A Swedish engineer filed a patent application for one of the most important safety devices of all time.

The most powerful solar storm in recorded history started on this day, causing all kinds of weird issues.

The island exploded in a cataclysmic eruption that was heard 3,000 miles away.

They were alive, and some were taken home in hats.

In 1875, an Englshman named Captain Matthew Webb became the first man to successfully swim across the Engilsh Channel. It was one of his many heroic feats.

Unsettling tremors and weird cloud formations rattled the locals, but most people went on with business as usual.

Archaeologists found evidence of soaps as far back as 2800 BCE in Babylon.

The detailed accounts from this famous encounter are extraordinary in that they come from a wide range of sources and remain convincingly consistent.

Viking 1 spent 6 years gathering important data on Mars.

John Dryden, was born on this day. He was England’s first poet laureate.

Where is the great conquerer buried? There are many theories about why his grave has remained hidden for almost 800 years.

The biggest earthquake in Montana history triggered a massive landslide that formed a 220-foot tall dam.

He is the first and only major league baseball player to be fatally injured at the plate.

A typhoon destroyed Kublai Khan's fleet of more than 4000 ships and 140,000 men. Next to D-Day, this was the largest naval invasion force ever assembled.

One of history’s more colorful characters was attacked by pirates on this day.

In 1913 a German acrobat named Otto Witte was crowned King of Albania...or so he claimed.

The quagga was a subspecies of the plains zebra. The species went extinct in 1883, but there's a controversial effort to breed it back into existence.

In 1909 a wireless operator named T.D. Haubner sent the first SOS call from an American steamship. The incident happened off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.