Stories

Every day, New York City’s subway shuttles millions of commuters through crowded tunnels. But in 2015, researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine discovered that these stations carried more than just passengers.

In southern Brazil, near the Argentine border, lies a small municipality that has puzzled scientists for decades. Cândido Godói, with just over 6,000 inhabitants, is no ordinary town.

In 1847, tragedy struck when Semmelweis’s friend Jakob Kolletschka died after being cut by a student’s scalpel during an autopsy.

Carrie Edwards of Midlothian, Virginia, matched four of the first five numbers plus the Powerball in the September 8, 2025, Virginia Lottery drawing.

Wu Zetian’s rise to power was as dramatic as it was controversial. Married first to Emperor Taizong as a concubine and later to his son Emperor Gaozong, she became empress in 655.

Ota Benga was born around 1883 among the Mbuti people of the Congo Free State.

On July 12, 1979, Comiskey Park in Chicago became the site of one of the most infamous promotions in Major League Baseball history.

When Germany invaded Denmark in April 1940, Niels Bohr faced an unusual problem. Inside his Institute of Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen sat two gold Nobel Prize medals that did not belong to him.

In Poznań, Poland, the safety of drinking water rests in the shells of eight mussels.

In the late 19th century, a haunting photograph captured two men in bowler hats standing atop a towering pile of bison skulls.