The Serpentine Story of Snake Oil, Or How I Came to Buy Snake Oil from...
Snake oil purchased from Amazon.com. (Photo: Ella Morton)Buying snake oil in 2015 is surprisingly easy. A search for "snake oil" on Amazon yields 2,716 hits, many of them not liquid, but 16 oils sit...
View ArticleLOST: Hollywood's Greatest Twitter Account
Fame is fickle (Photo: Christian Haugen/Flickr)Hollywood, an entire industry dedicated to people pretending to be someone that they're not (both onscreen and off), pretty much invented the concept of...
View ArticleCheating Wonders: The $6,000,000,000 Gold Mine That Didn't Exist
(Photo: Wichan Kongchan/shutterstock.com)The Gold Rush may be over, but that doesn’t mean the precious metal stopped inspiring criminal ingenuity.In fact, the largest gold mining scam in the history of...
View ArticleHow To Design a Magical Life
(Photo: Alexandre17/shutterstock.com)You know those magical moments when fates collide, uncertainties resolve into sudden, stunning clarity, and the resulting awe and gratitude you feel for the...
View ArticleThe Unmasking of the 19th Century's Seance Queen
Helena Blavatsky. (Photo: Public Domain/WikiCommons)“For our part, we regard her as neither the mouthpiece of hidden seers, nor as a mere vulgar adventuress; we think that she has achieved a title to...
View ArticleNashville's Cheatin' Heart: Why Country Music Has Been Obsessed With Adultery...
Some troubadour left his broken heart. (Photo: Tim Parkinson/Flickr)Country music and cheating go together like whiskey and water.Flip on any radio station—classic country, pop-country, alt-country,...
View ArticlePizza Doesn't Really Stretch That Way, And Other Devious Food Stylist Tricks
What are they hiding? (Photo: William Hueberger/Lisa Homa)Everyone needs a little help to look their freshest. Celebrities have makeup artists, Instagrammers have filters, and food has food stylists:...
View ArticleFound: A Very Flexible Fake Football Player
As a professional football team, the Phoenix-based Arizona Rattlers fields a very talented group of cheerleaders...and one extra-talented football player: Okay, okay, just because he is wearing a...
View Article5 Time Machines You Can Buy, Build or Visit
An 'Astral Projection Time Travel Machine Helmet Psychotronic Technology', for $129.95. (Photo: Ebay)The urge to travel through time is irresistible. It is, in fact, timeless: H.G. Wells' The Time...
View ArticleCheating Wonders: A New Nazi Gold Scam?
One of the tunnels from Project Riese. (Photo: Chmee2/Wikipedia)This week, a pair of amateur treasure hunters claimed to have discovered a lost train packed with ill-gotten Nazi gold near the Polish...
View ArticleScam Reviewers Are So Crafty They Actually Deserve 4 Stars
(Photo: Artem Samokhvalov/shutterstock.com)You're walking around the city with a group of friends. It's 7 p.m., and you all have a similar urge to fill your stomachs with fish tacos and strong...
View ArticleTake a Ride with the Country's Most Dedicated Elevator Tourist
Nix Hospital Elevator Lobby in San Antonio. (Photo: DieselDucy/flickr)Andrew Reams was just a toddler when he went on the elevator ride that launched a lifelong passion.He was shopping with his mother...
View ArticleFOUND: The Oldest Message in a Bottle Ever Recovered
One of Bidder's bottles (Photo: Marine Biological Association of the U.K/Facebook)A few months back, Marianne Winkler and her husband, Horst, were taking a vacation on Amrum, a German island in the...
View ArticleThe Psychedelic Moon Maps of the 1970s
Geological detail from the Byrgius Quadrangle of the moon. (Image: U.S. Geological Survey)In the 1960s and '70s, the U.S. Geological Survey created a Geologic Atlas of the Moon. The series of maps,...
View Article140 Years Ago, Captain Matthew Webb Swam The English Channel And Made...
An artist's rendering of Captain Webb accepting libations during the long swim. (Image: CS&PF/Public Domain)It's a hot August day, and you, like many, may choose to beat the heat with a few bracing...
View ArticleFleeting Wonders: Snow in August
A windshield's-eye view in Longview, Alberta this weekend. (Photo: National Weather Service Grand Forks/Weather Channel)While much of the world swelters through one of the hottest summers on record,...
View ArticleMeet the Genghis Khans of the Plant Kingdom
Sonchus oleraceus (Photo: Sten Porse/Wikimedia)In human history, certain societies have made it their business to try to take over the world. In plant history, there are species with the same...
View ArticleWhen the Lights Go Out: 8 of the World's Loneliest Lighthouses
Photo: Thomas Guest/WikimediaAh, the lonely life of the lighthouse keeper. In the heyday of sailing, long before automated beacons steered ships away from treacherous shores, brave men and women were...
View ArticleFOUND: A Reef to Rival the Great Barrier Reef
The reef (Photo: Parks Victoria)Off the south coast of Australia, the Wilsons Promontory Marine National Park has been hiding an incredible coral reef beneath its waters. Not long ago, when scientists...
View ArticleFleeting Wonders: Watch One Stumble Ruin $1.5 Million Worth of Flowers
In the history of destroyed art, are there any more tragic or strangely gratifying examples of destruction than those caused by bumbling?The latest example of masterpiece-tarnishing klutzery comes from...
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