He was an 18 year old Marine bound for Iraq. She was a high school senior in West Virginia. They grew intimate over IM. His dad also started contacting her. No one was who they claimed to be and it led to a murder.

John Dirr’s son Eli didn’t really have cancer. In fact, neither Eli nor John Dirr ever existed. The story of a decade-long hoax.

On an affliction for the digital age, “Munchausen by internet.”

How a 19-year-old actress and a few struggling Web filmmakers created a star.

How a Massachusetts psychotherapist fell for a Nigerian e-mail scam.

The story was told by Sports Illustrated, CBS News, and countless others: linbeacker Manti Te’o, Heisman trophy candidate and the face of Notre Dame football, was playing brilliantly despite the tragic loss of his girfriend to leukemia early in the season. The reporters missed one key element of Te’o’s story, however: the girl hadn’t died. She couldn’t have. She didn’t exist.

An obsessive marine biologist gambles his savings, family, and sanity on a quest to be the first to capture a live giant squid.

On the grief that comes with losing livestock.

A profile of a 25-year-old Spanish sensation.

The inevitably tragic story of Travis the chimp and the family of tow-truck operators who raised him like a human child.

A trip to a lobster festival in Maine leads to an examination of the culinary and ethical dimensions of cooking a live, possibly sentient, creature.

A take down of the press corps and the modern presidential campaign, published on the eve of the ’88 election.

On the press buses, nicknamed Bullshit 1 and Bullshit 2, following John McCain.

Manny Pacquiao, still in his fighting prime, on the campaign trail for a congressional seat in the remote, untamed Southern province of the Philippines that spawned him.

A first-time candidate working out his public identity early in his campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

The nihilistic confessions of a presidential campaign reporter who covered Giuliani, Huckabee, and Clinton for Newsweek.

The strengths and limitations of the Republican frontrunner.

Newt Gingrich’s brief turn at the top in Iowa.

A profile of the late actor-turned NRA president.

Adapting from his book of the same name, Chivers traces how the design and proliferation of small arms, originating from the Pentagon and the Russian army, rerouted the 20th century.

Most military experts agree that robots, not people, will inevitably do the fighting in ground wars. In Tennessee, a high-end gunsmith is already there. The story of Jerry Baber and his robot army.

How two twentysomethings, equipped with the Internet and weed, ruled the lucrative world of weapons trading … for a while.

On America’s relationship with the right to bear arms, from the founding fathers to the Black Panthers and the Ku Klux Klan.

The author sits down with notorious (and recently convicted) arms dealer Viktor Bout, Bout’s brother, and a close friend.

In the days after 9/11, Mark Stroman went on a revenge killing spree in Texas. Rais Bhuiyan survived and, a decade later, tried to stop Stroman’s execution.

The final years of “Rock Around the Clock” singer Bill Haley.

How what was once one of the most popular websites on Earth—with ambitions to redefine music, dating, and pop culture—became a graveyard of terrible design and failed corporate initiatives.

The story of an Idaho pizza delivery boy turned weed kingpin.

How an idealistic young recruit became part of a cash-snatching, drug-reselling, renegade clique of cops in Brooklyn.

At 25, Stephen Glass was a reporter wunderkind, regularly filing incredible pieces for the largest magazines. When suspicion fell on his sources, things started to really get strange. It wasn’t just sources and organizations he was inventing, but whole stories.

The end of the line for world’s most notorious weapons trafficker.

The crumbling mythology of the beloved Minnesota Twin.

On Suck.com, the Web’s first daily-updated site.