William McGonagall’s poems are something else. The jarring meter, the banal imagery, the awkward rhymes: they made him a laughing stock in 19th Century Scotland and are still derided to this ...

Economists love to tell each other stories about perverse incentives. The “cobra effect” is a favourite. It describes an attempt by the British Raj to rid Delhi of its cobras by paying a bounty ...

Number Fever: How Pepsi Nearly Went Pop (Classic) Pepsi twice ended up in court after promotions went disastrously wrong. Other big companies have fallen into the same trap - promising customers ...