Histories And Mysteries

Nuclear waste will last for thousands and thousands of years before it is finally safe. How do we communicate this danger to future generations, who may not share our language, symbols, or scientific understanding?

Nuclear power is gaining popularity worldwide, but despite its long history, we haven't actually decided where to put the highly dangerous byproducts of nuclear power production. Maybe we should get on that.

1820, at the height of whaling, the Nantucket whale-ship Essex suffered an unheard of tragedy - being attacked and sunk by an 80 foot sperm whale. But unlike the book it inspired, this was far from the end for the captain and crew.

A major distinction between different types of serial killers - and different types of Angels of Death - is motive. Traditionally, male serial killers are more likely to be motivated by sex and female serial killers more motivated by material comfort. However, that it not always the case... particularly not when it comes to killers like Jane Toppan.

We expect nurses and doctors to provide knowledge, health, and most of all, safety. But medical professionals compose a distinct subset of serial killers, known as Angels of Death.

For hundreds of years, Canada and the United States have been each others closest neighbours, strongest allies, and largest trading partners... except for all the times they were at each others throats. The Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Pork and Beans War, and the Pig War -- 50% actual wars, 50% backwoods hijinks. This past is one far more recent than one might think, including two decla...

Lizzie Borden, despite being acquitted of all charges, has remained the primary suspect in her parents double-homicide for over a hundred years. Was she really the killer? And is there any way to know for sure? Absolutely not.

Lizzie Borden took an axe Gave her mother forty wacks When she saw what she had done She gave her father forty-one [Citation Needed]

The quest for the Northwest Passage -- a navigable sea route through the Canadian arctic -- was long and dangerous. Even so, when Sir John Franklin led two ships, the Erebus and Terror, on a last mission to complete mapping of North America's icy archipelago, there was every reason for confidence. The Terror and Erebus were last seen by European whalers off the coast of Greenland in the summer of...

In 1921, Roscoe Arbuckle was one of the most famous men in the United States and among the wealthiest actors in the nascent Hollywood. That all ended when a lurid murder trial for the death of Virginia Rappe led to him being a persona non grata, his films banned all around the English-speaking world.

Before Leonardo DiCaprio, before Rock Hudson, before Clark Gable, before even Charlie Chaplin, the biggest star in American television was none other than Roscoe Arbuckle. A larger than life character from the age of silent film, Arbuckle was a talented performer, dancer, and singer who made hundreds of popular (and profitable) movies. He was better known, however, for his immense size, which earn...

There have historically been two kinds of phenomena known as ghost ships -- the first, a mysterious apparition crewed by the souls of the damned, and the second, the sudden and unexplained disappearance of a ship's very real human crew. The Mary Celeste, an entirely normal American shipping vessel began as the latter when her crew vanished on a routine crossing of the Atlantic, but her story slowl...

Built in the waning days of the 19th century, the Eiffel tower was erected as the entrance arch to a world fair and survived two world wars to become a towering beacon of Parisian resilience and French resistance. As a modern icon of romance, every day, dozens upon dozens of couples pose and propose in front of the tower as a symbol of their love. In the early 20th, century, however, the Eiffel to...

In the early 20th century, Georgia Tann was perhaps the most famous, most beloved figure in American social work, even receiving a personal invitation to the inauguration of President Truman. But as the reports of stolen children and advances in standards and statistics brought more in more scrutiny on the Tennessee Children's Aid Society, the house of cards she built could only stand for so long.

Adoption has always existed as a human practice, but our modern understanding of adoption, where a child is taken in by complete strangers who legally incorporate that child as a member of the family, is relatively new, originating in the 20th century. One woman did more than any other to normalize the practice: social worker Georgia Tann, the beloved head of the Tennessee Children's Home Society....

Timothy Dexter was born poor in 1747. At 8 years old, he dropped out of school to become a farm laborer, then a tanner's apprentice at 16. At 22, he married a rich widow, then invested her money in various business ventures -- primarily based on the malicious advice of other wealthy men who absolutely hated him.

If there's one thing we associate with the British, it's tea. But for most of their history, the British lacked access to tea except through their highly contentious and often one-sided trade relationship with the far-off nation of China. That relationship only began to change with the mass smuggling of opium into China by British traders -- as well as the theft of the secrets of making tea by the...

The family living at the Bavarian homestead of Hinterkaifeck had their share of dark secrets. All were overshadowed, however, by their gruesome deaths at the hands of an unknown attacker -- who had likely been living for several days, unnoticed, in the family's attic.

Mishima Yukio was a complicated man -- a successful author, celebrity, committed family man, repressed homosexual, and budding fascist paramilitary leader. His attempted overthrowal of the elected government of Japan walks a fine line between failed coup and conscious act of suicide. He lived as an international literary icon, but died as a controversial nationalist figure, forever complicating hi...

Mishima Yukio was a celebrated and prolific 20th century actor, director, model, poet, playright, and especially author. To this day he is considered one of the most important Japanese writers of the era, though many of his works remain untranslated in English. He was even three times in contention for the Nobel Prize in Literature. But what he is perhaps best known for is dying by his own hand af...

Joan Risch was in many ways your average 60s housewife -- beloved wife, doting mother, and trusted neighbor. She was intelligent and well-read, as a writer and former secretary, and she intended to return to work when her children were older. No evidence was ever found that she was in any way unhappy. There are many theories about what happened to Joan Risch: Murder, Suicide, or an Intentional Dis...

In 2013, 44 year-old former drug addict David Sullivan attacked and repeatedly stabbed his elderly mother. In 2015, 19 year-old former high school rugby star Thomas Chan brutally murdered his own father. Both suffered severe psychotic breaks that led to their violent actions, but due to a quirk in Canadian law, both were convicted and sentenced to five years in prison. The successful appeal of the...

When the munitions ship, the Mont Blanc, exploded in the Halifax harbor, thousands died in an instant, while thousands more were injured, tens of thousands left homeless or buried in the rubble. The devastation took Halifax decades to fully recover from. For two generations, many Haligonians refused to even discuss the tragedy, meaning their stories died with them. Join us for our second episode o...

During WWI, the deep natural harbour of Halifax, Canada was the most important seaport in North America. All neutral merchant traffic, military convoys, and army recruits coming and going from the eastern seaboard came through Halifax first, including shipments of munitions intended for the European front. December 6, 1917, 9:05:35 A.M., the realities of war would have tragic consequences for the...

In 1914, Sir Ernest Shackleton, veteran polar explorer, announced his most daring expedition to date: a land crossing of the Antarctic continent. The journey would be perilous, but fame and fortune would be his likely reward should he make it back alive. However, even before they set ashore, they found themselves trapped by sea ice, adrift, certain of only one thing: help wasn't coming.