Some people in history have been so strange and baffling that we may never know their story. For example, Tarrare was known for his extreme hunger and bizarre eating habits. Records indicate that he had an insatiable appetite and could eat more than 20 pounds in one day. What caused his insatiable hunger? To this […]
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WW2 was a global war lasting from 1939 to 1945. The majority of the world’s countries, including every great power, faced off in two opposing camps: the Axis and Allies. In the end, over 70,000,000 people were dead, and large chunks of Europe and Asia were left in ruins. Test your knowledge about this great
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Even though Ching Shih was only active as a pirate for about nine years, she certainly earned the “World’s Most Successful Pirate.” Also known as Zheng Yi Sao and Shi Yang, she was born in 1775 to a family of humble means. When she turned 26, she married a pirate named Zheng Yi. After he
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Isolated in the Venetian Lagoon, Poveglia Island is a place that has long been shrouded in mystery. Geographically, it’s just a few miles from Venice, Italy. The island has a long and dark history, dating back to the Roman Empire. Over the years, it has served many purposes, but ultimately it ended up abandoned and
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Anyone who has seen an old cowboy film has almost certainly laid eyes on a large, broad-brimmed hat with a high, rounded crown. This “10 gallon hat” has been the distinguishing characteristic of the traditional North American cowboy. The hat’s date of origin is not known precisely, but historians suspect it originated circa 1925. There
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There are dozens of well-known fictional characters with blue skin, from Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan to X-men’s Beast to Neytiri in Avatar. Real people, though? They don’t tend to come in blue. Or do they? In reality, the Fugates family of Eastern Kentucky, particularly those alive in the early to mid-20th century, were born with blue
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Eighteenth-century Europe was a period in which clubs and societies abounded. In an age before that most modern types of entertainment, the moving screen of cinema and television, many people spent their leisure time in taverns or pubs. But for the upper class of British society, there was an increasingly snobbish desire to establish societal
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One would think that of all the senior members of the Nazi regime, someone like Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazis, or Heinrich Himmler, the head of the SS, would have been deemed ‘The most dangerous man in Europe.’ But that wasn’t the case. By the end of the Second World War in 1944,
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The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were the golden age of classical music. In the early part of the eighteenth century, known as the Baroque period, Johann Sebastian Bach perfected the fugue technique. In the Classical period, Ludwig van Beethoven composed his famed orchestras. Perhaps the most significant composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s career, fell between these
What Really Killed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? Read More »
Tattoos have had a fraught and complex history around the globe. What was once an important sacred and cultural form of expression quickly became stigmatized by the advent of modernism and colonialism. No one country can lay a claim to inventing the art form. Ancient Greek pottery depicts tattooed Thracians, and a 5,300-year-old mummified body
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