When Genghis Khan died in 1227, rumors spread that he perished heroically in battle or was castrated by a princess, but modern researchers believe that the Mongol conqueror’s death was far more mundane.Genghis Khan’s death has been the subject of scholarly debate for nearly 800 years. The story of his brutal reign as the founder of the Mongol Empire is well documented. His death, however, remains largely mysterious. To this day, historians are still asking: how did Genghis Khan die?

A passenger on United Airlines Flight 93, Todd Beamer helped lead a revolt against the terrorists who hijacked his plane on September 11, 2001 — and may have saved the U.S. Capitol.For most of his life, Todd Beamer dreamt of becoming a professional baseball player. A car accident dashed those hopes, but his athletic prowess nonetheless came in handy. At age 32, he helped lead a passenger revolt on United Airlines Flight 93 after it was hijacked on September 11, 2001.

The Philadelphia State Hospital at Byberry tormented its patients with almost no consequences from its opening in 1911 until it was finally shut down in 1990.Public DomainThe “violent ward” at Byberry mental hospital. 1943. “Thousands spend their days – often for weeks at a stretch – locked in devices euphemistically called ‘restraints’: thick leather handcuffs, great canvas camisoles, ‘muffs,’ ‘mitts,’ wristlets, locks and straps and restraining sheets. Hundreds are confined in ‘lodges’ – bare, bed-less rooms reeking with filth and feces – by day lit only through half-inch holes in steel-plated windows, by night merely black tombs in which the cries of the insane echo unheard from the peeling plaster of the walls.

Sir John Franklin's expedition to the Northwest Passage was derailed by poisoning, murder, and cannibalism after his ships became trapped in Arctic ice.In May 1845, 134 men embarked on a quest to find the elusive Northwest Passage, a lucrative trade route that could open Britain up to all of Asia — but they would never make it. The Franklin Expedition, as it was called, was considered one of the best-prepared missions of its time.

While working in Bosnia following its civil war in 1999, Kathryn Bolkovac blew the whistle on a number of international peacekeepers for exploiting their positions of power there.Kathryn Bolkovac arrived in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo in 1999. A former police officer from Lincoln, Nebraska, she was grateful to join the U.N.’s International Police Task Force (IPTF) that was retraining local law enforcement there. It had only been four years since the Bosnian War, and regional authorities needed all the help they could get in stabilizing the region.