June - 2020

Chez Armageddon: The 1970s Cold War Bunker Deep Below Las Vegas

The 15,200-square-foot basement on Spencer Street, Las Vegas features: two-bedrooms, three-bathrooms, a four-hole putting green, matching jacuzzis, one barbecue, a bar, heated swimming pool, fake trees, a stage and kitschy decor. It’s reached via the elevator in a suburban two-story house. Designed for a family in the event of nuclear armageddon, the home replicates the lost world above with murals depicting scenes of bucolic glory and a sky blue ceiling covered in painted cl

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‘She’s A Rainbow’: The Story Behind The Rolling Stones’ Classic

The Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow” is regarded nowadays as a psychedelic classic. But the group’s collective mood in 1967 can be summed up by drummer Charlie Watts’ assessment of their sixth album Their Satanic Majesties Request (as quoted in Bill Wyman’s 1997 memoir Stone Alone): “Sometimes I think it was a miracle that we produced anything with all the emotional upheavals within the group.” Nonetheless, as Keith Richards put it in his autobiography Life, “it was time for

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The Rajah from Tipperary (the tale of how an Irish farmer ended up ruling his own kingdom in India)

There have been many great 'adventurers'. People who have through force of will or luck or the ability to bullshit really REALLY well, have carved their names into the pages of history. Little people who do extraordinary things. One of my favourites is the illiterate Irish farmer who managed, without any support, to create for himself his own kingdom in India. Known as the "Jehazi Sahib" he briefly created a whole new state, with himself as a rajah, in the wild and dangerous

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Possessed: Voodoo’s Origins and Influence from the Blues to Britney

Vodou (the proper Kreyol/Creole spelling of Voodoo) is a neo-African religion that evolved in the New World from the 6000-year-old West African religion Vodun. This was the religion of many slaves brought from West Africa to the Americas and the Caribbean. Vodun was brutally repressed by slave-owners, yet its powerful beats, ethics and aesthetics endured. We owe our concepts of cool, soul and rock and roll to it. The roots of rock are in a West African word for dance — rak. A

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Remembering When Runners Drank Champagne as an Energy Drink

At the 1908 London Summer Olympics, marathon runners hit the bottle mid-race. On July 24th 1908, The London Olympic Marathon in the Summer Olympics went down in history as one hell of a race. Summer heat had plagued the city, and a newly resurfaced track stretched hard as rock under the runners’ feet. At the last minute, the course was extended nearly two miles, forever setting the official marathon length to an arbitrary 26 miles and 385 yards. So much drama unraveled under

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Native Americans Left a Code For Humans To Live By

Certain words of wisdom are followed by every person - regardless of their ethnicity, religion, tribe or culture. These words come from the difference between the people living in their society. These words shape their culture and mold their culture to be unique. The Native American Code of Ethics, originally published in the Inter-Tribal Times, is possibly one of the best code of conduct for building character. This code of ethics teaches everyone, including those who are no

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1914-1918: Black British WW1 Forces

Despite the protests of Lord Kitchener who believed black men should not be allowed to serve, many black men volunteered for and were recruited to all branches of the British armed forces during the First World War. Black men were recruited from Britain's African colonies including Gambia, the Gold Coast, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone - a total of more than 120,000 Black African men. More than 15,000 black men from the Caribbean volunteered to serve in the British Army. At first

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Henri Charrière, Imprisoned On The Inescapable Devil’s Island — Then He Escaped and wrote Papillon

How Henri Charrière escaped from one of history's most infamous prisons and then won his freedom from the government that he claimed had wrongly imprisoned him in the first place. If even half of the daring exploits described in Henri Charrière’s autobiography Papillon are true, then he lived a life of adventure and frequent brushes with death that would make any thrill-seeker jealous. From his gangster days in Paris to his escape from one of history’s most infamous prisons i

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Five Female Assassins And Their Deadly Tales

Whether it's Jodie Comer in Killing Eve, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill or Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde the world are always more than a little bit interested in female assassins, but that's in films, what about real life? Here are the tragic and shocking stories behind the most lethal women killers in history: 1. The Dancing 'Double Agent': Mata Hari (1876-1917) As a taboo-busting exotic dancer who was convicted of moonlighting as a spy during World War One, Hari’s story has H

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When Aldous Huxley Had The 'Most Beautiful Death'

Brave New World novelist Aldous Huxley was diagnosed with cancer in 1960, at which point his health slowly began to deteriorate. On his deathbed in November of 1963, just as he was passing away, Aldous — a man who for many years had been fascinated with the effects of psychedelic drugs since being introduced to mescaline in 1953 — asked his wife Laura to administer him with LSD. She agreed. The following letter — an incredibly moving, detailed account of Aldous's last days —

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What Makes Edgar Allan Poe So Great? An Animated Video Explains

His gloomy, haunted visage adorns the covers of collected works, publications of whose like he would never see in his lifetime. Edgar Allan Poe died in penury and near-obscurity, and might have been forgotten had his work not been turned into sensationalised, abridged, adaptations posthumously, a fate he might not have wished on his most hated literary rival. But Poe survived caricature to become known as one of the greatest of American writers in any genre. A pioneer of psyc

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Watch an Art Conservator Bring Classic Paintings Back to Life in Intriguingly Narrated Videos

Even in our age of unprecedentedly abundant images, delivered to us at all times by print, film, television, and especially the ever-multiplying forms of digital media, something inside us still values paintings. It must have to do with their physicality, the physicality of oil on canvas or whatever tangible materials the painter originally used. But in that great advantage of the painting lies the great disadvantage of the painting: tangible materials degrade over time, and

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