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.

An Austrian girl was held captive for 8 years by a creepy loner named Wolfgang Priklopil.

One of the most infamous brawls in baseball history happened at Candlestick Park during a game between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

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

The exiled Russian Bolshevik was assassinated by a Soviet agent named Ramon Mercader.

These were the first living creatures (that we know of) that journeyed into space and returned alive.

Many regard this comment as the spark that ignited the Dakota War of 1862, an incredibly bloody campaign of terror that claimed the lives of up to 800 white settlers.

A priest named Urbain Grandier was burned alive after a notorious trial that included a remarkable piece of evidence - a document signed by Satan himself.

Ben Abruzzo, Maxie Anderson and Larry Newman crossed the Atlantic in a helium balloon

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.

Did you know comedian Steve Martin was also a master illusionist?

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 1984, President Reagan improvised a Cold War joke that caused at least one division of the Soviet Army to go on alert.