The Rajah from Tipperary (the tale of how an Irish farmer ended up ruling his own kingdom in India)There have been many great 'adventurers'. People who have through force of will or luck or the ability to bullshit really REALLY well, ha...
Possessed: Voodoo’s Origins and Influence from the Blues to BritneyVodou (the proper Kreyol/Creole spelling of Voodoo) is a neo-African religion that evolved in the New World from the 6000-year-old West A...
Native Americans Left a Code For Humans To Live ByCertain words of wisdom are followed by every person - regardless of their ethnicity, religion, tribe or culture. These words come from t...
The Roentgens' Berlin Secretary CabinetDiscover the hidden features and intricate interior of this cabinet. One of the finest achievements of European furniture making, this ca...
1914-1918: Black British WW1 ForcesDespite the protests of Lord Kitchener who believed black men should not be allowed to serve, many black men volunteered for and were rec...
Henri Charrière, Imprisoned On The Inescapable Devil’s Island — Then He Escaped and wrote PapillonHow Henri Charrière escaped from one of history's most infamous prisons and then won his freedom from the government that he claimed had w...
Five Female Assassins And Their Deadly TalesWhether it's Jodie Comer in Killing Eve, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill or Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde the world are always more than a li...
When Aldous Huxley Had The 'Most Beautiful Death'Brave New World novelist Aldous Huxley was diagnosed with cancer in 1960, at which point his health slowly began to deteriorate. On his d...
What Makes Edgar Allan Poe So Great? An Animated Video ExplainsHis gloomy, haunted visage adorns the covers of collected works, publications of whose like he would never see in his lifetime. Edgar All...
Watch an Art Conservator Bring Classic Paintings Back to Life in Intriguingly Narrated VideosEven in our age of unprecedentedly abundant images, delivered to us at all times by print, film, television, and especially the ever-mult...
Nicholas Winton, the ‘British Schindler’ who saved 669 children from the NazisOne of the most popular television programmes of the 1980s was BBC magazine show That’s Life. It regularly pulled in more than 20 million...
‘Unbought And Unbossed’: The Trailblazing Presidential Campaign Of Shirley ChisholmIn 1968, Shirley Chisholm made history when she became the first African American woman elected to U.S. Congress. A few years later, she ...
Zitkala-Sa, The American Sioux Activist Zitkala-Sa was born on February 22, 1876 on the Yankton Indian Reservation. She spent her early childhood on the reservation with her mot...
The Story of Ignaz Semmelweis, The Physician and Scientist That Was Ridiculed For Washing His Hands.Ignaz Semmelweis was a Hungarian obstetrician who disproved the belief that post-operations deaths were caused by ‘poison air’ in a hospi...
Last Survivor of Transatlantic Slave Trade – The Life of Matilda McCrearThe life of Matilda McCrear has been unearthed from a dark period of history. Dr. Hannah Durkin of Newcastle University has been research...
Carl Emil Pettersson – the Swedish sailor who became king of Tabar Island in Papua New GuineaAt the beginning of the 20th century, newspapers were filled with stories about the Swedish man who became the king of Tabar Island. Each...
Ole Kirk Christiansen and the birth of the LEGO BUILDING BRICKThe LEGO Group began in the workshop of Danish carpenter, Ole Kirk Christiansen. Ole opened the shop with his 12-year-old son, Godtfred, ...
Bessie Coleman the first African American, and the first Native American woman pilotBessie Coleman soared across the sky as the first African American, and the first Native American woman pilot. Known for performing flyin...
While His Maniac Brother was Busy Killing Jews, Albert Göring Worked Tirelessly to Save ThemWhat would happen to your family should one of your siblings join a deadly political beast? If you were a member of the Göring family in ...
The Origin of the English Alphabet (and all its 26 letters)The English alphabet has a fascinating history, and the development of each letter of the alphabet has its own story. Although English is...
Woody Guthrie’s Doodle-Filled List of 33 New Year’s Resolutions From 1943On January 1, 1943, the American folk music legend Woody Guthrie jotted in his journal a list of 33 “New Years Rulin's." Nowadays, we'd c...
Jonas Salk (1914–1995): A vaccine against polioThose who lived through the 1940s and 1950s will not forget the devastating ravages of poliomyelitis, a spinal cord motor neuron disease ...
The occupation of Alcatraz by Native Americans in 1969On March 8, 1964, a small group of Sioux made landfall on Alcatraz Island, which had been abandoned as a prison the previous year. They...
c. 1321-1941Death masks. Faces from beyond the graveGustav Mahler (1860-1911). While decorative funeral masks have been used to adorn the dead since ancient times, from those gracing Tutank...