Twenty-Sixth Issue: Hidden Identity
Warning for topics such as murder, kidnapping, and mention of sexual abuse. I read a long and interesting article about a man who had memory loss and did not...
Twenty-Fifth Issue: Sara Jane Olson
The summer I was eight years old, my family went to Minnesota for a month and a half to visit my grandparents. I barely remembered what the United States was...
Twenty-Fourth Issue: Pauli Murray and Ellen Craft
Sorry it has been a while, this issue of the newsletter has been in the works for a long while. I had to read a whole dense book for research. I say have as...
Twenty-Third Issue: Cats!
This issue is about cats. I want to get a cat. Cats are great. They have been on my mind lately. I was talking with my uncle the other day about cats – he’s...
Twenty Second Issue: A Sheep-Farming Soldier, a Lesbian Peter Pan, and a British Playwright
My apologies that this newsletter has not been more regular. I have been having trouble finding things I want to write about! So as I mention always,...
Twenty-First Issue: Lesbian Suffragettes
This week I am writing about women who were lesbians who helped out in Europe during World War I! I’ve been reading a book about Joe Carstairs who I...
Twentieth Issue: The Happy Valley Set
I'm sorry it's been a while! Life got in the way. This issue of the newsletter is pretty juicy though! It deals with scandalous behavior, including drugs,...
Nineteenth Issue: The Llewelyn Davies Boys
I spent some time this week reading about J. M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan, and the Llewelyn Davies boys who inspired his story. Barrie became friends...
Eighteenth Issue: Heroines of the AIDS Epidemic
This week I’m going to talk about a serious subject, but I want to talk about people who helped and made it better. If you remember back when I talked about...
Seventeenth Issue: Salad Dressing, Reindeer, and a Deadly Head
This week’s newsletter is going to be a little bit different than previous ones. I’ve got a grab bag of three shorter historical stories, facts, and...
Sixteenth Issue: Utopias
Every utopia is a dystopia. There’s no such thing as a perfect world because everyone has a different idea of what perfect might be. In fact you could...
Fifteenth Issue: Disco Rocks
I recently read a young adult book called Burn Baby Burn by Meg Medina. It had interesting characters and a good plot, but more than anything else the...
Phoolan Devi: Bandit Queen
Warning: This story includes mentions of rape so if you do not want to read it please just skip it. Phoolan Devi was known as the Bandit Queen. She lived in...
Thirteenth Issue: The Battle of Hayes Pond
Hello everyone. My apologies about last week - I didn't have time to do a newsletter. No fear, I am back and with an interesting issue about a Battle!...
Twelfth Issue: Murder in the Galapagos
The information in this week’s newsletter is actually NOT from Wikipedia, at least not most of it. Wikipedia has articles on what happened and who is who,...
Eleventh Issue: Ludwig Wittgenstein
This week’s newsletter is about Ludwig Wittgenstein. He’s fairly well-known, but I had never heard of him and he had a fascinating life, so he gets a whole...
Tenth Issue: Female Criminals in 19th Century New York
I found an article on Marm Mandelbaum by accident, and it led me down a rabbit hole of fascinating facts about the world of female criminals in New York City...
Ninth Issue: Messiahs
I’ve been looking at Wikipedia’s list of messiah claimants lately. It is interesting that they don’t have a list of messiahs just claimants. I guess...
Eighth Issue: Batavia
The story of Batavia seems to be a pretty well-known one, but I honestly had never heard of it until stumbling upon the Wikipedia page. Maybe it's bigger in...
Seventh Issue: Animals Attack
This issue is about animals! It’s not quite historical, but whatever. First up is Fred the baboon. Fred was from Cape Town, South Africa and he was a GANG...
Sixth Issue: Japanese Castaways
Okay, so they're not all castaways or even all Japanese, but I fell down the Wikipedia rabbit-hole when I was researching castaways last week, so here are...
Fifth Issue: Castaways
I found Wikipedia’s list of castaways and phantom islands and spent a good couple of hours browsing through them. The idea of a phantom island is much cooler...
Fourth Issue: Bunce Court School
I was going to do this issue about something else, but you know what, it's been a rough year, so I switched topics from what I had originally planned and I'm...
Third Issue: Following Your Dreams
I've been thinking about Tommy Wiseau lately. He's a weird guy. You can read all about him here, and watch his famous film, The Room, online for free in any...
Second Issue: The Papacy
I find the whole concept of a Pope to be interesting. Well, I find religion interesting in general, but what blows my mind about Catholicism is that there's...
Welcome to the First Issue of Capacious Extremis!
Hello! I'm so glad to have an audience to share my love of strange and interesting historical facts with. I've decided to name this newsletter after the...