The Ford Model T was the first affordable automobile. Henry Ford famously said that his vehicle was targeted at the common man. Only the rich could afford a car before the Model T came along, and it actually became less expensive throughout production. It cost $850 at the time it was unveiled in 1908 and

Ethiopia covers most of the Horn of Africa. But that is the least of its feats. The region is rich with history and strange things. There are wolves masquerading as jackals, rainbow-colored springs, and unique magnetic miles. Ethiopia has many of the world’s oldest wonders. But it also leads with novel projects that fight modern

In one form or another, chocolate has been with mankind for centuries. The delectable snack has an unusual European history. First viewed with suspicion, chocolate became medicine and finally turned thousands into chocoholics. This popularity hides the industry’s nasty side. A chocolate coating is a smuggler’s best friend, and companies sell dangerous products. In Japan,

The legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table has been popular for centuries. King Arthur himself emerged as a literary figure sometime after 800 when he started to appear in manuscripts such as the Y Goddoddin in Wales. The history of his loyal knights, however, is much less clear. They first

Feces are waste—so they must not be valuable. We just dump it and forget all about it. This is even though some pieces of excrement out there are worth hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. And yet people actually pay sewer and water bills to get rid of their poop. It’s not just

Different cultures once thrived in Mesoamerica, a region in southern North America. The civilizations were otherworldly enough to stay fascinating today. Recent discoveries did not disappoint. Societies older than the Maya knew about magnetism, turkeys were gods, and nearly the whole Mesoamerica knew how to get high. The Maya also invented the papaya we eat

Water only exists as a solid, liquid, or gas, right? Wrong! It can exist in a number of other states and forms, including some that you might not have heard of. Would you believe that water can become hot ice or even powder? Yes, powdery water is a thing. Now, you might be thinking, “How

The bogeyman is an overused cliche. But this trite quality does not obscure the fact that he has existed in every culture at every time. There have always been things out there in the dark waiting to get us. Most of the time, insofar as the stories go, things going bump are supernatural entities like

It’s easy to view history through an oversimplifying lens—a phenomenon which often happens with the United States Civil War. Generalizations might proclaim, for example, that all Confederates were white Anglo-Saxons who wholeheartedly opposed both change and the American constitutional order. It is true that the Confederacy would not have come into its brief existence without

Far too often, there is a tendency to focus on negative or violent events while positive news items take a back seat. That’s not the case here as this list covers only stories that inspire, amuse, and uplift. If weirdness is more your thing, you can also check out the offbeat list right here. This

Sometimes, genius arrives simply by chance, not by choice. That explains why some of the greatest inventions happened by accident. In some cases, the inventor was searching for one thing but found something very different. However, in one case, it was a casual walk through the woods that led to the discovery. Find out how