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Zona Heaster Shue’s husband Erasmus snapped her neck in 1897 — then she allegedly returned from the dead as the “Greenbrier Ghost” to make sure he paid for his crime. The Man Who Wanted Seven WivesAn unverified photo of Zona and Trout Shue, widely circulated as the only extant photo of the pair. How could a young, healthy woman drop dead of an “everlasting faint”? This question was one of the things keeping Mary Jane Heaster, of Greenbrier County, West Virginia, from a restful sleep in the winter of 1897, following the late January death of her newlywed daughter, Zona Heaster Shue....

Who doesn’t want to drill a hole into their head to cure a headache? The Most Painful Medical Procedures Of Medieval Times: Trepanning Source: Wikipedia Eclipsing the lobotomy in terms of age and pain, trepanning involved a physician cutting a hole into the skull of an individual suffering from what some believed to be mental illness, seizures or skull fractures. The hole was typically cut into the dura mater and, surprisingly, the survival rate was very high and chance of infection remained low....

The DNA testing company found Darrell Crawford’s results so unprecedented that they said it was like finding Bigfoot. TwitterDarrell “Dusty” Crawford didn’t even want to get his DNA tested. He merely did it to assuage his brother, who died before the results came back. Before Alvin “Willy” Crawford’s heart gave out, the Montana man asked his brother, Darrell “Dusty” Crawford to get his DNA tested. When he did, according to USA Today, CRI Genetics told Crawford that his results were so unprecedented that it was like finding Bigfoot....

The unique peaks of Tianzi Mountain inspired the alien landscapes of “Avatar,” and it’s easy to see why. Bill Hertha/FlickrTianzi Mountain Often surrounded by mist, the tower-like peaks of Tianzi Mountain abruptly rise up from the tree-covered ground below to create a landscape like no other. These 21 square miles of mountain landscape located inside the Wulinyuan Scenic Area amid Zhangjiajie National Forest Park in the Hunan Province of China truly represent one of the most unique formations on Earth....

Agent 355 Agent 355 was a female spy who worked directly for George Washington during the American Revolution. Even today, her identity is unknown, though some intel has been gathered. It is known that she was likely a socialite, living in New York City, who passed vital information about Washington’s affluent enemies right back to him. Annie Edson Taylor Annie Edson Taylor was a teacher who, in 1901, on her 63rd birthday, became the first woman to survive a trip over Niagara Falls in a barrel....

The study was published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Andy Lyons/Getty Images A new study casts a dark shadow on America’s favorite sport. Published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dr. Ann McKee offers a survey of her findings from her examination of the brains of 202 deceased football players. 111 of them played for the NFL. Of those 111, the neuropathologist found that 110 of them had chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), which experts have posited is caused by repeated hits to the head....

Larry Racioppo Photographer Larry Racioppo is a people person. “I interact with people, I photograph them head on. As much as I can, I bring them back photos when I know I’m going to see them again,” he told ATI over the phone. Racioppo began photographing Halloween revelers around his native New York in 1974. He started in Park Slope, just a few blocks from where he grew up. “I would walk out of my house around 3, when kids would come home from school and photograph with just a small hand held camera, no flash....

Despite of English language’s incredible variety of words and tenses, certain ideas just don’t translate, like these interesting words that don’t translate into English. It was Rudyard Kipling who said that words are the most powerful drug of mankind. But unlike more conventional drugs, certain words have no use once they cross the border. Cultures make language in their image, and sometimes there are linguistic “reflections” in one language that simply don’t find their partner in another....

Bill Nye has been one of the most notable advocates of science in popular culture for nearly three decades. For almost three decades, Bill Nye—The Science Guy—has been the foremost voice of scientific reason in popular culture. Alongside people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Nye has made it his mission to make science accessible, entertaining and, above all, important to the American people. Here are 21 of his most memorable quotes:...

Before it became predominantly associated with celebrity nips and tucks, plastic surgery was about saving lives. The medical procedure would change a person’s life – not by giving them a little extra confidence, but by making it possible to walk outside again. Share Flipboard Email On some level, plastic surgery has been around for thousands of years – but the idea really got started during World War I, when doctors performed the first skin graft....

Whether treating women as sex objects or servants, these sexist beer ads of decades past look positively shocking today. The beer industry has a long and vexed history of dude-centric advertising. If women even featured in early beer ads, they were typically depicted serving up a cold brew to their hard-working husbands or were simply reduced to objects of the male gaze. Since then, after a whopping century or so, the frat-house imagery and misogynist subjugation of beer ads seem to finally be losing favor as ad targeting shifts towards a generation of millennial beer-drinkers less likely to tolerate such attitudes....

The ancient settlement’s discovery provides evidence of advanced urban planning in Chinese society much earlier than previously known. Li An/XinhuaAerial photo of the sprawling Shuanghuaishu site in central China’s Henan province. China remains one of the oldest civilizations in the world with a history of ancient settlements dating back to thousands of years ago. An excavation at the Shuanghuaishu site in Gongyi on the outskirts of Zhengzhou in mid-May 2020 revealed the site of a huge settlement that archaeologists estimate dates back to 5,300 years ago....

The garbage ingested by this whale clogged its digestive system and caused it rupture. Espacios Naturales Protegidos de la Region de Murcia/TwitterThe washed up whale died of an abdominal infection due to the massive amount of plastic it ingested. A dead sperm whale that washed up on the shore of a beach in southern Spain had 64 pounds of plastic and waste in its stomach. The young whale, found on the beach of Cabo de Palos in Murcia on Feb....

“This has to be a concern for the governments we trust to protect our coastal cities and communities.” Reuters Antarctica has enough ice to raise the global sea level by as much as 190 feet if it all melted. That’d be enough to put New York City, to pick just one example, underwater. Thus, knowing how much Antarctic ice is melting is a major part of understanding the potentially disastrous impacts of climate change both at present and in the future....

Just two days after Juan Gerardi produced a massive report detailing his country’s wartime atrocities, three members of the military killed him in his home. That’s the official story, at least. HRD MemorialGuatemalan bishop and indigenous rights advocate Juan Gerardi fought to give a voice to the indigenous Mayan peoples targeted by Guatemala’s military dictatorship during the country’s 36-year-long civil war. On April 26, 1998, Bishop Juan Gerardi was bludgeoned to death with a concrete slab inside his home in Guatemala City so savagely that he could only be identified by the ring he wore to signify his position....

Black Bart may have staged the most dignified robberies of the Old West. In 1878 (or possibly 1880 depending on the account), a stagecoach was running the long road between two California mining towns. Inside were several bags filled with cash. The cash made the coach a tempting target for bandits, as the driver found out when he saw the barrel of a shotgun poking out from a nearby bush....

Indian movie star Salman Khan is receiving jail time for illegally killing a rare antelope 20 years ago. Associated Press Salman Khan Famous Bollywood star Salman Khan killed two blackbucks, a rare type of antelope, back in 1998. Now, 20 years later, he is being punished for the crime. On April 5, 2018, Khan was convicted of illegal poaching. He will serve five years for the conviction and has already been taken to jail....

Captain John “Calico Jack” Rackham was known for wearing colorful calico clothing, his marriage to ferocious fellow pirate Anne Bonny, and his absolute mercilessness on the high seas. The name “Captain Jack” might automatically bring forth an image of Johnny Depp’s famed character from Pirates of the Caribbean. However, there was an equally fierce Captain Jack who terrorized the Caribbean during the early 18th century: John “Calico Jack” Rackham. Wikimedia CommonsJohn “Calico Jack” Rackham, 18th-century pirate of the Caribbean....

The historic deposit will take place at the end of February and will make the Cherokee Nation the first U.S. tribe to deposit its heirloom seeds in the Global Seed Vault in Svalbard, Norway. Cherokee NationCherokee Nation Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. (left) with Secretary of Natural Resources Chad Harsha. The seeds they’re holding will be inducted into the Global Seed Vault on Feb. 25, 2020. The Global Seed Vault, which sits inside of a mountain on Svalbard island between Norway and the North Pole, houses nearly a million samples of various crops from around the world — and it’s about to get a few more, courtesy of the Cherokee Nation....

It sounds a lot like science fiction, but it’s not. Zombie deer disease makes deer listless, underweight, and in some cases, aggressive. Mike Hopper, Kansas Department of Wildlife, Parks and TourismA “zombie” deer with Chronic Wasting Disease. When you hear about zombie deer, you might think you’re being pitched a script for a new horror movie — but the phenomenon is all too real. The fact is that zombie deer disease — or Chronic Wasting Disease — is very real and may even pose a threat to humans....