Frank Dux said he won a secret full-contact tournament called the Kumite. A martial arts magazine printed it, Hollywood filmed it, and then reporters went looking for the evidence.
Bloodsport Was Sold As A True Story. Nobody Has Found The Tournament. Read More »
Sparta left almost no written record of its own, so nearly everything we think we know comes from outsiders — rivals, admirers, and a film. The archaeology tells a stranger story.
What ‘300’ Got Wrong: The Real Sparta Behind The Myth Read More »
In August 1823, some ten thousand enslaved people on the coast of what is now Guyana put down their tools and demanded the freedom they believed had already been granted. The rising was crushed within days — and became an argument British abolitionists used for the next decade.
The Demerara Rebellion Failed. It Helped End Slavery Anyway. Read More »
In 1725 a Dutch East India Company bookkeeper was convicted of sodomy, put ashore alone on a bare volcanic island in the mid-Atlantic, and left there. The diary he kept was found, printed, and rewritten until almost nothing of him remained.
Marooned: The Diary Of Leendert Hasenbosch, Left To Die On Ascension Island Read More »
From a German commanders’ conference in August 1942 to a fountain left standing in a wrecked square: the battle for Stalingrad in photographs, taken by both sides, in chronological order.
Horrifying Photos From The Siege Of Stalingrad Read More »
In 250 CE, a Gothic leader named Cniva led his forces across the Danube, sacked one of Rome’s great Balkan cities, and destroyed an imperial army in the marshes at Abritus, killing the emperor Decius and his son. Then he disappeared from the record entirely.
Cniva: The Gothic King Who Killed A Roman Emperor And Vanished From History Read More »
In the movies, gladiators fight until one is dead and the emperor’s thumb decides the rest. The real arena was deadly, but gladiators were expensive to train, and most walked away from any given fight.
Did Roman Gladiators Really Fight to the Death? Read More »
In April 1989, Rudy Linares held staff in a Chicago pediatric ICU at gunpoint while he disconnected his brain-damaged son’s ventilator. A grand jury later refused to indict him for murder.
The Chicago Father Who Took His Son Off Life Support at Gunpoint Read More »
In the middle of Argentina’s 1990 World Cup knockout match against Brazil, Brazilian defender Branco drank from a bottle handed over by Argentina’s staff and began to feel dizzy. Years later, Maradona laughed about it on television.
The “Holy Water” Scandal: Did Argentina Drug Brazil at the 1990 World Cup? Read More »
In the 1920s, zoologist Ilya Ivanov won Soviet state funding to try to cross humans with apes. The experiments failed — but it was politics, not biology, that finished him.
The Soviet Scientist Who Tried to Create a Human-Ape Hybrid Read More »
