A cabinet of true curiosities
Tiny true stories,
lovingly odd.
Weird science, forgotten history, and human quirks — each one true, each under a minute, each a little stranger than you’d expect.
Latest
The Chemist Who Tasted Everything
He described hydrogen cyanide as having a 'pleasantly sharp acidulous flavor,' the way someone else might describe a good Riesling.
Carl Wilhelm Scheele discovered oxygen, chlorine, and more elements than almost anyone in the eighteenth century. Working alone in Swedish pharmacies, he identified each substance by tasting it. Mercury compounds. Arsenic. Hydrogen cyanide, which he found pleasantly sharp. His hands swelled. His joints ached. His body filled with what he'd catalogued. He died at forty-three, notebooks open, descriptions precise. The poisons tasted exactly as he said they would.
scienceeccentricsgeniustragedy
Read this oddlet →
More oddlets
The Man Who Boiled His Own Urine and Found Light
He boiled 1,500 gallons of urine looking for gold and accidentally discovered the first new element since antiquity.
The Woman Who Practiced Madness in a Mirror
Nellie Bly spent one night practicing insanity in a mirror, then fooled every doctor who examined her.
The Man No One Could Stop
Burton pulled a javelin through his own face and kept fighting, but his wife burned forty years of his writing to save his soul.
The Woman Who Warmed the World
She discovered that carbon dioxide traps heat in 1856, and then history erased her name for 154 years.
The Woman Who Calculated Everything
She funded her physics research by calculating card game odds and winning.
The Girl Who Was Struck by Lightning
Her neighbors believed she became a genius because lightning killed three women standing next to her when she was fifteen months old.
The Woman Who Discovered Climate Change from Her Seat
She discovered the greenhouse effect in 1856, then sat in the audience while a man read her paper aloud because women weren't allowed to present their own work.
The Mathematician Who Dreamed in Equations
A goddess wrote equations on his tongue in dreams, and when mathematicians finally checked his work, he was right.
The Doctor Who Was Right
He died of the same infection, in the same place on his body, that he'd spent his life trying to prevent.
The Movie Star Who Invented Your Wi-Fi
The Navy told Hedy Lamarr she'd be more useful selling kisses than inventing torpedo guidance systems.
The Man Who Ate Everything Else
The French army once used a man who could swallow live puppies whole as a courier, hiding documents in his stomach.
The Man Who Listened to Plants Die
In 1895, a scientist invented radio components he refused to patent, then built a machine that recorded the exact moment a plant died.
The Astronomer and the Moose
The greatest astronomer of the sixteenth century lost his nose in a duel over math, consulted a clairvoyant dwarf, and owned a moose that died falling down stairs drunk on beer.
The Worm Who Rewrote Physics
The four equations that power every phone on Earth were written by a man who lived on granite blocks and signed his letters W.O.R.M.
The Man Who Recorded Everything
After nearly walking into Lake Michigan in 1927, Buckminster Fuller decided instead to document his entire life in fifteen-minute intervals.
The Woman Who Crossed Out the Stars
She discovered what stars are made of, then a famous man told her to cross it out and wrote it back in his own handwriting.
The Man Who Weighed the Earth and Hid From His Housekeeper
He measured the density of the entire Earth. When he saw his housekeeper on the stairs, he built a second staircase.
The Man Who Loved a Pigeon
Nikola Tesla loved a pigeon as a man loves a woman. When she died, he said his life's work was finished.
The Man Who Was Emperor of America
Joshua Norton declared himself Emperor, and San Francisco largely agreed.
The Man Who Ate Everything
William Buckland was a leading scientist who also made eating animals a research side quest.
Explore by topic
Wonder, delivered.
A fresh oddlet in your inbox every weekday morning — true, strange, and under a minute.
Free forever. Unsubscribe anytime.