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Pat Garrett didn’t just kill Billy the Kid, he also became the leading expert on the outlaw’s life. In a small town in northern New Mexico, a man hid in a bedroom with a loaded pistol. Two men entered, and upon sensing the presence of the man already there, one shouted “Quien es? Quien es?” (“who is it?”) while reaching for his gun. The first man beat him to it, drawing his revolver and shooting twice, the echo reverberating into the desert night....

The 45-pound cross between a Tibetan mastiff and a Himalayan sheepdog managed to ascend some of the world’s most challenging terrain — and is perhaps the first of her kind to do so. TwitterMera, happy to be on Wargowsky’s Himalayan adventure. Don Wargowsky has been an experienced climber and expedition leader for years — in a sense, he’s seen it all. But when a stray dog approached his group of climbers at 17,000 feet during a challenging ascent up the Baruntse peak in the Himalayas, even for him, this was a first....

It’s virtually impossible to comprehend the scale of a supernova explosion. When a dying star finally explodes into oblivion, the energy emitted is so great that merely writing out the measure of its power becomes surreal: an average bulb will have about 60 watts whereas the biggest supernova explosions have about 220,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 watts. That’s 580 billion times brighter than the sun. How about comparing a supernova explosion to an atomic bomb?...

The couple kept the woman in their home and forced her to work 19.5 hour days without breaks, hot food or hot showers. A Texas couple who enslaved their Nigerian nanny for two years without pay has been ordered to pay her over $121,000 in restitution. According to the nanny, a woman from Nigeria who has not yet been identified, Chudy and Sandra Nsobundo, of Katy, Texas, promised her $100 a month to work for them, after recruiting her from her home country....

The bite of a blue-ringed octopus is one of the deadliest in the world — and it comes in a squishy package. The tiny blue-ringed octopus packs a lethal punch. One of the deadliest animals in the world, this little cephalopod doesn’t have razor-sharp teeth or even the ability to travel particularly fast. But it does produce a neurotoxin with the power to paralyze — or kill. When threatened, rings of electric blue flare along the body of this seemingly harmless mollusk....

Hessy Levinsons Taft’s photo was secretly submitted to a Nazi beauty contest. Out of 100 photos, they picked her, not knowing she was Jewish. Wikimedia CommonsThe January 24, 1935 cover of the Nazi magazine Sonne ins Haus, featuring Hessy Levinsons Taft. First, the photo of the wide-eyed, chubby-cheeked baby girl adorned the cover of a Nazi magazine claiming to have found “the perfect Aryan.” From there, the image spread to postcards and billboards, making its way across Nazi Germany....

Oluale Kossola, or Cudjo Lewis, was abducted by illegal slavers in 1860 and enslaved in Alabama, where he later began a self-contained African community once he was freed. University of South AlabamaCudjo Lewis at his home in Africatown, which was a West African settlement based in Mobile, Alabama. Over the course of nearly 400 years, more than 12 million Africans were abducted by slavers and shipped to Europe and North America....

Even after their leader was gone, the Thugs of India ruled the streets with a deadly hand. Wikimedia Commons A group of Thugs strangling a victim, similar to the way Thug Behram would. For over three hundred years, roughly between the mid 1500’s and the mid 1800’s, travelers in Indian held an unspoken fear. Many knew someone who had gone missing on the roads in the darkest hours of the night....

1,235 square miles of preserved desert have been monitored by 8 personnel due to the shutdown, which has allowed visitors to essentially run wild through the park. GoodFreePhotosJoshua Tree National Park’s once pristine landscape. The government shutdown has wrought an extensive range of misfortune on the country’s National Parks and for Joshua Tree National Park, that misfortune has come in the form of unruly visitors who drive illegally off-road, cut through campground chains and locks, and have even gone so far as to chop down the park’s much-cherished trees....

Samuel Morse first got the idea to invent the electric telegraph in 1832, and by the time he died 40 years later, it was possible to send a message from America to Europe within minutes. Authenticated News/Getty ImagesSamuel Morse sending the first public telegraph from the Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol to Baltimore, Maryland, on May 24, 1844. When the first telegraph message was successfully sent in 1844, curious bystanders were gobsmacked....

The American Revolution was fought on the homefront, which means that women and children were often caught up in the fighting in one way or another. It was their war, too. Remember Rosie the Riveter? She symbolizes the women who worked in the factories and ran the family farms and shops while men were away fighting in WWII. And there were many women just like Rosie in the Revolutionary War, too....

For most of our existence, humans have used myths to demystify the world and our place in it. We created stories to explain where babies come from and where the sun goes at night and everything in-between. Up until the Enlightenment, when we began using science to understand the universe, these stories were all we had to make sense of things. Here is a collection of some of the most fascinating, creative, and even unpleasant stories that explained the origins of the earth before science could....

From Al Capone to Machine Gun Kelly, America’s most notorious criminals ended at the maximum-security prison on Alcatraz Island. Like this gallery?Share it: Share Flipboard Email And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts: Who Was Ted Bundy? Inside The Life Of America’s Most Notorious Serial Killer 33 Hells Angels Photos That Put You Inside The Notorious Biker Gang The Bloods: 21 Startling Photos Inside America’s Infamous Bi-Coastal Gang...

“Cangoroo and our pogo sticks offer a quicker alternative to walking, a more convenient alternative to having a bicycle, and a more environmentally friendly alternative to cars and e-scooters.” CangorooThe Cangoroo company is adamant that this is not a joke and that they’re seriously working on making pogo sticks an alternative to e-scooters. While electric scooters have become an increasingly popular alternative for urban navigation, Swedish startup Cangoroo has boldly announced an even more environmentally friendly option....

The AuthaGraph map is the most accurate map you’ll ever see. You probably won’t like it. Authagraph You probably don’t realize it, but virtually every world map you’ve ever seen is wrong. And while the new AuthaGraph World Map may look strange, it is in fact the most accurate map you’ve ever seen. The world maps we’re all used to operate off of the Mercator projection, a cartographic technique developed by Flemish geographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569....

People are upset that Disney chose an actress whose ethnicity is not true to the original film, which is set in the imaginary land of Agrabah. John Sciulli/Getty Images for WIREDActress Naomi Scott, who was cast to play Princess Jasmine. It would be hard to cast a film with ethnically appropriate actors if that film is set in an imaginary place. Still, a lot of people feel that Disney did not do a good enough job when picking the female lead for its live-action remake of 1992’s Aladdin....

After his master John Gray died in 1858, Greyfriars Bobby spent the next 14 years guarding his grave, leaving just once a day to eat. Wikimedia CommonsA granite statue of Edinburgh’s famous terrier, Greyfriars Bobby. The heartwarming story of “Greyfriars Bobby” goes like this: An older Edinburgh man named John Gray became a police nightwatchman in the mid-1850s and chose a watchdog to accompany him on his long, duty-filled nights at work....

Queen Nefertiti lived in ancient Egypt between 1370 and 1330 B.C.E and was the mother of Tutankhamun, or King Tut. OLIVER LANG/DDP/AFP via Getty ImagesA bust of Queen Nefertiti. A renowned archaeologist in Egypt has made a startling claim — that he’s finally found the lost mummy of Queen Nefertiti. “I’m sure I’ll reveal Nefertiti’s mummy in a month or two,” Zahi Hawass, a prominent Egyptologist and the former Minister of State for Antiquities Affairs in Egypt, told El Independiente....

For nearly a decade, the FBI stalked and slandered Jean Seberg until her suicide in 1979 — and all for supporting civil rights. While some actresses etch themselves into the collective consciousness by way of charm, good looks, talent, or all three, some are remembered for their tragedies. Such is the case for French New Wave cinema icon Jean Seberg. After ascending to the heights of Hollywood, Seberg used her influence to promote progressive social reforms....

While Prohibition was in effect in the United States from 1920 to 1933, speakeasies popped up across the nation as places where people could buy alcohol illegally. Shortly after the end of the first World War and leading up to the Great Depression, two monumentally important periods in American history co-existed: The Roaring ’20s and Prohibition. It seems strange that an era known for its surging economy, lavish parties, jazz, and the Harlem Renaissance covers the same gap of time as the era in which the production, sale, and transportation of alcohol was almost entirely banned across the United States — until you account for speakeasies....