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“By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind,” the couple wrote in their joint blog before the attack. Simplycycling.orgLauren Geoghegan and her boyfriend Jay Austin quit their jobs and embarked on the trip of a lifetime in July 2017. A millennial couple embarked on an international biking adventure after quitting their day jobs in 2017. The two wrote a joint blog post about their planned travels, where they revealed that they would discover that “humans are kind” and that evil “is a make-believe concept....

Though his reports almost immediately made the New York Times’ Bestsellers list, his research was very much not without its critics. Keystone Features/Getty ImagesAlfred Kinsey in June 1952. Alfred Kinsey has been hailed the “father of the sexual revolution.” For one, his open and curious attitude about sex brought the subject into the mainstream. He wrote two unprecedented and in-depth explorations of human sexuality known as the Kinsey Reports and has been credited with paving the way for the sexual liberation and gay rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s....

A close study of topographical data from Spain’s coasts may have revealed the lost Temple of Hercules Gaditanus in the Bay of Cádiz. Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia CommonsAn ancient depiction of Hercules, the Greek and Roman demigod. For centuries, many archaeologists have viewed the lost Temple of Hercules Gaditanus as a “holy grail.” Visited by Julius Caesar and Hannibal, the site played a crucial role in ancient history. Now, archaeologists believe they may have finally located the elusive site....

The Bajau people have long lived on the waters of Southeast Asia, where they’ve evolved into sea-dwelling beings with bodies like no other humans on planet Earth. Claudio Sieber / Barcroft Images / Barcroft Media via Getty ImagesBajau people at sea near Semporna, Malaysia in 2017. They live on the waters of Southeast Asia, dwelling in boats and living off the sea with hardly even a homeland that they call their own....

Get a whole new perspective on history’s most important people and events with these thirty-four black and white photos brilliantly restored in color. From an intimate portrait of Mark Twain in the last years of his life to an incredible overhead photograph of the D-Day invasion, we take a look history’s most important people and events captured in black and white photos and transformed into beautiful color images: The inventor of the bulletproof vest tests one of the first prototypes in Washington DC in 1923....

For 30-40 seconds, Michael Packard struggled to escape the whale’s mouth and wondered if he would be swallowed whole. Packard Family PhotoMichael Packard from his hospital bed on June 11, 2021. In this story, a man was swallowed by a whale. And no — it didn’t take place in the pages of the Old Testament to a man named Jonah. It happened to a lobster diver named Michael Packard off the coast of Provincetown, Massachusetts....

Known as the “King of the Wild Frontier,” soldier and adventurer Davy Crockett became a folk hero for his exploits in the Creek Indian War and the Texas Revolution. Wikimedia CommonsDavy Crockett during the War of 1812. To this day, America remembers Davy Crockett as a frontiersman and a folk hero, part myth and part man. His explorations were dramatized in stage plays and storybooks for decades, and his name conjures images of wilderness and coonskin caps....

In June 1969, Dennis Lloyd Martin walked off to play a prank on his dad and never returned, sparking the largest search effort in the history of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Family Photo/Knoxville News Sentinel ArchiveDennis Martin was just six years old when he vanished without a trace in the Great Smoky Mountains National National Park in 1969. On June 13, 1969, William Martin brought his two sons, Douglas and Dennis Martin, and his father, Clyde, on a camping trip....

Considered the deadliest natural disaster in American history, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 left one in four city residents homeless and killed up to 12,000 people. On September 8, 1900, the coastal city of Galveston, Texas, was hit by a hurricane like none that the United States had ever experienced before. Winds of 120 miles per hour slammed the city with flying debris that cut through homes like shrapnel. Waves crashed onto the streets, leaving the city 15 feet underwater at one point....

Inside her New Orleans mansion, Madame Delphine LaLaurie tortured and murdered untold numbers of enslaved people in the early 1830s. In 1834, at the mansion at 1140 Royal Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans, a fire broke out. The neighbors rushed out to help, offering to pour water on the flames and help the family evacuate. However, when they arrived, they noticed that Madame LaLaurie, the woman of the house seemed to be alone....

Doctors asked Abhishek Prasad to play the guitar during his brain surgery so that they could see if they were fixing his condition. Getting brain surgery can be so boring. Might as well strum your guitar to pass the time. That’s what it appears as though Indian man Abhishek Prasad was thinking in recent photos that show him playing a tune while doctors operate on his wide-open head. In reality, however, the doctors had actually asked Prasad to play the guitar during the surgery as a means of providing feedback on whether or not they were fixing the problem at hand....

Michael Rockefeller’s death in New Guinea in 1961 was initially ruled a drowning — but some believe he was actually eaten by cannibals. In the early 1960s, Michael Rockefeller vanished somewhere off the coast of Papua New Guinea. President and Fellows of Harvard University; Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology Michael Rockefeller on his first trip to New Guinea in May 1960, just one year before his death. His disappearance shocked the nation and prompted a manhunt of historic proportions....

For 1,000 years, villagers have used fishing boats to trap whales in the bay before wading into the water to kill them by hand with knives. Warning: Images below contain graphic depictions of animals being killed. Sea Shepherd UK/Triangle NewsBy the Faroese government’s own estimates, the yearly tradition sees 800 whales slaughtered each year. On July 15, the waters off the shores of the Faroe Islands turned red with blood after nearly 300 whales were slaughtered in one evening during the yearly whaling ritual....

Spetsnaz forces are revered in their countries, though not much is known about their secretive and shadowy training regimens. https://youtu.be/eHuR63W9hXI This video shows the Special Forces in action in Syria. Special forces are, by their nature, secretive in their affairs. The comings and goings of surreptitious agencies thrive flying under the radar – in Russia, even more so. Spetsnaz (an acronym for Voyska spetsialnogo naznacheniya, Special Purpose Military Forces) is the umbrella term for all special forces carried out in Russia and the former satellite states of the Soviet Union....

Welcome to Dallol, Ethiopia, where volcanoes, geysers and fractured earth form the landscape of the hottest place in the world. No matter how low you have your thermostat set this summer, chances are your neighborhood’s heat conditions pale in comparison to everyday temperatures in Dallol, Ethiopia. With average temperatures consistently hovering at 94 ˚F, Dallol, Ethiopia might just be the hottest inhabited place on the planet. An Afar man overlooks Dallol’s psychedelic slat formations....

Atomik Vodka produced in Chernobyl, Viking beer hall unearthed in Scotland, Holocaust survivor’s 104th birthday held in Jerusalem. Introducing Atomik Vodka: The First Liquor Made From Crops Grown In The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone University of PortsmouthThis is currently the only product made and sold by the Chernobyl Spirit Company — and within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. April marked the 33rd anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. After the 1986 explosion, which released untold amounts of radioactive material across the continent, a 1,000-square-mile exclusion zone around the Chernobyl plant was established to mark the region deemed too radioactive for habitation....

Ancient Roman egg unearthed, Auschwitz lovers reunited, Civil War hair dye uncovered. Archaeologists Find 1,700-Year-Old Ancient Roman Eggs — And Accidentally Crack A Few Open Oxford ArchaeologyAccording to the archaeologists, the two eggs that cracked open during retrieval emitted a “sulfurous aroma.” Between 2007 and 2016, archaeologists excavated an ancient Roman settlement called Berryfields in central England. The findings included four chicken eggs preserved in a waterlogged pit for 1,700 years — some of which accidentally cracked open....

Often described as the voice of Chile’s poor, Víctor Jara was brutally tortured and executed during the military coup that installed General Augusto Pinochet as dictator in 1973. Gems/Redferns/via Getty ImagesVíctor Jara, c. 1960. Jara was a leader in Chile’s folk music scene who was executed during Chile’s 1973 coup for his socialist politics. Like many countries, Chile was at a crossroads as the 1960s came to a close. The worldwide shift in political and cultural attitudes had seen a groundswell of hunger for change in a country long dominated by a land-owning ruling class....

The illustrator said his cartoons of the Rube Goldberg Machine were a “symbol of man’s capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results.” Joseph Herscher is a Brooklyn-based artist who knows how to entertain. His video entitled The Page Turner has more than nine million views after seven years, and it’s easy to see why. All Herscher has to do is flick his wrist to make it to the next page of a newspaper....

The heroics of the women fighting in WW2 will amaze and enlighten you. Read more about the bad-ass women that helped win the war. ATI Composite Heroism — especially in times of war — tends to produce gendered associations. We think of men fighting (and dying) valiantly, while women wait passively at home for their spouses to return. The historical record produces a different picture, however. Among the many heroes of World War II are these bad-ass women....