Russian family was cut off from all human contact for 40 years

From The Smithsonian: "In the summer of 1978. A helicopter was skimming the treeline a hundred or so miles from the Mongolian border when it dropped into a thickly wooded valley. Then the pilot saw something that should not have been there: a clearing, 6,000 feet up a

She talked like a millionaire but slept in a parking garage

From the WSJ: "University of Florida officials went back and forth with documentary filmmaker Jo Franklin, an alumnus, over details for a planned gala in her honor at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington. She had pledged $2 million to her alma mater, and her guest list included the

Why did they try to live far off the grid in the winter?

From Outside magazine: "Talon Vance, 13, lived in an apartment complex in suburban Colorado Springs with his mom and Aunt. Other relatives lived nearby. Typically, he spent much of the week with his father, half brother, half sister, and grandparents, all of whom lived together not far away in

He claimed Antarctica and set up his own nation

From Big Think: "Seven countries each have staked a claim to a slice of Antarctica, but all those claims have been frozen by the Antarctic Treaty of 1959. Together, those claims cover most of the continent at the bottom of the world — except Marie Byrd Land, which is the

She pretended her girls were Inuit and stole a fortune

From Toronto Life magazine: "Amira and Nadya Gill were well-known on campus. The ambitious twins seemed to excel at everything they did. Amira was pursuing her master’s in civil engineering, and she was a reservist in the Canadian Armed Forces. Nadya, a former NCAA soccer player, juggled her

After her son was beheaded she met one of his killers

From The Guardian: "The last time Diane Foley spoke to her son Jim was in November 2012, when he called her at work in New Hampshire. Foley, a nurse practitioner at the clinic where her husband, John, was a doctor, was relieved to hear her son’s voice. A

An ancient bacteria revived by an industrial accident

From The Economist: "New species are generally found rather than awakened. And they are typically discovered in remote places like rainforests or Antarctic plateaus. But not so a species of bacterium described in a paper just published in Extremophiles. The bug is new to science, but it is not

She was taken in 1947 and no one knows why

From Strange Company: "On April 9, 1947, the town of Woodward, Oklahoma was slammed by a tornado. Hutchinson Croft was a successful sheep farmer who lived with his wife Cleta and their two children, Joan and Geri. The tornado flattened their home, killing Cleta, but four-year-old Joan and eight-year-old

Walt Disney blamed himself for his mother's death

From Vintage News: "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs marked a turning point for Walt Disney. It was his first full-length cel-animated feature film, and it was astonishingly successful. The movie took in an unheard-of $1.5 million. Flush with success, Walt and his brother Roy bought their parents

Was he wrongfully convicted for killing his daughter?

From Esquire: "At around 7:00 a.m. on June 16, 1998, Barton McNeil, a thirty-nine-year-old divorced father, woke up on the couch after a muggy, stormy night. It was the beginning of one of those long summers in Bloomington, Illinois, the air so heavy you could chew it.

She put $50,000 in a shoe box and gave it to a stranger

From The Cut: "On a Tuesday evening this past October, I put $50,000 in cash in a shoe box, taped it shut as instructed, and carried it to the sidewalk in front of my apartment, my phone clasped to my ear. “Don’t let anyone hurt me,” I

A nuclear weapons lab cracked a serial killer case

From Undark: "Nuclear weapons laboratories don’t often help solve serial-killer cases. But in the investigation of Efren Saldivar, data from such a lab provided the clinching evidence that led to his conviction on six counts of murder. As a respiratory therapist at Glendale Adventist Medical Center in California,