Few armed forces have a more Orwellian origin story than the People's Liberation Army of China. Initially known as the Red Army, it first served under communist dictator Mao Zedong and mostly consisted of "poorly armed but fanatical peasants." Here's what happens if you quit the Chinese military.
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Some of the tools and contraptions you have used every day have been around longer than your great-great-great-grandparents. The ancients had some ideas so perfect that even now, nobody has thought of a better way to do it. Here are ancient inventions you didn't realize we still use today.
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Chances are if you just searched "Mediterranean booty" or "Roman jugs," you weren't expecting to read about one of the largest Roman shipwrecks ever discovered. But much like the discovery itself, it's a story worth diving into and exploring.
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Outlaw Jesse James attained a folkloric air through a series of brutal robberies and gunfights across the midwest. But there's a bullet out there for every cop killing racist bandit from the 1800s, and James found his on April 3rd, 1882, when it came out of the front of his face.
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Every name has a meaning, no matter how silly it might be, and dog names — while certainly a lot more fun and varied than human ones — are no exception. Here are the meanings behind the most popular dog names.
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When you're Leonardo da Vinci and one of your inventions is a helicopter, it seems strange that your most enduring creation is a tiny painting. Then again, Mona Lisa is arguably the most famous artwork in history, so maybe he isn't spinning in his grave. The thing is, who exactly is Mona Lisa?
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Cornered, outgunned, wounded, and hopeless, it seems likely that two of the last legends of the Old West -- Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid -- refused to be taken alive, opting instead to die on their own terms. Or did they?
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Amazon's forthcoming The Lord of the Rings TV Series is seeking "'hairy hairy people" with 'wrinkles and lots of them please' to play orcs in the new show," according to the Independent.
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Twenty people -- that's how many were executed in the 1692 Salem Witch Trials. Nineteen of them were hanged, per Famous Trials, and the other "was pressed to death under heavy stones for refusing to submit to a trial on witchcraft charges." Here's the real reason the Salem Witch Trials happened.
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While there will never be another Beethoven, a group of musicologists and programmers has been training artificial intelligence to complete his unfinished tenth symphony.
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There's another painting that looks an awful lot like the Mona Lisa residing in the Louvre. It's known as the 'Isleworth Mona Lisa' to some, and 'Earlier Mona Lisa' to others -- and some experts think that it might be da Vinci's early attempt at what would become the most famous painting in history.
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As Macedonia's king and a consummate world-beater, Alexander the Great portrayed himself as an "invincible god," according to Livius, though he might not have believed it himself. Here's how Alexander the Great really died.
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On March 5th, 1953, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin died in his country home near Kuntsevo. If you were looking for a satisfying explanation of the details surrounding his passing, that's as good a place as any to stop reading, because heads up, the rest of the story just sort of keeps getting weirder.
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World War II combined the height of human ingenuity with the lowest point of human nature. The Allied forces showed a MacGyver-like inventiveness in their attempts to outfox the Axis Powers. In one the craziest operations of all, British spies devised exploding rodents to sabotage Nazi factories.
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One's the unhinged dictator of a dystopian nation. The other's a five-time NBA champion and possibly the secret love child of a tattoo gun and a rainbow. Together they're really confusing. Here's Dennis Rodman and Kim Jong Un's relationship explained.
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In the oft-mythologized world of Wild West gunslingers, it's not the size of the dog in the gunfight; it's the size of the gunfight in the dog. And in the pantheon of pistol-packing legends, Johnny Ringo is remembered as a pack leader. Here's the truth about Johnny Ringo's death.
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Pandas don't do much. At this point, they seem like a natural first choice for next year's fad superfood. Or they did, until Liu Xiaodong helped them pull themselves up by their bootstraps. How? He started harvesting their feces and turning it into stationery.
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King George III will likely be remembered by this generation for chewing scenery during Hamilton and as the guy who had to go home after work one day and say "honey, I lost America." Here's the truth about the madness of King George III.
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Mary I of England wasn't a perfect person, especially in the eyes of those who dubbed her "Bloody Mary." Here's how Bloody Mary really got her name, and why we now have a tomato-vodka breakfast beverage based on her life.
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Have you driven a Ford lately? If so, what color was it? If you listened to Henry Ford's sage advice, you'd always bet on black. And that might be sound advice, because Henry Ford made a lot of money. Here's how much he'd be worth today.
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It's easy to forget that many saints were flesh and blood people. And sometimes, they faced real dangers when it came to their faith. And sometimes, they were the dangers. From horrific martyrdoms to bizarre lifestyle choices, here's the messed up and tragic truth about these Christian saints.
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For 45 years, Queen Elizabeth I reigned over the British empire. Over the course of her life, the last monarch of the house of Tudor survived numerous attempts at assassination. What ill fate befell the woman who, statistically speaking, is responsible for like 20% of Judy Dench's paychecks?
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Nobody asked for these inventions, but they got made anyway.That's the beauty of them. The best inventions are ones we didn't even know we needed. It's a fine line, though, and these inventions missed the boat on the "need" part. Here are inventions from this past decade that nobody asked for.
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Have you ever solved a Rubik's cube? If not, it's okay, you're not alone. Want to know another genius who had a rough time figuring the damn thing out? Well, amusingly enough, the dude who invented it.
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If a person's existence is a sentence, could it not be said that it would be incomplete without a punctuation mark at the end? How did the life of the gambler, gunfighter, and legend in his own time, Wyatt Earp, come to a close?
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It's happening, folks. After years of speculation, corruption scandals, legal proceedings, and accusations, finally leading to 2019's whole Ukraine incident, President Donald Trump is getting impeached. But he's not the first. Here's how many US presidents have been impeached.
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Russia has its own ridiculous set of rules and laws that most in the West would hate. There, people are struggling to make it in a world where everything from their memes to their underwear are liable to land them in the slammer. Here are some strict rules all Russian citizens have to follow.
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