10 Marathon490 BC The Persian Empire was the mightiest force that the ancient world had seen up to that time. After conquering the kingdoms of Media and Lydia, King Cyrus tried to impose Persia’s heavy-handed rule on the Greek cities of Asia Minor. The liberty-loving Greeks resisted this oppression by walling up their towns and preparing for war. Cyrus died before managing to pacify the unruly Greeks, but his son, Darius, decided to bring the war to Greece itself....

10 Doctor Who Changed Gender Oh, great. Another piece of pop culture for the world to argue over. Doctor Who (for all 12 of you who don’t already know) is a long-running British sci-fi show about a man called the Doctor who travels through time and space. At least, he used to be a man. On Sunday, the BBC dropped their first look at the thespian who will take over when incumbent Peter Capaldi leaves....

10Mary Ellen James For six long years, Mary Ellen James wanted to get pregnant. She did once, but she miscarried. She even tried fertility treatment, but that didn’t work. Then a year after she quit the treatment, she found herself pregnant. On October 31, 1989, Mary Ellen went into labor 12 weeks premature at a hospital in Boca Raton, Florida, and the baby was delivered stillborn. The doctor massaged the infant’s chest, and there was no response for an agonizing 12 minutes, then the infant’s heart started beating....

10Kamille Seenauth In 2005, Patricia Alvez was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of Kamille Seenauth in Georgetown, Guyana. Alves ran a “Spirit Church” and many people, mostly women, would come to her for African- or Hindu-style exorcisms. During these exorcisms, prayers and ritual beatings were often used to drive off the invading spirits. However, when Kamille Senauth came asking for exorcism, Alves beat her with an iron bar until she died from her injuries....

10The Fred West House25 Crowmell Street, Gloucester, England Marriages are often most successful when both partners have similar interests, such as hiking, antiquing, or murdering children. Fred and Rosemary West of Gloucester, England shared such a passion. The horrors that unfolded at their home on 25 Cromwell Street are almost too gruesome to describe. Fred and Rosemary each had horrible childhoods full of incest and abuse. They met on November 29, 1968, her 15th birthday, when he was 27 years old....

10 Anne Fisher David Russell Cain was a 28-year-old father of two infant children. He and his wife, Elizabeth, divorced in May 2015, and David was granted full custody of their kids. The couple had a stormy past. At the time of their divorce, Elizabeth was on one year of probation for a November 2014 incident in which she had been charged with misdemeanor assault against David. Despite the couple’s tumultuous past, Elizabeth and her mother, Anne Fisher, were granted visits with Elizabeth’s children....

10 Skeleton Lake Roopkund Lake sits 5,000 meters (16,000 ft) above sea level in the Himalayas in India. For one month during the summer, the frozen lake’s surface melts away, revealing hundreds of human skeletons. First reported in the 19th century, the watery grave was found again by a game reserve ranger in 1942. There are so many human remains in this body of water that it has been dubbed “Skeleton Lake....

Mordechai Vanunu worked as a nuclear technician for the State of Israel in the 1980s, which was claiming to pursue nuclear power for civilian purposes only. In 1986, citing his opposition to weapons of mass destruction, Vanunu leaked details of the Israeli nuclear weapons program to the British press, confirming the world’s fear that Israel possessed nuclear weapons. After this, the Mossad lured him to Italy, drugged him, and abducted him....

10The Assassination Of Salvatore Giuliano In the 1940s, the bandit Salvatore Giuliano styled himself as a Sicilian Robin Hood, stealing from rich landlords and redistributing the spoils to the peasants. He was also a Sicilian nationalist, longing to end Italian rule and give the island its independence. He even wrote President Harry Truman, suggesting that Sicily be made an American state. But by the time World War II was over, Giuliano had shifted his support from the peasants to the Mafia and landowners, who could provide the funds he needed for his guerrilla army....

10 Claire Sylvia Has Strange Cravings and DreamsNew England Not only did the heart and lung transplant that 47-year-old Claire Sylvia received save her life, but it also made her the first person in New England to undergo the process. She’s also convinced that in addition to vital organs, she received some of her donor’s tastes as if his memories were locked into his heart and lungs and consequently are now flowing in her body....

10 Jellyfish Can Have Eyes We think of jellyfish as little more than transparent, brainless blobs with tentacles, and that’s accurate enough for many species. However, the deadly box jellies, or Cubozoa, are equipped with surprisingly advanced eyes, one cluster at each corner of the animal’s slightly box-shaped body. Even though the box jellies have no centralized brain, their eyes are believed to make out light, shadow, shape, and motion, allowing the creature to navigate more deliberately than its current-riding, blind cousins....

At moments like these, we’ll usually find ourselves in the company of someone who claims to know the difference. That someone is clearly wrong—but we’d be hard-pressed to say exactly why we think so. Until now: African elephants are slightly larger and slightly heavier than their Asian cousins. But size won’t really help you to identify one from the other unless they’re side by side. To identify a lone elephant, there are two main features to look for: Firstly, an Asian elephant will have two domes on its head while the African will only have one....

10 Franz von Paula Gruithuisen In 1824, Franz von Paula Gruithuisen, a German astronomer and physician, published a paper with the hefty title, “Discovery of many distinct traces of lunar inhabitants, especially one of their colossal buildings.” In a series of papers spread out over 28 years, he defined what he believed to be a true lunar city near the crater called Schroter. In numerous drawings, Gruithuisen interpreted what he saw through his telescope as artificially constructed buildings, waterways, and roads....

However, the more they are spoken about, the more likely their intelligence, bravery, or mere existence will be remembered for decades to come. Keep their memories alive by reading about the following ten people forgotten by history. 10 Matthias Sindelar An onlooker once said that Matthias Sindelar played soccer the way “a grandmaster plays chess.” The pro player enjoyed sporting fame playing for FK Austria Vienna and the Austrian national team throughout the 1920s and 1930s, which brought him popularity and wealth similar to today’s players....

Pioneer children, in the days of the American frontier, would often be kidnapped by raiding warriors. When Native American tribes lost their own children in wars with the settlers, they would even the score. They would raid a white village, take their children, and carry them back to their homes as hostages. But when their families tracked them down and tried to rescue them, sometimes, the children didn’t want to go home....

The truth has a lot to do with how (and why) we see colors. Without going into the science involved, we recognize colors by their wavelengths. Think of wavelengths as the difference in the speed at which the signals from a color reach our eyes. The wavelength of every color gets to our eyes at different speeds. Our eye captures this information and sends it to our brain, which then uses it to determine the color we’re looking at....

The question: What did Louis Keseberg do? On April 14, 1846, a group of pioneers known as the Donner Party began their voyage to relocate from the U.S. state of Illinois to California. The trip covered 2,500 miles (4,023 kilometers) over the Great Plains, two mountain ranges and the deserts of the Great Basin. The voyage took between four and six months, but the Donner Party was slowed because they decided to follow a new route called Hastings Cutoff....

10Sir Francis Galton’s Bell Curve Theory Over the centuries, the concept of human intelligence has fascinated countless scientists. What is it that makes human beings think and make decisions differently from other animals? One of the most popular, and eventually most controversial, theories was Sir Francis Galton’s “Bell Curve Theory.” According to Galton’s enormously influential 1869 work Hereditary Genius, inherited human intelligence can be measured and mapped on a standard bell curve graph....

Rare stories are particularly valuable. They offer glimpses into the personal lives of ancient business owners and why neighboring cities fought. Unique finds also solve mysteries, create new world records, and even challenge the current timelines. 10 Earliest Down Syndrome The genetic disorder known as Down syndrome is ancient. Throughout the centuries, artists have depicted the condition in paintings and sculptures. The oldest case involving human remains came from France....

The period expired horribly. But while it lasted, remarkable things happened. The first flower bloomed, ducks found their voices, and malaria was born. Researchers also pieced together extinct food chains, encountered mysteries, and discovered a single terrifying ant. 10 The Oldest Flowering Plant Archaefructus sinensis was proud of itself. At 125 million years old, the Chinese fossil was the oldest flowering plant ever found. In 2015, a new guy bumped it off the throne....