Before women were allowed to enroll in medical school, Margaret Ann Bulkley studied medicine and assumed the identity of Dr. James Barry for 56 years while dressing as a man. After 46 years of service as an army doctor officer, her secret was not made public until after her death in 1865. […]
There is an upside-down fig tree in Bacoli, Italy. No one is quite sure how the fig tree ended up there or how it survived, but year after year, it continues to grow downwards and bear figs. […]
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William James Sidis, who was only 11 years old when he enrolled in Hardvard, finished his primary and secondary schooling in less than a year. He knew eight foreign languages by the age of eight and even invented his own language, “vedergood.” […]
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These are the mugshots of Will West and William West, and they are not related. They were both sent to Leavenworth Prison at the same time, in 1903, and after some confusion, the staff understood they had two different prisoners with the nearly same name, who looked exactly alike. They are part of the reason fingerprints are now used as identification. […]
Russian scientist injected himself with a 3.5 million-year-old strain of bacteria, just to see what would happen. According to Brouchkov, Bacillus F has a mechanism that has enabled it to survive for so long beneath the ice, and that the same mechanism could be used to extend human life, too. […]
In 1975, when officials in the Chinese city of Haicheng were alarmed by odd and anxious behaviors of dogs and other animals. These observations led them to order 90,000 residents to evacuate the city. Only a few hours later a 7.3 magnitude earthquake destroyed nearly 90% of the city’s buildings. […]
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In 2013, A young programmer offered a homeless man the choice between $100 cash or coding lessons. Leo Grand chose the lessons, and his first mobile app was “Trees for Cars,” which helps drivers find carpooling partners. […]
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American environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill lived in a 1500-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days to prevent it from being cut down by the Pacific Lumber Company. The Simpson’s episode “Lisa the Tree Hugger” was inspired by Hill’s story. […]
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An Indian man traveled from India to Sweden on a bicycle to meet his Swedish wife in 1978. The journey took him 4 months and through eight countries. […]
Hours before his death Edgar Allen Poe was found on the streets of Baltimore. He was incoherent, wearing another man’s clothes, and unable to explain how he got there. The cause of his death is an unsolved mystery. […]
Read More… from Inside The Mysterious Death Of The Famed Gothic Writer Edgar Allan Poe
