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In the early 1870s, the Bender family operated a small store and inn out of their home on the Osage Mission Trail in Labette County, Kansas. Mr. and Mrs. John Bender as well as two adults who were presumed to be their children welcomed travelers inside to eat and rest — and then murdered them.

One of the men would hide behind a canvas curtain that separated the single-room house and bash the guests in the head with a hammer as they sat at the dining table. The victims would then be lowered through a trapdoor to bleed out in the cellar before being buried in the orchard. In May 1873, at least 11 bodies were found in eight graves across the Benders' homestead — but by then, this serial killer family was long gone.

Go inside the chilling crimes of the Bloody Benders.

On October 2, 1978, Tim Allen walked into Michigan's Kalamazoo Airport with 650 grams of cocaine in an Adidas bag that he was expecting to exchange for $42,000. Unbeknownst to Allen, the drug dealer he was doing business with was actually an undercover officer, and Allen was quickly arrested for drug trafficking. To avoid a life sentence, he named his fellow co-conspirators and ended up only serving 2 years and 4 months in prison.

Read more about Tim Allen's tumultuous - and little-known - early life.

Antony Baekeland was the only child of Barbara Daly Baekeland, an American socialite who married the wealthy heir to a plastics empire. By the time Antony was in his early 20s, Barbara was reportedly so concerned about his homosexuality that she encouraged him to sleep with female sex workers. Rumors have even spread that Barbara seduced Antony herself in an attempt to "cure" him.

Their turbulent relationship took a violent turn in November 1972, when Antony attacked Barbara with a kitchen knife during an argument. He was sent to the infamous Broadmoor psychiatric hospital after her murder, but he spent just eight years there — and then he tried to kill his grandmother just six days after his release.

Read more here: Antony Baekeland, The Plastics Heir Who Allegedly Had An Incestuous Relationship With His Mother — And Then Killed Her

Reindeer hunters were astonished to find a Viking sword while they were hunting in a high-altitude area in Oppland County, Norway. The sword was wedged between two rocks on a plain filled with the small rocks that pepper the Norwegian countryside, known as scree.

Though the blade was rusted — and any organic material that was attached to it like leather straps or bone and wood adornments had rotted away years ago — it was remarkably well preserved. The extreme cold and low pressure likely prevented further rusting or degradation.

Source and more here: 1,200-Year-Old Viking Sword Discovered On Norwegian Mountain

Read more here: 3,500-Year-Old Prosthetic Hand Made Out Of Bronze Discovered In Switzerland

A retiree who was vacationing at a seaside resort along the Black Sea in eastern Bulgaria was walking down Varna Beach when he suddenly stumbled upon a sarcophagus believed to be from ancient Rome.

Measuring nearly eight feet long and carved with ornate flourishes including garlands, grapes, and animal heads, this sarcophagus has all the hallmarks of a Roman relic. When government officials were first called to the beach, they estimated that it dates to the second or third century C.E. — read more here: A Vacationer Just Stumbled Upon An Ancient Roman Sarcophagus Inexplicably Sitting On A Bulgarian Beach

Go inside the Hanoi Hilton, north Vietnam’s torture chamber for American prisoners of war.

In the 1920s, you could visit Luna Park in Coney Island for 10 cents. But for an additional 25 cents, you could also see hundreds of premature babies being kept alive by incubators, a machine that the American medical community was slow to adopt.

The exhibition was run by a man named Martin Couney, a Polish immigrant whose own daughter had been born prematurely. Determined to help other parents in similar situations, Couney sought to popularize the machine that had helped his daughter survive. And even though he wasn't an actual medical professional, physicians from all over the country flocked to Coney Island to learn from the man known as the "Incubator Doctor."

Read the remarkable true story of Martin Couney, the sideshow savior.

On the night of November 16, 1999, Rae Carruth, an NFL player with the Carolina Panthers, and his pregnant girlfriend Cherica Adams went to see "The Bone Collector" at a local cinema in Charlotte, North Carolina. On the way home, they took separate cars, and as Adams was driving, Carruth stopped suddenly, blocking her in. Then, another car pulled up beside her — and opened fire.

Adams, fatally wounded, managed to call 911. She suggested that Carruth had arranged her murder, an allegation she repeated the next morning in a note to the police as she lay dying at the hospital. Carruth denied it, but the man who shot Adams later told police that the NFL player had hired him, first to beat Adams to induce a miscarriage, then "as a hit man… to kill Cherica Adams and the baby." Carruth was ultimately found guilty of conspiracy to murder and served 18 years in prison before his release in 2018.

Read more here: Rae Carruth, The NFL Player Who Hired A Hitman To Kill His Pregnant Girlfriend

See more here: Vintage Photos That Show What Las Vegas Was Really Like During Its Golden Age

When Joe Davis was doing routine maintenance work at Rutland Water Nature Reserve in early 2021, he saw something unusual that looked like clay pipes sticking out of the ground. But when he went in for a closer look, he realized he just stumbled upon the last thing he expected to find: the complete remains of a prehistoric sea dragon.

When he called the city council and said he'd found a dinosaur, they replied, "We don't have a dinosaur department... so we're going to have to get someone to call you back." Soon enough, paleontologists flocked to the scene and unearthed the skeleton of a 32-foot ichthyosaur — the largest and most complete ichthyosaur skeleton ever found in the United Kingdom.

More here: English Naturalist Happens Upon The 'Unprecedented' Remains Of A Prehistoric 'Sea Dragon' The Size Of A Bus

"I blame nobody for my fall. I had to face agonizing decisions when I was younger. The decisions broke me. But, too, there was a lack of philosophy in my life. With faith in myself and in God, I think I have won the fight to control myself."

Though Frances Farmer was one of Hollywood's biggest stars, it was her struggle with alcoholism and depression that catapulted her into the tabloids' spotlight. Known as Tinseltown’s first "wild child," Farmer was notorious for her drunken exploits, including a DUI, dislocating a hairdresser's jaw, and running down Sunset Boulevard topless. As a result, Farmer spent most of the 1940s in and out of psychiatric facilities, where she was subjected to electroshock therapy treatments and held in a high-security ward for "violent" patients.

Read more here: The Tumultuous Life Of Frances Farmer, Old Hollywood's First 'Wild Child'

Read more here: Scuba Diver Finds 900-Year-Old Crusader Sword In The Mediterranean

Source and more here: Olive Oatman, The Mormon Girl Who Was Raised By The Mohave

See more here: Why The Coconut Crab Is The Crustacean Of Your Worst Nightmares

Bertha Liebbeke, known as “fainting Bertha,” was born in 1880 in Iowa and as an adult, found an interesting way to use her apparent innocence to make a profit. She would spy a man in a crowd and seductively smile at him; intrigued, he would move closer. Then she would suddenly collapse, and the man would catch her. Before they knew it, she would have stolen everything in his pockets.⁠

Bertha continued pickpocketing for years until she was finally caught and sent to Nebraska State Penitentiary. She would then spend the remainder of her life in and out of penitentiaries and insane asylums before dying in 1939.

Source and more: 63 Mugshots From The Glory Days Of Frontier Outlaws

Nicole van den Hurk disappeared while riding her bike to work in the Netherlands in October 1995. Her body was found in a wooded area seven weeks later, but despite multiple arrests, the case soon went cold.

For years, her stepbrother Andy van den Hurk suspected investigators had stopped caring. In his last attempt to reignite interest in the case, he publicly confessed to her murder — even though he didn’t do it.

Andy later admitted that his false confession was designed to force police to exhume Nicole’s remains and test them for DNA. When they finally did, they found genetic material that didn’t match Andy, but did match a man named Jos de G., who had a long criminal history.

Read the full story of how Nicole’s stepbrother risked his own freedom to get justice for his sister.

A Siberian mystic known as the "Mad Monk," Grigori Rasputin was infamous for his seemingly hypnotic ability to influence people. Despite his humble roots as a "nobody from nowhere," this former peasant used his mysterious powers and supposedly mesmerizing eyes to become one of the most important men in the country and wield considerable control over the royal family.

Meanwhile, Rasputin was adored by a cult-like throng of women he called his "little ladies." They would fight over his dinner scraps, kiss his fingers just after he'd licked them, and regularly sleep with him despite the fact that he'd proudly go months without bathing.

Go inside the unbelievable and brutal downfall of the Mad Monk.