World’s Strangest

As the Nazis swallowed Europe, two scientists fought back with the only weapon they had: chemistry. Getty Images When the Third Reich took control of Germany, Danish physicist Niels Bohr (pictured) transformed into something like Oskar Schindler in a lab coat. From his Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, the Nobel laureate aided and protected Jewish scientists, [...]

Whether these people were donning masks to celebrate Halloween, Thanksgiving (more on that later), or a fancy dress party, or to safely perform a medical procedure or act in a play, the results are spooky—and likely to give you nightmares. Happy Halloween! Getty Images 1865: A white caped figure wearing a Halloween pumpkin mask taking two [...]

Shaun Usher is delighted to have a copy of the new book Kurt Vonnegut: Letters, which is available for purchase today. He has published two of the letters at Letters of Note, in which the author’s fatherly side is evident. One concerns his son Mark, who received his draft notice in 1967. Here’s the first [...]

Union Hardware in Bathesda, Maryland sells decorative household materials. Over the years, owner David Goldberg has accumulated a lot of old discontinued pieces. He took them out of storage and assembled this rendition of Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night: This new rendering utilizes over 1,250 door knobs, levers, and back plates from Italy, Germany and the [...]

It’s February, 1945. The US Army is advancing into Germany through Luxembourg. Sgt. William Furia of Philadelphia first wore his lace cozy as a joke, but then he found it offered some effective camouflage in the snowy weather. Link -via Retronaut | Photo: AP

“QUANTUM SHOT” #800 Link – article by Mike Gulett Designed to resemble the German Graf Zeppelin dirigibles We wrote about Tatra’s streamlined cars before (also see other aerodynamically shaped cars in our older article). We received quite a good response, asking us to continue this series. Today we feature The [...]

There are monsters all around us -or at least the legends of monsters. Last week we saw some of the monsters of Asia. Now here are some of the scariest monsters of Europe. 1. Kelpie The Kelpie lives in the lakes and rivers of Scotland, and is often referred to as a “water horse” because it is [...]

The First World War was an unprecedented catastrophe that killed millions and set the continent of Europe on the path to further calamity two decades later. But it didn’t come out of nowhere. With the centennial of the outbreak of hostilities coming up in 2014, Erik Sass will be looking back at the lead-up to the [...]

In 1947, the British South American Airways plane Star Dust took off from Buenos Aires, Argentina, with eleven people aboard, destined for Santiago, Chile. But it never arrived. The passenger list certainly does its part to set the stage for conspiracy theories: A Palestinian returning to Chile from visiting a dying relative, two British businessmen, a [...]

We covered some of the many alternate histories out there. Here are seven more intriguing ways the world could be completely different. 1. What if the Romans won the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest? Effect: No one would speak English. Explanation: In What If? (1999), edited by Robert Cowley, historians pondered what would happen if historical events had [...]