BlogFlockThe race was on. It was the fall of 1960, and the candidates were on the presidential campaign trail. The polls gave Nixon the lead, and talk of a historic debate with Kennedy was in the headlines. Campaign buttons were everywhere: “Pat for First Lady,” they shouted in red, white,…
In 1815, a volcanic eruption in Indonesia released a massive cloud of ash and particulates, large enough to affect global weather. Temperatures plummeted, causing frosty conditions and torrential rain across Europe, North America, and Asia for months. The result? Failed crops, widespread hardship, pestilence,…
In 19th-century Munich, a woman with no formal banking experience began promising ordinary people extraordinary returns on their savings. Workers, servants, craftsmen and farmers flocked to her door, carrying the money they had spent years accumulating. Some mortgaged their homes or sold their land to take advantage of her generosity.…
A labor-saving device to lighten the domestic workload … wouldn’t that be taken up in a second? The vacuum cleaner and the electric refrigerator certainly were. These were juiced-up variations on familiar things (brooms, iceboxes) and were welcome—if one could afford them. But electric-powered washing machines, which began to…
From the peaks of Eryri to hidden valleys and haunted mines, the storied landscapes of Wales have inspired centuries of myth and folklore. Over time, these tales of the unexplained…
If you were asked to picture Balinese dancers, the Luh Luwih troupe might not be what comes to mind. Founded in 1995 as an offshoot of a pioneering gamelan wanita (women’s orchestra), the thirty-member troupe is composed mostly of middle-aged women who have “set about performing the all-male genres one…
Sure, you’ve seen a dead body before, but have you ever seen a thumb preserved in salt? How about a saint’s heart shrouded in gold?
Beyond the normal displays of skeletons in…
Each time we read a poem, we dream. We leave the everyday world—our jobs, responsibilities, and friendships—and enter into a spell cast by language. “Is all that we see or seem / but a dream within a dream?” Poe famously asked in his poem “A Dream Within a Dream.” Countless…
Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864–1952) is considered one of the great women photographers in American history. She made a name for herself as the first established woman photographer in Washington, DC, where she was raised and where she established her first studio in 1894. That same decade, she began working as…
Welcome to Wyrd Britain, a place of stories of a stranger Britain.
Exploring every aspect of a human and natural cosmos that is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine
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