Jenny: The Orangutan That Helped Darwin Evolve His Theory

Mar 14, 2022

If you visit the Darwin Archive at Cambridge University Library (DAR 191) today, you will find notes on orangutans recorded by Charles Darwi...

Treaty of Kadesh: The World’s First Peace Treaty

Mar 10, 2022

On the walls of the Temple of Karnak near Luxor, Egypt, and on the temple of Pharaoh Ramesses II in Thebes, are engravings that describe a g...

The Sculpted Rocks of Rothéneuf

Mar 10, 2022

In 1879 in a small town in the south-east of France called Châteauneuf-de-Galaure, a postman began the construction of a fantastic palace, w...

Ambergris: The Highly Sought-After ‘Whale Vomit’

Mar 9, 2022

The sea washes up all kinds of strange stuff , from carcasses of whales and squids to fossils and ancient shipwrecks. But nothing is as prec...

Thomas Midgley Jr.: The One-Man Environmental Disaster

Mar 8, 2022

The unnatural warming of the Earth’s atmosphere in the past century or two can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution when humans began...

The Field of Cloth of Gold

Mar 4, 2022

Situated just ten miles south of Calais, Balinghem is an unremarkable little village, but five hundred years ago this quiet countryside play...

The Turf Mazes of Britain

Mar 3, 2022

Turf mazes are labyrinths made by cutting a convoluted path in an area of short grass or lawn, and were once a common feature of the English...

Tarrare: The Man Who Ate Too Much

Mar 1, 2022

If gluttony is a sin, then perhaps the worst offender was a man named Tarrare who lived in 18th century France. He had such an insatiable ap...

Mensur And Bragging Scars

Feb 25, 2022

This is Otto Skorzeny, often regarded as Hitler’s deadliest general. An Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the SS during World W...

Giuseppe Fieschi’s Infernal Machine

Feb 24, 2022

On July 28, 1835, Giuseppe Marco Fieschi positioned himself in front of an open window on the third floor of N. 50 Boulevard du Temple in Pa...