Marie Curie's Forgotten Daughter, Irene Curie

Erin B. | Friday, Nov 28, 2014

What's it like to be the daughter of a Nobel Prize-winning trailblazer? For Irène Joliot-Curie, it was one thing, all right: inspiring. In fact, Irène herself won a Nobel Prize for chemis...

27 Years Later the Max Headroom Hackers Still Remain a Mystery

Dara K. | Sunday, Nov 23, 2014

“Well, if you’re wondering what happened, so am I.” – Dan Roan, WGN sports reporter On November 22,1987, TV channels in Chicago were mysteriously interrupted by someone wearing a Max Head...

The Leopard Man Murders of Africa

Mark H. | Friday, Nov 21, 2014

In the late 1870s, French colonial officials in Libreville, Gabon, started stumbling across the corpses of local peoples. These weren’t simple deaths, though—no victims of disease or even...

Meet the Man Who Catalogs Medieval Cartoons

Emma B. | Saturday, Nov 15, 2014

Just take a cursory look at the art from medieval times and you’ll be as convinced as I that people living through the Middle Ages were somewhat humorless. Maybe it’s the stylistically pl...

The Gibbons Twins Did Everything Together Including Murder

Stephanie W. | Thursday, Nov 6, 2014

“This sister of mine, a dark shadow robbing me of sunlight, is my one and only torment.” —June Gibbons The story of the Gibbons twins sounds like a Hitchcock film. They spoke their own co...

Mel Brooks Once Fought Nazis with Music

Josh H. | Wednesday, Nov 5, 2014

Mel Brooks is best known for his award-winning comedy films such as Young Frankenstein and Blazing Saddles. But Brooks was also a combat veteran of World War II who fought under General P...

Particularly Badass Saints to Remember on All Saints' Day

Jes G. | Thursday, Oct 30, 2014

The fifth century saint Augustine of Hippo once said, “There’s no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.” This is a concept we often forget what with saints’ tendencies to serv...

Saudi Arabia Has an Anti-Witchcraft Unit

Josh H. | Wednesday, Oct 29, 2014

Something afoul or unexplained in the village? Find the witch! Innocent people suspected of witchcraft have been scapegoats for the terrible and unexplained for centuries. In the 21st cen...

Marie Antoinette Built A Fake Peasant Village; Real Peasants Not Pleased

Kristen M. | Tuesday, Oct 21, 2014

Marie Antoinette probably never said, “Let them eat cake,” but that doesn’t mean her subjects didn’t have cause to dislike her (it’s not referring to the delicious cake you’re thinking of...

The Worst Contraceptives of All Time

Emma B. | Wednesday, Oct 15, 2014

Don’t you just love a good glass of onion juice? Or a glass of water with a dash of lead in it? How about some beaver testicles ground up and swizzled into moonshine? This isn’t some hips...

How a Few Men Reintroduced the Church to the Rapture

Chris H. | Tuesday, Oct 14, 2014

Some have deemed the 2014 movie year the “Year of the Bible.” Films like Noah, Son of God, Exodus and Mary are all Bible-based stories released, or to-be-released this year. But 2014 coul...

The Time Columbus Thought Manatees Were Mermaids

Josh H. | Monday, Oct 13, 2014

If you were on a sailing vessel back and someone shouted that there was a mermaid swimming alongside the ship, you’d be pretty bummed when you looked over the side and saw a rotund manate...