In January of 1959, a group of 10 Russian college students set out on a hike in the Ural Mountains in Siberia on a journey of some 700 miles. One student, suffering health problems, had to turn back and end his hike early. But that proved to save his life because an unexplained tragedy occurred in which all nine remaining hikers were killed in potentially brutal and purposeful passion. The cause of death remains a mystery as historians have wondered for more than 60 years: what happened at Dyatlov Pass?

The Western Hemisphere was, in many ways, the last frontier of exploration during the end of the medieval world and into the Age of Exploration of the 1500s. For many, the Western Hemisphere at that time was not what we know today due to the belief that the nearest landmass to the Atlantic coast of Europe was the Pacific coast of Asia. But when Christopher Columbus and other European explorers who followed him discovered a new continent between Western Europe and East Asia, they also discovered many ancient pagan tribes. One of these – perhaps the most famous of pre-European America – was the dominant force in Central America. These were the Aztecs.

The 5th Century AD is one of the more bizarre times in human history. Do we still call it the Roman Empire, even though the Western Empire is dead by this point? Is the known world Christian, even though Christianity had only spread the distance of the Eastern and Western empires? Have we reached the Middle Ages yet? What do we make of the bloodshed and barbarism of this century? All of these questions relate to one of the most famous warlords in history. Known in the Christian world as the “Scourge of God,” that figure is Attila the Hun.