Several years ago, when Colton Burpo was 4 years old, he underwent cardiac arrest and was resuscitated during emergency surgery for a ruptured appendix. Four months later, Colton started saying strange things to his father, a Nebraskan pastor named Todd, and his mother, Sonja, about his near-death experience (NDE). Colton...

College is a time of learning, expanding the mind and gaining new skills, right? Not so much, according to a new study. By the end of sophomore year, 45 percent of students show no significant improvement in critical thinking, writing and complex reasoning, the Associated Press reports. The findings come...

Early in the morning of Jan. 20, FBI agents arrested more than 100 reputed mobsters at multiple locations in and around New York City. The raid brought down small-time soldiers representing all five of New York's crime families, as well as some heavy hitters, including the entire leadership of the...

North Korean state media has reported the discovery of the lair of a unicorn ridden by an ancient Korean king. But that doesn't mean the entire country is living in a fantasy world. In fact, the report is a propaganda piece likely geared at shoring up the rule of Kim...

Drug smugglers have resorted to some creative schemes to sneak cocaine, heroin and other contraband past police and border guards, but one recent failed attempt took a rather macabre turn. A 28-year-old Panamanian woman arriving at Barcelona's El Prat Airport aroused the suspicion of border agents after she answered some...

Museum of Math: Color Spheres (Image credit: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience)Each colorful sphere makes music at this exhibit in the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath). Hyper Hyperboloid (Image credit: Clara Moskowitz/LiveScience)The Museum of Math's Hyper Hyperboloid lets you twist straight cords into a curved shape. Museum founder Glen Whitney demonstrates. Square-Wheeled Tricycle...

You might expect the world not ending to be a cause for celebration. But for believers in doomsdays like yesterday's supposed Mayan apocalypse, the continued existence of the planet can be quite traumatic. Yesterday (Dec. 21) was widely rumored online to be the end of the world, a misunderstanding of...

As the holidays call for good will toward men, new research indicates that kids who are kinder are also happier and more popular. This finding suggests that simple and brief acts of kindness might help reduce bullying, the researchers say. At the top of parents' wish lists is for their...

If colorful leaves and the occasional snowstorm weren't a sign that summer has slipped away, daylight saving time officially ends this Sunday (Nov. 4). At 2:00 a.m. that day, the clocks will fall back an hour, meaning brighter mornings but darker evenings for most Americans. (Hawaii and Arizona don't participate...

The first Polynesian settlers sailed to Tonga between 2,830 and 2,846 years ago, according to new research. The findings, published Nov. 7 in the journal PLoS One, relied on ultraprecise dating of coral tools found at Tonga's first settlement. The technique provides us with unbelievable precision in dating quite ancient...

Evangelical Protestants have become more devoted to their religious beliefs over the last three decades, even as Catholics have become less attached to their faith, new research finds. The denominational differences come even as religious affiliations have decreased overall in America, with the number of people who claim no religious...

The rate of babies born in the United States hit a record low in 2011, a new analysis shows. Researchers say the drastic drop in the birth rate among immigrants has greatly contributed to the overall decrease. Based on preliminary data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the Pew...

From World War Z to The Walking Dead to Shaun of the Dead to Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and countless brain-dead rip-offs, zombies — re-animated corpses with an unstoppable craving for human flesh, especially brains — have invaded pop culture like never before. For staggering, slow-moving monsters, zombies have...

Past expeditions to find conclusive evidence for the existence of Bigfoot have at least two things in common: They were unsuccessful, and they were ground-based. That's why the Falcon Project will make history regardless of whether it achieves its goal of capturing clear, steady film evidence of a Hominoid in...

If you believe in that sort of thing, humanity can expect a mere two months left of existence before the Mayan apocalypse hits Dec. 21. Today (Oct. 21) starts the two-month countdown toward doomsday, according to an interpretation of the Mayan calendar that has taken hold in some New Age...