During a visit to a church in Sicily, a priest offered Caravaggio “holy water”. Caravaggio asked the old priest what it was for. “It will cancel your venial sins, my son,” replied the priest. “Then it

From July to September 1518, the citizens of Strasbourg took to the streets to dance. And dance. And dance. A strange phenomenon took over and led people to dance to their deaths. But what caused this

There are few stranger figures from the 19th century than Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Her absolutely unbelievable life story has puzzled biographers since the 1800s. Nevertheless, her occult spiritual

At the command of Jim Jones, more than 900 followers of The Peoples Temple drank a beverage laced with cyanide in an act that Jones labeled “revolutionary suicide”. Jones himself was found dead from a

In which the world's worst chemist gives everyone lead poisoning, and then puts a hole in the ozone layer as an encore. Certificate #25185

José de San Martín gets zonked on opium and marches through the Andes.