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Julius’ subspecies is severely threatened and endangered. The 39-year-old chimp’s precious life nearly came to an end simply because of a careless visitor. Facebook/Dyreparken ZooJulius, Norway’s “most famous chimp,” eating some fruit. When Julius, Norway’s “most famous chimp,” was observed trying to eat his own arm, Dyreparken Zoo officials hurriedly put him under anesthesia to examine him. The Norwegian staff quickly noticed a series of serious self-inflicted wounds and were confounded as to why....

Nick Mead got a real bargain on eBay. When Nick Mead purchased an ex-military tank on eBay, he probably thought he was getting a decent deal. Little did he know, there were five gold bars worth $2.4 million hidden in the fuel tank. Mead, a tank collector from the United Kingdom, owns a company that provides tanks and armored vehicles for driving classes, television and film props and, occasionally, epic parties....

Records prove that John Oliver avoided major taxes, but just how complicit is he? Late-night TV host John Oliver has frequently used his Last Week Tonight program to criticize America’s wealth gap (see video above) and the lawmakers who are only helping to widen it, especially Donald Trump. However, a new report indicates that Oliver himself may have dodged major taxes by exploiting some of the very tactics that those lawmakers helped forge....

After 16-year-old Emma Walker broke up with her boyfriend Riley Gaul, he eventually grew enraged enough to kill her — then posted a message on Twitter to cover his tracks. In 2016, 16-year-old Emma Walker seemed to be living her teenage dream. She was a cheerleader at Central High School in Knoxville, Tennessee, she was surrounded by loving friends, and she was even dating a boy on the football team. But that fall, everything came crashing down when she broke up with 18-year-old Riley Gaul — and he killed her because of it....

Loathed by British imperialists but beloved by the Iraqis, Gertrude Bell negotiated a sovereign Iraq — while opposing women’s suffrage in her own home country. On Mar. 12, 1921, three British diplomats posed in front of the Sphinx in Egypt. They were members of the Cairo Conference, which was given the power to shape the Middle East and Asia in the post-World War I era. Among them was Gertrude Bell, a wildly successful archaeologist, spy, and explorer....

Crustaceans and cephalopods engage in vertical migration on a daily basis. While they can handle the fluctuations in oxygen, climate change might remove a bit too much oxygen for them to handle. Lily McCormickIn a recent study, scientists attached electrodes to the eyes of larvae and then place them in low and high-oxygen conditions to record their retinal activity. The octopus is one of the world’s most intriguing animals. The cephalopod is capable of freeing itself from a jar, and even adapting to its surroundings in a stunning form of camouflage still baffling scientists to this day....

As temperatures begin to cool and daylight hours start to dwindle, there is little better way to send summer off than by sipping a cold beer with family and friends. But what if we told you that what we recognize as Oktoberfest, the German festival which does just that and then some, was not exactly meant to last more than one week? A Brief History Of Oktoberfest The annual festival, which this year takes place from September 20 through October 5th, was actually borne out of a party — and a royal one, at that....

After John Callahan was paralyzed following a drunken car crash, he learned to draw cartoons with both hands, went to rehab, and had is politically incorrect cartoons published in dozens of magazines and newspapers. John Callahan was an alcoholic. Then a car crash rendered him a quadriplegic, and he became an established cartoonist. But if you think of his story as sad or heroic or inspirational, he’d probably hate you....

Ada Blackjack had no wilderness skills before she was forced to fend for herself on a remote Arctic island. Wikimedia CommonsAda Blackjack before the expedition set out. In 1921, a small crew of five set out from Nome, Alaska, for a remote plot of Siberian land known as Wrangel Island. From the beginning, the adventure was a poorly executed one. The crew was small and inexperienced, and the reason for the expedition was flimsy – the captain was hoping to bring the island under British command, despite the fact that the British had never expressed any interest in owning it....

Polio epidemics plagued America as early as the 1890s, but by far the most destructive outbreak occurred in 1952 — leaving tens of thousands paralyzed, in iron lungs, or dead. It may be hard to believe now, but there was a time not all that long ago when a polio epidemic was all but guaranteed to ravage America about once a year. In a post-vaccine world, the polio epidemic has been off most Americans’ radar for the better part of 60 years, but in the mid-1900s, it spread at an alarming rate, especially in children....

After two failed inquiries in 1947 and 1963, a new team of investigators believes that a Jewish notary betrayed Anne Frank’s hiding place to protect his family from deportation. Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesA symbolic tombstone at the former Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lohheide, Germany, where Anne Frank and her sister died of typhus in 1945. Anne Frank was 10 years old when the Nazis invaded Holland. The precocious young Jewish girl spent two years in hiding before they discovered the secret Amsterdam attic in 1944....

A down-and-out dockworker, James J. Braddock shocked America when he took the world heavyweight champion title from Max Baer in a legendary boxing match in 1935. Afro American Newspapers/Gado/Getty ImagesJim Braddock (left) fighting Joe Louis on June 22, 1937. James J. Braddock added that middle initial himself. Though he was actually named James Walter Braddock, he dreamt of following in the footsteps of boxing champs like James J. Corbett and James J....

Far right nationalist parties are on the rise throughout the West. Who are these groups and why are they taking over? Classical fascism has gone into the history books since its defeat in the Second World War. As far as most people are concerned, the fall of Berlin and the bombing of Nagasaki marked the end of the far-right as a potent international movement, and apart from a few non-Western despotisms dressed up as popular governments, the arc of history had seemingly swept away from fascism as an ideology forever....

Michael and Kristine Barnett of Indiana claim that their adopted daughter Natalia Grace is really a psychotic adult dwarf who tried to kill them — but where does the truth lie? Kristine BarnettNatalia Grace Barnett came to the U.S. two years before the Barnetts adopted her in 2010, but had no birth certificate. Initial tests showed she was between 8 and 10 years old, though later tests said otherwise. When Kristine and Michael Barnett of Indiana adopted Natalia Grace Barnett in 2010, They were told she was six years old....

Though no one is sure, Hog Island seems to have disappeared sometime during the 1920s. Wikimedia CommonsAn 1873 map of New York showing Hog Island. Hog Island’s origins are as mysterious as its demise. An 1895 New York Times article offered a creation story that sounds straight out of Greek mythology, claiming, “Hog Island rose from the ocean in a single night, thirty years ago.” Although the landmass off the southern coast of Long Island certainly reached the height of its popularity in the years after the Civil War, chances are that it formed slowly over the years as the ocean current swept sand outwards from the coast rather than springing into being overnight....

The practice is reportedly most popular among the country’s youth and is gifted for birthdays or graduations as well. Wikimedia CommonsKim Il-sung Square on Lunar New Year’s Day, 2017. The Lunar New Year arrived across East Asian countries in early January and has been a great cause for celebration over the last month. While China observed the holiday with fireworks and choreographed dragon dances, the citizens of North Korea have found a surprising alternative in the gift of crystal meth....

Though Shamima Begum described life as an ISIS member as “normal,” she also said it was exactly like what the propaganda videos depicted — and that decapitations didn’t bother her. London Metropolitan Police15-year-old Shamima Begum in Gatwick Airport, 2015. Shamima Begum left her home in Britain to join ISIS in Syria when she was a teenager in 2015. Together with two of her classmates, the young girl was recently found in a refugee camp by UK newspaper The Times....

It could be a fabrication or paranormal phenomena, but the history of Ireland’s Montpelier Hill is fascinatingly macabre. Source: Blogspot Perched atop various grassy knolls near Dublin, Ireland is Montpelier Hill, one of the most haunted locales in all of Ireland’s history. Throughout its nearly three-century long existence, the home has been the subject of many hauntings and other speculated supernatural events. The hunting lodge was originally built atop the now-famous hill by William Conolly, the speaker of the Irish House of Commons, sometime around 1725....

Not only have MIT biologists discovered the very first animal on Earth, they’ve found that it existed 250 million years earlier than previously thought. New research shows that the simple sea sponge was the very first animal on Earth. It’s been confirmed: the first animal to ever evolve on Earth is… the sea sponge. We realize this might be a little disappointing, but wait, there’s more! Real life sea sponges will never be as popular as Sponge Bob, but they are much more interesting than you might first assume....

The diving group has been studying the cave system for over 20 years. After two decades of searching, a group of divers off the coast of Mexico has discovered the world’s largest undercover cave, containing preserved Mayan artifacts and extinct flora. The group was comprised of divers from the Gran Acuifero Maya project, which is dedicated to the study and preservation of the waters of the Yucatan Peninsula and has been studying the cave systems for over 20 years....