Whether it's the horrific experiments led by "angel of death" Josef Mengele, the horrors of concentration camps like Ravensbruck — or, you know, Hitler — you won't be hard-pressed to find examples of Nazis being unspeakably awful.
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Over the ages, dogs have been used to perform many odd jobs alongside humans. From working in public safety, mental health and criminal justice sectors, the addition of a canine pal can prove beneficial in many situations. Can dogs detect cancer, though?
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Cats might be the new kids on the block, when it comes to domestication — the world's oldest dog breeds were around a long time before the world's oldest domestic cats — but surely, thousands of years is plenty of time to shake off bizarre superstitions... like those legends assigned to black cats.
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Harvey Milk is an icon, the first non-incumbent openly gay man to be elected to public office in the United States. Here's the tragic story of Harvey Milk.
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The 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.
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When the world's largest athletic apparel and equipment company makes a statement, people listen. That company, Nike, just made a big announcement about Juneteenth -- the oldest national celebration commemorating the official end of slavery. Here's what you need to know.
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In the United States, June 19th marks an auspicious day in history. It's Juneteenth. Here's why that's important.
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Emmett Till loved to laugh."He would pay people to tell him jokes," according to his cousin, Wheeler Parker. He also "loved to tell jokes," said childhood friend Richard Heard, who remembered Emmett being "a funny guy all the time."
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Remember when the Beatles broke up? Well, it was a huge thing at the time, the end of an era, as well as a creative partnership that had entertained and inspired not only audiences but other musicians throughout most of the sixties. Fate took its own sweet time with the Police, too.
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Grab a spoon, and dare to sample two of the darkest, strangest, most dangerously binge-inducing true crime documentaries lurking on Netflix.
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Tear gas and pepper spray are both "riot control agents." But what's the real difference between them?
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Pepper Balls fall under what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classifies as "Riot Control Agents." Sometimes they get lumped together and called the same thing, kind of the way facial tissue always gets called Kleenex, no matter what brand it is.
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Referred to as "kinetic impact projectiles," rubber bullets are composed of a metal core encased by a rubber shell (later changed to plastic to minimize injuries). But they still injure plenty of people.
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In May 2020, Anonymous reared its faceless head amid peaceful protests and riots over the countless instances in which officers in the U.S. have killed unarmed black people, usually with impunity or simply risking a slap on the wrist. How did this anonymous organization really start?
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Prison is prison. Loss of freedom is a psychic blow to a human being (just ask any teenager who's been grounded), but it's also true that some prisons are less restrictive than others, in part because the inmates aren't considered high risks. Such is the case for white collar prison.
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We can all be grateful to Blue Öyster Cult for a couple of things. Umlauts and cowbell. But when it comes to their timeless classic "Don't Fear the Reaper", what does the song actually mean?
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However, in 2005, Grohl revealed that he felt a kind of awkwardness as part of Nirvana: "I don't think I've ever told anyone this, but there were times when Kurt was really unhappy with the way I played drums. I could hear him talking about how much he thought I sucked. But he'd never say it to me."
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Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) stands as a towering achievement of comedy, chock full of absurdities, non-sequiturs, digressive dialogue, and ingenious scenes -- including the "killer rabbit" scene.
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The Red Hot Chili Peppers' kaleidoscopic, acid-washed energy and strange charm emerged onto the eighties Los Angeles music scene like a vision of funk-rock psychedelia. Part slappy bass, part riffy punk, part Run DMC-style rap, they garnered mainstream attention with 1989's Mother's Milk.
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Many people may not know that Petty was greatly influenced by Prince and the musical risks he took throughout his career. In fact, Prince inspired one of the more popular songs Petty wrote.
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"I don't believe in regrets at all," said ZZ Top bassist and singer Dusty Hill. It's a heck of an attitude, and likely something that served him well when -- speaking of agonizing -- he accidentally shot himself in the ZZ Middle with a derringer.
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Though Ozzy Osbourne commands the face of Black Sabbath, it's Tony Iommi who has always been there, with band members circulating around him like planets around the sun. Just as many can't imagine "Iron Man" or "Paranoid" without Osbourne's croon, imagine it without Iommi's guitar. You can't.
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Divorces are often messy, especially when money, and rock 'n roll get involved.
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Guess what? Cloud Atlas has come to Netflix.
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If you have the money to spend and you want a fine wine, you go to a respected sommelier. Looking for the apex of vehicular reliability? You might ask a renowned engineer, mechanic, or one of those Top Gear guys.
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The starving artist stands as a trope, embodying any hope for earning anything with a creative or entertaining pursuit. The world expects these vocations not to make money. However, calling them "slave contracts," the term for a type of contract that's rife in the K-pop industry, is troublingly on the nose.
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Michael McDonald was part of Steely Dan for a period in the 1970s, providing backing and lead vocals, as well as keyboards, for performances and recordings. In 1975, The Doobie Brothers came calling.
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The Beatles wrote some of the best songs in music history. Everyone has their favorite and least favorite tunes — even the band members.
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The night was October 16, 1966, and the venue was the much-beloved Fillmore West concert venue in San Francisco. Also soon-to-be-much-beloved was the new woman singing lead for Jefferson Airplane, a former floor model for the I Magnin department stores named Grace Slick.
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Steve Perry fronted Journey to its greatest commercial success in the '80s, catapulting the band to arena rock stardom through the likes of "Open Arms" and "Don't Stop Believin'." However, by 1987, despite the triumph of Raised by Radio tour, the band went on hiatus for nearly ten years.
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The beef between 2Pac and The Notorious B.I.G. (Tupac Shakur and Christopher Wallace) is not only the most well-known and well-documented in rap history, it has come to embody the West Coast-East Coast hip-hop rivalry that took off in the 1990's.
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Don Henley might look more like friendly uncle than one of the greatest rock stars of all time, but rest assured, the man is most definitely a rock star.
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Hard rock giant Def Leppard has been chugging away since 1977. Through all of it, singer Joe Elliot has been standing at the forefront of his group. Here's how much money he is now worth.
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In one of his last interviews with Rolling Stone, Kurt Cobain intimated that Nirvana may have started its downward trajectory — that after a couple more albums, the band would probably dissolve, because the same people completing the same jobs is rather limiting.
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There is one enduring mystery about Pearl Jam, though: What, exactly, is up with the name? You can sort of understand where band names like "Nirvana" or "Alice in Chains" are coming from, but "Pearl Jam" just seems like Eddie Vedder and his cohorts picked two random words from a dictionary.
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The Rolling Stones formed in 1962, and before all of their success in writing some of the best rock and roll songs to date, they actually wrote a jingle for a cereal commercial.
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It was springtime in 1964, the Beatles were on a tour of France, and they heard Dylan's album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, his second studio album, for the first time. And liked it. A lot.
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Frances Bean Cobain, by name and birthright, is the royal princess of the kingdom of flanel. She's the daughter of Kurt Cobain, legendary frontman of Nirvana, and Courtney Love, the multimedia proto late-stage Randy Quaid of the nineties. After Kurt's death, Frances was raised by a single mother...
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R&B diva Erykah Badu still commands a presence. Despite the fact she's still actively making and performing music, though, she's also working a relatively normal job — namely, Badu is a doula.
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A bit of music history was made October 18, 1926, in St. Louis, Missouri. That was the day that Charles Edward Anderson Berry -- you probably know him as Chuck -- entered the world and began a life journey that would alter popular music as we know it. But his youthful innocence would soon fade.
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All airplanes must eventually touch down and refuel, before charting a new course. Such was the case with Jefferson Airplane, which became "Jefferson Starship."
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It's been just six years since the release of The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and Andrew Garfield's turn as New York's favorite webhead is already buried in the subconscious of the memories of filmgoers, who are now five movies deep in a new new Spider-Man's story. Why?
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If you could see one band reunite again, which would it be? For many people, the answer would be the Beatles. America almost had its chance to, on none other than Saturday Night Live.
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Iggy Pop: Sometimes a singer, sometimes an actor, sometimes a producer, pretty much always shirtless. Stripped? Usually. Strapped for cash? Hardly.
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The Rolling Stones and Truman Capote seem to have first met at a party thrown for Jagger's 29th birthday. It didn't take long for Keith Richards to decide he wasn't a fan of the writer.
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Are you in the market for a Fast & Furious-style, car-themed action movie, only en français? What if we told that it's on Netflix now, and is really good?
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Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses are perhaps the most quintessential rock stars of the early 1990s. As such, it's only natural that the two frontmen knew of each other. Unfortunately, they didn't much care for each other ... or rather, Cobain didn't particularly like Rose.
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Netflix's true-crime series, Narcos, weaves a tale of ruthless brutality centering around the Colombian drug trade and its legendary leader, Pablo Escobar. But how much of what we know about him is myth?
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In 2004, Kill Bill: Volume 2 ended on a pile of figurative question marks, to say nothing of a literal one. What happened to the California Mountain Snake, blinded and trapped in a trailer with a venomous black mamba? Would Vernita Green's daughter come looking for revenge?
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Robert Smith does not exactly dress like a millionaire. In fact, he looks a bit like he still raids his mom's makeup drawer and shops at Goodwill -- but then again, that's his style, and far be it from us to cramp it. After all, it's not like Smith comes to our house and tells us how to look.
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Known as one of the most transgressive hip hop acts of their time, the Beastie Boys took the late eighties music scene by storm, and they were propelled to success by the very song that the band now hates the most.
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Sometimes, what might seem like the next big movie franchise fails to catch an audience. Just ask the planned Percy Jackson movie trilogy.
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Ray Donovan. It was here, and it was good. Then it was gone. What happened? "We're still scratching our heads," said showrunner David Hollander. But all hope is not lost.
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Netflix's The Witcher contains a lot of small details for those who have read the books or played the games. The first episode alone has many callbacks that you may have missed.
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Here is a proposal modestly put forward for a new Rorschach Test: What do you immediately think of when you hear "David Bowie and Mick Jagger?"
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Back when times were simpler, many a child laughed with Bozo the Clown, or woke up in a cold sweat after dreaming he was standing right over their bed. But whatever happened to the man behind the red schnoz?
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In 1965, the Beatles met Elvis Presley. Strange? Certainly, and all the stranger considering that you've never seen pictures or video of the event. How did two of the most famous and influential musical acts of the 20th century manage to spend an afternoon together without anyone snapping a photo?
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Longtime collaborators Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty shared a decades-long friendship, which was ultimately cut short in 2017 by the frontman's untimely death. Over the years, the pair supported each other and assisted with the each other's major hits, propelling both to further success.
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During his prime, Reynolds was pulling down $10 million a year -- and yes, back then, $10 million was not chump change. In 2015 he told Vanity Fair, "I've lost more money than is possible because I just haven't watched it."
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Syd Barrett was instrumental in forming Pink Floyd, one of the biggest rock bands of all time. But his life would end up very different than those of his former bandmates.
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Roger Daltrey, the best chin in rock and roll, nearly became a "who?" to the Who after a violent incident.
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Steve Walsh carried on with Kansas for over 40 years, but in the end, ended up a wayward son. Here's how Walsh ended up dust in the wind.
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Show business is a peculiar beast, and Seal once managed to nab a #1 hit thanks to a heavily benippled vigilante. Let's dig in.
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Mötley Crüe is the kind of band that names its autobiography The Dirt: Confessions of The World's Most Notorious Rock Band. The Netflix film ignored significant parts of their true story, but there's no denying that they spent years doing their best to live up to their self-professed notoriety.
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Miles Davis overcame all odds to produce beautiful, timeless music. But his weren't all wine and roses.
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In 2019, The Matrix 4 (title forthcoming) was announced, with original trilogy's co-screenwriter Lana Wachowski at the helm. Expectations are high, to say the least.
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Long hair, spandex, showmanship, and an after-show lifestyle that, according to David Lee Roth, made devoted hedonists like Led Zeppelin "look like Boy Scouts," combined to create a pop culture force of nature.
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Post Malone has definitely collaborated with some artists you wouldn't typically expect to hop in on a rap song.
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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.
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Well for one thing, nobody seemed to know what the hell a Shawshank Redemption was.
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Joseph 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."
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As 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.
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Thor 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.
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We have a creeping suspicion you'll know which song, but let's take a look at the Radiohead hit song that Thom Yorke hates.
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As 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.
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There 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?
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Around 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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Age is more than a number. It's a great basis of comparison, by which you can feel less accomplished than your favorite celebrities. Heck, you can even feel less accomplished than your favorite fictional characters, like the ones from Avengers: Endgame.
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During its debut season, Animaniacs was one of the highly rated children's programs on television. So why were they canceled in the first place? Like the kid who plays gin with all the lunch ladies during recess, the problem wasn't the popularity, it was the age group they were popular with.
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Up to a point, they at least had music in common. Also, apparently, a deep dislike -- maybe even distaste -- for each other professionally. Justin Timberlake and Prince simply did not get along.
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Pearl Jam are one of the most dominant bands to emerge from the grunge scene, and certainly the most enduring one of the musical style's four greats. And their net worth reflects that.
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On the fateful night of May 20, 1966, the Who was playing a show at the Ricky-Tick Club in Berkshire, England. It ended... bloodily.
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R.E.M. is one of the most successful indie bands of all time, if not the most successful. Like every musician, Stipe prefers some songs in his band's back catalog over others ... and his least favorite is one you're very familiar with.
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As the biggest metal band out there, Metallica hasn't been short of petty cash in a while. However, everyone has to start somewhere. Sometimes that means living out of your rehearsal room.
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Carl Perkins wrote "Blue Suede Shoes," and Elvis covered it. But he had a good reason.
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Steve Miller and Jimi Hendrix are both iconic musicians and guitarists, though their approach to the artform is radically different.
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Being lead guitarist in The Beatles might seem like a pretty sweet gig, but Geirge Harrison almost missed his place among the gods of rock 'n' roll simply because John Lennon was heavily against him in the beginning. Why was Lennon so adamant about letting young Harrison in the band? Let's find out!
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Writing about 2500 years ago, the philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus observed that the only constant in life is change -- "life is flux." Rarely has popular culture embraced that as thoroughly as the BBC's Doctor Who, a time travel/sci-fi series that ran from 1963-89 before relaunching in 2005.
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Many can agree that, like all things, VR is served best with a healthy dose of moderation. But what happens when you use it too much? Like every day?
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The most famous ghost of Latin America is undoubtedly La Llorona, the crying woman. Her eerie cries foretell death and danger for naughty children, or maybe unfaithful husbands. She's been in movies, but what do you really know about the wailing woman? This is the legend of La Llorona explained.
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At age 27, Willie Nelson moved to Nashville and got a job as an in-house songwriter, crafting songs like "Hello Walls," a hit for Faron Young, and "Crazy," a huge seller for Patsy Cline. And it almost wasn't.
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Styx is the river between the lands of the living and the dead in Greek mythology. Another, extremely different Styx makes music, and is quite good at it. But they wouldn't play Mr. Roboto for the longest time. Here's why.
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What's in a name? People are still asking it, all these centuries later. And for good reason. Pink Floyd wasn't always Pink Floyd. Nor was The Grateful Dead born that way. But what about Simon and Garfunkel?
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In case you've forgotten, Marilyn Manson and My Chemical Romance have also been sparring for over a decade in a feud that will most likely never be resolved.
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Daryl Hall (the tall, blond one) and John Oates (the one with the mustache) are one of the greatest duo acts pop-rock has ever seen. And it all started with... a shootout.
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Huey Lewis and his band contributed a track to Back to the Future that helped make history, both for the movie and for their careers. But it was almost never recorded.
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Dio joined Black Sabbath when the band fired the increasingly unreliable Ozzy Osbourne in 1979, and his powerful voice was a perfect match for the band's signature sound. So why'd he end up leaving?
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One of the most successful Hollywood directors of all time, Spielberg has formed quite a legacy. Fans would undoubtedly be interested in viewing his first feature, if only to see just how far the movie legend has come. The catch is, Spielberg's earliest film doesn't exist anymore.
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Elvis Presley was a man who spent his later years surrounded by two things: the adulation of his hangers-on, and comfy cozy velvet. His followers, dubbed the Memphis Mafia, filled numerous roles in the singer's life -- including that of bodyguards.
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What is the most definitive rock band of all time? That question is prime fodder for an entertaining evening of argument, but you can be dead certain of one thing: At some point, someone's bound to mention Led Zeppelin.
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Steve Buscemi (pronounced "buss-ehm-ee," says Snopes) is one of those character actors who keeps surprising the audience. He's displayed a remarkable range over the course of his nearly 40 years in the business. Surprisingly enough, though, he also used to be a firefighter.
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Founded in 1969, it's no doubt that funk group Earth, Wind & Fire is considered one of the most commercially successful acts of all time. However, amid all this overwhelming success and an iconic status lasting fifty years, one question remains: Where did the group's legendary name come from?
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There's one mystery that's had the very cool bow ties of the Whovians all mussed up for years. And it's not "why does the Doctor's age fluctuate so much?," or "What was the Doctor talking about when he said he was half-human in that TV movie?"
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Remember The White Stripes? The band that consisted of Jack and Meg White had a good run during their 14-year career. In the band's heyday, they peaked at number three on Billboard 200 with their 2005 album, Get Behind Me Satan, and their single Seven Nation Army is still an anthem today.
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Betty Boop first showed up in 1930, though not in human form... at first she was an anthropomorphic french poodle.
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If you've ever left the TV running and have dogs, you might have noticed they sometimes stare raptly at the screen. Why is it that dogs seem to really love watching TV?
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It's been more than 30 years for Cops, the ride-along reality TV series that purported to show police officers at work, making communities across the country safe. But now those Bad Boys are going to have to find something else to do, as the show's been canceled, along with Live P.D.
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John Wayne remains an American icon for his roles in Westerns and war movies, but what do we really know about him? This is the untold truth of John Wayne.
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Keiynan Lonsdale, an Australian actor took on the role of Wally West, who becomes Kid Flash. But he may have been a flash in the pan, so to speak.
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The Mythbusters, among other unrealized dreams, and much to their own disappointment, will never turn the world into their own personal Hot Wheels track.
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Nearly 30 years ago, in 1991, Guns N' Roses released "November Rain," a nine-minute ballad full of sweeping orchestral accompaniments, soaring guitar work, and a music video that grew as much notoriety as the song itself.
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Matisyahu struck an interesting figure in the mid-2000s music scene. After all, he was the Hassidic reggae artist from New York, who looked and acted the part. Since then, where has he been?
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Yes, 300 is based-ish on real events, but it portrays those events through a deeply goofy lens. As it turns out, the Spartans, the real Spartans, weren't what you'd call "TV ready."
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Nevertheless, there are those who manage to cut a truly unique swath through the world of popular culture, even art, and sustain that unique place for the course of a career. By anyone's estimation, at the head of the pack would be the songwriter/director/actor/performer known as Prince.
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In the scant few months since its official unveiling, America's sixth military branch, the United States Space Force, has faced many battles. But its biggest foe of all may turn out to be ... Netflix.
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They say that some of the best things come by accident, something hard rock pioneers Led Zeppelin knew too well during the group's formation in the late 1960s.
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Save for its strange design choices and clunky build, the Zune was a quality MP3 player, which were in high demand in the mid-2000s. So why was it such a colossal failure?
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Depending on who you believe, a half-century of recordings -- about 500,000 of them -- went up in smoke from a fire at a warehouse at Universal Studios Hollywood in 2008.
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Lots of people probably resent Aerosmith's success, are jealous of Steve Tyler and Joe Perry's combined levels of irresponsible personal debauchery...
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Throughout his musical career, Tom Petty accomplished many impressive milestones. He saw multiple number 1 hits on Billboard's charts, played the halftime show at the Super Bowl, and he released 13 studio albums. His early career was comprised of bands ...
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"Another insipidly sleazy, lizard-brain shoot-'em-up that through its very dullness demonstrates how rote such ghastly fare has become in our culture." "Instantly forgettable tough-guy fantasia." Just a few selected lines from reviews of the critically panned The Last Days of American Crime.
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In between streaming Netflix's new Space Force show starring Steve Carell, we recommend gaining some real space knowledge about how our universe formed and how NASA is gearing up to return man — and woman — back to the moon by 2024.
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The early eighties were a particularly revolutionary time for British rock band Queen. The decade also saw Freddie Mercury leave behind his trademark long hair and painted fingernails for a strikingly different look.
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In February of 2020, Netflix at long last pulled back the curtain, allowing its viewers the opportunity not just to watch things, but to watch a screen showing what other people are binge-watching. The old gods were dead, and the age of the Netflix Top Ten had begun. Here's the catch.
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In March 2006, a bright new dawn peaked over the technological horizon, when Toshiba released its first consumer HD DVD player. It would be an understatement to describe this device as the pinnacle of man's engineering aptitude. It could do anything, from playing HD DVDs, to ... uh.
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Bing Crosby was a beloved entertainer, dominating the silver screen, music charts, and infiltrating radios across the country from the 1930s to 1960s. Yet despite all his success, Crosby's personal life was filled with hardship. This is the tragic real-life story of Bing Crosby.
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Shemp may not have been the most famous Stooge, but he was instrumental in their success. Here's his story.
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By the time Fleetwood Mac got around to recording the follow-up album, Rumours, things were dissolving, emotionally.
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Brendan LaCava, has been making steady progress forging a career in show business. Given his pedigree, it seems like manifest destiny.
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Kurt Cobain struggled mightily with stardom and bearing the weight of his generation's problems. Here's what the final 12 months of Kurt Cobain's life was like.
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It's not every TV series that gives birth to a new word that actually sticks around. But that's one of the side effects of 1985's MacGyver, an adventure series that emphasized brains and knowledge over guns. Why'd this classic get canceled?
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Led Zeppelin dominated the rock and roll scene in the seventies, with songs like Stairway to Heaven, Kashmir, and When the Levee Breaks. One surprising fact? One of their greatest hits of all-time, Dazed and Confused, arguably isn't a Led Zeppelin original at all.
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The history of Middle Earth unspooled from J.R.R. Tolkien's head like a high fantasy scarf being pulled by a magician from the mouth of a very special birthday boy, and fans know that the Lord of the Rings trilogy was only the punctuation mark at the end of a decidedly long run-on sentence.
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In May of 2020, fans of the CW's sprawling panoply of DC adaptations were astonished to learn that Australian actress Ruby Rose would be exiting her post as Kate Kane, the eponymous guardian of Gotham City on Batwoman after only one year. Here's what we know about the next in line.
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These United States have subsisted on a single, galvanizing promise that one day, if we keep the faith and stick to the straight and narrow, X gon' give it to us. Tragically, it was a promise doomed to go unfulfilled, as DMX is no longer financially capable of giving it to anyone.
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It makes sense that The Wall, a 1979 rock opera, came from Pink Floyd, since three out of the four original members were architecture students... Here's the story of how Pink Floyd began.
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Pete Townshend was the revolutionary guitarist of The Who, and the writer of classic songs like "Baba O'Riley," "My Generation," Pinball Wizard," and "5:15." As such, he's a bonafide six-string legend with a ridiculous amount of musical wisdom to impart to his younger brethren, and has been doing so for decades.
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The Marvel Cinematic Universe is a vast, glorious, and self-indulgent place, an obsessive onscreen "Where's Waldo?" of referential goings-on. Enthusiastic viewers have spent more than a decade Clockwork Oranging their eyes at the screen, trying to spot unseen Easter eggs, and Avengers Endgame ...
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David Bowie died from cancer on January 10, 2016, leaving behind one of the most eclectic catalogs in music history. Let's take a look at what the last 12 months of David Bowie's life were like.
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When the credits roll, everyone has had the discussion — or argument, depending — of "What'd you think of the movie?" Whether you liked it or thought it stunk on ice, though, someone is likely to bring up the fact that their opinion is supported by the opinions of a couple million others, who either loved/loathed the film the same way.
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Movie stars are just like us and can fall prey to illness and accident. The following actors died after filming box office hits.
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Jimi Hendrix is arguably the most magnificent guitar wizard in the history of rock music. Though his life was a short and tragic one, Hendrix still found the time to revolutionize the guitar sound, cement his place as one of the greatest guitarists of all time, and give the world ...
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The English rock band would have never happened if it wasn't for John Lennon and Paul McCartney. They would become as close as brothers, but they weren't always that way — in fact, McCartney and Lennon initially met by chance.
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ooking for something to take your mind off of the terrifying state of the world? Why not try some well-regarded speculative fiction on the terrifying state of other worlds?
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"The Man Who Sold the World" turned out to be so well-received, and such a tremendously successful performance, that Nirvana incorporated the song into 31 live shows after the recording of Unplugged...
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Spend a couple of minutes reading about the production history on any movie and you'll quickly come to the conclusion that the film industry is basically a century-long issue of Marvel's old "What-If..?" comic. And for a brief window of time, Jean-Claude Van Damme was the alien monster inspiring a young Arnold Schwarzenegger and company to return, post haste, to the chopper.
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Grant Imahara was the robot guy on Mythbusters. He built mechanical arms to hold samurai swords, among other things, and invented rigs to swing tree trunks into trucks. Imahara, though, might surprise you ... especially when you find out how much he's worth.
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Johnny Cash. The Man in Black. The great rebel of country music, and one of the precious few artists of the genre who grew to enjoy widespread mainstream appeal, to the point that he could justifiably be called a rock star. His career as a recording artist spanned six decades ...
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The artist formerly known as "The Artist Formerly Known As Prince" was an enigma. The legend put it best in one of the many classic songs from the Purple Rain soundtrack, "I Would Die 4 U," in which he declared, "I'm not a woman. I'm not a man. I am something that you'll never understand."
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From San Francisco to Chicago to New York City, Americans have sure been playin' a mean pinball for almost 100 years. But this seemingly innocuous game was once illegal coast to coast.
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Good news, everyone: we already have flying cars. Chances are, we had them well before you were even born. And in a passive aggressive twist of the historical knife, they're not around today because folks just refuse to support local business. Also, you know. They were death traps.
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Back in March, some envisioned a world in which we resorted to toilet paper as the base of our bartering. Now, however, NPR reports that a new fashionable shortage has arrived, meaning we will monetize... Well, money. Specifically coins.
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In the post-war economic boom of 1950s America, consumerism took center stage. While some items found in the average home are still the standard to this day, other fads were just plain bizarre. Let's dig in and find out about the things Americans in the 1950s couldn't live without.
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Whether you're driving behind a UPS truck and questioning why their drivers never make left turns -– or wondering why UPS trucks always leave the doors open –- there's a lot of secrets to unpack with these guys, with one of the biggest mysteries remaining: how much do UPS drivers actually make?
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The story of Henry VIII of England is almost as big as his waistline (which was big indeed). But some facts have been conflated, or inflated into myth over time.
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Cleopatra: the woman of the golden barge, drifting down the Nile. Beautiful, Egyptian... or maybe not? Let's separate fact from myth.
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Everybody's got that one relative that nobody wants to talk about. Even Hitler.
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Some say Catherine the Great died like Elvis -- not as a king, but on the toilet. Here's the truth.
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Alexander the Great, who turned half the world into his empire, seems like an almost god-like figure. Rumors about him, first encouraged to further his legend, continue to persist.
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It may seem like the main objective of Monopoly is to last forever and make the other players hate you until the end of time ... but in a way, the aim is to create a lucrative company town. You strategically buy up properties, railroads, and utilities, until you control everything.
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In 1932, the US Public Health Service began conducting a study on the Black men of Macon County, Alabama. The men were never informed of the true nature or the risks of the Tuskegee syphilis experiment.
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In 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.
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There'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.
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Queen Elizabeth I of England ruled over what many call the Golden Age. This was a time when the country flourished. So of course, over time, legends around her grew. She called herself the "Virgin Queen" and historians generally believe Queen Elizabeth I actively encouraged these myths about her.
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The Olmecs are the lesser-known cousins to the Aztec and Maya, and predate them as the oldest Mesoamerican civilization on record.
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Back in the 8th Century, you couldn't very well have a rifle fit for a king -- but you could have a sword. And you did, if your name was Charlemagne, King of the Franks.
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The eighties were a pretty weird and wild decade. Hair was at its all-time high, people actually listened to Cutting Crew, shoulder pads were worn far and wide ... and, for a moment in time, Pepsi became the sixth largest military force in the world.
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There was a time when it was illegal for blacks and whites to marry, or have children together, or love one another in committed, legal relationships. But along came the court case of Loving v. Virginia
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Many myths surround the Great Wall of China, from the story that it can be seen from space (it cannot), to the reasoning that it was built to keep the Huns from invading China, as seen in the opening scene of Mulan. That one, it turns out, might not be true either.
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In September of 1998, Swissair Flight 111 crashed unexpectedly off the coast of Nova Scotia. All 229 passengers and crew died in the accident, which was later determined to have been caused by a fire stemming from faulty wiring.
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There have been many popes who kept their birth name when they were elected to the papacy, though the last one was in 1555 -- Marcellus II. Here's why they change them.
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The Pentagon, headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, is a remarkable feat of architectural design and structural engineering. And it's got a ton of bathrooms.
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Baba Yaga is Russian, she's scary, and she wants to eat you, but there's so much more. How do you know when you've found a Baba Yaga and not just a generic forest witch? Is she definitely going to eat you? Can you go to her for a solid deal on a good horse? This is the legend of Baba Yaga explained.
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An 1884 song observed that "A Boy's Best Friend is His Mother." It perfectly describes the relationship of King Henry VII of England -- father of the future Henry VIII, grandfather of Queen Elizabeth I -- and his mother, Margaret Beaufort.
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Quick: what do George Floyd and Kente cloth have in common? Congressional Democrats were accused of using both of them in a photo op masquerading as a meaningful gesture.
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Funny how a little piece of cloth can become the focus of a political debate, and a political divide. But this is not our nation's first pandemic rodeo, and it's not the first time people got snippy about wearing masks in public to help control a public health menace.
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Bram Stoker can thank his mom for some of the dark inspiration of Dracula.
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If you happen to find yourself in New Jersey's Pine Barrens, keep an eye out for a scary cryptozoological creature which, these days, usually goes by the friendly name of the Jersey Devil. And no, it has nothing to do with hockey. This is the legend of the Jersey Devil explained.
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Get ready to buckle your swash, me hearties, to hear a tale of long ago from the High Seas, and there's a celebrity, and there's pirates! This one happened back around 75 BCE and it involves one of the few people from Ancient Rome that almost everybody can name: Julius Caesar.
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Yes, even your ancestors enjoyed the occasional nippitaty — that is, according to Merriam-Webster, a very strong drink. But while colonists couldn't call upon Postmates or head over to the nearest Trader Joe's wine shop, mom-and-pop liquor stores have served the public since the United States was founded.
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As bad as coronavirus is -- and it is bad, make no mistake about it -- Black Plague was worse. (So far, anyway.) Also known as Bubonic Plague, also known as the Black Death, in the mid-1300s it ravaged Western Europe. It would rear its head again in San Francisco.
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America loves two things: expensive whatnots and big booms. For more than a decade, the good folks at Mythbusters were kind enough to bring us the second of the two. Some were more expensive than others.
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The Headless Horseman has cantered through Scandinavian mythology, early German folklore, and northern Indian lore. This is the legend of the Headless Horseman explained.
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Humans have always been a little suspicious of dogs of the not-so-nice variety. Wolves may only want to be left alone, but mankind has long told tales of another kind of dog: the black-furred, red-eyed beast that lurks in the night, watching and waiting. This is the legend of hellhounds explained.
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Look! Up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! It's -- a blimp. Are you trying to say Superman put on weight? Of course not. That would be mean. Plus, you're probably talking about spotting an airship, which could be a blimp, a zeppelin, or a dirigible.
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Any gambler who knows the secrets of casinos will tell you that there are wagers out there made exclusively for chumps. A scant few hundred years back, one of the biggest sucker bets a person could make was marrying Henry VIII ...
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The White House has a lot of history. It started with a design competition won by Irish architect James Hoban, according to History. The site was chosen by George Washington, with work beginning in 1792, and completed eight years later ...
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The number of billionaires in the world is dwindling, which — considering the state of the global economy — is not surprising. But have you ever thought if it meant countries are poorer, too? Which country is the richest anyway?
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Edward III found himself not that large, but most assuredly in charge, at the age of 14.
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It's tempting to call the fall of the Byzantine Empire, well, byzantine, and then call it a day because life's too short for excessive complexity. Or maybe call it a lot of days, because just as the Western Roman Empire crumbled after decades of obvious decline, the Byzantine Empire, took its time.
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Flags have a hallowed place in human history. Usually made of cloth, they signify all manner of things: something to follow in the midst of battle. Symbolic identity for a group, large or small. The same is true for the Pride Flag.
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It wasn't until nearly 100 years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone that the first handheld cellular phone call was placed.
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Close to 1,000 fresh-faced candidates start the Navy SEAL training program every year. Most don't make it through training.
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Seen from one perspective, then, maybe you can make a case for the FBI investigating Albert Einstein, certified genius. But perspectives are, of course, relative.
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Some palaces aren't just your standard royal residences. They're mini-cities, full of obscene displays of wealth. These are the most over-the-top royal palaces in the world.
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We all have had an occasion to lie -- sometimes about cherry trees, like George Washington, and other times, just to be polite. There is a difference between social niceties and pathological lying, though. But where is the line, and what happens when we cross it?
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Although they lack the pizzazz of lightsabers, polygraphs — better known as lie detectors — work on the equally fantastical premise that a machine can definitively say whether the subject of the test is lying or not ... and the Supreme Court ruled against them in 1998.
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Baseball caps -- also tractor caps, or trucker caps -- are everywhere, especially on people's heads. Usually they come off within a reasonable timeframe, but what happens if you wear a hat every day?
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Gone with the Wind presents a sentimental view of the old South—and slavery. It's impossible to ignore the messed up truth about Gone with the Wind—truths that include overt racism, love affairs, protests, and one of the most chaotic and poorly-run film productions in history.
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The Montgomery bus boycott is often hailed as the opening act of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. But the version you're taught in school leaves out the heroic efforts of multiple people who worked tirelessly towards desegregation. This is the messed up truth about the Montgomery bus boycott.
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Grisly murders of Italian lovers; mutilated body parts and mysterious letters -- this is the story of the Monster of Florence.
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In 1987, Guns N' Roses released their first album, Appetite for Destruction, to a thunderous response. They went on to become one of the biggest names in rock. So where have they been the last 11 years?
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Bob Dylan could easily be considered one of the greatest songwriters of all time. Like all artists, though, Dylan admires the work of his fellow musicians.
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Despite a touring history spanning over fifty years and several lineup changes, Fleetwood Mac can certainly still hold their own in concert. With hits like "Go Your Own Way", and "Rhiannon," and many of its core members going strong, it's pretty clear why they still fill up stadiums globally.
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Bands break up all the time, and the 2010s was no exception. Some bands break up in a manner that's so strange, dramatic, high-profile, or just plain shocking to the fans that the mere memory makes them cringe. Let's take a look at some of the most devastating band break ups of the past decade.
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Eddie van Halen hates playing cover songs. Unfortunately, he's played a ton of them.
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That brilliant, unapologetic individuality made for musical voodoo that only he could do so well. But it could also cause discord.
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Legendary rock and roll/folk artist Neil Young is 74 years old, but that doesn't stop him from continuing to tour around the world and making and releasing music for his fans.
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Before going solo as the Piano Man, Billy Joel showed off his less polished side as one-half of a band named Atilla, which was a fusion of prog-rock, psychedelic, and heavy metal. It might've led to the worst rock album of all time.
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Prince recorded some of the greatest songs of all time, from "When Doves Cry" to "Purple Rain." His performances were always a mix of sensuality and power that is still unmatched. But the Purple One was more than a performer. He was also a brilliant songwriter.
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Five years ago, moviegoers were treated to Dan Stevens' performance in an indie thriller/mystery titled The Guest. Now it's crushing it on Netflix.
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One of Netflix's most recent acquisitions, The Night Clerk, is part police procedural, part whodunnit, part study of humanity, as the best mysteries always are.
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A real masterpiece of mystery story-telling needs a bit more than an unknown bad guy to become truly binge-worthy. Mystery gems have that added ingredient of making viewers care. Here are some of the best on Netflix.
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When MTV was at the height of its influence on the music world, a guest spot on MTV Unplugged was a surefire sign that you'd made it as a band. For Nirvana, the nineties grunge music legend, their MTV performance doubled as one of their most successful albums.
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"Robert Smith is famous for three things: wearing make-up, having big hair, and writing and singing some of the loveliest songs in the English language," TimeOut London wrote about the vocalist in 2018. But personally, Smith wasn't always a huge fan of the style.
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The Loch Ness Monster has fascinated people for centuries, earning a distinguished role in the pantheon of famous mythic creatures like Bigfoot and the Chupacabra. Sadly, scientists are ready to burst your bubble — they think it's not a monster, at all.
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If ancient Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization, Babylon was arguably its favorite baby. Nowadays, its name is synonymous with opulence and moral decay, but to quote the Evening Standard, "Babylon wasn't so bad."
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Pegasus was mostly horse, but with the addition of wings, therefore enabling flight for a creature that doesn't usually fly through the air with the greatest of ease.
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Native American tribes had their own ideas for what happens after death, and their beliefs can tell us as much about how they lived as how they died.
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The 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.
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It sounds like the stuff of fantasy. An underwater ghost village in the Mediterranean? That's got to be a lost suburb of Atlantis, right? Do mermaid ghosts live there, and do they swim or just eerily pass through the water like it doesn't exist?
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The lesser-known political parties of the U.S. run the gamut from weird and wacky to disturbing and even scary. Here are some you probably haven't heard of.
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The Peter Parker school of ethics teaches that with great power comes great responsibility. If Spider-Man had consulted a lawyer, he'd know that U.S. courts often hold people with great power less responsible for wrongdoing, especially public officials, a legal protection called qualified immunity.
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The Secret Service's mandate wasn't expanded to presidential security until 1901, when President William McKinley was assassinated while in office. The first president to be assassinated was Abraham Lincoln, in 1865 ... and, in a deep historical irony, it was Lincoln who established the Service.
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The late 1990s were a magical time. But all was not well in America -- there was a dire threat lurking just over the horizon. The United States National Security Agency was on top of it. In January of 1999, they made their move, officially banning Furbies from NSA property.
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Ulysses S. Grant should be a lot more famous than he is, but his name mainly comes up during discussions about greatest generals or worst presidents. However, the untold truth of Ulysses S. Grant is a much richer and more fascinating story.
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John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the second and third presidents of the United States, helped lay the foundation of the country. They were also the best of frenemies.
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Even though a band called "Queen" has continued after Freddie Mercury's death in 1991, Queen had effectively ended with his passing. Or, at least, that's how John Deacon, Queen's bassist, felt. But where is he now?
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In Vikings, Kattegat serves as the seat of Ragnar Lothbrok, the series' protagonist, and as a mirror for his rise in power, growing from a market town to the seat of the kingdom's power. It is a central point in the story, but is it real?
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Mick Jagger is a lot of things. As the singer of the Rolling Stones, he is the voice of legendary hits like "Sympathy for the Devil," "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," "Jumpin' Jack Flash," and "Gimme Shelter." He's also reportedly ... an enemy of the Queen?
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From lush forests, to bleak Scandinavian shores, to the cold stone of isolated (and amazingly easily conquered as it turns out) English monasteries, Vikings' settings aren't just gorgeous to behold -- they're a vital part of the show. So where is it actually filmed?
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Before Eric Garner and George Floyd, there was Rodney King, whose beating would lay bare the racism and injustice that ran through the LAPD.
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Queen Victoria never truly got over the loss of her husband, Prince Albert, and she literally wore her feelings on her sleeve.
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The Talking Heads had a successful 16-year musical career, which ultimately ended when Byrne decided to leave the band in 1991. Here's why.
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After 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.
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It 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.
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Queen Victoria, with nine children and a full time job, probably needed to cut loose once in a while. Here are her favorite drugs.
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Queen Victoria's grandson, Prince Albert Victor was known to those who loved him as "Eddy," (also great uncle to the present Queen, Elizabeth II), and a proposed candidate for true identity of Jack the Ripper.
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Historical figures become known by their nicknames. Sometimes, people forget why they were given those names in the first place. That's pretty much what happened to Elizabeth Woodville, the White Queen, especially after the BBC TV show of the same name premiered.
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Acting is a notoriously fickle business. There are those actors who want to branch out into music, or direct, or return to their roots in live theater. Or aspire to film, rising above the more pedestrian work to be found on television. (Commercials? Ew.)
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The royal family follows a lot of rules. These can involve what they wear, how they walk, or what to say, but one of the lesser-known ones has to do with titles. For example, Elizabeth II is Her Majesty the Queen, but her husband remains His Royal Highness, Prince Philip. Why is that?
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In what might well be a case of rock-and-roll toe-may-toe/toe-mah-toe, Lindsey Buckingham was either fired from Fleetwood Mac or was "forced out" (which is kind of the same thing, maybe) by fellow Fleetwooder Stevie Nicks in 2018.
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Get famous enough, and the legends start to pile up. The Vikings are no exception. Here are some popular Viking myths you can stop believing.
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It's accepted wisdom that nothing succeeds like success — if it worked one time, it'll probably work the next time, too. Oscar Wilde once observed, "Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess." Both lines would apply to the phenomenon known as The Walking Dead ...
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NPR 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.
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As an entity that devotes itself wholly to news, CNN hasn't always gotten things quite right. In fact, over the years, they've been involved in a number of controversies, questionable practices, and even outright misconduct. Here are some of the biggest scandals to hit CNN.
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The very first Civil War ironclads and the first in the world to fight warships were armored gunboats built by Union Captain James Buchanan Eads, the cousin of future President James Buchanan. This led to some of the earliest Union victories of the entire conflict. But they were kind of cartoonish.
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Eminem's disses leave third-degree burns on their coolest setting. So unless you want Eminem to melt you with his mouth, it's best not to light a fire under him because you will probably be no match in a feud. But Nick Cannon didn't choose his fire fight in 2009. Eminem chose him.
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Duct tape — or as its commercially known, Flex Tape — can do many things. Flex Tape even has commercials talking about everything it can stick together. And while it's true some things can be fixed with duct tape... don't believe everything.
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As if 2020 has not yet done enough, a massive plume of dust from the Sahara Desert is now on its way to the United States.
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How far will Amazon go to manifest itself as the platonic ideal of a dystopian corporate hellscape? Very far, apparently.
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It's rare to beat a world record, let alone have two, unless you're that guy with the record for most world records. However, one dog in the UK managed this feat. Freddy the Great Dane is not just the tallest dog in the world (and one of the largest), but is also now the oldest living Great Dane.
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On November 12th, 2019, myriad viewers from around the world looked to their television sets and, irrespective of their places on the gender identity gradient, felt sudden and intense maternal impulses. The reason? Baby Yoda.
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Genuine, committed, dyed-in-the-wool dog owners are like golfers: They're really easy to shop for. But there's one thing dog owners are split down the middle about -- dog beds? To buy or not to buy?
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SARS came and went -- which seems like a real glass-is-half-full potential outcome for the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. Unfortunately, there's a small pile of reasons why it's unlikely that we'll see the same miraculous contagion disappearing act this time around.
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"Small and kind of cute" doesn't necessarily mean "small and kind of cute and harmless," as any Peter Dinklage fan knows. Add "kind of cute, for something boneless" and it doesn't change. Case in point: the blue-ringed octopus. Small, and kind of cute, but astonishingly deadly.
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Between overwhelmed aunts, the folks at your church, and coworkers who won't stop pumping in the break room, there's a good chance you know somebody perpetually pregnant. Now, researchers have found a marsupial that double-bunks its pregnancies like it's running a shady hostel in its womb.
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The humble cicada begins its life as an egg, so small as to be imperceptible to all but the most astute. Then, like fossil fuels and the Uruk-hai, they emerge from the firmament and make everyone's life hell.
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Imagine a world without cell phones. It's hard for most people, since cell phones are so ingrained into everyday life. However, if you lived in Green Bank, West Virginia, you wouldn't be able to text anyone, let alone take social media photos.
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Play a game long enough and eventually, you'll find yourself seeing it everywhere, or seeing changes in your body. This is particularly true for games involving patterns, like Tetris, where colored objects fit together like a puzzle. This phenomenon even has a name: the "Tetris effect."
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How is it that tales of overwhelming (or not-so-overwhelming) woe seem to hijack the human brain so reliably?
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After two years of letters and in-person visits with "Son of Sam" David Berkowitz, it became abundantly clear to author and criminologist Dr. Scott Bonn that Berkowitz "relished his evil celebrity status and that he enjoyed terrorizing the city of New York ...
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Deep space is immense, brimming with potential — and not unlike Henry Ford's Model T, you can get in any color, so long as that color is black.
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James 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.
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Thanks in large part to Brad Pitt, society bumped up their Latin vocabulary last year. Added to "et cetera" and "in vino veritas," everyone now knows "ad astra," the title of Pitt's movie about space travel, meaning "to the stars."
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Some people might tell you that once they hit Earth, meteorites go to live on a farm with other meteorites, where they can run through the fields together and chase rabbits. Some people would be wrong.
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Anything that happens in a bathroom on Earth is a little more problematic in space, but they've got that figured out, too. For instance, how many of us keep a scale in the bathroom?
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If worse comes to worst, if it all goes south, and you're waaaaay up there in space, what specifically goes down? What do you do with a dead body?
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Scottie Pippen repeatedly rose to basketball's highest peak, but he had a very rough life. Here's the tragic story of Scottie Pippen.
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He comes from the land down under, does Buddy Murphy. The Australian native, born Matthew Adams, originally wrestled in his home country under the name Matt Silva. Now he's climbing the ranks in the WWE.
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Sappy love songs say that love gives you wings, but for Mike Tyson it's the exact opposite. Wings -- and the pigeon bodies they're attached to, are what give Tyson love.
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With all of 50 Cent's success, it might be surprising to know that his original ambition wasn't on the stage: It was in the boxing ring.
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These days, Sammy Sosa might not look anything like he used to during his active playing career, but the baseball great's considerable achievements remain etched in the annals of the sport. Does his net worth reflect that success?
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For longer than most of us have been alive, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (or NASCAR, to its friends) has been rattling the ground beneath Daytona. But how did it get its start?
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Donnie Yen's mother, Bow-sim Mark, is kind of a big deal — not just as an acclaimed martial artist but also as a business woman who made it big at a time when the glass ceiling was a whole lot thicker than it is today.
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No doubt it was a mixture of dedication to physical perfection and wanting to make successful movies that drove supreme martial artist Bruce Lee to the lengths he went to.
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"Bruce Lee was my friend and teacher," Kareem Abdul Jabbar states simply, yet powerfully. The basketball superstar had started studying martial arts growing up in New York, and when he was a student at UCLA sought to continue that growth.
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At the 1972 Munich Games, a group of U.S. basketball players set out to make their hoop dreams come true, but this was no Olympic Dream Team. There was no Michael Jordan to make gravity look like an inconvenience, no "Mailman" like Karl Malone to deliver in the post, no Larry Bird or Magic Johnson.
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In terms of rich athletes, Michael Jordan is always the top of any list. But his fortune pales in comparison to a chariot racer from around the Second Century CE, named Diocles.
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The world's most dangerous tree takes the form of the manchineel, typically found in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and of course, Florida.
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Like a lot of things, there are fruits out there that are nifty fun and delicious and good for you, and then there are fruits that are good for you in moderation. And then there's those fruits that are basically Mother Nature's booby-trap to cull the herd.
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1865 saw the first Wild West showdown, in which gambler Davis Tutt bet on himself to beat "Wild Bill" Hickok and lost his life. But for prospectors, the West was plenty wild long before Hickok busted a cap in Tutt's butt.
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The Wild West was a bit more nuanced than tough, no-nonsense dudes talking some god-fearin' sense into a wild and unforgiving land. Here's what life was really life for explorers.
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When people began moving west in the 1800s, it was a treacherous journey. They had to pass through dangerous terrain, and unpredictable territories, spawning many myths and false facts about the Wild West.
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On April 3, 2015, life caught up with Bob Burns, the original drummer for the southern rock powerhouse Lynyrd Skynyrd.
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"My dad was Mr. Charisma," Carlos said in 2014. "I adored him because of the way he carried himself, the way he dressed and smelt. He knew he was magnetic."
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Despite Fiona Apple's stunning success, her childhood was anything but easy.
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Mark Ruffalo is no stranger to either success, or tragedy.
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Maya 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.
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When 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.
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1919'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.
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On the night in question, Owen Hart was given a dramatically absurd entrance. The plan was that he'd be lowered by a cable, beginning his descent far up in the rafters of the packed Kemper Arena in Kansas City. Things didn't go as planned.
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Jean-Michel Basquiat, an artist whose roots in graffiti made his work stand out among others, left a legacy of stunning paintings. But his sudden popularity in his 20s caused him to spiral into a drug habit that eventually cost him his life. His death cemented his status as an art world rockstar.
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Hank Williams Jr. found some success, working more or less as a tribute act and playing plenty of his old man's standards. Critical reception was lukewarm -- The New Yorker pointed out that he "was raised to be an echo, not an influence," changing his name to better pull a nostalgic crowd.
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Unfortunately, The Ramones only seemed like a tight unit from the outside. They may have made rock history, but the band's internal affairs were full of arguments, feuds and disappointment ... and ultimately, several untimely deaths.
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For a band as longstanding and storied as Metallica, they have not been without ups and downs. No event had such a dramatic impact on Metallica's history, though, as the death of the bassist Cliff Burton.
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On July 6, 1992, Johnson's lifeless body was pulled from New York's Hudson River. The police classified it a suicide. None of her friends accepted that.
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You could do worse than marrying the King of England. That had to have gone through her mind... at least until she was beheaded.
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Every time a metalhead throws up the devil horns and casts a protective ward against the evil eye, we're saying a small thank you to Ronnie James Dio. Here's how he passed.
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The best indicator of Steve Clark's importance within Def Leppard might be the fact that he was never fired. He stayed with the band until his tragic death.
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Those of a certain age might be forgiven for confusing Davy (though he preferred David) Crockett and Daniel Boone. Their timelines overlap, though Boone, born in 1734, could have been a grandfather to Crockett, born in 1786. Here's how Boone lived, and eventually, died.
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It wouldn't exactly be a surprise to find out that Siegfried Fischbacher and Roy Horn had a personal zoo, located in the pair's Las Vegas property which they called "Little Bavaria."
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Been rickrolled lately? It's okay. There's no shame. It's just part of living in a world where Rick Astley exists. But just who is this guy?
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We'll start by stating that the main untold truth about Jack the Ripper is that nobody knows for sure who committed the murders attributed to him (or her, for that matter). But there's much more to be told.
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Wrestling was the Hart family business. Owen's father, Stu, was an acclaimed Canadian wrestler, and Owen followed in his father's footsteps -- as did all 11 of Owen's older siblings. But his life would be tragically cut short.
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The San Juan Bautista, "St. John the Baptist" -- one of America's first slave shipments -- originally had 350 slaves on board, bound for Vera Cruz in the colony of New Spain. About 150 of them died en route; apparently a pretty standard rate of loss for such trips.
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In 1995 anywhere from 400,000 to 1.1 million black Americans filled the Washington Mall, all the way from the Washington Monument to the capitol building, in solidarity against the socioeconomic disparity and systemic oppression experienced by black communities in the US. The "Million Man March."
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Fought in the emotionally fraught aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway became a Hollywood movie in real time.
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Kurt Cobain's guitar just sold at an insane price -- netting the equivalent of $1 million per string.
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you 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.
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George Harrison is remember as the quiet Beatle, but he was much more than that. This is the untold truth of George Harrison.
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You 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.
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In America, we called them dime novels. The English called them penny dreadfuls.
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The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People -- the NAACP -- was officially founded in 1909, but its roots stretched farther back into history -- from the time enslaving human beings was not only tolerated, but legally protected in this country.
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Back in the 2000s, streaming music was still in its infancy, so internet-savvy teenagers started using MP3 players that needed to be loaded with songs. This was the perfect moment for LimeWire — a peer-to-peer network where people shared files like music and movies — to be born.
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Research shows that the population of cowboys in the Old West was at least 25 percent black. Yet you'd never know based on traditional history.
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While the "Chicago Strangler" might sound like a historical villain who stalked the Windy City sometime during the Great Depression, this possible serial killer — or killers — has claimed victims as recently as 2018.
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When protests erupted in response to footage of a Minneapolis police officer killing George Floyd — a helplessly handcuffed man who cried out for his mother as a uniformed government official kneeled on his neck for nearly nine minutes — a few familiar scenes played out in the media.
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There's a long and storied tradition of enlisting animals to assist humans in times of war or straight-up attempting to weaponize them against enemies. In WWII alone, the British sabotaged Nazis with exploding rats, the U.S. tried planned to make bat bombs, and Polish soldiers adopted a ...
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In 1935, the Nazis founded the Ahnenerbe. Its archaeologists researched a lot, from the prehistoric roots of the Aryan race to the location of the Holy Grail, the relics of a lost colony of Atlantis, and, well, you get the idea. This is the untold truth of the Ahnenerbe, Hitler's archaeologists.
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Tear gas is classified as "riot control agent," and so can be used by police departments, but is banned as a military weapon by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. Here's everything you need to know about it.
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America's tragic history of racism is rooted at least in part in the nation's sordid history of slavery. Enter the Clotilda -- a poignant reminder of injustice.
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Wikipedia is everywhere, but the untold truth of Wikipedia is probably just as interesting as any page you can find on the site itself.
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Brian May's guitar playing helped define Queen. After writing some of Queen's greatest hits, May spent his time caring for animals and studying the night skies.
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In the beginning there was MythBusters. And it was very good. Now it's gone, but we have... Mythbusters Jr.
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Johnny Mathis sold millions of records and kept turning out soft pop singles for decades. Here's a look into the untold truth of Johnny Mathis, the undisputed king of soft rock.
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When the History Channel show The Curse of Oak Island began, no one knew it would run for seven seasons. But the show's unexpected popularity has made the mystery surrounding the treasure island even more intriguing.
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The movie American Gangster includes a stunning sequence, wherein heroin was smuggled into the U.S. inside the coffins of fallen soldiers returning from the Vietnam War. Did this really happen?
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As documented by the U.S. State Department Office of the Historian, during a 1965 meeting at the White House, President Lyndon Johnson voiced "serious concerns" about whether westerners stood a chance, "in the absence of intelligence," of winning the Vietnam War.
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Now, there's a new hidden detail in Star Wars making its way across the internet, rounding out a galaxy far, far away just that much more. It regards Yoda's living situation, and friends? It's a stone cold bummer.
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It might seem impossible, trying to nail down the realities of the Star Wars universe. The events described in the movies, books, and video games occurred, allegedly, far, far away, and not even recently. Still, the good folks at MythBusters never let a childish premise stop them.
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Fans of Star Wars have been trying to undo Lucas' litany of changes to the first three movies for decades. Some have even succeeded...
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One of the most enduring treasure hunts in the past decade finally came to an end this week. Forrest Fenn, who hid a treasure box possibly worth over $1 million, confirmed on his website someone found his buried chest of booty in the Rocky Mountains.
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Meet "American hero," 64-year-old Donald Gorske, who ate 30,000 Big Macs over the course of 46 years,
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