In 1936, a brass plate surfaced in Northern California bearing the name of Sir Francis Drake and claiming England’s possession of the land in 1579. For decades, it was celebrated as a monumental historical find.

Deep in the wilderness near Little Fort, British Columbia, in the 1950s, Francis Wharton found himself in need of a new pair of dentures.

In 1974, farmers digging a well near Xi’an, China, uncovered fragments of clay that led to one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century.

The so-called “five-second rule” suggests that food dropped on the ground is safe to eat if picked up quickly—typically within five seconds.

In 1790, in Alexandria, Virginia, an 80-year-old enslaved man astonished prominent visitors with feats of mental calculation so advanced they questioned whether he might once have rivaled Isaac Newton.

On February 28, 2005, with temperatures just above freezing on a Kansas tarmac, Steve Fossett climbed into a strange, mantis-like aircraft with one goal: to fly solo around the world without stopping or refueling.

At the 1912 Stockholm Olympics, a young Japanese marathoner named Shizo Kanakuri vanished during the race—and Sweden listed him as missing for 50 years.

In rural Sardinia, especially in areas like Marghine, Planargia, and Gallura, stories tell of a mysterious woman known as Sa Femmina Accabadora.

Just before midnight on March 12, 1928, a sound like thunder ripped through San Francisquito Canyon in California. Residents, jolted from their sleep, thought it was an earthquake.

On the morning of August 7, 1974, crowds in lower Manhattan looked up and saw what seemed impossible: a man walking on a thin steel cable stretched between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, a quarter mile above the ground.