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The congressman made headlines earlier this year when he threatened to duel lawmakers who he blamed for Congress’ inability to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The previously unknown member of Congress behind a large sexual harassment settlement paid out through a little-known congressional account has been identified. Congressman Blake Farenthold (R-Texas) used a taxpayer-funded Office of Compliance account to pay an $84,000 settlement when he was sued for workplace sexual harassment by one of his staffers, reported Politico....

In 1866, Cathay Williams changed her name to “William Cathay,” disguised herself as a man, and became a Buffalo Soldier. U.S. ArmyA painting of Cathay Williams. At the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, over 400 women disguised themselves in order to join in the fray. But 17-year-old Cathay Williams, a Black slave, was not one of them. After Union soldiers freed her, Williams became a cook and washerwoman for their army....

First, they saw that the orb was bigger than them. Then they saw the thousands of little creatures wriggling around inside. YouTubeResearchers diving in the Norwegian Sea came upon this mysterious floating blob while searching for a World War II shipwreck. Time and again, the deep sea reveals the most extraterrestrial-looking life we’ll ever see without actually leaving Earth. This was precisely the case during a recent dive in the waters near Ørstafjorden, Norway....

Source: Etsy While very few baubles blinked or buzzed under the tree when Dr. Seuss introduced the world to the noise-hating Grinch in 1957, Seuss’s vision of a loud, cacophonous and automated future of the toy industry was rather prophetic. In the 1950s and 60s, toys and games were still very low-tech and relied on human exertion to be enjoyed, like the Hula Hoop, Play-Doh, the passive Barbie doll and games like Yahtzee....

By the time of Al Capone’s death, the 48-year-old had deteriorated so severely from the advanced syphilis ravaging his brain that he had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old. While there were plenty of gangsters who made headlines in the Roaring Twenties, Chicago mobster Al Capone always stood out from the pack. In the span of just a decade, Capone rose from being a street thug to the FBI’s “Public Enemy No....

Known As “Joe the Boss,” Joe Masseria headed what’s now known as the Genovese crime family until he was killed in a hail of bullets in Coney Island on April 15, 1931. While today we think of “Mafia” as a byword for organized crime, in the early days, the Mafia wasn’t all that organized. At the beginning of the 20th century, there was little structure to the Mafia. Instead, minor gangs waged brutal wars against each other for dominance over their rackets....

The Hubble Space Telescope takes some of the most amazing photographs in the entire universe. This close-up of cosmic clouds and stellar winds features LL Orionis interacting with the Orion Nebula flow. Adrift in Orion’s stellar nursery and still in its formative years, variable star LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than the wind from our own middle-aged Sun.NASA Discovered over the course of the years 1745 and 1746 by French astronomer Philippe de Cheseaux, the Eagle Nebula pictured here is part of the Pillars of Creation that was first photographed by the Hubble telescope in 1995....

On April 22, 2004, former NFL star and U.S. Army Ranger Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan — and it may not have been an accident. After the 9/11 attacks, Pat Tillman gave up a lucrative football career to join the U.S. Army. But in 2004, he was tragically killed by the Taliban — or so his family and the American public were led to believe. As the story went, Tillman had bravely rescued dozens of his fellow soldiers before he was gunned down by enemy forces in Afghanistan....

Jamison Bachman spent years as a serial squatter, terrorizing his roommates and even trying to force them out of their own homes before ultimately murdering his own brother. Montgomery County DAJamison Bachman, the “serial squatter” who terrorized his roommates for years. Jamison Bachman seemed like a successful, trustworthy man. He was charming, he had a law degree, and those who knew him professionally had nothing but positive things to say about him....

At a public town hall event, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau interrupted a woman when she used the word “mankind” in a question to suggest she use the word “peoplekind” instead. On February 2, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a town hall meeting at MacEwan University that included a Q&A session. When asking a question, one woman used the word “mankind.” This prompted Trudeau to interrupt her, saying, “We like to say ‘peoplekind,’ not necessarily ‘mankind,’ because it’s more inclusive....

In 1939, Lina Medina of Peru became the youngest person to give birth when she had a baby named Gerardo at just the age of five. In the early spring of 1939, parents in a remote Peruvian village noticed that their 5-year-old daughter had an enlarged belly. Fearful that the swelling was a tumor, Tiburelo Medina and Victoria Losea took their little girl from the family’s home in Ticrapo to see a doctor in Lima....

According to a radiologist who examined CT scans of the man’s penis, he’s just a big phony. In 2015, Roberto Esquivel Cabrera of Saltillo, Mexico, went viral after he posted a video of him measuring his penis, which he claims is the biggest in the world. He claimed in the video that his penis measured 18.9 inches and that he was hoping to get recognized by the Guinness book of world records....

A refugee with no paperwork, Mehran Karimi Nasseri had nowhere to go to and nowhere to go back to. Wikimedia CommonsMehran Karimi Nasseri; terminal one of Charles de Gaulle Airport. If you happened to pass through Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle International Airport between August 26, 1988 and July 2006, you may have spotted Mehran Karimi Nasseri. If you thought he was just another passenger waiting to catch a flight, you’d only be part right....

Nancy Wake was far from a damsel in distress, and by the end of the war was number one on the Gestapo’s Most Wanted list. Wikimedia CommonsNancy Wake during her time as a Maquis fighter. On March 1, 1944, French Resistance Captain Henri Tardivat found Nancy Wake tangled in a tree. As he looked up at her hanging from the branches, he remarked on her beauty. “I hope that all the trees in France bear such beautiful fruit this year,” he said....

Filled with calcium-coated cliffs and mineral pools, Pamukkale is a UNESCO Heritage Site in southwestern Turkey that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors a year. In the picturesque southwest region of Denizli, Turkey, there lies a steep valley with hillsides lined with rows of shimmering white stone steps — and an incredible 2,000-year legend. Welcome to Pamukkale. Pamukkale, The Cotton Castle Of Turkey FlickrPamukkale at sunset. Three hundred meters below the surface of the Anatolian plateau, in roiling subterranean caves, mineral-laden water bubbles....

“The limitation of riots, moral questions aside, is that they cannot win, and their participants know it,” said Martin Luther King Jr. in an address to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) just weeks before his death on April 4, 1968. Share Flipboard Email “Hence riots are not revolutionary but reactionary because they invite defeat,” King continued. “They offer an emotional catharsis, but they must be followed by a sense of futility....

Project Odeuropa hopes to document, recreate, and store the smells of old Europe in an accessible online library. Matija Strlic/OdeuropaThe project also hopes that museums will employ these scents for their exhibits. If they had to guess, scientists think historic Europe may have smelled like tobacco or experimental plague remedies. And now, they are working to identify more of these smells and archive them in a digital library. According to the The Guardian, a team of European scientists from various fields, including artificial intelligence, have banded together to work on an ambitious project called “Odeuropa....

Brooklyn-based design firm Snarkitecture just installed the world’s most bizarre “beach.” And you can visit it. Forget sand and seawater. The architects and artists at Snarkitecture have created a beach that’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Using nearly one million white plastic balls, the studio installed a 10,000 square ball pit smack dab in the middle of the National Building Museum’s grand hall in Washington D.C. As if its sheer size wasn’t impressive enough, the installation’s monochromatic white on white color palette makes “The Beach” simply unforgettable....

Around 353,000 babies are born every day. Some of them will be born in hospitals, others at home with the assistance of a midwife or doula, while others will make their grand entrance in the back of a car or ambulance somewhere in between home and hospital. The history of childbirth, and in particular of midwifery, is a complicated and often cyclical one. Throughout 19th century America, midwives attended the majority of births, especially in the American South....

“Blood must be avenged with blood, and accounts with the U.S. imperialists must be settled with, at all costs.” News Dog MediaArtwork from the North Korea’s Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities. The relationship between the United States and North Korea has never been smooth. But to fully understand the fractured relationship between the two nations one must go back almost 70 years to the Sinchon Massacre. This was a series of mass killings allegedly carried out by the United States military forces from Oct....