Being an author is hard, but when it goes right, it goes right. Some people have managed to use the art of stringing words together to rake in countless millions. So which one of these precious few has done it the best? Who, in fact, is the richest author in the world right now?
Read MoreFor 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.
Read MoreLife hasn't been easy for Carlos Santana. In fact, it's been a long and bumpy road to legendary status for the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer.
Read MoreOn 24 February, 2020, author Clive Cussler died at 88 years old. He lived a pretty extraordinary life. And a pretty successful one.
Read MoreIt's one of those moments in espionage history when someone probably said, "That plan is so crazy, it just might work." Which is fine for movies, but in real life, generally, if the plan is that crazy, it really won't work. Case in point: the incident now known as The Great Locomotive Chase.
Read MoreIn 1990, Willie Nelson found himself at odds with the Internal Revenue Service to the tune of more money than you will ever even find yourself tangentially connected to.
Read MoreThe mortality rate of the coronavirus is somewhere around two percent, and there's no telling just how contagious it is until more data trickles in. What's more, there's a chance that there'll be an outbreak in the U.S. as well. So, what should we do to protect ourselves?
Read MoreJust 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.
Read MoreFor decades, Motley Crue has been a borderline unavoidable presence for even the most casual rock fan. Time after time, they've been bombarding us with hit songs, bad behavior, Netflix specials about songs and bad behavior ... well, you get the idea. But how much have they made?
Read MoreOn February 24, 2020, Rolling Stone dropped a bomb for the metalheads looking forward to Metallica's upcoming festival gigs: The metal juggernaut has canceled its appearances on both May's Sonic Temple festival and September's Louder than Life. Here's why.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreIf the first images of record-breaking glacial melt in Antarctica didn't send you running for your climate comfort blanket, how about these latest images of bloody ice shelves calving into unforgiving seas?
Read MoreActing on a new directive to extend the orbital reach of satellites tens of thousands of miles in the direction of the moon, the shadowy R&D arm of the Pentagon is hard at work on a "nuclear thermal propulsion" engine.
Read MoreAll kinds of disasters, natural and otherwise, have rocked the American landscape through history. Many of them, like the Great Chicago Fire, are remembered by nearly everyone. Other disasters have faded into oblivion, forgotten by all those except the ones who lived them.
Read MorePretty much everyone who grew up in the '90s knows who Pocahontas is. Disney Princess, love interest of the great explorer John Smith, Native American nobility. Yes, Disney taught us many things about the Powhatan heroine, and they're all wrong. Mostly. Here's the truth about Pocahontas.
Read MoreEveryone wants to leave their mark on history, and there's no better way to do that than having something important named after you. Sometimes, that thing is a medical condition. What do you do to earn that? Here are real-life people who had medical conditions named after them.
Read MoreSometimes, coincidences just kind of ... happen, and don't really mean anything. Other times, they might be signs of a vast global conspiracy, a magic spell, or extraterrestrial surveillance, depending on who sees them. These bizarre coincidences all happened on the same date.
Read MoreA new study published in the journal Physical Review Letters may have the solution to science's most angst-ridden puzzle -- why the universe exists at all.
Read MoreSteven Seagal is a great many things: Actor, blues musician, a reportedly difficult coworker, and possibly useless in an actual fight. Does he have the black belt (or, better yet, belts) to prove his skills, or is he one of those martial arts actors who don't even have a black belt?
Read MoreYou'd think that a beard would be a bacteria sanctuary, and the longer, the better for bacteria. Shaving must be healthy. Not necessarily.
Read MoreIf cats knew they were also mostly tiger inside, would they cease to know who or what they are? And are some cats more lion-like than others? If so, which breed best resembles the king of the jungle?
Read MoreOn February 2nd, 1979, the man born John Simon Ritchie was found dead of a heroin overdose the morning after a Greenwich Village party celebrating his release from Rikers Island prison and a compulsory detoxification program. Here's the truth about Sid Vicious' death.
Read MoreThese kiddie shows can't possibly be good for us past a certain age, so we change them.
Read MoreIn the last few decades we've gotten pretty good at tracking many of these potential doomsday rocks, but scientists remain at odds over what we could actually do to alter our fate if we discovered one on a collision course with Earth. Now we're working on a defense system.
Read MoreToday we refer to leprosy as Hansen's disease, named for the Norwegian physician who first identified the causative agent back in 1873. But the disease itself has been around for millennia -- with indications found in human remains dating back to around 2000 BCE.
Read MoreFrida Kahlo’s work is known for portraying both magical realism and suffering. And speaking of suffering, Kahlo had an incredibly hard life, and while she was a talented artist, she died a pretty tragic death.
Read MoreFew people bother trying to deny that Steve Jobs ushered in a whole new age of information technology. Before his untimely death, he introduced the world to brand new wonders such as iPads, iPhones and iPods, and his company to countless millions of sheer cash revenue.
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