The Heart of the Ocean necklace from the 1997 film was based on a real-life necklace owned by Titanic survivor Kate Phillips.

Born with a hereditary condition known as severe combined immunodeficiency, David Vetter was so prone to infection that he had to live his life inside a plastic bubble.

Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, killed 2,403 people — and 1,177 of those fatalities were crewmen on the USS Arizona.

Venice's Poveglia Island was a quarantine center and mass grave for victims of bubonic plague, earning it the nickname the "Island of Ghosts."

A successful landowner in Abbeville, South Carolina, Anthony Crawford was murdered by a lynch mob on October 21, 1916, after arguing with a white store owner over the price of cottonseed.

Dust Bowl migrants were part of one of the largest mass migrations in American history, and they faced difficult journeys and discrimination.

While Mileva Marić was married to Albert Einstein, many believe she greatly contributed to his world-changing discoveries — only to be denied credit later on.

Forced to be queen consort when she was just 19, Queen Genepil was later executed by Soviet forces during Mongolia's Stalinist purges in 1938.

To this day, Victorian death pictures remain chilling artifacts of a bygone era that's shocking to modern sensibilities.

An American helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War, Hugh Thompson Jr. threatened his fellow soldiers at My Lai that he would shoot them if they didn't stop killing civilians.

University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in October 1998 by two men who targeted him because he was gay. A decade later, his murder spurred federal legislation against hate crimes.

On December 11, 1964, R&B legend Sam Cooke was shot to death by a hotel manager named Bertha Franklin. It was ruled self-defense, but was that really the case?