Last year, the U.S. state department said it had uncovered a fake embassy in Accra that had been issuing a stream of forged visas. The story went viral. It was wrong.

The chef, who died last year, was one of San Francisco’s culinary stars in the 1990s. She created a space for the city’s queer women to thrive in the kitchen.

Why audio never goes viral.

An ode.

On the curious life of Archibald Butt, confidant to President Taft and tragic victim of the sinking Titanic.

As much as the narrative of Butt’s heroism meant to the family, to the White House, to the military, it seems all too cinematic. The reality is that the experience was probably a great annoyance to him, right up until the moment it became a nightmare.

The next frontier of search is… everything. Voice recognition, image recognition, and why Google’s data set is one of the most valuable scientific tools of our age.

How to understand the real-world value of things that are worth nothing and everything at once.

Searching for answers 40 years after a Brooklyn man threw acid in the face of his 4-year-old neighbor.

A profile of the deadliest sniper in American history, who was murdered last month by a fellow soldier.

The outing of a failed writer who spent years anonymously grinding axes on Wikipedia.

On H.H. Holmes “an old hand at corpse manipulation and insurance fraud,” who built a house of death in 1890s Chicago.

Virginia authorities possess DNA evidence that may exonerate dozens of  convicted men. Why won’t the state say who they are?

Rabbi Barry Freundel said he would help dozens of women convert to Judaism. In the process, he secretly videotaped them naked.

After 13 years of war, the United States has helped create a nation ruled by drug lords.

An investigation into the steady dismantling of safety nets for injured workers.

Overcrowding in prisons leads to doubling up inmates in solitary confinement, regardless of their homicidal intentions or mental health.

The story of Martin McNally, who hijacked a plane in 1972. Among other crimes.

Inside the big and not especially scientific business of lavender and frankincense.

“I never got any help, any kind of therapy. I never told anyone.”

Ignoring warning signs of misconduct, Baltimore Police praised — and promoted — a Gun Trace Task Force leader.

An upstart football league goes horribly awry during its first season,.

They had $19 million, a deal with Disney, and dreams of becoming the next Ben & Jerry’s. Then everything fell apart.

Will Vinton created the California Raisins, coined the term “claymation” and had a firm making $28 million a year in the late 1990s. By 2002, he was out of a job, replaced by a failed rapper who had gone by the name “Chilly Tee” and also happened to be the son of Nike co-founder Phil Knight.

“It’s more than soup.”

Last year, a group of young Romanians stole millions of euros worth of art from the Kunsthal museum in Rotterdam. They had previously only robbed homes and thought the artwork would be easy to sell. It was not. So they secreted it back home, where, in an effort to save her son, the leader’s mother burned it.