It was on a rainy night in 1816 that a bunch of friends gathered at a summer house near Lake Geneva. Their collective creativity would mark a pivotal moment in horror history. 

A mysterious flaming blob flew into Traven Matchett's backyard in southern Ontario. The fiery object nearly hit his nineteen-year-old daughter, Donna, in the head.

On this day Ella Fitzgerald spent her last morning listening to birds in the backyard of her Beverly Hills home.

A French physician named Jean-Baptiste Denys gave a 15-year-old boy about 12 ounces of sheep blood.

Jean Baptiste Kleber was one of the greatest generals from the French Revolutionary Wars. He died when an assassin plunged a knife into his heart.

During his 22-year reign as the King of Bavaria, Ludwig II earned a reputation as a wild eccentric who loved to build fantastic castles. His death was extremely suspicious.

Over the 50 years the open-pit mine operated it became one of the largest manmade holes on earth. A truck starting at the rim of the mine would take 2 hours to reach the bottom.

A man from Kentucky named Lewis Haslett called his invention an "Inhaler or Lung Protector."

It was the deadliest crash ever in motorsports history. Pierre Levegh was driving a Mercedes 300 SLR which collided with an Austin-Healey and went airborne.

As he recited a prayer, Thích Quảng Đức lit a match and set himself ablaze.

Legend has it that Sir John Popham rises from the dead every New Year's Eve and takes a step toward his empty tomb.

The Maori tradition was to strap their dead chiefs in an upright position and set them adrift.

The British ship's demise was a significant step toward the War for Independence.

In 1909 Alice Huyler Ramsey and three companions became the first women to drive across the continent.

Nick Ut snapped one of the most powerful images of the Vietnam War.

A U.S. Navy submarine took careful aim at the mainland and launched a customized cruise missile in which the nuclear warhead had been replaced with a bunch of postcards.

The British Army detonated 19 ammonal mines it had carefully placed beneath the German trenches near the town of Messen, Belgium. 10,000 Germans died in the attack.

A big space rock tumbled into the Earth's atmosphere and exploded over the eastern Mediterranean (between Libya and Greece).

a 24-year-old woman from Oxford, Connecticut made the first jump from an airplane using a nylon parachute.

Americans got their first taste of the modern banana in 1876 at Philadelphia's Centennial Exhibition.