Other lost-history collections

Other publications — books, magazines, notebooks, journals, blogs, whatever — that are like The Dossiers in that they primarily contain articles or entries on obscure, weird, strange, odd or esoteric topics, forgotten, lost or secret histories, interesting ideas, etc.

• Damn Interesting, an online site of articles on interesting topics of history, disaster, the world of tomorrow, and more. Soon to be a printed book.

• Cosma’s Notebooks. Nice plain-text layouts, Produced in plain-text markup with Emacs, Blosxom, and other interesting hackery.

• The Secret Histories: Hidden Truths That Challenged the Past and Changed the World by John S. Friedman, ed. (Picador 2005) contains various essays on interesting or “secret” events in 20th century history.

• For over a decade, Mysteries of Canada has been publishing articles online about the historical, geographic and mythological oddities and legends of Canada.

• “Weekend Stubble,” a blog by writer Paul Collins, who frequently links (and writes) on odd subjects and lost histories. See also Collins’ New Scientist articles and his book, Banvard’s Folly: Thirteen Tales of People Who Didn’t Change the World (Picador 2002).

• Rex Research, a site of “Information Folios of collected articles about suppressed, dormant, or emerging Sciences, Technologies, Inventions, Theories, Therapies, and miscellaneous Alternatives that offer some Hope of helping to Liberate Humanity from itself,” a mix of HTML and PDF documents, going since 1982. Robert A. Nelson, proprietor.

• Abandoned Places, a Livejournal community of people who find and photograph every conceivable type of interesting “place” that has been, yes, abandoned.

• Similarly, FutureCity is a Livejournal community posting contemporary photos of the city.

• DIY, creative, interesting and unusual hacks and projects are detailed at the online zine House Hacker.

• Makezine’s hacks section covers similar ground as House Hacker (above).