Essex was an American whaling ship from Nantucket, Massachusetts, which was launched in 1799. On November 20, 1820, while at sea in the southern Pacific Ocean under the command of Captain George Pollard Jr., the ship was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale. About 2,000 nautical miles (3,700 km) from the coast of South America, the 20-man crew was forced to make for land in three whaleboats with what food and water they could salvage from the wreck. After a month at sea the crew landed on the...

Carlos Henrique Raposo (born 2 April 1963), commonly known as Carlos Kaiser, is a Brazilian con artist and former footballer who played as a striker.[citation needed] Although his abilities were far short of professional standard, he managed to sign for numerous teams during his decade-long career. He never actually played a regular game, the closest occurrence ending in a red card whilst warming up, and hid his limited ability with injuries, frequent team changes, and other ruses.[1]

A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention.[1] In most countries, patent rights fall under private law and the patent holder must sue someone infringing the patent in order to enforce their rights.[2]

For five years, a New York City man managed to live rent-free in a landmark Manhattan hotel by exploiting an obscure local housing law.

Richard Dawkins FRS FRSL (born 26 March 1941)[3] is a British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author.[4] He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. His 1976 book The Selfish Gene popularised the gene-centred view of evolution, as well as coining the term meme. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards.[5]

A siege engine is a weapon used to destroy fortifications such as defensive walls, castles, bunkers and fortified gateways.   A fortification (also called a fort, fortress, fastness, or stronghold) is a military construction designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin fortis ("strong") and facere ("to make").[1]

The legend dates back to the Middle Ages. The earliest references describe a piper, dressed in multicoloured ("pied") clothing, who was a rat catcher hired by the town to lure rats away[1] with his magic pipe. When the citizens refused to pay for this service as promised, he retaliated by using his instrument's magical power on their children, leading them away as he had the rats. This version of the story spread as folklore and has appeared in the writings of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, the...

Project 57 was an open-air nuclear test conducted by the United States at the Nellis Air Force Range in 1957,[1][2] following Operation Redwing, and preceding Operation Plumbbob. The test area, also known as Area 13, was a 10 miles (16 km) by 16 miles (26 km) block of land abutting the northeast boundary of the Nevada National Security Site.[3]

Sun Wukong (Chinese: 孫悟空, Mandarin pronunciation: [swə́n ûkʰʊ́ŋ]), also known as the Monkey King, is a literary and religious figure best known as one of the main characters in the 16th-century Chinese novel Journey to the West.[1] In the novel, Sun Wukong is a monkey born from a stone who acquires supernatural powers through Taoist practices. After rebelling against heaven, he is imprisoned under a mountain by the Buddha. Five hundred years later, he accompanies the monk Tang Sanzang riding...

Bollea v. Gawker was a lawsuit filed in 2013 in the Circuit Court of the Sixth Judicial Circuit in Pinellas County, Florida, delivering a verdict on March 18, 2016. In the suit, Terry Gene Bollea, known professionally as Hulk Hogan, sued Gawker Media, publisher of the Gawker website, and several Gawker employees and Gawker-affiliated entities[2] for posting portions of a sex tape of Bollea with Heather Clem, at that time the wife of radio personality Bubba the Love Sponge. Bollea's claims...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handshake   A handshake is a globally widespread, brief greeting or parting tradition in which two people grasp one of each other's hands, and in most cases, it is accompanied by a brief up-and-down movement of the grasped hands. Customs surrounding handshakes are specific to cultures. Different cultures may be more or less likely to shake hands, or there may be different customs about how or when to shake hands.[1][2][3]   ...

The 1967 NFL Championship Game was the 35th NFL championship, played on December 31 at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin.[1] Because of the adverse conditions in which the game was played, the rivalry between the two teams, and the game's dramatic climax, it has been immortalized as the Ice Bowl and is considered one of the greatest games in NFL history. NFL 100 Greatest Games ranked this game as the 3rd greatest game of all time. It is still the coldest game ever played in NFL history.

Colton Harris Moore (born March 22, 1991)[10] is an American former fugitive. He was charged with the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars in property, including several small aircraft, boats, and multiple cars, all committed while still a teenager.

Jeanne Louise Calment (French: [ʒan lwiz kalmɑ̃] ⓘ; 21 February 1875 – 4 August 1997) was a French supercentenarian and, with a documented lifespan of 122 years and 164 days, the oldest person ever whose age has been verified.[1] Her longevity attracted media attention and medical studies of her health and lifestyle. She is the only person verified to have reached the age of 120 and beyond. According to census records, Calment outlived both her daughter and grandson.[2] In January 1988, she...

John Burdon Sanderson Haldane FRS (/ˈhɔːldeɪn/; 5 November 1892 – 1 December 1964[1][2]), nicknamed "Jack" or "JBS",[3] was a British-Indian scientist who worked in physiology, genetics, evolutionary biology, and mathematics. With innovative use of statistics in biology, he was one of the founders of neo-Darwinism. Despite his lack of an academic degree in the field,[1] he taught biology at the University of Cambridge, the Royal Institution, and University College London.[4] Renouncing his...

Sir Francis Drake (c. 1540 – 28 January 1596) was an English explorer and privateer best known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition between 1577 and 1580. This was the first English circumnavigation, and second circumnavigation overall. He is also known for participating in the early English slaving voyages of his cousin, Sir John Hawkins, and John Lovell. Having started as a simple seaman, in 1588 he was part of the fight against the Spanish Armada as a vice-admiral.

The Conch Republic (/ˈkɒŋk/) is a micronation declared as a sarcastic secession of the city of Key West, Florida, from the United States on April 23, 1982. It has been maintained as a tourism booster for the city. Since then, the term "Conch Republic" has been expanded to refer to "all of the Florida Keys, or, that geographic apportionment of land that falls within the legally defined boundaries of Monroe County, Florida, northward to 'Skeeter's Last Chance Saloon' in Florida City, Dade...

Anthony Comstock (March 7, 1844 – September 21, 1915) was an American anti-vice activist, United States Postal Inspector, and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice (NYSSV), who was dedicated to upholding Christian morality. He opposed obscene literature, abortion, contraception, masturbation, gambling, prostitution, and patent medicine. The terms comstockery and comstockism refer to his extensive censorship campaign of materials that he considered obscene, including...

The United States' Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) made numerous unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. There were also attempts by Cuban exiles, sometimes in cooperation with the CIA. The 1975 Church Committee claimed eight proven CIA assassination attempts between 1960 and 1965. In 1976, President Gerald Ford issued an Executive Order banning political assassinations. In 2006, Fabián Escalante, former chief of Cuba's intelligence, stated that there had been 634...

Steven Paul Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American businessman, inventor, and investor best known for co-founding the technology company Apple Inc. Jobs was also the founder of NeXT and chairman and majority shareholder of Pixar. He was a pioneer of the personal computer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, along with his early business partner and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

The Late Bronze Age collapse was a time of widespread societal collapse during the 12th century BC associated with environmental change, mass migration, and the destruction of cities. The collapse affected a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean (North Africa and Southeast Europe) and the Near East, in particular Egypt, eastern Libya, the Balkans, the Aegean, Anatolia, and, to a lesser degree, the Caucasus. It was sudden, violent, and culturally disruptive for many Bronze Age civilizations,...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_canceled_launch_vehicle_designs Even before the launch of Sputnik 1, there were various types of launch vehicle designs. The launch vehicle designs described below are either canceled or never left the drawing board.

Counterfeiting of the currency of the United States is widely attempted. According to the United States Department of Treasury, an estimated $70 million in counterfeit bills are in circulation, or approximately 1 note in counterfeits for every 10,000 in genuine currency, with an upper bound of $200 million counterfeit, or 1 counterfeit per 4,000 genuine notes.[1][2] However, these numbers are based on annual seizure rates on counterfeiting, and the actual stock of counterfeit money is...

This list of unusual deaths includes unique or extremely rare circumstances of death recorded throughout history, noted as being unusual by multiple sources.