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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If you stood patiently by the right Connecticut roadside between 1883 and 1889, sooner or later a solitary figure would appear in the distance... The Leatherman.
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The musical Hamilton deserves every bit of its status as cultural phenomenon, but it plays fast and loose with historical fact. Here are a few times Hamilton lied to you about history.
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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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