Weird War

Weird but True Stories from World War II: Bizarre but Real Tales from the World’s Strangest War dives deep into the hidden, surreal, and astonishing true events that unfolded between 1939 and 1945. From exploding rats and rubber tank armies to psychic infiltrators and bears enlisted in combat, this fascinating book uncovers the strangest corners of World War II history—stories so unbelievable they can only be true. Perfect for history buffs, trivia lovers, and curious readers, this compelling collection brings together ten incredible stories that reveal just how unpredictable and ...

From Alexander the Great to Watergate, this unique, witty book based on the massively popular history podcast is full of wisdom and good old-fashioned banter. "These bespectacled, middle-aged bookworms have somehow made history alluring, borderline sexy.” —Times (UK) The Rest is History...

The Second World War is the bloodiest on record. It was the first total war in history when civilians, men, women and children were on the front line as never before. With so many millions involved, the rumor machine went into overdrive, with tall stories built on fear of the unknown. With so much at stake, boffins battled with each other to build ever more bizarre weapons to outgun the enemy. Nazi Germany alone had so many government-orchestrated foibles that they would be funny if they were not so tragic.

Discover the strangest true stories from the trenches, skies, and deserts of World War I in this fascinating, fully factual collection. Weird but True Stories from World War I: Bizarre, Shocking, and Unbelievable Tales from the Great War is a gripping, entertaining, and meticulously researched collection of real events that defy belief. From the Christmas Truce that stopped the war for carols and soccer, to a homing pigeon who saved an entire battalion, to the spy who used invisible ink made from an unmentionable bodily fluid—these are the stories you never learned in history class. ...

This dieselpunk alternate history WW1 story plunges deep into the trenches of France, where the rules of war have changed—and lightning obeys no master. April 1917, Chemin des Dames: a ridge soaked in blood and ambition. Amid the mud and ruin, a French artillery unit is handed a weapon that should not exist, one born from Nikola Tesla’s most dangerous ideas. The Foudre Rapide hums with restrained fury, its copper fins pulsing with charge. But power this raw comes with a price. Captain Émile Fournier, a man of calculations and guilt, must walk the line between science and madness, ...

Discover the strangest side of the Civil War that textbooks left behind. From sneezed-out bullets and exploding mules to musical ceasefires and sky-high spies in balloons, Weird but True Stories from the Civil War reveals the bizarre, hilarious, and unbelievable moments that actually happened during America’s deadliest conflict. These aren’t fictional tales—they’re real events, drawn from eyewitness accounts, battlefield reports, and historical archives. Explore ten shocking stories that shine a light on the surreal side of 19th-century warfare, including a Confederate soldier who ...

The history of firearms has never suffered from a shortage of strange ideas. Good judgment occasionally arrived late. STRANGE BUT TRUE: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF FIREARMS takes you through seven centuries of ingenious inventions, spectacular miscalculations, and weapons that make you wonder who agreed to test them first. Meet Chinese experimenters searching for long life whose discoveries helped unleash gunpowder. Follow early gunners into the awkward business of carrying a cannon on a stick. Discover beautiful dueling pistols built for ugly disagreements, pocket guns crowded with barrels, and ...

Did a Warner Bros. cartoon prophesize the use of the atom bomb? Did the Allies really plan to use stink bombs on the enemy? Why did the Nazis make their own version of Titanic and why were polar bear photographs appearing throughout Europe? The Second World War was the bloodiest of all wars. Mass armies of men trudged, flew or rode from battlefields as far away as North Africa to central Europe, from India to Burma, from the Philippines to the borders of Japan. It saw the first aircraft carrier sea battle, and the indiscriminate use of terror against civilian populations in ways not seen ...

Weird but True Stories from the 1950's: Bizarre, Shocking, and Unbelievable Tales from America’s Atomic Age Think you know the 1950's? Think again. Beneath the surface of poodle skirts, chrome diners, and black-and-white TV was a decade overflowing with mystery, irony, and stranger-than-fiction true stories. This captivating collection reveals ten astonishing real-life events from the 1950's that defy expectation and logic—each one verified and rooted in historical fact. From radar panic over Washington D.C. to the eerie Phantom Whistler of New Jersey, from mid-air collisions with ...

Step into the stranger side of the Swinging Sixties with Weird but True Stories from the 1960s: Bizarre, Shocking, and Unbelievable Tales from the Swinging Sixties. This fascinating collection uncovers the most outrageous, unexpected, and absolutely real events from one of history’s most transformative decades. From CIA cat spies and a government plan to nuke the Moon to a dolphin experiment that spiraled into psychedelic madness, these true stories reveal just how far imagination, paranoia, and ambition went during the 1960's. Meet the woman who lived with a dolphin, revisit the legend ...

The Underground Knowledge Series VI–X plunges readers deeper into the shadows of global power, exposing the hidden forces shaping society in ways most people never imagine. In this controversial and explosive box set, bestselling authors James & Lance Morcan continue their relentless investigation into the world’s most secretive institutions, controversial subjects, and suppressed truths. BANKRUPTING THE THIRD WORLD: How the Global Elite Drown Poor Nations in a Sea of Debt reveals how developing nations are systematically crippled by debt, corruption, and predatory global financial ...

A stranger dies in a London flat with a notebook full of code in his pocket. Soon the man who found him is running across the Scottish moors, hunted by the police and by the spies who killed him. That chase made John Buchan famous and gave the thriller a new shape. Its dedication calls The Thirty-Nine Steps a “shocker” whose incidents “march just inside the borders of the possible.” Over a long career Buchan pushed that border through the First World War, the Scottish hills, the Virginia of the first settlers, the witch-haunted Scotland of the seventeenth century and the South ...

America is turning 250, and somehow the party includes cracked bells, haunted taverns, giant president heads, battlefield ghosts, roadside diners, patriotic gift shops, and one suspicious cannon nobody fully trusts. Weird America 250 is a funny, strange, story-packed road trip through the odd places, dramatic legends, historic landmarks, and bizarre tourist traditions that helped shape the United States. This is not a dry textbook or a stiff patriotic lecture. It is a lively travel-guide-style journey through the country’s most memorable historic stops, from Philadelphia’s Independence ...

The world is at war — again — and its greatest defenders are back on the front lines. This collection of tales set during the Second World War finds Captain Gideon Argo and his loyal crew, The Flying Zombies, battling those arcane forces the Allies couldn't tackle on their own. In 1937, a werewolf stalks a Japanese camp in China, where Capt. Bullshark Dempsey is imprisoned. In 1938, Wings pilots a giant drilling machine into the deep earth with the crew, uncovering a hidden world of dinosaurs and indigenous people under attack by German soldiers. During the London Blitz, Doc Riley and ...

After the Civil War, frontier doctor Killian Obadiah Davis rides west seeking peace, but finds a nightmare waiting in the settlement of Redemption. Families vanish without struggle. Bodies are found drained of blood. And the creatures responsible move with impossible speed through the darkness. Answering a call for help from an old comrade, Doc joins forces with sharpshooter Jed Raines, the deadly Irish gunfighter Declan Caine, U.S. Marshal Sylvanus Forrester, and steadfast saloonkeeper Patrick Godwin. Together, they stand, first in Redemption and finally, in Springfield, against a rising ...

In a desolate world where dirigibles rule the skies and blood soaks the dry earth, a young man joins the fight against a tyrant who has problems of his own. Andrew Sutter returns home from hunting to find drought-wracked Carroll Town under the thumb of a tax collector from the cannibalistic Flesh-Eating Legion. A riot becomes a battle, leaving Carroll Town in ruins and Andrew alone in the merciless Iron Desert. Saved from certain death by the riders of rebel chieftain Alonzo Merrill, Andrew finds himself fighting for their doomed cause. Meanwhile, Grendel, first lord of the Northlands and ...

Pack your sunscreen, bug spray, and emotional support breakfast taco — the Texas Gulf Coast is not here to behave. Weird Gulf Coast Texas Stories takes readers on a funny, strange, and story-packed road trip along one of the most wildly underrated coastlines in America. This is not a polished beach brochure full of calm waves and perfect sunsets. This is the Gulf Coast of haunted Galveston hotels, pirate legends, shrimp boats, storm-battered beach towns, ferry gulls with criminal intent, mosquitoes that require their own defense strategy, and beach roads where trucks discover that sand is...

A sentry shoots a horseman on a Virginia cliff. A man escapes a hanging at Owl Creek Bridge, or does not. A colour outside the range of human sight destroys another. Sixty-nine stories of war, murder and the dead who will not lie down, by Ambrose Bierce. Ambrose Bierce arranged his own short fiction twice, and the second arrangement is the one printed here: the war and civilian tales of In the Midst of Life (first published in 1891 as Tales of Soldiers and Civilians) and the ghost stories of Can Such Things Be? (1893), as he redistributed them in 1909 for his Collected Works. Most modern ...

Tea looks harmless enough. A few leaves, some hot water, maybe a biscuit nearby minding its own business. But behind that polite little cup is a history packed with smugglers, emperors, samurai, spies, wars, taxes, stolen plants, fortune-tellers, bizarre rituals, and people who became dangerously emotional about when to add the milk. STRANGE BUT TRUE: THE WEIRD HISTORY OF TEA follows one remarkable leaf from ancient China to monasteries, royal courts, colonial plantations, Boston Harbor, Victorian drawing rooms, Tibetan mountains, Moroccan tea tables, Russian samovars, Japanese ceremonies, ...

Weird but True Stories from the 1980s: Bizarre, Shocking, and Unbelievable Tales from the Decade of Excess explores the wildest, strangest, and most astonishing true events that actually happened during one of the most unforgettable decades in modern history. From Cold War close calls and covert cult operations to lost video games buried in the desert and pop culture disasters on live television, this fascinating collection reveals the bizarre underbelly of the 1980s. Meet the Soviet officer who saved the world by ignoring a computer warning of nuclear war. Discover how Pepsi briefly became...