The Mad Hatterpillar In 1820, Washington Irving popularized the character of the Headless Horseman, a ghost who terrorizes the countryside looking for his missing head. Though the myth reaches farther into time – Irish folklore, for example, features the Dullahan (“dark man”) who carries his head by horseback – Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hallow destined this character […]
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Odysseus Few literary characters rise to a level of timelessness in which their stories survive millennia. Still, fewer characters see their names become eponyms folded into multiple languages. One such gargantuan of the page is Homer’s Odysseus. If you’re into the Romans or the Irish, you might know him better as Ulysses. Though the champion
Mocha Dick Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. — Herman Melville, Moby-Dick Instead of projecting his spout obliquely forward, and puffing with a short, convulsive effort, accompanied by a snorting noise, as usual with
Transylvania and the Count In 1897, Irish author Bram Stoker unleashed Dracula upon the world. The titular Count was not the first vampire in literature – that trend extends at least to the first half of the 18th century – but he is the most famous. Because of Stoker, we have dozens of adaptations of his
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The Sirens of Titan Join me on a trip toward the outer reaches of our solar system. On the voyage, we’ll mix metaphors from two fantastic authors. I think the conflation we’ll make might be acceptable to one of them. Maybe both! In 1959, Kurt Vonnegut published his second novel. Setting the tone for his
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Mount Doom and the Crags of Mordor In our previous issue, we explored Mont Blanc, Western Europe’s High Point and the tallest peak in the Alps. After visiting the “White Mountain,” it seems fitting in this Halloween season to travel next to a place with a diametrically opposed name. Translated from the native language of
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The Unaccountable Freak & the Comet I think it’s fair to say no comet is as popular in the collective consciousness as Halley’s Comet. Every once in a while another will pop up, such as Hale-Bopp, which garnered a lot of attention in 1997 due to the cult called Heaven’s Gate, or last year’s spectacular NEOWISE.
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Frankenstein’s Monster Volcano Mary Shelley might not be the first name encountered when considering women in science and nature, but she led an extraordinary life and has an intriguing connection to one of the largest events in geologic history. Additionally, many literary critics dubbed one of her novels as the first science-fiction piece ever written. Her
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