Towering above the small German town of Heringen, a massive white mound dominates the landscape. Known as Monte Kali, this artificial mountain is made entirely of sodium chloride—common table salt.

In 1885, Edwin Wiley Grove introduced a medicinal syrup designed to make quinine bearable. After losing his wife and daughter to malaria, Grove set out to create a remedy that masked the bitterness of the life-saving drug.

In 1980, poachers attacked Collin “TC” Thorstenson’s buffalo herd in North Dakota, leaving a three-year-old calf without a mother.

During the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, on October 25, 1962, U.S. presidential advisor Harald Malmgren was briefed by senior CIA and Atomic Energy Commission officials about a classified incident.

In 1271, after nearly three years without a pope, frustrated officials in Viterbo locked the cardinals in a palace and removed its roof to force a decision. This event led Pope Gregory X to establish conclave rules in 1274: electors would be secluded cum clave—“with a key.”

Veijo Rönkkönen lived quietly in the woods of Parikkala, Finland, working at a paper mill for 41 years and avoiding social contact. But in secret, on his rural property near the Russian border, he was building a concrete world—one he worked on for five decades.

Each year, millions gaze up at the 60-foot faces of Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt at Mount Rushmore. The man behind the mountain, Gutzon Borglum, began carving in 1927 at age 60, but his path to the Black Hills began with another project—on Stone Mountain, Georgia.

Before he became the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Jorge Mario Bergoglio—now known as Pope Francis—held a job that few would associate with a future pontiff.

In the late 1800s, people in Gallatin, Tennessee, often spotted an enormous man riding through town in a cart pulled by goats. That man was John William Rogan, who grew to a staggering height of 8 feet 9 inches (267 cm), making him the second-tallest person in recorded history.

In the early 1960s, while the Cold War superpowers competed for dominance in space, a small college in Beirut launched its own race to the stars