Kevin Hart wanted a scholarship to play Division I college football. It didn’t come. So he made one up–and called a press conference.

Pat Robertson was 29 years old, possessionless, and living in a Bed-Stuy brownstone when he announced that God had told him to buy a fledgling TV station in Virginia. Here’s what happened next.

When members of China’s massive bulletin-board forums perceive wrongdoing, they form a “human flesh search engine” and seek out real world vigilante justice.

A Wisconsin basement gave birth to one of the most influential narratives of our times – Dungeons and Dragons – sending its creator, E. Gary Gygax, on a strange journey of his own.

Why the U.S. Senate gets so little done.

Jacob Riis, writing in 1899, on how a childhood spent in New York City’s tenements led a 15-year-old boy to be convicted of murder.

The Appleseed Project is ostensibly a traveling marksmanship school - but what else is it teaching?

How PCC, once an inmate soccer team and now Brazil’s most notorious prison gang, coordinated seven days of riots throughout São Paulo using mobile phones.

Selections from the leaked documents about the war in Afghanistan portray a military effort that is ineffective and frequently absurd. (Part of the NYT War Logs series.)

The forgotten life of Eva Tanguay, perhaps America’s first rock star.

David Sedaris on smoking and quitting.

How a dental equipment salesman from Germany named Klaus Teuber invented the perfect board game, Settlers of Catan.