At 6:30 p.m. on July 29th, 2023, 15-year-old Talia Deila Diaz stood just outside the back door of her house, staring into the thick, shadowy rainforest that made up her backyard. She lived in a tiny, isolated village in Peru—right…
On the evening of December 24, 2001, 48-year-old businessman Kevin Butler was in the kitchen of his Dallas, Texas home, preparing food for a Christmas party he planned to attend the following day. As he focused on the task, he…
One evening in late 2003, a 22-year-old man named Michael Bridges sat in the stands of a professional hockey game in Calgary, a major city in Canada. As he stared out at the rink, waiting for the players to file…
On the morning of August 30th, 2001, a middle-aged police sergeant named Alan McGregor drove with his partner, Officer Mark David, toward the Huron National Forest — a sprawling nature preserve in northern Michigan. The two officers were headed there…
At 7:20 p.m. on Friday, January 12th, 2007, 19-year-old college freshman Wade Steffey walked into Ford Dining Hall, one of five dining halls on Purdue University’s campus. Purdue, a prestigious university in Indiana, is well known for its excellence in…
Something most people don’t know is that you can’t just strap on scuba tanks, dive down to any depth, and then shoot straight back up. That would be a fatal mistake. The air in scuba tanks is compressed and typically…
In the spring of 2017, 21-year-old Antonio Navaret was on top of the world. A Florida native living in the quiet rural suburb of Wimauma, just south of Tampa, Antonio had recently found the love of his life, a young…
In the early 1980s, John Harter was the classic athletic, popular kid at his high school in Delaware, Ohio—a relatively small town just outside the state capital. But unlike the typical stereotype of high school jocks as arrogant bullies, John…
Sevnica is a gorgeous town in the heart of Slovenia, nestled right along the Sava River—one of the longest rivers in Europe. The section of the Sava that flows past Sevnica was once a beloved destination for kayakers and canoers.…
One chilly February evening in 2011, Yang—a man in his 30s—sat down for dinner in his modest home in a remote rural village in China. At the table were his five elderly aunts, with whom he lived and cared for.…