Mongolian Beatles
In 1971, Mongolia’s Minister of Culture decided that the country needed its own rock band, and so Soyol Erdene was born.
Category: 20th century history
Book smugglers
From 1864 to 1904, a vast underground network smuggled illegal books into Russian-controlled Lithuania.
Yo ho ho, a sailor’s life for me
Zeppelins, U-boats, the Titanic, Dunkirk, the Klondike Gold Rush, the Great Smog, castaways, cowboys, and hobos all had one thing in common: Charles Lightoller.
Greatest headline
Although probably apocryphal, the greatest newspaper headline I’ve heard of was supposedly written for the occasion that the English politician Michael Foot was appointed to a nuclear disarmament committee.
Citric panic
Beginning in 1976 a pseudoscientific pamphlet spread like wildfire across Europe, stating that many common food additives caused cancer – including cellulose and citric acid.
Education circus
Tents appear outside a town in early 20th century rural United States. It’s not the circus, it’s the circuit chautauqua: teachers, preachers, musicians, and orators, ready to bring education and religion to the masses.
Burning runway
What do you do when a plane cannot land because of heavy fog? In WWII Britain, you set the runway on fire.
Suffragette arson
The campaign for women’s voting rights was not smooth: by 1913 suffragettes in Britain were setting fire to houses, cricket pavilions, and Westminster Abbey.
Oliver Reed’s last day
Oliver Reed, the famed actor and alcoholic, drank 8 pints of beer, 12 shots of rum, half a bottle of whiskey, and some shots of cognac, arm-wrestled five sailors, and then died of a heart attack.
Smallpox cult
Dr. Oguntola Sapara suspected skulduggery from the influential priests of Sopona, the Yoruba god of smallpox. He was right.
Body swap
The corpses of Eva Perón, the first lady of Argentina, and Pedro Eugenio Aramburu, one of the generals who overthrew her husband’s government, became the centrepieces of a bitter dispute more than twenty years after Evita’s death.
High treason on the radio
The last person to be executed for treason against the United Kingdom was not actually British.
The Bat unmasked
In Mexican wrestling the mask is sacred, and its loss in the ring is the ultimate insult. The first Mexican wrestler to lose his mask was El Murciélago Enmascarado, The Masked Bat, and it all happened eighty years ago.
A letter to the dystopian future
In 1947 the English author Dennis Wheatley wrote a letter to the dystopian future he thought was coming and buried it. Twenty-two years later the letter was uncovered. It had not aged well.
Gliding home
In 1983 a Boeing 767 with 61 passengers ran out of fuel while twelve thousand metres off the ground. The metric system was to blame.
Defection by jet
In 1953 No Kum-Sok defected from North Korea. He brought a MiG-15 Soviet jet fighter with him.
The Generalist Academy 