Mariel Synan

This month, the 2.3 million Girl Scouts across the United States will begin taking orders for some 200 million boxes of Thin Mints, Tagalongs and more as they launch their annual Girl Scout cookie sale. A considerable source of funding for troop activities, the sales are also an ...read more

Bobbing for apples has been an autumn tradition for hundreds of years. Despite its presence at Halloween parties and festivals today, however, its origins are more rooted in love and romance than tricks and treats. In fact, it began as a British courting ritual, popular among ...read more

It may surprise you that one of the most notable entrepreneurs of the American frontier didn’t wear a jacket, tip his hat and shine his shoes, but rather dressed in a coffee sack, donned a tin hat and traveled barefoot. John Chapman, better known as Johnny Appleseed, was a ...read more

Aside from the famous six-day hostage situation at the Sveriges Kreditbanken in Stockholm from which its name is derived, Stockholm syndrome is perhaps most famously associated with the iconic photo of a beret-wearing, gun-toting Patty Hearst robbing a bank in April 1974. The ...read more

Covering an expanse of over 6.6 million square miles, Russia is the world’s largest country by landmass, beating out runner-up Canada by around 2.8 million square miles. It includes nine different time zones and shares land borders with 14 neighboring countries. Russia’s origins ...read more

It may be difficult to imagine, but there is a country in the world smaller than New York City’s Central Park and one with a population smaller than a typical high-school class. Based on landmass, Vatican City is the smallest country in the world, measuring just 0.2 square miles, ...read more