What Almost Lore is focused on

Current editorial focus

Original longform about documented historical near-misses and odd public facts. A scheme that sold a country, a poison legend that outran the trial file, a balloon that ditched short of Europe, a subway that ran one block, an almost-war on the Nile. If the archive is thin, the sentence stays thin.

The standard is on the about page: public record first, sources named, uncertainty left visible.

Longforms on the site

14 longforms are published. The newest is The Aroostook War: a border without a battle (2026-09-26). Dates below are the days those essays went up here.

• The Aroostook War: a border without a battle (2026-09-26)
• The Venezuela crisis that threatened a wider war (2026-09-26)
• Dogger Bank: the night the navy fired at fishermen (2026-09-26)
• The Caroline affair: a burning ship, an unsteady peace (2026-09-26)
• The four men taken off the Trent (2026-09-26)
• The Pig War: one shot, thirteen years of waiting (2026-09-26)
• The last winter of Vitus Bering (2026-09-25)
• The Darien scheme: Scotland’s ruinous shortcut (2026-09-25)
• The secret in San Francisco’s fog (2026-09-25)
• Two flags at Fashoda (2026-09-18)
• Poyais: the country that existed on paper (2026-09-11)
• The subway that ran one block (2026-09-11)
• One hundred and ten miles of Atlantic (2026-09-11)
• Aqua Tofana, after the legend (2026-09-11)

What’s next

The newest longform is The Aroostook War: a border without a battle. The Poyais essay now points at a separate working file. That file is $9 only when the dossier page says card checkout is open. There is no newsletter and no account. Some essays link to books on Amazon; the about and privacy pages say so. If display ads are added later to cover hosting, those pages will say so.

Contact

The site is published at almostlore.com. For a correction — a date we should hedge, a count we should unsay — write hello@almostlore.com.

This is a /now page in the sense Derek Sivers described at nownownow.com.