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Sophia R.

Tragedies & Disasters Europe

The Ninth Fort, Kaunas: The Fortress That Never Fought a War and Killed 50,000 People

It was built to stop an army and never fired a shot. What happened in the fields behind its walls, the Germans spent 1943 trying to erase.

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The Ninth Fort, Kaunas: The Fortress That Never Fought a War and Killed 50,000 People

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Malbork Castle: The Largest Castle in the World

Prisons & Fortresses

Malbork Castle: The Largest Castle in the World

Malbork is the largest castle on earth and almost nobody has ever taken it by force. In 1457 the Teutonic Order's own mercenaries sold it instead.

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The Battle of Grunwald: The Day the Teutonic Order Broke

The Battle of Grunwald: The Day the Teutonic Order Broke

In 1410 a Polish-Lithuanian army destroyed the Teutonic Order in one afternoon. The Order had run out of a reason to fight twenty-four years earlier.

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The Salton Sea: California's Largest Lake Was an Accident

The Salton Sea: California's Largest Lake Was an Accident

California's largest lake was created by accident in 1905. It is drying now, and the lakebed it leaves behind does not stay on the ground.

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Picher, Oklahoma: The Most Toxic Town in America

Abandoned & Failed

Picher, Oklahoma: The Most Toxic Town in America

Picher, Oklahoma armed two world wars with the ore beneath its streets. The town was erased in 2009, and the reason is still stacked on the ground.

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Keroman Submarine Base: The Nazi U-Boat Fortress That Allied Bombs Could Not Break

Keroman Submarine Base: The Nazi U-Boat Fortress That Allied Bombs Could Not Break

The Allies dropped 4,000 tons of bombs on Lorient in five weeks and destroyed 90% of the city. The U-boat bunkers they were aiming at never cracked.

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The Halifax Explosion: The Largest Man-Made Blast Before the Atomic Age

Tragedies & Disasters

The Halifax Explosion: The Largest Man-Made Blast Before the Atomic Age

A French ship loaded with explosives caught fire in Halifax Harbour in 1917. What followed was the largest man-made blast before the atomic age.

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Auroville: The Experimental City Built for Human Unity

Auroville: The Experimental City Built for Human Unity

Auroville is an experimental city in South India, founded in 1968 to belong to all of humanity. Fifty years on, the dream is being fought over with bulldozers.

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Clipperton Island: The Atoll Where One Man Made Himself King

Tragedies & Disasters

Clipperton Island: The Atoll Where One Man Made Himself King

Clipperton is a remote coral atoll off Mexico where a forgotten Mexican garrison slowly died. The last man alive crowned himself king of the survivors.

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Base 211: The Legend of Hitler's Secret Nazi Base in Antarctica

Myths & Legends

Base 211: The Legend of Hitler's Secret Nazi Base in Antarctica

Nazi Germany claimed a slice of Antarctica with swastika darts in 1939. Then came the legend of Base 211 — Hitler's secret ice fortress. Did it ever exist?

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Dixia Cheng: Beijing's Underground City Built to Survive a Soviet Nuclear War

The Underground

Dixia Cheng: Beijing's Underground City Built to Survive a Soviet Nuclear War

Mao made 300,000 Beijingers dig a secret nuclear shelter under the city by hand — big enough for half the population. Then everyone forgot it.

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Area 52: The Secret Base Doing the Work Area 51 Is Too Famous For

The Underground

Area 52: The Secret Base Doing the Work Area 51 Is Too Famous For

Area 51 got too famous to hide anything. So America's real secret testing moved 70 miles away, to a base most people have never heard of: Area 52.

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Colonia LeBaron: The Polygamist Mormon Colony in Mexico's Cartel Heartland

Colonia LeBaron: The Polygamist Mormon Colony in Mexico's Cartel Heartland

American polygamists fled south to build a colony in the Mexican desert. Its founder's own son turned it into a killing ground.

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Tito's Bunker (ARK D-0): Inside Yugoslavia's Largest Secret Nuclear Command Center

The Underground

Tito's Bunker (ARK D-0): Inside Yugoslavia's Largest Secret Nuclear Command Center

Tito spent 26 years and $4.6 billion secretly digging a nuclear bunker for 350 people under a Bosnian mountain. He never once set foot inside.

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The Eagle's Nest: Hitler's Mountaintop Fortress — the Gift He Barely Used

The Eagle's Nest: Hitler's Mountaintop Fortress — the Gift He Barely Used

Martin Bormann blasted a road and a brass elevator through a mountain to build Hitler the ultimate gift. The Führer barely wanted to set foot in it.

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Goma: The City That Lives Between a Volcano and a War

Goma: The City That Lives Between a Volcano and a War

Goma sits beneath a volcano and beside a lake that could suffocate a million people — and Africa's deadliest war just returned. How does it survive?

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