In 1959, Texas journalist John Howard Griffin darkened his skin and lived for six weeks as a black man in the segregated South. In this week's episode of the Futility… Read the rest of the article: In 1959, a white journalist traveled the Deep South posing as a black man. The conditions horrified him.

If you opened a box of Quaker Oats in 1955, you'd find a deed to one square inch of land in northwestern Canada.

In the 1850s, settlers in western Nevada were cut off from the rest of the world each winter by deep snow. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast… Read the rest of the article: In the 1850s, mail was carried through the California mountains by one guy on skis.

In 1910, four Alaskan gold miners set out to climb the highest peak in North America just to show that it could be done. In this week's episode of the… Read the rest of the article: In 1910, a group of inexperienced gold miners bet two cents that they could reach the top of Mount McKinley

Felix von Luckner was a romantic hero in the Great War, a dashing nobleman who commanded an old-style sailing ship. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll… Read the rest of the article: The Sea Devil: the gentleman pirate who made friends of his enemies in World War I

One of the most fearless and admired stagecoach drivers of the Wild West was discovered after death to be a woman.

Was an Australian butcher really a long-lost English aristocrat?

Being well known can make it harder to rest in peace.

What happens to a town founded explicitly to reject Christianity?

Follow the desperate journey of 20 surviving seamen stranded a thousand miles from land.

Here are four new lateral thinking puzzles to test your wits!

What happens when a Japanese fighter pilot crash-lands on a remote Hawaiian island after the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Did the spirits of dead composers contact British medium Rosemary Brown to dictate new music?

When the largest rescue operation of the Vietnam War failed to reach downed navigator Gene Hambleton, how did his lifelong passion for golf become the key to his rescue?

That being the highly successful French play.

Can you solve "the prize puzzle of British criminal jurisprudence"?

Coincidence, correlation, or something else?