Saint Roch’s Worm : In 2017, Italian researchers inspected a painting of Saint Roch. The 14th Century Frenchman was said to have cured people of the plague and then contracted it himself. He is often portrayed with a bubo, a swelling on the upper leg of plague victims. The

“Government cheese,” produced in the 1980s to offload a massive dairy surplus, was stored in Missouri’s underground caves and given to struggling Americans. The surplus stemmed from 1970s farm policies that left the government with over a billion pounds of cheese.... 🇺🇸🧀 As

The bar tab of a 1787 farewell party for George Washington is still intact. The Founding Fathers drank 54 bottles of Madeira, 60 bottles of claret, 8 bottles of whiskey, 22 bottles of porter, 8 bottles of hard cider, 12 of beer, and 7 bowls of alcoholic punch. There were only 55

On the day of Albert Einstein’s death, instead of going to Princeton hospital like other reporters, a photographer named Ralph Morse went to Einstein’s office and bribed the superintendent with a fifth of scotch to let him in. He then took these photos of Einstein’s desk mere

In 1992, the animated characters Beavis and Butt-Head became iconic figures in pop culture, and their creation was inspired by two teenage boys from creator Mike Judge’s own life. Judge, who was a young animator at the time, came up with the idea for the characters while working

In 1986, an astronomer spent 10 months tracking down a 75-cent computer time discrepancy, only to uncover a German hacker who was selling U.S. defense secrets to the KGB... The astronomer was Clifford Stoll, then 36 years old and working at the Lawrence Berkeley National

In 1950s, the milkman was a trusted figure who played a quiet yet essential role in everyday life. With his crisp uniform and clinking bottles nestled in a wire crate, he arrived each morning like clockwork, leaving fresh milk on doorsteps before most families had even begun

The little girl in this painting is Bia de’ Medici, and her story is as fragile as the pearls she wears... Bia was born in 1536, before her father, Cosimo I de’ Medici, had fully secured his rule or his carefully constructed public image. She was his child, but not his wife’s.

JFK lived with his sister Eunice for 3 years during his time as a congressman in the late 1940s. Here they are photographed together in the house itself, located on 34th Street NW, Washington D.C. He would later end up moving out in 1951. John F. Kennedy shared a Washington home

America hasn’t had a President who was fluent in a language other than English since World War II.... Before the mid 20th Century, multilingualism among US presidents was not unusual. In fact, it was often expected. Early American leaders were shaped by classical education and

Physics laureate Maria Goeppert Mayer, also known as the 'Onion Madonna', with her Nobel Prize medal she received in 1963 for her discovery concerning nuclear shell structure. In her #NobelPrize lecture she spoke about her revolutionary discovery: nobelprize.org/uploads/2018/0…

In the early 1900s, photographs of women together often reveal a kind of intimacy that seems striking through a modern lens. Two women leaning close behind the bushes, sharing what looks like a private, tender moment, would not have raised many eyebrows in their time. This was an

Rob Halford, James Hetfield, and Lemmy Kilmister backstage at the Revolver Golden Gods Awards, May 2, 2013. Photo by Ross Halfin. That night, Halford joined Metallica on stage to perform "Rapid Fire." A few years later, after Lemmy passed, both Rob and James were among the close

Chris Espinosa is Apple’s longest-serving employee. He joined the company in 1976 at just 14 years old, writing BASIC code when Apple was still operating out of Steve Jobs’ garage. Chris Espinosa holds the unique distinction of being Apple’s longest-serving employee, having

In the 1960s, Stanislaw Ulam, while doodling during a boring presentation, discovered a surprising pattern when he arranged numbers in a spiral and highlighted the primes. This spiral revealed a striking pattern and structure in the distribution of prime numbers. 📷visualizing

On a peaceful Sunday afternoon in June 1961, just months after leaving the presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower was tending his vegetable garden at his Gettysburg farm when he noticed a young couple had gotten their car stuck in the mud on the rural road bordering his property.

The real Johnny Appleseed, born John Chapman, did plant apple trees across the American frontier, but not for snacking. Most of the apples grown from seed were bitter and unsuitable for eating raw. Their real purpose was hard cider, which was safer to drink than water in many

BREAKING: MSNBC just confirmed it. The Epstein release included a spreadsheet of allegations involving Trump and other powerful figures. Then it disappeared. Not disproven. Not corrected. Removed. I saved it before they could delete it

In 1982, Winona LaDuke made a choice that defied the logic of upward mobility. At 23, armed with a degree in economics from Harvard, she bypassed the high-rise career path to move to the White Earth Reservation in rural Minnesota—a place she had never lived, where her arrival was

In the 1930s, the term "cat lady" referred to older women who lived alone and kept multiple cats as companions. In an era when societal expectations often placed pressure on women to marry and maintain a traditional family structure, those who chose to live independently with