Posts

Poachers are fundamentally altering the African elephant’s gene pool. TONY KARUMBA/AFP/Getty ImagesElephant calves playing at the Amboseli Game Reserve. New reports show that poaching has caused an increasing number of African elephants to be born without tusks. Because poachers have been killing off elephants with tusks, there are now less of those animals in the wild and able to breed. The tuskless elephants that are left to breed are then more likely to pass that trait on to their offspring....

A new study analyzes the fur, feathers, and plant matter found in the 8,000-year-old grave of a young child. Tom BjörklundAn artist’s depiction of what the child buried in Majoonsuo might have looked like. Recently, a team of archaeologists working in eastern Finland made a fascinating discovery in the grave of a Stone Age child dating back 8,000 years. When they sifted through the soil, they found that various canine hairs were present alongside the body....

After an El Paso woman found her pets eating suspicious, pink food left on her doorstep, five cats and one dog died — foaming at the mouth. El Paso Police DepartmentShawn Michael Hanke is a lieutenant firefighter at the El Paso Fire Department. Shawn Michael Hanke has worked at the El Paso Fire Department for 16 years. While the Texan has surely rescued a few cats from trees during that tenure, the 48-year-old has seemingly spent his spare time killing them....

Between 1988 and 2003, John Jamelske abducted women and girls as young as 14 and held them as prisoners in his secret bunker — where he raped them daily. Twitter/Criminal JusticeA depraved kidnapper and rapist, John Jamelske became known as the “Syracuse Dungeon Master” after his arrest and imprisonment. New York kidnapper and rapist John Jamelske earned many names after the world learned the truth about his crimes, from the “Syracuse Dungeon Master” to the “Ariel Castro of Syracuse....

George Stinney Jr. was just 14 years old when he was executed in South Carolina in 1944. It took 10 minutes to convict him — and 70 years to exonerate him. The youngest person in the United States to ever be put to death in the electric chair was an African-American 14-year-old named George Stinney Jr. He was executed in the Deep South in 1944, in the midst of the Jim Crow era....

The candidates for who has killed the most people in history range from despotic leaders to imperial rulers, all of whom killed millions of people during their bloody reigns. Human history is scattered with cold-blooded killers. Some of them led nations and saw millions perish under their harsh rule. Others took lives single-handedly, either as soldiers or as murderous serial killers. But who killed the most people in history? In the running for history’s worst mass murderers are vicious leaders like Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, and King Leopold II....

The culprits are allegedly not customers but are instead en route to a nearby drug testing facility. First Coast NewsBP gas station and convenience store owner Parul Patel has instituted a strange ban with their microwave. Weird news in Florida is certainly “heating up” as one Jacksonville gas station owner is “sick and tired” of locals using his microwave to warm their urine. BP gas and convenience store owner, Parul Patel, claims “random people keep walking in every day” to warm containers of their urine in his microwave....

These Jackie Kennedy quotes reveal the iconic first lady’s wisdom on everything from history to sex to her husband’s assassination. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is likely the most iconic first lady in American history. Embracing the role, she transformed the White House with museum quality paintings, a French chef, and many glamorous parties. Her fashion sense was religiously imitated by women around the globe, her popularity abroad once prompting John F. Kennedy to say, “I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris — and I have enjoyed it....

Virginia “Ginny” Oliver learned how to trap lobster from from her dad in 1927, and today she still fishes with her 79-year-old son. Boston Globe/InstagramOliver measures each lobster and releases those too small to keep. While most elderly folks are content to spend their later years at home, Virginia Oliver wouldn’t dream of it. The lifelong Mainer and lobster trapper learned her trade at 7 years old, still spends three days a week at sea — and just celebrated her 101st birthday....

It takes some serious eccentricity to produce timeless works of art. Artists tend to be an eccentric lot. After all, it takes a good amount of mental and emotional contortion to bring the deepest parts of the human imagination to life. Indeed, behind the works of our most beloved artists are fascinating — if not troubled — personalities with strange habits and quirks. Some embodied the starving artist and lived in their own filth for the majority of their lives....

Immortalizing the collective elation (or heartache) following a play in one single frame, sports and photography have been a complementary team since the invention of the first camera. It’s in this vein that Sports Illustrated recently released what it considers to be the magazine’s greatest football photographs from its 60 years in print; a historic collection that captures memories and the raw, undiluted power of America’s national pastime. 2011: Aaron Hernandez of the New England Patriots has his helmet forcibly removed by linebacker David Harris of the New York Jets....

The daredevil has performed over 301 stunts before, gaining a large social media following. A Chinese daredevil fell to his death last month while performing a stunt atop a 62-story skyscraper, catching his own fatal fall on camera. Daredevil Wu Yongning, an internet star famous for capturing video of himself scaling tall structures or dangling over ledges at dizzying heights, died on Nov. 8, according to police, though his death wasn’t announced until a month later when fans began to question his absence from social media....

“I was afraid that I wasn’t going to be able to participate in life,” Erik Weihenmayer remembered thinking after he first went blind at 14. But that’s not how things turned out. Wikimedia CommonsErik Weihenmayer Ever since Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the first documented summit of Mount Everest in 1953, climbers have been competing for other “firsts” on the mountain. And in 2001, American mountaineer Erik Weihenmayer accomplished one of the most astounding Everest firsts of all when he reached the treacherous peak despite the fact that he was blind....

Giles Corey and his wife Martha were already outsiders in the farming village of Salem, Massachusetts when they were accused of witchcraft. They subsequently faced a torturous fate. Giles Corey was a prosperous farmer with a bit of a dark past. An upright and proud man, he had a few times escaped the punishments of the leaders of Salem, Mass. His relationship with the community was strained and the people of Salem might have wanted revenge, thus the Salem Witch Trials became the perfect cover for getting away with his and his wife, unconventional Martha Corey’s, murder....

Scientists recently developed a “shark eye” camera that replicates the way deep sea sharks see each other in the ocean’s darkest regions — and some of them apparently glow in the dark. The study, just published in Nature, reveals that certain sharks exhibit fluorescence in deep sea environments. For instance, the catshark usually appears in a muddy brown color closer to the surface. As it swims deeper into the ocean, though, it amps up its biofluorescence and turns a bright shade of green, making it easier to see by its deep sea peers....

In the early 1980s, Griselda “La Madrina” Blanco was one of the most feared drug lords of the Miami underworld. Known as “La Madrina,” Colombian drug lord Griselda Blanco entered the cocaine trade in the early 1970s — when a young Pablo Escobar was still boosting cars. While Escobar would go on to become the biggest kingpin of the 1980s, Blanco was perhaps the biggest “queenpin.” It’s unclear how closely she was linked to Escobar, but she is said to have paved the way for him....

Despite Adolf Hitler’s anti-drug rhetoric, Nazi Germany used a little courage pill called Pervitin to take Europe by storm. It turns out it was pure methamphetamine. Just before meeting with Benito Mussolini in the summer of 1943, Adolf Hitler was feeling seriously ill. Still, he couldn’t ditch an Axis power meeting, and so Hitler’s personal physician injected the Führer with a drug called Eukodal — think oxycodone combined with cocaine — to perk him up....

James Stacy was nominated for two Emmys despite having become a double-amputee in 1973. But this reputation was tarnished by his 1995 conviction. Wikimedia CommonsJames Stacy enjoyed fame as a beloved Western TV actor before the tragic accident that made him a double-amputee. James Stacy was a popular Western TV star during the 1960s. His most famous role as the brother to Wayne Maunder’s character in the Lancer cowboy series seemed to prepare him for a career in stardom....

A recent mass poaching poses an additional threat to the reindeer population. Santa might face a worker shortage this year, as 20,000 reindeer were recently slaughtered in Siberia. The mass poaching, which was uncovered by the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF) in Russia, took place in 800 locations along a 930-mile route. Investigators found 300 deer carcasses in the forest — indicating that the well-armed poachers didn’t bother to aim before firing at the herds....

William Cooper has often been called the father of conspiracy theories. He covered it all: the JFK assassination, the AIDS epidemic, and the extraterrestrial threat he thought was going to bring America to its knees. YouTubeA CNN interview with Milton William Cooper. If believing in conspiracy theories was a faith, Milton William Cooper could be considered a founder of that religion. Dealings With Extraterrestrials 1988 was the year Milton William Cooper first made a splash on the conspiracy theory scene....