Located in Hays County, Texas, is a submerged sinkhole fed by a natural spring known as Jacob's Well. Things look bucolic on the surface, but if you dive deep into the sinkhole, you'll find an underwater cave system whose siren song has led multiple divers to their deaths.
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"Alcatraz," said Thomas E. Gaddis, was the federal prison "with a name like the blare of a trombone ... a black molar in the jawbone of the nation's prison system." And he should know, because he's the author who gave us the 1955 book The Birdman of Alcatraz.
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For every activist there is an equal and opposite re-activist. In the case of Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg, that opposite is 19-year-old German Naomi Seibt.
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For something that happens almost every four years, it can still be a shock to wake up on leap day and notice that your calendar reads February 29th.
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In World War I, the 3rd South African Infantry Regiment's had an iconic member: Jackie, the lovable Chacma baboon who witnessed more trench warfare savagery than the snowflake, iPhone-loving primates of today could ever fathom. This is the untold truth of Jackie, the baboon who fought in WWI.
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Sinatra invited us to come fly with him, back in the '50s, and later asked us to fly him to the moon. Were those round-trip tickets? He never said. Maybe we assumed he could afford one-way fares, because one-way fares are more expensive than round trips, right?
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Decent shoes can set you back a pretty penny, but in June 2019, one collector shelled out a whole lot of cash to buy the most expensive sneakers ever sold.
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Young people have always enjoyed pulling crazy stunts, and that’s definitely true for college students back in 1939, who were all about swallowing live goldfish.
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Apocalyptic locust swarms aren't just a plague from biblical antiquity. NPR writes that in 2020, the already poverty-plagued Horn of Africa is under assault from swarms three times the size of New York City. Nothing can stop them... except ducks?
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New York City sees an average of six manhole explosions a day, and they are doozies. What causes this cartoon-like phenomena to take place?
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The legacy of Phineas Taylor Barnum is a cultural monolith built on murky ground.
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An alternative voting method has been making huge strides in the past few years, which combines the benefits of caucuses and traditional voting in one bright, shiny package: it's called ranked-choice voting. Here's how it works.
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"I am Spartacus." It's a rallying cry to this day, people together for a common cause, acting as one. But whether or not the moment actually happened in history, we're still asking: Who was Spartacus?
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For Catholics, fasting during the Lenten season (Ash Wednesday to Easter Sunday) is a way to practice spiritual discipline and penance leading up to their holiest day of the year. In 17th century Bavaria, however, some very clever monks spent their Lent living off of nothing but beer.
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Just one month before the release of Enter the Dragon, Bruce Lee died in Hong Kong, where he had been working on what was his final, uncompleted film, Game of Death. But it was never fully realized.
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The J.M. Smucker Company, manufacturers of Jif peanut butter, have teamed up with popular GIF database Giphy to produce limited edition peanut butter jars that may settle the pronunciation debate.
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Dreams, or "sleepy-time brain television," have long been a point of fascination. Sometimes, those dreams involve snakes.
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On February 23, 2020, former stuntman and noted rocket-themed daredevil "Mad" Mike Hughes perished in an equally rocket-themed accident in Barstow, California.
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Humans have been trying to outdo and impress one another by building massive structures since the earliest days of civilization. And we don't care how expensive those buildings get.
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Zamboni driver David Ayers starred in his own inspirational sports story when he was brought in as a replacement goalie for the Carolina Hurricanes.
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It's so expensive to lace up in a pair of Kanye West's Yeezys you'll need a prenup before you tie the knot. So why are Yeezys so expensive?
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Queen Elizabeth owns a great many things like jewelry, palaces, and works of art. And you'd think that would be enough, right? But no. Apparently, her majesty also needs to own all of the whales off the coast of Great Britain. Here's the weird reason Queen Elizabeth owns so many whales.
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The sun never set on Queen Victoria's empire, but eventually, as suns tend to do, it set on her life. And after she passed away, the queen's funeral was incredibly bizarre.
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Home is where the heart is, but occasionally you find other body parts there, too. In 2020, a person inspecting the foundation of a Gainesville, Florida home found "at least six jars of preserved human remains, mainly tongues," stashed under the floorboards.
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As officials race to stop the disastrous coronavirus in its tracks, another horrifying fallout has been the widespread racism and xenophobia now being targeted at people of Asian backgrounds.
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The Farrington neighborhood in Sunderland, England was trying to get through Storm Dennis just like every other community in the area. Well, to be fair, there was one small difference. As UPI tells us, they were also dealing with a mysterious infestation of pillow cases filled with snakes.
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