On a crisp December morning in 1948, two people strolling along an Australian beach stumbled upon a sharply dressed corpse propped against a seawall.

Imagine surviving a train plunging into a freezing river, being sucked out of a crashing airplane, and escaping exploding cars, only to win a massive lottery jackpot decades later.

In 1801, a 26-year-old woman working on a floating brothel in southeastern China received a marriage proposal that would alter maritime history.

For over seven decades, an anonymous figure performed a solitary, secretive tribute at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe.

Instead of remaining government property, the vast forest became the first natural resource in the world to be granted legal personhood, giving the land the ability to own itself.

In 1943, Adolf Hitler ordered the construction of a covert meteorological base deep in the frozen expanse of the Arctic.

In 1916, a small town in Tennessee gathered to witness a 10,000-pound (4,535 kg) Asian elephant named Big Mary hang from an industrial crane.

Suspended 25 meters above the churning Tasman Sea, a perfectly cuboid, white sandstone formation in Australia became an overnight viral sensation.

On October 12, 1964, a shooter fired two bullets on a quiet Georgetown towpath, ending the life of a woman who held Washington’s highest secrets.

In 1927, physicist Thomas Parnell placed dark bitumen into a glass funnel at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia.