The Great Boston Molasses Debacle
In 1919 a 2.3 million gallon tank burst and Boston discovered that molasses, like bureaucracy, is impossible to shovel politely.Read More 
Hakarl: How Iceland Ferments a Poisonous Shark and Sells It With Swagger
They take a urea-soaked Greenland shark, bury it like a secret, dry it till the poison is gone, and then invite you to pretend the ammonia is 'flavor'.Read More 
the tree that mapped the desert (and then got fired)
There was one acacia in the Tnr so perfectly alone caravans treated it like a landmark GPS until a truck driver took it out and now its trunk naps in a museum.Read More 
They Soak Fish In Lye And Eat It
They take dried cod, bathe it in caustic soda until it turns to jelly, wash the death out and serve it with pride - proper daft, innit.Read More 
They Ate Arsenic For a Pretty Face, Honestly
Victorian ladies popped arsenic tonics and 'complexion wafers' to look pale and flawless, then wondered why their teeth fell out and their skin joked back.Read More 
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 
The Guy Who Outsmarted the Ocean for 76 Days (Yes, Really)
He spent seventy-six days alone on a life raft, lived on raw fish and rain, invented a desalination trick, and somehow came back polite enough to write a book about it.Read More 
France Made Supermarkets Give It Away
In 2016 the French actually outlawed binning edible supermarket food and made shops donate it instead - and I love that for them.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 
The Shark That Time Forgot
Picture a fish that treats a 400th birthday like a Tuesday - Greenland sharks can live nearly four centuries and only reach proper adulthood at about 150.Read More 