It’s an inevitable fact of life that people get old. Many times, age and its changes bring about a need for assistance in day-to-day life. Families unable to provide such care may make the often difficult decision to place their loved one in a nursing home, hoping to keep them safe. Over 1.5 million people

The vast expanse of Siberia holds many secrets and dangers. Despite its harsh seasons, humans have lived among the region’s mountains and lakes for millennia. We know comparatively little about these ancient societies, but we’re learning more all the time. Siberia’s permafrost guards the only traces of unknown cultures, unusual graves, and even more unexpected

Modern technology has turned everyday survival from a vicious challenge into a cakewalk. For instance, a weather app can tell you the local temperature in seconds and seeing in the dark is as easy as turning on your phone’s flashlight. How could we possibly do this stuff accurately and easily without electronics and machinery? Well,

Celebrity can be a beacon that draws in madness. When someone’s name flashes across every part of the world, it starts working itself into the lives of people they’ve never met—including the ones they’d never want to. Every famous star has fans who take it too far. There are thousands of people who spend their

When most people think about racial persecution and genocide during the Nazi regime, the Holocaust is usually the first thing on everyone’s mind. Although it’s true that the Jews endured horrible atrocities, they were not the only ones to suffer under Adolf Hitler’s twisted ideas of racial superiority. The population of African people living in

For as long as people have been making discoveries and expanding the breadth of human knowledge, others have been lying about it. Maybe the hoaxer seeks fame and fortune, maybe he just can’t admit he’s wrong, or maybe he just likes a good prank. Whatever the motivation, hoaxes have led people astray throughout history. Fortunately,

Facial hair can be considered a nuisance or a stylish accessory, depending on who you ask, but to the following ten people, it’s a competitive event that they work toward every year. “International bearding,” as it is referred to, has been around since the late 1900s, but the exact origin is often up for debate.

Kenya is a wild and wonderful place. As the country is filled with lions and giraffes and zebras, you might think it’s little more than a nature preserve for foreign sightseers. How wrong you are. Today, we take you to the wackier side of Kenya where the monkey terrorists reign supreme and the white women

We can all agree that our way of life has changed in some pretty astonishing ways over the years. Technological breakthroughs and our understanding of the human mind and body have led the way in making great strides in our modern world. Our ancient ancestors would undoubtedly have a hard time believing what mankind has

Keeping up with the news is hard. So hard, in fact, that we’ve decided to save you the hassle by rounding up the most significant, unusual, or just plain old mind-blowing stories each week. This week saw the biggest, most surprising geopolitical shift since the Arab Spring. Dictator Robert Mugabe, who briefly held the title

It should be no surprise that someone in history has been caught in a lie. Most people lie everyday: “I’ll be there in five.” “I read the terms and conditions.” “You do look good in those jeans.” Any of those sound familiar? But when you tell a little white lie, you don’t expect it to

When it comes to food, there are generally two types of people. Some like to stick with what they know, ordering the same food from the same places every time, while others like to seek adventure and try new things. Part of that adventure is the fact that you can end up with some strange,

Perhaps second only to the Sun, the Moon has been a central and focal point in the skies over humanity since the beginning of time! Or has it? Even today, in an age where bizarre and outlandish stories flow freely around the Internet, some claims about the Moon are right up there with the best

Natural catastrophes remain mankind’s timeless companion. For those who lived before warning systems and international aid, disasters often meant the death of entire villages or a civilization. Archaeologists are drawn to such events because they tend to leave behind time capsules. Abandoned settlements and skeletons give clues to how people reacted to epidemics and the

Are tattoos just a fad of the times? Hardly. In fact, tattoos were prominent in the good old days of the past, and it wasn’t just the seedy characters getting them. People love to decorate themselves. While stage actors and actresses were getting designs painted on their bodies, there were many other people getting permanent

Perhaps the most famous crime ever committed by men dressed as Santa was a 1927 Christmas bank robbery in Texas, which we’ve previously covered here. However, it’s by no means the only noteworthy Christmas crime that has tarnished Santa’s good image. While we can look back on some and laugh, others are truly horrific. It

Some traits are easily recognized as pieces of our DNA. Hair and eye colors, height, and the shape of our noses can typically be found in one or both of our parents. Ailments such as high blood pressure or mental illness have a hereditary factor, too. Most traits commonly associated with our genetics are physical.

People have always had a fascination with predicting the future. From staring at tea leaves to examining animal entrails, self-proclaimed seers have found a myriad of ways to do so throughout history. One object sterotypically associated with attempting to see one’s future is the crystal ball. Crystal gazing or “scrying” is what psychics do when

When it comes to television, you usually know who and what is going on because all the main characters are right there for you to see. On occasion, a character might be able to cover all their lines and get it done completely behind the scenes. These characters tend to be the wise ones—the givers

2017 has been significant for archaeology. We have uncovered new discoveries and made sense of ones we found years ago. There is still plenty more to learn (as there always will be), but this year helped give us a better understanding of the world as it was hundreds and thousands of years ago. In this

This is the one white light in the sky you don’t want to go toward. And if you can’t figure that out on your own, the boom of thunder afterward should send you racing for cover. Then again, after you hear how a lightning strike dramatically changed an orthopedic surgeon, you may reconsider. Throughout history,

Islands seem to sit in a place between two worlds. They’re land, but they’re surrounded by sea. The isolation that they offer has been fruitful in fiction but has also inspired folklore around the world. How many sailors have spotted an island on the horizon and wondered if it meant salvation or a supernatural threat?

Sometimes it feels like scientists are getting pretty close to solving every mystery there is. We have theories on wormholes, dark matter, the beginning of the universe, and a whole map of how single-celled organisms evolved into human beings. We’ve solved some mysteries so complex that it boggles the mind to even think about them.

Keeping up with the news is hard. So hard, in fact, that we’ve decided to save you the hassle by rounding up the most significant, unusual, or just plain old mind-blowing stories each week. This week, the news in the United States was understandably dominated by the second hugely deadly mass shooting in barely a

Although they’re not always given as much attention as the boys, ancient women do receive their fair share in forensic anthropology. Their stories, told with bone and reanimated flesh, can be as unique as their faces. It’s amazing how much we can learn from ancient facial reconstructions of women. Whether they are witches, saints, powerful

Being gay has always being a controversial topic, so it’s no surprise that governments and researchers have always looked into ways of finding out who is gay and who isn’t. Over the years, they have researched and created several inventions and tests that supposedly distinguished between a gay and a straight male. Many of these

It’s looking likelier every day that the human race will need to leave mother Earth. Whether that’s some of us or all of us, it’s inevitable that space travel will be an eventual part of our future. If tycoons like Elon Musk of SpaceX and Richard Branson of Virgin Galactic have anything to say about

In London in 1690, John Dunton founded the Athenian Mercury, a magazine to answer “all the most nice and curious questions.” It was the world’s first advice column. Any literate person could write in with questions on subjects ranging from the philosophical to the scientific to the personal. One man asked where the wind came

In the age before television and nature documentaries, taxidermy was a way of studying and preserving the natural world by stuffing and mounting animal skins to often produce a lifelike appearance. Specimens, small and large, were collected by scientists and naturalists alike. Taxidermists have a long and sometimes noble history. As far back as ancient

Ice! Anders Breivik! Fish! The invention of the word “slalom!” A socialistic nightmare or wonderland, depending on how much you like Bernie Sanders! What could the subject of this week’s list be, you ask? It could only be the fascinating country of Norway. Let’s see what the frozen land of happiness has to offer. 10