From The Guardian: "A Chinese paraglider who was accidentally propelled more than 8,000 metres high by an updraft has been banned from the activity for six months after a video of his ordeal went viral. Peng Yujiang began from an elevation of about 3,000m in the Qilian
From the New York Times: "Kelly Wakefield, a professional gardener, was doing her spring cleanup of a public park in St. Albans, Vt., when she stumbled upon a mysterious metal box under a pile of leaves. She shook the box and heard the telltale jangle of coins. She opened
From National Library of Medicine: "The structure of modern residency programs in North America originated at Johns Hopkins Hospital during the last decade of the 19th century, under the aegis and influence of William Stewart Halsted. Halsted was a surgical innovator who greatly shaped surgical practice in the 20th
From The Wrap: "A remote indigenous tribe Amazon tribe in Brazil has sued The New York Times, claiming a story about its first exposure to the internet has led to widespread reports that its members have become addicted to pornography. Filed last week in Los Angeles, the Marubo Tribe
From The Atlantic: "Last week, Germany arrested Peter Fitzek, 59, an anti-government figure also known as King Peter I, the Son of Man, the Messiah. Historically, attempts to arrest messiahs have met with mixed results, so to stay on the safe side, the Interior Ministry not only rolled up
From Now I Know: "In 2007, Tommaso was a homeless kitten, living on the streets of Rome — your stereotypical alley cat. He quickly became the feline equivalent of a rags-to-riches story when a woman named Maria Assunta, then either 89 or 90 years old, adopted Tommaso as her own.
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
From the New York Times: "It was May 1996, and David Kaczynski, a counselor for troubled youth in upstate New York, sat down to write a letter to his brother Ted. A month earlier, his brother had been shockingly unmasked as the shadowy Unabomber, responsible for a 17-year campaign
From Mental Floss: "It was 1955, and Tucker, 30, was underwater in Bermuda. He was diving at the site of a shipwreck, which he would later learn to be the 16th-century Spanish ship the San Pedro. On the seventh day, Tucker was tugging on a piece of wood 30
From Mental Floss: "Louis Knapp saw the girl in the red parka and decided to stop. It was roughly 3 p.m. on Sunday, December 1, 1946, and Knapp was driving along Route 67A in Bennington, Vermont. He asked the girl where she was going. To hike the Long
From AP: "One of the greatest mountain guides will attempt to scale the world’s highest peak for the 31st time — and possibly the 32nd time as well — and break his own record. Kami Rita, 55, flew to Mount Everest from Kathmandu to lead a group of climbers who
From Modern Met: "For most of her life, Tilley Lockey has been championing the limb different community. The 19-year-old singer, influencer, and host lost both her arms to meningitis when she was just 15 months old. But rather than hide it or try to blend in, Lockey has embraced
From the Washington Post: "She has broken world women’s records in the 75-79 age group for every distance and, at times, beaten the fastest men in that age group.Rice is 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighs 95 pounds. Her physiology is so striking that her maximal