On August 23rd, 1514 on the Chaldiran plain in northwest Iran, the Safavid Shiite Muslims clashed with Sunni Muslims from the expansive Ottoman Empire. Believing that their leader, Ismail, was the twelfth infallible imam of Islamic teaching, the Safavid troops fearlessly charged into battle with inadequate training and archaic military equipment. Needless to say, the Safavids were soundly defeated, and their supposedly infallible leader slipped away from the battlefield and died ten years later.

Are healthy and attractive the same thing?
Are modern conceptions (or fashions) of beauty consistent with seeking a successful mating partner?

The media seem to tell us that tall, slim, leggy women, with large breasts; and tall, muscular men, with big jaws, are the most attractive.  But are they the most successful at producing healthy babies?  Maybe, it's a circular arguement: they're the most successful at attracting prospective mates, and so the fashion in body shape is effectively written into our (un)natural selection process.

On Gigantour, heavy-metal bands explore the genre with complex layers and intense performances

By Steve Appleford, Special to the Los Angeles Times

Being loud isn't nearly enough in heavy metal. A bad attitude helps, but for the bands collected under Megadeth's touring mini-festival Gigantour, some distinctive style and vision made all the difference Friday at the Gibson Amphitheatre.
Though each of the three top-billed acts — Megadeth, Motorhead and Volbeat — were dependably loud, confrontational and contained elements of classic metal and punk, each delivered something vastly different from the next.

If you could only use a few words to describe what the arts meant to you, what would you say?

From the book celebrating the arts and creativity, Art & Soul.

A beautiful collection from 123 actors, producers, directors, dancers and singers who came together, sat for portraits and wrote about what the arts mean to them.
Photos by Pulitzer Prize winner Brian Smith.

Magnificent, futuristic, desirable, unique, are all words to describe the 1955 Bisiluro Damolnar.  The name "Bisiluro" is Italian for "twin torpedo" and it is easy to see that this is the perfect description.

The car was created in 1955 by Carlo Mollino and Enrico Nardi, their goal was to create an ultra-light, aerodynamic car to compete at Le Mans alongside the much larger and far better funded factory teams like…

There has always been a lot of discussion around scientists doing experiments and testing on animals. After watching this video it is clear that captivating an animal for 30 years is maybe not the most humane approach. The chimpanzees that were released to see sunlight for the first time, started to hug each other and jump around in their new habitat.