One of the most captivating displays of saintly relics is at the Basilica Cateriniana di San Domenico in Siena, Italy, a town about 45 miles (72km) south of Tuscany. Worshippers and tourists who visit this search can see the mummified head of… Read More ›
In 1896, Sir Wallis Budge, Keeper of the Egyptian Department at the British Museum at the turn of the 20th century, reportedly witnessed the exhumation of six mummies dated to the predynastic era, the period between the Neolithic and Dynastic periods… Read More ›
Between the 15th and 18th centuries, many people applied cosmetics that contained deadly toxins to achieve the look of a flawless complexion. This harmful makeup often worsened the wearer’s skin, caused physical discomfort, and, in at least one case, death. An 18th… Read More ›
In 49 AD, a Roman soldier carried a decaying human head into Rome to present it to the wife of Emperor Claudius, Julia Agrippina. Julia Agrippina, also known as Agrippina the Younger, had ordered the suicide of Lollia Paulina, her formal… Read More ›
According to legend, some time in the 1940’s a ship named the S.S. Ourang Medan sent a distress signal as it traveled through the South Pacific. The S.O.S. said that the officers aboard were dead and rest of the crew were dying…. Read More ›
People used to believe that the corpses of murder victims could identify their killers – sort of a zombie testimony. Courts all over Europe, up until the 19th century in some places, practiced a ritual called the bier-right. The bier-right… Read More ›
General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia fought the Union’s Army of the Potomac, which was commanded by Major General Joseph Hooker, at the Battle of Chancellorsville in Virginia between April 30 and May 6, 1863. The Battle of… Read More ›
Although the Suicide Squad is best known today as a movie about a fictional group of supervillains drafted by the government to undertake dangerous missions in exchange for commuted sentences, there was a real-life Suicide Squad at Caltech in the… Read More ›
The morning of November 16, 1880, Wilhelm Friedrich Kühne (1837–1900), a professor of physiology at the University of Heidelberg, dissected the head of an executed murderer in his dark room within minutes of the man’s death. Kühne worked around the… Read More ›
The Countess and the Princess In 1807 an enigmatic couple arrived in the village of Hildburghausen in Central Germany and lived in the castle of Eishausen for the next 30 years. The villagers referred to the solitary duo as the… Read More ›
