Ray Bowman and Billy Kirkpatrick, who began boosting together as teenagers, were arrested only twice during their prolific partnership. The first time was for stealing 38 records from a K-Mart in 1974. The second arrest came in 1997. In between, Bowman and Kirkpatrick robbed 27 banks, including the single biggest haul in United States history: $4,461,681 from the Seafirst Bank in suburban Tacoma.

Peggy Jo Tallas, a soft-spoken bachelorette, spent much of her adult life doing two things: taking care of her ailing mother and robbing bank after bank dressed as a pudgy, bearded cowboy.

Anthony Curcio was the pride of his small town in Washington state. A former football star, he had married his high-school sweetheart and was making good money flipping houses. Then the real estate market crashed, and Curcio turned his obsessive attention to planning an ingenious heist involving Craigslist, an inner tube, and $400,000.

The robbers had a helicopter, explosives, and inside information on a $150 million cash repository. But the police were on to them—sort of.

A young man named John Wojtowicz, desperate to provide for his children and finance his lover’s sex-change surgery, attempts to rob a Chase branch in Brooklyn. The bank is surrounded almost immediately and a 14-hour standoff ensues. The story inspired Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon.

In 2003, a man named Brian Wells robbed a bank in Erie, Pa., with a bomb around his neck. Shortly thereafter, with Wells surrounded by cops and claiming he’d been forced to commit the crime, the bomb detonated, leaving authorities to piece together who had put it there. Eight years later, they’re still not entirely sure who was behind this bizarre crime, or even the true motive.

How a 24-year-old nurse discovered Vegas, high-stakes gambling, and serial bank robbery.

On the start of the high school football season in Odessa, Texas. An adaptation published alongside the release of Bissinger’s 1990 book of the same name, which led to the movie and the show.

Her suicide made headlines around the world after classmates were indicted on felony charges related to bullying, but the real story wasn’t that simple.

At age 22, the author went undercover at his old high school. An excerpt of the book that became the film.

Mr. Lindwall was the only high school teacher who understood him. Then Mr. Lindwall went to jail, and it was his turn to try to understand.

Sixteen years after graduating, an alumnus heads back to his old stomping grounds in Cleveland.

How two love-struck, type-A high school students almost got away with murder.

Navigating life as a brilliant teenage girl.

The profile of a 34-year-old woman named Charity Johnson who tricked people all over the country into believing she was still in high school.

An essay on a fatal car crash in the author’s youth.

The science behind why high school sucks.

After losing his sight at age 3, Michael May went on to become the first blind CIA agent, set a world record for downhill skiing and start a successful Silicon Valley company. Then he got the chance to see again.

One killer’s creepy obsession.

Daniel Kish had his eyes removed at age 1 because he was born with retinoblastoma, a cancer that attacks the retinas. But many people would never guess that he is blind.

The perspective-bending art of identical twins Trevor and Ryan Oakes.

Captain Iván Castro lost his vision in Iraq, but that didn’t stop him from running marathons.

The allure of invisibility.

How 3-D images affect the eye, plus proof that viewers have hated the technology since at least 1953.

How animals see.