Sixteen years have passed since Ferdinand De Lesseps’ catastrophic failure in Panama, and the dramatic collapse of the French Panama Canal company. Now, President Theodore Roosevelt has picked up ...

Beneath all the tariff craziness — the taxes on islands inhabited only by penguins, the pseudo-profound mathematical definition of “reciprocal”, the idea that the settled trade policy of every ...

In 1978, a dredging gang working for British Waterways was struggling with a problem. They were trying to clear obstacles on the Chesterfield Canal so they could stabilise a concrete wall — not an ...

Ferdinand De Lesseps, “the Great Frenchman”, was convinced that he was the man to build the Panama Canal. No, he wasn’t an engineer and no, he’d never actually been to Panama before. But he’d managed ...

It’s almost 13 years since the UK government raised £22.5bn in one of the biggest auctions of all time, for the right to use radio spectrum for 3G mobile phone services. The next big thing, 4G, has ...

In 1978 the world is on the brink of declaring victory over smallpox. No cases have been seen for months, and it looks like the end for a deadly, painful disease. When a photographer in Birmingham ...

William the Conqueror undertook a remarkably modern project. In 1086, he began compiling and storing a detailed record of his realm: where everyone lived, what they did and where they came from. 900 ...

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 ...

“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 ...