The Bordereau That Tore France in Half
A torn-up scrap of paper from a German embassy wastebasket convicted the wrong man in 1894. France spent the next twelve years arguing about it.
Read the story →A theme
Religion
Faith, heresy, ritual, and the institutions built around them.
15 stories in this theme.
The Rhineland Massacres That Came Before the Crusade
In the spring of 1096, before the First Crusade reached Asia, an army of pilgrims spent six weeks killing the Jewish communities of the Rhine.
Read the story →The Seven Years Europe Ate Its Own
The rain started in May 1315 and did not stop. Across northern Europe the harvest failed for three years running. By 1317 cities were locking up their own children.
Read the story →The Larger Dancing Plague Nobody Remembers
In July 1374, after a major Rhine flood, hundreds of people in Aachen began to dance in the streets and could not stop. The plague moved with them up the river.
Read the story → The Coroner’s Report June 11, 2026 · Old Jewish quarter, Cologne, Holy Roman Empire (modern Germany)
The Night Cologne Killed Its Jewish Quarter
Cologne's Jewish community had stood since the fourth century. On the night of Saint Bartholomew, August 1349, a mob ended it in a few hours.
Read the story →The Curate Who Doubted John Snow
Henry Whitehead set out to disprove John Snow's water theory. He spent six months knocking on doors in Soho. By the end he had identified the index case.
Read the story → The Coroner’s Report June 10, 2026 · Island on the Rhine, Basel, Bishopric of Basel (modern Switzerland)
The Pogrom That Came Before Strasbourg
Five weeks before the Strasbourg massacre, Basel built a wooden house on an island in the Rhine, locked roughly six hundred of its Jews inside, and burned it.
Read the story →The Missionary Who Sailed to Greenland to Find the Vikings
Hans Egede spent fifteen years on the Greenland coast looking for Norse Christians who had been dead for three centuries. He found ruins, ice, and Inuit.
Read the story →The Mathematician the Mob Came For
Hypatia of Alexandria was the most famous philosopher in the eastern Mediterranean. In March 415 a crowd dragged her from her carriage and killed her with roof tiles.
Read the story →The Astronomer Who Defended His Mother From the Stake
In 1620 the seventy-four-year-old mother of Johannes Kepler was arrested for witchcraft. He spent six years getting her out.
Read the story →The Strasbourg Pogrom of Saint Valentine's Day, 1349
Six weeks before the plague reached the city, the council of Strasbourg deposed its mayors, replaced them, and burned the city's Jewish community alive.
Read the story →The Men Who Whipped Themselves Across Europe
In the summer of 1349 thousands of penitents marched through plague-stricken Europe flogging themselves twice a day. The Pope banned them within months.
Read the story →The Library That Did Not Burn
Caesar's fire, the Christian mob, the Caliph's order — every famous ending of the Library of Alexandria is wrong, or only partly true. It died slowly.
Read the story →The Laughter That Closed Fourteen Schools
In January 1962 three students at a Tanganyikan girls' school began to laugh and could not stop. By the end of the year a thousand others had joined them.
Read the story →The Summer Strasbourg Could Not Stop Dancing
In July 1518 a woman in Strasbourg began to dance in the street. By August several hundred people had joined her, and some of them had died of it.
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