the 1500s Fantastical demon drawings from 1565 Popkin

england List of supernatural inhabitants of England Rob Beschizza

art Is this Leonardo's painting of a younger Mona Lisa? David Pescovitz

art Bizarre 16th-century medical drawings of eye conditions Popkin

airbnb Want to stay in the Sicilian palazzo featured in The White Lotus? It's yours for $6k per night on Airbnb Mark Frauenfelder

By God's Visitation How did the genocide of indigenous Americans impact the health of planet Earth? Elías Villoro

movies Meet Jimmy Wang Yu, the real-life gangster that inspired Bruce Lee Devin Nealy

corset When men wore corsets Miss Cellania

linguistics Our centuries-old use of "they" as a singular pronoun Clive Thompson

colonialism The mystery behind the "lost colony" of Roanoke has finally been answered, disappointingly. Thom Dunn

futility closet In the 1500s, four Spanish colonists were marooned in an unexplored North America Futility Closet

the people's republic of animation Nick Cave narrates The Cat Piano and it's, predictably, both horrific and sublime Séamus Bellamy

neither a borrower nor a lender be Plagiarism software finds Shakespeare plundered cool words from a little-known book Clive Thompson

torture Guy Fawkes signature, before and after torture Mark Frauenfelder

disease Shedding light on the Black Death Maggie Koerth