If the news of the week has got you down, this list will do its best to cheer you up. Here we only talk about stories that will lift your spirits because they are positive, amusing, or inspirational. If you prefer to learn about the stranger goings-on of the week, click here to read the

The human body is a marvel of evolutionary engineering, seemingly equipped to counter every roadblock nature dares to throw our way. Most of our body functions have gone through millennia of trial and error to be like they are, but we’re not here to talk about them. We’re more interested in the weird functions that

To most of us who live normal, everyday lives, murder is a striking human behavior, an anomaly that stops us in our tracks and makes us question the nature of humanity—and ourselves. Who are we? To those of us in the civilized world, murder seems to be completely out of the ordinary, especially when the

Almost every town has monuments of some sort—war memorials, statues of people long dead, or pieces of art commissioned to celebrate a momentous national occasion, for example. Sometimes we recognize the names on them. Often we do not. Most of these monuments have become part of the scenery; we walk past them and barely even

Mummies are not just from Egypt. Sometimes, they surface in places like New York and bring plenty of oddities along for archaeologists to chew on. Elsewhere in the world, cemeteries reveal unique glimpses into the fears of ravaged communities or set straight long-held historical misconceptions. A few recent graves also turned up things never before

Birds have always migrated, but humans haven’t always completely understood what was going on. We could certainly see the massive flocks journeying across the skies, but it was anyone’s guess as to why. Not surprisingly, some remarkable ideas and stories about migrating birds have come about through the ages. These erroneous beliefs were largely based