“I was one of the few guys rooting for the comet to hit the Earth. Statistically, more people that deserved to go would go.”

Five Vietnamese-American journalists were killed on American soil between 1981 and 1990. The prime suspects? Members of the National United Front for the Liberation of Vietnam, a group of former military commanders from South Vietnam.

The bribery scandal, involving tests given for coveted government jobs and medical school admissions, began implicating high-ranking officials. Then people started turning up dead.

The Los Angeles surgeon who can double your size for $13,000.

On a small section of land wedged between Egypt and Sudan called Bir Tawil and the American who tried to claim it for himself.

Philanthropist and private equity mogul David Rubenstein is lauded for his patriotic donations, including half the cost of repairing the Washington Monument. He also helped save a controversial tax break billionaires love.

He was the poster boy for the movement to repeal “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Now Dan Choi is sleeping on a couch, smoking too much weed, watching TED talks and wondering what he’ll do with the rest of his life.

The underage prostitution study that was cited extensively in the congressional hearings that resulted in the removal of Craigslist’s Erotic Services turns out to be the work of a for-hire business consulting firm and, scientifically, completely bogus.

No one really knows the script for days like these, and neither did we.

Ramón González’s middle school is a model for how an empowered principal can transform a troubled school. But can he maintain that momentum when the forces of reform are now working against him?

On the ground to witness Cuba’s last days:

“Either we rectify our course or the time for teetering along on the brink runs out and we go down. And we will go down…[with] the effort of entire generations.”—Raul Castro

In 1935, a nine-year-old living in Switzerland became the King of Thailand. He would return to his homeland a decade later, and within six months he would be found shot to death in his bed. Though three servants were executed for the crime, a mystery endures.

A dispatch from the early days of AIDS:

It is as relentless as leukemia, as contagious as hepatitis, and its cause has eluded researchers for more than two years.

In 1979, a group of Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy and held the entire American diplomatic mission hostage for fifteen months. Twenty-five years later, the students reflected on their actions, many with regret.

One day Nejdra Nance realized the woman she had called Mom for 23 years may have been at the center of one of the most harrowing kidnappings in decades—hers.

On the American Legislative Exchange Council, a D.C. nonprofit with a library of more than 800 pieces of fill-in-the-blank legislation ready for state legislatures across the country.

The Tiwonge Chimbalanga, a transgender woman who was imprisoned four years ago in Malawi for getting engaged to a man. Pardoned and freed, she now scrapes by living in exile in South Africa.

Nancy and Frank Howard were happily married for three decades. Then he fell in love with another woman, embezzled $30 million, and hired a parade of inept hit men to kill his wife.

Nearly 50 years ago, a penniless monk arrived in Manhattan, where he began to build an unrivaled community of followers—and a reputation for sexual abuse.

"Really, the ideas and theories we form about others and their motivations are just as much portraits of ourselves as they are descriptions of other people. It’s impossible for them to be anything else, when you think about it."

What’s the reason for Mike Tyson’s continuing appeal?

You can have a PhD from Yale. You can be a rising star in the State Department. And you can still find yourself being investigated by the FBI for espionage.

Prospecting for gold is still a live trade in America, if you’re willing to walk deep into the desert with a hand-drawn map.

An art museum in Tasmania is saving the local economy. It also offers an “eternity membership” which, for $75,000, will see your ashes displayed there once you’ve gone.

A false confession to bad cops put a man in prison for rape and murder. But even conclusive DNA evidence hasn’t gotten him out.