Agloe: The Made-Up Town That Outsmarted Cartographers
Mapmakers planted a fake village as a copyright trap; a shopkeeper put up a sign and the forgery turned into fact, which is deliciously petty and brilliant.Read More 
Rue: The Smelly Herb That Bossed-Off Bad Luck
Folks from Naples to Nuevo Leon used bitter rue-ruda-to hang over cradles, sprinkle in doorways and bathe babies so jealous eyes and nasty luck would take a hike.Read More 
The Car That Wanted A Mini Nuclear Heart (and Nope)
In 1958 Ford sketched a tiny car with a nuclear reactor in its butt and the 1950s were charmingly delusional about that sort of thing.Read More 
Most Of The Clitoris Lives Inside, Mate
You only see the bonnet; the rest is a lumpy, lovemaking apparatus that sprawls like a secret map under the skin.Read More 
How They Let Dord Into the Dictionary
A tiny clerical blunder turned 'dord' into a bona fide dictionary entry for years, proving lexicographers are gloriously human.Read More 
Trimethylaminuria: When Your Body Insists On Smelling Like Fish
A genetic lapse in a liver enzyme can make a person permanently fragrant like a fish stall and the remedies are as decorous and awkward as a county council meeting.Read More 
That Underground City With The Rolling Stone Doors
There is a cliff-town under Cappadocia that you can literally bolt shut from the inside with millstone doors and I adore the theatricality of it.Read More 
When Your Hand Goes Rogue
Proper daft: one of your hands can start doing stuff on its own, like some tiny squaddie with a vendetta.Read More 
Victorians Took Dead Selfies And Called Them Keepsakes
They posed corpses like sleepy roommates, propped eyes open with paint and wire, and kept the photos on the mantel like it was no big deal.Read More 
They Ground Up Mummies And Called It Medicine
Honey, for centuries Europeans bought powdered Egyptian mummies from apothecaries and swore they cured everything from headaches to bad manners.Read More
