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Rich plantation owners in the 1880s were so desperate to combat the rats eating their sugarcane that they brought the mongoose to Hawaii — and the government still can’t get rid of them to this day. Colonialism and white supremacy have caused many problems all over the world, and those problems even extend to the animal kingdom — like the case of the mongoose in Hawaii. Originally brought to the island nation in the hopes of controlling the rat population, today’s mongooses have threatened other flora and fauna on the Big Island....

From rigged elections to using the muscle of the city’s gangs, Tammany Hall’s Boss Tweed was the state’s most corrupt politician in history. Interim Archives/Getty ImagesCopy of an engraving depicting William ‘Boss’ Tweed and members of his corrupt Tammany Hall ring running from the New York City Treasury, mimicking the crowd in pursuit of a thief, all the while thinking and looking like they are the object of the chase, October 1871....

Ambitious or power hungry? Was Empress Wu Zetian – China’s only female ruler – truly as evil as the history books say? Empress Wu Zetian. Image: Wikimedia Commons The favorite concubine of the Chinese emperor has just given birth to a baby girl. Instead of seeing her child, she sees an opportunity. Hoping to dethrone the current Empress Wang and take her place, Wu Zetian takes her baby into her arms for the last time and strangles the infant....

Gold coins found under British couple’s kitchen floor, 17th-century “vampire” unearthed in Poland, enormous dinosaur uncovered in Portuguese backyard. British Couple Renovating Their Kitchen Finds $288,000 Cache Of Gold Coins Six Inches Below Their Floor Spink & SonThis massive hoard originally belonged to a wealthy mercantile family who stashed them there in the early 1700s because they didn’t trust the recently-formed Bank of England and its new paper currency. After owning their house in Yorkshire, England for 10 years, one anonymous British couple recently decided to redo their kitchen floor....

Ancient elk skull uncovered, Greek tomb dug up, haul of Roman coins found. Fishermen Discover A Massive 10,000-Year-Old “Irish Elk” Skull Ardboe Galler/FacebookRaymond McElroy is pictured with the antlers and skull of an Irish elk, discovered in his net while fishing on Lough Neagh lake in Northern Ireland. A fisherman and his assistant were out on the lakebed of Lough Neagh in Northern Ireland on Sept. 5 when they reeled in the farthest thing from their usual catch....

The world’s fastest human could have run circles around history’s most feared predator. The T. rex has earned a legacy as one of the most formidable predators in history. With a bite force equal to getting smashed by three cars, none of us ever envied the people in the Jurassic Park jeeps. Now, though, a cutting-edge study shows that the ruler of the dinosaur kingdom confined his cardio to a brisk walk....

As André the Giant’s only child, Robin Christensen-Roussimoff is an actress and former wrestler who works to help keep her father’s legacy alive. Kevin Winter/Getty ImagesRobin Christensen-Roussimoff at the premiere of HBO’s “Andre The Giant” on March 29, 2018 in Los Angeles, California. When André the Giant died in 1993, he left an outsized legacy. The wrestler-turned-actor had awed at high-profile fights and warmed hearts in The Princess Bride. But his memory is especially important to one person — Robin Christensen-Roussimoff, André the Giant’s daughter and only child....

Less than half of the racers in the 1904 Olympic marathon finished the notoriously perilous race — and only after the winner was dragged across the finish line. On August 30, 1904, then-President Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice Roosevelt stood at the finish line of the 1904 Olympic marathon, eagerly awaiting the competitors. The summer games were in St. Louis, Missouri, that year, making it the first modern Olympics held on United States soil....

As anyone who has played the board game Monopoly knows, the pursuit of profit can lead people to do some pretty outlandish things — including creating dozens of Monopoly variations to market to a specific demographic. Originally made in 1903 as a way to help people understand progressive political economist Henry George’s “single tax” plan, Monopoly has since transformed into a global board game in which capitalistic land grabbing becomes a form of entertainment....

Before Times Square was a global attraction, it was home to sex shops and drug dealers, earning a reputation as the sketchiest part of New York City. Today’s Times Square is known as the iconic tourist destination of New York, becoming the most visited place on the globe and attracting over 131 million visitors a year. But before it became home to Broadway shows, chain restaurants, and television studios, it spent the latter half of the 20th century as the symbol of New York’s decay....

From the crew’s last days of training to the moment the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded, see one of the worst disasters in American aerospace history as it happened. Like this gallery?Share it: Share Flipboard Email And if you liked this post, be sure to check out these popular posts: NASA Was Warned The Space Shuttle Challenger Could Explode, But They Launched It Anyway The Halifax Explosion: 33 Photos Of History’s Worst Explosion Before Nuclear Weapons...

A new study found that one crocodile’s mummification began “very rapidly after the death,” which was caused by blunt force trauma to its head. Porcier et al.A new study has found that this 2,000-year-old crocodile mummy was embalmed right after its death. So revered were certain animals in ancient Egyptian culture that these creatures were routinely mummified as sacrifices to the gods. And according to a new study, Egyptian hunters specifically killed them just to sacrifice them — even if they were dangerous beasts like crocodiles....

Meet Annette Kellerman, the early 20th-century pioneer who broke swimming records, dove off 90-foot cliffs, and became the first woman to appear nude in a major motion picture. When Annette Kellerman was born in 1886, women had to wear heavy wool garments to the beach or cover their legs completely with stockings. But Kellerman, who would later become a world-record swimmer, couldn’t win races in swimwear she compared to “lead chains....

Not only is it 30 times larger than other isopod species, but it’s also the first new giant isopod species found in over a decade. LKCNHM/InstagramThe Bathynomus raksasa is the largest known giant isopod species in the world. If you happen to be a fan of the popular video game Animal Crossing, then you’ll know that giant isopods are alien-like deep-sea crustaceans that resemble large underwater cockroaches. But there are also “supergiant” isopods, which can grow up to 20 inches — and a team of biologists have recently identified what they believe to be the largest known species of supergiant isopods in the world....

“[Women and little girls] can look to me and say OK, she’s a woman who is able to be successful in an organization like the Miss America organization, but she’s also a scientist.” John Herzog/Miss Virginia24-year-old biochemist Camille Schrier made a splash with her foamy science experiment during the Miss Virginia competition. Dressed in a white lab coat, safety goggles, and dazzling chandelier earrings, 24-year-old Camille Schrier found herself mixing together chemicals to concoct a blue-and-orange explosion of foam-like substances in front of a panel of judges and a live audience....

Though he narrowly escaped, almost all of Bush’s fellow pilots were tortured, killed, and eaten on that fateful day in September 1944 that became known as the Chichijima Incident. George Bush Presidential Library and MuseumAfter he was shot down in World War II, George H.W. Bush narrowly avoided the Chichijima Incident. At dawn on Sept. 2, 1944, a group of American pilots fighting in the Pacific theater of World War II took to the skies....

The hunter faces life-threatening injuries after the moose he’d been hunting attacked him — but no action will be taken against the moose. USDA Forest ServiceThe incident marks the fourth moose attack in Colorado this year. On Tuesday, the sheriff’s office in Larimer County, Colorado, received an emergency alert from a hunter’s GPS device that he’d been seriously injured by an enraged bull moose. When the deputy arrived, he found the man being helped by passers-by after he had hiked about a mile and a half to Long Draw Road, FOX reported....

Big game hunting is legal in some African countries, but the animals occasionally fight back against those humans who seek to kill them — as in this case. YouTubeThe two hunters take aim at the pack of elephants. A video of two hunters receiving a karmic scare after shooting an elephant in Africa has recently resurfaced — and is sure to please animal lovers everywhere. The footage, which was obtained by News24, shows two male hunters stalking a group of elephants in the Nakabolelwa Conservancy in Namibia....

The cave is believed to have been in use by the Chumash people between 1600 and 1800, and evidently served as a space in which they could trip on the flower Datura wrightii. Devlin GandyThe cave art resembles an unfurling Datura wrightii, a flower that contains both scopolamine and atropine which are two very psychoactive compounds. A new study has found that Indigenous cave art near Santa Barbara, California likely depicts a hallucinogenic “trance flower” known as Datura wrightii....

NASA released the first video of Earth spinning for an entire year thanks to the only deep space satellite, Deep Space Climate Observatory. Images of our world as seen from outer space help put our problems — our very existence, really — into perspective. “It suddenly stuck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth,” Neil Armstrong once said of his view from the moon. “I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth....