A Chicago man who discovered a trunk of rare papers formerly belonging to Harvard University's first black graduate says he plans on burning them all if Harvard doesn't stop lowballing him on the price. Rufus McDonald is not playing around: "I'll roast and burn them," he told the Chicago Sun-Times.

Once upon a time not so long ago, there was an idea: that some things in this world should be able to exist free from the influence of money—that these things should be done because of their own intrinsic value. You would be forgiven for scoffing at the notion that this idea was ever taken seriously at all.

If you're one of the very few people in the world with both an irrational Nirvana obsession and lots of money to throw around—most rich people only listen to classical music or Jay-Z—then, boy, do we have the house for you.

Every town has its weird history, and even the newest housing tract of wet stucco and green 2x4s has some kind of buried backstory. The island city where I live today is loaded with Gold Rush tales and Victorian mansions, but the fact that Jim Morrison spent his formative years around the block is not something you can learn about at the local historical society.

On this September 11, another year further removed from the events of 2001, many Americans have seemingly lost focus on the significance of what happened. As the attacks move toward history's horizon, like the Civil War and Thanksgiving before them, Gawker offers an educational resource to help America's schoolteachers explain and preserve the meaning of the day. This pageant may be staged with 20 to 25 children, depending on class size. For younger grades, the teacher may serve as the Narrator.

Beloved entertainer Rush Limbaugh once again proves he's "king of all media" with his new children's book about America's colonial history. Kids everywhere are excited about the $19.99 storybook, which will "drop" just in time for Halloween, when children will finally get hip to the man lovingly known as Uncle Rush.

Way back in the day when Twitter was a bootleg reindeer name, David Rozier invented farting during Mass. A few minutes before we marveled at the six Catholics at Holy Family Catholic School sipping out of one gold goblet, and right after Father Joe suggested we offer each other “a sign of peace,” David tapped me on my shoulder, swung his right arm around his back and farted in his hand. Father Joe rolled his eyes from the pulpit as David proceeded to shake the hands of Ms. Bockman, Ms. Raphael, and all the other sixth-and seventh-graders in our row.

We live in strange, strange times: Germany is now the most positively viewed nation in the world.

Fugitive cop-killer Joanne Chesimard has become the first woman on America's Most Wanted Terrorists List, joining a previously all male list of super villains. Chesimard, who also goes by the aliases "Sister-Love Chesimard" and "Joan Davis," murdered a New Jersey state trooper 40 years ago today. Chesimard busted out of prison and has lived in Cuba ever since.

Do you want to make $600 cash by Tuesday? Then get to work on this rich guy's "Masters Level History" papers. We are not talking about a cut-and-paste from Wikipedia here, this guy is a legitimate grad student who needs to learn about World War II by having you write his well-sourced academic papers. "I've done this type of thing before," he writes, "so I am comfortable and experienced with it." What could go wrong?

Jamestown was a gruesomely failed start to the English colonization of America. The people were malnourished and disease-ridden and too dumb to eat the bountiful fish and fruits all around them. Most of the settlers were dead within the first year, and in the second hungry winter of 1609-10, the starving survivors chopped open the skull of a newly dead 14-year-old girl and feasted upon her brains.

Here's to Rosalind Franklin, whose work to discover the structure of DNA was published by Watson and Crick 60 years ago today.

In case you had any doubt that the campaign to rehabilitate George W. Bush's reputation was phony and corrupt, Lanny Davis has signed on.

Newton Leroy Gingrich, a former college professor who co-writes speculative novels about alternative versions of history, has just coauthored the most momentous counterfactual of his career. Forget wondering what would have happened if the Confederates had won at Gettysburg, or if the United States had fought Imperial Japan and left Hitler alone: What if the two most absurd and most widely loathed candidates in last year's Republican presidential primaries had joined forces to win the White House?

Now we've seen the art of George W. Bush, but have we really seen it? We asked arts blogger Greg Allen, of greg.org, to give the ex-president's works a close reading.

We're all jealous of Kate Middleton now. The shiny hair. The castle home. But in 500 years she'll be just another monarch buried underneath a Pizza Hut parking lot, so who cares, really?

An adult film actress best known for her roles in such acclaimed spanksploitation talkies as Big Booty Bomb #2 and Lesbian Pussy Power #4 is preparing her body to boldly go where no porn star has gone before: Space.

Active duty U.S. Marine Corps captain Matthew Phelps made history over the weekend by proposing to his partner Ben Schock inside the White House.

Fifty years ago, black man James Meredith matriculated at the University of Mississippi after a lengthy legal battle with school administrators and state politicians. The governor of Mississippi himself, Ross Barnett, chastised President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy's support of Meredith as "evil and illegal forces of tyranny." Thousands of soldiers were deployed to ensure Meredith's safe entry onto campus, which led to a riot that killed two and injured hundreds. In the end, despite all the anger and violence, Meredith entered classes at Ole Miss and graduated in 1963 with a degree in political science.

The history of lingerie is being rewritten, all because a couple freak-nasty archaeologists were rooting around in some hang-loose Austrian gals' trash.