On April 1, 1898, William James Sidis was born in Boston to Boris and Sarah Sidis, Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who fled antisemitic violence in the Russian Empire.

In the early 1630s a potent arsenic based poison known as Aqua Tofana appeared in Sicily. The first recorded cases date to 1632–33, when Francesca la Sarda and Teofania di Adamo used it.

Francesco A. Lentini was born on May 18, 1881, in Rosolino, Italy, with a third full-sized leg extending from the right side of his body.

From the 1830s to the 1880s, P. T. Barnum drew large audiences by promoting performers and attractions billed as “human curiosities.”

In late summer 1989, construction workers renovating a 150-year-old building in Augusta, Georgia, uncovered thousands of human bones buried in its basement.

You’d hardly imagine that two villages separated by barely 2.2 kilometers would hold such different fates.

In 1797, after leaving the presidency, George Washington planned to enjoy a quiet retirement at his Mount Vernon estate.

Deep in Phong Nha–Kẻ Bàng National Park in Quảng Bình, Vietnam, lies Hang Sơn Đoòng, the world’s largest known natural cave.

Deep within the Svalbard archipelago, at the foot of the pyramid-shaped mountain that gave it its name, lies Pyramiden, an abandoned Soviet coal mining settlement.

About 12 kilometers north of Šiauliai, Lithuania, lies the Hill of Crosses, a site that has drawn pilgrims for nearly two centuries. Its origins trace back to the 1831 Uprising against the Russian Empire.