When Jeanne Calment was born in 1875, Alexander Graham Bell had just invented the telephone.

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.