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. […]
Read More… from Earthquakes: Can Animals Really Predict Them?
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. […]
Read More… from Leo Grand: from homeless to mobile app developer
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. […]
Read More… from The incredible story of Julia “Butterfly” Hill and her legacy
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
In 1969, a musician named Jim Sullivan recorded an album titled “UFO” which featured a song about him being abducted by aliens in the desert. Years later, Jim disappeared and his car was found abandoned in middle of New Mexico desert. His body has never been found. […]
Read More… from Jim Sullivan’s Mysterious Masterpiece: ‘U.F.O.’
Roller coasters were invented to distract Americans from sin. In the 1880s, hosiery businessman LaMarcus Thompson didn’t like that Americans were going to places like saloons and brothels and created the first roller coaster on Coney Island to persuade them to go there instead. […]
Read More… from Roller Coasters were First Invented to Distract People from sin
Robert Landsburg, a photographer who upon realisation that he is going to die in the mount St. Helens eruption of 1980 lay down on top if his equipment to preserve the photographs he had taken of the events. Landsburg‘s body was found 17 days later, buried in ash with his film intact. […]