Diogenes Lived In A Jar And Told Alexander To Move
He abandoned sofas, installed himself in a single enormous pithos, and famously told Alexander to 'stand out of my sun' with the kind of decorum only an ancient eccentric could muster.Read More 
When Greenwich Outsourced Zero Longitude and Lost a Football Pitch
The famous line at the Royal Observatory is not where modern satellites say zero is - GPS puts it about 102 metres to the east, and the resulting geography of pretension is delicious.Read More 
When Corpses Clock In: Welcome to the Body Farm
There is, rather splendidly, a university garden where donated dead people teach police how to stop being wrong about time of death.Read More 
Valentich: The Pilot Who Phoned the Night Sky
On October 21 1978 a small Cessna rang Melbourne approach to report a strange craft, emitted a gobsmacking last transmission and then simply vanished like a badly behaved piece of luggage.Read More 
When Strasbourg Decided to Dance Itself to Bits
In the summer of 1518 one woman started jigging in Strasbourg and within days the town had choreographed its own mild apocalypse - the council's solution was to hire a band.Read More 
Mima Mounds: The Gopher Conspiracy
A neat army of circular earth hummocks baffled geologists for centuries; the leading suspect now happens to be an overambitious burrowing rodent.Read More 
Yarkovsky's Tiny Push: Sun-Heated Rocks Steal Orbits
The Sun gives small asteroids a microscopic shove - over centuries it can turn a pebble into an Earth-bound hooligan.Read More 
How Rome Sweetened Wine with Lead
They boiled grape must in lead kettles to make 'sapa' and then merrily sweetened wine with the resulting 'sugar of lead'-a culinary shortcut that invited lead into every goblet.Read More 
France Lets You Marry The Dead, Quite Properly
Under French civil law you may marry a deceased partner - so long as the paperwork and a presidential nod prove you were sincere and not simply theatrical.Read More 
Dani's Two-Colour Universe and My Mild Existential Crisis
The Dani people of New Guinea famously run the world on two basic colour words and, shockingly, the cosmos keeps functioning.Read More 