She endured three husbands' deaths, was betrayed by Elizabeth I, and ultimately suffered a gruesome execution. This is the tragic story of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.Mary, Queen of Scots, also known as Mary Stuart, was born into conflict. She assumed the throne as queen of Scotland when she was just six days old, upon the death of her father. From the beginning, her life was mired in struggle as she grappled with the demands of the Scottish throne and the deaths of several husbands.

The heroic story of Toussaint Louverture, who brought himself and his people from slavery to freedom.Library of CongressToussaint Louverture. A typical 18th-century plantation employed hundreds of slaves who worked 16 to 18-hour days in all kinds of weather. Rations were minimal and punishments were brutal. The largest, most profitable European slave colony was French-controlled Saint-Domingue, the western part of contemporary Haiti (the eastern part, Santo Domingo, was Spanish). Famed economist Adam Smith described Saint-Domingue as “the most important of the sugar colonies of the Caribbean,” and largely due to trade with the newly independent United States, production in Saint-Domingue nearly doubled between 1783 and 1789.

Vicente Carrillo Leyva was warned by his infamous father, Amado Carrillo Fuentes, not to go into the family business — but he couldn't resist and was eventually arrested for his crimes in 2009.ALFREDO ESTRELLA/AFP via Getty ImagesVicente Carrillo Leyva, son of the leader of the Juarez drug cartel Amado Carrillo Fuentes, after his arrest, on April 2, 2009. It’s not unusual for members of the same family to go into the same line of work — as Vicente Carrillo Leyva can attest.

The Worst Hurricanes: Hurricane Andrew Credit: Wikimedia At the time Hurricane Andrew struck, it was named the most destructive hurricane in United States history. Forming in 1992, Andrew quickly gained strength and crossed the Bahamas as a Category 5 hurricane, destroying nearly 800 homes and causing an excess damage of $200 million alone before making landfall in Florida. In the U.S., Andrew caused incredible damage with flooding and winds exceeding 177 MPH.

What one small city in Belgium can teach the world about mental illness.Wikimedia CommonsSt. Dymphna Church in Geel, Belgium The city of Geel, Belgium, has a popular saying: “Half of Geel is crazy, and the rest is half crazy.” The 35,000-person city is quaint — about an hour east of Antwerp, and an hour south of Belgium’s border with the Netherlands — and has all the charm of a weathered European city.

The Milgram experiment tested its subjects' willingness to harm other people for the sake of obeying authority — and it ended with truly shocking results.Yale University Manuscripts and ArchivesParticipants in one of Stanley Milgram’s experiments that examined obedience to authority. In April 1961, former Nazi official and SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann went on trial for crimes against humanity in an Israeli courtroom. Throughout his trial, which ended with a conviction and death sentence, Eichmann had tried to defend himself on the grounds that he was “only following orders.

Geologist and art historian Ann Pizzorusso believes that the background of the Mona Lisa depicts Lecco, a small town in the Lombardy region of Italy.Leonardo da VinciThe small Italian town of Lecco, in the Lombardy region, may be the real-life setting depicted in the background of the Mona Lisa, if new research is correct. Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa is perhaps the world’s most famous painting. It’s also one of the world’s most mysterious.

Despite its monstrous jaws and teeth, the wolf eel is actually a gentle giant that’s even known to cuddle with divers.Few beasts strike more fear into the hearts of humans than those that make their homes in the unknown darkness. One of the most terrifying of these is the wolf eel of the North Pacific — a remarkably ugly creature that can grow up to eight feet long and sports powerful jaws and sharp teeth.

A single footprint is the size of an adult male.DON EMMERT/AFP/Getty Images We know that some dinosaurs were massive, and a recent discovery in the Gobi desert illustrates just how big “big” can be when we talk about the now-extinct reptiles. This August, researchers from Okayama University of Science and the Mongolian Academy of Science discovered one of the largest dinosaur footprints in recorded history — a Titanosaur’s footprint. The dinosaur left the footprint behind roughly 70 to 90 million years ago in what is now the Gobi desert.

In February 1995, Sally McNeil murdered her husband Ray, a fellow bodybuilder — then alleged that he'd been physically abusing her in a fit of rage brought on by his steroid use.NetflixSally McNeil in a promotional image for the Netflix documentary Killer Sally. Sally and Ray McNeil were far from a typical couple. For starters, they were both ex-Marines and world-class bodybuilders. Ray, 256 pounds of muscle, was named Mr. California in 1991.