A malfunctioning prop caused Shakespeare's Globe Theatre to burn down during a performance of 'Henry VIII.'

George Lucas used Joseph Campbell's 'hero's journey,' a narrative structure that encompasses the common characteristics of multiple cultures' mythologies, to revise 'Star Wars.'

Bernice Sandler, a part-time teacher in Maryland, helped launch Title IX with a class-action lawsuit.

The United Nations recognized eight Frank Lloyd Wright works as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

JD Salinger served in World War II while working on a draft of his most famous novel, 'The Catcher in the Rye.'

Toronto Blue Jays star pitcher Dylan Cease is a serious yoga practitioner, and even wears the number 84 as an homage to the number of poses in hatha yoga.

'A Boy Named Sue,' made famous by Johnny Cash, was written by Shel Silverstein, a writer best known for his children's poetry.

Winston Churchill said he was comforted by Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice' and its characters' calmness during World War II.

In the 19th century, ice-cream-related illnesses were somewhat regular in America thanks to vendors' poor hygienic practices.

Before it was used to describe the blend of punk and metal from Seattle, 'grunge' was used as an insult.

Read JK Rowling's original 'Harry Potter' pitch that a dozen publishers rejected.

Delacroix's painting 'Liberty Leading the People' is one of romanticism's most recognizable works, vividly depicting a scene from the French Revolution of 1830, just a few months after it began.

According to its creators, Virginia's famous tourism slogan, 'Virginia Is for Lovers,' contains no salacious or subtle messages.

The earliest known country recording is a 1891 wax cylinder of Louis Vasnier's 'Thompson's Old Gray Mule' that was discovered by accident over a century later.

'The Larry Sanders Show' redefined the American sitcom by removing audience laughter, a move that seemed counterintuitive for a television comedy.

A fire has been raging underneath a mostly abandoned town in eastern Pennsylvania for 60-plus years.

An 1844 chess match via telegraph anticipated the board game's online popularity.

Gutai, a Japanese form of performance art, used the body as a canvas, anticipating the Westernized version of the art form by several decades.

Pizza didn't take off in the US until after World War II, likely because of technological advancements and soldiers' exposure to it abroad.

Aldous Huxley, author of 'Brave New World,' wrote to his former student, George Orwell, after the release of '1984,' suggesting that Orwell's vision of dystopia was misguided.

Understand distinctions between coffee types and other popular cafe beverages with this visual guide.

A $50 bet led to the first American coast-to-coast road trip, a journey that cost the driver $260K in today's money.

Half of the residents of Coober Pedy—a small mining town in South Australia—live in underground homes to avoid the area's scorching temperatures.

Almost 95% of plane crashes aren't fatal. Here are some expert tips that could save your life in case of a disaster.

The man who created the slogan 'Ithaca Is Gorges' never trademarked it, viewing it instead as a gift to his hometown.

Chicago's Rookery Building, completed in 1888, is America's oldest skyscraper and was part of a campaign to rebuild the city after its Great Fire.

Svalbard Brewery is the northernmost brewery in the world, located in a remote Arctic village where there are more polar bears than people.

Disney World's Magic Kingdom includes utilidors—an underground system of tunnels and passageways—to hide the park's maintenance operations.

Writer Washington Irving was the first to call New York City 'Gotham,' referencing an Anglo-Saxon word for a village of fools.

Nearly all 270 people who reside in Whittier, Alaska, live in the same high-rise building.

Roger Banister was the first person to break the 4-minute mile, a feat he accomplished while enrolled in medical school.

Christopher Nolan's 'Odyssey' is the first full-length feature film shot entirely on IMAX, which required him to use 2 million feet of the film.

The streets in Santa Barbara, California, are slightly off-kilter because surveyors used shrinkable rawhide, which contracts and shrinks with temperature fluctations, to plan them.

The iconic 'I Heart NY' logo was originally designed in the back of a cab.

DH Lawrence's novel 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' was banned for obscenity in numerous countries, but small private printings turned it into an underground sensation in the late 1920s.

Explore a collection of famous literary maps, including original images from 'Treasure Island,' 'The Swiss Family Robinson, ' and 'Walden.'

Explore a detailed map of Odysseus' fictional journey from 'The Odyssey.'

Writers like Colleen Hoover and Emily Henry have propelled romance to become the most popular genre in publishing, generating over $1B annually.

The video game Mario Bros. was a spin-off of the wildly popular Donkey Kong, another Nintendo title that featured a carpenter named Mario.

Before he was a legendary painter, a young Jean-Michel Basquiat was fascinated by the medical reference book 'Gray's Anatomy,' which many believe was an early influence on his idiosyncratic style.

Teenager Lamine Yamal, Spain's star footballer, who was scouted at six years old.

Before 'Saturday Night Live,' Chevy Chase played in a jazz band with the members of Steely Dan.

Toasting with an exclamation of 'cheers!' comes from the Anglo-French for 'the face.'

In the original 'Wizard of Oz' book, Dorothy's slippers were silver, but they were changed to ruby for the 1939 film adaptation so they would pop on screen.

The first MLB All-Star Game was designed by a sports journalist who believed the spectacle would boost baseball's reputation during the Great Depression.

Watch some of the best moments from All-Star Game history, including Cal Ripken's final All-Star at bat, an Ichiro inside-the-park home run, and more.

A 1893 speech from a Hindu monk in Chicago set the stage for yoga in the US, which exploded in popularity in the next century.

Stephen King threw the draft of 'Carrie,' his first hit, into the trash, but his wife rescued it and convinced him to stick with it.

San Francisco's Mission-style burritos, which are packed with rice and other fillings, were designed for hungry firefighters on the go.

The ancient Greeks were known to take vacations.