A prison can't operate without staff, including Alcatraz. Many of the police officers, prison guards, and other staff who worked in the prison lived on the island with their families, including young children. There was another side to the island, where staff kept their homes and raised kids.
Read MoreThe Biblical story of the Garden of Eden centers around four key characters: God, Adam, Eve, and the serpent. To many, the serpent is a particularly interesting character, representing cunning and evil, standing in opposition to God's goodness and grace.
Read MoreAccording to NBC Sports, however, Coleman invested his money in development deals in his hometown of Detroit, Michigan in hopes of "trying to turn around a city in need of someone willing to make big moves there."
Read MoreWe've also littered the heavens. We know it might be a problem someday. There's everything we've left behind on the Moon and on Mars, the probes we've sent deep into space, and probes like Venera 7 that have dropped onto Venus. Closer to home is the trash currently orbiting Earth itself.
Read MoreNot all of Kennedy's mistresses received the same treatment. Mary Pinchot Meyer, a talented painter and the daughter of a wealthy progressive lawyer and a journalist, was a long-time Kennedy mistress whose death, although less well known than Marilyn Monroe, was no less shrouded in mystery.
Read MoreOne of Tubman's encounters with danger stands out from the rest, but not because of a slave owner or someone on the hunt for her reward money. It came from a hustler who was uncommonly good at his job, who left Tubman beaten and bound in the woods of Auburn, New York.
Read MoreMany of Hill's friends and collaborators point to one relationship which has been especially destructive since her 1990s hey-day, a relationship which came into being just as Hill was at her most vulnerable, feeling the pressures of both public life and supporting a family as a working mother.
Read MoreAlthough they can be annoying at times, nose hairs actually serve a vital health purpose. Coated with a thin layer of mucus and as dense as the hair on your head, nose hairs protect us from pollen, dust, germs, and other airborne particles we would otherwise breathe in -- a first line of defense.
Read MoreSome of the biggest acts around performed, including Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Joan Baez, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, The Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin, but Dylan took a hard pass. What could have been more important?
Read MoreThe legend is that Johnson entered into a Faustian pact: that his great ability as a guitarist and vocalist was down to Johnson selling his soul to the devil, a deal which took place at the crossroads of Highways 49 and 61 in Mississippi, according to how the legend is recounted by Biography.
Read MoreIn August 1877, during a poker game, McCarty trades insults with a local blacksmith, Francis Cahill. The game turns violent. Cahill pins McCarty to the ground, and McCarty shoots. Cahill dies two days later.
Read MoreWhitesnake is 1987 all the way, and the band's megahit "Here I Go Again" is perhaps the catchiest hard rock song of all time. Whitesnake has a complex history that stretches over four decades. Here are a few things you probably don't know about the band.
Read MoreThe 19th-century photographer Mathew Brady, who went from taking portraits of the rich and famous to taking death portraits on Civil War battlefields, is known for depicting the cost of war. The truth of Civil War photographer Mathew Brady is he funded the photojournalism himself and went into debt.
Read MoreWith voguish gangsters and bootleggers like Al "Scarface" Capone and George "Machine Gun Kelly" Barnes capturing the public's attention, the government knew it needed an equally dramatic response to their sensational criminality, one that would strike fear in the hearts of potential lawbreakers.
Read MoreIn 1993, the editors of the Midnight Star interviewed "Weird Al"'s drummer, Jon "Bermuda" Schwartz, asking about the significance of 27. Said Schwartz: ""There's no significance to those numbers. I asked Al, who evidently hadn't even noticed before. He hesitated, and said, '27 is a funny number.'"
Read MoreIt seems to be human nature to have a fascination with bathroom and bathroom-related activities that began with our ancient ancestors and will probably continue until approximately always. Just take a look back on one of Western Civilization's ancient forefathers, Ancient Rome. It's nothing new.
Read MoreIt is an idea that has captured the imaginations of cryptic-minded listeners and stoned truth-seekers for more than five decades: Paul McCartney, the principal singer-songwriter alongside John Lennon in the Beatles since their formation, is dead after a gruesome car accident around the end of 1966.
Read MoreReligious texts explain more about the Garden -- for instance, that the Garden of Eden consisted of two gardens. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, there were both a "higher" and a "lower" Garden.
Read MoreHypatia was born in Alexandria, Egypt. She was a scientist, educator, and intellectual, though many details of her life remain obscured. She was a brilliant woman who was deeply tied to Alexandra's reputation as a center of learning and progress.
Read MoreA charity event puts everyone to work toward a common goal and is usually for something that no one can argue about. Every once in a while a charity event occurs that is a disaster unto itself. Here are some of the biggest, grandest, charity disasters.
Read MoreAt that point in time, few had any true understanding the mental and physical complexities of anorexia nervosa. And sadly, it took seeing the young, fragile Karen Carpenter wither and waste away before the world's very eyes that made people stand up and take serious notice of the condition.
Read MoreFrom curses to enslavement to the downright weird, the Ancient Greco-Romans had it all. And, one of these revenge methods was certainly as strange as they come: using the enemies' names as toilet paper.
Read MoreQueen Victoria carried with her a royal curse, one that she passed on to other royals. Unlike that episode of Doctor Who, where Queen Victoria passed on lycanthropy to her heirs, her royal curse is more of a medical nature: She was a carrier for hemophilia.
Read MoreKehew has the dream job of occasionally being allowed into the Warner Bros. vault where the label keeps its decades of musical recordings. The warehouse, "this Indiana Jones-sized place," is full of recordings of musicians ranging from Jimi Hendrix to Madonna to Green Day and, of course, Van Halen.
Read MoreIn the 2017 report, researchers speculated on whether the brace kept Kennedy sitting upright after he'd been shot in the neck by Lee Harvey Oswald. Had the president not been wearing it, he may have crumpled forward, making it more difficult for Oswald to fire the fatal second shot.
Read MoreWhen trying to locate the physical, actual inspiration for the Garden of Eden, you might assume that we'd be looking for a pretty lush, verdant expanse stuffed full of bountiful fruits. But there have been a lot of climate changes in the Middle East going back to, oh, 10,000 BCE or so.
Read MoreMany people believe Alcatraz is one of the most haunted places in the United States -- it's featured in several haunted San Francisco tours. The Rock, as it's sometimes called, has seen death and violence in its long history, so it wouldn't be a surprise if restless spirits remained on the island.
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