---

The Middle Ages were truly not for the faint of heart.  Most people were peasants and dirt poor.  They lived short, brutal existences, and the peasants had few rights to speak of. And did we mention the torture?  I’m not talking about waterboarding here.  This stuff was brutal.  Some people got really creative in figuring [...]

The practice of binding books in human skin, also known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, is not just the stuff of dark legends and horror fiction.  It was a real technique which, although frowned upon and considered ghastly by today’s standards, was officially practiced since the 17th century.  The technique gained considerable popularity during the French Revolution and among [...]

Riots occur when people are hungry; hungry for food, knowledge, and even power. We all know what a riot is and how tragic they can be when they turn deadly. Most riots happen when a large group of people are unhappy with a certain event or a certain person or group of people. Riots often [...]

A feud, or vendetta, is an extended argument between two groups of people, usually started as the result of an insult, violence, or even murder. Today the term is more popularly associated with celebrities and sports rivalries, but historical blood feuds were fairly commonplace, and there were even rules and laws—like dueling—that were set up [...]

Okay, I admit, I am a bit of a nerd. I don’t do pocket protectors, tape on glasses or plaid pants, so I am a cool nerd, but a nerd none the less. One of the ways that this nerdiness manifests itself is in my unabashed admiration of the LOTR trilogy.  If you don’t see [...]

Some movies feature intense violence that really stays with us after the final credits stop rolling. These films use dark intensity, and the most primitive instincts of man, to grab our attention and make us think. Here is our list of top ten violent films – 10. Kill Bill  (Vols. 1 & 2) Quentin Tarantino [...]

Throughout the history of the world, starting with the church, censors have been put on many different things. The church was able to create a list of banned books, and many of the books were burned. The first list of banned books came from Pope Paul IV who established The Index of Prohibited Books to [...]

Of course, nobody wants to go to prison, but there are some prisons that you really, really don’t want to be imprisoned as an inmate. Being in jail is only part of the problem, staying alive is the bigger issue. Here are the top 10 most dangerous prisons in the world. 10. San Quentin Prison [...]

The word gang has taken on many meanings throughout the years. Originally, the word was just used to express a group or band of people. You probably have heard someone talk about the local gang of boys or something of that sort. In older times, the word gang didn’t have such the negative tone that [...]