Suitably for the organisation claiming to be ‘the world’s local bank’, HSBC earns a tidy profit. In 2021, it reported a pre-tax profit of $18.9 billion dollars. Most of that money is earned through legitimate business deals. However, throughout the 21st Century, HSBC has taken the business of some of the biggest scumbags the world … More Your Bank May Have Helped Drug Cartels and Terrorists
One of the many effects of the pandemic is that we all watched way too much TV. With Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Shudder, AppleTV and more all competing for our attention, it can feel like all the visual content is scrambling our brains. Perhaps our grandparents were right for calling it the idiot box. Well, … More The Dexter Killer
We’re doing something a little bit different this week. Rather than examining the story of a single group or person with a sordid past, we’ll be covering a particularly gruesome method of execution. What is it? Well, the title’s a bit of a clue: blowing someone from a gun is the Victorian name for of … More Blowing from a gun
Human beings have always desired control over their lives, and what better way to gain it than being able to see one’s own future? From astrology to haruspication (reading the entrails of sacrificed animals), people have been practicing forms of fortune telling for millennia. Today it’s a lucrative business: According to a poll by researchers … More Sylvia Browne
After the murder of George Floyd and other videos of crimes and abuses committed by cops have circulated on the internet, it’s fair to say that the image of police officers has been tarnished somewhat. Whatever your opinion of policing is, it’s undeniable that there are bad cops out there, and today we’ll be examining … More Jon Burge
Next Tuesday, 8 March, is International Women’s Day, so it seemed appropriate to write a story of a bunch of strong independent women taking on the patriarchy! …they may have taken things a bit far. In 1911, Nagyrév gained a new mid-wife. Her name was Julius Fazekas, and she came with several glowing references from … More The Angel Makers of Nagyrév
Couples across the globe celebrated Valentine’s Day this week, and so I thought to myself ‘why not do a romantic story?’ Well, this story doesn’t feature any Montagues or Capulets, but it does feature a whole lot of love… of a sort. In April 1930, local newspapers in Los Angeles were abuzz with the lurid … More Dolly Oesterreich & Otto Sanhuber
Today’s tale is one of the most famous – and spooky – true crime stories to come out of Japan! In 1984, Japan was in the midst of its ‘economic miracle’ a period of massive growth in GDP and standards of living that had lasted since the end of WW2. Japanese car companies were famously … More The Monster with 21 Faces
We’re back! After a festive celebration and a grapple with illness, today marks the first morbid story of 2022, and I thought I’d kick off the new year with a classic unsolved mystery: Who put Bella down the Wych Elm? That’s not only the title of this particular tale, but also a piece of graffiti … More Who put Bella down the Wych Elm?
I guess you could say that my heart has grown three times larger over the course of the last week, because I simply don’t have it in me to ruin people’s festivities (besides, the Omicron variant seems to be doing just fine at that by itself). So instead of informing you about political corruption, war … More The Chocolate Pilot: A Christmas Special
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