Haunting Postcards of Parisian Homicide

Note: Some of the images below contain disturbing content. Alphonse Bertillon was bad at a lot of things, but excellent at two: solving crime, and pissing people off. Both were honed during his long career at the Prefecture de Police in mid-19th century Paris, one of the grisliest eras for tracking down criminals in the rapidly growing metropolis.…

The World’s First Sex Therapist and his Temple of Hymen

Self-styled Scottish ‘doctor’ James Graham may not have been the original snake oil salesman but he wasn’t far from it. The ultimate eccentric showman who spotted innumerable untapped business opportunities in the sex industry, James Graham gleefully administered a cocktail of somewhat questionable, shall we say, ‘fertility treatments’ to his well-to-do aristocratic patients, who were…

We went on a Picnic in a Parisian Nazi Bunker

I‘ve been on some adventures in my lifetime, but none of them ended with a candlelit banquet in an abandoned Nazi bunker. And it is with great pleasure that I finally get to share this surreal experience with you. The idea began with the proposal of a picnic with a few friends, somewhere a little…

Building Mr. Eiffel’s Penthouse Apartment: A Tower Under Construction

A Parisian friend dropped some very interesting photographs in my inbox this week, some that I’d never seen before of the Eiffel Tower in its earliest days. I had previously come across time-lapse photographs of the Eiffel Tower in its various stages of construction, but none like this; none that went behind the scaffolding, right up close inside the growing skeleton…

Sex, Lies, and LSD: The CIA’s Untold Story of Operation Midnight Climax

Did you ever hear the one about the CIA-employed sex workers who were trained to drug, bed and interrogate unsuspecting American citizens while they were unwittingly tripping on LSD as government agents secretly watched? You’d think you’d remember a story like that but Operation Midnight Climax has conveniently evaded the public consciousness for decades. We’re…

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Biblical Bad Girls and Their Ancient “Time’s Up” Scandal

Welcome to Rouen, France, a city where the cider flows freely (it’s a Normandy thing), and the streets are lined with crooked, half-timbered houses that send a singular, ye-olde message: you’re on some seriously ancient stomping grounds. Rouen’s power and influence can be traced from its founding by a sturdy Celtic tribe, to its pivotal…

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Kim Jong-un Married One of His Cheerleaders

It’s a big year for North Korea. The country has qualified 22 athletes for the 2018 Winter Olympics in the DPRK enemy territory of Pyeongchang, South Korea– and the world is holding its breath to see how interactions unfold. Also in tow with the athletes? Kim Jong-un’s “Army of Beauties,” a highly competitive cheerleading squad…

The Witch-Proof Windows of Vermont

Drive around enough of Vermont’s picturesque streets, and you’ll become puzzled over an architectural anomaly that even the locals can’t explain. Or, maybe it’s just that the explanation is a little too eerie for comfort. You see, the anomaly in question is called a “witch window…” Witch windows are cockeyed windows that have been a staple…

The Town Where It’s Illegal to Die

Candy coloured houses dot the icy valley of Longyearbyen, one of the world’s northernmost towns in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, a place with some seriously uncommon protocol. It is illegal, for example, to leave home un-armed in the event of an encounter polar bear. It is also illegal to die. It sounds like a…

Unearthing Hollywood Treasure in an Arctic Ghost Town

Dawson City, Canada’s favourite “living ghost town,” is finally starting to flesh out again after decades of falling into ruin. The Yukon settlement located about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle was born from the glory and greed of the Klondike gold rush, and ushered in 40,000 people in just two years. Today, its story…