He took his shoes off years ago and never looked back

For two decades, Joseph DeRuvo Jr., 59, has lived an almost entirely barefooted life. He initially decided to forgo shoes because of agonizing bunions, but he has stayed barefoot for reasons that transcend physical comfort. After years spent as a photographer and a photography teacher, he is still self-employed, now as a Pilates instructor, a particularly barefoot-friendly profession. And the couple stays close to home. When they go out, they gravitate toward mom-and-pop stores and restaurants where they can forge personal connections with owners and managers, and he can be seen as more than the guy with the feet. Still, his wife Lini Ecker said, “we get thrown out of a lot of places.”

Children's author Dr. Seuss cheated on his wife, who committed suicide

Ted Geisel, the cartoonist who became famous for writing under the pseudonym Dr. Seuss, may be known for his winsome children's books, but he had a darker side. Among other things, he cheated on his wife while she was terminally ill. He was married to Helen Palmer Geisel for 40 years, but she contracted Guillain-Barre syndrome, followed by cancer. Ted started having an affair with a close family friend, Audrey Dimond, and when it became public, this reportedly contributed to his wife's decision to commit suicide. In a suicide note, she wrote that Geisel could "say I was overworked and overwrought" so that his "reputation with your friends and fans will not be harmed."

Caesar’s assassin Brutus minted a special celebratory coin

When this denarius was struck in northern Greece in late summer or early autumn 42 BC, Marcus Junius Brutus was so well known that an entire family legacy could be conjured in just four letters: BRVT. Brutus’ family were known as noble defenders of Roman independence, and he very proud of this legacy. Reminiscent of a police ID photo, Brutus’ picture is in fact a gesture of prestige – even vanity. While being able to mint coins is a sign of high status, having your portrait on the coins you issued was very bad form in Republican Rome. EID.MAR stands for eidibus martiis, ‘the Ides of March.’ That Brutus chose to identify the day of his victim Caesar’s death, further demonstrates his overwhelming sense of the justice of his cause in killing the emperor.

The philosopher who believes that objects have a life of their own

A few years ago, while delivering a lecture, Jane Bennett, a philosopher and political theorist at Johns Hopkins, played clips from “Hoarders,” commenting on them in detail. She is sympathetic to people like Debra, partly because, like the hoarders themselves, she is focussed on the hoard. She has philosophical questions about it. Why are these objects so alluring? What are they “trying” to do? We tend to think of the show’s hoards as inert, attributing blame, influence, and the possibility of redemption to the human beings who create them. But what if the hoard, as Bennett asked in her lecture, has more agency than that? What if these piles of junk exert some power of their own?

A sword assumed to be a replica turns out to be 3,000 years old

In the 1930s, a tarnished bronze sword was pulled from the banks of the Danube River that runs through Budapest. It was styled like a Hungarian weapon from the Bronze Age, and yet at the time, it was assumed to be a replica, possibly made in the Medieval Era or later. For nearly a century, the sword has sat on display at the Field Museum in Chicago, labeled as a mere copy. But last year, while the museum was preparing for an upcoming exhibit on ancient European kings, a visiting Hungarian archaeologist (whose name has not been publicized) took one look at the sword and declared it authentic. Experts now think the ancient sword was thrown into the Danube between 1080 and 900 BCE.

Former delivery man found with a 600-year-old mummy 'girlfriend'

Police in Peru have seized a mummified human, between 600 and 800 years old, from a former food delivery man who claimed to have had it at his home for three decades. ​The mummy was in the thermal bag the man had once used to deliver food to people's homes. The man, 26-year-old Julio Cesar Bermejo, will remain in detention while investigators look into the case, a government official told AFP on Tuesday. Bermejo told local media the mummy, who he called Juanita, was "like my spiritual girlfriend." "At home, she's in my room, she sleeps with me. I take care of her," he said in a video that went viral on social media.

Lava escapes from a lava tube