History
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Read more: Loch Ness Monster & The Surgeon’s Photo: Evidence or Hoax?
Some legends are born in the mouth, carried from hearth to hearth and polished by generations. Others are born in a press room, stamped onto paper in a single day and multiplied into thousands of identical memories. The modern legend of the Loch Ness Monster grew from both kinds of birth: older Scottish stories about…
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Read more: The Siberian Unicorn and the Folklore of Fossils
In the frozen steppes of Siberia, beneath layers of permafrost and ice, there once lay a colossal skull unlike any other. The wind-whipped grasslands of the Ice Age had buried this secret for millennia. When at last the skull was unearthed by modern hands, its heavy bones spoke of a creature that bridged myth and…
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Read more: Egypt’s Sacred Cats – From Myth to Meme
Have you seen the videos? A young woman presses play on her smartphone, and a haunting melody of ancient flutes fills her living room. Her cat, previously lounging lazily on the windowsill, bolts upright. Ears perked, eyes wide, the feline seems transfixed by the mysterious music echoing from millennia past. This is a scene playing…
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Read more: Tesla’s Pigeon: A Genius, His Friend, and the Myth of the “Bird Brain”
In the last few months I’ve become very close to birds. I’ve been raising a family of quails in my home. My new-found connection to the emotional and intellectual lives of birds reminded me of a story I’d heard about the genius of the modern world… In the twilight of his life, a lone figure…
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Read more: Holidays without Christmas: A Collection of Winter Festivals from Around the World
As a non-christian omnist, I have complicated feelings about the celebration of Christmas. Although we in the United States are often told that a “traditional” Christ-focused Christmas is central to the American identity, the truth is that Christmas was outlawed for several decades by a congress that was, arguably, made up of more practicing Christians.…
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Read more: Milton Cooper to QAnon: How Behold a Pale Horse Shaped Modern Conspiracy Culture
On a November night in 2001, in the high desert of Arizona, a peculiar chapter of American conspiracy lore came to a violent end. Milton William “Bill” Cooper—an ex-Navy radio broadcaster turned author—died in a shootout with sheriff’s deputies on his own property, guns blazing. Cooper had often declared he would never be taken alive,…
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Read more: The History of Miniature Mt. Fuji Shrines
In a quiet corner of a Tokyo neighborhood, tucked behind the gates of a Shinto shrine stands a small mound of rocks and earth shaped unmistakably like the cone of Mount Fuji. These are miniature Mt. Fuji mounds, known as fujizuka, and they are far more than just playgrounds. They represent a link across centuries…
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Read more: How Beer Domesticated Humans
Imagine a time in prehistory when humans stumbled upon a happy accident: a mash of wild grains left in a pot that turned into a fizzy, mildly intoxicating brew. The standard story of civilization suggests that our ancestors first domesticated grains to fill their bellies with bread, and only later discovered the pleasant side effect…
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Read more: Weapons: America’s Dark Obsession with Witch Hunts
Weapons is one of biggest horror films of the year and the Junji Ito-esque picture opens up a conversation about the nature of witch hunts. The film takes place in a quiet Pennsylvania town where 17 children vanish into the cold darkness without a trace. Panic grips the community. Neighbors cast suspicious eyes at those…
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Read more: How Did Escape Artists, Strongmen and Acrobats Become Superheroes?
A crowd gathers under the bright stripes of the circus tent, hearts pounding as a man wrapped in chains struggles inside a water tank. Minutes feel like hours… submerged… entombed in impossible knots of metal. Just when it seems no human could survive even a second longer, he bursts free, arms raised in triumph as…
