This month, mysterious packages containing seeds have been appearing on doorsteps and in mailboxes across the country containing 'mystery seeds' from China. What ever could they mean?
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When you read about the people who lived in Greece in ancient times, it's almost always about men. The women in ancient Greece also had rich lives, but how they lived those lives depended on where they were. Women in Sparta, for example, had a lot of freedoms their counterparts in Athens never had.
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Who really was Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin? How can we define him, besides "Russian guy with a sinister stare" and "staple antagonist in comic books and cartoons?"
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One multi-eyed monster of Japan, however, was self-named and real: the Monster with 21 Faces (and presumably 42 eyes).
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Oh, the 1980s. A decade full of neon clothes, mullets, and the Brat Pack. Let's learn some things that Americans in the 1980s couldn't live without.
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There once lived a man richer than anyone else who has ever lived. His name was Mansa Musa.
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When you think of vampires, do you envision them stalking down a dark alley in England, or hiding away in an Eastern European castle? Or, perhaps, do you picture vampires frolicking about the picturesque cities of New England, amidst its mountains and gorgeous coastlines?
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Phrenology, if you're not familiar, is a thoroughly debunked old-timey pseudoscience.
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Treasure hunters have inspired books and movies throughout history. Who wouldn't want to strike it rich by finding a pirate's buried treasure or taste immortality from the Fountain of Youth or the Holy Grail? But it's not easy. These are some of the most notable treasure hunters in history.
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Picasso was mainly a painter, dabbling in sculpture and other media, and he certainly didn't lead a boring life. Here's the messed up truth about Pablo Picasso.
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For some people's money, you just can't find a more hellish spot than Stull, Kansas, a small, unincorporated community in the Northeast quadrant of the Sunflower State, where the local cemetery reportedly houses a gateway to the fiery inferno of the underworld.
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Today, when you think of the richest people in the world, billionaire businessmen and tech giants come to mind, like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett. But have you ever wondered who the richest people were throughout history?
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Humankind has had its fair share of false doomsdays. From perennial favorites like the rapture, predicted with unwavering enthusiasm three times a year, to new, exciting translations of the works of Nostradamus, people can't get enough of those wonderful prognosticated existential threats.
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Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn't do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity."
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If you were lucid during the weeks that followed 9/11, you'll remember that Nostradamus suddenly started popping up in more conversations than usual. At the center of his newfound popularity was a prophetic quatrain, credited to the enigmatic seer, in emails prefaced with "RE:RE:RE:RE."
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Fleas and kissing. The two might seem unrelated, but in an era of social distancing, the link between might be clearer.
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The human species has worked hard to add a layer of organization to the passage of time, and there have been some interesting solutions.
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There are tales of a real life vampire... and it's not who you think.
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It's one of the older scams going (and it's still very much going): psychics.
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You just don't hear about organizations like the Special Operations Executive anymore. Or their mission to beat the Nazis with exploding rats.
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In 410, Rome fell for the first time in 800 years and for the first time since the establishment of its imperial power. Though today we would date the end of the Western Empire sixty-six years later in 476, its days were now numbered.
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In June of 1845, Andrew Jackson was 78 years old -- roughly 248 in 19th century years. Soon he'd be buried -- but not how you might expect.
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Part of the narrative of the 1836 Battle of the Alamo is that the defenders were there to liberate Texas from the tyranny of Mexico. One of the points that often gets lost amid the flag-waving and coonskin caps is that by the time of the Texas Revolution, Mexico had abolished slavery. Texas hadn't.
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Quicksand is probably more important as a motion picture plot device than as an actual natural phenomenon that's waiting to suck you to your death the next time you stroll in the woods/jungle/cursed mall.
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"He saw two black dots he assumed to be Mallory and Irvine near one of the final ridges before the peak before disappearing into the clouds again. It was the last time both of them were seen alive..."
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In terms of ideal career paths, being an astronaut is one of the coolest jobs you could imagine. NASA accepts around 12 astronauts into its training program every couple years, but there's another way to make it to the moon, and Eugene Shoemaker is proof.
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Abraham Lincoln was a great many things. And before he was president, he held a very different job dedicated to serving the people: that of bar owner.
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