Sometimes a car just takes your breath away — in every imaginable way. It's even better if this experience is totally unexpected.

This happened recently with our transportation team when we checked out an Aston Martin DB9 for a few days. The DB9 isn't exactly a new car — it's been around since 2003. The formula for this grand tourer is quite simple and involves two parts. Part one is a gigantic V12 engine stuffed under the hood. Part two is an abundance of suave, British tailoring.

Because what we have in the DB9 is effectively an English Corvette, minus the bone-crunching redneck 'Vette associations. They've been replaced with the requisite infusion of James Bond, which makes sense as Mr. Bond has always been an Aston man.

Honestly, we weren't expected to be so thoroughly captivated by the DB9. With "only" 510 horsepower, it's left in the dust, on paper, by several competitors these days. But massive horsepower can be a mere number — it's in the way that you use it, to borrow a line from a famous English guitarist.

And the DB9 uses all its horsepower to perfection. All while looking so, so good. I've had a lot of sexy cars in my driveway, but the $200,000 DB9, in a striking red paint job, stopped more than a few folks in their tracks as they strolled by.

Photos by Hollis Johnson.

The DB9 was designed by Henrik Fisker, and although its debt to the classic Jaguar E-Type is obvious, in red this car has more curb appeal than should be legal.

What does it look like when every angle, swoop, line, and curve on a car is right? It looks like the DB9. More recent examples of this genre — the 2+2 GT coupe — can come off as burly and over-muscled. But not the DB9. And believe me, it's very hard to be this gorgeous without expending seemingly any effort.

This is not an angry face. This is not a serious face. This is a purposeful face.

The front-end proportions are completely in balance: headlights, hood width, grille, aerodynamics. The Aston badge is also refreshingly modest. This all enables you to focus on the best feature of the car's hood, which is how long it is. This is a hood that announces a car with a forceful fanfare that never threatens to go out of tune.

The badging on the rear is low-key ...

So it's a DB9, not a DB7.

Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk is on fire right now.

His company SpaceX just ushered in a new era of spaceflight by launching a rocket into space, and then improbably landing it on a floating robotic ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

His electric car company Tesla also just made automobile history by raking in hundreds of thousands of pre-orders — worth perhaps $14 billion in future sales — for its upcoming Model 3.

Musk himself is worth $14.3 billion as of April 2016, though he allegedly doesn't believe in the word "business."

Whatever Musk labels his efforts, he sure has entwined himself in a bunch of them — major online payment services, building and launching spacecraft, and trying to cover the world with solar panels, to name a few.

The breadth of his reach is astounding and enough to make anyone feel exhausted.

To cut through that complexity, we've highlighted 18 entities that Musk has reportedly founded, cofounded, invested in, or supported in some way.

1. Musk's first company was Zip2 Corporation — the web's first Yellow Pages — in 1995.

Musk was 24 when he dropped out of graduate school for physics at Stanford University to launch his first company, Zip2 Corporation— a dot-com media company that supplied maps and business directories to online newspapers.

He linked digital online maps from Navteq to a business directory and created the internet's first online Yellow Pages.

Four years later, in 1999, Musk sold the company to computer-manufacturer Compaq for $307 million. At that time, it was the largest amount ever paid for an internet company.

2. He founded online payment company X.com in 1999, which eventually merged with PayPal.

The same year Musk sold Zip2, he used $10 million from the sale to found the online financial-services company X.com.

Musk wanted to focus on the new technology of making payments via email, so he merged his company with a competitor called Confinity— which started the online money transfer process PayPal.

In a heated clash of personalities and egos, however, the cofounders of Confinity fired Musk from the board, then renamed the company PayPal.

The online auction company eBay purchased PayPal in 2002 for $1.5 billion.

3. In 1998, Musk invested in IT company Everdream Corporation, which was eventually sold to Dell.

Cofounded in 1998 by Musk's cousin, Lyndon Rive, Everdream sold desktop management services to small businesses. It also managed and fixed antivirus software, performed data backups, and administered data encryption.

Musk, who was still involved with PayPal at the time, invested in Everdream on the fourth round, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal.

Rive and his twin brother, Russ, sold the company, headquartered in Fremont, California, to Dell in 2007.

Due to the political difficulties of traveling to Iran, most Americans have never had the opportunity to travel to the country and experience its amazing cultural history. 

While nothing can compare to seeing Iran's architectural beauties in person, Iranian photographer Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji provides the next best thing. Through his photographs, Ganji explores the sunning patterns and marvels of some of Iran's most amazing mosques. 

We have shown our favorites below. 

The following photos are republished with permission from Mohammad Reza Domiri Ganji.

SEE ALSO: 14 things you should know before traveling to Iran

The Sheikh Lutfollah Mosque stands on the eastern side of Naghsh-i Jahan Square, Isfahan. Construction of the mosque started in 1603 and was finished in 1619.

A view of the lights, columns, and colors in the Nasir al-Mulk Mosque in Shiraz.

The Nasir Al-Mulk Mosque is also known as the Pink Mosque.

When it comes to the leafy greens you put in your salads, some are a rank above the rest.

So which should you pick to justify the croutons, bacon, and other yummy toppings in your salad?

We're here to help. Using rankings from the CDC's 2014 list of "powerhouse foods," as well as the nutritional breakdowns of the veggies, we compiled the best, most nutritional greens for your salads, ranked from worst to best.

SEE ALSO: 25 'superfoods' you should be eating more of right now

DON'T MISS: Americans are eating less of one fruit, and it could signal a bigger problem in our diets

No. 10. Iceberg lettuce

It's no surprise that iceberg lettuce is among the least nutritious greens you could put in a salad. In fact, Chick-fil-A has even banned the veggie from its stores, allegedly because of its low nutritional content. Iceberg lettuce has about only 7% of your daily vitamin A per cup, as well as only 3% of daily vitamin C, among the lowest on the list.

Calories per cup: 10

No. 9. Arugula

Arugula's distinct taste doesn't quite correlate with high nutritional content. It's a solid source of vitamins A and K, but is lacking in other nutrients that other greens boast. 

Calories per cup: 6

No. 8. Kale

Trendy for a reason, kale kills it in vitamin content, especially A, C, and K. Vitamin K is especially important in helping blood clot. But kale has one tiny downside: It's a tad higher in calories than other greens — though it's still very low! — which means that technically it has a lower nutrient density, the amount of nutrients packed into each bite.

Calories per cup: 33

If investing feels like a rich person's game, it's not your imagination: Many online brokers impose initial deposit requirements of $1,000 or more. Mutual funds, a common investment choice with close to $16 trillion in U.S. assets, often have similar minimums.

But that doesn't mean you should sit on your hands — or settle for the near-0% interest rates that savings accounts are paying — and assume you can't meet the cost of entry.

After all, regularly investing small amounts over a long time horizon just might be the single best way to build wealth. And with robo-advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront actively targeting new investors with low minimums, it's possible for anyone to get in on the action.

Here's how to do that with just $500.

SEE ALSO: The 11 smartest things to do with your end-of-year bonus

Start with a 401(k) if you have one.

If you have some extra money to invest and a 401(k) that offers matching dollars, this is an easy answer: Start funding that baby. Those matching dollars are free money and a 100% return on your investment. Don't pass that up.

There's another benefit, too: 401(k)s typically offer a curated selection of investments with no minimum requirements. The selection tends to be skimpy, yes, but there are likely to be at least a few good mutual or index fund choices that would otherwise be out of your reach. For instance, Vanguard's target date funds — which are some of the best, and lowest-cost, in the business — typically require a $1,000 minimum investment. But if they're offered within your 401(k), that won't apply.

The payoff: $500 invested at a 7% return for 30 years will grow to close to $4,000. Add a 50% match on that contribution and you'll have nearly $6,000. No, it's not a ton of cash. But it is 10 times your initial investment — and regularly putting extra money to work will add up over time, in addition to making you a more confident investor.

Invest through a robo-advisor.

When you have a small amount to invest, one of the best choices is a robo-advisor.

Robo-advisors use computer algorithms to manage your money in exchange for a small management fee. The process diversifies even small account balances among a range of carefully selected exchange-traded funds, and the management fee is typically a percentage of assets under management, which means the amount you pay is tied to your account balance.

Betterment has a $0 funding requirement, but on balances of $10,000 or less it requires auto-deposits of $100 a month to avoid a $3 monthly charge. Wealthfront has a $500 minimum but manages the first $10,000 for free. (Even better: The company has agreed to increase this to $15,000 for NerdWallet's readers.)

With either of these robo-advisors you can open an IRA, which is the best home for your money — after, of course, a 401(k) with matching dollars.

The payoff: Betterment says its clients can expect returns that are 4.3% higher than what the average DIY investor sees. Less the company's fees, on $500 invested over 30 years that could add up to additional earnings of close to $8,600.

Pick an online broker that waives its minimum.

If a robo-advisor isn't your style — maybe you want to be a little more hands-on with your investment choices — you might prefer the autonomy of an online brokerage account.

The trouble: As noted, many online brokers require $1,000 or more to open an account. Even if a broker doesn't require that kind of initial balance, many mutual funds and index funds do.

But there's another option that builds momentum and gets you in the door: Some brokers will waive the required minimum to open an account if you commit to continued monthly deposits. (This is often called an automatic investing program.) At Fidelity, you can do this in an IRA if you elect for auto-investments of at least $200 a month. Charles Schwab often waives its $1,000 account minimum with automatic investments of $100 a month.

The catch if you go this route is that your investment choices may be limited to select mutual funds, typically the broker's own. But there's also an added perk: Once you get into the habit of putting that money away, you may not want to stop. The act of saving admittedly isn't very fun, but watching that money build up certainly can be.

The payoff: An earlier start on growing your money. Let's say it would have taken you a year to build up a $1,000 minimum. Delaying your investment by that long would shave $300 off your 30-year return.

"Hamilton" is the most coveted Broadway show right now and tickets have been sold out months in advance.

The musical — created and composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda — features a multiracial cast rapping and singing the story of Alexander Hamilton, a founding father and America's first secretary of the treasury. 

It took six years for the musical to come together, but since it has, there is no stopping it now.

"Hamilton" won a Grammy earlier this year for best musical theater album and the cast performed at the White House for an education initiative. With an album that has reached gold status, a mixtape set for release later this year, and a recently released behind-the-scenes book (April 12), "Hamilton" is everywhere, even if you aren't one of the lucky ones able to secure (or afford) the exclusive tickets. 

Celebrities and politicians, including Kerry Washington, Amy Schumer, and the Obamas, have been gushing about the show, and many have seen it more than once. Even presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders made time to see the musical while campaigning in New York City in April.

Here's what you should know about the hottest musical on Broadway:

SEE ALSO: A new 'Game of Thrones' season 6 trailer is here, and it's the most intense yet

Created and composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda, the musical is based on "Hamilton," a biography about Alexander Hamilton written by Ron Chernow.

Miranda read the entire biography while on vacation in Mexico in 2008, but he discussed the idea for a hip-hop musical based on Hamilton's life with Jeremy Carter, a former theater critic, a week before he even went on vacation.

Source: "Hamilton: The Revolution"

In 2009, Miranda performed a rough version of the first song that would eventually open the musical at the White House.

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Famed physicist Stephen Hawking and tech billionaire Yuri Milner just announced a radical plan to send tiny, blazingly fast space ships to the nearest star system to our own, Alpha Centauri.

The core concept of the project, called Breakthrough Starshot, is to shoot powerful lasers at thousands of palm-size "nanocraft" equipped with light sails.

This should propel the small robots upwards of 20% the speed of light, helping them reach our neighboring star (which is about 25 trillion miles away) in a couple of decades.

Here's how these tiny celestial sailboats might work.

The plan involves tiny, mass-produced nanocraft that should cost about as much as an iPhone.

Within the nanocraft will be a StarChip, a "gram-scale wafer" the carries all the necessary equipment — thrusters, power supply, communications, a camera, and more — the spaceship needs to explore deep space.

The tiny ships will be propelled by an array of powerful lasers back on Earth, called the "light beamer."

Tesla finally revealed its first mass market car, the Model 3, last month.

The Model 3, which is expected to be delivered by the end of 2017, is key to helping Tesla accomplish it's goal of producing 500,000 cars per year by 2020. 

But for Tesla to produce that many cars, it will need to make a lot of batteries, which is why the company is working to complete its giant battery plant called the Gigafactory. 

"In order to produce half a million cars a year, we would basically need to absorb the entire world's lithium ion production. That is why we are building the Gigafactory. This is a vital element," CEO Elon Musk said last month at the Model 3 event. 

The Gigafactory, which is located in Sparks, Nevada, is scheduled to be finished by 2020 and will produce more lithium ion batteries than all other lithium battery factories in the world combined. But it's size isn't the only thing that's impressive. 

Here's a look at some of the Gigafactory's coolest features. 

At 10 million square feet, the building will be one of the largest on the planet.

The Gigafactory will be huge. 

According to Tesla, the building's total footprint will be 10 million square feet of space, making it the largest footprint of any building on the planet, Tesla claims.

It will be the second largest building in volume, only smaller than Boeing’s Everett, Washington, plant, which is where the company builds its 747 planes. 

The Gigafactory will consume no fossil fuels.

Like Tesla's cars, the battery factory will consume no fossil fuels. That means no natural gas will be piped in and no diesel generators will be on site, Tesla told Tech Insider. 

Solar panels will line the roof and are strategically placed on the land.

While Musk is a co-founder of the solar company Solar City, it's unclear if the company will provide the solar panels. 

According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, a Tesla spokesperson said that Solar City would still have to participate in a competitive process to win a contract with Tesla. 

Warning: Do not read ahead if you want to avoid spoilers for "Game of Thrones," as well as speculation about upcoming plot lines.

When "Game of Thrones" premiered on HBO in 2011, the main cast of actors were still relatively unknown. Some of the show's talent — like Isaac Hempstead Wright who plays Bran Stark — were as young as 11-years-old.

With season six starting on April 24, now's as good a time as any to take a look back on what our fan favorites looked like in season one.

Keep scrolling to see how much your favorite "Game of Thrones" characters have changed.

At the start of the series, Jon Snow was living in Winterfell as the bastard son of Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, and Warden of the North.

He volunteered to "take the black" and join the Brothers of the Night's Watch after Eddard Stark was named the Hand of the King.

The last episode ended with Jon stabbed repeatedly by his Brothers of the Night's Watch, who found his dealings with the Wildlings traitorous.

While producers, actors, and even the president of HBO programming himself have insisted Jon Snow is officially dead, fans are not convinced — there have been repeatedsightings of Kit Harrington, the actor who plays Jon Snow, around next season's set looking very much alive.

For the full "Jon Snow is alive" theory, click here.

When we first met her, Sansa Stark was the eldest daughter of Eddard and Catelyn Stark in Winterfell. She adored love stories and longed for the excitement of the capital.

She spent all of season one trying to gain the favor of Joffrey Baratheon, her intended, as well as his mother Queen Cersei Lannister.

Counting household names like Sheryl Sandberg, Barack Obama, and Natalie Portman among its celebrated alumni, Harvard consistently remains one of the top colleges in the country.

But while the school continues to churn out impressive graduates, current students hold their own as well.

We tracked down 12 of Harvard's most remarkable undergraduates who go above and beyond, from developing new techniques for 3-D printing prosthetics to becoming an officer in the US Marines to promoting social activism through music.

Read on to meet 12 of the most impressive students at Harvard right now:

SEE ALSO: 12 of the most impressive students at Stanford right now

DON'T MISS: 15 impressive students at MIT

Alex Yang designed a way to 3-D print customized prosthetics for under $5.

Class of 2017

Hometown: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

Major: Biomedical engineering

When Alex Yang gets frustrated, he doesn't just forget about it and move on — he finds a way to change things. One of Yang's biggest frustrations was the egregious cost of medical devices and prosthetics, especially in developing countries, which led him to develop an affordable method of manufacturing and fitting prosthetics for amputees.

Yang's method allows doctors to use any camera — including mobile phones — to capture about 100 photos of an amputee's residual limb, which are then stitched together to create a model. His software builds a socket that fits the limb, which can be 3-D printed in only a few hours for about $5 worth of materials.

Last summer, Yang took his design to Cambodia, which has the highest incidence of amputees per capita because of land mines, where he worked in a clinic fitting patients with prosthetics.

"To put things into perspective, it was taking clinicians in Cambodia several weeks to make a poorly fitting prosthetic," he says.

Yang also wants to make affordable technology available in classrooms. He won the 2015 Deutsche Bank Challenge for Klay, a low-cost education platform launched in Peru where children learn basic quantitative, deductive reasoning, and STEM skills through Play-Doh "games."

Yang's still got another year of school ahead of him, but after Harvard he hopes to commercialize some of the medical devices he's designed. Beyond that, he plans to earn a combined MD/MBA and put it to use redesigning medical technology.

Carolyn Pushaw will be an officer for the US Marines.

Class of 2016

Hometown: Malibu, California

Major: Human evolutionary biology

Carolyn Pushaw not only challenges herself academically at Harvard, but as a newly minted US Marine, she knows how to push herself physically and mentally as well.

Pushaw started in the US Navy ROTC her freshman year, but after observing the motivation and camaraderie of the Marines during a summer training session, she knew she wanted to switch. After years of early-morning workouts, late nights in the field, and weekends spent training — in addition to keeping up with a full course load — Pushaw got the chance to complete Officer Candidates School last summer. Described as "more demanding than any [training] you've experienced before," it prepares its graduates to enter the Marines as officers.

When she's not studying or training, Pushaw works as an EMT-Basic with CrimsonEMS, a volunteer group. She also participated in Harvard College in Asia, a cultural exchange program in which she hosted a Thai student at Harvard for a week and then spent a week in Bangkok.

Upon graduation in May, Pushaw will be commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Marines. She'll spend six months at The Basic School for officer training, followed by up to two years of flight school in Florida before serving as a Marine for at least six years.

"I am really looking forward to having the opportunity to serve my country and hopefully make a positive difference in the lives of the Marines I will lead," she says.

Harriet Kariuki provides Kenyan children with the supplies they need to succeed in school.

Class of 2016

Hometown:Kerugoya, Kenya

Major: Government

Growing up in Kenya, Harriet Kariuki had never even heard of Harvard before she applied. Neither of her parents went to high school, and she faced a choice: to work on the family tea farm or finish her education.

Kariuki chose the latter. But she never forgot the effort it took to get her there, including siphoning ink from a friend's pen so she could finish her schoolwork when she ran out of supplies. Her experiences inspired her to start Pens4Dreams alongside her roommate, Viona Shina Leboo. An outgrowth of her photography business, Kariuki Photography, Pens4Dreams provides school supplies to students in need in over 300 primary schools in Kenya. All the proceeds she earns from her photography go toward the initiative as well.

"These pens are not just pens but a source of motivation and something they can hold on to every time they lose hope in their pursuit to achieve their dreams," she says.

Harvard also sparked Kariuki's interest in language and travel. She currently speaks five languages — Korean, Japanese, Swahili, Kikuyu, and English — and has studied abroad in Japan, Korea, and China.

After graduation, Kariuki will head back to China to pursue a master's in public policy and international relations at Peking University through the Yenching fellowship, with a focus on Sino-African relations. In the long term, she eventually wants to return to Kenya and change it for the better.

The hottest spot for innovation in smartphone design right now is the camera on the back. These devices have leaped from grainy, awkward replacements for disposable cameras to photo gear to be taken as seriously as any Nikon product.

Whenever a new contender hit shelves we like to compare it to the reigning best smartphone you can buy. Right now that's the Samsung Galaxy S7, which wildly outperformed the previous leader, the iPhone 6s Plus, in our test.

Here's how the LG G5's innovative new dual-camera system stands up to the Galaxy S7:

The G5's main camera and the S7 produce images of good look and feel in easy conditions.

In the even light of the Flatiron District at noon on a cloudy day, these phones produce very similar images in terms of color and exposure.

I leave the cameras in "Auto" mode for these tests, because that's how most people, including the pro photographers I know, work with smartphones. It's up to the phone's silicon brain to expose the image properly, and both devices get it basically right in these conditions. That wasn't a sure thing — LG's last premium phone, the V10, tended to oversaturate daylight images.

One thing I do prefer about the S7's shot here? The aspect ratio. LG likes to give its smartphone camera sensors ultra-wide 17:9 aspect ratios. That's too wide for my taste, cutting off vertical context in a lot of situations and using the lens less efficiently.

Blown up to full size, you can see that the S7 is the sharper camera.

Again proving that bingeing on megapixels is a bad idea for smartphone developers, the 12.1 MP S7 makes a sharper image than the 16 MP G5 here. In fact, the G5's shot hardly even blows up any bigger than the S7's because those 16 megapixels are spread so inefficiently across an ultra-wide sensor.

The G5's lens isn't soft by any means, but it can't match the S7. Look at those bricks on the S7 shot. On the S7 they pop, but on the G5 not so much.

Strangely, it looks like the G5 is even softer than the quite-sharp V10 was in our comparison. However, that was in different lighting conditions at I don't have a V10 to test it against head to head with.

The LG G5 has a second, ultra-wide rear camera.

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I took the above video in the G5's picture-in-picture mode, which lets you simultaneously shoot from both cameras at once. While I've argued going ultra-wide as opposed to more zoomed in was a waste of a good idea by LG, it's good to see an attempt at innovation, and the eight megapixel, f/2.4 camera isn't bad in any obvious way. It's just hard to find a good use-case for it.

Amid discussions on the possible deployment of THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), America's most advanced missile defense system, to South Korea, the hermit kingdom in the North continues to flex its supposed military might.

And while the secretive rogue nation continues to issue threats and make claims of having serious firepower, its true arsenal remains unknown.

SEE ALSO: 19 images showing the brutal training for China's paramilitary police

Soldiers shout slogans as they march past a stand with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and other officials.

Senior North Korean military officers follow the performance celebrating the 70th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea.

Artillery pieces are seen being fired during a military drill at an unknown location.

In spring 2014, Michael Gallagher and Alexandra Carson were poolside in Santa Monica, California, talking logistics for a month-long vacation through Europe.

"We thought we'd do all of Italy, all of Greece, and all of Croatia," Gallagher recalls — but then they started crunching the numbers.

"We realized it could easily be a $10,000 or $20,000 trip," he tells Business Insider.

That's when the idea of living, rather than vacationing, abroad surfaced.

"Alex said, 'Why don't we move to Florence?' We were literally laying outside by the pool having this conversation and all of sudden it went from this pipe dream to, 'Let's do it.' We were entirely set on it, immediately."

A year and $8,000 worth of savings later, the couple, who've been together for nearly three years and are now in their mid-20s, boarded a one-way flight to Italy.

"We quit our jobs, sold virtually everything we owned (which wasn't much), and set out to live our lives for no one other than ourselves,"they write on their travel blog, "Couple's Coordinates."

What started as a plan to move to Florence for the year evolved into a seven-month adventure that took them to 13 countries.

"We got a little spontaneous," Gallagher says.

Business Insider spoke to the couple, who moved back to Santa Monica in late December 2015, about life on the road, how they managed to stretch $8,000 for seven months of world travel, and how you can also make your dream trip a reality.

SEE ALSO: After working in corporate America for 20 years, one man quit his job to build a new life traveling abroad

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Gallagher and Carson in Singapore.

After that day at the pool, Gallagher and Carson started making "soft plans," talking and dreaming about the places they would visit.

Come the fall, they started socking away as much money as possible. Gallagher was working in sales for an IT consulting firm and Carson was teaching yoga, modeling, and acting.

They cooked 90% of their meals at home, cut back on weekend trips to save on gas and other travel expenses, and eliminated their biggest vice: Starbucks. They started to put each purchase into perspective, Gallagher says: "Say we wanted to go somewhere an hour away, which is about $20 in gas money. That $20 is a night in a hostel, or the best pizza in the world sitting over the Arno River in Florence, or a full day's worth of food in Bali."

About six months of conscious spending and diligent saving — plus selling Gallagher's car and TV — amounted to an $8,000 travel fund.

"We really didn't have that much money to travel with," Gallagher recalls.

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Gallagher and Carson in Ubud, Bali.

Their soft plans materialized into more concrete plans in April 2015.

"Two months before we were about to leave, we said, 'OK, let's make this real. Let's buy our one-way tickets and that will make it real,'" Gallagher tells Business Insider.

To save money, they also booked all of their flights and accommodations through October.

"During high season, buying flights and hotels last minute can double or triple your costs,"they write on their blog. "To avoid this, we decided which countries outside of Italy that we wanted to visit and purchased flights and booked accommodation ahead of time."

These preparations cost about $4,000 overall, which they bought gradually, as biweekly paychecks came in, rather than drawing from their $8,000 travel fund.

They also took advantage of travel-rewards cards.

"Before we left, we each opened a British Airways credit card from Chase,"they write. "After spending just a few thousand dollars over a period of three months, you get 50,000 bonus miles. For us, this was enough for flights from Milan to Qatar and on to Bali, and additionally, from Tokyo back home to LAX."

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Gallagher and Carson in Santorini, Greece.

Gallagher gave his two weeks' notice and worked up until the Friday before flying out of Los Angeles. Carson's schedule was a bit more flexible, but she also worked right up until the weekend before leaving in order to build up their travel fund as much as possible.

They packed up their apartment, stored their possessions with family who lived in the area, and took off for Florence the day their apartment lease ended.

The tech industry is having a love affair with bots, and Facebook's big news today was the introduction of bots in Messenger, which will allow users to talk directly to businesses. Even Business Insider's planning one!

But they're not exactly easy to find or get started with. And based on this first experience, I don't exactly understand why anyone would use them — at least not to order products online.

Here's what it was like.

CHATBOTS EXPLAINED: Why Facebook and other tech companies think they're the biggest thing since the iPhone

You start with the normal Messenger screen. (I blurred everything to protect the privacy of my contacts.) So where are the bots? First, you have to pull down from the top.

Then you have to tap in that search box.

There they are, in the second row. Eventually you'll be able to search for them by name, too, but there aren't very many available yet.

A mansion that was just listed for an eye-popping $150 million looks more like a high-end resort than a home where someone could live full-time.  

Located in the ritzy Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, the home was built on speculation on the same lot where Barbara Streisand's "Mon Rêve" estate once stood. 

The new structure covers a whopping 38,000 square feet and has 10 bedrooms and 20 full baths. Additional amenities include private hiking trails and a movie theater complex with its own guest valet entrance. 

According to the Wall Street Journal, it was developed by Gala Asher of Dream Projects LA, who purchased the land from tech entrepreneur David Bohnett for $13.25 million in 2014. Streisand's original home was demolished shortly after she sold it to former music exec Les Bider in 2000. Bider then sold the empty lot to Bohnett. 

Let's take a look inside one of the most expensive homes currently listed for sale in the US. Ginger Glass of Coldwell Banker Previews International has the listing.

SEE ALSO: A star broker from 'Million Dollar Listing New York' says this is the most important skill to have when selling high-end homes

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The massive home can be found on Carolwood Drive in Holmby Hills, one of Los Angeles' most exclusive neighborhoods. Walt Disney, Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Rod Stewart, and Elvis Presley all called Carolwood home at one point, according to a press release from listing agent Ginger Glass.

The home is set behind a gate, at the end of a private road.

Heavy vegetation adds to the secluded feel.

Facebook just gave a bunch of businesses, media outlets, shopping sites, and apps the ability to chat with you in Messenger.

Instead of downloading separate apps on your phone, the idea is that you'll use these chat-based "bots" to communicate directly with an app or company like you would with another human. Facebook has already been building Messenger into a customer support tool and integrating it with other apps like Uber over the past year, but now it's letting all kinds of bots work in Messenger.

Here are some examples of the new bots you can use in Messenger right now:

CNN will deliver news updates and let you search for stories you want to read with related keywords. The bot will even summarize a story for you if you don't have time to read it in full.

Poncho will send you the weather forecast in your area and can give you more information about conditions outside.

1-800 Flowers will let you order followers, pay for them, and track their delivery without leaving Messenger.

Most individuals who climb to the position of CEO have plenty of smarts. A certain level of intelligence is generally required before you're handed the keys to an entire enterprise.

A study that ran from 1996 to 2014 confirms this idea: About 40% of Fortune 500 CEOs were found to be in the top 1% of cognitive ability.

But pure brainpower isn't nearly enough to successfully walk the CEO tightrope.

People like Jack Welch, Alan Mulally, and Jeff Bezos have more than impressive IQ scores; they've excelled as chief executives because they understand the unique nuances of the role — most of which involve inspiring and influencing people, not mastering logical problems.

Here are seven mistakes even the smartest chief executives commonly make (and most of which I've made myself):

SEE ALSO: 7 questions to ask yourself every day if you want to be successful

1. Playing cheerleader when the team is losing

In 2013, Duke University analyzed 1,000 CEOs and rated 80 percent as "very optimistic," making these leaders substantially more bullish than the general population.

That's an asset in most cases, but it becomes a major problem if the CEO insists that everything is great when performance is down. Just as a basketball team needs to know the score from quarter to quarter, employees need to understand the reality of where the business stands. The CEO should help the team confront challenges with energy and positivity — but she must first acknowledge that the challenge exists. 

2. Outsourcing recruitment to HR

I once sat next to Texas Tech football coach Spike Dykes on a flight. We got to talking about the similarities between CEOs and head coaches, and Spike told me something that stuck with me. When I asked how much of his team's success was due to the players' talent and how much was due to actual coaching, he said, "It's 75 percent the players and 25 percent coaching. You give me the best players and an average coach and we will beat the best coach with average players every time."

Human Resources is a vital ally to the CEO, but the chief executive must take the ultimate responsibility for supplying the talent that will help the team win.

3. Insisting on making all the 'important' decisions

Decisions are the fuel on which organizations run. If you're holding up critical decisions by insisting they all cross your desk, you are stifling your entire operation.

When the decision has implications across multiple functional areas or involves key personnel, it's the CEO's to make. Otherwise, it's likely the decision could be made lower down in the organization, by someone who has the requisite expertise and perspective.

"Star Wars" actor Mark Hamill promised fans on Twitter that he would share a special "rehearsal reveal" in honor of costar Daisy Ridley's birthday Sunday, and he did not disappoint.

Sunday evening, Hamill shared a playful photo of the two of them on set of "Episode VIII" at Pinewood Studios in the UK.

Look familiar?

The photo is a recreation of Hamill with Master Yoda in "Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back." 

At the end of "The Force Awakens," Rey (Ridley) finally found Jedi Master Luke Skywalker who had previously gone missing. Many think he'll be training her in the ways of the Force as Yoda trained him.

Fans quickly started re-editing Hamill's photo with Ridley and the 64-year-old actor started resharing a bunch of the remixes. Here are some of the best.

Training to become a Jedi is hard work.

Tweet Embed:
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/719362874032803841
@HamillHimself I hope y'all squeezed as many jokes as possible into the bit... Such as... pic.twitter.com/crEoNRZj8y

This is just wrong.

Tweet Embed:
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/719358333426073600
Not my creation, @HamillHimself, but I figure you should see this anyways. pic.twitter.com/F8gfns5mg0

No Jedi training would be complete without Yoda.

Tweet Embed:
https://twitter.com/mims/statuses/719314582943084545
.@hamillhimself@pinewoodstudios It's Jedis all the way down. pic.twitter.com/q6gq7iPB4Y

Audiences love superhero films. With dozens more planned over the next few years, audiences are hungrier than ever to see their favorite comic-book legends on the big screen.

But superhero movies aren't guaranteed hits. At their best, comic-book adaptations bring in an already dedicated fanbase and set up a cinematic universe with a lot of potential for spinoffs and sequels. At their worst, they're hugely expensive mistakes because of the high cost of shooting big-budget action sequences. 

While "Batman v Superman"has grossed over $784 million worldwide, critics picked apart the film for being an overstuffed, convoluted piece from director Zack Snyder. Though fans were kinder to the Warner Bros. movie, "BvS" is not going down as anyone's favorite superhero movie ever, but it wasn't the worst, either.

Tech Insider looked at the Rotten Tomatoes scores for superhero movies of the past 20 years and averaged critic and audience scores for the film to come up with our list.

Keep reading to see the worst superhero movies.

8. "X-Men: Origins — Wolverine" (2009)

Averaged Rotten Tomatoes Score:49%

2009's "X-Men: Origins — Wolverine" tried (and failed) to tell Wolverine's origin story. Despite any number of plot missteps (and a distracting supporting role from rapper will.i.am.), the film is best known for introducing Ryan Reynolds as a mutated, confusing version of Deadpool. The many weird plot decisions were later satirized when Reynold starred in 2016's "Deadpool."

A.V. Club said that ultimately, the absurd story ruined even the action sequences: 

"A couple of halfway decent action scenes do little to distract from the story's mounting ludicrousness, or a conclusion that's only a little more satisfying than a projector breakdown. Maybe."

7. "Ghost Rider" (2007)

Averaged Rotten Tomatoes Score: 37%

2007's "Ghost Rider" was a both a box office and critical bomb, yet somehow garnered a sequel - the even lower rated "Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance" in 2012. "Ghost Rider" starred Nicolas Cage as "hell's bounty hunter," tasked with finding corrupt souls across America on his motorcycle. Critics said the original was an unholy mess, with bad acting and CG effects. The action sequences, typically the saving grace of a poorly-reviewed comic book film, were also disappointing. 

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone blamed the formulaic plot: "The real evil in this flick isn't Blackheart (Wes Bentley), the devil's son, it's the soul-sucking devil of modern cinema: Hollywood formula."

6. "Green Lantern" (2009)

Averaged Rotten Tomatoes Score: 35.5%

Ryan Reynolds is pulling double duty on the list. After 2009's "X-Men: Origins — Wolverine," two years later, he starred in 2011's "Green Lantern," which was both a critical and box-office disaster for its bizarre plot and terrible CG effects. 

Calling it "Dim Lantern," New York Post said of the film: 

"His face largely pasted on a computer-generated body, poor Ryan Reynolds acts only from the neck up in “Green Lantern,” a relentlessly silly superhero flick with eyeball-rolling dialogue — set in vast, familiar-looking digital realms that look like rejected models from the second “Star Wars” trilogy.

"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling is breaking into screenwriting with the series' first spinoff movie "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." The story is set in 1920s New York City, and follows magizoologist Newt Scamander as he navigates the wizarding world in America for the first time. On April 10, a new trailer debuted during the MTV Movie Awards and it contains tons of new footage.

Scamander carries a magical briefcase with him that contains numerous dangerous beasts. When he accidentally leaves the case open and creatures escape, it's up to him to contain them before any no-maj (American muggles) find out. 

Scroll down for our breakdown of everything we spotted in the new trailer.

The trailer opens with Newt Scamander onboard a ship heading towards New York City.

A voiceover, likely Colin Farrell's character — an auror named Graves — says: "You’re an interesting man, Mr. Scamander. Just like your suitcase, I think there’s much more to you than meets the eye."

A creature attempts to wriggle out of Newt's briefcase, which magically expands inside to contain his "fantastic beasts."