History

disastrous trivia roundup

Calamities, fiascoes, debacles: a roundup of things disastrous.

ignatius donnelly, king crank

Minnesota’s contributions to American culture include Zubaz, hotdish, and a cheeseburger where you put the cheese inside the burger. Equally deranged but less well-known is Ignatius Donnelly: crank, crackpot, charlatan, peripatetic land speculator turned politician turned PT…

a brief history of miniature golf

Did you know mini-golf was hugely, monstrously popular in 1930? Neither did I. A report from August 1930 listed 25,000 miniature golf courses in the US. By 2001, there were 7500. On a per capita basis, that’s eight times as many mini golf courses in 1930 as now. Mini…

corrupted trivia roundup

A roundup of frauds, flimflams, cheats, sandbags, dupes, bamboozles, deceptions, and corruption…

1. Gerrymandering is a portmanteau of Jerry Mathers, TV’s “Beaver.” After leaving acting in his teens, Mathers, a math prodigy, studied computer science at Cal…

a history of vending

“We started out some time ago with a machine for selling prophylactic goods. Maybe we ought to have been shot for that.” I. W. Schulman

Scoring a 7 on the Volcanic Explosivity Index, the eruption of Indonesia’s Mt. Tambora in 1815 was a global disaster. On the plus…

lost trivia roundup

Pigeons of war, Ruth Buzzi, hat people, castaway depots, a gold-mining flim-flam man: a roundup of things obliquely lost…

1. The Lost Battalion was a group of 554 American soldiers who, through miscommunication, ended up entirely surrounded by German soldiers in the…

found trivia roundup

Heads, ancient cities, ideas, and ill-considered TV shows: a roundup of things found…

1. Here’s a thing that happened: after his death in 1809, composer Joseph Haydn’s head was stolen. CRANIOKLEPTY: a national scourge. Why steal his head? Well, it was 1809, and the…

timed trivia roundup

A roundup of calendars, clocks, dating conventions, missing time, and lesser-known batman villains.

1. The AD/BC convention (now BCE/CE) dates back to 525 AD. Dionysius Exiguus, a Christian monk, was responsible for the computus, or the calculation of the date of…

The Victorian Search for Gorillas, Evolution, and Humanness

How Europe became fascinated with…

A History of Anesthesia

A Terror That Surpasses All Description