Bar Room Banter

When you hear the word “stampede,” what kinds of animals come to mind? Bulls, elephants, Black Friday shoppers, and wildebeests might make your list, but squirrels probably don’t crack the top 10.

In August of 1964, Guns & Ammo published a cover story detailing what the magazine’s editors enthusiastically dubbed “the world’s hottest .22!” The wildcat cartridge could launch a 15-grain bullet an astounding 6585 feet-per-second (fps), over twice as fast as a .30-06 Springfield and six times as...

Over the last three weeks, my family’s dogs have killed three of our four chickens. I often see the last remaining hen standing just outside the dog’s chain-link enclosure, staring at the drooling canines, unblinking, within 6 inches of certain death. I’ve named that chicken “Tom Hanks” because she...

The United States and the Soviet Union had been locked in the Cold War for nearly two decades, and it looked like things were about to turn hot: Soviet ships were steaming towards an American blockade of Cuba, and it wasn’t clear whether the two superpowers would resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis...

Crater Lake, as we discussed on episode 285 of the MeatEater Podcast, is the deepest waterbody in America. It was formed 8,000 years ago when the Mount Mazama volcano collapsed in on itself. Still, that’s not even the most interesting thing about the lake. That title belongs to The Old Man of the...

On July 9, 1958, at 10:15 p.m., an earthquake near Alaska’s Lituya Bay triggered a massive rockslide that created the largest wave ever documented. That record measurement wasn’t some rough estimate either; the megatsunami wiped trees off a mountainside up to 1,720 feet above sea level, leaving an...