Long before humans split the atom, a self-sustaining nuclear reactor quietly ran beneath the ground in what is now Gabon.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, psychologist Walter Mischel and colleagues at Stanford University conducted an experiment that would become one of the most cited in social science.

Faced with violence, corruption, and environmental devastation, the people of Cherán expelled politicians, police, and criminal groups.

In 2015, conservation biologist Neil Jordan proposed a low-cost, non-lethal idea that sounded more like a prank than a serious strategy: painting eyes on the backsides of cows.

Isaac W. Sprague, born in Massachusetts in 1841, lost weight relentlessly from the age of 12 despite eating well.

In 1895, readers of The Boston Post encountered a story unlike any other. It described Edward Mordake, a young English nobleman said to have been born with a second face on the back of his head.

In Cancún, Mexico, a non-profit underwater museum holds 500 submerged sculptures between three and six meters deep. Planned to reduce pressure on nearby coral reefs, the site draws about 200,000 visitors a year and opened in November 2010 after work began in 2009.

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.