Posts

The fall from the observational deck of the Empire State Building is about 1,050 feet. YouTubeElvita Adams and the Empire State Building. On Dec. 2, 1979, Elvita Adams decided to end her life. After losing her job, the 29-year-old Bronx woman was reportedly living off $100 welfare checks. Unable to pay the rent, her landlord was threatening to evict her and her 10-year old son. So in a deep depression and not knowing what to do, she found herself on top of the Empire State Building....

Colombo family mobster Sonny Franzese hung out with Frank Sinatra, financed the pornographic film Deep Throat, and killed more people than he could even remember. Nick Sorrentino/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesJohn “Sonny” Franzese. 1966. John “Sonny” Franzese, who was one of the deadliest, richest, and longest-living Mafia bosses, died on February 25, 2019. He was 103 years old. According to his son Michael, he passed away in a hospital in the New York area, but no further details were given....

Truck driver Reginald Denny nearly died from a random attack during one of the most violent uprisings in Los Angeles’ history — but good Samaritans saved him. On April 29, 1992, 39-year-old construction worker Reginald Denny was driving through Los Angeles, unaware of the angry uprising brewing in the streets in response to the verdict in the Rodney King case. He unknowingly drove into the heart of the unrest, and his truck was suddenly attacked by an angry mob....

With his girlfriend Myra Hindley, Ian Brady kidnapped, tortured, and murdered five children — one as young as 10 — in a series of notorious slayings known as the Moors Murders. For two harrowing years, Scottish serial killer Ian Brady terrorized Manchester, England with a string of grisly murders. Together with his equally depraved accomplice, Myra Hindley, Ian Brady raped and murdered five children in a killing spree now known as the Moors Murders....

After losing control of the experimental aircraft he was piloting, John Denver died when the plane crashed into Monterey Bay on October 12, 1997. For some two decades before John Denver’s death, he took folk music to new heights with his idyllic lyrics, soaring vocals, and acoustic guitar playing. His unique, spiritual sound invited audiences to see the world in all its natural splendor just as he did. Indeed, “If you give Elvis the ’50s and the Beatles the ’60s, I think you’ve got to give John Denver the ’70s,” his manager once said....

From notorious serial killers to possible wrongful convictions, these are the most memorable last words of executed criminals from around the world. Some break down and beg for their lives. Some remain stubbornly hardened and brutal to the end. Some make no sense at all. Whichever way they go, there’s always someone on hand to record the last words of executed criminals. See the bizarre mix of terrifying, witty and poignant in the (very final) quotes below:...

John Torrington and the other Franklin expedition mummies remain haunting reminders of that lost 1845 voyage to the Arctic that saw sailors cannibalize their crewmates in their final, desperate days. Brian SpenceleyThe preserved body of John Torrington, one of the Franklin expedition mummies left behind after the crew was lost in the Canadian Arctic in 1845. In 1845, two ships carrying 134 men set sail from England in search of the Northwest Passage — but they never returned....

Researchers think the Inca sacrificed these llamas as a way of bonding with the people living in their newly-conquered territory. L.M. ValdezFour well-preserved sacrificial llamas were unearthed at an ancient Inca site in Peru. Archaeologists have long known about the common practice in ancient Incan culture to use human sacrifices as offerings to the gods. But it wasn’t until recently that they’d ever found a mummified llama sacrifice — let alone four of them....

“We don’t just have a skeleton,” said one of the nodosaur researchers involved. “We have a dinosaur as it would have been.” Robert Clark/National GeographicThe nodosaur is the crown jewel of a dino exhibit at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta, Canada. You can’t even see its bones, but scientists are hailing it as perhaps the best-preserved dinosaur specimen ever unearthed. That’s because those bones remain covered by intact skin and armor — 110 million years after the creature’s death....

On September 22, 1975, Sara Jane Moore became the second woman to try to kill Gerald Ford in the span of just 17 days — and she very nearly succeeded. Janet Fries/Getty ImagesSara Jane Moore in prison months after her attempted assassination of President Gerald Ford. On Sept. 5, 1975, President Gerald Ford narrowly escaped an assassination attempt. That day, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme walked up to the president in Sacramento and pointed a ....

Experts believe that the statue may depict Hercules or perhaps a Roman emperor dressed as the ancient hero. Parco Regionale dell’Appia Antica/FacebookThe Hercules statue appears to date back to the Roman imperial period, 27 B.C.E to 476 C.E. History hums beneath the city of Rome. In the latest exciting archaeological find from the heart of the bygone Roman Empire, archaeologists have discovered a statue of a Hercules-like figure, draped in a lion’s cloak, while excavating an ancient sewer in the Appia Antica Park....

Professor Stephen Hawking is likely the most famous scientist since Albert Einstein (in fact, Einstein was Hawking’s nickname in grade school.) As the theoretical physicist, author and professor turns 75 this week, here are some facts you probably didn’t know about his amazing life: 1. His birthday coincides with another special event. Hawking was born exactly 300 years after the death of a similarly space-inclined scientist: Galileo Galilei. 2. Doctors said he would die in his 20s....

Black holes, parallel universes and teleportation: these fringe sciences can be as cool as they are scary. Fringe science is any field of scientific inquiry which represents a significant departure from orthodox theories or bodies of work. Sometimes fringe sciences are accepted and become mainstream. Evolution, The Big Bang Theory, and Continental Drift all began on the fringes of science and today–while still debated by some–are taken as scientific truth....

“I owe my life to that dog. She’s really been a godsend to me. She has never been wrong.” Stephanie HerfelStephanie Herfel with Sierra, her Siberian husky who sniffed out her cancer three separate times. “I owe my life to that dog,” Stephanie Herfel said of her Siberian husky, Sierra. And because Sierra has helped diagnose Herfel’s cancer three different times, it’s hard to disagree. Herfel, a 52-year-old Wisconsin resident, first experienced Sierra’s heroics in 2013....

Yoshie Shiratori became known as the “man no prison could hold” after he escaped four different times — once using little more than miso soup. Wikimedia CommonsA photograph of Yoshie Shiratori, who escaped from four different prisons. Between 1936 and 1947, Japan’s Yoshie Shiratori escaped from prison four times, earning him the nickname “the man that no prison could hold.” The escape artist also became famous – or infamous. His escapes brought attention to horrible conditions in Japan’s prisons....

“Tattooing by prehistoric people in the Southwest is not talked about much because there has not ever been any direct evidence to substantiate it” — until now. Robert Hubner/Washington State UniversityThe tool has been stored in a box for over 40 years and has now finally been identified to have been used for inking, 2019. The oldest tool in western North America was discovered in Utah during a 1972 excavation of a dig site called Turkey Pen Ruin — and it wasn’t for hunting or gathering....

Convening the best aspects of photo and video into one pith and movement-filled entity, the GIF is the Internet’s wunderkind. While arguments have arisen about its pronunciation, everyone can agree that they do a fine job of entertaining and informing an audience whose mobile lifestyles demand that content be quick, to the point and easy to absorb. Enjoy these thirty fantastic GIFs that explain the world around us: How The Human Face Forms In The Womb Formed both by intramembranous and endochondral ossification, it’s in a woman’s first trimester that the fetus’ skull is most susceptible to developing skull deformities....

“Most of them are here to satisfy curiosity or a macabre, but harmless, interest in the school. For a small group of others, there is a potential threat to do harm.” Steve Starr/CORBIS/Corbis/Getty ImagesStudents running out of Columbine High following the massacre. April 20, 1999. The Columbine High School shooting on April 20, 1999 quickly became a focal point of America’s nationwide discussion over a range of issues such as gun control and violence in entertainment....

While wearing a mask similar to the one from the Scream franchise, the workers called the children “monsters,” then chased them around the room as they cried. Twitter“Are you being bad? Do I need to take you outside?” one of the workers in the video asked a crying, petrified child. “No,” the child replies, hiding their face. Five former employees of Lil’ Blessings Child Care and Learning Center in Hamilton, Mississippi are facing charges of child abuse after a video of the workers terrifying the young children in their care surfaced online on October 6, 2022....

Police arrested Robert John Lanoue, 70, and charged him with the 1982 murder of five-year-old Anne Pham. Seaside PoliceAnne Pham’s brutal murder went unsolved for 40 years. On Jan. 21, 1982, five-year-old Anne Pham begged her mother to let her walk the three blocks from her family’s home in Seaside, California, to her elementary school. Somewhere along the way, a stranger abducted, sexually assaulted, and strangled her. Now, after 40 years, police say they have finally solved her gruesome murder — and named her killer....