Utterly interesting

In the quiet, sun-drenched city of Teresina, in Brazil’s Nordeste region, José Medeiros was born in 1921. By the age of twelve, he was...

Picture this: you’re curled up on the sofa after a long day, nursing a bar of chocolate like it’s the last form of pleasure available to...

Sebastião Salgado’s photography doesn’t just document—it compels you to stop and take in the weight of what you’re seeing. One of his...

Note: This article discusses historical medical events involving gender identity and trauma. It is intended for educational purposes and...

Few names evoke as much dread in modern Iraqi history as that of Uday Hussein. Born into privilege as the eldest son of Saddam Hussein, Uday could have led a life of diplomacy or governance. Instead, he chose a path of unchecked brutality, making even his father’s brutal regime appear, by comparison, coldly pragmatic rather than maniacally sadistic. For Iraqis, the name Uday came to symbolise more than corruption or power—it stood for sadism, violence, and terror. So just how

They tore through the streets of Mayfair in gleaming motorcars, flung pearls around their necks like confetti, and threw parties so...

In the early hours of 2 September 1983, a man named Jimmy Lee Gray sat strapped to a metal chair in Mississippi’s gas chamber. Within...

The year is 1988 and the Iron Curtain is slowly crumbling. The Soviet Union, a nation long known for its austere ideology and strict...

While the grim history of capital punishment is filled with clinical efficiency and tragic inevitability there are also rare and strange...

Dylan and his entougrage across the street from the Delmonico Hotel, on Park Ave. and 59th Street, where the Beatles were staying when...

Between 1870 and 1910, a rather curious and creative tradition emerged at the University of Tartu in what is now Estonia. Known as...

There are few scenarios more terrifying than being buried alive, it’s the stuff of nightmares, horror films and gothic fiction. But in...

On 29 April 1863, in San Francisco, California, William Randolph Hearst was born into a world already steeped in ambition, fortune, and...

In the roaring tide of Prohibition, when the United States tried to legislate temperance and wound up inspiring a decade-long national...

When Ride the Lightning  finally came out in June 1984, it was clear to fans and critics alike that Metallica had raised the bar. The...

On a warm autumn afternoon in April 1996, visitors wandered through the historic site of Port Arthur in Tasmania, soaking up the scenery and history of the old penal colony. Families, tourists, and locals alike moved between the ruins and the Broad Arrow Café, unaware that within the hour, Australia would be changed forever. The Port Arthur massacre, as it would come to be known, remains the deadliest shooting in Australian history. Thirty-five people were killed and another

If you could step back in time and sip whisky to the beat of a double bass, Copenhagen’s Storyville Club in 1957 would be the place to...

Imagine strolling into a Viennese salon in the 1920s and finding a world of velvet drapes, bearskin rugs, gilded mirrors and glamorous...

Tucked into the corners of busy train stations, bustling department stores, and lively seaside piers, photo booths once offered a little...

Of all the ways to start your career in music, having a future legend turn up at your parents’ doorstep isn’t the usual path. But that’s...

Diane Arbus had a way of seeing people that most others overlooked. Through her lens, the outsiders and the unusual figures of New York...

Discover Belles Lettres: The Naked Alphabet (1971), a daring typographic project by Anthon Beeke and collaborators, first published in Avant Garde magazine. A provocative blend of art, photography, and design history.

When Alma Mahler ended her passionate affair with artist Oskar Kokoschka, he struggled to let go. In his grief, Kokoschka commissioned a life-sized doll in her likeness—an eerie creation he wined, dined, and paraded through Vienna, before destroying it in a dramatic finale.