Like many Englishmen who suffered from tuberculosis in the 19th century, Sir Edward Burnett Tylor went abroad on medical advice, seeking the drier air of warmer regions. Tylor came from a prosperous Quaker business family, so he had the resources for a long trip. In 1855, in his early 20s, he left for the New World, and, after befriending a Quaker archeologist he met on his travels, he ended up riding on horseback through the Mexican countryside, visiting Aztec ruins and dusty pueblos.

In the course of two decades, a medical secretary in Paris persuaded scores of renowned photographers to take her picture.

On New Year's Day in 1985, Eastern Air Lines Flight 980 was carrying 29 passengers and a hell of a lot of contraband when it crashed into the side of a 21,112-foot mountain in Bolivia. For decades conspiracy theories abounded as the wreckage remained inaccessible, the bodies unrecovered, the black box missing. Then two friends from Boston organized an expedition that would blow the case wide open.

The video for Soul Asylum’s 1993 smash hit featured real missing kids. Some eventually came home; some never did.

Newfoundland’s coast is dotted by ghosts of communities past, lifeless towns born and sustained on a once thriving fishing industry. The community of Little Bay Islands is one of them. LBI, as locals call it, is home to 95 souls. Or 72, depending on who you ask. They are plain, decent, hardworking folk, the wearers of unfashionable fleeces and proud drinkers of respectable, if uninspired, Canadian lagers. The town once had 800 residents, and in an alternate future it would have had zero...

The miracle of the great Zanesville zoo escape—which began last fall when a depressed, desperate man named Terry Thompson set free his vast collection of exotic animals—was that not a single innocent person was hurt. The incident made global news. It also thrust into daylight, if only for a brief moment, a secret world of privately owned exotic animals living off the grid, and often right next door. We sent Chris Heath to Zanesville, Ohio, to find out where the wild things are—and what the hell they're doing there

Ever since childhood, Brian Regan had been made to feel stupid because of his severe dyslexia. So he thought no one would suspect him of stealing secrets. By Yudhijit Bhattacharjee.

Jennifer Frey drank herself to death. By Dave McKenna.

In the summer of 2005, Jeffrey Karp, a bioengineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, was working late one night when he spotted a journal article on a colleague’s desk. What caught his eye was not the text itself, but the full-page colour illustration of Spider-Man that accompanied it. Intrigued, Karp sat down and started reading. The article detailed how a group of researchers had created a new synthetic material by mimicking the properties of gecko feet – whose tiny, hair-like pillars allow...

In 17 March 2016, the watch manufacturer Breitling opened a lavish new stall at Baselworld, the world’s biggest watch fair, to show off its latest marvels. There was the Avenger Hurricane, a beefy black and yellow extravaganza in a special polymer case made specifically to survive all extremes of superhuman adventure (£6,500). There was the Superocean Chronograph M2000 Blacksteel, with full functionality at a depth of 2,000 metres (£3,850). And there were at least 60 other items, each out-glistening the other in an attempt to demonstrate a new and expensive way to tell the time.

This is a story of stories — specifically, three stories about the same individual (or group of individuals, depending on which story you choose to believe). In the first story, a lone writer looking to carve out a niche in the internet decides to satirize the untidy, anything-goes state of self-published erotica.

IT WAS JUST after sundown when a man knocked on Steve Talley’s door in south Denver. The man claimed to have hit Talley’s silver Jeep Cherokee and asked him to assess the damage. So Talley, wearing boxers and a tank top, went outside to take a look. Seconds later, he was knocked to the pavement outside his house. Flash bang grenades detonated, temporarily blinding and deafening him. Three men dressed in black jackets, goggles, and helmets repeatedly hit him with batons and the butts of their guns.

From Ulysses to Herzog, the comic novel unlocks the “meaninglessness of everything”. By Howard Jacobson.

The final holdout at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge occupation earlier this year wasn't a dyed-in-the-wool rancher or hardened militiaman. He was a young, half-Japanese kid from the Midwest who had no affiliation with the Bundy brothers or the Patriot movement. This is why David Fry drove across the country to join a group of extremists he'd never met.

One monday morning last fall, at Spring Valley High School in Columbia, South Carolina, a 16-year-old girl refused to hand over her cellphone to her algebra teacher. After multiple requests, the teacher called an administrator, who eventually summoned a sheriff’s deputy who was stationed at the school. The deputy walked over to the girl’s desk. “Are you going to come with me,” he said, “or am I going to make you?”

Valentine Strasser was once the world’s youngest dictator, ruling Sierra Leone for four turbulent years. But his fall from power left him broken, exiled, and eventually back home as a mysterious and feared recluse. BuzzFeed News makes an uninvited house call. The run-down mansion rising above the Freetown slum was the first giveaway, but it got even stranger. As Valentine Strasser’s home came into view, my guide screamed in Krio, “I go scared!” then yanked open the car door and bolted. He emerged 50 meters away, behind a tangle of banana trees.

The Long Read: When the battered body of a Cambridge PhD student was found outside Cairo, Egyptian police claimed he had been hit by a car. Then they said he was the victim of a robbery. Then they blamed a conspiracy against Egypt. But in a digital age, it’s harder than ever to get away with murder

Is the head of Y Combinator fixing the world, or trying to take over Silicon Valley? One balmy May evening, thirty of Silicon Valley’s top entrepreneurs gathered in a private room at the Berlinetta Lounge, in San Francisco. Paul Graham considered the founders of Instacart, DoorDash, Docker, and Stripe, in their hoodies and black jeans, and said, “This is Silicon Valley, right here.”

To investors who lost millions of dollars, Brent Brown is a con man who used a restaurant franchise as his personal piggy bank. But Brown defiantly insists he’s been wrongly vilified and just needs a little more time to make everything right, he swears.

The first death was on the night of Jan. 9. It was a Saturday. Pele Kristiansen spent the morning at home, drinking beers and hanging out with his older brother, which wasn't so unusual. There wasn't a lot of work in town. A lot of people drank. In the afternoon, they heard someone banging on their door, yelling.