Given our love of gemstones, it's not surprising some of the biggest and most beautiful examples have been passed down through generations, usually of the rich and famous. Some, though, seem to bring more than just bling: some, it's said, bring along a curse. These are history's most cursed gems.
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"The individuals so afflicted were convinced that their bodies were made of glass -- and not the bulletproof kind of glass that might actually be helpful if, say, you're a professional skateboarder."
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Every field has its pioneers. In the world of high-profile American child disappearances, we must look back before the Balloon Boys, JonBenéts, and Lindbergh babies, turning instead to the story of one Charles Brewster Ross -- the first case of kidnapping-for-ransom in U.S. history.
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There's one major band that rubs Robert Smith the wrong way, and it's none other than the legendary Queen.
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Nobody (that we know of, anyway) claims that a sport isn't a sport unless it involves a live bird. Like, for instance, a goose. But geese, and horses, and human beings are the basic ingredients for a blessedly less common sport called goose pulling.
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Lagertha is played by Canadian actress and martial artist Katheryn Winnick, who spoke to Collider's Christina Radish about the character when the series was still young. What attracted her to the role, and how does she really perceive Lagertha? Here's how she feels about her character in Vikings.
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In a corner of Laurel, Maryland hides a 200-acre property. Wrapped up in thick forest, you'll find a vast compound. Peeling paint, the smell of rot, and at least a few decades of graffiti-flexing all vie for attention... This is Forest Haven Asylum.
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Firefighters are possibly the closest thing we have to real-life superheroes. They have uniforms, a ton of special equipment, a skillset that's well beyond ordinary people, and even their own, themed vehicles. But what about money?
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The Celts were unique in the prominence and power they afforded women, who could not only partake in the political realm as rulers and diplomats, but conduct business, own property, have any profession, choose their suitors, and not only fight alongside men in combat — but lead them.
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Jerry Springer once said: "Cults are dangerous and not entitled to the protection of religion, not because of what they believe, but because of what they entice their adherents to do." The text is taken from a transcript stored on the website of his interviewees, the Church of Euthanasia.
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As far as cult names go, the International Chivalric Organization of the Solar Tradition (known to its friends simply as the Order of the Solar Temple) has a lot going for it.
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Atlantis is one of those words, those places, that's truly a figure to conjure with, a mix of ancient legend and steam-punk possibilities, a sort of tabula rasa for whatever you'd hope humanity to be.
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If sales are any measure of success, Ned Buntline was very successful indeed. He wrote about what he knew, at first -- seagoing tales, perhaps inspired by his service in the Navy as a young man (a "buntline" is a kind of knot used on ships).
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It's a conundrum. How do you make someone happy? Happy Hogan from the MCU is happy because Jon Favreau gets an executive producer credit no matter what. As for Happy Meals, they took the easy route: include one wad of plastic in every box of salty meat.
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It's perfectly reasonable to blame the banal marketing of Silicon Valley for people's inability to differentiate a new way to add middlemen into their lives, and the creation of a truly radical space. The birth of the post office dramatically changed how people access information.
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Lyudmila Pavlichenko, generally considered the world's most -- "successful" doesn't seem quite right; maybe "effective" -- sniper, killed 309 Germans on the Eastern Front in the earlier days of World War II, defending Russian soil to the best of her abilities.
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You'll be thrilled to learn that these United States were overseen by a man who claimed to have spotted a flying saucer in Calhoun County, Georgia. The claim, detailed in a remarkably official looking report to the International UFO Bureau in Oklahoma, was made by one Jimmy Carter.
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When Joe and Jean Pritchard moved into their recently bought 30 East Drive in Pontefract with their two children, 13-year-old Diane and 15-year-old Philip, and Jean's mum Sarah in August 1966, they seemed to have lucked out on a picturesque house in West Yorkshire. But things got creepy, quickly.
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Like much of American history, the story of the Louisiana Purchase is much darker and more complicated than what's taught in schools. It paved the way for the oppression of Native Americans, the expansion of slavery, and even the Civil War. This is the messed up truth about the Louisiana Purchase.
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A recent discovery in Mexico, however, made only in June of 2020, may throw this entire, neatly crafted timetable on its head, and place humanity in the Americas as far back as 33,150 years ago.
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There are plenty of historical records as we get into the modern era, and World War II is no exception. Some things were destroyed in the course of war, but much remained. Yet certainly a tantalizing object would have been the personal diaries of the leader of the Third Reich: Adolf Hitler.
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The unusual case of the Affair of the Poisons has absolutely everything that an aspiring true crime enthusiast could want: royal scandal, murder most foul, and complicated last names that make you sound smart when you pronounce them correctly.
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NXIVM. It's spelled like the name of Julius Caesar's spaceship. Unfortunately, it's pronounced "nexium," so when read aloud, it sounds more like a magnesium-based anti-diarrheal. And that's about the nicest thing you can say about them.
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Sir Isaac Newton may have been one of the greatest physicists of all time. After all, he discovered gravity, during quarantine, in a rather famous event involving an apple tree. But he did have other interesting hobbies, other than math, like busting counterfeiters.
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Archaeologists and explorers have found tons of super cool stuff in the jungle, and seeing it for the first time? That had to be a case of not believing your eyes. Heck, some of this stuff is still hard to believe — but they're all very real. Here are some fascinating discoveries made in the jungle.
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The story of the Persian Princess hoax begins in 2000, when a mummy and sarcophagus showed up on the black market, sparking an international argument, lots of confused archaeologists and historians, and a story full of twists and turns. This is the crazy true story of the Persian Princess.
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Yep, giants were everywhere in ancient history. But could there be a hint of truth behind the legend? Could giants have ... actually existed?
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