MoneyFILE 021
The Great Salad Oil Swindle
Inspectors measured the tanks with a tape dipped in water. Oil floats. One man used that fact to borrow against $150 million of soybean oil that did not exist.
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The archive · 21 files declassified
Everything you know is slightly wrong.
Two-minute true stories about films, history, sport and science — told properly, and kept in one place worth coming back to.
Researched against primary sources · no invented quotes · corrections published in public
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RSS feedMoneyFILE 020
Was Tulip Mania Even a Bubble?
The most-cited financial bubble in history may be mostly a story invented 200 years later by a man selling a book about crowd madness.
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MoviesFILE 019
The Shower Scene That Took a Week
Forty-five seconds of film, seven days of shooting, 78 camera setups — and no shot of a knife touching skin.
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MoviesFILE 018
The Film That Almost Destroyed Its Studio
Metropolis took 17 months, 30,000 extras and millions of marks. It was a technical miracle and a commercial catastrophe.
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HistoryFILE 017
The Dead Man Who Fooled the Nazis
Operation Mincemeat used one corpse, a fake major, and a set of letters to move an entire German division.
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HistoryFILE 016
Boston's Tidal Wave of Molasses
A tank of syrup burst in 1919 and sent a wave through the streets at 35 mph. The smell lasted for decades.
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HistoryFILE 015
The Librarian Who Smuggled 350,000 Manuscripts
When extremists seized Timbuktu, one man spent months moving a civilisation's records out of the city in metal trunks.
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HistoryFILE 014
The War That Lasted 335 Years and Killed Nobody
The Netherlands and the Isles of Scilly were allegedly at war from 1651 to 1986. Peace was declared — and historians aren't convinced it was ever real.
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SportFILE 013
Who Actually Snubbed Jesse Owens?
Everyone knows Hitler refused to shake his hand. Owens himself named a different man.
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SportFILE 012
The Marathon That Doesn't Count
Eliud Kipchoge ran a marathon in 1:59:40. It isn't a world record, and the reasons why are fascinating.
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ScienceFILE 011
The Noise That Turned Out to Be the Universe
Two physicists spent a year trying to remove a persistent hiss. They cleaned out pigeon droppings. It didn't help — because the noise was the Big Bang.
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ScienceFILE 010
The Dinosaur Found With Its Last Meal Still Inside
A machine operator in Alberta hit something unusual. It turned out to be a 110-million-year-old armoured dinosaur — preserved in three dimensions, with its stomach contents intact.
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