HAistoric — Histories That Almost Were

— A Soviet mole, a typo, and the 3.8 billion-rouble navigational error that delivered the Eagle to Havana. —

— One Pittsburgh bookkeeper, a single rogue decimal, and the forced liquidation of America’s second-largest fortune. —

— The night a Soviet agent accidentally gave the moon landing its own psychedelic jazz soundtrack, live from Mission Control. —

— How a protest garment of the West Riding of Yorkshire ended up on every arse in the world. —

— Sometimes, when a woman says she’s just going out for a bit, she means she is going to fly 29,000 miles to deliver a single goddamn cake. —

— One man’s obsession with a single bad map costs the Spanish crown a fortune and gives cartographers everywhere a migraine. —

— The West gets a new menu, but no new maps. Who could have predicted this would be a problem? —

— Charlie Chaplin was the first to put a song on film. It was a mistake. —

— A tale of two pipes, a misunderstood deity, and the strategic application of 300,000 tons of rancid olive oil. —

— Forget witchcraft. The real trial was about who controlled the good soap. —

— Paris’s greatest monument was supposed to be temporary. Instead, it became permanent, embarrassing, and inconveniently horizontal. —

— A forgotten magnetic mine, a nervous GRU lieutenant, and 99 problems but a launch ain’t one. —

— The ball was 51 centimetres over the line. Ask any Englishman. Ask the man who sold them the tape measure. —

— A once-in-a-millennium Baltic weather event leaves the Allied invasion of Europe high, dry, and frozen solid. —

— How a simple plant turned the healers of Kos into the happiest, hungriest, and most useless doctors in the ancient world. —