From unspectacular beginnings as a relatively nondescript medical facility, Arkham Asylum (originally Arkham Hospital) expanded, warped, and eventually became the gothic labyrinth of villainy you know today. But did you know that a real life mental institution inspired it?
Read MoreUFC president Dana White is a pretty powerful dude these days. However, everyone has to start somewhere ... and his start came while running away from the Winter Hill Gang, a gangster outfit led by none other than Whitey Bulger, the notorious gangster.
Read MoreIf you give a mouse a cookie, it will ask for a glass of milk. So, one might logically conclude that if you give a mouse a house, it will ask for a magic kingdom. When the Walt Disney Company became the House of Mouse, its resident rodent helped build an empire.
Read MoreAfter a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, patrons took up whatever they could find and fought back against their oppressors, and amid the chaos, the Gay Rights movement was born. This is the untold truth of the Stonewall Riots.
Read MoreAll by his lonesome, Elfego Baca took on over 80 outlaws and dodged hundreds of bullets in a clash that lasted more than 33 hours.
Read MorePatty Duke's colorful career in acting spanned across seven decades, earned herself 13 awards, and even won herself an Oscar for The Miracle Worker. As Patty Duke struggled with bipolar disorder, addiction, and personal loss, she became a strong mental health advocate and a powerful memoirist.
Read MoreThe author was not only accomplished, he lived an insane and exciting life, including, per Biography, marriage to an Academy Award-winning actress, Patricia Neal. And on top of all that, he was a pretty awful dude who said some pretty awful stuff.
Read MoreAlthough it's a sport that involves two highly athletic competitors going at each other with swords, fencing is actually much safer than many other popular sports. A five-year study by sports science professor Dr. Peter Harmer found that it is especially safe for children and youth.
Read Morethe case came to a close. The 1817 case came to a close. Or it would have, if it weren't for the fact that the whole thing happened again 157 years later. In a series of eerie coincidences, Barbara Forrest met her astonishingly similar and tragic end in 1974.
Read MoreSteve Austin retired from competition in March of 2003 after losing to The Rock in WrestleMania 19, but there has been chatter -- often spouted by the Stone Cold wrestler himself -- that he would come out of retirement to give the new generation of contenders a beer-soaked lesson in respect.
Read MoreWhile every other nation in the world has a rectangular or square flag, Nepal's flag instead follows a double-pennant design, and has done so for centuries. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, this makes Nepal the only modern country with a non-quadrilateral flag.
Read MoreThe very first pins for clothing showed up around the 14th century BCE. It was called a fibula (plural: fibulae) and was mostly used by the Mycenaeans. The Fashion Institute of Technology explained fibulae functioned like a clasp to fasten garments.
Read MoreGenerations have given rap their own spin, evolving their techniques and the sound of the music in the process. Can it really be fair to compare the early innovators to those more technically advanced who emerged decades later, thanks to the influence of those that came before them?
Read MoreAt the 1936 Olympics, Haiti competed under its civil flag, a horizontal blue stripe on top of an equal-width red stripe. In contrast, Haiti's national flag includes a coat of arms in the center, per CRW Flags, but the civil flag was more commonly used for non-governmental affairs like the Olympics.
Read MoreThe music of Glam Rock is something between the feather boa glitz and dramatic pageantry of stage musicals, plus the fabtastic, over-the-top bombast of rock bands like Queen, or Elton John's ultra-big glasses phase. Add to this distilled essence of Tim Curry from 1975's Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Read MoreIn 2017, a team of paleoanthropologists in Morocco made a discovery that would fundamentally alter our understanding of the origin of our species. Their findings, published in Nature, push back the oldest known beginnings of Homo sapiens another 100,000 years.
Read MoreBarry Bonds was voted Most Valuable Player a record seven times (and finished second in the MVP voting twice). Second, there's his offensive output. Bonds holds the all-time record for career home runs at 762, a number so enormous there's almost no chance anyone will beat it.
Read MoreThe heiress and businesswoman Marjorie Merriweather Post (basically, she built General Foods Corporation) purchased an unkempt patch of palm trees and vegetation off the coast of Palm Beach Island in 1923. Four years later, the brush had been transformed into a million-dollar beachfront property.
Read MoreIf you know one thing about the North Pole, it's that Santa lives there. But if you know two things about the North Pole, then you know that it's extremely cold. The North Pole is the northernmost point on the Earth, lying in the middle of the frozen Arctic Ocean, but not as cold as you imagine it.
Read MoreThey're not just for Thanksgiving turkeys: presidential pardons have long been a contentious practice, seeming to give a green light for close allies of a sitting President to engage in nefarious dealings with the knowledge that a get-out-of-jail-free card will be waiting for them.
Read MoreIn January 1959, Igor Dyatlov, a college student, and his cadre of nine fellow hikers set out to cross Russia's Ural mountains in the coldest part of the year.
Read MoreLawrence's notoriety was thanks to the influence of one man: Lowell Thomas, an American journalist who saw something in Lawrence that he knew audiences the world over would just eat right up.
Read MoreIt sucks to end a relationship during or near the holidays, because it's a time when people want to be around their loved ones. So, why is it that someone is willing to break up during this time? Every relationship is different, but it could be because of a few things.
Read MoreThe colorful tissue paper hats are found inside the Christmas Cracker, a festive cardboard tube that, when pulled, emits a bang and dispenses the hats, along with a small gift and a slip of paper containing a joke or funny motto. Christmas Crackers are a delightful part of the holidays in Britain.
Read MoreThe feud between Van Halen lead singers David Lee Roth and Sammy Hagar has gone on forever. Here's a rundown of the Sammy Hagar and David Lee Roth feud.
Read MoreEven Christmas has fallen prey to 2020. No, Christmas isn't canceled, but it may be a little less bright. Christmas decorations have sold out faster than expected, and retail stores have a harder time restocking their shelves. Several stores have said they were caught short in their supplies.
Read MoreA little more than two months after the tragic death of Eddie Van Halen, news has finally come of the official cause of the legendary rocker's death.
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