Clever Hans was a 1900s horse that was believed to be able to solve math equations, tell time, and read and comprehend German, until a psychology student discovered how he got his answers.

Early 20th-century debates about horses with 'paranormal mathematical abilities' helped shape modern approaches to psychological research.

Lady Wonder, the horse with supposed clairvoyant powers

Lady Wonder became widely known as a horse that shared her special powers by spelling out words by using blocks with letters. She reportedly helped solve the case of a missing young boy while also offering advice and sports predictions.

One man in Germany answers a large amount of Santa's mail

There are a few places in the world where much of Santa Claus's mail ends up, often because their name includes the jolly man's moniker. One of those places is Nikolausdorf, Germany, where Hubert Weddehage, a local government employee, has responded to Santa's mail for over 50 years.

How Seabiscuit's DNA made him a winner

Seabiscuit's sudden success in the sport has been framed as a classic against-the-odds sports story. One Binghamton University molecular physiologist wanted to go a bit deeper, though, to see how much genetics played a role in the horse's legendary career. Using the horse's silvered hooves, his research team discovered that Seabiscuit's genotype was typically associated with late bloomers, a finding confirmed by the horse's track record.

The Hans Niemann scandal rocked chess in 2023

In 2022, GM Hans Niemann was accused by Magnus Carlsen of cheating—a controversy that led to an internal Chess.com report alleging Niemann "likely cheated" more than 100 times in online games.

Computer pioneer Alan Turing was also an elite runner

Alan Turing is credited with helping to found modern computer science, in addition to cracking the Nazi code known as Enigma. Beyond these world-historical achievements, the British mathematician also nearly represented his country in the Olympics in the marathon, running just 11 minutes slower than the eventual gold recipient at the 1948 games. Read more on this lesser-known aspect of the man here.

Researchers once thought Stonehenge functioned as a precise astronomical computer

In the 1960s, scientists used early computers to analyze the stone layout at Stonehenge, arguing it could predict eclipses and other celestial events. This BBC Sky at Night Magazine piece explains how the theory arose—and why scholars now doubt it.

Among the smallest mass-produced mechanical calculators in history, the Curta was designed by Austrian engineer Curt Herzstark while imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp during World War II.

In 1898, Nikola Tesla wowed a crowd by controlling a boat with no visible connection

Some onlookers thought it was a trick, such a a monkey being inside the boat, rather than mind control or some other metaphysical phenomenon. In reality, Tesla was pioneering radio waves, proving wireless control was possible.

The Hodag was a mythological animal—part reptile, part mammal, with spikes running down its back—invented by a 19th-century Wisconsin lumberjack-turned-con-artist who claimed he'd slain one after it attacked a child.

Data suggests the typical horse produces over 12 horsepower—a unit of measurement for the rate of work done that was conceived as a marketing tool to communicate steam engine performance.

How a competition honoring a king's birthday uncovered history's first chaotic system

A committee established a contest for King Oscar II's 60th birthday, featuring four unsolved problems in mathematics, including one on proving the stability of a system of more than two objects held together by gravity. Focusing on three celestial objects, Henri Poincaré won the prize for his proof, which he later learned was incorrect and, upon correcting it, instead proved these systems to be unstable.

The science of optical illusions

The human brain has developed cognitive shortcuts to help us navigate in a world where our visual senses are constantly bombarded of information. But these shortcuts can also be exploited, tricking the brain into telling us something is happening when it really isn't. This short video unpacks the neuroscience behind some of the most common (but perplexing) optical illusions.

How math whizzes exploit sportsbooks

Chris Dirkus is a professional sports bettor who approaches the hobby as a math problem, not from a fan's perspective. He focuses on mispriced odds in popular games where many fans are betting for high liquidity. He's one of a rare segment of sports bettors exploiting slow models and human mistakes.

Searching for Albert Einstein's stolen brain

Within moments of Einstein's 1955 death, someone reportedly ferreted away the 76-year-old genius's brain. Decades later, a reporter's editor told them to solve the case. This 64-minute podcast episode follows the work of Steven Levy, the reporter who ultimately tracked down Einstein's brain, which had been sliced and stored in slides, goo, and a cardboard box in a scientist's office.

Listen to audio clips from Hoover, a harbor seal named after its insatiable appetite, who learned to say English phrases such as 'hello there' and 'come over here.'

Designed in 1937 by Harvard graduate student Howard H. Aiken, the 'Harvard Calculator' was used by the US Navy to solve advanced physics problems.

Mathematicians often solve problems using wordless mental processes

It's a common technique among expert mathematicians, where thinkers rely on intuition, blurry perceptions and subconscious work—no writing, no formulas. The state is distinct from daydreaming, and often relies on sudden illuminations stemming from extended periods of subconscious reflection.

Personality tests, like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, feel accurate because humans tend to accept generic descriptions of themselves that include flattering statements—a psychological phenomenon known as the Barnum effect.

One of the first mechanical calculators—the Pascaline—was built in the 1640s by French mathematician Blaise Pascal to help his father, who worked as a tax collector.

The Antikythera mechanism: The oldest-known analog computer

A device now considered the world's oldest computer was pulled from a shipwreck more than 120 years ago. Known as the "Antikythera Mechanism," it is now believed to have allowed precise tracking of astronomical positions, and its sophistication overturned understanding of Ancient Greek capabilities.

Harvard drowned rats for this?

Harvard's 1950s rat study was ethically questionable, but scientifically profound. One rescue attempt made rats swim 40x longer. The finding: hope isn't poetic, it's biological.

In the 1980s, excerpts from fake diaries of Adolf Hitler were published in a prominent German magazine

Excerpts from the diaries were published in other publications around the world, like The Sunday Times, despite uncertainty about their authenticity. After forensic analysis, the diaries were proven to be fake. The diaries were produced by Konrad Kujau, a petty criminal who frequently produced counterfeits.

Twain claimed to possess 'mental telegraphy'

In an 1891 essay, the writer claimed to possess psychic powers. It’s something that seemingly supported by his mother and his own death: Twain predicted he would die the day after Halley’s Comet returned in 1910, which did indeed happen.

August A. Busch, Sr. was gifted a six-horse Clydesdale hitch to celebrate Prohibition’s end

This helped reveal the marketing power of a horse-drawn beer wagon, so it invested in a second six-horse Clydesdale hitch. The Clydesdales soon went to New York, where they drew a crowd of thousands en route to the Empire State Building. Anheuser-Busch even gifted a case of Budweiser to New York Governor Alfred E. Smith in thanks for his help in the fight against Prohibition.

Ray Bradbury said he was inspired to pursue writing after meeting a magician named Mr. Electrico, but scholars have never been able to confirm the story.

Using scientific bets, Hawking challenged and highlighted major physics ideas

Hawking famously placed wagers on high-stakes questions in theoretical physics—such as the Higgs boson—for fun and to draw attention to science. When Hawking lost a bet about Cygnus X-1 being a black hole, he paid up with a magazine subscription.

Nearly 50 years before the first observational evidence, a soldier fighting on the Eastern Front in World War I found a mathematical solution to Einstein's equations that suggested the existence of black holes.

The belief that classical music enhances intelligence is mostly incorrect

"The Mozart Effect" was based on a 1993 study by psychologist Francis Rauscher. Rauscher played a Mozart Piano Sonata for college students and then assessed their spatial reasoning, finding it improved for 10 to 15 minutes. The media ran with a simpler story: listening to classical music made you smarter.

Jim Henson and his creative team constructed several optical illusions to make the Muppets appear as though they walked through the real world.

Patient H.M. revealed that the hippocampus was responsible for memory formation

Henry Molaison became a landmark case in psychology after surgery removed large portions of his hippocampus, leaving him unable to form new memories. Upon his death, Molaison's brain was sliced into 2,401 sections and digitized for research.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

The magazine competition that pitted Houdini against the author of 'Sherlock Holmes'

In 1922, Scientific American magazine launched a contest to prove, or disprove, the existence of ghosts and define the limits of Spiritualism. This article details how this competition furthered the growing ideological split between escapologist...

A 14-year-old "human calculator" shatters six mathematical world records in one day

A teenage prodigy from Maharashtra, India named Aaryan Shukla set the record for the fastest time to mentally add 50 five-digit numbers. He did so in just 25.19 seconds–roughly equivalent to one addition every 0.5 seconds. The math whiz said he practices calculations for around five to six hours a day.

Arnold Schoenberg designed a musical typewriter that transcribed complex compositions with a simple keyboard.

Holocaust History

Born in Berlin in 1924, to a Catholic father and Jewish mother, Wolfgang Haney survived the Holocaust, though many in his family did not. He spent a large part of his life collecting more than 15,000 objects related to the history of anti-Semitism, before dying in 2017. Recently, the German Historical Museum acquired his collection, as detailed in this article

'Everything you look at can become a fairy tale and you can get a story from everything you touch.'

- Danish author Hans Christian Andersen (1805-1875)

Watch this octopus win every single Escape Room challenge

Octopuses are famously intelligent, solitary creatures covered in hundreds of chemical-sensing suckers. They're also pretty fascinating pets, and even enjoy playing. The crew at OctoLab put one of its more playful mollusks into four different Escape Room-like cages to see how long it would take for it to escape. Watch this video to see the brilliant, if a bit unsettling, methods the animal uses.

At the age of seven, Grace Hopper dismantled alarm clocks

Foreshadowing a career in computers, Hopper exhibited a curiosity for gadgets at a young age and took apart seven clocks, determined to understand how they worked. Despite having a dollhouse, Hopper built an elevator for it and showed a greater interest in building toy furniture than playing with dolls.

'There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.'

-Alexander Graham Bell (1847-1922)

Houdini recalls how he became 'Handcuff King'

Illusionist Harry Houdini rose to fame through his many escapes, like from the handcuffs slapped onto his wrists by Los Angeles police in 1899. In this 1907 Los Angeles Herald article, Houdini recalls some of the many times he's thwarted attempts to...

One pop-culture historian fooled the nation with a fake origin story of April Fools' Day

In 1983, Joseph Boskin, a professor at Boston University, was interviewed by the Associated Press to discuss the history of April Fools'. Boskin shared a made-up story about a jester who took over Rome for a day and proclaimed that April 1 would henceforth serve as 24 hours of silliness. AP published the fib about "King Kugel," creating buzz and confusion for news outlets around the country.

One of Einstein's papers challenged quantum theory but helped confirm entanglement

In 1935, Einstein suggested that quantum mechanics was incomplete due to its strange implications about entangled particles. Their challenge led to decades of experiments that eventually proved distant particles could affect each other instantly.

Mathematical breakthroughs influenced Shakespeare’s stories

New ideas in math were transforming Europe at the time Shakespeare penned his plays, including newly popular conceptions of zero via philosophers Descartes and Leibniz.

The creator of Sherlock Holmes published a book claiming fairies were real

In 1917, two young girls took photos of one another appearing to interact with fairies and a gnome. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes books and a fervent believer in spiritualism, published the photos in a magazine and asked the girls to recreate them, which they did. Conan Doyle went on to write a book about the fairies. In 1983, decades after his death, the girls admitted the photos had been faked.

Cygnus X-1 helped scientists confirm black holes are real and measurable phenomena

The 1964 discovery of Cygnus X-1 provided the first strong candidate, but it took decades—and a famous bet between Stephen Hawking and Kip Thorne—before scientists were certain it was a black hole. Hawking's thumbprinted concession was delivered after breaking into Thorne's office.

Humans can track smells on the ground quite well—our ability to crawl is a limiting factor

As part of a scientific bet, neurobiology researchers dragged a chocolate bar across the grass and sought to see if a human could track it—she could. This led to a more in-depth experiment on human olfactory capabilities and behavior when other senses were blocked.

The history and operation of SIGABA, the US counterpart of the Nazi Enigma machine

Developed by the US Army and US Navy, over 10,000 of these machines were deployed by the end of World War II to encrypt messages for the armed forces using three series of rotors. The device would continue to be used until the 1950s, while personal computers were shown to possess enough computing power to crack it by 2021.

Did a Smithsonian anthropologist steal people's brains?

This comic examines "racial brain collection" of Ales Hrdlicka, the Smithsonian's head of physical anthropology during the early 1900s. Hrdlicka was a white supremacist who sought physical evidence for his theories on anatomical differences between...

Claims about 'Twenty-One' weren't taken seriously until other quiz shows were exposed

Contestant Herb Stempel alleged that “Twenty-One” was fixed after his loss to Charles Van Doren, saying that everything on the show was “carefully choreographed,” though his claims were dismissed as mere bitterness. In truth, Stempel had been promised a network job if he went along with the con and became outspoken when it didn’t materialize. Van Doren, meanwhile, became a celebrity, donning the cover of Time magazine.