When Jimi Hendrix was just a little boy he grabbed a screwdriver and began dismantling his dad's radio. Watching him this whole time, with a mix of confusion and concern, was the brother who later told this story: Leon Hendrix.
Read MoreEddie van Halen hates playing cover songs. Unfortunately, he's played a ton of them.
Read MoreWell for one thing, nobody seemed to know what the hell a Shawshank Redemption was.
Read MoreJoseph Gordon Levitt took a break from acting to be with his kids. That break ended with 7500, in which the still-boyish Gordon-Levitt plays the co-pilot of a plane being overtaken by terrorists. He told Variety, "this movie was the most challenging acting job I've ever done."
Read MoreAs far as rap artists go, Kanye West is a mystery wrapped in an enigma wrapped in designer clothing and rocking a pair of Yeezys. He has one hit song, though, that he can't stand.
Read Moreyou squint your eyes and think really hard, you'll probably be able to think of a few dozen times and places that were more pleasant than Florence, 700 years ago.
Read MoreMark Ruffalo is no stranger to either success, or tragedy.
Read MoreThor spent the first half of his time in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a brooding jock tank. What he lacked in personality, he more than made up for in bleach blonde eyebrows. That's right, you forgot that Thor used to get his eyebrow hair did. The giants weren't the only things getting frosted.
Read MoreThe United States' historical treatment of its indigenous peoples is contentious, to say the least. From 1794 to 1887, during the Westward Expansion, Native American lands shrunk to almost nothing, and then the Dawes Act in 1887 chopped up what little land was left and divided it up between tribes.
Read MoreIn 1258, Baghdad, the seat of the Abbasid Caliphate and the heart of what was effectively the Arab empire fell to the besieging army of Ghengis Khan's grandson, Hulagu Khan. But things had been going downhill for a while.
Read MoreThe Talking Heads had a successful 16-year musical career, which ultimately ended when Byrne decided to leave the band in 1991. Here's why.
Read MoreGeorge Harrison is remember as the quiet Beatle, but he was much more than that. This is the untold truth of George Harrison.
Read MoreMaya Angelou has become one the most influential and popular authors in American history, and she overcame more than her fair share of hardship to do so. This is the tragic real-life story of Maya Angelou.
Read MoreThere's no catch-all for psychiatric wellness. At times in history, the insane asylum was a catch-all, and not the kind of place you'd want to spend a moment.
Read MoreWhen people die young, it's almost always a tragedy. It becomes even worse when they died of something that may have been prevented. He is perhaps unknown to many in the West -- less so by people not mathematically-inclined -- but Srinivasa Ramanujan died of something easily curable at a young age.
Read More1919's Red Summer race riots are a little-known fragment of America's bloody struggle with racism that portrays yet another link in the nation's chain of systemic ignorance, oppression, and violence.
Read MoreThe tragic true story of the Tulsa Race Massacre is a dark spot in American history, and thanks to decades of silence, you've probably never heard of it.
Read MoreWe have a creeping suspicion you'll know which song, but let's take a look at the Radiohead hit song that Thom Yorke hates.
Read MoreYou don't really hear about Woolworth's anymore. It stands to reason, seeing as the company's mark on history largely comes down to "they sold ham sandwiches in a retail setting." But the store was the site of an important civil rights victory.
Read MoreIn America, we called them dime novels. The English called them penny dreadfuls.
Read MoreAs an artist with a vast musical output in many styles, Madonna's back catalog is so impossibly robust and encompasses so many subgenres of pop that even the most hardcore Madonna fan would probably find it difficult to adore all her music equally. In fact, she outright hates one of her own songs.
Read MoreThere was one particularly awful piece of paper that Hendrix was unfortunate enough to sign in 1965. What did this contract entail, and why did it have such a vast impact on the musician's life?
Read MoreNPR is usually seen as boring and nerdy, so it may be a surprise that even vanilla NPR is still frequently embroiled in scandal. Here are some of the biggest.
Read MoreAfter Young Hannibal depicted Hannibal Lecter as a samurai-themed kid seeking revenge on his sister's killers, it was easy to think that Hollywood has said all it has to say about a certain cannibal murderer. NBC's Hannibal promptly proved everyone wrong by bringing Dr. Lecter on the small screen.
Read MoreJames Gunn, the writer and director of the first two movies in Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy series — and, if nothing goes horribly wrong again, the planned third entry — loves his Easter eggs.
Read MoreIt took a couple of hundred years, but some members of what passed as the medical profession started to ask whether tobacco and cigarette smoking was really such a good idea after all.
Read MoreAround this time, Butler described having experienced a late night, supernatural visitation in which a black silhouette stood at the foot of his bed. The harrowing tale became the basis for a new song, titled "Black Sabbath," named after a 1963 Boris Karloff film.
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