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 
They Really Put Waterloo In Your Mouth
In the Victorian era respectable smiles were sometimes built from other peoples teeth-often nicked from battlefields and graves-and nobody used the word 'awkward' with sufficient gravitas.Read More 
How Photographers Sold You Ghosts and Everyone Took the Money
A quickly fashionable Victorian business model: take a portrait, add a faint pallor, bill a grieving family for their dearly departed's cameo and then argue about the receipts in court.Read More 
Camouflage Is For Soldiers, Not Your Saturday Shop
Several countries, notably in the Caribbean and West Africa, actually outlaw civilians wearing military-pattern camouflage to stop impersonation and public confusion.Read More 
The Church Carved From Salt (Yes, Really)
Down beneath Krakow miners carved an entire chapel out of rock salt - altars, chandeliers and all - which is both impolite to lick and unfathomably splendid.Read More 
Why High Places Love Ejective Sounds
A delightfully absurd but real linguistic pattern: the world's 'popping' consonants turn up disproportionately at altitude, as if mountains taught people to snap their T's with dramatic conviction.Read More 
The Dunes That Decided to Sing
Certain deserts emit deep, musical booms when dry sand avalanches - and the explanation is gloriously technical and mildly theatrical.Read More 
When the Victorians Went Mad for Leeches
They bled society dry by sending jars of wriggling leeches to every parlour and pharmacy, and then invented 'leech diplomacy' to explain why the marshes were crying.Read More 
When London Drowned in Beer (And Nobody Called A Plumber)
In 1814 a rotten vat at a Tottenham Court Road brewery gave way and released over a hundred thousand gallons of porter, flattening houses, drowning cellars and killing eight people - which is history's most civilised catastrophe.Read More 
The Sin-Eater Who Ate Your Shame (Very Bad Manners)
In parts of Britain a shunned professional would eat bread and drink ale over corpses to 'take' their sins for a crust and a pint, and everyone behaved as if this were entirely sensible.Read More 