The Grid

The Black Death, also known as the Pestilence (Pest for short), the Great Plague or the Plague, or less commonly the Black Plague, was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history, resulting in ...

The Peasants' Revolt, also named Wat Tyler's Rebellion or the Great Rising, was a major uprising across large parts of England in 1381. The revolt had various causes, including the socio-economic and political tensions generated by the Black Death in the ...

Do you want to put a smile on someone’s face today? Maybe make their day a little better. It won’t cost you a single penny or much time to do just that. And because smiling ...

Deep in the cavities of the mind is your subliminal channel that circles the subconscious, conscious and unconscious mind. In this region of the brain is the area where the psyche resides and holds hidden ...

We can safely say that the period of man’s history from 476 AD to 1000 AD was the most maligned of all. This period, known to historians as the Early Middle Ages, is still referred ...

The dark side of selfies. Our social media feeds are full of self-shot photos of our friends and family looking better than we do, doing things that are more exciting than the things we do, ...

Ryan Koopmans tells the story:   GQ Magazine assigned us to photograph the atmosphere and culture around Area 51, a highly secretive and much talked-about US airforce institution located in the desert of Nevada. We met ...

Astronomers have a theory on how the planet Uranus got flipped onto its side. They used detailed computer simulations showing a body about twice the size of Earth must have slammed into Uranus between 3 ...

Big Bang. Dinosaurs walked the earth before humans did. A big cloud of gas and dust floated out in the universe before earth. Before the universe ... well, before that is a point that physicists ...

Dave Pollot is a painter in the US who brings new life to old and forgotten thrift store paintings by adding pop culture characters. He uses these old paintings to combine his interest in painting ...

The specific point on Earth that reigns as the planet’s hottest place turns out to be a very complex, loaded question. What defines 'hottest' exactly? Do we mean the place that reaches the highest temperature? ...

Simon Beck, who bills himself as “the world’s first and most famous ‘Snow Artist,'” is back with a new work of unique art – a massive snow dragon that he drew by walking in the ...

A mysterious prankster who has been dressing up as Pennywise the evil clown from the popular “It” films and trying to scare passers-by has been getting a lot of attention in Ukraine, including from prosecutors ...

How to motivate yourself. It will be so hard for you to do anything beneficial in your life if you lack intrinsic motivation. For one move from a single step to another, changing your way ...

Idiots that changed history. Yes, it happened to us all at one point or another. We've all felt the slow burn that comes with the realization that we've done something horribly wrong. Whatever you did, ...

(recommend audio) The Athenian Revolution (508–507 BCE) was a revolt by the people of Athens that overthrew the ruling aristocratic oligarchy,  establishing the almost century-long self-governance of Athens in the form of a participatory democracy ...

The first vampires. Many people wrongly believe that vampires were first discovered in Romania when in fact, vampires records date back as far as well over a thousands years. This wrong perception is understandable given ...

The last soldier surrendered. During World War II around 450,000 German soldiers were imprisoned in 700 camps across the United States. After the war ended, these prisoners were repatriated to Germany.  But seven of them ...

Fanta for Nazi Germany. It's February 1944 and Berlin is attempting to recover from American aerial bombing. But life and industry continues on the city’s outskirts. In farmhouses, bottles clang and a mix of ex-convicts, ...

The theory of future aliens. According to ancient astronaut theory our ancestors experiencing these huge leaps forward - advancing their knowledge in all fields - is due to extraterrestrial intervention. And maybe even genetic intervention ...

Try terrifying Japanese ghosts for size! If you know all about ghost stories or haunted house movies then there's a good chance that you might feel like you've seen it all. A floating candelabra? Boring ...

The Bell witch. It all happened in a farm house that stood on the Red River trail near Adams, Tennessee in Robertson County, which in the mid-1800’s was the site of many horrific encounters with ...

Alone with their thoughts. In 1654, scientist and philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote: “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Now, there's some science behind that statement. A ...

The Saurian Monster must have left a ghoulish sight in the wake of his macabre stride. It all started in October 1886 when workers found a sheep picked clean to the bones at the Frankton ...

Be strong and withstand this cuteness overload! Our parents can probably not wait and are probably relieved to see us grow up!  But in all honesty, our furry counterparts could please just stay babies forever ...

Jeremy Mann (American, born in 1979) is a painter best known for his moody, dark cityscapes. Mann graduated from Ohio University with a degree in Fine Art painting, and later attended the Academy of Art ...

Unlucky people. Have you ever got a sneaky suspicion that the universe is sometimes trigger-happy to assassinate you? However, you haven't met Ann Hodges. She wasn't particularly special but she was still in the universe ...

Childhood friendships. To adults, friends may be fine feathered or fair weathered. But kids have funny answers that really give adults a life lesson on the true meaning of friendship. It makes perfect sense that ...

OBE or Out of Body Experience is a term that was first used in 1943 by author George N. M. Tyrell. Tyrell was looking for a broader scientific term to replace more supernatural or mystical ...

Future dreams. Much has been written regarding dreams and their meanings or purpose. Mankind has been fascinated with our dreams since the first dreamer awoke and wondered about what their visions meant. Since ancient times ...

The best Feng Shui bed room tip that a Feng Shui expert can offer you is to have your bed in ‘command position’. What is FengShui? But before you know what is a command position ...

The winners and runners up of the 2019 Nature Photographer Of The Year were announced recently. The standards were incredibly high, as usual. The award was presented at the Nature Talks Photo Festival in the Netherlands ...

Develop fine motor skills in babies and toddlers through the coolest way possible – play. Fine motor skills are subtle movements of the hands and fingers in coordination with the eyes. They help achieve tasks like ...

Peter Stumpp (alternately spelled Stumpf, Stubbe or Stuppe) was a mid-16th century German farmer who was executed on Halloween in 1589. Unfortunately, we only have one surviving account of what happened in the town of ...

Mysterious shipwrecks. We are fascinated by shipwrecks, and it's easy to see why. First, there's the idea of sunken treasure, which has a pretty universal appeal in any culture that admires shiny things (all of ...

Ancient leaders. To say that some ancient leaders were really weird is probably a bit of an understatement. Being really weird was almost a prerequisite for being an ancient leader. Ancient leaders in particular were ...

Everyone knows of hypnosis because of four infamous words: "You're getting very sleepy." But aside from old Hollywood films and sideshow parlor tricks, hypnotism is viewed by many psychiatric professionals as a credible form of ...

There will be a teddy bear. There always is. Push back against the plush tide and it crashes, all fur and baleful plastic eyes, in the living room regardless. Scientists regularly find that so-called “transitional ...

Dwarf planet called Goblin. A strange little planet with a colorful name is giving astronomers new evidence in the hunt for Planet X. The Goblin is a newly confirmed dwarf planet that travels to the ...

The grey wolf. The battle between wolves and farmers has been going on since the beginning of time, and has been largely uninterrupted over the course of American history. Western Europe, over the course of ...

Time travel is the one that we want to be real of all mysterious phenomena. The possibilities are endless, and some people claimed they've already experienced them. Of course, it's easy to dismiss all these ...

Ten inventors that was killed by their inventions. Over the course of civilization, thousands upon thousands of inventions succeeded beyond their creator’s wildest dream. But some were epic fails. William Bullock invented the first modern ...

Atlantis! The name alone is enough to invoke images of mermaids, bubble cities, sunken ruins, and an ancient, technologically advanced situation that suffered ruin at the whims of the gods or their own hubris. But ...

Entire countries embarrassed. These mistakes made entire countries blush. If countries were capable of vasodilation, of course. The truth is, while countries can be large or small, they're run by people. And people are capable ...

Inspire your destiny. Are you happy with your current situation in life? Your answers could range from yes, no or maybe. Then you start pondering and have these strange thoughts that have been recurring every ...

There are things about ancient Egypt that still can't be explained. Few civilizations have a more mysterious reputation than ancient Egypt. But the point of a mystery is to solve it, and over the years we've ...

Hitler and the occult. The rise of the Nazi regime which led to the occupation of several countries and the extraction and eradication of countless Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, aged, disabled and children did not happen ...

Beijing-based MAD Architects earned themselves a place on the shortlist of the Southbank by Beulah competition with a green skyscraper that towers over the city of Melbourne. Twisting up as a single tower, the skyscraper is a multipurpose vision ...

The Dunkirk evacuation, code-named Operation Dynamo, also known as the Miracle of Dunkirk, was the evacuation of Allied soldiers during World War II from the beaches and harbour of Dunkirk, in the north of France, between 26 May and 4 June 1940. The ...

The Doomsday Clock. It's two minutes to midnight. Those words probably make you shiver, just a little bit, because bad things always happen at midnight. And midnight on the Doomsday Clock is the baddest of the ...

Nursing cat. Radamenes is an angelic little black cat in Bydgoszcz, Poland and has been through hell and high water. He survived a respiratory infection, and now helps other animals at this Polish shelter to get ...

Anneliese Michel. Born in Bavaria in 1952, Anneliese Michel is perhaps the last embodiment of Satan you'd expect. Michel was part of a devoutly religious family, who believed that she needed to pay penance for ...

Abhartach. Information on just how real this person was is sketchy, but that's not entirely surprising. Record-keeping from the 5th and 6th centuries leaves just a smidge to be desired. We do know that Ireland was ...

Cute sea slugs. Most of these “slugs” are actually snails that have lost their shells and gained new characteristics through evolution. For example, sacoglossans are sometimes called “solar-powered sea slugs” because they use chloroplasts from ...

Crow rides on the back of an eagle. Phoo Chan, a talented California-based bird photographer whose photos have been featured by National Geographic, has captured an incredible, once-in-a-lifetime series of photos of a crow landing and ...

Artist used LSD. Countless artists have experimented with the effect drugs have on their work. User whatafinethrowaway, inspired by the “Nine Drawings” series which was the result of an experiment by the US government in ...

Your belief system. It is interesting to note that most of society is free. There is a percentage of the populous that is incarcerated for crimes against society. So too, are there people who live ...

The city of Danzig was home to a lengthy territorial dispute between the Germans and Poles who inhabited it and had been declared a free city by the League of Nations. In late August 1939, the Schleswig-Holstein, a ...

Japanese filmmaker and animator Hayao Miyazaki has long delighted and inspired people around the world with his original imaginative universe. Now, those that have found his work artistically influential are paying homage to Miyazaki in ...

Cute panda ant. The panda-ant may look cute, but its sting is painful! Technically not an ant but a wasp, its colors and patters are aposematic, warning other predators to stay away. Only the female ...