In ancient Olympia, rules were strict, punishments swift, and cheating—while rare in records—was harshly dealt with. From bribes to eye gouging, athletes tried anything for victory, but penalties often followed. The Greeks may not have had doping, but they had their own scandals.

In 1959, the U.S. Army constructed Camp Century under Greenland’s ice sheet, 240 km from Pituffik. Publicly presented as a scientific base, it secretly supported Project Iceworm—a plan to build a hidden network of nuclear missile launch sites.

In a remote pocket of Minnesota lies a small piece of land cut off from the rest of the state by water and connected to Canada by land.

In August 1914, just weeks into World War I, the skies over Serbia witnessed an unprecedented moment. During the Battle of Cer, Serbian pilot Miodrag Tomić, on a reconnaissance mission, encountered an Austro-Hungarian aircraft. What began as a wave between airmen turned quickly into the world’s first known dogfight.

In August 1839, over 100,000 people converged on Eglinton Castle in Ayrshire, Scotland, for a medieval-style tournament organized by Archibald, Earl of Eglinton.

In 1936, on a rain-soaked court in Berlin, the U.S. men’s basketball team faced Canada in the Olympic final. Wearing bright white Converse All Stars with red and blue pinstripes, the Americans slogged through mud to win 19–8.

It began with a pun. “May the Fourth be with you” first appeared publicly on May 3, 1979, in a London Evening News ad supporting Margaret Thatcher’s election. But it wasn’t until decades later that the phrase became central to a fan-created celebration of the Star Wars franchise.

In 1958, Robert Timm, a WWII pilot and mechanic for the Hacienda Hotel in Las Vegas, proposed an unusual promotion: fly a Cessna 172 nonstop to break the flight endurance record. The hotel agreed, and the aircraft was heavily modified to support an airborne life.

In 1944, 19-year-old Hungarian soldier András Toma was captured by Soviet forces near Auschwitz while serving in an artillery regiment. He was taken to a POW camp near Leningrad, but in 1947, the camp closed and Toma was transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Kotelnich, Russia. There, he was misdiagnosed with psychoneurosis and removed from prisoner records.

In June 1955, Paul Anderson, a powerlifter from Georgia nicknamed the “Dixie Derrick,” stunned the Soviet Union. During a USA vs. USSR meet in Moscow, he clean and pressed 193 kg (425 lb) in front of 15,000 spectators.