Around 1533, the Ottoman sultan broke custom to marry his favorite concubine Hürrem Sultan — and she soon became the most powerful woman in the empire.

Between 1899 and 1951, J. C. Leyendecker drew 322 covers for the Saturday Evening Post, created thousands of advertisements for companies like Kellogg's and Ivory Soap, and invented the idealized "Arrow Collar Man."

From her love affairs to her racy depiction in a semi-nude sculpture, Pauline Bonaparte lived a colorful and controversial life — especially for a woman of her rank.

Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin was murdered on December 30, 1916 — but he only died after being poisoned, shot, and thrown into the freezing Neva River.

After defeating Joe Masseria in the Castellammarese War, Salvatore "Little Caesar" Maranzano declared himself the "boss of all bosses" and reorganized the mob into the Five Families — but his reign would soon come to a bloody end.

Believed to date back at least 10,000 years, trepanation involves drilling a hole into a person's skull and exposing the membrane surrounding their brain.

Ann Atwater was a single mother in Durham, North Carolina when she helped integrate the city's schools with C.P. Ellis in 1971 — a story that inspired the film "The Best Of Enemies."

On July 27, 1969, Manson Family member Bobby Beausoleil stabbed Gary Hinman to death, and he remains behind bars in California to this day.

A rare phenomenon, a coffin birth occurs after abdominal gases build up in a pregnant corpse, ejecting the fetus from the woman's body.

Though Mary Brunner helped the Manson Family kill Gary Hinman and gave birth to Charles Manson's son, she later testified against the group.

The co-founder of Murder, Inc. and the head of the infamous Mangano family, Albert Anastasia was one of New York City’s most feared gangsters — until his story came to an end in shocking fashion.