Distracted Man on Scooter Drives into Sinkhole

It's like a scene out of an action movie: one moment, the city street seems calm and ordinary, and in the next moment, the asphalt and concrete crumble ...

Polar Explorer Dies, Deceived By False Map

In 1879 Lieutenant George De Long set out with a crew on the USS Jeannette in hopes of claiming the North Pole for the United States. De Long's plans ...

Homeowners Remove Alarm Clock from Inside Wall after 13 Years

Thirteen years ago, homeowner Jerry Lynn was trying to figure out where he should put a hole in his wall for a TV wire. He went up to the second floor ...

High-Tech Security Robot Falls down Stairs and into Fountain

One of the internet's more recent victims of notoriety was not a person, animal, or airline—but rather a security robot.

The K5 Autonomous Data Machine—which ...

Closing Your Eyes doesn't Hide the Truth

Former Maryland poet laureate Lucille Clifton wrote a poem in which she pictures herself trying to keep her eyes closed, ignoring the truth. But then ...

Twitter Imagines New United Airlines Mottos after Scandal

If you read, watch, or listen to the news at all, you probably heard a story about a certain United Airlines flight from Chicago to Louisville (in April ...

Professor Loses Manuscript in Hurricane

Kris Lackey thought he had hurricane-proofed his manuscripts. An English professor at the University of New Orleans, he had saved his fiction and papers ...

Evangelist Leighton Ford Meets Muhammad Ali

Leighton Ford, evangelist and brother-in-law of Billy Graham, once met the former boxing champion Muhammad Ali at a hotel in Sydney, Australia. Ford listened ...

Ship Misguided by Faulty Maps

In the Kingdom of Ice is journalist Hampton Sides' compelling account of the failed nineteenth-century polar expedition of the USS Jeannette, captained ...

Actress Kate Bosworth's View of Heaven

When actress Kate Bosworth, who plays the strong-willed wife of a preacher in the movie 90 Minutes in Heaven, thinks about heaven, she doesn't particularly ...