He played a pivotal role in the invention of the modern lightbulb and telephone, and he was the only Black member of Thomas Edison's elite research team. But who was Lewis Latimer?Wikimedia CommonsInventor Lewis Latimer played a major role in the history of electrical lighting. Thomas Edison is often credited with inventing the lightbulb. But Lewis Latimer, a self-taught Black inventor, helped make it what it is today. Born into a family of self-emancipated formerly enslaved people, Latimer taught himself mechanical drawing and quickly advanced in his field as an expert patent draftsman, playing a key role in the development of inventions like the telephone.

Inside her New Orleans mansion, Madame Delphine LaLaurie tortured and murdered untold numbers of enslaved people in the early 1830s.Wikimedia CommonsWhen firefighters entered Madame LaLaurie’s mansion, they found her enslaved workers, some of them horribly mutilated yet still alive while others were dead and simply left to decompose. In April 1834, a fire broke out at the New Orleans mansion owned by Madame LaLaurie and her husband. Locals rushed to help — and discovered shocking proof of her deranged depravity.

Police had stopped the investigation of Nicole van den Hurk's murder, so her stepbrother falsely confessed in order to get her body reexamined for DNA testing.Wikimedia CommonsPortrait of 15-year-old Nicole van den Hurk in 1995, the year she was murdered. After Nicole van den Hurk’s 1995 murder case went largely ignored for more than 20 years, stepbrother Andy van den Hurk did the only thing he could think of to get the police to reexamine the matter with a DNA test: He falsely confessed to her murder.

On June 21, 2020, cameras captured a bizarre series of events leading up to the disappearance of 14-year-old Noah Donohoe — including footage of the boy inexplicably riding his bike naked down a busy street in Belfast.In the summer of 2020, Northern Ireland was rattled by the mysterious disappearance of a local schoolboy, Noah Donohoe. Volunteers arrived in droves to help search for him after he vanished while biking through Belfast.

Porfirio Rubirosa was, at his core, a playboy, but over the course of his life he would wear dozens of hats. Los Angeles Times/ Wikimedia CommonsPorfirio Rubirosa and Zsa Zsa Gabor Many different people have been named as possible inspirations for fictional superspy James Bond. While Porfirio Rubirosa usually isn’t on that list, his life actually comes a lot closer to Bond’s than most of the people who are. Rubirosa was an international playboy who was romantically involved with some of the most beautiful women of his time.