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The author of Frankenstein had an obsession with the cemetery and saw love and death as connected.

Mary Toft staged an elaborate hoax, but the pain was real.

Humanity is never fully in control of its creations. This lesson from Mary Shelley has remained relevant for over 200 years.

Seneca thought the use of ice was a "true fever of the most malignant kind."

What creates our private, inner universes is still a mystery.

Urban legends help personify the anxieties that arise from living in a modern city.

When you're a genius, how do you make ends meet?

This necropsy represents an early entry in what would become a tradition of performing autopsies to consider an individual’s sanctity.

From "Thompson's violinist" to the "Experience Machine," these thought experiments will throw your mind for a loop.

Billy was a local celebrity in the early 1900s. And he might have been a murderer.

Fear is one of the oldest and most powerful emotions known to man, so it should come as no surprise that horror stories are as old as storytelling itself.

Remember Stephen Hawking's robotic voice? It wasn’t a robot.

Here's your gateway to enjoying the best of literature.

"The Da Vinci Code" popularized the idea that Christians stole much of their theology. It's wrong, especially regarding Christmas.

"Oosouji" or "big cleaning" is much more than a chance to tidy up.

Serving as the inspiration for the modern horror classic “The Blair Witch Project,” what does our fascination with this unsolvable mystery tell us about our modern psyche?

Fear of technology is not new. But we misunderstand its origin. In reality, we don't fear technology but each other.

Some scientists think we should allow our bodies to more harmlessly live with pathogens until they’re cleared from our systems.

Would you want to live in any of these places?

A 1.5-million-year-old hominin bone shows signs that the victim was eaten by lions — and humans.

Its apples taste bad, but institutions all over the world want a descendant or clone of the tree, anyway.

"Burke's the butcher, Hare's the thief, and Knox the man who buys the beef." Read the story of 19th-century Scotland's corpse dealers.

The amazing life of “Gudrid the Far-Traveled” was unjustly overshadowed by her in-laws, Erik the Red and Leif Erikson.

Esoteric evidence points to a ritual performed by Queen Elizabeth's court magician John Dee.

From forgotten Hollywood movies to Frank Herbert’s "Dune," science fiction illustrates some of our deepest fears about technology.

Jules Verne wrote about gasoline-powered vehicles, weapons of mass destruction, and global warming more than a century ago.

Synthetic biology has the power to cure and kill. Have we learned from our past mistakes?

Science has come a long way since Mary Shelley penned "Frankenstein." But we still grapple with the same questions.

Human organs don't always show up where doctors expect.

With U.S. infrastructure crumbling, an honor oath and iron ring remind engineers of their profession's ethical weight.