While a "day in the life of" may not be as glamorous as Chuck Norris delivering roundhouse kicks to the jaws of '90s TV ruffians, the small cadre of elite Texan police plays an actual, prominent role in the state's law enforcement and criminal investigation, kind of like a Texas-only FBI.
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The majority of people who've never taken a philosophy class have a hard time naming -- or caring about, for that matter -- more than a handful of philosophers, but any middle school student could tell you who Pythagoras was. He was the guy with the triangles. All of the "a²+b²=c²" nonsense.
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The beginning of a new year has always been cause for celebration, introspection, and superstition, but as we saw in 1999 when Y2K was a thing, it's also a time for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It wasn't so different 1,000 years ago. Here's what it was really like on New Year's, 1000 AD.
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Living in the Wild West wasn't easy, but doctors did their best to save their patients. Here's what life was like for doctors in the Wild West.
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"Maybe I didn't deserve to win the race, but neither did he," Andretti told Motor Trend Magazine. "The rule was clear, and a rule is a rule. Bobby won the race, but he cheated winning it. There's an asterisk next to that one." But it wasn't that simple.
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ZME Science reported in 2017 that they used sonar technology to uncover sunken boats, cars, a Civil War-era pier and structures that looked like boulders arranged similarly to those found in England's Stonehenge -- where about 100 stones stand in a circle.
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They date back to about the 14th Century, but very little else is known about them and "the skill and genius of a civilization that we know ... nothing about."
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If there was ever a book for both military leaders and businessmen alike, it's The Art of War by the Chinese philosopher and strategist Sun Tzu. His writings detailed the Chinese army's military strategies, including information on weapons and the importance of intelligence tactics.
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Science fiction has been successfully and very unsuccessfully predicting the future since its conception. Futurism was once a wacky, fun thing to talk about. Will we have jetpacks and be kicking it with aliens while we travel the universe? Now, of course, the predictions are much darker. Or weirder.
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For many people, King Arthur is more than just a character in an epic poem, they believe he must be a real historical figure. After all, the Arthurian legend has been told over several generations.
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Vestal Virgins in ancient Rome were typically upper-class women selected to serve the goddess of the hearth, Vesta. What it was really like to be a Vestal Virgin included keeping the sacred flame at the Temple of Vesta going, performing rituals, and taking a vow of chastity for 30 years.
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When you open the news and find out the stock market crashed, you often see photos of despondent stockbrokers on the floor of the stock exchange. The trading floor is one of the most iconic areas of finance, and not everyone understands what it's like to work there.
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Cholera is a bacterial infection that causes severe diarrhea, vomiting, and leg cramps and is transmitted through contaminated food and water.
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Certain U.S. vice presidents would have done better staying away from Pennsylvania Avenue. And some of them found themselves promoted to the highest office in the world and failing just as much as they did as vice presidents. These are the worst vice presidents in American history.
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Lord Byron was a Romantic poet, aristocrat, and British politician best known for the works of Don Juan and Childe Harold's Pilgrimage in the 19th century. The crazy true story of Lord Byron includes fame, fortune, and a wild string of affairs across Europe until his death at age 36 in Greece.
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Many of those who study dictators as either political commentators or psychological investigators make the point that the reverse side of narcissism is paranoia. These two traits have emerged in an interweaved manner through the behavior of countless dictatorial figures throughout history.
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Thanks to Hollywood, modern people think being a medieval knight would be cool. But we are wrong, oh so very wrong. You may want to hold off on teleporting back through time to claim your title as Sir Whatever until after you've read about what it was really like to be a medieval knight.
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The Dead Sea -- at 413 meters (1,414 feet) below sea level, already the lowest point on the Earth's surface, according to CNN -- has been consistently sinking further into the ground over the last 50 years. Its water level fell six meters in each of the first two decades after 1976.
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According to National Geographic, the tombs of Ancient Egyptian pharaohs typically were stocked with "everything they might need or want in the afterlife" -- and that included preserved food.
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AM NY recently reported that West Nile virus claimed the life of one New Yorker, and five others were diagnosed with the disease. Cases were also confirmed in Massachusetts, California, and Ontario, Canada, in September 2020, and authorities in Texas identified the virus in mosquito pools.
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Pies today come in every shape and size and have transformed in every culture they've come into contact with. This is the long history of pie explained.
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When bands break up, it's usually because the members got into a fight or there were creative differences between the group and their management. But there are those few instances when bands fragment because they thought they weren't successful. The Zombies believed that when they broke up in 1967.
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Edison's predictions a century ago about air travel, mass production, electric trains, and smartphones (kinda) were more or less on the mark. His forecast about the role that steel would play in our lives, however, ended up a cold, lifeless heap in the slush pile of attempted augury.
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Few of us really understand why these beautiful arcs appear in the sky. Sure, it has something to do with sunlight and water droplets -- but what, exactly?
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Plague doctors were scary guys in dark robes and long, beaked masks under hats ... right? Here's what it was really like being a plague doctor.
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In reality, Revere didn't complete the whole ride, wrote Smithsonian Magazine. Nor was he the only rider. He was, however, a real person. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, he was a silversmith and engraver, as well as an American revolutionary.
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Sharp, loyal, savage, and obedient, Grese quickly rose in rank out of 170 female SS staff to become the warden of the women's camp, which had 30,000 women in 62 barracks. The barracks were the epitome of squalor and disease, and Grese compounded this suffering many times over.
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