A cabinet of lovable weirdos
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.
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Grandma Moses
Ribbons for the Jam
At the Cambridge Country Fair, Anna Mary Robertson Moses entered her paintings alongside her preserves, and won ribbons for the jam.
At seventy-six, arthritis ended her embroidery, so she took up painting — house paint on Masonite, glitter for snow. She entered canvases beside her preserves at the county fair and won ribbons for the jam. Her name was Anna Mary Robertson Moses.
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The Paintings the Spirits Told Her to Hide
What if the first abstract paintings in Western art were commissioned by a spirit named Amaliel for a temple that didn't exist?
The Diagnosis
What happens when a Soviet prison doctor has to diagnose the man who invented Russian absurdism?
The Man Who Found Troy
What does a man who made three fortunes — in indigo, saltpeter, and Sacramento gold dust — do for an encore at forty-eight?
No to Edison
What do you do when the man who twice tried to take your patent in court turns around and offers you a job?
The Spider That Was Named After Her
At fifty-two, a divorced naturalist sold every painting she owned and sailed to a malarial jungle to paint a spider no one believed existed.
Time Me, Gentlemen
He operated with the bloodied blade clamped between his teeth, and the students in the gallery held up their pocket watches to time him.
The System of One
What happens when the man who proved no system is complete builds one with a single trusted element?
The World's Best Loser
A Glasgow grocer spent thirty-one years and five yachts chasing the same silver cup, and lost every single race.
The Smell of Sin
What does it take for a 13th-century shepherdess to become the patron saint of psychiatrists eight hundred years later?
The Abbess Who Hid the Grave
What does a twelfth-century abbess do when an archbishop orders her to exhume a body she has decided to keep?
The Architect Who Wore a Sailor's Coat
Who designs the gilded ceilings of British democracy in pilot trousers and jack-boots, then sails out to pull drowning men from the Goodwin Sands?
The Man Who Drew the Curtains
He sailed to Tahiti, India, and Japan in 1920 and never left his cabin — so what exactly was he doing in there?