The year 2018 was not a good one for journalists. The Committee to Protect Journalists reports that that year, at least 34 journalists were killed in reprisal for their work worldwide, nearly double the number killed in 2017. Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi-born US resident, was one of them — but his murder would ignite an international firestorm exposing horrific brutality, torture, and corruption among some of the world’s most powerful leaders.

For decades, he was close to the Saudi royal family and even served as an adviser to the government. He was a prominent journalist, covering some of the biggest…

When two Boeing 737s slammed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, over 2,700 people lost their lives — including over 400 law enforcement officers, paramedics, and firefighters. Along with the 189 people who died in the attack on the Pentagon and the 44 who died thwarting the hijacking of United Flight 93, this constituted the deadliest terrorist attack in American history.

The few who survived the attacks on the World Trade Center had many difficult and complex emotions to deal with. There was relief, of course, along with trauma. …

It was a warm May day in 1963 when 14-year-old Sebasian Guerrero was out exploring near the small village of Yerbabuena (sometimes spelled Yerba Buena) in southern Tamaulipas, Mexico. At the feet of the eastern Sierra Madre mountains, the area had many caves — and many legends about lost gold and hidden treasures inside them.

It was near dark when Gurrero saw something that intrigued him: flickering lights coming from inside a nearby cave. As he got closer to investigate, he began hearing sounds — human sounds, but not sounds of talking or singing. …

In early 1991, when a trainee nurse named Beverley Allitt was hired on at Grantham and Kesteven District Hospital in Lincolnshire, in the UK, the staff were glad to have the help. Grantham and Kesteven was a small hospital that served the rural areas around Grantham, so it wasn’t particularly busy, but it suffered from chronic understaffing.

At first, the nursing manager, along with the ward sister (basically, the charge nurse), had been against hiring Allitt. The 22-year-old had barely passed nursing school, calling in sick some 160 days during her two-year studies.

But Ward 4 — the pediatric ward…

Sept. 7, 1920, Twin Falls, Idaho: Edward F. Meyer, a ranch foreman, dies after a sudden attack of illness.

Both he and one of his ranch hands had taken sick just days earlier, after eating a meal cooked by Ed’s new bride, Lyda. The men were doubled over with cramps, nausea, and diarrhea. The ranch hand recovered, but Ed was taken to the hospital. While there, he too began to recover, but then mysteriously took a turn for the worst.

On his death certificate, the doctor lists Ed’s cause of death as typhoid fever, a common illness at the time…

His followers believe every word he speaks (or tweets), no matter how obviously false. They believe in a tinfoil-hat-worthy conspiracy, promoted by their leader, accusing his enemies of Satan worship, cannibalism, and pedophilia. They refuse to listen to any media that doesn’t parrot their leader — and if anyone dares to contradict him, that person or network is shunned.

As their sources of information narrow down to only one man, they move further and further away from reality.

I am certainly not the first person to point out that Trumpism has all the hallmarks of a cult. After the violent…

It’s Women’s History Month, so let’s take a look at the dark side of women’s history, starting with one of the cruelest and most sadistic women in American history.

Marie Delphine MacCarthy Blanque LaLaurie was born in 1787 into the New Orleans wealthy elite. Like many manipulative sociopaths, she was known to be kind and courteous — at least to her social equals. “The lady was so graceful and accomplished, so charming in her manners and so hospitable, that no one ventured openly to question her perfect goodness,” according to British writer Harriet Martineau.

Yet there were red flags.

Soon…

In the early 1990s, punk band The Gits were on their way up. Nirvana had recently moved the capital of rock music to Seattle, The Gits’ adopted hometown, and major record labels were scouting the city for the next big thing.

The Gits, fronted by 27-year-old singer Mia Zapata, had moved to Seattle from Ohio in 1989. Over the next four years, they lived and recorded at “the Rathouse,” an abandoned house in the low-rent, high-crime Capitol Hill neighborhood. …