In early 20th-century Washington State, Linda Hazzard operated Wilderness Heights, a sanitarium where patients came seeking health through extreme fasting.

In the early 20th century, Serge Voronoff, a French surgeon of Russian origin, made headlines across Europe. Having trained under Nobel Prize-winning scientist Alexis Carrel, Voronoff specialized in transplants—but not just any kind.

In 1963, a group of West German students in Berlin set out to dig a tunnel under the Berlin Wall.

Between the 13th and 18th centuries, courts across Europe tried animals for crimes.

Long before electricity reached the sea, ships faced a dangerous problem: how to light the decks below without risking fire.

In July 1951, Sweden watched in amazement as 66-year-old Nils Gustaf Håkansson cycled the entire Sverigeloppet, a grueling 1,764 km (1,096 miles) race from Haparanda to Ystad.

In 1962, Brendon Grimshaw, a newspaper editor from Dewsbury, England, bought Moyenne Island, a small 24-acre island off the coast of Mahé in Seychelles, for £8,000.

In 1919, New York City saw an unexpected venture: a chain of coffeehouses founded by the children of former President Theodore Roosevelt.

In August 2008, archaeologists from the York Archaeological Trust made a remarkable discovery during excavations at Heslington, Yorkshire, on land destined to become part of the University of York campus.

In 1922, British archaeologist Howard Carter uncovered the tomb of Tutankhamun in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings.