In 1852, Mary Ellen Pleasant arrived in San Francisco with a brilliant plan.

Across the span of roughly a century and a half, the 9th of November witnessed empires fall, glass shatter, and a concrete divide crumble.

Imagine receiving a formal invitation from a respected surgeon, not for a dinner party or a musical performance, but to watch a millennia-old corpse be stripped of its bandages.

Few historical figures have lived as chaotically as the man who served as a Christian missionary, a British Member of Parliament, a German spy, a Nazi collaborator, and a Buddhist abbot.

Sixty million years ago, a creature stalked the muddy waters of South America.

In late 2005, music fans who bought compact discs from their favorite artists unknowingly brought a digital spy into their homes.

In July 2005, a torrential flood of 250,000 colorful bouncy balls launched down the steep slopes of San Francisco.

On the night of April 14, 1912, a British freighter named the SS Californian stopped in a massive ice field 5 to 20 miles (8.0 to 32.1 kilometers) from the RMS Titanic.

In 1891, two lumbermen stood at the base of a California sequoia and began a 13-day task. Their objective was to cut down a tree so massive that many people refused to believe it was real.

On January 30, 1962, three students at a boarding school in East Africa began to laugh.