Prince pulled 1987's 'The Black Album' days before its planned release

Prince's sexually explicit 1984 track 'Darling Nikki' attracted the ire of the Parents Music Resource Center, an advocacy group that inspired the Parental Advisory sticker, even though the song ends with a Christian message.

One disco producer saw 'Star Wars' four times on its opening weekend and was so inspired that he recorded the album 'Star Wars and Other Intergalactic Funk,' which produced a chart-topping single.

The distributor behind 'Rocky Horror' pulled the film from its scheduled national release, believing it would be a failure, though it eventually amassed a dedicated fanbase through midnight showings, a trend that continues over 50 years later.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

A century of Billboard issues documenting the evolution of popular music.

Quincy Jones' 'Big Band Bossa Nova' helped introduce bossa nova—a jazz-influenced Brazilian genre—to the US

Brian Wilson wrote the Beach Boys' 'Don't Worry Baby' for the Ronettes, but the legendary girl group rejected it.

The Ramones' 'Pet Sematary,' the theme song for the Stephen King novel of the same name, was written while the band was admiring the writer's collection of horror memorabilia.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

A researcher recently discovered an interview from 1967 between groundbreaking journalist Joan Didion and the Grateful Dead, years before the band became an institution.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

In 2019, a laptop loaded with six of the worst malware in history and described as 'an exhibit of historical weaponry' sold for $1.3M.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

According to the physics of black holes, our 4D reality may be a hologram—a projection of information coded on a 2D surface on the edge of the universe.

Walt Disney's early film 'Alice's Wonderland' was a groundbreaking innovation in the silent film era

The US first hosted the World Cup in 1994, a tournament that lives in soccer infamy for its poor planning and the murder of Colombian player Andres Escobar, who'd accidentally scored on his own net.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

Before writing 'Walden,' transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau nearly burned down his hometown with a campfire that grew out of control.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

The original copy of the Declaration of Independence is not a pristine document, and even features a smudged anonymous handprint in the bottom left corner.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

Volcanic activity may have triggered the Black Death by spewing gases that led to crop failures in Europe, thus forcing the import of grain ships with plague-infested fleas.

The Mona Lisa's celebrity status and repeated restorations have obscured what made the painting so revolutionary for its time

The 1987 Nintendo video game 'Stadium Events' isn't known for being particularly fun, but its scarcity has made it a highly sought-after item that has sold for up to $35K at auction.

SpaceX's S-1 or 'prospectus' revealed many previously unknown details about the company, including its unprofitability despite doing $18.7B in revenue in 2025, exactly how many voting shares Elon Musk will have in the company (roughly 85%), and more.

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

The first line of 'immortal' human cells, which can divide indefinitely and are used in scientific research, was nonconsensually taken from a Black woman.

Explore fun facts from the USPS, including unique post office buildings, a stamp that traveled past Pluto, and more.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

The power and influence of the American presidency have expanded significantly over time—far beyond what the founders envisioned.

The animatronic shark from Steven Spielberg's 'Jaws,' the first modern blockbuster, was a complex underwater apparatus called 'Bruce.'

American dance legend Martha Graham, sometimes called 'the Picasso of dance,' refused to perform at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin and conceived the piece 'Chronicle' in response to the experience.

Fireworks make a loud booming sound after exploding due to air expanding faster than the speed of sound.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

The concept of phantom limbs, the perception that amputated limbs are still present, dates back to a French military surgeon in the 16th century.

Domino's Pizza's 30-minute delivery guarantee was responsible for the chain's 1980s surge, but it was discontinued after the company was found liable for delivery driver accidents.