Meet the President’s Daughter, a “Wild Animal That Had Been Put Into Good Clothes”

In a world rife with lifestyle influencers and “content houses,” where building one’s own notoriety is big business, it’s tempting to dismiss being famous for being famous as the most banal and basic kind of renown. But there was a time, with a burgeoning American press beginning to define itself and a brash and pithy…

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George Washington’s Dinner Table Is Still Set in This Manhattan Tavern

Fraunces Tavern is a whisky-soaked lesson in some of the weirdest, most wonderful moments of American history . It was the go-to spot for all Revolutionary festivities, from the farewell dinner that a certain George Washington held for his officers in 1783, to the “Evacuation Day” party thrown by the governor once the British split. Whether it was…

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10 Things to Know (and Love) about Amanda Gorman

Before she’d even finished reading her poem at Joe Biden’s inauguration, she’d stolen the show. Overnight, Amanda Gorman became household name, and in the hours after she delivered her poem “The Hill We Climb” to a global audience, you could refresh her Instagram page and watch the follower count jump by hundreds of thousands per…

But Did You Hear about France’s Most Infamous Madam?

With the Jeffrey Epstein scandal creeping its way into every late night dinner table conversation and the sordid secrets of his mysterious Madam, Ghislaine Maxwell, slowly unfolding in the press, it wasn’t long before we would be talking about “Madame Claude”. France’s own high society brothel queen, aka. Fernande Grudet, reigned for decades as one…

A Brief Compendium of the Weirdest Stuff Sold Online (Like Your Soul).

The Internet, that “alien life form” as David Bowie decreed in a prophetic 1999 interview, has changed a lot in the past decade. The dial-up shriek is no more, AIM Bots are probably withering away in a black hole next to MySpace, and the glory days of weird eBay auctions are behind us. Or so…

In Other News, Turkmenistan’s Dictator Wants to Be a Superstar DJ

For the President of Turkmenistan, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov it’s been a busy year. Aside from running Central Asia’s own hermit kingdom, which according to the Human Rights Watch, “remains one of the world’s most repressive countries”, he manages to find the time for some rather unconventional hobbies. Let’s meet Turkmenistan’s “multi-talented” dictator… How do you entertain a country that…

Where the U.S. Vice President Gets to Live (Hint: it’s not in the White House)

I guess I always assumed the Vice President of the United States was shacked up in the White House along with the President, occupying a couple rooms somewhere at the back of the house, nothing too fancy of course, occasionally running into the leader of the free world in the west wing kitchen while grabbing a late-night glass of milk.…

Bowling with Mr. President beneath the White House

If you’ve ever seen The Big Lebowski, you’ll recognise this photograph of President Richard Nixon bowling, which infamously loomed over the Dudes tiki bar in the cult Coen brothers film. It is in fact a real photograph of Nixon and as I recently discovered, in 1969 the former President added his own secret one-lane bowling alley in…

That time President George H. W. Bush Escaped Cannibals

In WW2 nine airmen escaped from their planes after being shot down during bombing raids on a tiny island 700 miles south of Tokyo. Eight of these men were captured, tortured, beheaded and eaten. The 9th man was George H. W. Bush, the only one who survived. I came across a particularly astounding insert on Wikipedia…