Improbable Research

Hospitals can be good places to catch cold or other illnesses. They can also, it seems, be good places to catch fire. Investigator Joanne Berger has alerted us to a snazzily written guide to preventing hospital bed fires. The document is titled, simply, “Safety Tips for Preventing Hospital Bed Fires” and is published by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. A crackling good read if you’r ein the mood for that sort of thing, it can be found and enjoyed here.

Don’t worry, be happy. Unless you’re Russian, of course, and then it’s probably impossible…

So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian. Read it here.

Improbable research translates from one language to another, but sometimes this involves adventure. For a prime example, see the letter from the Chinese translator of the book Best of Annals of Improbable Research, here.

The English writer Samuel Pepys (who lived from 1633-1703, and whose name was pronounced “peeps”) produced a diary that is now much-celebrated. We at the Annals of Improbable Research have have an intriguing photograph of “Marshmallow” Pepys, which you can see here.

Our Rate-the-Poets Project question of the month is:

Which of these three poets (click here to see them) would you be least likely to buy a used car from?

Data from this question will be added to our database, for future analysis.