What is the Voynich Manuscript?

The Voynich Manuscript is a roughly 250-page book written in an entirely unknown language/writing system. It’s been carbon-dated back to the 1400s and includes illustrations of plants that don’t resemble any known species. It’s named for the Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912. It is believed to have been intended as a medical […]

The Incident at Dyatlov Pass – an unexplained mystery

On the first night of February 1959, nine ski-hikers died mysteriously in the mountains of what is now Russia. The night of the incident, the group had set up camp on a slope, enjoyed dinner, and prepared for sleep—but something went catastrophically wrong because the group never returned. On February 26, searchers found the hikers’ […]

Arctic Nightmare by Richard Gradner

The polar bear looked up from the bloody seal carcass, as the thundering sounds of an iceberg cleaving a large section off the ice sheet, rumbled across the tundra like a herd of stampeding bison. Shards of ice, the size of houses, crashed into the Arctic, pounding the near-freezing waters with explosive force, sending wave […]

Gold! – A short story by Richard Gradner

“Senór, look.” Pablo pointed at an Amazonian pyramid that came into view. Julio raised his hand to shield his eyes from the shafts of sunlight that cut through the canopy of trees. The familiar sound of howler monkeys echoed in the distance and a flock of colourful macaws swooped overhead as Julio gradually made his […]

Inferno

In my upcoming novel, Servant of Memory, I’m currently writing about the famous polymath, astronomer, physicist, philosopher and mathematician, Galileo Galilei, who gives a lecture in Florence about how to calculate the dimensions of hell in Dante’s 14th century epic poem Divine Comedy. The famous renaissance artist, Sandro Botticelli, painted a visual interpretation of Dante’s […]