By the Skin of his Body: The Death of Big Nose George
August 1878, United States of America; a Union Pacific train was screaming through large, and largely empty, rural Wyoming. The day was warm and the...
Author: Alex Archives
The Bikini and the Beast
Nuclear means much more than atomic power. Since World War II it has inspired thoughts of Utopia and destruction, but most of all in trying...
John Frum and the Cargo Cult
No planes or soldiers were remotely near the islands of Vanuatu, yet airstrips were appearing like scars through the pristine landscapes. World War II had...
Music, Mathematics and the First Vegetarians: Rise of the Pythagoreans
Pythagoras, mathematician and philosopher, returned from Egypt and Babylon a changed man. At the Greek colony of Croton, he set down roots and brought thinkers...
On The Origin Of Zero
Something, to deliberately show nothing – that is the odd irony at the heart of zero – it is almost unbelievably useful. It makes algebra,...
Ivy Mike: How the H-bomb Vaporised an Island
5km across, the fireball erupted from the island of Elugelab and engulfed the sky. The shock wave vaporised everything within 5km, and scraped the neighbouring...
Drapetomania – Freedom the Sickness
In 1851 the prominent American physician Samuel Adolphus Cartwright observed black slaves that fled captivity, and saw an illness. “Drapetomania, or the disease causing Negroes...
Line to Nowhere: The Life and Death of a Mojave Phone Booth
Deserted in the desert Two dusty tracks cross in the sun-blasted Mojave Desert; there, perched on the edge of nowhere are concrete blocks where a...
Voskhod 2: The Cursed Peak of Soviet Space
Alexei Leonov on his spacewalk. Voskhod 2 was a deadly mission. It was the final space race victory for Soviet Russia before NASA finally claimed...
How You Are A Hive Mind
You make decisions. How good you are at doing so is irrelevant, what matters is that you make them. Now, you are smarter than a...