Manny Pacquiao, possibly the greatest boxer of his era and still in his fighting prime, on the campaign trail for a congressional seat in the remote, untamed Southern province of the Phillipines that spawned him.

In 1992, a Chinese freighter tipped violently in a storm dumping a load of plastic floatee toys—7,200 red beavers, 7,200 green frogs, 7,200 blue turtles, and 7,200 yellow ducks—to the open sea. This is their story.

Before the guru, Prakashanand Saraswati, vanished in March—before a jury convicted him of sexual abuse; before he slipped across the border into Mexico overnight—he led the premier Hindu temple in Texas and, perhaps, the whole United States.

Rogue cops in the LAPD Rampart division’s anti-gang CRASH unit (Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums) were involved in everything from drug smuggling and bank robberies to, allegedly, the murder of Christopher “Notorious BIG” Wallace.

Nearly four years later, I sometimes type his email address in the search box in my Gmail. Hundreds of results pop up, and I’ll pick a few at random to read. The ease of our everyday interactions is what kills me.

Remembering a relationship through IM.

A profile of a breakout male porn star:

The porn machine churns out performers to satisfy every fantasy, be it MILF, dwarf, fat, granny, or gang bang. But if you’re interested in watching a young, heterosexual, nonrepulsive man engage in sex, James Deen is basically it.

The West Memphis Three, teenagers who were convicted in 1993 of brutal killings that they certainly did not commit on the basis of local gossip that they were satanists (as evidenced by Metallica fandom), suddenly found themselves released this summer after over 17 years in prison. But what life awaited them?

In 1979, a Pulitzer was given to “an unnamed photographer of United Press International” who documented a mass execution in Iran.

His name is Jahangir Razmi – and, nearly three decades later, he wants the credit.

A murder case in Mississippi catches the eye of amateur sleuths on Facebook, who proceed to harass everyone involved in the case.

Two pairs of identical twins mismatched in a hospital happen upon each other in their twenties.

In 1998, a cop named Jon Aujay went for a run in the desert. He never came back. The department decided it was suicide, but that is not the only theory.

She was a Canadian student whose travels brought her to the cheap hotel on Skid Row. The only clue in her disappearance was a strange elevator video in which she peeks and then gestures with her hands down an unseen hallway.

Chris Earnshaw began taking photographs of Washington, D.C. more than 40 years ago. By the time he paid a visit to a museum to tout his work, he had in his possession—in plastic bags and filing drawers—3,000 Polaroids of a city long gone.

Last August, contaminated water escaped from an abandoned mine in Colorado and traveled down the Animas River to Shiprock, the second-largest city in the Navajo Nation. Two weeks later, the EPA declared the sludge-filled river safe.

An attempt to make sense of the dog meat industry in Vietnam, an unregulated maze of black market slaughterhouses, home restaurants, and thieves who are often murdered in the open when caught stealing the family pet.

L’Wren Scott went from bullied Mormon teen to international model to Hollywood stylist to fashion designer, becoming Mick Jagger’s girlfriend in the process. In March, she took her own life.

In 1965, a mother was charged with killing her 5-year-old son and 4-year-old daughter in Queens. Fifty years later, it still isn’t clear if she did it.

In nine hours, Guinea-Bissau’s President and military leader were assassinated in separate incidents. Their dealings had turned the country into the runway of choice for drug smugglers and Hezbollah.

A profile of Tom Donohue, CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the sixth-highest paid lobbyist in the country. Since Obama took office, Donohue has scared-up tens of millions in new donations.

In January 1966–the same month In Cold Blood was first published–Truman Capote sat down with George Plimpton to discuss the new art form he liked to call “creative journalism.”

In March of 1991, Vanilla Ice had the #1 album in the country (To the Extreme), a movie about to be released (TMNT II: The Secret of the Ooze), and a dogged belief that his 15 minutes weren’t about to end.

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.

A profile of Jimmy Connors on the eve of the 1978 U.S. Open. His legendary confidence, honed by his mother since childhood, was in free-fall. (He would go on to win the final in straight sets.)

Some call them “flying lawnmowers.” The entire fleet is decades old. The Pentagon almost junked them in 2008. And yet the tiny Kiowa helicopter has become America’s air weapon of choice in Afghanistan.

In 1976, newly appointed Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens voted to reinstate capital punishment in the United States. Thirty years later, he argued that it’s unconstitutional. Here, he explains why he changed his mind.