Also known as the Catherine wheel or simply the wheel, the breaking wheel crushed the limbs and bones of the condemned, sometimes over the course of several days.

Not only did Anna Genovese testify about Vito Genovese's criminal activities in open court, she also had multiple lesbian affairs — yet she lived peacefully into old age and was buried by her former husband's side.

In February 2009, Charla Nash was viciously mauled by Travis the Chimp in Stamford, Connecticut, leaving her clinging to life and needing a full face transplant.

Culleoka Unit School teacher Tad Cummins spent months harassing and assaulting Elizabeth Thomas before he kidnapped her and drove her to California to make her his "wife."

Recent scholarship has suggested that Mao Zedong was the deadliest dictator in history, but he was far from the only one responsible for millions of deaths.

With roots in the temperance movement, Prohibition was intended to improve morality in American society and produce a more disciplined workforce. Instead, it led to the rise of organized crime, people dying from tainted liquor, and distrust of government regulation.

Walter Wick spent up to three weeks painstakingly crafting and photographing each scene for the I Spy books, which became a worldwide phenomenon in the 1990s.

After running off with an older man named Jerry Strickland in 1986, Missy Munday was located when an episode of "Unsolved Mysteries" publicized the story of Munday and Strickland — and their suspected involvement in a murder.

During the last decade of Elvis Presley's life, he became increasingly dependent on his doctor George "Dr. Nick" Nichopoulos — who supplied the King with thousands of prescriptions.

In 1978, Billy Milligan became the first person to successfully use multiple personality disorder as a legal defense, though the debate surrounding his condition turned the case into a hotly-debated spectacle.