The ankle monitor was inspired by a Spiderman comic strip

From Public Seminar: "Electronic monitoring came into the criminal justice system not as a result of extensive research, but in part because a district judge in Albuquerque avidly pursued the idea in the 1970s. Judge Jack Love had read about the use of location tracking for livestock, and was

She never stopped believing that her son was still in there

From The Atlantic: "Like so many other family members of vegetative patients, she held on to a mother’s belief that Ian could understand everything around him. She took care, when shaving him, to leave the wispy mustache he had been trying to grow. When his high-school friends went

Harvard's copy of the Magna Carta is actually the real thing

From the BBC: "A manuscript once considered an unofficial copy of Magna Carta is now believed to be a genuine version and one of the world's most valuable documents, according to UK academics. Harvard Law School paid $27.50 for it in 1946 and for years it

Behind the fancy cars and private jets was a huge fraud

From Toronto Life: "Elaine Hoffman, a 71-year-old grandmother, sat in her suburban Indiana home and turned on her computer. A banner ad caught her attention: its claim seemed unbelievable — that she could make money with the click of a mouse. Hoffman knew her way around investments. She had a

Inside the rise and fall of a notorious bank robber

From Toronto Life: "To fellow tourists he met around the world, Jeffery Shuman was a semi-retired developer with a bright smile, an even tan and a fat wallet. In truth, he was a legendary bank robber on the run from the Toronto police and the US Marshals. He had

Residents of this California town say that birds are exploding

From ABC News: "Residents of a neighborhood in the Bay Area community of Richmond, northeast of San Francisco, claim they have found multiple dead birds in their yards on their street. Security cameras even recorded one fowl's fatality, showing it falling to its death from a power

A thumbprint on a cigarette pack solved a 48-year-old murder

From the New York Times: "Jeannette Ralston was at the Lion’s Den bar in San Jose, Calif., when she told her friends that she would be “back in 10 minutes.”She never returned. The next morning, on Feb. 1, 1977, police officers found the 24-year-old woman strangled with

A teacher split her $2.8M estate among her favorite students

From the New York Times: "In August 2021, a mysterious package from Sarasota, Fla., showed up in Nicole Archer’s mailbox in Manhattan.Dr. Archer hurried upstairs to her cramped Chelsea apartment with the thick envelope in hand and tore it open at her dining table, revealing a legal

Residents of this island can't escape a mysterious hum

From the BBC: "Islanders in the Outer Hebrides say their lives are being disrupted by a mysterious low frequency humming sound that can be heard day and night. Lauren-Grace Kirtley, who has set up a Facebook page dedicated to the "Hebridean Hum", said about 200 people on

At 23 years old she became the queen of a mountain kingdom

From Wikipedia: "In 1959, Hope Cooke was a freshman majoring in Asian Studies at Sarah Lawrence College. She went on a summer trip to India and met Palden Thondup Namgyal, Crown Prince of Sikkim. He was a 36 year-old recent widower with two sons and a daughter. Two years

She was forced to become a pirate and then lived in a cave

From Wikipedia: "Sarah Bishop was born around 1759 on Long Island, New York. She led a life of privilege as a member of an affluent and well-educated family. During the American Revolutionary War, her family's house was burnt by a raiding party from a British privateer. She

He let snakes bite him 200 times to create a better antivenom

From NPR: "In 2001, after working up to it for years, Tim Friede finally allowed himself to be bitten by a snake. Friede has been fascinated with snakes for as long as he can remember. He used to hunt garter snakes growing up in Wisconsin. As an adult, his