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Dirty Man in the Snow
In 1925, Greek photographer and geologist N. A. Tombazi, while on a British Geological Expedition in Tibet, saw something kind of strange. At an altitude of about 15, 000 feet, Tombazi’s local guides...
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A Modern-Day Not-a-Fish Story
When in July of 1891, the ship Star of the East made it to port in Connecticut after a two-and-a-half-year journey, it brought with it a story of Biblical proportions. Among the ship’s crew was a...
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A Classy Post about a Loyal Dog with an Unfortunate Name
On the night of May 29, 1805 in the Montana wilderness, a group of intrepid and weary explorers got a shock when a large buffalo bull came charging across a river, pushed off a long, wooden canoe, and...
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Why I Want to be a Science-y Lemming
The 1959 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature went to Disney’s White Winter, largely for the wonderful exploration the film made of the strange case of lemming mass suicide. It is one of those...
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Meanwhile, UFOs
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been kind of avoiding watching/reading/listening to much news lately. Under normal circumstances, I’m not exactly a news junkie, but I do like to check in more or...
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Does Superman Have Wisdom Teeth?
Recently I was asked a very serious question: “Knowing, as we do, that Superman is an alien from the planet Krypton who exhibits superpowers when exposed to the yellow sun of Earth, and if the planet...
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A Nude Horse is a Rude Horse
It’s been kind of a rough week here in the United States. Anxieties are running high as we wait for the final results of what looks to be an incredibly tight hot mess of a presidential election...
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Let’s Talk Turkey
In 1535, Spanish colonialist and historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés published his General and Natural History of the Indies in which he described for the old world some of the elements of...
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Say What?!
In 1774, German naturalist Johann Matthaus Bechstein published a treatise on cage birds in which he mentioned an African Grey Parrot owned by Cardinal Ascanius. This bird could perfectly recite the...
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New Zealand Rips a Big One
Those of you who have followed this blog for a long time may have noticed that rarely does it venture into topics that could be considered very serious. You may have even wondered at times why a...
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A Tuesday for the Rabbits
In July of 1807, Alexandre Berthier, then Chief of Staff to Napoleon Bonaparte, made a slight miscalculation that led to what has to be in the running for most epic battle in human history. This...
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A Jury of Slimy Philosophical Counselors
It’s been a crazy couple of days here in the Greater St. Louis area as historic flash flooding has overwhelmed roadways, swamped cars, and caused a lot of damage to homes and businesses. By historic,...
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A Mini Fridge, a Microwave, and a Bear
I confess this is one of my favorite times of the year, as everyone is getting ready for school and activities are firing up all around. Once I get through the drudgery of the start-of-the-year forms,...
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Hares, Hounds, and an Unlikely Superfan
It’s been about two hundred years since the students of the Shrewsbury School in England invented a new game in which they pretended to engage in an epic rabbit hunt. A couple of students took off...
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Prognosticator of Prognosticators
On February 2, 1887, exactly one year after Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper editor Clymer Freas suggested the idea of an official Groundhog Day, a group of well-dressed and maybe just a little bit silly...
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Godspeed, Ben!
On April 30, 1904, the Louisiana Purchase Exposition opened to the world on the grounds of Forest Park in St. Louis. To walk through Forest Park today, nearly one hundred and nineteen years later, you...
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Orca-strated Attack
These past few weeks, or maybe months, I have fallen out of the blogosphere a little bit. Life has just been really busy. Fortunately, it has calmed down a little now, and I’m hoping to reestablish...
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Really Fowling Up the Place
In March of 1847, 19th century literary journal The Knickerbocker published what is most likely the first printed version of what has become one of the most ubiquitous terrible jokes in the English...
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Thinking About the Roman Empire
I’ve been at this blogging thing for going on twelve years now, which is long enough to lose a little steam, and also to not always remember what territory I’ve already covered in this space. I am...
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Not a Nut
In January of 1942, Pennsylvania dental surgeon and amateur inventor Lytle S. Adams had a big idea to share with the United States government. Like many Americans, I’m sure, in the weeks following the...
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