If you were to believe some of the more unusual things aired by the History Channel, the only explanation for the architectural abilities of ancient, usually non-European civilizations is... aliens. The historical record disagrees.
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Believe it or not, the first domesticated animals weren't for eating, or riding.
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Reliable contraceptives are nearly impossible to find in the wild.
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In terms of sheer numbers, Octomom wouldn't have been difficult to beat in the field of spawning. The animal kingdom has plenty of big birthers.
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Socks or spats, the patter of white paws across the room requires either a musical accompaniment or an appropriate choir of "awws." But why white? Surely any cat in the wild would shun such attire, opting instead for something more camouflaged. So where did all these white-footed cats come from?
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Tornadoes, which grace this great land of ours more frequently every year than anywhere else on the planet. Here's why.
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The Cali Cartel was an offshoot of the Medellin Cartel, and while its founders were known as the Gentlemen of Cali due to their elevated social status, they were just as dangerous.
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One of the strangest and most unique crimes in history was a bank robbery that became known as the Pizza Bomber. In happened in 2003, but it just got weirder and weirder as the years went on, and there are still some unanswered questions, too. This is the crazy real-life story of the Pizza Bomber.
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This probably won't come as much of a surprise, but the life of a correctional officer is distinctly short on beer and skittles.
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"The stupidity and futility of it all, the complete and utter waste of life, destruction of a family not to mention the death, and other traumas are far beyond anything else I have ever come across." Such was the case of the tragic story of Michael Taylor.
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Imagine you're rich and famous. Oh no, you've been kidnapped! What do you do?
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Americans love talking about free speech. Or, more accurately, they love the idea of free speech ... even if they miss the fine print of the actual Constitution.
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If you've flown in the last 20 years, you'll no doubt recollect, you will have been reminded in monotonous tones and relentless cadence that laptops must be removed from bags.
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For decades, the story of Kitty Genovese has served as a point of fascination to first-year sociology students, an example of the "bystander effect" to anyone cornered by said students at a party, and a finger-wagging expository homily to viewers of The Boondock Saints.
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No question, Elvis Presley loved his family, and they loved him back. His dad Vernon was willing to do just about anything -- including criminal activity, in order to provide for his family.
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In 1968, the Beatles were riding the mighty crest of the psychedelic wave. The formerly squeaky-clean Fab Four's transition to facial hair, colorful costumes and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the full-length, Beatle-themed animated movie Yellow Submarine certainly drove the point home.
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You'd think that with an illustrious career, Wyclef Jean would be absolutely rolling in cash. So, how did he manage to lose all his money?
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With Avatar: The Last Airbender once again streaming on Netflix, fans are revisiting their favorite moments. One of these occurred toward the show's end, when Prince Zuko suddenly became one of the most compelling characters.
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At the end of his years, The King weighed roughly 350 pounds. Here's why.
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You might love Green Day's songs, but how much do really you know about the man behind the music? Here's what fans don't know about Billie Joe Armstrong.
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Some stories, such as The Haunting In Connecticut or The Rite bear many similarities to real-life occurrences, other horror films turn out to be quite a stretch to apply to real-life events. Whether you mind it or not, 2008's "The Strangers" falls into the latter category.
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Offering to the Storm has taken Netflix by storm. Here's why.
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Playing cards -- 52 cards divided into four suits, numbered 2-10, three royalty, an ace -- hearken back to a long ago time, when amusements were simpler and performed by hand. But when, and where, did they first appear?
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Third Eye Blind were at the top of their game upon the release of their self-titled debut in April 1997, with three singles dominating the airwaves and claiming countless MTV spots with the music video for "Semi-Charmed Life."
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Frank Sinatra was a Hoboken, New Jersey boy, born in 1915 to an Italian Catholic family. Some say it's his family that gave him his temper.
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'American Girl' is hailed as one of the best guitar songs of all time by Rolling Stone, but its narrative hasn't always been agreed upon. While some fans take the song literally—a story about an American girl who most likely jumped to her death from a balcony—that's not the case at all.
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Now it's known officially as Disneyland Park, but when the doors opened on July 17, 1955, it was simply Disneyland.
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The 1995 movie Hackers is beloved for introducing much of the world to Angelina Jolie, but it also reached cult status for its visuals, nineties slang, and surprisingly bomb soundtrack ... though the technology it features has not aged well.
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Time changes people. Just look at your old high school yearbook. How many of your friends from back in the day would look at the person you are now, and still commit precious pen gel to wishing you a great summer?
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With a heavy heart and a solemn tone that we deliver the following news: in 2016, Mötley Crüe frontman Vince Neil grabbed a lady by the hair when she asked for an autograph and pulled her to the ground. And, most shamefully of all, he did it in front of Nicolas Cage.
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The story of James Bond, Ian Fleming's infamous double agent, may not have actually been his idea.
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At some point, Liam Neeson turned from a somewhat intense Irish romantic lead into an action hero. Before Neeson was acting, though, he did have some particular skills, on a physical level, that you might not expect.
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"Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I mostly only know things are different because people ask me different questions, but I don't feel like things are very changed... I'm the wrong kind of person to be really big and famous," said Elliott Smith.
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When you're rock-and-roll royalty, you're going to fall in love and live happily ever after and success is never ever going to change you. And maybe that happened for somebody, but John Lennon wasn't one of them. First wife Cynthia did not have an easy time of it.
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While everyone has their favorite tunes (as well as their guilty pleasures), it can be hard to remember that some of your favorite artists keep certain songs close to their hearts, too.
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Sometimes when a person quits the band, everything works out quietly and well for everyone involved. Things weren't so simple for the band Live, however.
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In the popular imagination, you could not have Nirvana without Kurt Cobain. Yet, while it's difficult to imagine what Nirvana could be without Cobain's voice, lyrics, and his general style that so informed the band's identity, it must be conceded that there were two other musicians in the band.
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Darkness imprisoning me / All that I see, absolute horror ... These lyrics accompany one of the most well-known passages in metal history: the machine gun riff and double kick drums of Metallica's 1988 smash hit "One." Here's what they mean.
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While the public was still in mid-reel over the news of the death of the TV presenter Regis Philbin, WSBT, the CBS-Fox affiliated channel in South Bend, Indiana, announced on July 26 that at a date still uncertain, Regis Philbin would be buried on the campus of The University of Notre Dame.
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Musical outfit The Offspring, of '90s skate punk fame, encountered legal troubles when bass player Gregory "Greg K." Kriesel filed a lawsuit against his former band.
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Maybe it's just that splitting your time between being a rock god and serving as a sun damaged Jack Sparrow life model doesn't leave room in your schedule for discerning personal choices, but Steven Tyler has had a couple "incidents" in his past.
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'Sean was the product of love,' John Lennon is reported to have once told a young Julian. 'You were the product of a whiskey bottle.'"
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Trent Reznor of the Nine Inch Nails has had an extraordinary career. And his net worth reflects that.
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Radioactive takes a few liberties on its way to present a true, if not entirely factual, sense of an historical individual.
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The details of Kanye West's bipolar diagnosis aren't anybody's business but his, but scattered interviews and public comments have given the public a fraction of a look at the tough position of living with both an intense personality disorder and an alien lifestyle of being a musical phenomenon.
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"Before I did the record, we went on tour with Skinny Puppy. That was the first time I played these songs live. It was a somewhat bad experience," said Trent Reznor.
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Most people don't remember watching certain animated movies as children. David Bowie, on the other hand, didn't remember recording an album as a 29-year-old.
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"Polly," which appears in the iconic Nirvana album Nevermind, is a disturbing song that's hard to forget.
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Life for Whitney Houston — and pop music as you know it — may have gone very differently, had the musician made one different choice.
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It's a tale as old as time: a young woman encounters a creepy man late at night in a big city. For Debbie Harry, of the iconic rock band Blondie, this encounter was with serial killer Ted Bundy, as Harry recalled in an interview in 1989 — the same year Bundy was executed.
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1980 was a crucial year for John Lennon, who'd emerged from a hiatus ready to make music once again. This is what the final 12 months of his life were like.
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Artists have their quirks. And some don't feel quite secure in front of all those people unless he's packing heat. And that guy would have been Elvis.
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Kris Kristofferson has had a remarkable career and a colorful life. So why did his family disown him?
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Considering that The Wall is one of THE Pink Floyd albums as well as THE concept album, you might suppose being part of the band at the time would be a generally good thing. And it might have been for Roger Waters, but for Richard Wright, Pink Floyd's keyboardist, it lead to his departure.
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The Mamas and the Papas' heyday "was two and a half years of total melodrama," according to member Michelle Phillips.
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Written during the peak of the grunge movement in the mid 1990s, Irish rock band The Cranberries' 1994 hit "Zombie" bombarded airwaves and marked a new era of success for the group.
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Rock stars are often unpredictable, but David Lee Roth has taken things to another level.
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There's no question that Lee was an extraordinary athlete, teacher, actor, and director. Dying far too young, at 32, only adds to the tragic mystique. Along with the tragedy come stories, bordering on myth, attached to a man whose reality was more than remarkable all by itself.
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A full eight years before the shootings at Columbine High School resulted in the deaths of 13 students in Littleton, Colorado, well before school shootings became tragically passe, and before online bullying even existed, Pearl Jam released their 1991 masterpiece "Jeremy."
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Kris Kristofferson is one of those people, you look at his life and you think to yourself, "What can't this guy do?" But even his stellar career had its low points.
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Though they've flirted with new wave, rock, Gothic pop and even dance over the years, Depeche Mode have always sounded like themselves, thanks to singer Dave Gahan. Given their success, he must be doing pretty well, right?
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In 1996, Anders Colsefni, the original lead singer of Slipknot, approached Jim Root with the offer of a lifetime -- would he join Slipknot? The answer, originally, was no. Multiple times.
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In 2015, the world lost yet another rock star when Scott Weiland died. Yet despite his massive success, he was nearly broke.
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Hawkins, Indiana is a very peculiar place. The third season of the Netflix super-hit Stranger Things raised the stakes considerably, what with huge monsters, copious body horror, and even a secret base full of angry Russians.
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On May 29, 2009, Ozzy Osbourne served Tony Iommi a lawsuit.
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Considering Pink Floyd's generally bleak outlook, one might think that a childhood spent in a tent with a refugee father from Nazi Germany who fought in the Spanish Civil War would serve as the basis of a brilliant backstory for one of its members. And for Bob Klose, it was.
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Grant Imahara would work on some of the most iconic effects pieces of the last three decades. Here are some of the movie robots you never realized he built.
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In a Reddit Q&A with fans, Imahara talked about his own preferences for the take-everywhere gadget (well, tool, actually) that was his must-have.
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Years after people started debating whether the final, top-spinning scene in Inception was all in Dom's head, Interstellar had fans and critics scratching their heads at not only some of the inner logic of the film, but its final sequence, as well
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For a song that's been adapted into multiple children's games and musical anthologies, Johnny Cash's take on "You Are My Sunshine" is nothing short of dark.
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When Lil Nas X's management realized that the beat for his hit "Old Town Road featured the banjo from "36 Ghosts IV" by Nine Inch Nails, they grew understandably panicked.
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Fleetwood Mac's second album, Rumours, dropped in 1977, and they hit the tour circuit to support it. Their opening act was none other than a now-solo Kenny Loggins.
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It's been a while, but unlike a lot of comedies, Blazing Saddles holds up nearly 50 years after its release in 1974. It was the Western parody that saw not only the longest flatulence joke in cinematic history, but lined up racial stereotypes and slapped them silly.
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Every band has its drama. Sometimes it blows over by the time they decide to go on a reunion tour. Not so for the Smashing Pumpkins, a band that's known for not only generation-defining albums but also for the infighting between its members.
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The money you enjoy earning spends the same as the other kind. Francis Albert Sinatra certainly knew that, so he became a singer, and enjoyed it. Usually. But there was one song he couldn't stand.
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Eric Clapton is responsible for a frankly disproportionate amount of bangers between the 1960s and the 1990s, and continues to be active even today.
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Keyboardist Ray Manzarek, drummer John Densmore and guitarist Robby Krieger were all instrumental to The Doors. Here is how much Manzarek was worth when he died.
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Brothers are awesome, but spending your professional life with one can be a balancing act between sibling bickering and getting things done.
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It was 35 years ago that Canadian singer-songwriter Bryan Adams released his fourth studio album, Reckless.
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Lots of people will say that the military gave them a sense of purpose, discipline, an ability to follow directions, even physical health. By the time he was drafted, Elvis Presley already had several of those qualities down...
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In 1985, founding member Roger Waters came to the conclusion that he had a viable solo career ahead of him, if he just made the leap. And leap he did. A lawsuit was soon to follow.
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It's been almost half a century since its release and we're still seeing John Lennon's "Imagine" seeping into the headlines. Here's what it really means.
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Sadly, the Grateful Dead ultimately broke up in 1995, but it was not because they wanted to stop making music and touring together.
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It was June 27th of 1965 when Johnny Cash stumbled out of a burning ring of fire in California's Los Padres National Forest. That the Man in Black was responsible for the conflagration has been established by everyone from the FBI to Cash himself, but five decades later, the details remain murky.
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Colossal is now available for streaming on Hulu. If a movie that combines Godzilla and Lost in Translation with a generous slice of Being John Malkovich is up your alley, do yourself a favor and give it a whirl.
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For a long time, Keith Richards seemed to have a bone to pick with Prince.
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In the context of the films, James Bond's backstory is intentionally murky. If he smacks of an aging man's power fantasy, though, there's a solid explanation.
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Sting is rich. He has to be, after such a long time in the spotlight. More surprising than that, though, is how much he's worth ... and who's going to inherit it.
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Judas Priest's Painkiller tour ended poorly. Even though Rob Halford, as Ultimate Classic Rock enthused, had "never sounded more like a demented Dalek" on the album they were promoting.
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Though Bon Scott made AC/DC and recorded their first album with them, he wasn't their first singer. That obscured honor goes to Dave Evans.
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Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry had a bit of a problem. He was so hooked on a laundry list of drugs that he showed up high to his own wedding.
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There was one tune in particular that the King "didn't want to record," "didn't like," and "sang as rarely as possible". And it's one of his most popular.
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Before he'd hit it big fronting The Charlie Daniels Band, Daniels was a session player, providing guitar and bass (no fiddle, apparently) on Nashville Skyline, as well as three more Dylan albums, reports Rolling Stone. But before that Daniels had teamed up with Johnny Cash to write a song.
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What exactly did Charlie Daniels mean with The Devil Went Down to Georgia? And where did he get the idea?
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Country Music Hall of Famer Charlie Daniels died on Monday, leaving behind a beaten devil, a slide into right-wing political talking points, and a pile of worth.
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Back in 1980, a 911 call from Henley brought the fire department to his Los Angeles home. What they found would have made any Eagle-ill.
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Paul McCartney admitted he doesn't even listen to his own solo work, let alone Beatles recordings. But why?
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Pearl Jam, the classic grunge mainstay, have been touring rock arenas for nearly thirty years, pleasing cross-generational crowds of thousands night after night. How did they first get started?
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Slipknot may not be the only masked band out there, but they're easily the most famous and recognizable. For the vast majority of their career, the backbone of their sound was Joey Jordison, the diminutive drum maestro behind a series of ever stranger masks. Why'd he leave?
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American rapper, songwriter and producer T-Pain was living large at the height of his career in the early 2000's, with hits such as "Buy U A Drank" and "Can't Believe It" affording him an ultra-lavish lifestyle. But it didn't last.
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Wynonna Earp tells the story of one of Wyatt Earp's descendants, tasked to rid the world of demons, and to end the curse that got her family stuck fighting said demons in the first place. Who is the actress playing the show's lead, though? And why does she look so familiar?
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You don't know him, but he's your Doobie Brother. And that Brother is the mother of all yacht rock singers. He's, of course, Michael McDonald, a man whose unmistakable vocals turn on a light switch in the human soul.
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Merle Haggard left quite a legacy when he died in 2016. He lived a rollercoaster life, and so did his money.
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First there were two in the Brothers Van Halen -- Eddie on guitar, Alex on drums -- joined by David Lee Roth on vocals and Michael Anthony on bass. The year was 1974. And it was very good. Here's why Anthony stopped.
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Ozark, one of the darkest shows streaming now, on Netflix is a very stressful show to watch. One thing that viewers of the show have wondered is how the Byrde family can even afford their lifestyle.
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Waylon Jennings made a career out of bucking trends and pushing back against authority. For instance, there was that time early in his career when he was playing bass, backing up the headliner act, and was supposed to get on a charter plane to the next gig.
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In 1979, The Clash broke America with the release of their 1977 debut The Clash which now boasted their newly recorded song "I Fought the Law," which became their first single to be released in the States.
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Doctor Sleep had a lot going against it. It was the sequel to The Shining, a masterpiece of a movie and one of the most legendary horror films in existence. What's more, the villain of the piece was Rose the Hat, an inhumanly beautiful woman wearing a silly-looking top hat.
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As attested to by a litany of press conferences, public service announcements, and toilet paper commercials, these are uncertain times. That's why it's so important to give positive revelations a moment to soak in. It is time, therefore, to take comfort in knowing that Bob Dylan is doing just fine.
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It's a great rabbit hole to fall down, trying to figure out the hidden meanings behind your favorite songs. For one, was John Lennon's "Imagine" secretly a love letter to the Communist Manifesto? And then there's "Brown Sugar," the Rolling Stones' 1971 classic.
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Director Bong Joon-Ho's 2013 movie Snowpiercer told the story of the last remaining humans on Earth. It talked about rebellion, class issues and hope -- but the movie's ending might need a little bit of explanation.
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The Gary Busey we know today is a far cry from the promising talent that marked his youth. What happened? And how did he lose all of his money?
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It wasn't the travel that drew the eye of Jimmy Buffett to this exciting potential career path in chaperoning drugs on their way to new homes. There was something else about drug smuggling that piqued his interest.
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Music videos were amazingly effective for selling recordings. Some had practically nothing to do with the song itself and some made at least a passing attempt at a narrative. Also, an excuse for the band to hang out with very attractive other people. Like in "Hot for Teacher."
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In 2009, Deadline reported that Sean Connery had an "explosion clause" written into his contracts. Any film in which the Scotsman appeared was required to include a bigger and more Earth-shattering kaboom than the last. Even Connery wasn't in the most expensive Bond movie, though.
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"Come Together," by the Beatles, is a true jam, so much so that the Arctic Monkeys's cover was played in the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics ... oh, and it also pulled heavily from Chuck Berry's "You Can't Catch Me," to the point where one could claim plagiarism.
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It's hard to imagine a time before Led Zeppelin existed, let alone a time when songs like "Stairway to Heaven", "Kashmir", and "When the Levee Breaks" didn't grace our radio speakers. It's even harder to imagine what Led Zeppelin would have been like without the band's frontman, Robert Plant.
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The boys of the History Channel show American Pickers go all around the country (and sometimes even to London) looking for long-lost pieces of Americana. And of course, they gotta have somewhere to put it all in, and you see that place a couple of times in the show.
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Yep, giants were everywhere in ancient history. But could there be a hint of truth behind the legend? Could giants have ... actually existed?
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If you stood patiently by the right Connecticut roadside between 1883 and 1889, sooner or later a solitary figure would appear in the distance... The Leatherman.
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The musical Hamilton deserves every bit of its status as cultural phenomenon, but it plays fast and loose with historical fact. Here are a few times Hamilton lied to you about history.
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When you read about the people who lived in Greece in ancient times, it's almost always about men. The women in ancient Greece also had rich lives, but how they lived those lives depended on where they were. Women in Sparta, for example, had a lot of freedoms their counterparts in Athens never had.
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Who really was Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin? How can we define him, besides "Russian guy with a sinister stare" and "staple antagonist in comic books and cartoons?"
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Oh, the 1980s. A decade full of neon clothes, mullets, and the Brat Pack. Let's learn some things that Americans in the 1980s couldn't live without.
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There once lived a man richer than anyone else who has ever lived. His name was Mansa Musa.
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When you think of vampires, do you envision them stalking down a dark alley in England, or hiding away in an Eastern European castle? Or, perhaps, do you picture vampires frolicking about the picturesque cities of New England, amidst its mountains and gorgeous coastlines?
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Phrenology, if you're not familiar, is a thoroughly debunked old-timey pseudoscience.
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Treasure hunters have inspired books and movies throughout history. Who wouldn't want to strike it rich by finding a pirate's buried treasure or taste immortality from the Fountain of Youth or the Holy Grail? But it's not easy. These are some of the most notable treasure hunters in history.
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For some people's money, you just can't find a more hellish spot than Stull, Kansas, a small, unincorporated community in the Northeast quadrant of the Sunflower State, where the local cemetery reportedly houses a gateway to the fiery inferno of the underworld.
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Today, when you think of the richest people in the world, billionaire businessmen and tech giants come to mind, like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett. But have you ever wondered who the richest people were throughout history?
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Humankind has had its fair share of false doomsdays. From perennial favorites like the rapture, predicted with unwavering enthusiasm three times a year, to new, exciting translations of the works of Nostradamus, people can't get enough of those wonderful prognosticated existential threats.
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Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "One day our society will come to respect the sanitation worker if it is to survive, for the person who picks up our garbage, in the final analysis, is as significant as the physician, for if he doesn't do his job, diseases are rampant. All labor has dignity."
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If you were lucid during the weeks that followed 9/11, you'll remember that Nostradamus suddenly started popping up in more conversations than usual. At the center of his newfound popularity was a prophetic quatrain, credited to the enigmatic seer, in emails prefaced with "RE:RE:RE:RE."
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Fleas and kissing. The two might seem unrelated, but in an era of social distancing, the link between might be clearer.
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The human species has worked hard to add a layer of organization to the passage of time, and there have been some interesting solutions.
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There are tales of a real life vampire... and it's not who you think.
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It's one of the older scams going (and it's still very much going): psychics.
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You just don't hear about organizations like the Special Operations Executive anymore. Or their mission to beat the Nazis with exploding rats.
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In 410, Rome fell for the first time in 800 years and for the first time since the establishment of its imperial power. Though today we would date the end of the Western Empire sixty-six years later in 476, its days were now numbered.
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Part of the narrative of the 1836 Battle of the Alamo is that the defenders were there to liberate Texas from the tyranny of Mexico. One of the points that often gets lost amid the flag-waving and coonskin caps is that by the time of the Texas Revolution, Mexico had abolished slavery. Texas hadn't.
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"He saw two black dots he assumed to be Mallory and Irvine near one of the final ridges before the peak before disappearing into the clouds again. It was the last time both of them were seen alive..."
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In terms of ideal career paths, being an astronaut is one of the coolest jobs you could imagine. NASA accepts around 12 astronauts into its training program every couple years, but there's another way to make it to the moon, and Eugene Shoemaker is proof.
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Abraham Lincoln was a great many things. And before he was president, he held a very different job dedicated to serving the people: that of bar owner.
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Was Herodotus the first Western historian, or "the father of lies?"
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To add to the list of things you'd never thought you'd see in your lifetime that happened in 2020, there is now a coin shortage. Here's why.
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Mount Rushmore could have looked very different.
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The Incan empire quickly grew during the 16th century CE to encompass nearly the entire western coast of South America. Here's what life was like for its women.
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One of the world's first superpowers, the Persian Empire was located in modern-day Iran, Syria and Turkey. Compared head-to-head with other ancient world civilizations, there's something oddly endearing about Persia.
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If there's one thing we know about Shakespeare, it's -- well, practically nothing. But there's plenty to talk about, including the poem on his grave.
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Through extensive advertisements and daytime talk show segments, the History Channel announced that they had finally solved the big one: the disappearance of Amelia Earhart. Boy were they wrong.
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If anybody knows anything about Ben-Hur, it's chariot races. Even the film version feels pretty ancient. So it may not be a surprise that almost every cast member is no longer alive. Save for one.
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The ancient Aztec city of Tenochtitlan is the source of a flood of fascinating history. Then again, it's also the source of many fascinating rumors and half-truths, thanks to repression after the Spanish conquest. This is the true story of the ancient Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan.
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The life of a hospital Emergency Room staffer is never dull. And the unexpected can ratchet up the pressure even more. This was the experience of ER staffers at Riverside General Hospital one night in 1994. To this day, the mysterious Toxic Lady, Gloria Ramirez, still has not fully been explained.
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At the turn of the 19th century, slaves in the French colonies in Haiti pulled off an unprecedented feat.
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Solomon Northup's tale is unique because his account of slavery was from the lens of a free man. He was educated, married, and had children before he was stolen and forced into 12 years of cruel bondage. This is what Solomon Northup's 12 years as a slave were really like.
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The year is 1922... don't get caught wearing this kind of hat.
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Recollections of Abraham Lincoln 1847-1865, an 1895 book which collects anecdotes from Ward Hill Lamon about his presidential friend, included one particularly odd note about a dream.
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The griffin -- also gryphon (says Mythology), also grypes (says Theoi) -- traditionally is a blend of an eagle's front crafted onto the body of a lion. And it may have been based on a real animal.
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Recent history has not been kind to Thomas Edison. Once remembered as a titan of creative thought, today he's become more or less synonymous with the corrupt underpinnings of American industrialism and man's capacity to dash his rivals' dreams, or go to New Jersey and electrocute an elephant.
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Historically speaking, it's never been easy to convince Catholics and Protestants to agree on things. However, in the late 1400s, the two denominations put their differences aside and essentially started an interfaith book club.
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The Roman Empire at its height spanned all the way through the tip of modern day Scotland, down to encompass all of Europe, out to Russia and into Turkey, and along the northern African coast. But did the Romans have any idea what that empire actually looked like?
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Kraken. "Nessy," the Loch Ness Monster. Soe Orm from Scandinavia. The Great American Sea Serpent. That shark from Jaws. Ancient myths and modern stories of water-bound monsters abound in human consciousness and across cultures.
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The Hoover Dam is exactly the sort of thing that a Bond villain would want to blow up. Enter the Nazis, the real-life Bond villains of the mid-20th century.
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Steve Jobs first founded what would be one of the largest tech companies in 1976 with his business partner, Steve Wozniak. The two met on a chance occasion, and it's a good thing fate was in their favor, or we might not have had the iPhone, the MacBook, or the iPod.
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Mùlán has served as inspiration in China for centuries, an example of self-sacrifice for the greater common good; of devotion to family; of bravery. Could she have actually existed?
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Long before people were tossing coins to ultra-buff witchers, they were placing them in the mouths of the dead. "Charon's Obol," as such coins have been dubbed, have been found in the graves of the once-living since the 5th century BCE, largely throughout Western European countries.
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It would be hyperbole to declare that mathematician Alan Turing saved England and won the war against the Axis in Europe during World War II. But there's no question the war would have had a very different outcome if Turing hadn't been there during the time Churchill called "the darkest hours."
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The year was 1774, and German physician Franz Anton Mesmer had done the impossible: he had cured Francisca Österlin's hysteria. Supposedly
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One weird truth of ancient board games is that they offer a candid view into how people from a different age approached the game of life — like a quick 'n sneaky casual snapshot taken when the subjects weren't deliberately composing themselves to look good.
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Archaeological digs can shed some light on long-held theories, even ancient ones. So when archaeologists discovered human bones in the Sahara desert, they thought they had finally found a Persian army lost to the sands centuries ago, ultimately solving an ancient mystery.
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Story after story is told of the Amazons (a word which isn't Greek; it's probably from a Persian word for "warrior"), in many different cultures and societies. The stories are good. The history is better.
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As Union forces captured Confederate territory, the slaves they encountered would be freed. Which raised the next question: If slavery is finally abolished everywhere, what happens to all of these thousands of people, formerly enslaved, but now free?
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There are two kinds of people in this world: those who divide everyone into two groups, and those who don't. Another two kinds: Those who love Shakespeare, and those who would rather binge watch Friends -- again. But Shakespeare may have been even less real than friends.
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Colonel Tom Parker was a doughy human rabbit hole of shadowy weirdness. And he may even have been a murderer.
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Ah, zombies. The archetype of the shambling undead minion has left a meaty trail across the length and breadth of pop culture worldwide. But is zombification actually a thing? And if so, how does it happen?
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Human beings have been inhabiting Easter Island since somewhere around 400-700 CE. But something led to a collapse in its once balanced civilization.
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The thing about ancient Egypt? If you're trying to figure out who the meanest ruler was, there's a lot of stiff competition.
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Dillinger is one of those names that's become an archetype. Depression-era American criminal -- a gangster, a bank robber. Here's how he died.
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Life in ancient China was not easy for women.
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Owning a guitar used by a famous rock musician is a way of owning a piece of history. Here are the most expensive guitars in rock history.
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When the sun rose on August 3rd, 216 BCE, the future of the Roman Empire seemed in mortal peril.
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The Aztec Empire was relatively short-lived. What was like for its women?
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Had things gone as planned, we wouldn't have heard of the Donner Party, a pioneer group who attempted to migrate to California in 1846-1847. Out of the 87 members of the original wagon train, only 48 survived by resorting to survival cannibalism. And one of them was almost Abraham Lincoln.
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The Ottoman Empire was one of the most longstanding and powerful empires in history. What was life like for its women?
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One of the most famous jewels in the world is the Hope Diamond. While most people think the Hope Diamond is the same one in Titanic, it's not — it's actually famous in its own right, primarily because of a supposed curse that befalls those who dare own it.
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It's tough to get an entire society's beliefs nailed down. Even now, saying "modern-day Americans believe that the Earth is round" isn't an accurate blanket statement. Somehow. So it gets even trickier, as you might imagine, putting your finger on the pulse of an ancient culture's worldview.
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Good old werewolves. They don't usually top the list of anyone's biggest fears -- but what if we told you they may, just possibly, have existed?
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Centered in the heart of present-day Guatemala, the Mayan Empire flourished for close to two and a half millennia, only to abruptly disappear around 900 CE. What happened?
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Here's a working definition: a robot is pure machine. A cyborg is a human with machine parts (or, perhaps, a machine with human parts. It depends on where you're standing). An android is a machine built to look and function like a human being.
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High in the Ötztal Alps of Southern Austria, a muscular and heavily-tattooed man lay down in the snow, finally ready to die. Fifty-three centuries later, some believe Otzi, "the Iceman," curses those who get involved with him.
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The anodyne thing to do would be to pretend this article exists in a vacuum, but out of respect for your intelligence as a reader, the moment at hand should be acknowledged.
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The Constitution of the United States is the most important document in our country, so it's surprising how many myths and outright falsehoods surround our foundational document. Here are false things you believe about the Constitution.
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Picasso was mainly a painter, dabbling in sculpture and other media, and he certainly didn't lead a boring life. Here's the messed up truth about Pablo Picasso.
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Reconstruction after the Civil War was an attempt to reconstruct everything about Southern life and politics. But after an auspicious start, Reconstruction slowly collapsed under the weight of political reality and short-sighted decisions. Here's the messed-up truth about the Reconstruction era.
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Like all wars, the Iraq War was filled with heroes, villains, and mistakes both harrying and hilarious. These are some messed up things that happened during the Iraq War.
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Here's a quick primer on the Ligoness family murders, and the bones of one of the stranger theories for why it all went down: that this is all part of an elaborate, decade-long cover-up.
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Grand Funk Railroad is not immune to temptation of frivolous lawsuits.
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The world of rap has been particularly struck by tragedy, seemingly more so than other musical genres. Here are some rappers who died tragically.
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The Red Hot Chili Peppers have not released an album since 2016, and fans have spent the whole time wondering about it.
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In 1985, Stones frontman Mick Jagger released his debut solo album, She's The Boss, and it nearly struck a killing blow to the band.
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Not every big rocker of the time showed up at Woodstock. Here are some musicians who turned down playing at Woodstock.
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Ledbetter, later known as Lead Belly, was born in Louisiana in the late 1880s -- into a life of violence.
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Dave Gahan, the illustrious singer of Depeche Mode, is without a doubt one of rock's great frontmen ... unfortunately, being a rock star can often mean living like a rock star, and Gahan certainly took part in some of the darker undercurrents of fame.
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It's not uncommon that the first musical project that a musician picks up won't be their last. Such was the case with Bruce Springsteen.
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Sometimes rebellion comes in the form of butchering the very thing that bands are being used to commodify: their own songs.
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Madonna once described her early musical training, playing instruments and writing music for the first time, as "one of the happiest times of my life."
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Record companies are out to make money, and there's a lot of shadiness going on that proves they don't care how they do it, they're perfectly happy to get rich off the backs of the music artists with the real talent. Here are insane times music artists were screwed over by their recording companies.
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Depeche Mode has always been a group subject to drama as intense as their music.
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Neil Young and Rick James. You probably don't associate the two music legends with each other. But at one time they made sweet music together.
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Sometimes even the greatest musicians need a little bit of inspiration from others. That's certainly the case for the English rock band Led Zeppelin.
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American rock band Aerosmith has been playing together for 50 years. But they're still prone to feuds.
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It's hard to imagine what it must feel like to miss out on being in an iconic band.. It's a feeling that English singer-songwriter Stephen Duffy is familiar with, having departed from '80s new romantic staple Duran Duran in 1979 shortly before the band signed with EMI in 1980.
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Longtime Smashing Pumpkins bass player D'arcy Wretzky played a pivotal role in the formation and early success of the '90s grunge band, serving as a core member for the rock outfit's first five albums. But now she's off the radar. Whatever happened to her?
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This month, mysterious packages containing seeds have been appearing on doorsteps and in mailboxes across the country containing 'mystery seeds' from China. What ever could they mean?
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One multi-eyed monster of Japan, however, was self-named and real: the Monster with 21 Faces (and presumably 42 eyes).
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While song lyrics tend to stick to an unmistakable point — usually along the lines of "Oh, I love you" — they occasionally are just ambiguous enough to leave it up to the listener to decide what's happening. Bob Marley achieves this in "I Shot the Sheriff."
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While certain bands are infamously secretive about their creations, pop legend Prince has typically been frank about the meaning behind his songs. Purple Rain is an exception.
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The original series gave everyone the opportunity to be a detective/forensic psychologist/UFOlogist. Even if you weren't alive for the original, the reboot gives you the chance to rewrite a bit of history. Are you up to the challenge?
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For women in ancient Macedonia, life wasn't exactly a bowl full of chariots.
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There's a lot of ocean out there. And some of it's really deep. That's where the giant squid live. And maybe the kraken.
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The seventies were a foundational time for Def Leppard. Though their first album didn't release until 1980, the band's roots were established in the decade. Pete Willis, Joe Elliott and Rick Savage came together as teenagers, and formed the band in Sheffield, England in 1977.
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Joni Mitchell, the singer that delicately traces life and love in her songs, has largely retired from the public eye. So much of her life has been documented in songs, but to many, her early life remains a mystery.
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The banshee is a female spirit; a sort of bridge between this world and the next, fairy folk, "linked to the realm of the dead." But their origin is a real hoot.
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The origins of mythical monsters can be hard to pin down, but it becomes even harder when people start describing different beings in interchangeable terms. Consider the case of the siren and the mermaid. Most people think they're the same, but honestly? They couldn't be more different.
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The modern justice system is far from perfect. Innocent citizens are convicted unjustly, and the guilty are handed punishments disproportionate to their crimes. With that said, at least people don't still torture, behead, and cremate folks suspected of being werewolves.
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The American Indian Movement, most known for the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, galvanized a generation of Native youth. This is the true story of the movement.
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You may know all the facts about the Pacific Ocean's depth, size, length, and more, but what you might not know is how the Pacific Ocean got its name.
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The Atlantic Ocean is the Earth's second largest body of water. According to the National Ocean Service, the Atlantic covers approximately 41,105,000 square miles, or about 20% of the Earth's surface. Yet, the title itself, the Atlantic, sounds a bit impenetrable ...
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A recent paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests a coincidental explosion at Mount Okmok, a volcano in Alaska, caused the extreme climate that decided the very end of the Republic and birth of the Empire.
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The shadow of misery and death haunts a lot of prisons, such that the ghosts of inmates reportedly stick around. Here are some creepy tales of prison ghosts.
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Take a time machine back to the mid-20th century, a time when tales of the peculiar and unexplained were best told by intense middle-aged men in black suits as they cocked their eyebrows, cradled their cigarettes, and stared directly into your soul.
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When you're on set of a horror flick, it's easy to get carried away with eerie occurrences that happen. Here are some creepy tales of movie set ghosts.
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Las Vegas is home to more than a few ghosts. Perhaps it's the place's dramatic and dangerous history. These are some creepy tales of haunted Las Vegas.
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Ghost is definitely a band that people either "get" or not.
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For once, 2020 has brought about some good news. Well, good news for the people who have been looking for signs that aliens have already visited Earth, anyway.
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In June of 1845, Andrew Jackson was 78 years old -- roughly 248 in 19th century years. Soon he'd be buried -- but not how you might expect.
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The vice president makes roughly enough to buy 100 medium-range French bulldogs. Here's how much that is.
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It's not the cherriest of gigs, running the free world. Still, the office is nice, and you get your own bowling alley. Maybe that's why children across the United States dream of the day when they'll grow up to be president.
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Everybody's familiar with demons. Conceptually, they are more or less universal. But what are their origins in Christianity?
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Quicksand is probably more important as a motion picture plot device than as an actual natural phenomenon that's waiting to suck you to your death the next time you stroll in the woods/jungle/cursed mall.
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Vikings has been a truly massive success for the History Channel, and for the show's first four seasons, it was spearheaded by a larger-than-life main character.
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Vikings. The word conjures a host of images in popular imagination: brutal, burly savages wielding axes and howling their way through coastal raids, clad in equal parts dirt and animal skins, and sporting questionable hygiene. However, the Vikings were a far more nuanced society than many realize.
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Vikings, being just like us, really, though usually carrying more cutlery than we do, also delighted in codes. And we have proof.
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Vikings, hailing from what's now Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, had developed the one thing that made them not only a military power, but a commercial power. And that thing was sea power. Their go to vessel? The longship.
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Here's what you need to know before the second half of Vikings season 6.
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Sure, there are plenty of easy answers here. After all, you know what you didn't you see in the first episode of The Walking Dead? Optimism ... or, for that matter, anything you hadn't already seen in 28 Days Later.
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So what did get fans upset about Vikings Season One? It all boils down to deadly snakes ...
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Merry Clayton has one of those voices you've heard -- repeatedly -- but probably didn't know the name that went with it. Her most famous work? The Rolling Stones' 'Gimme Shelter.'
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You would think Prince and Rick James would have been great friends. But in reality, while the two were musical peers, Prince and James were anything but friends.
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Prince and Michael Jackson: two slender heavenly bodies, trapped irrevocably in one another's gravitational pull, each seemingly doing his best to out-weird the other by an order of magnitude. Their rivalry was the stuff of Greek mythology, akin to the events of The Prestige, but with tighter pants.
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"Blue holes" is a term that scientists use for sinkholes on the ocean floor. And later this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, alongside the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium, will continue their collaborative exploration of these holes, by sending a "benthic lander."
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The tale of Noah, and the great flood, is one of the more well-known biblical stories. For historians, academics, and scholars of comparative religion, however, this tale of Noah and the flood is but one iteration of a much older, cross-cultural story that in fact has over 200 versions worldwide.
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If you're looking for a boring story, you've come to the right place. But it's not you that will be bored -- it's a mile-long tunnel under Las Vegas, brought to you by the good folks from The Boring Company.
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In general, don't meet bears. They really don't want to meet you, either. They're predators, and they get hungry, and while many bears are omnivores (consuming anything from berries to grubs to you), any port in a storm when you're hangry.
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Apparently there's a relatively wide-spread rumor going around that not only has NASA shifted the calendar, but has added a new sign to the traditional 12-sign lineup of the zodiac (which, to be clear, is astrology).
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You're not dreaming. You can smell the rain...
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From space, Earth resembles a deep blue marble with shots of browns and greens coursing through it. Its distinctive color is due to the sheer amount of water covering it. But even though we know there is a lot of water on the Earth, we do not really ever conceptualize how much water that truly is.
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Even without the mythological aspect, Jupiter is a prominent, easy-to-study element of modern astronomy, with a host of features that boggle the mind.
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On July 15, Lancet published the findings of a series of models they've implemented to predict the future of humanity's population based on trends in fertility, migration, and mortality rates. What they found was that the fertility rate in almost every country will drop below the replacement level.
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In many ways, the majestic Mount Kilimanjaro, in Tanzania, is in a category of its own. As National Geographic reports, the 19,340-foot colossus is the tallest mountain in Africa, and since it is not a part of any mountain range, it's also the largest freestanding mountain in the world.
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If you have heard the name Vladimir Demikhov, it's probably for the science fiction-sounding experiments he conducted, in which he transplanted the head of one dog to another, in effect, creating a two-headed dog.
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Solar eclipses are the the KISS concerts of astronomical occurrences ... and, just like a KISS concert, you'd be foolish to look directly at it without some form of eye protection. Why is that, though?
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Sometimes, a chance meeting can become the most important event in your life. Occasionally, it can change the world, too. That's what happened when grad student Sergey Brin met Larry Page. The two eventually co-founded Google, now one of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world.
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The moon; our mysterious celestial cousin. While you probably won't be going there soon, even for a lot of money, it costs nothing to gaze up at it in wonder. You don't even need a fancy, heavy telescope to even see it.
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If you're being charitable, it'd be fair to characterize some people as having more enthusiasm than common sense. For instance, Rachel Levin wrote about the one the guy who decided it'd be cool to pick up the rattlesnake he found on the trail, and hold it in a pose. You know, for Instagram.
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Jeff Bezos, whose time is very valuable indeed, reached the conclusion that PowerPoint is a waste of his time.
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Odds are your hand sanitizer stinks. No, not the situation (though that's true, if you equate "this stinks" with "this is inconvenient") -- the product. And yes, there's a reason.
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Camels are notorious for the humps on their back, so much so that Wednesday, also known as "hump day" is associated with the camel in present-day pop culture. But how did Joe Camel really get his lovely humps?
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Besides giving everybody the theatrical genius of Peter Dinklage on a regular basis, Game of Thrones also popularized dire wolves, those large, toothsome beasties that seem to be the size of a decent pony ... and, if you've got a problem with dogs, the stuff of nightmares.
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It's been speculated that in the middle of the earth, in the land of the Shire, there was, at some point, a brave little hobbit with qualities that a lot of people find admirable. Then, in 2003, according to the Smithsonian Magazine, a discovery was made on the Indonesian island of Flores.
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The T-shirt cannon has a much deeper history than you might imagine.
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When you do a simple Google search — not "I Heart Steven Seagal," but maybe something close — you're more likely to come up with hot lists of people who don't like the nineties action hero with a penchant for "kill" and "justice" in his movie titles.
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At first glance, you might not expect Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder to befriend former Bull's player Dennis Rodman. Although the two are a seemingly odd pair, they are actually great friends in real life.
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Ah, Mark McGwire! The second most famous Big Mac in history is one of the greats of baseball, even though his legendary player career is somewhat tainted because of his use of performance-enhancing drugs.
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In the decades since Secretariat won the Triple crown, many horses have tried to match his performance. However, none of them did it as spectacularly as he did.
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A pervasive image of NASCAR is a sea of Confederate flags. So when the organization behind NASCAR announced on June 10, 2020 that it will from henceforth ban Confederate flags from its races people grew interested, not least in the driver who called for the ban: Bubba Wallace.
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Alexander Hamilton has long been renowned as one of America's Founding Fathers, but he hasn't received quite as much attention in history as fellow founders. Lin-Manuel Miranda's epic rap-musical isn't entirely historically accurate, but it's close-ish. Here's the real story of Alexander Hamilton.
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In the predawn morning of of December 4, 1969, 14 police officers surrounded 2337 W. Monroe St, the Black Panther stronghold in Chicago. The raid about to be carried out was organized specifically to kill Fred Hampton.
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As dramatic as the French Revolution was, the Tribunal had no interest in drama. Instead, they sentenced Marie Thérèse Louise to death, at the hands of the crowd.
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Many comedians have created humor that lasts for ages, and one of those comics is Mitch Hedberg, whose drug addiction would send him to an early grave. This is the tragic real-life story of Mitch Hedberg.
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When you look at Mark Twain's history, it's a wonder that he even smiled at all.
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Having faced down poverty, illness, divorce, and ever-changing public tastes, Cher continues to beat the odds, winning over generation after generation of fans with her unwavering dedication and authenticity. This is Cher's tragic real-life story.
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On the astronomically slim chance that you're not familiar with Walpurga Hausmännin, here's the inside story, which is actually horribly tragic.
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Prosecutions of homosexuals increased in England after World War II, and one of the individuals so ensnared was a mathematician -- Alan Turing.
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"When I was a kid, I never wanted to be James Bond. I wanted to be Q, because he was the guy who made all the gadgets," said Grant Imahara. Throughout his career, he did exactly that -- a career which ended with his death on Monday, July 13, of a brain aneurysm. He was just 49 years old.
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Before Tiger King captivated the world with its tale of murder, mayhem and madness, before Penn and Teller made Vegas crowds gasp with their ballistic ballet of bullets and bunkum, there were Siegfried and Roy.
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Considering modern longevity -- 78.6 years now, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- 60 just seems younger and younger, especially as an endpoint, as it was for Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett.
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In the face of both entrenched racism and death threats, Jackie Robinson smashed baseball's color barrier when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. This is the tragic real-life story of Jackie Robinson.
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Brian Jones, the founding guitarist of the Rolling Stones, was found at the bottom of his pool on July 3, 1969 -- at the age of 27.
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The Wright brothers -- Wilbur, born in 1867, and Orville, born in 1871 -- were best friends growing up. And they live to achieve some pretty remarkable things -- like flying. Here's how Wilbur died.
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The Ramones became of the most influential and important rock bands of all time. All the same, the Ramones' tragic real-life story is full of full of heartbreak and tragedy.
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There's a darker tragedy wrapped around the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter," as well. It's one of rock and roll's most pervasive and legendary stories. It might even be true.
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'...Pyle remembered that Van Zant retrieved a pillow on his way back to his seat, stopped, and shook Pyle's hand. "Ronnie knew that he was going to die."'
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The unsolved mystery of Zebb Quinn's disappearance technically is, indeed, unsolved — even though a culprit has been charged. Here's the explanation.
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Anybody who's anybody has seen a UFO. And in 1957, right around the time that Sputnik II took flight and the Space Race went full swing, just about everyone in the town of Levelland, Texas saw one ... or, at least, the ones who were awake did. It was pretty late.
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Elvis Presley loved himself a PBB&B sandwich so much that his arteries were effectively bulletproof when he died, and he also absolutely owned a chimp. His name was Scatter, and he was prone to unwarranted promiscuity.
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When founder, songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist Glenn Frey died at the age of 67 in 2016, his son Deacon stepped up.
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Jason Bonham was just fourteen-years-old when his dad, John Bonham, passed away after a legendary bender of 40 shots of vodka. It was also from that moment that it seemed Jason Bonham would follow the footsteps of his dad, the drummer of Led Zeppelin, and become a drummer in his own right.
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It's officially known as the "president's emergency satchel," but realistically, that name makes it sound like it has an extra set of Oshkosh overalls and a pack of wet wipes. Maybe that's why it's more widely recognized by its bro-down-heavy, guitar-riff-worthy nickname: the nuclear football.
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When it comes to ancient volcanic eruptions, Pompeii may have cornered the public imagination. However, Thira deserves a mention for boasting not one site preserved by volcanism, but two: Akrotiri and Thera.
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In just over thirty years, a staggering 16,000 people have vanished while traversing this largely unexplored wilderness, dubbed the Alaska Triangle.
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It's said that one of the inspirations for The Beatles was Buddy Holly and the Crickets.
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Have you ever known for sure something happened but when you look it up, you find out that you were wrong? Say, for example, thinking the children's book was called Berenstein Bears and not Berenstain Bears? If you have, then you've fallen victim to the Mandela Effect.
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In June 1941, Britain was well into World War II when the puppy was brought home to a delighted seven-year-old boy, Barrie Railton. Soon Khan would be enlisted to serve his country.
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Everybody is tired of being oversold on products. Everyone had that moment during childhood when they purchased an Amazing Sea Monkeys kit, expecting to own a colony of sentient new mer-buddies just like the ones in the ad. So, the name "Midnight Terror Cave" is probably a bit dramatic, right?
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Giovanni Aldnini had a question: If you can make a deceased frog dance, could you bring a deceased human back from death?
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We know that Viking berserkers wore a lot of fur, and were probably deep into hallucinogens. That's right -- the ultimate Germanic iron age warrior was basically just a light-up pacifier away from being EDM club trash.
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As chief legal counsel of the NAACP, Thurgood Marshall tried hundreds of cases including Brown v. Board of Education before being appointed to the Supreme Court
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Born October 28th, 1936 in Wilmington, North Carolina, Charlie Daniels was a staple of the country music community, having enjoyed a career that spanned more than five decades.
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Amidst a shroud of suspicion, Lena Chapin disappeared in 2006. She has not been seen since.
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The reality of Robert E. Lee a bit more complex than the popular version. This is the real, complex, often ugly, untold truth of Robert E. Lee.
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On May 24th 2006, Rey Rivera's body was found in a disused room annexed to Baltimore's Belvedere, a beaux-arts hotel and Baltimore landmark that had been converted to a condominium in the nineties. He was last seen on May 16th. Sometime in between, he had crashed through the roof of the room.
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The first car was invented by Henry Ford, who built the quadricycle in a shed behind his house in Detroit. It was a horseless carriage, powered by a gasoline engine, unveiled June 4, 1896. Because 'Murica, right? Not so fast, buckaroo.
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Although they now suffer a severe case of camp, vampires lurked in the dark corners of humanity's imaginations for millennia.
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The first time anyone mentioned the name Zozo was in Le Dictionnaire Infernal, a 19th century spotter's guide to the gruesome and unholy. It wouldn't be the last.
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Too often in life, people are divided into socially reinforced groups, diametrically opposed to one another on principle. Jets versus Sharks. Montagues versus Capulets. Contemporary versus classical theater nerds. And, for a time, Star Wars fans were often pitted against Star Trek fans.
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Between finding gold and figuring out whether or not grapefruit is good, dowsing clearly wears a lot of hats. How does such a remarkable feat work?
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Where to begin? In 1906, a sixteen-year-old orphan named Clara Germana Cele confessed to having made a pact with the Devil, in her Catholic mission school uniform. How did that happen, exactly? The details are confusing.
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The Discovery Channel found a bona fide hit with How It's Made. It's fun watching an assembly line of frozen burritos whizzing by or seeing a creator meticulously craft unique handmade goods. But sometimes, these segments get downright weird. These are the most bizarre episodes of How It's Made.
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