Histories And Mysteries

The year is 1907 when the household maid of a wealthy family living on well-to-do Park Avenue in Manhattan suddenly grows ill. Soon after, the family's only daughter likewise grows sick and dies. The cause? Typhoid, a disease associated with poverty and poor sanitation. Upon investigation, signs pointed to the recently hired head cook -- Mary Mallon, a perfectly healthy woman who had never before...

Before the Cold War race to the moon between the USA and the USSR, there was the purely peaceable race to the South Pole between the British Empire and the recently independent nation of Norway. The Norse were led by Roald Amundsen with his traditional, low-tech approach of sled dogs and skis, while the British were led by Naval stalwart Robert Falcon Scott and his experimental strategy of motor s...

At the turn of the 20th century, two teams of experienced explorers raced to be the first to plant their flag at the southernmost point of the globe for the sake of personal and national glory. They were well financed, well trained, and well equipped, but the harsh conditions of the Antarctic, the final unexplored continent, could be deadly and any mistake could be their last. Join us today as Jes...

Nyleen Marshall was a typical little girl who vanished on a warm Saturday in June, 1983 from Helena National Forest in Montana. Despite a robust search effort, she was never found. Evidence soon emerged, however, that she may not have simply disappeared, but rather she may have been taken. Join Jessica and Janel as they discuss the motivations of stranger kidnappings, the odd coincidences associat...

Two centuries before the coining of the term "transgender", a genderless former Quaker preacher claimed power of prophesy and attempted to lead their followers to create an enclave in the rough country of western New York. They also claimed to be a reanimated corpse, which is probably weirder. Hard to say.

The École Polytechnique massacre remains to this day the deadliest mass shooting in Canadian history, but beyond the deaths of 14 women and the later suicide of two survivors, the massacre had a massive and lasting impact on Canadian politics and policy. It marks the beginning of the divergence of Canadian and American gun control laws.

Canada is a relatively peaceful nation. Low violence. Low crime. Compared to their neighbours to the south, Canada rarely experiences American-style mass gun violence. However, that hasn't always been the case. Ten years before Columbine. Nearly two decades before Virginia Tech. Montreal Polytechnique was the scene of a misogyny-fueled terrorist attack that yet ranks among the deadliest school sho...

The life of a wartime spy behind enemy lines is often nasty, brutish, and short with the most dangerous positions carrying an expected lifespan of weeks or months. A spy, once burned, risks death should they return to the fray. Which isn't to say that none of them do.

Virginia Hall was a woman of talent and frustrated ambition -- denied again and again from a position as an American diplomat, first on account of her sex and second on account of her status as an amputee. In a different world, she would have remained nothing more than an over-qualified secretary, but as with the advent of the Second World War, she became something more: one of the most successful...

In 1932, during the waning hours of prohibition and the dawn of the Great Depression, a group of unscrupulous criminals, headed by speakeasy owner Tony Marino, came up with a dastardly plot to come up with some quick cash: to take out three life insurance policies on a haggard, homeless drunk named Michael Malloy. They figured Malloy wasn't far off from the grave, and they wouldn't need to lift a...

During the second World War, U Boat Wolf Packs stalked the Atlantic, harassing and sinking various Allied military and merchant vessels, threatening the vital resource lines supplying Britain. A long swath of ocean lay outside the range of land-based anti-submarine aircraft, known as "the Gap". Then, British inventor Geoffrey Pyke had an idea: a giant unsinkable aircraft carrier constructed entire...

Cave diving is among the most dangerous of extreme sports, where the smallest mistake can prove fatal, even for experienced, knowledgeable divers. So when a overconfident young diver goes missing, last seen entering the treacherous Vortex cave system, there seems to be an obvious conclusion as to his ultimate fate. However, not everything is as clear cut as it might seem.

After years of terrorist bombings throughout the Canadian city of Montreal, members of the militant separatist group, the Front de Liberation du Quebec, plotted their most audacious attack yet: the kidnapping of prominent diplomat, British Trade Commissioner James Cross. What followed was a crisis that rocked the country and resulted in Canada's very first peacetime enactment of martial law.

1960s Montreal was a growing, industrious city and cultural powerhouse -- the site of numerous festivals, the 1967 World Fair, and a massive wave of bombings, riots, and armed robberies. Several cells of the FLQ, a group of francophone separatists, carried out independent terror campaigns, with Montreal at their very centre.

The 1960s in the Canadian province of Quebec was a time of vast cultural, political, and economic change. A peaceful revolution in the way that French Canadians lived, worked, and defined themselves as a nation within a nation. In the midst of this changing world, a group of young Quebeckers decided that they would free their homeland from English Canadian tyranny by any means necessary, and they...

13 year old Megumi was far from the only foreign nationals stolen by the North Korean state -- known and suspected victims of abduction include a Romanian artist, a Mormon Elder, and an absolutely ludicrous number of South Korean citizens. The reasons for these abductions vary and remain shrouded in mystery, as does the ultimate fate of Megumi and her fellow abductees.

November 15, 1977 Megumi Yokota, a 13 year old girl who lived in a small Japanese village, was supposed to come home directly after badminton practice. She never arrived. Police immediately suspected that she had been kidnapped, but no ransom note was ever delivered. Decades later, the truth of Megumi's disappearance would finally be revealed. She had indeed been kidnapped on her walk home through...

Back in the frantic days of WWII, the National Defense Research Committee of the United States government had a policy of accepting civilian submissions for how to achieve military success against the Axis Powers. Most of these suggestions were never used, as they were likely ineffective, unworkable, or otherwise profoundly stupid. Sometimes, however, simply being obviously dumb was no barrier to...

How does a famous woman, surrounded by people who would recognize her on sight, disappear in the middle of a bright December afternoon from one of the busiest streets of one of the most densely populated places on the planet? Fucked if we know.

It takes courage to walk into the heat of battle, where death dogs your every step. No sane man seeks war, but then again, Jack Churchill was no sane man. Join us for archery, anachronisms, and a short stint as a male model on this week's Fat, French and Fabulous.

What do the Miracle on the Hudson, the Gimli Glider, and British Airlines Flight 5390 have in common? Well first of all, nobody died (outside of a few unfortunate geese) and they really, really should have. Join us for bird strikes, measuring mishaps, and freak accidents at 17,000 feet. *Picture credit to Wayne Glowacki of the Winnipeg Free Press

His true name unknown, his eating habits legendary, and his hunger unending, the man known only as Tarrare remains a medical mystery to this day.

With American intelligence drawing ever closer to the Cambridge ring, a plan is hatched to exfiltrate Donald Maclean -- a plot in which Guy Burgess had a key role. The revelation of the depth of Soviet infiltration would shake the very foundation of trust and cooperation between the the great western powers of the age.

We continue the story of Guy Burgess, Old Etonian and Communist Spy. Burgess rose within the ranks of elite British Society, whitewashing his colourful political history, and collecting information on behalf of the USSR. Meanwhile, Jessica and Janel enjoy the many silly names of early 20th century Britain and openly fantasize about women in red rubber body suits.

On the cusp of the Second World War, a privileged son of the British middle class made the fateful decision to begin a secret double life -- spying on his home country for the USSR. An ideological communist with little else in common with the Soviet Union, Burgess' motivations in serving a country in which he had little interest and less affection remain inexplicable to this day.