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Theodore Robert Bundy murdered at least 30 women and girls across seven American states between 1974 and 1978. He confessed to 30 murders in the days before his execution in 1989 — investigators believe the true number is higher, possibly significantly so. He never provided a complete accounting. He was, by conventional measures, an unlikely serial killer. He was handsome, articulate, and charming. He had worked on a political campaign. He volunteered at a suicide prevention hotline. He was a law student. People who knew him described him as kind, thoughtful, and normal. ...

In 1977, a CIA director sat before the United States Senate and confirmed that his agency had, for over two decades, conducted covert experiments on unwitting American and Canadian citizens. The experiments involved LSD administered without consent, sensory deprivation, electroconvulsive therapy beyond any therapeutic dose, hypnosis, sexual blackmail, and psychological torture. At least one person died as a direct result. Many others suffered permanent psychological damage. The program was called MKULTRA. ...

On November 18, 1978, in a remote jungle clearing in the South American nation of Guyana, 918 people died. Most of them drank cyanide-laced punch willingly. Parents gave it to their children first. Nurses administered it to infants with syringes. People who hesitated were injected by force. A few tried to flee into the jungle and were shot. It was the largest mass death of American civilians in history — a record that stood until September 11, 2001. ...

In the autumn of 1888, a killer prowled the narrow, fog-covered streets of Whitechapel in London’s East End. He targeted vulnerable women — mostly prostitutes — and murdered them with a ferocity and anatomical precision that shocked even experienced police surgeons. He sent letters to newspapers and police taunting investigators. He was never caught. More than 135 years later, Jack the Ripper remains the most famous unidentified serial killer in history. His case gave birth to modern criminal profiling, forensic investigation, and the global fascination with true crime that endures to this day. ...

In the late 1960s, a killer stalked the roads and lovers’ lanes of Northern California. He didn’t just murder — he performed. He sent coded ciphers to newspapers, taunted police with cryptic letters, and gave himself a name that would echo through decades of true crime history: The Zodiac. More than 50 years later, his identity remains officially unknown. No arrest was ever made. No conviction was ever secured. The Zodiac Killer is one of the most investigated cold cases in American history — and one of the most frustratingly unresolved. ...

At 1:23 AM on April 26, 1986, reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded with a force that blew the 1,000-ton reactor lid clean off its housing. It was the worst nuclear accident in human history — and the Soviet government’s first instinct was to lie about it. Not just to the world. To its own people. To the firefighters it sent in without proper equipment. To the children still playing outside in radioactive rain. ...

On the day before Thanksgiving in 1971, a quiet, well-dressed man bought a one-way ticket for a short flight from Portland to Seattle. He ordered a bourbon and soda, lit a cigarette, and handed a flight attendant a note. The note said he had a bomb. What followed was the only unsolved case of air piracy in American aviation history — a brazen, meticulously executed hijacking that has captivated investigators, amateur sleuths, and the public for over 50 years. The hijacker’s name was almost certainly not D.B. Cooper. But that’s what the world came to call him. And despite one of the longest-running FBI investigations in history, nobody knows who he really was. ...

In the year 2000, Enron Corporation was the seventh largest company in the United States. It employed approximately 29,000 people. Its stock traded at over $90 a share. Fortune magazine had named it “America’s Most Innovative Company” for six consecutive years, from 1996 to 2001. Fourteen months later, it was bankrupt. Its stock was worth pennies. Roughly 20,000 employees had lost their jobs. Thousands of ordinary workers had watched retirement savings — invested heavily in Enron stock at the company’s encouragement — evaporate to nothing. ...

On the night of February 1, 1959, nine experienced Soviet hikers cut their way out of their tent from the inside and fled into the darkness of a Ural mountain in temperatures approaching minus 30 degrees Celsius. They were found weeks later in states that defied easy explanation — some with catastrophic internal injuries but no external wounds, one missing her tongue, several with traces of radiation on their clothing, and all of them dead. ...