1956’s The Conqueror is considered one of the worst films ever, with John Wayne cast in the lead role as Genghis Khan. But the film’s total failure was the least shocking thing about it. The Conqueror’s Tragic Fallout You see, in the years that followed, 41% of the crew got cancer. This may have seemed like an average percentage of cases for the time, but there was one disturbingly unique detail—the affected crew members developed the disease at far younger ages than usual. This sparked a debate over whether The Conqueror’s filming location doomed everyone involved from the very beginning. Uni ..read more

A Twist Of Fate For Williamina Fleming When Williamina Fleming moved from Scotland to Boston with her husband at the age of 21, she likely knew her life would change. Still, she could have no idea just how much. For one, that husband soon abandoned her and their new child, forcing Fleming to find quick work to support the family. She soon landed a position as a maid with Professor Edward Charles Pickering, the director of the Harvard College Observatory. For Fleming, who used to be a schoolteacher and possessed a keen mind, work sweeping floors was a major downgrade. Just not for long. Unknown ..read more

One of the most influential sculptures of the 20th century…is a urinal. And it’s not a likeness of a urinal carved from marble or anything. It’s just a urinal, bought at a hardware store. It’s Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, and people still argue about it over 100 years since its creation. Art Of The Mind Marcel Duchamp was a key figure in the avant-garde art movement of the early 20th century. Contemporary critics place him as one of the three most influential artists of the era, along with Picasso and Matisse. But Duchamp had slightly different ideas about “art” from many of his peers. The bigge ..read more

In creating one of his most famous sculptures, Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, Edgar Degas used Marie Geneviève van Goethem as his model. Marie was a ballet student studying at the Paris Opera Ballet—but her life was no fairy tale. A Hard Life Born in 1865, Marie grew up in poverty alongside her two sisters. Her mother worked hard as a laundress—but her meager income meant that they moved frequently, often living in the most poverty-stricken areas of the city. But there were even darker times ahead. Wikimedia Commons The post The Sad Story Behind The Little Dancer appeared first on Factinate ..read more

One look at “The Black Garbo” Nina Mae McKinney, and people saw a star. But Hollywood simply wasn’t ready for her. McKinney, The Black Garbo Nina Mae McKinney had the face of a goddess and the fate of a Greek Tragedy. Just after she turned 16, she began grinding her way toward fame, working as a chorus girl in the Blackbirds of 1928. Although McKinney merely supported bigger names like Adelaide Hall in the revue, she always seemed destined for better things. For a brief time, that came true. McKinney had an undeniably stunning face, leading the press to call her the “Black Clara Bow” for her I ..read more

Population Boom The 1880s saw over 5.2 million immigrants come through New York City. In just a few years, the city’s population ballooned by 25%, and there wasn’t proper infrastructure to handle all these people. It didn’t help matters that, while earlier immigrants to America had been mostly English-speaking protestants, these so-called “new” immigrants came from Eastern Europe and Asia. They didn’t slot into American culture quite so seamlessly. The post How The Other Half Lives And New York City’s Squalid Tenements appeared first on Factinate ..read more

If you were to ask someone what they thought the most-viewed photo in history was, a few different answers might pop up. Maybe that one shot of the moon, or a photo reproduction of the Mona Lisa. However, the real photo, while still strikingly beautiful, is far more mundane. There’s no way to definitively measure it, but many believe that the most-viewed photo of all time is the bucolic Windows XP default background image, “Bliss”. It’s an image so perfect it looks as though it was generated by AI—but it is in fact a real photograph. Former National Geographic photographer Charles O’Rear was d ..read more

The heartbreaking story of the Titanic has captivated millions—but few have heard of the Sultana’s sinking on the Mississippi River. To this day, the explosion of this commercial steamboat is considered the worst maritime disaster in American history. What Went Wrong? On the fateful day of April 27, 1865, the Sultana—with a 376-passenger capacity—carried 2,130 people. But that wasn’t all. Unbeknownst to many on board, the boat’s boiler was in a dangerous state of disrepair. To save time, Captain James Cass Mason and his chief engineer made a chilling mistake. They instructed a mechanic to patc ..read more

There’s never been anywhere quite like the Kowloon Walled City—and there probably never will be again. Wikimedia Commons Chinese Town Though the city can trace its origins back a millennium as a military fort, things really started getting interesting when the British began occupying Hong Kong. At first, they thought the walled city might pose a threat, so they attacked—and found nothing but 150 scared residents inside. They claimed authority over the walled city, but mostly left it to its own devices. The walled city became a strange relic in industrializing Hong Kong. The Brits called it “Ch ..read more

As far as metaphorical symbols go, few are as enmeshed in everyday life as the heart. Sure, it’s the life-giving organ that pumps blood throughout our body, but it’s also the symbol of romantic love. And just on the other side of that is heartbreak. The subject of countless songs, referring to loss or longing as a broken heart goes back to ancient times. But hey, it’s just a metaphor. No one ever died of a broken heart, right? Well…not quite.  It turns out that heartbreak can actually be fatal—but it’s extremely rare. Sometimes called broken heart syndrome, takotsubo cardiomyopathy is the ..read more