“Truth serum” refers to various drugs that have been used in attempts to extract truthful statements from people. Wine was the basic method for extraction during ancient times, however, the first...
In Roman times slaves were used to mine salt. It was not a pleasant chore. But today in the Ukraine some people willingly spend several hours a day in a salt mine. They are not there, though, to...
On a fall day in 1991, two Germans hiking in the Alps near the Italian- Austrian border stumbled across what they initially believed to be a modern corpse frozen in the ice. Once the body was...
The science of geyser eruptions was worked out by none other than Robert Bunsen- of burner fame. Actually Bunsen did not invent the burner but did improve upon existing equipment by showing that...
Influenza is a nasty illness. It isn’t just a bad cold. This viral infection kills up to half a million people in the world every year. And that’s in a good year. In a bad year, like 1968, the Hong...
Because baby houseflies don’t exist. A little backgrounder on the flies’ reproductive cycle can clear up this seeming conundrum. Within a week of mating, a doggie-style activity lasting from a few...
Doyle had become interested in spiritualism in the late 1800s and joined the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR). In 1894 he was one of the members of a committee sent to investigate a...
Victorian ladies fainted with alarming frequency. They had been characterized as the weaker sex and had become conditioned to fulfil the role. A little shock, such as a glance at a passage in Lady...