The first term of my master’s degree in economics was an alarming experience. The econometrics was bewildering. The macroeconomics was even more mysterious. Everything was drenched in ...

In 1983, a plane takes off from Ottawa with less than half the required fuel on board. As the engines cut out one by one, the pilot is left with a ticking clock and an impossible task. But what ...

It’s D-Day and the Allies are about to invade Nazi-occupied France. For the landings to succeed, American soldiers on Omaha Beach will have to break through some formidable coastal defences ...

In 1799, the German adventurer-scientist Alexander von Humboldt set out on what would prove to be a five-year exploration of South America. Young, independently wealthy and almost absurdly ...

An amateurish burglary in 1950s London ends in murder. One of the men involved is a 19-year-old named Derek Bentley. Bentley has the understanding of a child – and he wasn’t the ...

When the Financial Times uncovered the billion-dollar Wirecard fraud, it seemed like the story was over. But then the company’s Chief Operating Officer, Jan Marsalek, vanished – leaving ...

Adi and Rudi Dassler made sports shoes together – until a feud erupted between them. They set up competing companies, Adidas and Puma, and their bitter rivalry divided the sporting world, their family ...

Panic has erupted in the cockpit of AirFrance Flight 447. The pilots are convinced they’ve lost control of the plane. It’s lurching violently. Then, it begins plummeting from the sky at breakneck ...

Gordon Moore’s famous prediction about computing power must count as one of the most astonishingly accurate forecasts in history. But it may also have been badly misunderstood — in a way that now ...

“Thanks to Tim Harford’s characteristic wit and magnetic storytelling, you may not realize you’re getting an advanced course in how to understand the kinds of statistics we’re all faced with every day ...