For years Russians deported criminals to Siberia, then were forced to import women to deal with a surfeit of lawlessness among the new residents. It remains a less than desirable locale.
Even before the advent of compulsory birth control and sterilization measures, Chinese women bore far fewer children than their European counterparts. The leading cause: less sex.
American colonists were "married to royal political spectacles" and "championed their British king with emotional intensity" right up to the eve of the Revolution, says one historian.
A brief Islamic rebirth occurred in the republic Daghestan in 1991, but it may have been doomed from the start by seven decades of Soviet rule.
Anecdotal evidence says women talk more than men. Scientific evidence says that's just idle chatter.
Novelist H. G. Wells offered visions of the future in a number of books. His predictions weren't flawless, but they often hit close to the mark.
Nations have been squabbling for years over land claims in the Antarctic, but the area might better be served by declaring it a global commons.
The Andy Warhol Museum of Modern Art has always been viewed as an odd fit in Medzilzborce, Slovakia, not unlike Warhol himself.
A biographer of the late poet Cecil Day-Lewis turned to an unlikely source for insight into his indiscretions: the poet's widow.
A controversial new law in India, aimed at giving educational and employment preferences to "other backward classes," may only benefit the "creamy layer" of each caste.