AM NY recently reported that West Nile virus claimed the life of one New Yorker, and five others were diagnosed with the disease. Cases were also confirmed in Massachusetts, California, and Ontario, Canada, in September 2020, and authorities in Texas identified the virus in mosquito pools.
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Pies today come in every shape and size and have transformed in every culture they've come into contact with. This is the long history of pie explained.
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When bands break up, it's usually because the members got into a fight or there were creative differences between the group and their management. But there are those few instances when bands fragment because they thought they weren't successful. The Zombies believed that when they broke up in 1967.
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Edison's predictions a century ago about air travel, mass production, electric trains, and smartphones (kinda) were more or less on the mark. His forecast about the role that steel would play in our lives, however, ended up a cold, lifeless heap in the slush pile of attempted augury.
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Few of us really understand why these beautiful arcs appear in the sky. Sure, it has something to do with sunlight and water droplets -- but what, exactly?
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Plague doctors were scary guys in dark robes and long, beaked masks under hats ... right? Here's what it was really like being a plague doctor.
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The 1970s defined themselves slowly. Here are some of the things people get wrong about the 1970s-even people who lived through them.
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They married on March 5, 1876, when Wild Bill was 39 and Lake was 50. The not-so-young couple didn't get to spend much time together.
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In reality, Revere didn't complete the whole ride, wrote Smithsonian Magazine. Nor was he the only rider. He was, however, a real person. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, he was a silversmith and engraver, as well as an American revolutionary.
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It's perhaps the most famous sidewalk in the world, but not many people know the true history of the Hollywood Walk of Fame, even though it has some very interesting tales to be told. Here is the history of the Hollywood Walk of Fame explained.
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Zika is a mosquito-borne virus illness that is spread through a common type of mosquito. Here is what you need to know about the history of Zika virus.
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Sharp, loyal, savage, and obedient, Grese quickly rose in rank out of 170 female SS staff to become the warden of the women's camp, which had 30,000 women in 62 barracks. The barracks were the epitome of squalor and disease, and Grese compounded this suffering many times over.
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The fable originated with "one of Washington's first biographers, an itinerant minister and bookseller named Mason Locke Weems." When Washington died in 1799, Weems immediately saw an opportunity to fulfill the American public's desire to learn more about the founding father.
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MERS, also known as MERS-CoV, or Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus, is a virus transferred to humans from infected animals -- in this case, dromedary camels, the ones with one hump. MedicalNewsToday reports that MERS-CoV was first discovered in Saudi Arabia September 20, 2012.
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The necromancers of our favorite fantasy games and stories were based on some very real practices. This is the crazy history of necromancy explained.
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During the SARS outbreak that ended in 2003, more than 8,000 people had become sick, with 774 deaths.
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At 6'4" he was effectively a giant for his times. He felled trees, split rails, and drove railroad spikes. He was also quite the wrestler. You wouldn't have wanted to fight this guy in close combat. But that doesn't mean he was the best soldier.
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The CDC said there are four different kinds of dengue viruses, and so some people may get the disease up to four times in their lifetime if they're unlucky. While generally considered a mild condition, people do die from dengue. About 400 million are infected with dengue every year.
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Many of the brilliant and influential people in the world are terrible spouses. Unfortunately, this seems to have included the late physicist Stephen Hawking.
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The Indiana Jones movies take a lot of liberties, but Steven Spielberg and George Lucas put a surprising amount of historically accurate info into their films.
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Hart Island has been host prisoners of war, quarantined city dwellers, convicts, the mentally ill, and more. And, almost always, it has been set aside for the burial of New York City's indigent and unclaimed dead. This is the messed up history of New York's Hart Island.
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Ebola is a pretty nasty disease. The virus can cause symptoms that you'd expect to see in a horror film. The more mild symptoms include fever, body aches, fatigue, and intense vomiting and diarrhea. The more extreme cases include kidney and liver impairment.
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Yellow fever has a history of plaguing humans for centuries. While today a vaccine can protect us, it had a history of affecting Panama Canal construction.
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Queen Nzinga was never supposed to be in power, but through sheer force of will, she became respected and feared by all who dared to oppose her.
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The CDC cites statistics from the World Health Organization: "in 2018, 228 million clinical cases of malaria occurred, and 405,000 people died of malaria, most of them children in Africa" with underdeveloped immune systems. It is fatal if not treated.
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You'd think that taking over an airplane the air would require skill or at least sobriety. You'd be wrong. Here are some of history's craziest plane hijackings.
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Medieval peasants were contending with the Black Death and the Crusades, and much of what they ate in a day was a reflection of what they had on hand.
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