Stories

On December 15, 1900, a passing ship noticed that the Flannan Isles Lighthouse, newly built off the coast of Scotland, was dark. For eleven days no light shone over the North Atlantic.

In late 1965, a teenager from Alcamo was abducted, held for eight days, and told a marriage would erase the crime.

In the small Ugandan village of Bugisa, one man’s family has grown so large he can no longer remember most of their names.

In 2017, a woman browsing a thrift store in Manchester, New Hampshire, picked up a framed painting from a pile of art stacked against a wall.

Bubbles was born in 1983 at a primate research facility in Austin, Texas. Michael Jackson acquired him as an infant in the mid 1980s through animal trainer Bob Dunn.

In the early 1980s, parts of Glasgow’s East End saw ice cream vans used as moving fronts for drugs and stolen goods.

In the 1970s, Dutch architect Piet Blom decided to turn architecture on its head—literally. He imagined homes as cubes tilted 45 degrees and raised above the ground on hexagonal pylons.

In 1703, Londoners were captivated by a pale-skinned man claiming to be the first visitor from a distant island called Formosa, now known as Taiwan.

On the morning of August 6, 1945, Streetcar No. 651 of the Hiroshima Electric Railway Company was running its usual route near Chuden-mae station. At 8:15 a.m., the atomic bomb exploded just 700 meters away.

In the chaos of World War II, a bear cub found on a roadside in Iran became one of the most unusual soldiers to serve in the Allied forces.