It's often said that blood is thicker than water – that family ties trump all others. But research with groups of men fighting in Libya has suggested that the bonds they formed in times of great adversity were as strong as those they had with their own kin.

It's undeniable that this satellite image of the Al Jawf oasis in southeastern Libya is incredibly striking, with large irrigated plots standing out in contrast to their barren surroundings. But, a little like staring at clouds, their lay-out is enough to get your imagination running wild.

The world record for the hottest recorded temperature of 58°C (136.4°F) was set at Al Azizia, Libya, in 1922. This year, a team of researchers — including one who was almost killed in Libya's 2011 revolution — invalidated that record. Here's the harrowing story of how they did it.

The treasure was kept mostly in two wooden chests, and locked away in a bank vault: thousands of coins, jewelry and figurines, some around 2,600 years old. For decades it sat in the bank, unattended despite the historical and monetary value. Then, as a popular uprising erupted around the downtown bank last winter,…

If you're a wealthy, militant despot of a nation and your sovereignty is slipping away, Wikileaks has discovered that you can attempt to prevent an uprising by hiring a network of spies who operate in the private sector and will keep tabs on citizens who threaten your reign.

One of the side effects of the fall of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi's regime is that archaeologists can now explore parts of the country's past that were long suppressed, starting with the lost cities of the ancient Garamantes civilization.

The Libyan rebels that helped overthrow Qadaffi's regime may not have had the most advanced weaponry at their disposal. But they were resourceful and used what they had available, including converting a bulldozer into a rolling, bulletproof battleship.

There was no shortage of crappy, short-lived genre shows in the 1980s, but only one of them accidentally predicted the death year of a newly deceased Libyan strongman.

Hey, what was the last update you posted to Facebook? That's nice, everyone loves a good cat video. Admiral James Stavridis of NATO just posted his intention to end the war in Libya. Possibly the first war to be ended via social media and definitely the first one to show up next to a Farmville request on your wall.

Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former dictator of Libya, was killed yesterday but Libyans don't know what to do with his body just yet. Right now, Qaddafi is being stored in a room-sized freezer at a shopping center in Misrata, the home city of the fighters who killed him. A fitting end?

It might have been a pack of brave Libyans who captured Qaddafi on the ground today, but his demise was started by a single French jet. Details are sparse, but a Mirage 2000 stopped Qaddafi's getaway in its tracks.

Qaddafi: dictator, despot, dead, man of immense style. If you knew your reign of shitty terror was moribund, wouldn't you want to go out in style? And so he did, wielding this gold pistol to the very end.

The new Libyan government has confirmed that Muammar el-Qaddafi, the former dictator of Libya, has been killed after his hometown of Surt was taken. Here's a look back at the search and pursuit of Qaddafi, and some of the more extreme tools that have seen action in Libya since February.

What do you buy when you're an incredibly rich, incredibly paranoid, oppressive dictator? No, not Scud missiles—you already have those! How about a luxury truck that can't be tracked and scrambles everything around it? Bien sur!

As much as the news cycle would want to move on and declare "victory" in Libya there is still very much a war going on there.

In reporting on the Fall of Tripoli, Reuters tells the inside story of Abdel Majid Mlegta, a caterer who supplied the victuals for Gaddafi's regime. Putting key inside information on a series of memory sticks, this man was instrumental in bringing Gaddafi down.