When Marilyn Monroe sang “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy, her dress—not her voice—stole the show. The actress wore a glittering, skintight gown while performing at a Democratic fundraiser/presidential birthday celebration held at New York’s City’s Madison Square Garden on May 19, 1962. A bidder paid $1.27 million for the iconic dress in 1999, but CNN reports that the slinky garment will go back on the auction block today. This time around, it’s expected to fetch up to $3 million.

Julien’s Auctions, a Los Angeles-based celebrity auction house, is selling the dress, along with an assortment of Monroe’s other possessions, including her jewelry, movie costumes, and even personal items like cigarettes, prescription pill bottles, and a used tube of lipstick. All of these items are expected to fetch a pretty penny, but none compare to the bejeweled gown, which Darren Julien, president and CEO of Julien’s Auctions, described in a statement (quoted by CNN) as “truly the most important artifact of Marilyn’s career that could ever be sold.” Currently, it holds the record for the most expensive personal clothing item to ever be purchased at auction.

Some people might argue that the white dress Monroe donned in 1955’s The Seven Year Itch is more memorable than the one she wore while singing “Happy Birthday” to JFK. Someone purchased it for $4.6 million in 2011, making it the most expensive dress ever to be sold at auction. However, it didn’t truly belong to Marilyn in real life—plus, W points out, the doomed starlet wore the beige gown during one of her last major public appearances. Less than three months after JFK’s birthday, the 36-year-old Monroe was found dead on August 5, 1962.

Bidding for the dress starts at $1 million. To see the full list of items for sale, visit Julien’s Auctions.

[h/t CNN]

When it was completed in 1931, the Empire State Building instantly became the tallest in the world. Standing an impressive 1250 feet tall, it was the first 100-story building in history and held the record as the world’s tallest for the next 41 years, until the completion of One World Trade Center in 1972. After that, the title moved to Chicago, and then to a number of super-tall buildings in Asia, until the current world’s tallest—Dubai’s Burj Khalifa—took the title in 2007.

Precisely what constitutes the world’s tallest building is debatable, with arguments raised over whether or not uninhabitable structures (like telecommunications towers) qualify for inclusion, and whether the extra height gained by the addition of radio masts and flagpoles should be taken into account. But using a straightforward list of habitable structures measured from ground to roof as a yardstick, the back catalog of former World’s Tallest Building title-holders actually includes some quite surprising entries.

1. THE PYRAMID OF GIZA // EGYPT

When the Great Pyramid at Giza was completed after 20 years of construction in around 2500 BCE, it stood an imposing 480 feet tall—although erosion has knocked a full 25 feet from that total so that it stands 455 feet today. Precisely what held the title before then is debatable, although contenders include several more of Egypt’s pyramids, the 28-foot Tower of Jericho completed around 10,000 years ago, and Göbekli Tepe, a mysterious site in Southern Turkey that dates back to the 10th millennium BCE.

2. LINCOLN CATHEDRAL // UNITED KINGDOM

When construction of the immense central spire of Lincoln Cathedral in England was completed in 1311, it is believed to have stood an impressive 525 feet, easily surpassing the Great Pyramid’s height by more than 40 feet and breaking its run as the world’s tallest building after a staggering 3800 years. Sadly, all three of Lincoln’s spires have been lost: the two smaller spires were removed in 1807, almost a century after concerns about their safety were raised by the architect James Gibbs, while the taller central tower was destroyed by a storm in 1548. Its collapse also meant that Lincoln Cathedral’s title was temporarily handed over to …

3. ST. MARY’S CHURCH // GERMANY

The 495-foot-tall Marienkircher or St. Mary’s Church in the town of Stralsund in northeast Germany was completed sometime in the 13th century. It might have unceremoniously snatched the title from Lincoln Cathedral after the disaster of 1548, but the Marienkircher has had its own share of bad luck throughout its long history: its bell tower collapsed in 1382, and its central steeple blew down in a storm in 1478 and had to be replaced. The replacement, however, was struck by lightning and burned to the ground in 1647—handing the title of world’s tallest building over to …

4. STRASBOURG CATHEDRAL // FRANCE

After a run of bad luck for ecclesiastical buildings, Strasbourg Cathedral—at 466 feet tall—managed to hold on to the title of world’s tallest building for the next 227 years (although some in the 19th century thought it was shorter than the Great Pyramid). But in the late 19th century, improvements in building techniques and architectural engineering led to a flurry of tall buildings completed all across Europe.

In 1874, a rebuilt St. Nicholas’s Church in Hamburg was completed after the previous building burned down 30 years earlier; standing 482 feet tall, it took the title from Strasbourg (but went on to be all but destroyed during the Second World War and is now in ruins). In 1876, a cast iron spire was added to Rouen Cathedral in France, which stole the title from Hamburg. Then in 1880, work was finally completed—after a 407-year hiatus—on Cologne Cathedral in Germany: construction had originally begun in 1248, but was halted in 1473. The finished building stood 515 feet tall, enough to steal the title from Rouen and return it to Germany. But just like its predecessor, Cologne Cathedral only held the title for the next four years.

5. WASHINGTON MONUMENT // UNITED STATES

On its completion in 1884, the 555-foot Washington Monument became the world’s tallest entirely stone-built structure, the tallest obelisk anywhere in the world, and the first known structure in North America to hold the title of world’s tallest building. Despite that impressive record, however, Europe reclaimed the record just five years later with …

6. THE EIFFEL TOWER // FRANCE

The 986-foot Eiffel Tower was the centerpiece of the 1889 World’s Fair. Although its designer and namesake Gustave Eiffel had a permit allowing it to stand for a total of 20 years, it was originally intended to be dismantled when the fair was over. Thankfully, aside from its popularity, part of the reason the Tower still survives is that it proved an excellent telegraph transmitter, and even proved useful in intercepting German radio signals during the First Battle of Marne in 1914.

On its completion on March 31, 1889, the 984-foot Eiffel Tower instantly became the world’s tallest building (although, astonishingly, it shrinks by up to 6 inches during cold weather). It held the record for the next 41 years, until finally it was beaten by …

7. THE CHRYSLER BUILDING // NEW YORK

When it was opened on May 27, 1930, New York City’s Chrysler Building broke the Eiffel Tower’s record by a full 60 feet—it stands an impressive 1046 feet tall, making it the first building in history to break the 1000-foot mark (thanks largely to a 185-foot spire constructed in secret to prevent any competition from beating it). It remains the tallest brick-built building in the world (although it does have a steel frame), despite holding the record as the world’s tallest for just 11 months: the Empire State Building was completed on April 11, 1931.

The good news: Tonight is the best night of the year to spot the Leonid meteor shower. The bad news: There’s a giant moon up there washing things out. Those are just the breaks. Moreover, this is a weak year for the shower. Sometimes it’s strong. Sometimes it’s not. Activity correlates to the return of its parent comet, Tempel-Tuttle, which traverses the solar system in a 33-year orbit. Alas, the comet won’t be back to spice things up until the 2030s.

Still, to stare into the night sky is to stare thousands of years into the past. (Longer if you use a telescope.) And that big and bright Moon, while meddling with our meteor viewing, is gorgeous this week and worth your time—it’s the super beaver moon, after all. But the Leonids, too, have earned their keep. They gave birth to meteor astronomy in terrifying fashion, having once been thought to signal Judgment Day.

THE CRACK OF DOOM

In 1833, biochemistry was born. Slavery was abolished in much of the British Empire. Across the Atlantic, the city of Chicago was founded. A re-elected president took the oath of office. And the nation was plunged into chaos as the sixth seal was apparently broken, “and the stars of the heavens fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.”

This was a pre-Edison world, and even gas lighting was in its infancy. The skies, in other words, were largely free of the eventual scourge of light pollution. They would have been painted with the Milky Way, and any motion at all, save the Moon and the planets, would have been obvious and noteworthy. So when thousands of shooting stars appeared in one crystalline night in November―when the sky became a dramatic field of streaking white―something was definitely wrong. This was no meteor shower. There were simply too many of them, too much, too frenzied in every direction. This was, well, it could only be one thing: a sign, and maybe the sign.

Scientists of the time weren’t necessarily on board with the Armageddon hypothesis, but they needed to move quickly to collect hard data on the phenomenon, determine how far the phenomena reached, build hypotheses on why this was happening now, and predict what might happen next. Scientific astronomy was paramount, as was the need to collect hard data from across the country (and perhaps around the world) before memories falsely inflated numbers and exaggerated meteor behavior. Now amplify the pressure of doing this when there was no way of communicating swiftly over great distances. This was a pre-telegraph world. It took weeks and months to bring the data together, but in the end they were successful.

So what was going on? Was this some sort of solar outburst? Were elements in the atmosphere ignited? Observations placed the radius of the shower in the constellation Leo. (Hence the eventual name “Leonids.”) In 1833, it was exclusive to North America, but there were reports of it the year before in Europe and the Middle East. Was it perhaps the work of some sort of particle field in space? It was in these fires of scientific inquiry about the Leonids that the field of meteor astronomy would be forged. The shower was particularly intense in 1833, these early meteor astronomers soon learned, because Tempel-Tuttle had returned in its 33-year orbit. After combing through some 2000 years of astronomical records, Yale College astronomer and mathematician H. A. Newton predicted the next spectacular shower would appear in 1866. He was right.

Because the world didn’t end in 1833, the terror of a sky lit in shooting stars would inspire people for years. Stories about that night were passed down for generations. The shower, for example, left an indelible mark on the people of Alabama, nearly a century later inspiring Carl Carmer, an English professor at the University of Alabama. He titled his literary exploration of the state, published in 1934, Stars Fell on Alabama. That phrase would inspire a song of the same name:

“We lived our little drama
we kissed in a field of white
And stars fell on Alabama last night
I can’t forget the glamour
your eyes held a tender light
And stars fell on Alabama last night”

CATCHING THE MAIN EVENT

The shower will peak after midnight tonight, in the early hours of November 18. If it’s too cold where you are to take chances on a quiet event, you can always watch the meteor shower on Slooh. You can also check out the Space.com feed. And of course there’s the old fashioned way: a dark area, a heavy coat, a blanket, an hour for your night vision to adjust, and a whole lot of patience. You might see 10 meteors an hour. And if you don’t, you’ll have a brilliant alabaster moon to keep you company.

Art authentication can be a tricky business. Seasoned experts can be fooled by forgeries or miss important clues that could cement the authorship of a particular piece. At stake: reputations of museums and millions of dollars.

The art world’s latest controversy arrived Tuesday, when two prominent scholars of Post-Impressionist artist Vincent van Gogh declared that a 65-page sketchbook passed down as a family heirloom in France was once owned by the uni-eared painter.

Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum, however, fired back with an open letter claiming the sketchbook was not the genuine article. Using their library of more than 500 van Gogh drawings as a reference, museum staffers wrote that the illustrations aren’t indicative of the artist’s development circa 1888 and that the brown ink used was inconsistent with his preference of black or purple ink.

It’s believed that van Gogh gifted the proprietors of a hotel in Arles, France with the sketchbook after he had been remanded to a mental institution after slicing off his ear; van Gogh had asked his doctor, Felix Rey, to pass it along to the Ginouxs, who welcomed the artist as their guest and had given him a ledger in which to draw. The museum argues that Rey had left Arles by then and had never come to visit him.

One of the scholars endorsing the work as genuine, Bogomila Welsh-Ovcharov, is a highly-respected van Gogh expert who has just issued a book titled Vincent van Gogh: The Lost Arles Sketchbook, featuring commentary and reproductions of select illustrations. Welsh-Ovcharov spent three years researching the sketches after discovering them in 2013. The book, she said, was in the Ginoux family for decades before it came into the possession of a neighbor, who was unaware of its significance. The neighbor’s daughter thought little of it until a friend suggested she show it to an art historian.

Welsh-Ovcharov maintains that an entry in the hotel’s 1890 date book supports her version of events. In it, an employee of the Ginouxs wrote: “Monsieur Doctor Rey left for M. and Mme. Ginoux from the painter Van Goghe [sic] some empty olive boxes and a bundle of checked towels as well as a large book of drawings and apologizes for the delay.”

[h/t The New York Times]

Around 1941, the Germans dropped a bomb on a street in Liverpool, exposing among the rubble a watertight metal cylinder about six and a half feet long. For several years it lay on the side of the street, more or less ignored. People used it as a bench, kids played on it, and nobody thought it was anything particularly unusual—until one day somebody took a look inside.

Liverpool had been the most heavily bombed British city outside London during the Blitz. Much of the city was destroyed, and amid the chaos, the explosion on Great Homer Street seemed just like any other. Rubble had been cleared away by American soldiers in bulldozers, who left behind some larger chunks of debris, including the aforementioned cylinder—which went largely ignored until July 13, 1945.

On that day, a group of children managed to break part of the cylinder open and peer inside. What they saw inside likely chilled them to the core: a corpse.

The police were alerted, and the cylinder was opened fully to reveal the skeleton of a man who, many locals presumed, had perished in the bombings a few years earlier. Curiously, however, the man was dressed head-to-toe in clothing much more suited to the Victorian era and lying on some sort of cloth. He also still had a few strands of hair attached to his skull, which was propped up on a makeshift pillow formed of a brick wrapped in burlap.

Rumors, speculation, and confusion surrounded the first few days of the discovery, with local newspaper the Evening Express stating that “at the present stage there did not seem to be any suggestion of murder. It was quite possible that the man was of the ‘queer’ type and had crawled into the cylinder to sleep. He may have been dead 20 years.” (In this context, queer likely meant somebody with a mental illness.) The mystery deepened a few days later, when the coroner, one Mr. G. C. Mort, announced that along with the body they had discovered two diaries (sadly illegible), a postcard, and a rail notice, all dating from 1884 or 1885, as well as a well-worn signet ring, a set of keys, and an undated receipt from a T. C. Williams and Co.

An investigation by the coroner showed that T. C. Williams and Co. had been a local paint manufacturing company that operated from the 1870s until 1884, when the company fell into financial ruin and closed for good. Its owner, Thomas Cregeen Williams, was declared bankrupt in 1884. Creditors were asked repeatedly to come forward and stake their claim to his assets, but by 1885 Williams had disappeared. Local papers announced the mystery solved—but the coroner wasn’t so sure. Williams had a son, born in 1859, and some believed that it was actually his body in the cylinder. This theory was ruled out when the investigation found the younger Williams buried in a cemetery in Leeds. Meanwhile, the elder Williams’s whereabouts remained unconfirmed.

As outlandish as it may seem that a body could lay undiscovered in residential Liverpool for 60 years, as far as the police were concerned, that appeared to have been what happened. On August 31, 1945, the official inquest recorded an open verdict, meaning the death was deemed suspicious but without an obvious cause. According to the Liverpool Evening Express, the coroner said it was “impossible to find the cause of death, which he believed took place in 1885.” Although the body in the cylinder has never been officially confirmed as that of T. C. Williams, this still stands as the prevailing theory.

But what of the cylinder? And how did the body end up in there in the first place? According to an official from the Home Office in 1945, the cylinder seemed to be part of a ventilation system (no traces of paint were found inside, ruling out any chance of a freak paint manufacturing accident). Was T. C. Williams sleeping in the vents of his old factory to hide from the creditors, and had he succumbed to deadly fumes? (The cylinder was found about a mile from the factory, but the bombs and bulldozers might have moved it.) Did he, as one theory put forward by the blog Strange Company suggests, fake his own death using this body as a decoy while making a break for America? Being that Liverpool was a major port city in the 1880s, it’s not logistically impossible, if perhaps a little farfetched. We might never know for sure. Perhaps the answer is still lying at the side of a road in Liverpool somewhere, just waiting to be noticed.

Not into sports drinks or protein bars? Reaching for one of these isn’t essential when you’re trying to get in shape. (In fact, they can be packed with so much sugar that they’re not even good choices unless you’re tackling an especially tough or lengthy workout.) When it comes to fueling up before and after you exercise, there are some beneficial—and somewhat surprising—choices that you likely already have in your cabinet or fridge. Read on for six foods and drinks that research has proven are awesome options for staying energized when you hit the gym and to help your body bounce back quickly afterward.

1. GREENS

There’s no end to the kale craze in sight—and now research suggests that it can help you work out harder, too. Eating leafy greens like kale and spinach regularly can help improve your muscle fibers, which in turn can boost your athletic performance—especially during high-intensity exercise, like sprint intervals, and if you’re exercising in a low-oxygen condition, like at high altitude, according to a new Belgian study. Researchers say the greens contain nitrate, which benefits fast-oxidative muscle fibers.

2. WATERMELON JUICE

Leave the Gatorade on the shelf and reach for refreshing watermelon juice before you get sweaty: Sipping on the sweet juice an hour before exercise relieved people’s muscle soreness, says a study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry. Researchers say the fruit contains antioxidants and can increase muscle protein.

3. FAST FOOD

Leaving the gym and heading for the drive-thru could be a surprisingly good way to help your body recover post-workout. Yes, you read that right: Eating fast food is just as good at restoring glycogen (your muscles’ go-to source of energy) after you work out as traditional options like sports drinks and protein bars, found a recent study published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Of course, load up on large fries with a cheeseburger and you can quickly overdo it on calories—so sticking to small servings may be your best bet.

4. CHOCOLATE

Permission to eat chocolate every day, granted. Nibbling on a couple squares of dark chocolate daily can improve exercisers’ endurance, according to a 2015 study. Researchers from Kingston University in London say the dark chocolate has similar benefits to beetroot juice and aids athletic performance by helping to dilate blood vessels and deliver more oxygen to muscles.

5. CEREAL

If you don’t have a protein bar on hand after exercising, reaching for a serving of cereal with non-fat milk can do the trick. Researchers from the University of Texas at Austin found that eating whole-grain cereal with milk is just as effective for promoting recovery after a lengthy workout. A bowl of the breakfast staple provides carbs, which help replenish your muscles’ stores of glycogen, plus protein for muscle repair.

6. COFFEE

It’s widely known that caffeine can give you a little athletic jolt, and it turns out coffee is an especially good form to get it pre-workout. Downing a couple mugs of coffee before you hit the running trail or gym can help you go longer, according to a recent study published in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism. Researchers from the University of Georgia found that when exercisers consumed between 3 and 7 milligrams of caffeine from coffee per kilogram of body weight, their endurance performance increased by about 24 percent. A cup generally contains between 75mg and 150mg of caffeine, so you should feel a boost if you down one before your workout.

All images courtesy of iStock.