history
Your parents, teachers, inspirational ABC family movies, etc., have all probably explained to you that you are a special and significant unique snowflake, and that if you believe in yourself you can achieve anything and become president and an astronaut and the world’s handsomest genius. Small comfort to those of us who grew up to eat Bugles in our underwear while watching reruns of "The Office." But a few people really did end up changing the world in massive ways just by working hard, thinking quickly or simply doing their jobs properly. Many of these people are lost to history for a number of reasons ...
Torture. For ages, humans have used whatever means were at their disposal to get people to confess, whether it be to enemies on the battlefield or traitors within the realm. Is torture gone? No way. As long as humans walk the Earth, they’ll find ways to inflict pain. As a testament to our creativity, many movies invent new ways to portray the destruction of the human spirit, like in the 1970s movies “Marathon Man” and “A Clockwork Orange.” With that in mind, here are 10 of the most infamous methods of torture that have been used throughout the world. The Rack Used in the Middle Ages, the ...
Some say dentists have the highest suicide rate among all professions. Not so; it’s actually physicians. Try telling that to writers, though, those sensitive, sun-challenged, pale creatures who spend their days in isolation, staring at a blank screen, bleeding for their art, pitching their wares to an uncaring public. No wonder the following writers ditched their typewriters and hit the delete button on their lives. Makes you wonder why great art comes at such a high cost. The only upside? No one is better qualified to write a suicide note. Here are 11 famous writers who took their own lives. Breece D’J ...
John Quincy Adams The sixth President was probably the weirdest dude to hold office up to that point. Sure, he was an excellent foreign-policy negotiator who shaped America’s place in the world, but he also loved to sneak out of the White House every morning, take all of his clothes off and go for a refreshing skinny dip in the Potomac River. Considering that he also kept a pet alligator, that strikes us as a remarkably ballsy move. ...
By Craig Gottlieb Before Lee Harvey Oswald's brief time in the public eye was cut short by nightclub owner Jack Ruby, his life was like a bad movie script: quixotic, curious, mildly entertaining, but not much worth watching. An outsider who learned to shoot while in the Marines, the restless Oswald may have been the only man ever to defect to the Soviet Union and then move back to America. And whether you believe Oswald acted alone in shooting the president or had help from the CIA, Mafia, KGB, Cuban intelligence or some random dude on a hill, we do know Oswald bought this 6.5 mm Mannlicher Carcano rifle by mail ...
