Shine On You Eagle Diamond
The year 1893 was a big one for Eagle, Wisconsin. Workers found a huge diamond on the Devereaux farm: sixteen carats, uncut, and now, all these years later, missing.
Who and What Was a Knocker-Upper?
Pour one out for the people paid to rouse the workers of industrial Britain.
Ireland’s Upper Sea
In medieval Ireland, ships that sailed across the sky were both marvelous and mundane.
The Gruesome History of Ohio’s “Fingers in the Jar”
Three of Mary Bach’s fingers, hacked off by her murderous husband in 1881, were displayed in a jar for more than a century in Bowling Green, Ohio.
Hold the Line
As telephony developed, so did a workforce of switchboard operators—all women—who were ultimately rendered obsolete by technological progress.
The Mystery of Crime-Scene Dust
In the late nineteenth century, forensic investigators began using new technologies to study minute details—such as the arrangement and makeup of dust.
Sex-Cult Rocket Man
Jack Parsons, one of the “suicide squad” trio of young rocket-boy founders of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, had an improbable extracurricular life.
In Search of Einstein’s Brain
After Albert Einstein’s death in 1955, a pathologist—searching for the secret of genius—removed, dissected, and ultimately stole the mathematician’s brain.
Early Doctors Diagnosed Disease by Looking at Urine
When uroscopy became trendy, it caused a minor scandal within the early medical profession.