In 1983, Australians watched in disbelief as a 61-year-old potato farmer in work boots outran a field of elite athletes in the 875-kilometre Sydney to Melbourne Ultramarathon.

This rare oceanic material, expelled by sperm whales and often called “floating gold,” has mystified and enriched humans for centuries.

In 1930s Chicago, Eliot Ness had made a name for himself resisting bribes and taking on organized crime.

In July 1518, in Strasbourg, a woman stepped into the street and began dancing uncontrollably. Within days, between 50 and 400 people joined her, dancing day and night.

There, in the gutter, he found a delirious man dressed in ragged clothes. It was Edgar Allan Poe.

In July 2013, 28-year-old Bernardo Leónidas Quirós left with his wife Alejandra, their two daughters, and their German shepherd Talero for a trip across southern Argentina.

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.