Nobody is sure exactly why we all call it what we call it.Big Ben chimed Monday morning for the last time in the next four years as it begins undergoing renovations. Some London residents are feeling gloomy and upset about the news, and somewhere, some big guy named Ben is feeling his heart sink a little, but he’s comforted by the hope that the restorations will preserve his famous namesake for many more years to come.

In the 1990s, the Galapagos Conservancy launched Project Isabela, an all out war against 250,000 goats in the Galapagos Islands to save the dwindling population of Galapagos tortoises.The Galapagos Islands Source: Flickr Charles Darwin called the Galapagos Islands “a little world within itself.” It’s hard to imagine what his life and work would have looked like without this Pacific Island archipelago, and it’s just as challenging to think of the island chain without the giant tortoises which give the islands their name.

Samuel Morse first got the idea to invent the electric telegraph in 1832, and by the time he died 40 years later, it was possible to send a message from America to Europe within minutes.Authenticated News/Getty ImagesSamuel Morse sending the first public telegraph from the Supreme Court chamber in the Capitol to Baltimore, Maryland, on May 24, 1844. When the first telegraph message was successfully sent in 1844, curious bystanders were gobsmacked.

After the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, the Warren Commission determined that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president — but many believe that there's more to the story.In 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison did an explosive interview with Playboy about what he claimed to have discovered during his independent investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Garrison said, “We discovered, in short, what I had hoped not to find… the existence of a well-organized conspiracy to assassinate John Kennedy, a conspiracy that came to fruition in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

In Norse cosmology and mythology, the massive ash tree Yggdrasil is said to support the whole universe, from the underworld known as Hel to the heavenly realm of Asgard.In Norse mythology, all things lead back to Yggdrasil. This mythical tree — thought to be the center of the universe — connects the Nine Worlds, acts as a meeting place for the gods, and may herald the apocalypse. Here’s everything you need to know about Yggdrasil, from the animals that nibble on its branches to why it offers hope in the end times.