Latest dispatches
Dispatches
Curious stories and events from around the world.
← Latest dispatchesSunday, 15 November 2026
Weird Universe
stop DEATH stop - The Billups Crossing Signal
Hoping to make railroad crossings safer, Alonzo Billups in 1936 obtained a design patent for what he imagined to be a safer crossing signal. It prominently featured the warning "stop DEATH stop" in tall letters. As a train approached,…
Read at Weird UniverseHistoric Mysteries
The Dorabella Cipher: What Elgar’s 1897 Note Actually Preserves
Edward Elgar's 1897 coded note to Dora Penny survives as a memoir facsimile. Here is what the page shows and why consulted specialists report no accepted reading. The post The Dorabella Cipher: What Elgar’s 1897 Note Actually Preserves…
Read at Historic MysteriesUnexplained Mysteries
Bigfoot filmmaker Roger Patterson's widow has died, aged 86
One of the last people alive who might have known the full story behind the controversial footage has passed away. News outlets in the cryptozoology c...
Read at Unexplained Mysteries
Live Science
NASA's Voyager 1 mission forever changed our view of Jupiter
As NASA's Voyager 1 probe reaches one light-day from Earth, we look back at its legendary photos of Jupiter that changed our view of the solar system.
Read at Live Science
Live Science
How did Cleopatra really die?
Ancient writers couldn't agree on how Egypt's last queen took her own life, and the famous snakebite story may owe more to her enemies than to the facts.
Read at Live Science
The History Blog
Iron Age frog mass grave explained
Scientists at Bournemouth University and Museum of London Archaeology have discovered the reason 8,000 frog and toad bones were found buried in a 45-foot-long trench at an Iron Age settlement near Cambridge in the UK. The bones were…
Read at The History Blog