As fascinating as it is horrifying, fetus-in-fetu is a developmental abnormality where, in utero, the larger of a set of twin fetuses absorbs the other into her body. The condition is usually diagnosed shortly after the surviving twin is born, although in a few horrific cases, the absorbed twin is not discovered until adulthood or death. Technically arising only in […]

So mysterious, no one even knows exactly which century it was written in, the Voynich Manuscript has stumped medieval scholars, linguists, cryptologists and the curious for hundreds of years. The Manuscript Approximately 6″ x 9″ x 2″, this octavo contains 240 pages of indecipherable text and a host of illustrations drawn with iron gall ink on vellum. Many of the […]

Ryan asks: What is a Ponzi scheme and why do we call it that? With our short memories, many of us have forgotten that long before Bernie Madoff defrauded his clients and lost $65 billion, another swindler, Charles Ponzi, ran a similar scam in 1920, bilking thousands of people out of millions of dollars by making them an offer that […]

A time-honored tradition in the U.S. military, contingency plans have been drawn up for the defense against, and invasion of, most major military powers. In fact, in response to recent events on the Korean peninsula, the U.S. and South Korea recently signed on to such a plan. One of the most interesting episodes in this rich history of preparing for […]

About eleven thousand years ago, in a remote corner of the cradle of civilization, Stone Age people who lacked cities, agriculture and metal tools built an enormous complex of multi-ton stone pillars called Gobekli Tepe (Potbelly Hill) in a region in modern day Turkey. The high degree of artistic skill and organizational wherewithal discovered at the site has caused the […]