J.D. McMahon promised Wichita Falls a skyscraper befitting the prospering boom town. Unknown to townspeople, the con man drew up blueprints for a building 480 inches tall, instead of the 480 feet he promised.

Claire Phillips was a smalltown girl from Michigan who wound up running a spy ring for the United States in the Japan-occupied Philippines during World War II.

How India's Great Banyan Tree came back from the brink of death to become one of the most astounding living things on Earth.

"Angel's Glow" was a phenomenon of the Civil War in which soldiers' wounds seemed to glow in the dark. It took 139 years to figure out why.

Written sometime between 200 B.C. and 100 A.D., the Seikilos epitaph is the oldest complete musical composition in existence — hear it for yourself.

Kurt Gödel was one of the 20th century's most brilliant mathematicians. But he was so paranoid he ended up starving to death.

Ambrose Burnside may have been a Civil War general as well as a governor and U.S. senator, but many today know him best as the man who popularized sideburns.

Discover why China's Reed Flute Cave first captivated humans more than 1,000 years ago — then vanished from our history for more than a millennium.

Over the course of 30 years, Alex the parrot and Irene Pepperberg showed that parrots are even smarter than most people think.

Queen Teuta ruled over a powerful Illyrian kingdom in the third century B.C. When Rome demanded that she stop her country's pirates from attacking their vessels, Teuta refused, resulting in war.