Why did audience members fail to flee a deadly fire… despite being told to escape? Flames are spreading through a Cincinnati hotel. The staff know it, the fire department is coming, and the people ...

Lying on the cold metal table, Voyne Ray Cox knew the drill. This was his ninth round of cancer treatment – which is why he was certain that what happened next couldn’t be right. He ...

One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is just a statistic. If Stalin ever said such a thing, he wasn’t the first — but the ghoulish claim has stuck to him because he is one of very few ...

Smoking kills. A few people had suspected as much before the second world war, but it was not until 1950 that the scientific evidence began to accumulate that smokers were at dramatically higher ...

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 ...

Steven Spielberg thought his career was finished. He was behind schedule, his actors were fighting, the crew were mutinous and worst of all, his shark was broken. It looked like Jaws was destined for ...

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 s… ...

“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 ...