The Decade Chicago Lifted Itself Out of the Mud
In the 1850s the central business district of Chicago was raised four to fourteen feet on jackscrews while continuing to operate. People kept eating at the hotels.
Read the story →A theme
Medicine
How people tried, often badly, to keep each other alive.
6 stories in this theme.
The Doctor Who Took the Handle Off the Pump
In September 1854, John Snow walked door to door through Soho with a map, a hypothesis, and a problem the city wouldn't believe.
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.
Read the story →The Astronomer Who Was Too Polite to Pee
Tycho Brahe died because nobody told him he could leave the dinner table. Four centuries later they dug him up to find out for sure.
Read the story →The Smell That Built a City
London's sewer system was funded in eighteen days. It took a heatwave, a river of feces, and a Parliament that could not breathe.
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