As October draws to a close, Halloween brings costumes, candy, and decorations designed to make everyday things feel frightening. Some of the holiday’s darker stories, though, aren’t make-believe. Discarded pumpkins can harm wildlife, trick-or-treating carries real risks for children, and one notorious crime helped fuel decades of fears about poisoned candy. Here are ten unsettling […]

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William the Conqueror seized the English crown in 1066 by defeating King Harold at the Battle of Hastings. He then built the Tower of London to secure his power over his new domain. Construction of the central keep, the White Tower, took about 20 years. Masons came from Normandy, and stone was brought from Caen […]

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Scientists often discover new animals in places that seem made for exploration: remote rainforests, deep oceans, isolated islands, and unexplored caves. But nature does not always follow expectations. Sometimes, previously unknown species turn up where people live, work, travel, and conduct research. A fish can be misidentified in a neuroscience lab, a scorpion can be […]

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Nuclear weapons tests were supposed to happen at test sites: Bikini Atoll, Nevada, Semipalatinsk, remote stretches of ocean and desert where governments could detonate something terrible, take measurements, and eventually pack up. The fallout did not respect the arrangement. Atmospheric tests in the 1950s and early 1960s scattered radioactive isotopes around the planet. Some settled […]

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Real history often outdoes the stories we make up. Around the world, towns grew around staircases and mines; ancient engineers found ways to store water in dry landscapes; and communities built floating islands. The histories behind these places may sound like fantasy, but every one is real—and people can still visit many of them today. […]

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Death is the one appointment every human keeps, yet people have spent thousands of years searching for a way to cancel it. Ancient kings pursued magical plants and mysterious springs, emperors swallowed poisonous metals, and aristocrats drank gold or claimed to remember events that happened centuries before their birth. Not every famous quest for immortality […]

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The Appalachian Mountains are beautiful by day, but darkness can turn even the most inviting trail into something sinister. For generations, the region’s battlefields, railroad towns, isolated communities, and shadowy forests have inspired stories of restless ghosts, strange lights, phantom animals, and creatures that refuse to fit comfortably into the natural world. Some of these […]

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