In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell how Spanish authorities found an ingenious way to use orphans to bring the smallpox vaccine to the American colonies in… Read the rest of the article: LISTEN: The Balmis Expedition: Using Orphans to Combat Smallpox

The American bomber Lady Be Good left North Africa for a bombing run over Italy in 1943. It wasn't seen again until 15 years later, when explorers discovered its broken… Read the rest of the article: LISTEN: the desperate last days of a lost WWII bomber

In 1872 the British merchant ship Mary Celeste was discovered drifting and apparently abandoned 600 miles off the coast of Portugal. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll… Read the rest of the article: LISTEN: The Mary Celeste: A Great Sea Mystery

Here are eight new lateral thinking puzzles that you can try on your friends and family — see who can make sense of these odd scenarios using only yes-or-no questions.… Read the rest of the article: LISTEN: Lateral Thinking Puzzles

In 1768, Catherine the Great ordered her subjects to move a 3-million-pound granite boulder intact into Saint Petersburg, a task that seemed flatly impossible with the technology of the time.… Read the rest of the article: LISTEN: The Thunder Stone

For most of the 20th century, a man in black appeared each year at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. In the predawn hours of January 19, he would drink… Read the rest of the article: LISTEN: Edgar Allan Poe's Graveyard Visitor

In 1835 the New York Sun announced that astronomers had discovered bat-winged humanoids on the moon, as well as reindeer, unicorns, bipedal beavers and temples made of sapphire. The fake… Read the rest of the article: LISTEN: The Great Moon Hoax

For this Thanksgiving episode of the Futility Closet podcast, enjoy seven lateral thinking puzzles that didn't make it onto our regular shows. Solve along with us as we explore some… Read the rest of the article: Lateral Thinking Puzzles

Between 1837 and 1904, rumors spread of a strange bounding devil who haunted southern England, breathing blue flames and menacing his victims with steel talons. In the latest Futility Closet… Read the rest of the article: LISTEN: Spring-Heeled Jack — A Victorian Supervillain

Abraham Lincoln's eldest son, Robert, is the subject of a grim coincidence in American history: He's the only person known to have been present or nearby at the assassinations of… Read the rest of the article: Death and Robert Todd Lincoln

In August 1977 a radio telescope in Ohio received a signal that bore all the hallmarks of an extraterrestrial intelligence, leading astronomer Jerry Ehman to write "Wow!" in the margin… Read the rest of the article: The Wow! Signal

For 500 years of European history, animals were given criminal trials: Bulls, horses, dogs, and sheep were arrested, jailed, given lawyers, tried, and punished at community expense. In the latest… Read the rest of the article: Pigs on Trial

Nova Scotia's Oak Island hides a famously booby-trapped treasure cache — or so goes the legend. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast, we review the many attempts to… Read the rest of the article: The Oak Island Money Pit

In 1828, a 16-year-old boy appeared in Nuremberg, claiming that he'd spent his whole life alone in a dark cell. In the latest Futility Closet podcast we'll follow the short,… Read the rest of the article: The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser

Sherlock Holmes was based on a real man, a physician who trained Arthur Conan Doyle at the University of Edinburgh. During his medical lectures, Joseph Bell regularly astonished his students… Read the rest of the article: The real-life Sherlock Holmes

In 1810 someone told hundreds of London merchants that Mrs. Tottenham at 54 Berners Street had requested their services. She hadn't. For a full day the street was packed with… Read the rest of the article: Futility Closet 26: A Practical Joke on a Grand Scale

On Dec. 1, 1948, a well-dressed corpse appeared on a beach in South Australia. Despite 66 years of investigation, no one has ever been able to establish who he was,… Read the rest of the article: Futility Closet: mystery of the well-dressed corpse

On New Year's Day 1886, London grocer Edwin Bartlett was discovered dead in his bed with a lethal quantity of liquid chloroform in his stomach. Strangely, his throat showed none of the burns that chloroform should have caused.

On Feb. 9, 1855, the residents of Devon in southern England awoke to find a bewildering set of footprints in the newfallen snow. “These are to be found in fields, gardens, roads, house-tops, & other likely and unlikely places, deeply embedded in snow,” ran one contemporary account. “The shape was a hoof.”

Futility Closet on a dramatic encounter in the skies over Germany in 1943, whether animals follow the 10 commandments, and why a man would falsely tell his nephew that his dog was shot.