Many people have heard the story of Typhoid Mary, the healthy woman who spread disease everywhere she went. However, almost no one knows the story of Mary Mallon, a feisty woman with a carving knife, who fought hard for freedom from imprisonment from the New York City Health Department. Of course, Mary Mallon was “Typhoid

To many Americans, the flag of the United States of America is a symbol of national pride that they display on flagpoles in front of their homes, on their clothing, and pretty much everywhere. Few countries enjoy the considerably ubiquitous nature Americans have with their flags, which may seem strange to anyone not from the

Geisha are one of the most iconic images we associate with Japan. If there’s one thing most Westerners can say they know about Japan, it’s that they had those female prostitutes who covered their faces in thick, white paint. One problem: None of that’s exactly true. Geisha weren’t prostitutes, and they didn’t always cover their

After Kenneth Arnold kick-started the UFO craze in 1947, a group of believers sprang up, claiming that they had sustained contact with flying saucers. These “contactees,” as they were known, told outlandish tales about talking to aliens via telepathy and visiting distant planets. Their most famous spokesmen, such as George Adamski and his friend George

Throughout history, mankind has found a number of ways to kill each other, whether through swords, bullets, or bombs. However, stupidity or bad luck have also led to a number of odd ways to die, including many that even the most creative cartoonist would never have thought of. This is a list of the first

Behind every historical artifact at a museum, there’s a perfectly normal and rational explanation as to how and why it came to be. Yet, every so often, something is discovered that leaves scientists and historians utterly baffled, to the point of dedicating years of their lives trying to shed light on its origins. Here are

Whether it’s stuffing a body in a vat of acid or forcing a snitch to dig his own shallow grave, almost every movie with a body in it has its own way of getting rid of the corpse. Hollywood has expended more creativity into thinking up ways to hide a body than into writing a