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Sombra Negra call their brand of justice a “social cleansing.” ELMER MARTINEZ/AFP/Getty ImagesTwo unidentified members of the Mara Salvatrucha or MS-13. Despite its size as the smallest country in Central America, El Salvador has a nasty reputation for harboring some of America’s most brutal gang members. Mara Salvatrucha, also known as MS-13, started in 1990s Los Angeles when teenage Salvadoran refugees formed a gang to protect themselves. These youngsters fled the brutal civil war in their home country, but many were deported because of their criminal activity in southern California....

How thousands of people that the Nazis categorized as subhuman ended up volunteering in the Free Arab Legion to fight for the Third Reich. Helmuth Pirath/German Federal ArchivesAir force soldiers belonging to the Arabian Legion stand at attention during training, 1943. Easily the most pervasive, enduring, and pernicious fallacy about World War II, at least in the U.S. and the U.K., is that it was “the good war,” a wholly noble, heroic endeavor (for its victors), one now rendered unto history in morally satisfy shades of black and white, good and evil....

The monstrous Schwerer Gustav was deployed in the Soviet Union during the Battle of Sevastopol. Wikimedia CommonsAdolf Hitler and other SS officers inspect the Schwerer Gustav. In 1934, the only thing standing in the way of Hitler invading France was the French Maginot Line. Really, it was the only thing that stood in the way of Hitler and Western Europe, a fortification running from the Rhine River to La Ferté made of concrete blockhouses, bunkers, and rail lines....

Tap water in Flint, Mich., has a distinct discoloration. It also has toxic levels of lead. Image Source: Twitter The children of Flint, Mich., are in danger. In 2014, Flint city government officials decided to change their water source, and thus started to use improperly filtered water from the local Flint River. The dirty water was then transported through a piping system desperately in need of an upgrade. The result: Thousands of people exposed to toxic levels of lead and a federally declared state of emergency....

66-year-old retired geologist Jim Fitton pocketed a few stones at the ancient site of Eridu in southern Iraq and was later arrested at the airport when officials searched his bags. Jim FittonJim Fitton’s family has started a petition online urging for him to be freed. To Jim Fitton, the rocks and shards of pottery lying in the sand in Eridu, Iraq, didn’t look like much. The 66-year-old picked up a couple to take home as souvenirs and continued with his tour....

Ancient mammoth rib shows signs of human hunting, DNA of extinct wolf found in modern dogs, remains reveal prehistoric humans and dogs once hunted together. Archaeologists Find 25,000-Year-Old Mammoth Rib Pierced With An Arrow From Early Human Hunters P. WotjalA close-up of the mammoth rib embedded with a Paleolithic flint fragment. A flint fragment from an early human weapon was discovered in a 25,000-year-old mammoth rib in southern Poland last week, further proving that humans hunted and were perhaps partly responsible for the extinction of the woolly mammoth....

Since coming under fire, the hunter has taken the photos down, though he insists each of his kills was legal. Nick Haridemos, posing in a jeep with the baboon he shot. Have something interesting to say about this hunter? Tell us below! A businessman from Canberra is under fire from animal rights groups after he posted a series of photos from his past few hunting trips. In one particularly controversial photo, land developer and avid big game hunter Nick Haridemos is sitting in the passenger seat of a jeep, while the body of a dead baboon, dressed up in sunglasses and a baseball hat sits in the driver’s seat with one hand on the wheel and the other hanging out the window....

First discovered in 1913, it has taken researchers over 100 years to unravel the piece of clothing’s secrets. British MuseumThe colorful, striped sock. Everyone knows the frustration that comes with trying to find a missing sock. Now imagine finding one 1,700 years later. That’s precisely what happened when this Ancient Egyptian sock was first plucked from a trash dump in the early 1900s. Today, the sock is letting researchers in on the secrets of Egyptian fashion, manufacturing, and trade practices during the Late Antique period....

At the first congress of UNESCO in 1948, multiple governments, international organizations and national nature conservation groups agreed to form the International Union for the Protection of Nature or IUCN, which would later shed light on the dangers of sprawl, over-fishing and deforestation. Though subsequent changes in human habits were not immediate, their work would prompt individuals and nations to take a long, hard look at environmental issues and their place in it....

From the Syrian wild ass to the famed Tasmanian tiger, these extinct animals are gone forever. Like this gallery?Share it: Share Flipboard Email And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts: 1 of 36QuaggaQuagga are an extinct subspecies of plains zebra that lived in South Africa until the 19th century. Its name was derived from its call, which sounded like “kwa-ha-ha” This is the only known photo of this species....

From its grand opening in 1955 to the original “It’s A Small World” ride, these photos of Disneyland’s early days prove that it has always been “the happiest place on Earth.” Like this gallery?Share it: Share Flipboard Email And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts: 1 of 56The Disneyland entrance in all its mid-century glory. The park officially opened on July 17, 1955, to a crowd of 28,000 eager visitors....

Free from the shackles of being functional, formal military dress tends to dabble–and occasionally get lost in–whimsy. Military battle dress is generally similar all over the world, since the physical demands of hard marching, concealment, and having lots of pockets are the same whether you’re the vicious oppressor or the noble freedom fighter. Formal uniforms, however, are free of the utilitarian requirements of crawling and getting shot at, so designers have traditionally felt free to liberate every silly flourish in their arsenal when designing a parade kit:...

Stoney lied and cheated his way into becoming the husband of Mary Bowes, an heiress who would endure decades of abuse at his hand. Tragedy made Mary Eleanor Bowes the richest child in Britain. In 1760, her father, wealthy coal magnate George Bowles, passed suddenly. He left his 11-year-old daughter his fortune with some strings attached. Determined to keep the Bowes name alive, her father specified in his will that his only daughter would never take another man’s name through marriage — though nothing in the will would protect her or her finances from falling under the control of a future spouse....

These renovators had no idea what they were walking into. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4XsBf_dm0Q&feature=youtu.be New York City has a long history of hoarders, but when renovators recently came to clean one Lower East Side apartment, they had no idea what kinds of horrors they were about to find. Earlier this week, contractor Martin Fernandez filmed himself and his renovation crew cleaning out the apartment that had previously been owned by a compulsive hoarder who’d left the apartment a rotting mess....

“We knew fairly quickly that what we were seeing was something very special. And huge.” Anthony Murphy/Mythical Ireland For the past several weeks, Ireland has been plagued by intense heat and a historic drought. But as normally plush agricultural land has turned into wilted pastures due to the extreme lack of rain, one astonishing find has revealed itself. On July 10 in County Meath, Ireland, a photographer and author named Anthony Murphy discovered the remains of a 4,500-year-old-henge previously hidden by the crops that covered the field....

Inside the mysterious and misunderstood world of Japanese geisha, the respected artists, musicians, dancers, and poets who the West mistook for prostitutes after the American occupation of Japan following World War II. Like this gallery?Share it: Share Flipboard Email And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts: Who Pays For Prostitutes? One Photographer Found Out By Paying Their Customers To Pose 33 Japan Facts That Reveal The Truth About Samurai, Geisha, And So Much More...

The origins of HIV have become an object of speculation for decades. Scientists are finally putting the pieces together, and the story is quite surprising. HIV, which was first identified by medical professionals in the 1980s, has a much longer history in human beings than was previously believed. Source: Wikimedia Doctors first identified the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in the early 1980s at the height of an epidemic. Tens of thousands of HIV-positive people around the world were dying as HIV developed into the Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome or AIDS....

When mine owners cut wages in 1870s Pennsylvania, the Molly Maguires fought back. But with a private military on their side, the mine owners ultimately won what would become the first labor war in U.S. history. Paul Frenzeny and Jules Tavernier/Georgia State University LibraryDuring the Long Strike of 1875, miners met to organize. In the 1870s, the Molly Maguires assassinated 24 mine foremen and supervisors and sent “coffin notices” to scabs during mining strikes....

Colombia has confiscated more than 11,000 specimens in 2021 alone — with this particular cargo including 232 tarantulas, eight scorpions, 67 cockroaches, and nine spider eggs. District Secretary of the Environment of BogotaAirport officials discovered the spiders and insects concealed in two travelers’ luggage. Officials at Colombia’s El Dorado International Airport in Bogotá just intercepted hundreds of wild spiders and insects being illegally smuggled out of the country. They discovered the creatures stored inside plastic containers that two Germans had hidden in their suitcases....

On a summer day in January 1966, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont boarded a bus to the nearby Glenelg Beach — and never returned. Wikimedia CommonsBeaumont children Jane, Grant, and Arnna in 1965. It was Australia Day in 1966 when the Beaumont children disappeared in a case that would hound investigators for decades. Indeed, it is currently the nation’s longest-running missing person’s case. On that day, 9-year-old Jane Beaumont had chaperoned her sister, 7-year-old Arnna, and brother, 4-year-old Grant, to Glenelg Beach....