One of the biggest causes of wrongful convictions is the false assumption that no one would ever confess to a crime they didn’t commit. When law enforcement officials are under great pressure to solve a case, finding the right perpetrator can become a secondary priority and if necessary, they will use coercion and intimidation to obtain a confession from a suspect. After being subjected to many hours of interrogation, suspects can reach a breaking point where they ultimately decide to tell the authorities what they want to hear. Sometimes, the suspect does not even have the mental faculties to understand the ramifications of what they’re doing. Even when there is no other evidence that a suspect committed the crime, a confession can still be enough to compel a jury to vote “guilty”. Here are ten controversial cases where a conviction was made possible by a very questionable confession.

New York City experienced one of its most infamous crimes on April 19, 1989 when a 28-year old woman named Trisha Meili was raped and severely beaten while jogging through Central Park. The attack left her in a coma and she had no memory of the incident after she recovered. Five Harlem youths – Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, and Kharey Wise—had been in the park the night of the attack and were brought in for an interrogation. With the exception of Salaam, they would each make videotaped confessions to the crime. The Central Park Five were all tried and found guilty and given sentences ranging from five to thirteen years.

However, all five youths would recant their confessions and claim they had been coerced and intimidated by the police. Their statements were not consistent with the physical evidence and the prosecution downplayed the fact that none of the DNA from the crime scene matched them. In 2002, the DNA did wind up matching a convicted serial rapist named Matias Reyes, who finally admitted to the crime and confirmed that he did it alone. By that time, the Central Park Five had already served their sentences and been forced to register as sex offenders after being released. On the basis of Reyes’ confession, their convictions were officially vacated.

On July 8, 1997, a Norfolk, Virginia woman named Michelle Moore-Bosko was found raped and murdered at her residence. A neighbor named Danial Williams and his roommate Joseph J. Dick, Jr. were soon brought in for questioning and confessed to the crime. Since no trace of their DNA was found at the scene, police were forced to look for other suspects, and Dick eventually named two more accomplices, Derek Tice and Eric C. Wilson, who subsequently confessed to being involved. Williams, Tice and Dick were sentenced to life imprisonment while Wilson received 8 ½ years. All four men claimed that they only confessed and pleaded guilty after being threatened with the death penalty.

The separate confessions of the Norfolk Four all seemed to contradict each other in their details, and naval logs showed that Dick was serving on the U.S.S. Saipan at the time of the murder. An inmate named Omar Ballard eventually confessed to committing the murder on his own and his DNA was present at the crime scene. However, the Norfolk Four remained incarcerated since police still maintained that they acted as Ballard’s accomplices. Wilson was released after serving his sentence, and Tice, Williams and Dick would receive conditional pardons from Virginia governor Tim Kaine in 2009. However, the Norfolk Four are still required to register as sex offenders and they continue to fight to clear their names.

It’s bad enough when a coerced confession sends an innocent person to prison, but it’s especially horrific when it sends them to death row and almost costs them their life. On June 4, 1982, 19-year old Rebecca Lynn Williams was raped and stabbed to death 38 times inside her Culpeper, Virginia apartment. One year later, police turned their attention to a farmhand named Earl Washington Jr., who was in custody for another crime. After interrogating Washington for two straight days, he eventually confessed to five different crimes, including Williams’ murder. The other four confessions were thrown out, but he was still sentenced to death for killing Williams.

Washington had an IQ of 69 and was coerced into making all his confessions. His initial confession to the Williams murder was filled with inconsistencies and he got many key details wrong, including the race of the victim and the location of the crime. His execution was ultimately halted when a fellow death row inmate named Joseph Giarrantano contacted a law firm to file a habeas corpus petition on Washington’s behalf. In 1994, Washington would receive clemency from the governor of Virginia and had his sentence commuted to life in prison. It was not until DNA testing proved he wasn’t the perpetrator that Washington was finally granted a full pardon and released after serving 17 years. The real killer of Rebecca Lynn Williams has never been found.

On April 13, 1986, the small town of Aurora, Missouri was shocked when one of its most respected citizens, 79-year old Pauline Martz, was murdered. She had been beaten and burned alive when the killer set her home ablaze. Acting on an eyewitness tip, police were eventually led to a 20-year old resident named Johnny Lee Wilson and after being interrogated for nearly four hours, he confessed to the crime. In order to avoid the death penalty, he would enter an Alford plea and was sentenced to life in prison.

However, Wilson suffered from mild retardation and had an IQ of 76. He was threatened and intimidated by police during his interrogation and thought he would be allowed to go home if he confessed. The details about the murder were clearly fed to him and he seemed unaware of what he was doing when entering his plea in court. Wilson also had an alibi for the time the murder took place and the eyewitness who implicated him was another mentally challenged man who later admitted to lying. A convicted murderer named Chris Brownfield eventually came forward and confessed that he and an accomplice had killed Pauline Martz during a robbery. In 1996, Johnny Lee Wilson was finally granted a pardon by Missouri governor Mel Carnahan and released after serving nine years.

On November 8, 1983, a Fort Lauderdale woman named Susan Hamwi was found stabbed to death with a butcher knife in her home. To make things even more tragic, her 18-month old daughter, Shane, died of dehydration in her crib after being neglected for several days. Police investigated a neighbor named John Purvis, who suffered from schizophrenia and was looked upon as the town “weirdo”. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Purvis would eventually confess to the murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

However, because of his schizophrenia, Purvis had trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. The first time he was questioned, Purvis’ mother broke up the interrogation when she saw detectives attempting to intimidate her son. The next time they brought Purvis in for questioning, they made sure mother wasn’t present and he was coerced him into making a taped confession. While Purvis was in prison, authorities seemed disinterested in pursuing other potential leads that popped up. The investigation was not reopened until 1992 when evidence came to light that Hamwi had been murdered by two hitmen who were hired by her ex-husband. They would soon be convicted of the crime and in January 1993, John Purvis was finally released after serving nine years.

The Juan Rivera case is a prime example of how much weight a false confession can carry. On August 17, 1992, an 11-year old girl named Holly Staker was raped and murdered while babysitting in Waukegan, Illinois. A tip from an informant eventually led authorities to 19-year old Juan Rivera, who had an IQ of 79 and was in custody on a burglary charge. He was questioned for four straight days and reached the point where he experienced a psychotic episode and started banging his head against the wall. Authorities eventually coerced him into signing a confession and he was sentenced to life in prison for the crime.

In 1998, Rivera received a retrial because his first trial was littered with procedural errors. This time, the prosecution produced one of the kids Staker had babysat as an eyewitness. Even though he was only two years old at the time the murder took place, his testimony helped convict Rivera a second time. In 2005, DNA tests excluded Rivera as the perpetrator and he was granted a third trial. Remarkably, he was found guilty again because the prosecution claimed that Staker had consensual sex with someone else that night… even though she was only 11 years old! It was not until January 2012 that the charges against Rivera were finally dismissed and he was released from prison.

On November 15, 1989, Angela Correa, a 15-year old resident from Peekskill, New York, went missing while on her way to class. Two days later, her body was found in a wooded area. She had been raped, beaten and strangled to death. At her funeral, police noticed that one of her fellow students, 17-year old Jeffrey Deskovic, was crying profusely and became suspicious when they discovered he’d been absent from school during the time Correa went missing. Deskovic was questioned on eight separation occasions, and on January 25, 1990, he was administered a polygraph test without a parent or counsel present and told he had failed. After being interrogated for six hours, Deskovic finally confessed to the murder.

Before the trial, DNA testing was done on semen samples and it excluded Deskovic as the perpetrator. However, the confession strong enough to garner a guilty verdict from the jury and Deskovic received a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. Like the Juan Rivera case, prosecution pushed the theory that the victim had consensual sex with someone else before she was murdered. It would be 16 years before new DNA testing was done and it wound up matching Steven Cunningham, a convicted inmate who was serving time for another murder and subsequently confessed to killing Correa. In 2006, Jeffrey Deskovic was finally exonerated and released.

On September 28, 1973, 51-year old Barbara Gibbons was found murdered at her home in Canaan, Connecticut. Her throat had been cut, she had been sexually assaulted, and there were numerous injuries on her body. Her body was discovered by her 16-year old son, Peter Reilly, but police were suspicious by his supposed lack of emotion and immediately brought him in for questioning. After failing a polygraph test, the exhausted Reilly was interrogated for several hours. He eventually came to believe the police’s assertion that he had blacked out and forgotten he committed the murder, so he signed a confession. Even though Reilly would later recant his confession, he was still convicted of first degree manslaughter and received a sentence of 6 to 16 years in prison.

In 1977, Reilly was granted a new trial after evidence was uncovered that a state trooper had seen him driving his car five miles away at the time the murder was supposedly taking place. The judge decided to clear Reilly of all charges and criticized the authorities’ handling of the case. The state police has always maintained their position that Reilly was the real killer and while he has made many attempts to find out who really killed his mother, authorities have always refused to release their files about the case and Barbara Gibbons’ murder remains unsolved 40 years later.

The town of West Memphis, Arkansas was shaken on May 6, 1993 when the naked bodies of three murdered boys—Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steve Branch—were found in a drainage ditch. One month later, police brought in 17-year old Jessie Misskelley, Jr. for questioning, and he eventually confessed that he and two other teens, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, had murdered the three boys as part of a satanic ritual. The West Memphis Three were soon charged and found guilty of the murders, with Echols being sentenced to death.

However, Misskelley quickly recanted his confession, which was filled with inconsistencies. He had an IQ of 72 and appeared to have details of the crime fed to him during 12 hours of interrogation. There was no DNA or physical evidence to link the suspects to the crime scene, and more compelling evidence seemed to point towards Steve Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs. The “Paradise Lost” series, a trilogy of documentaries about the case, garnered national exposure for the West Memphis Three and much outrage about their convictions. In 2011, a deal was reached where the West Memphis Three would be released from prison if they entered an Alford plea, officially pleading guilty to the crime while maintaining their innocence. Even though they are now free, they have never been officially exonerated and the real killer of the three boys remains unpunished.

In the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, sports editor Kent Heitholt was beaten and strangled to death with his belt in the parking lot of the Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri. The case remained cold until 2004 when a young man named Chuck Erickson told police he believed he had repressed memories of having committed the murder with his friend, Ryan Ferguson. After being interrogated, Erickson was eventually coerced into making a full confession. Ferguson was charged and given a 40-year sentence for the murder while Erickson received 25 years.

However, there was no physical evidence to tie either of them to the crime scene and the validity of Erickson’s confession has been questioned. He was a known drug and alcohol user with a history of mental illness and could not provide accurate details about the murder until they were fed to him by police. The only other piece of evidence was the testimony of a janitor named Jerry Trump, who claimed he saw Ferguson and Erickson in the parking lot that night. However, in 2012, Trump claimed he had been coerced into naming them by the prosecutor, and both he and Erickson would give sworn affidavits recanting their testimony. Even though there is no longer any evidence to tie Ryan Ferguson to the murder, all attempts to secure him a new trial have been unsuccessful and he remains in prison.

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. He is also the co-owner of a pop culture called The Back Row.

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Reptile attack: Nothing strikes fear into the human mind faster than the clash between prehistoric crocodiles or venomous snakes and modern man. However, we are not talking about these well-known dangers. In this shocking list, we look at the horrific Monster Lizards and Terror Turtles on Earth. Some are capable of killing, others, dismembering, or simply chewing your hand apart. The sight of a hard shell or thin tail signals danger beyond your expectations…

The Iguana has become a fairly popular pet in recent years, and advocates would say having this giant, prehistoric looking reptile around is like an alternative to a dog. Although herbivorous, the Iguana can be unpredictable, and possesses razor sharp teeth. On several occasions, savage injuries have resulted when “tame” but powerful Iguana have become agitated and latched on their owners face or slashed hands with teeth and claws. Iguana may weigh up to 18 pounds and reach over 6 feet in length, making an attack by this giant lizard nothing to joke about. Emergency room visits could very well follow your visit to Jurassic park.

The Leatherback Sea Turtle is the largest of all turtles, occasionally reaching over 8 feet in length. These 2,000 pound omnivores are possibly the widest ranging vertebrate animal on Earth, but are becoming rare and endangered due to development, pollution and bycatch. The turtles are usually fairly gentle giants, but can deliver a bone shattering bite if disturbed, and are extremely strong and powerful. In one bizarre case, a huge leatherback, likely weighing over 1500 pounds turned its aggression toward a small boat and charged it. The turtle had just been chased by a shark, so the boat was considered a threat.

South America’s Amazon is famous for its incredible and sometimes disturbing creatures. Sharing the rivers with Piranha and River Dolphin is the unearthly Mata-Mata Turtle. The fate of a human who stepped on a Mata-Mata has not been well tested, but the bizarre river reptiles have an elongated, snake-like neck with a strange mouth filled with two sharp plates that resemble human fused teeth. Prey items of these extraordinarily creepy exclusive carnivores include waterbirds, fish, and other reptiles. We could only imagine the effect on a boater who reaches towards the bump in the water…

The Big-headed Turtle is a bizarre chelonian species with a long, snakelike tail nearly the length of its body. This turtle is native to Southeast Asia, where it hunts for a variety of prey items in the rivers. The large head cannot be retracted into its shell, and carries immensely powerful jaws. The turtle will not hesitate to use its bone shattering beak if a threat is perceived, so it is best to keep your distance. The Asian Soft-shelled is, incredibly, capable of climbing trees, where it may perch, birdlike. Sadly, this awesome creature is at risk due to poaching, which must be combatted with increased diligence.

Looking like flattened, human/reptile hybrid out of an alien horror film, Soft-Shells make up for their shell shortcomings with a very hard bite. Among the many species of Soft-Shelled Turtles worldwide, the Cantor’s Giant Softshell, native to China is the most terrifying. It hides in the sand, waiting for prey, before striking out with sharp teeth. The sheer size and power of the bite could lead to horrendous injuries. However, this species is unfortunately now endangered, but more abundant species of soft shell such as the Florida Soft Shell occur in numbers worldwide and may chomp unwary fisherman.

The Nile Monitor shares the Nile and other African rivers with crocodiles, growing up to 9 feet in length. This terrifying lizard often preys upon the young crocodiles as an addition to its mammal and bird diet, and possesses an extremely powerful, infectious bite. When threatened by humans or other potential intruders, a Nile Monitor can seize with a viselike, bone shattering grip, which it is reluctant to release. The giant reptiles are sold as family pets, but owners should be cautious with reports of serious injuries and the fact that these lizards can “snap a cat’s neck in an instant and then swallow it whole”. Children should remain well out of reach of these lizards, as an attack is a possibility with such predators.

The Gila Monster is North America’s largest lizard at over 2 foot long, and is the only one that is venomous. Gilas are endangered and protected by law, but humans who interfere may become endangered themselves. If disturbed, a Gila Monster may latch on to the offender’s legs or arms, where it sinks its teeth in, quickly releasing a dose of extremely potent, neurotoxic venom. A number of deaths took place before greater awareness of the dangers and treatment options became known. Lacking fangs, the Gila will hold on with great force to a human hand, slowly chewing up the flesh, leaving a mangled, venom soaked mess. Submerging the monster in water may force it to let go, stopping the carnage.

The Malayan Water Monitor is the second heaviest lizard in the world, and lurks in the rivers and deep swamps of Southeast Asia. The lizard has backwards curving teeth, and is known to feed on…dead bodies. If a living human fell into the water where several Water Monitor were feeding, it is very possible that the reptile’s hunting instinct would be activated by the vulnerability of the human, provoking an attack. Water Monitors are capable of feeding on a wide range of animals, and have little trouble with large prey, weighing over 150 pounds in some cases. Length may reach…9.5 feet.

The Alligator Snapping Turtle is the world’s largest freshwater turtle, and by far the most dangerous. Weighing over 200 pounds, the bizarre looking reptile has a cone covered, dinosaur like shell, and a massive beak that will cleanly amputate any body part brought near it, and is capable of severing a broom handle with lightning speed. A swimmer accidentally treading nearby could easily lose part of a foot. Although deaths have not been confirmed, drowning may have occurred undetected. A hypothetical report of a 400 pound snapper is supported by the continued growth of this species throughout its lifespan, which may reach 200 years.

The Komodo Dragon stalks the forested lowlands, beaches and plateaus of Indonesia, posing a threat to nearly every living thing as a prehistoric apex predator. The 10 foot, 300 pound beasts are the largest lizards on Earth, forming microcosm of a prehistoric world where reptiles ruled. Komodos feed on prey as large as water buffalo, and have attacked, disremembered and consumed humans. Such large prey items are charged and knocked down, followed by a vicious attack involving large amounts of flesh being removed. The toxic saliva and bacteria will weaken an animal that does not die right away. Scientists have theorized the Komodo evolved to feed on now extinct dwarf island elephants.

Ron Harlan is a wildlife enthusiast and fan of incredible, dangerous or animals. He does freelance writing covering fascinating and scary wildlife, conservation and oddities.

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Since time immemorial, humans have been willing to endure grievous sacrifices to conform to society’s idea of beauty. In Africa and Asia, the women of certain tribes wear deforming metal coils that deform their neck and shoulders. In China, where foot binding was in vogue, there remain elderly women crippled by the procedure. The Western world too has its bizarre practices. The obsession with youth leads people to take terrible risks, injecting their faces with toxins, going under the knife, even bathing in excrement… Below are ten of the most dangerous, disgusting, and downright ridiculous beauty treatments in the world.

While many of the procedures on this list are quite risky, the face slapping bit is in good fun. Offered by Bangkok masseuse Tata in her San Francisco massage parlor, the treatment consists of pinching and manipulating the skin and light slaps that are said to cure wrinkles and shrink pores. Whether this is at all helpful in restoring a youthful appearance is highly debatable, but it doesn’t come cheap. A single 15 minute session will set you back $350.

The use of stem cells in medical treatments remains highly controversial, with detractors claiming their use is “playing God”. Very basically, stem cells can “transform” into any other cell, and are used by the body to make repairs. The only stem cell treatment approved by the US Food and Drug Administration is a bone marrow transplant in the instance of leukemia, but that hasn’t stopped many patients from seeking cutting-edge plastic surgeries, wherein the cells are drawn from the body via liposuction and then re-injected into the face, to repair wrinkles. Unfortunately, the procedure is in its infancy, and there is no way to predict exactly how the cells will behave. In at least one horrifying instance, a woman grew bones in her eyelid.

The doctor fish is native to the rivers and springs of the Middle East, a toothless creature around the size of a guppy. Like a lot of fish, these guys are not particularly picky eaters. In fact, they have been used for some years to perform pedicures; gnawing the dead and callused skin away from the feet. The creepy procedure is apparently quite effective, and those who have had it done claim it is painless. However, in much of the world, just as these pedicures began taking off, they were banned, as letting fish in communal baths chew on toes of multiple customers is not in the least sterile. Seized fish have been shown to carry a wide array of bacteria, including that which causes cholera and streptococcal infections.

The ideal of the geisha is quite foreign to Western sensibilities; her role often varied, anything from servant to concubine to entertainer, and everything in between. Perhaps the best known aspect of the geisha is her white pancake makeup, which was once lead-based and ravaged the skin. To restore their appearance, the geisha used a cream made from the droppings of nightingales, which contained revitalizing enzymes. Or so the staff at Shizuka New York, a posh Japanese spa in Manhattan, would lead you to believe. For just $180, they will paint your face with bird poo, carefully sanitized under ultraviolet light and mixed with some other ingredients to hide the rather disagreeable smell. While the claims seem dubious, some customers have reported a “glow” on their face after the treatment.

DC-CIK treatment is another controversial procedure which involves drawing blood from a patient suffering from cancer. The blood is then turned over to a lab, where it is concentrated, then injected back into the body after chemotherapy or surgery. It is said to promote healing. However, some dubious clinics in Hong Kong have begun offering the treatment to give patients a more youthful appearance. At least one death from septic shock has been reported, and several others have been sent to the hospital, infected by mycobacterium abcessus, a nasty bacteria known to cause lung disease and wound infections.

Most of us have a relationship of absolute necessity with our urine; one quick flush and its gone. There is however, a small but dedicated community that extolls the supposedly restorative properties of urine. These people claim drinking urine can cure (or at least relieve the symptoms of) a vast number of diseases, ranging from lupus to multiple sclerosis, and even cancer. Urine is also used for beauty treatments; when applied topically, advocates claim it is excellent for the skin, clearing up psoriasis, eczema, and acne. The best urine is apparently taken midstream first thing in the morning, when beneficial hormones have been able to build up overnight. Perhaps not surprisingly, the legitimate medical community has not recognized any benefit to the consumption of urine.

Although many bodily modifications made in the name of beauty could be described as frivolous, toe narrowing is amongst the most foolish. A growing number of people, unsatisfied with “fat” toes, have been turning to podiatrists for help. The procedure, which is somewhat gruesome, involves splitting the toe open and grinding down the bone and fat inside. While not a terribly risky procedure, it still carries the dangers inherent in any surgery. There is also usually a long recovery time.

The micro-needle roller resembles some kind of medieval torture device; sporting hundreds of tiny spikes, it is designed to puncture the skin at the microscopic level, both inducing it to heal itself and allowing for the penetration of creams. Many celebrities are said to use micro-needle treatment, and it is particularly popular in China. While the effectiveness of the treatment itself is debatable, the danger is not: there is no way to truly sterilize the equipment, and using it on multiple people provides a vector for infections, including blood-borne pathogens like HIV and hepatitis.

Advertised as a “safer” version of botox (itself a tamed version of the Botulinum toxin, one of the deadliest known substances), bee venom wrinkle cream has become all the rage, the beauty secret of the UK’s Duchess of Cambridge and Duchess of Cornwall. Quite expensive, the cream apparently induces a reaction in the skin that causes the body to believe it has been stung or damaged, increasing blood flow and collagen and repairing the area. The venom itself is harvested in a process wherein a “harmless” mild electric current is run through a pane of glass, inducing the bees to sting. There has been a larger movement for some years to use bee venom to cure all sorts of maladies, from multiple sclerosis to arthritis, but tests have shown it to be largely ineffective. Obviously, the use of venom carries with it serious risks; those who find themselves allergic can easily succumb to anaphylactic shock.

This one takes masochism to extremes rarely imagined. A few decades ago, the vast majority of those sporting tattoos were bikers and sailors, outlaws of a sort. Today, sorority girls the world over are inked. Cosmetic tattooing is not a terribly new phenomenon, with many women getting their eyebrows or lips done. But a strange new craze has begun sweeping the UK; women getting their nipples darkened and defined. Over a dozen salons offer the treatment, and word continues to spread. Local anesthesia is administered and a color complimentary to the patient’s skin tone is added. Every year to year and a half, a follow up appointment is scheduled to maintain the appearance.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist. He cuts his own hair, so he probably isn’t the person to look to for beauty advice.

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While we often think of our bodies and minds as two distinct entities, it turns out they are much more entwined than we might assume. Researchers are continually finding evidence that the brain has a distinct power to manipulate the body’s physiology. As these 10 examples show, the mind/body connection can work in our favor or detriment, depending on our knowledge of a situation and our ability to control our thoughts.

Judging by their ability to meditate for hours on end, to abstain from food for days, and their vows of silence, most us would agree that Tibetan Monks have better control over their minds and bodies than the average person. Still, what’s particularly amazing is some of them can control physiological processes, such as blood pressure and body temperature – feats many medical doctors find astounding.

In one of the most notable exhibits of their skills, a group of Tibetan monks allowed physicians to monitor the monk’s bodily changes as they engaged in a meditative yoga technique known as g Tum-mo. During the process the monks were cloaked in wet, cold sheets (49 f / 9.4 c) and placed in a 40 f (4.5 c) room. In such conditions, the average person would likely experience uncontrollable shivering and would shortly suffer hypothermia. However, through deep concentration, the monks were able to generate body heat, and within minutes the researchers noticed steam rising from the sheets that were covering the monks. Within an hour, the sheets were completely dry.

Although, the display was fascinating to the doctors, for the monks it was an ordinary occurrence. In fact, new monks use g Tum-mo as a way of proving their meditative strength and hold contests to see who can dry the most sheets in one night.

The Buddhists say the heat they generate is a byproduct of the meditation, since it takes energy to reach a state of alternate reality – a place unaffected by our everyday world.

Multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder, is a mental condition that’s interesting on many levels. Perhaps most intriguing of all is how some sufferers not only exhibit personality and behavior changes as they switch between their different identities, but some also have measurable physiological variations between each persona. For instance, one of a patient’s personalities may need eyeglasses and another won’t. Or, one identity might be diabetic and another will have perfect health. In such cases, it isn’t simply a matter of the patients thinking they need eyeglasses or insulin, their bodies actually go through legitimate alterations, such as differences in intraocular pressure or blood sugar levels.

In one case, published by the American Psychiatric Press, a doctor noted how medications prescribed to a dissociative identity disorder patient had different effects depending on what “personality” took the drug. For example, when a tranquilizer was given to the person’s childish persona, it made the individual sleepy and relaxed. However, when the adult personality was administered the same drug it made him anxious and confused. Similar results were found with other patients and with a variety of different medications. Doctors even noticed visibly apparent traits, like lazy eye, would come and go depending on which personality was present.

This phenomenon is especially fascinating since no one, including the patients, is claiming mysticism is at work. On the contrary, it is a genuine example of the mind altering the body.

A placebo is an inert substance or belief which produces real biological effects in humans. It’s so widely accepted as fact that a placebo variable is included in most medical tests as way of proving if, say, a drug works on its own merits or because people “think” it works.

There are tons of experiments showing the proof of the placebo, but one of the most amusing to watch is a test done by a group of Princeton students who decided to throw a non-alcoholic keg party for their unsuspecting classmates. The experimenters secretly filled a keg with O’Douls (contains about 0.4% alcohol while regular beer has around 5% alcohol) and then watched as their peers acted silly, slurred words, slept on the ground, and generally acted drunk. Although it’s nearly impossible to get intoxicated on O’Douls, these college students had such a strong belief they were drinking standard beer that it affected their behavior.

Curiously, researchers have discovered the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger, and some drugs that have been on the market for years, such as Prozac, are now proving less effective than placebos. Naturally, this is a major issue for big pharmaceutical companies, which has left many scrambling to conduct neurological studies in an effort to come up with new ways to safeguard their industry from ordinary sugar pills. Incidentally, Big Pharma is currently more profitable than Big Oil, so there’s quite a bit at stake.

While placebos are generally associated with positive outcomes, like curing an illness or getting drunk on O’Douls and having fun (if you consider that positive), the nocebo effect produces negative results, such as a cancer patient vomiting before chemotherapy starts or someone breaking out in a rash because they thought they touched poison ivy, even though it was merely an ordinary plant.

One of the most talked about examples of the nocebo phenomenon was an incident published in “New Scientist.” According to the account, late one night an Alabama man, referred to as Vance, went to a cemetery and met up with a witch doctor who told Vance that he was going to die soon. Believing the witch doctor’s prediction, Vance soon fell ill and within a matter of weeks was emaciated and close to death. Vance was taken to the hospital but the medical doctors could find nothing wrong with him. Finally, Vance’s wife told the physician, Dr. Doherty, about the encounter with the witch doctor, which gave the creative physician an idea. The next day, Dr. Doherty told the couple he had tracked down the witch doctor and physically threatened him until the medicine man finally admitted he had put a lizard inside Vance that was eating him from the inside. Of course, the Doctor’s story was completely fabricated, yet he made a big show of injecting the patient with a mysterious substance and snuck in a genuine, green lizard that he pretended to extract from Vance. The next day, Vance awoke alert, hungry, and it didn’t take long before he fully recovered.

Apparently, that story was corroborated by four other medical professionals, and is often cited when explaining why Voo Doo sometimes works (i.e. not because of magic, but because of the nocebo effect).

There are a lot of stories floating around out there about people who experienced an injury in their dreams and then found real, physical evidence of the wound on their bodies once they awoke. For instance, some people have claimed to have been caught in a fire in their dreams and then woke up to find burn marks on their skin. Other common stories involve people being attacked during their dreams and then waking up to find scratch marks somewhere on their bodies. However, most of these stories are found in chat rooms or message boards, so it’s hard to corroborate if they are true.

But, there is one well documented case, reported by famed psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, about an Indian man named Durga Jatav who, during a battle with typhoid fever, had an extremely vivid dream about being held captive in another realm. To keep him from escaping, his dream captors cut his legs off at the knee. Unfortunately, his legs were already severed by the time the captors realized they had the wrong man and didn’t need to keep Jatav after all. When Jatav asked how he could leave with no legs, they offered him several pairs of legs, he picked out his own pair, and then they were miraculously reattached.

While Jatav was having the dream, his body became very cold and at one point his family thought he was dead, yet he revived a few days later. Once he was awake, his sister and neighbor noticed deep fissures around his knees that weren’t there previously. X-ray photographs showed no abnormality below the surface of the skin, which led Jatav and his family to believe the marks came from his dream experience. Dr. Stevenson met Jatav some 30 years later (1979) and took pictures of the still visible scars. Although Stevenson did not witness the event, he apparently believed the story, which was confirmed by all involved, and he even included the account and photographs in his book “Reincarnation and Biology: A contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects.”

Obviously there’s no scientific proof to this intriguing account, but it’s not too far-fetched considering what we already know about the power of the brain over the body.

Like the Tibetan monks, Indian Yogis seem to have an unusual talent for manipulating their physiological processes while in deep meditation. After hearing stories of yogis spending 28 days underground and surviving, in 1936, a French cardiologist named Therese Brosse traveled to India to see if the yogis truly did have such talents. In her experiments, the yogis reportedly slowed their heart down so slow that it was only detectable via an EKG machine.

In the 1950s Brosse’s study was expanded by another group of researchers who traveled through India with an eight-channel electro-encephalograph and various other instruments, which they used to monitor the yogis’ brain activity, respirations, skin temperature, blood-volume changes, and skin conductance. Two of their test subjects were placed in air-tight sealed boxes, on two separate occasions, and were monitored for 8 to 10 hours. During that time the Yogis showed biological characteristics similar to sleep and were able to slow down their heart rate and respiration to low enough levels that oxygen and carbon dioxide quantities inside the box remained virtually in the same proportions as found in air at sea level. Thus, it was shown that by slowing down their bodily processes and not panicking (as most would do) the Yogis could survive a live-burial for far longer than the average person, possibly even weeks longer.

Many athletes claim it helps them perform better when they “play” the game in their minds before ever stepping foot on the field or court. While we might assume doing so is just a mental exercise that enables them to better focus on the game, there might be more concrete changes happening inside the body.

Take, for example, Air Force Colonel George Hall who was locked in a small, dark North Vietnamese prison for seven years. While most would lose their minds in such circumstances, Hall went to his happy place, so to speak, by mentally playing golf every day of his imprisonment. His visualizations were extremely in-depth and included everything from hitting the ball off the tee, raking the sand traps, feeling the wind, and of course tapping the ball into the hole.

Regardless of being weak and 100 pounds lighter than before his capture, one of the first things Hall wanted to do after his release was play a legitimate round of golf. He was invited to the Greater New Orleans Open where he astoundingly shot a 76. When a member of the press suggested his performance was a case of beginners luck, Hall replied, “Luck, I never 3-putted a green in the last five years!”

So, despite his physical deterioration and not stepping on a course in over seven years, his body had developed muscle memory based simply on his imaginings.

Jack Schwarz, a Dutch Jewish writer, also lived in horrific conditions while forced into a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Like so many others, he was beaten, starved, and tortured beyond what most of us can comprehend. To cope with his situation, he began the practice of meditation and prayer, which he developed to the point where he could block out the pain of his torment and subsequently withstand his situation.

After his release, Schwarz continued his mind over matter practice and occasionally demonstrated his skills by putting a long sail-maker’s needle through his arm without injury. He also displayed his ability to regulate his body’s blood flow by causing the puncture hole in his arm to bleed or stop bleeding at will. Schwarz was studied by researchers at the Menninger Foundation who found that he could indeed control many of his bodily processes with only his mind. Furthermore, through an electroencephalograph, they determined his brain had different electrical activity as compared to most other test subjects. According to Schwarz, he could also see people’s auras, which allowed him to gauge their physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental conditions.

Undoubtedly it’s difficult to keep a positive attitude when you’re facing a life-threatening disease, but, based on a variety of medical studies, doing so may mean the difference between living and dying.

For example, in 1989, Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford University conducted a study on 86 women with late stage breast cancer. Half of those women received standard medical care while the other half were given weekly support sessions in addition to the standard medical care. During the sessions the women shared their feelings, talked with other patients, and generally had a positive outlet where they could cope with their illness. At the end of the study, the women in the support group lived twice as long as those not in the group. In 1999, a similar study found that cancer patients who have feelings of helplessness and hopelessness have a lower chance of survival.

In recent years, David Seidler, writer of “The King’s Speech,” claimed to have eliminated his cancer through meditation and imagination. After battling bladder cancer for years and only two weeks away from surgery, Seidler decided to see if he could get rid of the cancer through his imagination. He admittedly thought the idea was a little “woo-woo,” but by that point he figured he had nothing to lose. So, he spent the two weeks leading up to his surgery envisioning a clean, cream-colored, healthy bladder. When Seidler went in for his pre-surgery biopsy, the doctor was stunned to find a distinct lack of cancer – he even sent the biopsy to four different labs for testing. While Seidler believes his visualization were behind the cancer’s disappearance, his doctor labeled it a “spontaneous remission.”

It seems counterintuitive that increasing numbers of people are claiming to put a greater effort into exercising and eating a nutritious diet, yet there are more obese people in the world than ever before. Some researchers think positivity is a missing variable in the weight loss equation, and a lack of it is what’s keeping people chubby.

To prove the point that the mind has a major impact on the body, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer conducted an experiment on a group of predominantly overweight hotel maids who, judging by their daily activity levels, should have been thin. Despite essentially exercising all day long through their work, Langer discovered through a survey that 67% of the maids felt they didn’t do any type of exercise. Langer predicted the maids’ perceptions were hampering their weight loss, so she took half the maids aside and, in addition to taking their physical measurements, explained that through their cleaning work they were exceeding the surgeon general’s definition of an active lifestyle. The other half of the maids were given no information.

A month later, Langer’s team returned to the hotel and reevaluated the maids. They found an overall decrease in systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio in the educated group. The other group had no significant physical changes. While some suspect the mere discussion of exercise somehow altered the women’s behavior, Langer said there was no indication any of the maids modified their routines, and she feels the results were due simply to a change in mindset.

Content and copy writer by day and list writer by night, S.Grant enjoys exploring the bizarre, unusual, and topics that hide in plain sight. Contact S.Grant here.

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Instead of making The Expendables 3, maybe Hollywood could consider putting together a soldier-of-fortune tale with an actual plot. Thankfully, history’s done all the hard work already. Here are ten stories that belong on the big-screen.

Ten thousand Greek Mercenaries trapped deep in hostile territory—Persia. With their employer, the usurper to the Persian throne, Cyrus, dead in battle and the mercenaries’ general killed in a treacherous plot, the Ten Thousand elect the philosopher-soldier Xenophon to lead them back home. And that’s just the first five minutes (or first few pages if you’re reading Anabasis).

With supplies dwindling , Xenophon chose to lead the Ten Thousand home via the shorter path north to the Black Sea. To get there, the Ten Thousand crossed mountains, fought their way through Armenia, and navigated a series of clannish alliances and feuds. When the remaining Hellenes finally reached the Black Sea shores, Xenophon wrote that the soldiers screamed, “The sea, the sea!” And while that wasn’t the end of the Ten Thousand’s ordeal, for cinematic purposes, that’s one heck of a finale.

True, The Warriors (1979) brought the Anabasis to the screen in the form of stylized Coney Island gang-warfare. But as great as the Warriors’ adaptation was, a half-dozen leather vest wearing street toughs lacks the epic appeal of ten thousand Greek warriors fighting for their lives across the Persian Empire.

Memnon was a hired Greek general in service of the Persian king Darius. He just barely escaped his first encounter with Alexander the Great at the Battle of Granicus. Alexander’s army routed Memon’s mercenaries and Persian allies there, but like all great underdogs, Memnon quickly bounced back from defeat.

After Granicus, Memnon proved himself to be the only commander capable of even slowing down Alexander’s march east into Persia. Memnon recognized the futility of challenging Alexander in pitched battle, and instead commandeered the defense of strategic cities like Halicarnassus. Before the walls of Halicarnassus, Alexander’s advance came to a grinding halt and Memnon’s defenders allowed Alexander only the most Pyrrhic of victories. The Macedonians spent months struggling to control the city and still the citadel remained under Persian control when Memnon chose to withdraw and regroup his forces elsewhere.

Alexander’s greatest rival continued to challenge the Macedonian forces in the west from the Aegean Sea. Fortunately for Alexander, Memnon died suddenly from a fever before he could rally Sparta and other disgruntled city-states to throw off Macedonian rule and force Alexander to return to Greece.

The tenth century marked a turning point in Scandinavian-Byzantine relations. Rather than fight against one another, for the first time, Vikings in large numbers were hired into the Byzantine military. For the next several centuries, hired Norsemen wielding giant battle-axes made up the elite corps of the Byzantine emperor’s personal guard. To its own detriment, Hollywood has thus far ignored the action movie gold mine that is the Varangian Guard’s history.

If pressed to choose just one story of a Varangian Guardsman, the life of Harald Hardrada would be a good place to start.

In the early 11th century, an uprising forced a young Harald to flee Norway—the country his family once ruled. He found refuge, and employment, in Byzantium. For eight years, Harald fought in service of the emperor. He rose through the ranks and became captain of the guard. But when the Byzantine empress refused Harald’s request to marry her niece, Harald kidnapped the girl and escaped the empire with more wealth than any Viking had ever seen before. And when he returned to Norway, Harald found the kingdom welcome him with open arms.

You want soldiers of fortune? How about an entire city filled with and ruled by them? Fourteenth century Athens was that city. And the Catalans were those mercenaries.

The Catalan Company was formed to swing the balance in the war for Sicily. After that fight wound down, the Catalans hired themselves out to the Byzantine Empire, who desperately needed more bodies to replace the ones Turks were chopping up.

The Catalan Company achieved several victories for their new paymaster. Maybe too many though, as Catalan leadership tried to establish its own kingdom within the Byzantine Empire. Not surprisingly, the offended emperor had the Catalan general, Roger de Flor assassinated and fired the Catalan Company, who in 1311, drifted south to serve the Duke of Athens.

And that’s where the story really gets going, because after winning several victories for the Duke, the Catalans’ new employer decided to stiff the mercenaries. Big mistake. The Duke of Athens then attempted to pit the mercenaries against each other. Bigger mistake. Offers of land and noble titles could not sway the Catalan leaders to turn upon their comrades. The company rallied together, defeated the Duke’s army, and took control of Athens and the surrounding areas. The mercenaries ruled Athens for the next seventy years.

The 17th century was the century for vicious religious warfare. The century’s death toll from the Catholic-Protestant struggle for Europe’s soul makes the Crusades look like a friendly disagreement by comparison. By the end of the 1600s England and Ireland were center-stage in said struggle.

Patrick Sarsfield, an Irishman, was part of the losing effort following England’s Glorious Revolution to reestablish the Catholic James II on the English throne. Sarsfield’s leadership wasn’t enough to wring out a victory. But, his efforts forced the beleaguered King William III to sign a treaty with an unusual provision.

Sarsfield and thousands of Irish-Catholic soldiers were permitted to seek refuge in France. The exodus became known as “the flight of the wild geese.” And France was more than happy to hire Sarsfield and his experienced soldiers.

The “Irish Brigade” fought all over Europe for the French monarchy, hoping one day for the invasion that would bring them back to Ireland. The brigade never got that chance, though Sarsfield was honored as a marshal of France for his battlefield tenacity. Shortly after, Sarsfield was struck down by an English musket during fighting in the Netherlands. As he lay bleeding, Sarsfield supposedly said, “If this was only for Ireland,” and then died.

Steiner’s story was seemingly made for film. As a German teenager, Steiner spurned his family’s military roots and ran away from home to study for the priesthood. A tryst with a nun ended Steiner’s religious aspirations, though.

Steiner joined the French Foreign Legion one year later. Once again a romantic relationship altered Steiner’s trajectory. While stationed in Algeria, Steiner fell for an Algerian woman who prompted her future husband to join Anti-French dissidents.

The Legion didn’t take kindly to anti-government sympathies among its ranks and kicked Steiner out. Beginning in 1967, Steiner took up various insurgent causes across Africa.

He led Biafran rebels with some success against the Nigerian regime. Later, Steiner found more success leading Southern Sudanese separatists against dictatorship in Khartoum. Steiner’s early efforts to establish a Southern Sudanese resistance were taken up by subsequent leaders who used the guerrillas to affect the end of the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972). Sudanese government troops captured Steiner, though, and the mercenary served three years in various prisons before being released due to poor health.

Before the soldiering life seized him, Mike Hoare was an accountant. World War II intervened though, and the former accountant deployed first to India and then Burma as a British officer.

After the war ended, the potential for adventure in Africa drew Hoare away from London. He began a safari company in South Africa, which familiarized him with terrain and people across much of the continent. He put his connections and knowledge to use as a mercenary in the Congo in the 1960s and gained fame for helping rescue a group of European hostages held in Stanleyville.

Unfortunately, Hoare’s career suffered an ignominious end. In 1981, a still fervently anti-communist Hoare, attempted to depose the corrupt and communist leader of Seychelles. Hoare and 43 mercenaries flew into the country disguised as a beer-drinking club on a charity mission. Things deteriorated when customs found weapons in one of the mercenary’s luggage. A gun-battle ensued between the mercenaries and local police, before Hoare commandeered a passenger plane and most his men escaped to South Africa.

Hoare and his crew were convicted only of hijacking. And most of the mercenaries were released after a few months, while Hoare served three years of a ten-year sentence before being released.

Bob Denard was the prototypical soldier-of-fortune—shadowy origins, a menagerie of aliases, and questionable renegade tactics. Throughout the French mercenary’s career, wherever a state was failing, Denard could be found either propping up or dismantling the government roughly in accordance with France’s desires.

The Congo, Algeria, Yemen, Benin, Nigeria—Denard and his small band of mercs, in keeping with Cold War sensibilities, fought for whichever paymaster was most ardently anti-communist at the time. But out of all the strife-ridden states of the 20th century, Bob Denard made the biggest impact on the Comoros Islands.

For two decades (1975-1995), Denard played king-maker in the south-east African island nation. Four times during that span, Denard staged coups. And for most of the 1980s, Denard essentially ruled the country through a series of Comoran political puppets.

Denard had a hard time letting go after being ousted in 1989, and attempted one last coup in 1995 with just thirty fellow mercenaries. For once, the French government didn’t approve and returned Denard to France. After a brief prison spell, Denard lived out his years relatively peacefully, as French prosecutors were somewhat reluctant to strictly prosecute a man French special services admitted to utilizing.

Tim Spicer represents the “new” mercenary—the corporate mercenary. A British Army veteran who served in the Falklands and North Ireland among others, Spicer found that civilian retirement didn’t suit him.

Spicer proved an adept marketer and his fledgling freelance military company was awarded contracts in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone. Both operations ended in scandal and failure. At least one university case study cited Spicer’s actions in Sierra Leone as a perfect example of exactly what not to do in armed conflict.

As the scandals mounted, Spicer moved smoothly, changing company names and establishing new ones. In 2002 Spicer finally founded a winner with the incorporation of Aegis Defense Services. In just two years Aegis grew from security consulting for cruise ships to winning a massive 300 million dollar contract from the U.S. government to coordinate the thousands of military contractors in Iraq. It’s like the Social Network, but with more up-armored SUVs.

And sure enough, scandal found Spicer in Iraq. Not long after Aegis’ arrival, videos surfaced of “employees” targeting unarmed Iraqi civilians.

The plot was simple enough. Simon Mann, a former member of the British SAS, gained the support of wealthy financiers to recruit, equip, and direct a small army of mercenaries to execute a coup in the oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea. But before Mann’s group could replace Guinea’s regime with one more favorable to outside financial interests, the mercenaries had to actually get to Equatorial Guinea.

Mann’s mercenaries planned to fly from South Africa to Zimbabwe to acquire weapons before continuing on to Equatorial Guinea. But a near-total lack of confidentiality undid the operation.

When the mercenaries landed in Zimbabwe, local authorities were waiting in force to arrest the sixty-plus mercenaries and Mann for attempting to purchase weapons illegally. The fifteen man advance party in Guinea was easily apprehended the following day.

Mark Thatcher—yes, son of the Margaret Thatcher—was also implicated in the conspiracy and arrested. Thatcher got off light. Simon Mann, not quite so, but the mercenary was pardoned in 2009.

Mann’s story actually seems to have captured Hollywood’s interest. And a film adaptation of the so-called “Wonga Coup” may be in the works.

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The legends of every religion are rich with mythology and lore. The Old Norse and Greek religions were full of amazing stories of gods, goddesses, and heroism. The gods of old had an abundance of amazing and varied powers and abilities. Human imagination has always been intrigued by abilities that make us stand out from others, and the Catholics are no exception. They have their own legends of other worldly powers, often performed by those who are considered the holiest of all, the saints. Below are the legends of some of the saints and the extraordinary powers they were said to have.

Saint Benedict is a pretty important saint and is known for both his skills at speaking and his general holiness and purity of heart. Saint Benedict is known for surviving multiple attempts on his life by his enemies. According to the legends some monks decided to poison him. The first time they tried to poison his wine and the glass shattered into little pieces when he prayed over it. The next time around the monks decided to use food, since that can’t shatter so easily. However, their plans were ruined when a bird flew away with the bread they had laced with poison. St Benedict founded the most famous order of monks the Benedictines and placing a Saint Benedict Medal over the doors of your house is said to keep evil spirits away.

According to his life-story, St Boniface arrived in Germany and saw the people worshipping a tree. He was angry at what he considered to be the worship of false idols and decided to destroy the tree. Supposedly with one blow of an axe the tree was felled and the Germans who saw this believed in his message. Some people claim that to satisfy their attachment to trees, Boniface invented the Christmas tree and told them to use it was a symbol of everlasting life.

There have been many saints who have supposedly had the gift of prophecy. One of the more interesting legends is that of St Anthony Mary Claret. He asked a group of farmers to come to his mission; many explained they could not because they needed to tend to their fields. He told them that if they came their fields would yield more, and if they did not come their harvest would be completely ruined. According to the story, his prophecy did indeed come true. There is also the prophecy of Saint Malachi, which has been mentioned here before. This prophecy of the popes predicts that the last pope will reign at the start of the end of the world. According to those who pay attention to the prophecy, our current pope (Francis) is supposed to be the last. The prophecy of the popes is suspected by some to be a forgery and—as with all post-apostolic prophecy—Catholics can freely choose to believe or disbelieve.

Many Catholic Saints through the ages have claimed to have something akin to an out of body experience. One of them, Saint Theresa of Avila claims that it felt like her soul was traveling to regions outside her body. Other saints to report this phenomenon include St Pio of Pietrelcina and St Frances Xavier. Saint Theresa was said to gain this ability through long meditative states of prayer, eventually feeling as if she was going through a sort of “detachable death” and felt it took her much closer to God.

The stories say that St Andrew the Apostle was eventually captured for preaching the message of Christianity and was affixed to an X shaped cross. His captors used this remarkably cruel means of execution because he seemed to feel no pain at all when they had previously tortured him. It is said that even though his execution was long and brutal, that he felt no pain whatsoever. Some legends also say that the specific type of cross was chosen because Andrew did not believe himself worthy to be killed using the same method Jesus had used for his sacrifice—the same reason St Peter chose to be crucified on a upside-down cross.

One of the oldest legends is that of St Lawrence, who was a deacon at the time, stationed in the city of Rome. The Saint is said to have been in charge of taking care of the poor, and was ordered by those in authority to give him their treasures. He brought the poor before them and said that these were the true treasures of the church. In retaliation for his impudence, his execution was ordered. In order to make it as painful as possible he was tied to a hot gridiron and slowly roasted to death. The story says that no matter how long it went on, it seemed not to bother him and he offered a quip near the end that he could be turned over as he was finished on one side.

Incorruptibility is when a corpse seems to not follow normal decomposition patterns and remains mostly fine. The skeptics argue that this is due to people secretly using embalming of different varieties, however, some cases are harder to explain and happened in cases where it seems decomposition should have actually been going faster. Some of the more famous cases include that of Saints Catherine of Genoa or Francis Xavier. The bodies of St Catherine of Laboure and St Bernadette are also said to be incorruptible, after being examined thoroughly it seems their bodies are pretty much in the same shape as they were when they died. St Bernadette is pictured above.

St Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of Astronauts, Pilots and pretty much anything to do with flying. This is because Joseph of Cupertino was known to have the ability to levitate. The stories say that his rapture in prayer was so great that he would get caught up during Mass and start levitating above the altar. Another legend says he was able to levitate carrying an enormous cross as if it were basically weightless. It was believed among those who knew him that his incredible holiness gave him incredible abilities.

This one is perhaps the most well known, but also incredibly controversial. There are many who say the claims of Stigmata are simply untrue. Others believe in the Stigmata, but argue over which cases are actually genuine and not faked. The most recent legend is that of Padre Pio, who is said to have received the stigmata, the same marks that would have been upon Jesus on the cross. Padre Pio (now St Pio of Pietrelcina) also allegedly had the ability to read the sins on a confessor’s soul and to bi-locate.

Bi-Location is one of the strangest paranormal phenomena. While many strange happenings are impossible to prove, some seem plausible. But how can you be in two places at once? Even if you could, it would seem a challenge to act in both places; your brain can only accomplish one task at a time. However, reports of this go back a long way. Among Catholic saints who have been seen in two places at once, include Saint Alphonsius Liguori and Saint Gerard Majella. One of the strangest features of many of these stories is that we never hear any evidence that the Saint in question was aware they were in two places at once. Some have then logically said that perhaps one of them was an apparition, but that would still make it quite a remarkable phenomenon.

You can follow Gregory Myers on twitter.

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From surviving ancient manuscripts it is clear that there has always been a belief that new lands could rise up from the ocean, while old ones could sink into the sea, destroying former civilizations in the process. The most famous of all the lost lands is that of Atlantis, described in great detail by Plato almost 2,500 years ago. During the past century as we developed the technology to fly and with the advent of sonar and better diving equipment, numerous underwater anomalies have been discovered. Sites such as the Bimini Road have been probed and discussed at length by many, but not all of the sites are so close to the surface, and often times the depth of the water limits our investigations to sonar images and samples taken by submersibles.

In 2003, scientists were surprised to discover a massive circular stone structure underneath 30 feet (9 m) of water in the Sea of Galilee. The structure is comprised of basalt rocks, stacked in a cone shape and it is twice the size of Stonehenge in the UK. In their findings that were only recently published, archaeologists have noted that it shares some features of ancient communal burial sites found worldwide, but it may also be a ramp or a ceremonial structure. As they have never come across a structure of this size, with its specific features, they can only speculate as to its exact age, how it was constructed and how it was used.

The circular anomalies that can be seen off the coast of Florida, North Carolina, and Belize have been documented by enthusiasts and archaeologists alike. Even though they are found on a global scale, their true objective hasn’t been discovered so far – many believe they were used as an ancient type of burial mound. They are also very similar to stone structures that have been found in Saudi Arabia that can be seen on this website. It is believed that the underwater structures have been better preserved than those on dry land and may date back to ±8,000 BC. as those in Saudi Arabia have been dated to around 7,000 BC.

Divers discovered proof of Eastern Canada’s ancient past while taking part in a unique submarine project in 2005. They found the very curious stone structure at a depth of 40 feet (12 m) below the surface. It consists of a massive 1,000 lb (453 kg) elongated rock with an almost completely level surface resting on 7 baseball-sized stones, which in turn sits on a huge several thousand pound slab on top of a ledge. It was thought to be a natural formation until geologists and archaeologists looked at the images. The discovery of the man-made “rock cairn”, was deemed to be proven when an underwater archaeologist concluded the existence of three shims was enough proof that the structure was man-made.

Whether it is a UFO, a Nazi anti-submarine defense tool or simply a glacial rock that has been dragged across the sea floor, the discovery of the disc-shaped Baltic Sea anomaly (and its subsequent investigation in 2012) kept all the interested parties on the edge of their seats. Although Swedish explorers generally convinced everyone that it is a rock and not a UFO, their research has raised a lot of questions. Firstly, the rock didn’t have a silt-layer on it, which is usually the case when rocks have been lying still at the bottom of the ocean for any period of time. Furthermore, the 196 feet (60 m) wide rock seems to be covered by construction lines and boxes and it appears to be propped up by a 26 foot (8 m) high pillar.

Lake Baikal in southern Siberia is unique in many regards. It is the oldest, deepest and largest fresh water lake on earth. The sediment deposit on the bottom of the lake is more than 4 miles (7 km) deep and many of the fish species that thrive in its waters can be found nowhere else on earth. As its ice cover normally lasts into June, astronauts on the International Space Station were alarmed to see a very large circular area of thinned ice near the southern end of the lake in April 2009. To their astonishment, there was also another feature above a submarine ridge that divides the lake. Although the origin of the circles is a mystery, the distinct pattern would suggest that warmer water were brought to the surface, but hydrothermal activity has never been observed over the very deep water at the southern tip of the lake.

Even though Stonehenge in the UK is one of the most famous historical stone monuments in the world, it is not unique. Similar stone arrangements have been found worldwide. In 2007 while surveying the bottom of Lake Michigan with sonar, a team of underwater archaeologists discovered a series of stones aligned in a circle 40 feet (12 m) below the surface. One of the stones also seemed to feature a carving of a mastodon, an animal that has been extinct for 10, 000 years. If the site is validated, it would not be completely out of place, as other stone circles and petroglyph sites can be found in the vicinity.

A series of submerged structures discovered off the Cuban coast in 2001 captured the imaginations of archaeologists, researchers and Atlantis-hunters worldwide. Found by a company doing surveying work, the sonar images have shown symmetrical and geometric structures that covers an area of 200 ha (almost 2 square km) at depths between 2,000 and 2,460 feet (± 700 m). Skeptics believe the site is too deep to be manmade as it is estimated that it would have taken the structures 50,000 years to sink to their current depth. If conclusive proof can be found that these structures were indeed manmade, it would back up the Maya and local Yucatecos stories of an ancient island inhabited by their ancestors that vanished beneath the sea.

Since its discovery in 1987, the massive Yonaguni Monument off the coast of Japan has been a subject of debate between scientists, archaeologists and scholars. Many supporters claim that the site is natural but may have been modified by human hands like the rock-hewn terraces of Sacsayhuaman. If proven true, the site would have been modified during the last ice age – around 10,000 BC. Skeptics on the other hand believe the whole structure to be natural; that the drawings and carvings observed are nothing more than natural scratches. The fact remains that although Yonaguni’s features can be seen in many sandstone formations worldwide, the high concentration of questionable formations at one site is unlikely.

During expeditions in 2006 and 2007 the deeper waters to the west of Bimini were mapped using side-scan sonar and sub-bottom profiling. A number of rectangular features were discovered at a depth of 100 feet (30 m). They are all aligned in the same direction in straight, parallel lines. The researchers have claimed that the structures appear to be very much like those found off the coast of Cuba. At a later dive managed by the History Channel, the formations were better observed. There are about 50 stone piles, mainly 10 by 45 feet in size, and all at a depth that would place their age around 10,000 BC.

In May 2001, it was announced the ruins of an ancient city was discovered in the Gulf of Khambhat. The discovery was made with the help of sonar while routine pollution studies were being done. During the announcement, the site was described as evenly spaced dwellings, a drainage system, bath, granary and a citadel that pre-dates the Indus Valley Civilization. During follow-up investigations, the area was dredged and several artifacts were recovered. Among them were wood (dated ± 7,000 BC), stones described as hand tools, fossilized bones, pottery sherds and a tooth. Among the controversies are that all the supposed artifacts are stones of natural origin, that the “sherds” are natural geofacts and that the dredging could have allowed errant artifacts to be dug up along with the site’s, removing all credibility from the finds.

Hestie lives in Pretoria, South Africa. She is amazed by all the mysterious discoveries that dates back to 10,000 years ago

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Being an astronaut may not sound like such a dream job nowadays as it has done in the past—but there was once a time when almost every child dreamed of shuttling into space.

The space race between the USSR and the USA—not to mention countless blockbuster space films—created a popular conception of astronauts as some of the most heroic, intrepid, and glamorous people in the world. This list will attempt to rank the ten most famous, inspirational, and influential astronauts of all time, who each changed the course of history by breaking down one or another of humankind’s barriers.

“I really don’t want to say goodbye to any of you people” (Before boarding the Challenger)

Christa is probably the most tragic figure on this list, and one who will always be in many of our older readers’ hearts.

When she was still a child she had been fascinated by the space program, but when she grew older she instead opted to become a teacher. In 1984, however, NASA announced that it was seeking a teacher to fly on the Space Shuttle Challenger. Christa applied, got the job, and took a leave of absence from teaching to train for the fulfillment of her childhood dream.

She and seven other astronauts on board were killed when the Challenger exploded only seventy-eight seconds after taking off from Cape Canaveral, in what remains to this day one of the most tragic accidents in NASA’s history.

“Houston, we’ve had a problem here”

It’s very possible that most people who hear this name (and know it) probably think of Tom Hanks, and not the real Jim Lovell. It’s also quite possible that if Lovell were a sportsman, he would be considered to be an extremely unlucky player—the one who never quite made the cut for the big game. He was the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, which suffered from a crippling system failure en route to the moon but was brought back safely. The mission was left unaccomplished, however, and once again Lovell had failed to make his dream come true.

Lovell was the first of only three people to fly to the moon twice—and the only one to have flown there twice without making a landing. He will always be something of a king without a crown.

“If you like waterbeds you’re going to love zero gravity…”

If there had been an exclusive marathon for astronauts, there’s no doubt that Valeri Polyakov would have won it. He experienced his first spaceflight as a researcher onboard Soyuz TM-6. The Soyuz linked up with the Mir space station, where Polyakov spent a whopping two hundred and forty days in space, studying the effects of micro-gravity on humans.

On January 8, 1994—this time as a doctor-cosmonaut on the Soyuz TM-18 flight—Polyakov returned to Mir. He spent the next 437 days in space, a world record that still stands today. During his stay on the space station, he conducted medical and physiological research. He orbited the earth 7,075 times and traveled 186,887,000 miles before landing back safely on March 22, 1995.

Dr. Polyakov left the Russian space service shortly after his return, after accumulating a then-record total of 678 days in space. Even though many of his records have been broken since then, Polyakov is famous as the first astronaut to make space his second home.

“I don’t know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets”

John Glenn made history in 1962, when he became the first American to orbit the Earth. But even before that, John had been a war hero who had flown fifty-nine combat missions during WWII. In 1959, Glenn took on a new challenge after he was selected for the U.S. Space Program. He and six others—including fellow legend Alan Shepard—were put through incredibly difficult training, and together they became known as the “Mercury Seven.”

Glenn orbited the Earth three times during his mission, which lasted nearly five hours. After this success, he became an American hero and a household name. He was feted with parades, and received numerous honors. President John F. Kennedy even awarded him the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and the two eventually became personal friends. It is believed that Kennedy was the one who encouraged Glenn to consider a life in the public service. After a few failed attempts, he was elected to the US Senate in 1974.

“Exploration is wired into our brains. If we can see the horizon, we want to know what’s beyond”

Buzz Aldrin is probably the second-most popular member of Apollo 11, and was one of the first people to walk on the moon. Aldrin—along with flight commander Neil Armstrong—made the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk, becoming the first two humans to set foot on the moon. They spent a total of twenty-one hours on the moon’s surface, and returned with forty-six pounds of moon rocks.

The historic walk was broadcast around the globe to an estimated six hundred million people—the largest TV audience in history. Upon his safe return to Earth, Buzz was decorated with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

“I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space”

Leonov is a legendary Soviet cosmonaut, and the first man to leave the spacecraft and take a spacewalk. He left the Voskhod 2 spacecraft and spent twelve minutes floating alongside, attached by a tether. He practiced free-fall maneuvers, made observations, and even took a short motion picture. When he attempted to return to the capsule, he found that his suit had over-pressurized to the point where he couldn’t fit though the hatch. He had to release the excess air before he could get inside.

Leonov is the only surviving member of the legendary Voskhod programme, and his legacy can be spotted in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, “2010: Odyssey Two.”

“I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all”

Shepard enjoys the honor of being the first—and so far the only—man in history who played golf on the moon. Unfortunately for Shepard, this is not a sports list; such an accomplishment can’t help his ranking, but it still makes him pretty awesome.

Early in 1961, NASA chose Shepard over Glenn and Grissom, the two other finalists, to be the first American in space. After his historic flight, Shepard’s thirst for adventure remained unquenched, and looked forward to future missions. On January 31, 1971, Apollo 14 blasted off from Cape Kennedy, nearly ten years after Shepard’s first space flight. He commanded the Apollo 14 mission, piloting the lander to what was the most accurate landing of all the Apollo missions. He became the fifth person to walk on the moon, and the only member of the Mercury Seven to do so. Alan Shepard will be remembered both as the first American in space; as one of a handful of moon-walking pioneers; and certainly as the first human being to play sports on another planet.

“If women can be railroad workers in Russia, why can’t they fly in space?”

Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space, orbiting the Earth in June, 1963, at the young age of twenty-six. Her excited and lively voice was broadcast to people all around the world: “It is I, Seagull!”

The image of a seagull soaring on high seemed to fit the young cosmonaut perfectly, and thereafter she came to be known affectionately as “Seagull” by people throughout the world. Valentina Tereshkova was an ordinary cotton mill worker, who managed to accomplish something quite extraordinary.

According to the Soviet propaganda machine, her flight showed the world that in a socialist state, women could achieve just as much as men—and that they were even encouraged to reach for the stars. The reality, however, was that Tereshkova’s three days in space were nothing more than a political stunt to upstage the Americans; no more Soviet women would enter space until 1982, nearly twenty years later.

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”

Neil Armstrong was one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. As a young man, he took an active part in the Korean War, and received the Korean Service Medal. After his service he returned to University, eventually graduating with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering. In later life, he took a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati.  

These are all fair accomplishments, of which any person would be proud. But they’re nothing compared to the journey that made Armstrong famous around the world. As we all know, he became the very first human to ever walk on the moon, on July 21, 1969.

“”I looked and looked and looked but I didn’t see God” (Disputed)

Yuri Gagarin is the prototype of all future spacemen—and except for that of Neil Armstrong, his name is probably the most recognized of all astronauts to this day. He became the first human to enter space, and the first to orbit the Earth—giving a huge boost to the Soviet space program, and intensifying the space race with the United States.

After the flight, Gagarin became a global celebrity, and one of the very few Soviets who was allowed to tour the West. He visited numerous countries, such as Germany, Italy, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and China, with the aim of promoting the Soviet Union’s accomplishment of putting the first human in space.

He was greeted everywhere as a hero, despite the petty politics of the Cold War. Three months after the Vostok 1 mission, he even visited the United Kingdom, where he was worshiped like no other Soviet in history. He remains the most decorated astronaut of all time, having received honors and medals from more than twenty-five different countries.

Theodoros II is a collector of experiences and a law graduate. He loves History, Sci-Fi culture, European politics, and exploring the worlds of hidden knowledge. His ideal trip in an alternative world would be to the lost city of Atlantis. His biggest passions include writing, photography, and music. You can view his photostream here.

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Whether or not you believe in the paranormal, you can probably agree that some places are simply creepy. Old hospitals, abandoned insane asylums, empty prisons, and most low end strip clubs immediately spring to mind. And of course you have to include places like battlefields and old military forts, where people were brutally killed or wounded during insanely bloody battles. Lots of those places simply give people the creeps, and after reading this list of 10 haunted forts and battlefields, you’ll probably understand why.

Back before he was a United States president, William Henry Harrison was a general. During the War of 1812, he established Fort Meigs just south of Toledo, Ohio, and successfully defended it against British attacks for over a year before it was finally abandoned and burned down. Because after all, who needs a fort proven to be highly defendable?

These days, people claim to hear cannon fire, muskets, and the sounds of fifes and drums being played, and no one can explain exactly what is causing those sounds. Still more people have stated they hear footsteps and, when walking around outside, have seen apparitions staring at them through the windows. It’s believed that over 500 dead Americans, British, and Indian soldiers are buried in unmarked graves around and underneath the fort, which was reconstructed and opened to the public in 1974.

If you have ever read The Last of the Mohicans, or at least watched one of the movie versions, you are familiar with Fort William Henry. Located on Lake George in upstate New York, it was a fort used in the French and Indian War. Of course there is a chance you may have become familiar with the fort through another means: an episode of the television show Ghost Hunters, since rumor has it that Fort William Henry is one of the most haunted military sites in America.

There are ghost tours offered at Fort William Henry, with reports over the years of lights turning on and off as well as the sounds of unexplained footsteps, as well as wind chimes sounding despite the absence of any actual wind. The fort was home to a massacre during the skirmish between Indians and British soldiers, with some believing that the spirits from both sides of the conflict still roam the grounds.

Going back to the War of 1812, but this time hopping across the border and into Canada, we move now to Stoney Creek. Located in Ontario, Stoney Creek was home to Mary Jones Gage and her family. Her husband, who had fought for the British, had died during the American Revolution, and then in 1813 invading American troops stormed the home with the hopes of taking it as their headquarters. The next day, the Battle of Stoney Creek broke out with the Gage family holed up in the basement of their posh home.

Unlike most of our other entries on this list, the Stoney Creek home once owned by the Gage family is not said to be haunted only by deceased soldiers but by Mary Jones Gage herself, whose family had been at one point held captive by American forces during that fateful battle. These days it is believed Gage still haunts the grounds. She died in 1841, and before she could be laid to rest her body and headstone disappeared. In addition to Gage haunting the actual home, there have been reports of misty figures who appeared to be soldiers marching in the area, apparently headed to battle.

In 1066, the Battle of Hastings took place with King Harold II and 7,500 of his Saxons defending against the invading Norman conquest of William, Duke of Normandy. William defeated Harold, and an abbey was built on Senlac Hill with the high altar said to have been placed on the very spot where King Harold perished. Apparently building an abbey on the site of that much bloodshed was a bad idea, considering that over the years there have been numerous bizarre reports.

Apparently, most of the sightings are of ghostly monks rather than soldiers, with visitors claiming to have seen re-enactors dressed in robes wandering the grounds only to be later informed that there were no re-enactors employed at the time. There are some other claims, such as the high altar bleeding and a soldier marching through the Great Hall carrying a sword, but those tales are considerably less substantiated.

Built in 1867 in San Angelo, Texas, as an outpost to protect the frontier settlers in West Texas, Fort Concho operated for more than 20 years. Among the commanders who served there was Pecos Bill himself, William Shafter, and today it is considered an historical landmark sitting on 1,600 acres. It saw numerous battles over the years, and its soldiers helped put down the Comanchero Movement, which saw illegal profiteering between Mexican and American traders.

These days, however, it is more famous for being haunted by several ghosts, including the spirits of James Cunningham, George Dunbar, Edith Grierson, and Ranald MacKenzie. MacKenzie was the most famous commander at Fort Concho, and visitors claim to have seen him appear as an apparition throughout the fort, particularly in Officers Row, where he lived for the duration of his time at Fort Concho. The other three, including the spirit of 12 year old Grierson, have been spotted throughout the facility over the years.

The Battle of Marston Moor was fought on July 2, 1644 during the First English Civil War. 4,000 members of the Royalist side were killed in what was a decisive victory for the Parliamentarians, with Oliver Cromwell leading the victors. Cromwell used the Old Hall in the village was used as a base of operations by Cromwell, and according to legend, he’s there to this day, haunting the grounds.

Oh, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that, apparently, the spirits of the Royalists who were slain in battle still roam the area. There have been reports over the years of phantom soldiers marching in Marston Moor, including possible sightings in 1932, 1968, and 1992, when people reportedly observed long haired, finely dressed soldiers marching along the roads.

The Battle of Cold Harbor took place from May 31 to June 12, 1864 during the American Civil War, and is considered one of the bloodiest battles in United States history. Union general Ulysses Grant led his men against Confederate general Robert E. Lee in what would turn into a bloodbath, with the Confederates decimating Grant’s troops through the course of the two weeks of fighting. It was one of the last battles for Grant, and one that he would call one of his largest regrets.

The Cold Harbor battlefield is also believed to be one of the most haunted military sites in America, with locals reportedly hearing sounds of the battle to the point where cannon fire, gun fire, and the sounds of screaming men are sometimes reported in the local newspaper. Tourists claim to still smell gunpowder when they visit the historical landmark, and both the Cold Harbor National Cemetery and the Garthright House, located across the street, are said to be haunted by the spirit of a young girl.

The Dieppe Raid, also known as Operation Jubilee, was a precursor to the Normandy Invasion during World War II. Consisting of primarily Canadian soldiers along with some British and a few Americans, the operation commenced on August 19, 1942 and between the hours of 5:00 a.m., when it began, and 2:00 p.m., when the battle ended, the attack proved to be a failure for the Allies. The casualties numbered more than 4,000 before the Allied forces retreated back across the English Channel.

Fast forward to 1951, when a pair of tourists were vacationing in Puys, nearby to Dieppe, and at 4:00 a.m. they were awakened by what sounded like gunfire, shouting voices, and other sounds of battle coming from the beach nearby their hotel. For the next three hours, they listened to the events unfold and documented all of the sounds they heard, and later the Society for Paranormal Research determined that their notes matched up almost to the second to the Dieppe Raid on that exact same beach.

The American Civil War was an incredibly bloody affair, to put it mildly. However, nowhere was this more evident than at the Battle of Antietam, which took place on September 17, 1862 on Antietam Creek in Maryland. The battle lasted four hours in this tiny area, and the casualties were astonishing. In that one small span of time, more than 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing in action. Today, the small road near Antietam Creek where the battle took place is known as Bloody Lane, for very good reason.

Today, the sound of gunfire and smell of gunpowder is often reported at Bloody Lane, and visitors have claimed to have both seen and heard spirits in the area. Virtually everything surrounding the Battle of Antietam has had reports of haunting, from Burnside’s Bridge, where Ambrose Burnside’s Union soldiers pushed back the Confederates and where the dead were quickly buried in shallow, unmarked graves, to the nearby St. Paul Episcopal Church, which was used as a Confederate hospital in the aftermath of the battle. According to the local legends, the floorboards of the church are so stained in blood that not even sandpaper will take it out.

If Antietam was the bloodiest single battle in the American Civil War, Gettysburg is the most famous and, over the course of several days, became one of its bloodiest with more than 50,000 men killed, wounded, or missing. Fought from July 1 through July 3, 1863 in the small town in southeastern Pennsylvania, the Battle of Gettysburg is viewed as the turning point for the Union in the Civil War.

And in the 140 years since the battle was fought, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who visited to Gettysburg who does not have some spooky story to share. At the Daniel Lady Farm, which served as the Confederate field hospital, it is believed that more than 10,000 deceased soldiers still haunt the grounds. Cashtown Inn, where the first soldier in the Battle of Gettysburg was killed, also has some bizarre tales, and the owners claim to have photographic evidence of spirits on the premises, as well as guests reporting hearing knocking on doors, lights turning on and off, and doors locking and unlocking themselves. Those are only a small sampling of the alleged ghostly sightings, which have also been reported at the Gettysburg Hotel and the Baladerry Inn, as well as on the battlefields themselves.

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This list contains ten lesser-known tales of dragon-slaying from around the world. A great number of these took place in Europe—most likely because dragons there have long been considered a force of evil, whereas in the East they are often seen as symbols of goodness and prosperity.

There may well be some awesome tales that didn’t make it into this list (any tale with a dragon in it is awesome, after all)—so please let us know in the comments.

It most often requires great cunning to defeat a dragon, and that’s the virtue which crops up again and again in stories about dragon slayers. We start the list, however, with a case of brute strength being the victor.

An unnamed dragon is said to have terrorized the area around the Austrian city of Innsbruck. It hoarded a massive treasure of gold, small pieces of which occasionally got swept away by the local river and found by villagers. Whenever the dragon noticed a loss of coin, it would devastate the surrounding countryside, smashing houses and killing locals in a fury of revenge.

Thankfully, a giant by the name of Haymo happened to live nearby. He was twelve feet tall, and of noble heritage. His strength was unmatched—and he believed that he could stand up to the dragon. So the giant put on his suit of armor, and marched with grim determination through the piles of rubble the dragon had created from what had been whole villages. 

Finding the dragon just as it was getting ready for another rampage, Haymo jumped onto it and began pounding it with his fists. The dragon writhed and squealed in pain, eventually breaking free and fleeing to its cave. Haymo followed it, ultimately stabbing it and cutting out its tongue, which he presented to the locals as proof that they no longer had to fear the terrible dragon.

Krakow, the ancient capital of Poland, is said to have been founded above the lair of a dragon known locally as Smok Wawelski. There are a number of versions of this tale, but the most popular has it that the dragon pillaged the countryside for many years, devouring livestock and terrifying farmers. The king sent out a call to noblemen and knights throughout the land, stating that whoever managed to slay the dragon would be rewarded with riches and marriage to his daughter. But none of the knights were able to get the better of the dragon, who quickly reduced all comers to a pile of ash.

A poor shoemaker’s apprentice named Skuba eventually volunteered his assistance. The king, who was by this stage rather desperate, agreed—though few people had much faith in the ability of the young lad. Skuba knew that he couldn’t kill the dragon with force, so he set a trap.

He killed three lambs, stuffed them with spices and sulphur, and left them lying outside the dragon’s cave. After the dragon had devoured this tasty morsel, he experienced a massive burning in his stomach. The pain became so great that he drank half of the nearby river in an attempt to quench it—eventually consuming so much water that he actually exploded.

Should you ever find yourself in Poland, you can still visit the dragon’s cave today.

According to various pre-Hindu religions, the asuras were a type of demigod or demon (direct translation is difficult as the pantheon is different to those familiar in the West). The most powerful of these demigods was Vritra, a dragon so big that his body covered the whole world. He would sometimes use his coils to block rivers, earning him the nickname “bringer of drought.” He eventually had the nerve to steal Earth’s entire supply of water, turning the planet into a desolate wasteland.

Vritra was slain by Indra, who would later go on to become king of the gods. Shortly after Indra was born, he set out and managed to demolish ninety-nine fortresses belonging to Vritra. Inevitably, a huge battle ensued. Indra was ultimately victorious, and “with his own great and deadly thunder smote [Vritra] into pieces,” thereby freeing the waters of the world.

The story of the Brno dragon is similar to that of the Wawel dragon above, except that this dragon is actually a crocodile. Yet its nickname—the “Brno dragon”—and its present-day resting place, hung by chains from the ceiling of the Town Hall, justify its place on this list.

Legend has it that near the beginning of the last millennium, the people of Brno were tormented by this beast, who lived in a cave and would eat anything that came his way. The frightened townspeople didn’t know how to deal with the problem, but they were luckily soon visited by a traveling butcher.

The cunning butcher, hoping to slay the beast, sewed a bunch of quicklime into an ox-pelt and left it out to be eaten. The dragon duly gobbled it up. Quicklime reacts rather vigorously with water—so when the beast washed its meal down with large swigs from the river, the contents of its stomach began to boil. The crocodile burst open, much to the delight of the locals, who sewed him back up and had him mounted on the ceiling for prosperity. The butcher earned a reward of one hundred gold coins, and presumably several xp into the bargain.

In Norse mythology, the dwarf Fafnir was one of three brothers. He didn’t begin life as a dragon, but became one after murdering his father for gold. He hid in the wilderness with the treasure, and became a dragon in order to better guard it. Unfortunately for the upstart dragon, he also happened to breathe poison around the land, which the locals understandably weren’t too happy about.

Fafnir’s brother, the blacksmith Regin, asked his own step-son—the young hero Sigurd—to kill the problematic dragon. Sigurd decided to dig a ditch, hiding there with the aim of suddenly leaping out and stabbing Fafnir in the heart.

Odin, King of the Gods, for his own reasons turned up and advised Sigurd to dig a number of other ditches to drain away the dragon’s blood, so that he wouldn’t drown. Sigurd listened to the advice, and when Fafnir showed up he duly attacked him. Though he missed the heart (instead plunging his sword into the dragon’s shoulder), the wound still turned out to be fatal.

Regin then asked Sigurd to cook the dragon’s heart. Sigurd, for some reason seeing nothing odd about this, did as he was told. He touched the heart to check if it was cooked, and burned his thumb in the process; and when he touched his thumb to his mouth in order to ease the pain, he suddenly found that he was able to understand the speech of birds. These birds told Sigurd that Regin intended to kill him, so the young hero killed Regin first, and made off with all of the gold himself.

The story of the dragon of Modiford starts out with a little girl named Maud. She was walking in the woods one day when she found a bright green baby dragon, smaller than a cucumber. She took it home with her and fed it milk, but as it grew in size, it began to consume chickens and other small animals. When it reached adulthood, it took to eating people—though throughout this process it remained friendly to Maud.

In what seems to be a recurring theme, the people living in the area weren’t too keen on having a man-eating beast in their midst—but they were at a loss as to how they might get rid of it.

There are a number of stories about how the dragon was killed. Most of them involve a convicted criminal who was offered pardon in exchange for slaying the beast. According to one story, he hid in a cider barrel and shot the dragon when it approached. Another story has it that he rigged the barrel with spikes and hooks, and the dragon impaled itself when it attempted to wrap itself around him. Two more stories involve the dragon being ambushed in its sleep—in one instance by the above criminal, and in another instance by a rabble of pitchfork-wielding villagers.

Perhaps the people of Modiford celebrated the dragon’s death a little too enthusiastically, and the details became blurry? We can probably forgive them for that.

There are two versions of the battle of the Hittite Storm God with the dragon-like giant Illuyanka. I will recount my favorite one here, but you can read them both here if you wish. Sadly, we know very little about the details of Hittite mythology, so the story has a few gaps in it (we aren’t told, for example, why the Storm God and the dragon didn’t get along).

During their first battle, Illuyanka the dragon was victorious over the Storm God. The despondent Storm God went to see the Mother God, Inata, to ask for her help in getting revenge. Inata came up with a plan, but she needed some assistance to carry it out—and for this, she went to a human man called Huspashiya. 

Huspashiya agreed to assist the god in return for letting him sleep with her, which she duly did. They then put together a large feast, with quite a significant amount of alcohol, and invited the serpent Illuyanka and all of his family to have his fill. When he was too drunk to move, they proceeded to tie up the serpent and the rest of his family up, allowing the Storm God to come and finish him off.

Huspashiya’s fate wasn’t much better, either. He went to live with his newfound goddess-lover, but was forbidden from looking out of the window. After twenty days of resisting the temptation to do so, he finally couldn’t help himself—and when he looked out, he saw his wife and child. He begged to be allowed to return to them, and . . . that’s all we know for certain, as the original source of the story is damaged from that point onwards. Scholars suspect that he was either killed for disobeying, or granted his wish after being castrated.

The story of the Lambton worm begins in the thirteenth century with a rebellious young boy named John Lambton, the son of a local lord in Durham Country, England. One Sunday, John decided to skip church, instead deciding to go fishing. Despite being warned that skipping church would bring no good, John set himself up for some relaxed angling. After a couple of hours, he caught a small, black, worm-like creature, which had the features of a salamander. Thinking it strange but of little further interest, he threw it into a well and got on with his life.

In adulthood, John joined the crusades as atonement for his youthful transgressions. While he was gone, the worm—by now fully grown—had emerged from the well. It wrapped itself seven times around a local hill, terrorizing villagers by eating their livestock and even snatching small children. The elderly Lord Lambton was able to sedate the worm by offering it twenty gallons of milk a day—but the local impact of the worm’s presence was devastating.

Upon his return from the crusades, John Lambton learned of the giant worm. Many had already tried to slay the beast, but whenever a piece of it was cut away it would simply reattach and heal itself. John sought the advice of a local witch, who advised him to attach spear-points to his armor and to fight the worm in the local river. He did so—and when the worm tried to wrap itself around him, its flesh was torn by the spear points, and the mangled pieces were washed away by the river’s current.

John was able to vanquish the beast, but in doing so he incurred a curse against his family which would last for nine generations: not a single of his descendants was to die peacefully in bed, as long as the curse lasted.

While walking along the river one day, the Shinto storm god Susanoo came across an old couple and their daughter, a young girl. Noticing that both of the couple were in tears, Susanoo enquired as to the cause of their troubles. They explained that they had once had eight daughters, but in each of the last seven years the giant serpent Orochi had eaten one daughter—and was now due to return for their last.

The old man explained that the beast had eight heads, eight tails, and a body the length of eight valleys. If there’s one thing this list has taught us, it’s that the best way for a storm god to slay a dragon is to get it drunk. Susanoo advised the old couple to build a fence with eight gates, and behind each gate to place a bucket of refined liquor. They duly did so, and when the beast arrived, each of its heads gulped down the contents of the buckets, which resulted in the dragon becoming intoxicated. Susanoo proceeded to hack the beast into pieces, turning the River Hi into a river of blood.

This is the only African tale on this list, taking place in what is modern-day Ghana. In the town of Wagadu, in ancient times, the people had made a deal with a dragon called Bida. They fed the dragon ten young maidens each year, and in return Bida made it rain gold three times annually. The town chief Lagarre, grandson of the chief that had originally made the deal, was able to renegotiate this to just one maiden a year in return for the same three rainfalls of gold. Eventually, it became the turn of the most beautiful maiden in the kingdom, Sia Jatta Bari, to be fed to the beast. She was dressed in wedding garb, and led out to the dragon’s lair.

Sia’s lover, Mamadi Sefe Dekote, had other ideas. He rode dutifully with the procession, but secretly harbored a plan of his own. He knew that it was the dragon’s custom to stick its head out of his cave three times, before snatching its meal on the third. As Bida’s head came out for the final time, Mamadi struck the dragon, killing it, and saving Sia. Celebrations all round, right?

Not quite. It turned out that the people had become quite used to the rainfall of gold provided by Bida—so they chased both Mamadi and Sia out of Wagadu. Also, it seems that Sia didn’t love Mamadi quite as much as he loved her, and tricked him into cutting off a finger and a toe. She then declared that she couldn’t love anyone who didn’t possess a full compliment of digits.

Mamadi was understandably upset by this point. He presumably reminded Sia that he’d killed a dragon for her, but ultimately turned to a witch for a love potion, which made Sia fall instantly in love with him. Mamadi then tricked Sia into sleeping with one of his servants—and when she realized what she’d done, she died instantly of pure shame.

Alan is an aspiring writer trying to kick-start his career with an awesome beard and an addiction to coffee. You can hear his bad jokes by reading them aloud to yourself from Twitter where he is @SkepticalNumber or you can email him at mailskepticalnumber@gmail.com.

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For some reason, the world is enthralled with the idea of the impostor. They’re sneaky, deceitful, and devoid of morals—but dang it, they do it with style. For example, one of the most famous impostors in recent history is Frank Abagnale, inspiration for the Spielberg/DiCaprio film Catch Me If You Can. He robbed, cheated, and lied his way into a fortune, but no matter how many checks he forged, you just can’t help rooting for the guy.

In the past we’ve talked about some of the greatest impostors in history, but here’s another installment for your viewing pleasure. These are 10 of the greatest impostors and con men of the 20th century.

Our first entry begins in the final years of the 1800′s and carries over to the leading decade of the 20th century. Cassie Chadwick was born Elizabeth Bigsley in 1857, and it wasn’t long before she embarked on a long and incredibly successful con career. It only took fourteen years to lead to her first arrest—she was picked up after forging checks in Ontario under the claim they they were inherited from a long lost British uncle. The court released her shortly, claiming her to be insane—a dubious accomplishment for a 14-year-old.

As the years progressed, so did Cassie’s schemes. In 1882 she married her first husband, masquerading as a clairvoyant named Madame Lydia DeVere. The high profile wedding, however, brought her past victims out of the woodwork and to her front door, demanding payment for the money she had stolen from them. The marriage lasted less than a year.

Fifteen years and three husbands later, Cassie Chadwick embarked on her most ambitious scam to date, and the one that turned her into a legend—she convinced the world that she was an illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie, the ludicrously wealthy steel and railroad mogul. Over the next eight years, she scammed up to $20 million in bank loans under Carnegie’s name—while the banks themselves were too afraid to ask Carnegie to vouch for the loans for fear of stirring up controversy over his “illegitimate daughter.” The entire scheme collapsed around her in 1904 when she was arrested after one bank called her bluff. She was given 14 years in jail, but in 1907 she died due to heart complications.

It’s hard to fault a man for trying, no matter how devious their intentions may be. And it’s hard to find a man who tried harder than Stanley Clifford Weyman. Unlike most impostors, Weyman wasn’t in it for the money—he wanted the adventure, famously stating: “One man’s life is a boring thing. I lived many lives. I’m never bored.”

In between impersonating navy and military officials, journalists, and the actual U.S. Secretary of State, he also masterminded a meeting between an Afghani princess and Warren Harding, the President of the U.S. See, in 1921, Afghanistan and Britain were in talks to negotiate a peace treaty, and Princess Fatima, of Afghanistan, was visiting the U.S. However, the U.S. government wasn’t acknowledging her official presence.

So what did Weyman do? He visited Princess Fatima under the guise of a Liaison Officer for the State Department and promised that he would arrange a meeting between her and President Harding. All he asked was that she supply $10,000 as a complimentary present to the State Department. But here, where most con men would have taken the money and run, Weyman actually followed through on his promise—he used the $10,000 for first class transport and accommodations for the princess, then lied his way up through the chain of command at the White House until he got to the president himself. When the press released his photo beside the princess and the president, he was recognized and arrested. Why did he do it? Just to see if he could.

It’s rare that an impersonator will manage to make a positive impact on the world and save the lives of the people who come to depend on him. Most impostors are after money or, in the case of Stanley Weyman, excitement. For Ferdinand Demara, impersonation was about filling in gaps, picking up the pieces where a job was needed, whether he had the training for it or not.

Early in his “career,” Demara was a soldier in the military. Not happy with where that was taking him, he decided to fake his own suicide in 1942 and assumed the name of Robert French, then began teaching college psychology at a Pennsylvania university. Every now and then he would move to a different university position under a variety of names. Eventually, though, he was caught and given jail time—not for impersonating anyone, but for deserting the army years earlier.

Out of jail and with the headlines of the Korean War plastered across newspapers, Demara decided to assume the name of an acquaintance, a surgeon named Joseph Cyr. Under his new identity he got a job on the Canadian destroyer HMCS Cayuga and shipped off to Korea. Unfortunately, he turned out to be the only surgeon on the ship, and ended up performing more than sixteen major surgeries—with no formal training. All of his patients recovered. In the biography of Demara’s life, The Great Impostor, Demara claimed that he simply read a surgery textbook before operating.

George Dupre is an interesting case, in that his only real impersonation was of himself. However, the history he actually had and the history he claimed to have were so different that he inadvertently became one of the greatest Canadian war heroes in the years following WWII.

After the war ended, Dupre began traveling across Canada as a public speaker, describing his missions as a spy for the Special Operations Executive, a legendary espionage organization sometimes referred to as the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Dupre wove intricate tales of life behind enemy lines in occupied Paris, working with the underground resistance to overthrow the Nazi Gestapo. He described his harrowing experience as a prisoner of the Gestapo undergoing weeks of physical and psychological torture yet refusing to divulge any information. His story became so widespread that a book was written about it, The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk, and Dupre became an international sensation.

Except that none of it ever happened. With the fame from the book came testimonies from people who had actually served with Dupre in the war. The truth was, Dupre spent the entire war behind a desk in London. It turned out that Dupre had just embellished a few stories for fun, and somehow the entire thing spiraled out of control. Aside from the fame though, Dupre never benefited from the book deal and the public talks—he donated all his proceeds to Scouts Canada. His biography was reclassified as fiction.

Most of the impostors on this list got their start at a young age—few of them achieved notoriety before the age of twenty. David Hampton is now considered one of the youngest successful con artists and impersonators, and his story has since been adapted into the play and film Six Degrees of Separation. His gimmick: impersonating actor Sidney Poitier’s son (Sidney Poitier actually has six daughters and zero sons).

In 1983, at the age of nineteen, David Hampton tried to get into a Manhattan night club with a friend. The bouncers refused to let them in, but when Hampton came back later and told them he was Sidney Poitier’s son, they immediately showed him to the VIP section. Thus, an identity was born. Hammond took to showing up at first class restaurants, claiming that he was meeting his “father.” He would dine, then act disappointed when his father never arrived while simultaneously signing the check in Poitier’s name.

Soon he began to target the wealthy citizens of Manhattan—including Calvin Klein and Gary Sinise, among others. Hampton would introduce himself as David Poitier, then make up a story about how he had been mugged and needed a place to stay until his father arrived the next day. In one of these homes he stole an address book, and took to calling first, claiming that he was a friend of their son/daughter from college.

After Hampton’s story became famous in Six Degrees in 1990, he began traveling the country under various other personas (“David Poitier” wouldn’t exactly fly anymore), playing the impersonation game until 1993, when he passed away from AIDS.

Christian Gerhartsreiter is a German who moved to the U.S. in 1979 in the hopes of getting a job as an actor. His plan worked—but not exactly in the normal sense. A mere eighteen years old with no money, no connections, and no legal visa to be in the States, he decided that the best thing to do would be to get married and obtain a green card through his wife. So that’s what he did—he found a young woman named Amy Duhnke and told her that if he were sent back to Germany he’d be conscripted into the German army to fight the Russians (this was during the Cold War). She agreed to marry him, but the day after the wedding Christian skipped out on the honeymoon and pointed his compass towards California, where his true calling lay.

His true calling, of course, was to become Clark Rockefeller—the faux multimillionaire social butterfly who spent the next two decades—from around 1985 to 2006—claiming to be a member of the illustrious Rockefeller family. The plan worked exceedingly well until his wife Sandra Boss (of 11 years we should add), began to get suspicious that he was not, in fact, a Rockefeller. The married couple had been living exclusively on Sandra’s income the entire time, while “Clark” pursued high profile social connections.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Sandra Boss discovered the lie, filed for divorce in 2006, and left with their daughter. Two years later, Clark was arrested for kidnapping his daughter in Boston, sparking a whirlwind investigation into this mysterious German’s true identity. As it turned out, he also killed a guy.

Stanley Kubrick is an American director who’s something of a legend among movie buffs. The words “greatest director in history” have been thrown around, along with the words “not British” and “heavily bearded.” Those last two are particularly important, because in the early 90′s the reclusive Kubrick began to show up in social clubs in London—only now, he was clean shaven and decidedly English. The “new” Kubrick was actually a man named Alan Conway, who had taken to using the name for the social status it imparted.

Despite the changes in his physical appearance, and reportedly having next to no knowledge of any of Kubrick’s films, Alan Conway (real name Eddie Alan Jablowsky) managed to keep the charade going. Since the real Kubrick hadn’t been seen in public more than a handful of times in the past 15 years, it couldn’t have been terribly difficult—and even people who had actually met Kubrick in real life were fooled by the act. The film critic Frank Rich was famously convinced and, based on Conway’s behavior, came to the conclusion that Kubrick was gay (which Conway was).

Unfortunately, this story would be hilarious if it wasn’t quite so tragic. Conway was a violent alcoholic, according to his son, and his impersonations were closer to fanatical delusions than any carefully calculated plan. Conway passed away in 1998 from heart problems.

In the past, masquerading as one of the captains of industry seemed to be the surest way to a quick million. These days, the Hollywood faces are the new American royalty. In 1992, Tehran native Anoushirvan Fakhran came to the States on a student visa, and spent the next several years living a lavish lifestyle, sprinkled with privileges usually reserved for celebrities and visiting royalty. That’s because nobody knew him by the name of Anoushirvan—to everyone who knew him, he was Jonathan Taylor Spielberg, nephew of director Stephen Spielberg.

In fact, he had even gone so far as to officially change his name to Spielberg in 1997. Then, in 1998, an anonymous woman placed a call to Paul VI high school in Fairfax, Virginia. She claimed to represent Steven Spielberg, and said that his nephew would be filming a movie in the area and wanted to research high school life. So the school allowed “Jonathan” to attend free of tuition, and gave him an official transfer from his previous school, the fictitious Beverly Hills Private School for Actors. Jonathan Spielberg was now a student.

During this time, Jonathan and his mother were living in a posh apartment in Fairfax Village, and Jonathan drove a BMW to school, often parking in the school principal’s reserved space. Nobody complained; he was related to a celebrity. Eventually though, the scheme backfired—Jonathan stopped attending classes, and the school tried to reach Steven Spielberg to find out why. Jonathan was arrested and sentenced to 11 months in jail for forging documents.

Steven Russell is probably closer to an escape artist than an impostor, but the means through which he masterminded his many prison escapes are the stuff of legend. In 1990, Russell lost his job and, instead of searching for new work, faked an accident and sued the company. This landed him his first prison sentence, and his first chance to escape. In 1992, Russell impersonated a prison guard by changing his clothes and just walking right out of the prison.

On his second arrest, which was for embezzling nearly $1 million from a medical company, Russell was given a $950,000 bail—he couldn’t pay it, so he simply called the courthouse, told them he was a judge, and reduced the bail to $45,000, which he promptly paid. Unfortunately, he was quickly tracked down again once the error was discovered, and Russell found himself facing a 40 year sentence for the previous embezzlement charges.

So he escaped again—this time by coloring his prison uniform with several dozen green markers until it resembled surgical scrubs. Again, he walked right out the front door. And again, he was quickly found and arrested. So this time Russell typed up fake medical records on a typewriter in his cell, and, through judicious use of laxatives, convinced the prison guards he was dying of AIDS. Then he called the prison and said that he was a doctor looking for volunteers to test a new AIDS treatment. When the prison warden announced the news, Russell promptly volunteered.

The next time he was caught, he faked a heart attack and was taken to a hospital under guard of FBI agents. So he asked to use the phone—and called the very agents guarding him under the guise of an FBI detective to let them know that they no longer needed to guard him. Russell is currently back in prison, looking forward to his release date in the year 2140. The film I love you Phillip Morris is based on his exploits.

The Rockefellers just can’t catch a break. Before the German Clark Rockefeller, there was Christophe Rocancourt, the “French Rockefeller.” Christophe started his scams big, and kept the ball rolling his entire career—his first scam was faking a property deed in Paris, and then selling that deed for $1.4 million.

With his wallet freshly stuffed, he then hopped the ocean to the United States and began fraternizing with the Hollywood fat cats, claiming to be a French relative of the Rockefellers. Through this alias (and others), he convinced multiple people to fund his fictitious projects. Most of the time, he never even had to make any concrete claims—he would just show up at a party and make a vague mention of his mother, who might happen to be an actress one week, or a famous producer the next week.

In 2006, he was interviewed by Dateline, and claimed that he had, all said and done, scammed about $40 million in his lifetime. His modus operandi was to convince someone wealthy that he was working on a large investment, but needed some capital to get it off the ground. The person would give Rocancourt the money, and Rocancourt would disappear. He famously convinced Jean Claude Van Damme, the action star, to produce a movie of his.

He was arrested for fraud in 1998, but has continued his scams well into the 21st century. As of 2009 he was in jail in Vancouver, where he told reporters, “I never steal. Never. I lied, but I never stole.”

The post 10 Greatest Impostors Of The 20th Century appeared first on Listverse.

The average person has an intelligence quotient of 100. An unsourced claim gives O. J. Simpson’s IQ as 89. Marilyn vos Savant has been cited in the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest measured IQ of 228, a number that can be sourced back to…Marilyn vos Savant. But Savant’s gifts to mankind’s progress include a “Dear Abby” style newspaper column, and a few books mostly compiled from this column. Here are eight reasons why your IQ really doesn’t matter all that much.

The first standardized attempt to measure the human’s mental capacity was courtesy of Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, who formulated a test to measure verbal ability. Binet and Simon only wanted to use the test to find those children who suffered from mental retardation. This experiment was furthered by William Stern in 1912 to compare a child’s mental age with his or her chronological age. Stern coined the term “intelligence quotient.” The score is calculated by dividing the mental age by the chronological age, then multiplying the quotient by 100. If a child of 10 years old has a mental age of 5, his IQ is 50. Determining his mental age is the difficult part.

Once an average person reaches the age of 15 or so, the IQ test is no longer important, since the mental age has reached maturity. But an average child of 5 should have a mental age of 5. If that child has a mental age of 1, he has a below-average IQ. The two most popular tests used today are the Weschler and the Standford-Binet. On the latter, Albert Einstein (who will make quite a few appearances in this list) scored a now famous 186 as a child. On the former, the same score registers as a 160. The problem with either number is that the tests were not originally conceived for the purpose of scoring this high.

Extremely high scores are routinely inaccurate. 180 on the Standford-Binet is typically the top of the scale, and anything measured over it has few precedents for comparison and should be taken with a grain of salt. Suffice to say, the test-taker has a high degree of adaptability, versatility, and fast retention of information. But is a 186 “smarter” than a 176?

All the various tests can do is discover the very low scorers among children, and these scores are quite accurate. The difference between a 79 and a 69 is highly noticeable, and the test can determine which is which and the reasons why. Given our current understanding of intelligence, the only feasible method by which to score extremely high IQs accurately is to make the questions harder. Spatial reasoning diagrams have many more moving parts and last longer; jumbled words are longer; arithmetical sequences have more gaps. But if you can perform these mental feats on simple challenges, the only difference between them and the more difficult ones is the time you require to solve them. If so, then disregarding the time you need to finish the test, your score ought to be the same. You did the same kind of work. If you deserve a bonus for the extra difficulty, then your score has become arbitrary.

Quite a few IQ tests measure “general knowledge.” Here’s an actual IQ question this lister came across when he was 5: “What color is an apple?” Well, the only apples this lister had seen in his first 5 years were green. Got that one wrong. There are quite a few colors of apples. Some are more than one color. Mensa’s test includes questions like, “2D is to mobius strip as 3D is to ______.” Google says the answer is “Klein bottle.” Now that we know, are we smarter? Einstein once said that he did not like to clutter up his memory with facts and numbers that he could just look up in a dictionary.

As general knowledge goes, the intent is to ask questions to which everyone on Earth, at an age of 5, should know the answers. There are some questions that fit the bill, like “What is 2 + 2?” but does a correct answer to this question indicate a higher mental capacity in the child? IQ tests have historically tried to eliminate all unfairness, and the only way to do so is to eliminate “general knowledge” questions. One question ths lister encountered on the Internet is, “If you unscramble the letters in CIFAIPC, you would have what?” The choices include the correct answer, “ocean.” This question measures vocabulary, reading, and visual reasoning. But suppose the person taking the test understands English and yet has never heard of the Pacific Ocean.

IQ tests were invented for the purpose of scoring children. We all know that children require a lot of parental discipline to ensure they don’t grow up to be criminals. It always starts innocuously enough with bullying, name-calling, and lording any advantage that can be found over a supposed inferior child. While the children with high IQs are usually deemed the nerds of a group and picked on by the larger, and usually dumber, bullies, the nerds frequently pick on each other as well. Size may not matter, but the group that knows everything about Star Trek will publicly ridicule the individual who wants to fit in but can’t.

Children are mean. They require maturity to grow out of this, and though good parenting is essential, it really only stops with age. This is why parents are usually told that it is a better idea not to inform their children of their IQs. If it’s even one point below the arbitrary average of 100, the child will feel inferior. If it’s well above average, the child will likely lord it over his peers. If it is average, the child will probably still feel inferior.

But then, adults seem to take their IQs very seriously—when it’s in their favor. We have groups around the world like Mensa, the Triple Nine Society, the Prometheus Society, and the Mega Society. The last of these is said to be the most exclusive intellect club in the world. Applicants must score at least 171 on the Standford-Binet test to be accepted. Mensa requires “only” a 132. But what good is it to be a member? The Mega Society does very little that can be described as helpful. They have meetings now and then around the world, and at these meetings, the members just schmooze and congratulate each other. More on this at #1.

The Internet, and so-called “experts” before it, have long propagated some theoretical, famously high IQs across history. They are, of course, utter conjecture, since the IQ, as a notion of measured intellect, and its tests have only been around since the turn of the 20th Century. But if you google “famous high iqs,” you’ll find well known webpage(s) claiming that on the scale that measures an average as 100, and Einstein’s as 160, Leonardo da Vinci “scored” 220. That’s an outright lie for a number of reasons: da Vinci didn’t score anything on a test that had yet to be invented; he might have had a 220, but not because the webpage says so—nobody knows; the numbers on these sites seem to be estimates based on the person’s significance to history, as well as the diversity of their exploits.

Everyone knows da Vinci had his hand in everything. But is that why Einstein scores lower at 160? Einstein is less creative? If you think it’s difficult to measure intellect in terms of the black-and-white mathematics and sciences, imagine measuring a person’s skill in liberal arts. You pick the single genre of the arts. Let us say “literature.” The tests usually measure skill in spatial reasoning, reading, vocabulary, arthmetic, memory and sometimes general knowledge. So in terms of vocabulary, would Shakespeare have a higher IQ than Ernest Hemingway, because Shakespeare uses bigger words in his work? Hemingway had this to say about it, “William Faulkner is of the opinion that because I do not use the 10 dollar words, I don’t know them. Well, we both have Nobel Prizes, so I assure you, I do. But there are older ones, simpler ones, better ones, and those are the ones I use.”

And how do we measure the IQ of Ludwig van Beethoven? He was good at music, but not good at mathematics. His mathematical education stopped at arithmetic. He couldn’t even do intermediate algebra. If he were to take the test, he would probably score low, but the absence of math and science from his mind didn’t hurt his career much. Charles Dickens is said to have had a 180 IQ. Why? Because Nicholas Nickleby is a good story? It is impossible to judge this literature as better than that (within reason), because all liberal arts are subjective endeavors. Justin Bieber has a lot of fans, and a lot of them probably think his music is better than Mozart’s.

Is it fair to say that Stephen Hawking’s estimated 160 deserves to be lower than Isaac Newton’s 190? They both worked in the same fields. But Newton “created” the calculus. Hawking simply works with it. Is that worth a 30 point drop? Andy Warhol was a rather good painter for someone with an 86, although to be fair, he may have answered the questions wrong on purpose, in protest. Who was smarter, Warhol or Jackson Pollock?

Einstein is typically remembered as a poor student when he was young, but that is grossly unfair. By the time he graduated from high school, Einstein had made his poorest showing how fast he answered questions. The German teachers were trained to drill the knowledge into the students by rote, and this was not how Einstein’s brain worked. When asked a question, he thought for a while to remember the answer, then thought some more to be sure of it. This was all it took to come close to failing several times, but he never did. His teachers considered him retarded. One of them just shook his head while Einstein was thinking and said, “Einstein, you will never amount to anything!”

Most IQ tests are timed, which means your speed is part of the score. Even if you answer every question correctly, your slow speed will pull your IQ down a few points, sometimes many. But is speed important in life? If you’re an astronaut working calculus to correct your decaying reentry trajectory before you burn to death, time is more than money, but how many of us will experience such a problem in life? And besides, why not get the math right before you reenter?

We know by now that the popular legend of Einstein the F-student is not true. He never flunked a course in his life, and in high school, he got very good grades. But for someone who redefined the entire 20th Century, whose last name has become a byword for “genius,” you would expect straight As, and Einstein did not get them. His report card for junior/senior year in high school is well know across the Internet, and it shows grades of 6, or A, in algebra, geometry, applied geometry, physics, and history. He scored 5 in chemistry, Italian, and German, a 3 in French, and 4 in geography and art. Most of them fair grades, but then, his strongest suits are obvious.

IQ tests typically measure the scientific and mathematical disciplines very well because you’re either right or wrong. There is no gray area. In this regard, it makes sense why Einstein would score a 186. He had a lot of talent for math. But while in elementary and middle schools, he scored a solid 3 to 4, or about a C, in most linguistic subjects, even his own language. If the test he took was balanced, with focus given to the liberal arts, his scores in these subjects certainly pulled his overall score down, which means his mathematical brain probably scored a lot higher than 186. On top of all this, Einstein failed his entrance exam to get into the Swiss Federal Polytechnical School. He aced the math and science sections, but failed French, Italian, history, and geography. He had to spend a year in a run-of-the-mill vocational college until they let him retake the exam. So how can we trust the single number?

If Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali were to have taken the same IQ test, which one would have scored higher? Ali seems the more reasonable answer, but this is strange inasmuch as we know very little of the mens’ intellectual capabilities. They didn’t work in mathematics or mechanical engineering. They were boxers. They made millions by beating people up. Ali won two of their three encounters, but don’t count Frazier as a footnote to Ali’s glory. Frazier was the only man to beat Ali in his prime. He did it on points and he knocked Ali down.

What do you think Frazier would have scored on an IQ test? An average 100? But a high IQ doesn’t enable a person like Einstein to box well. Einstein had no desire to box, or do very much that is physical. Perhaps it is fair to say that there is such a thing as a “physical IQ.” Boxing is a sport of motor skills. These are controlled by the brain, and some people are born with an incredible knack for refining them with ease. Franz Liszt had extreme motor skills in his hands and feet.

If two boxers train in the same way, and one of them very quickly learns how to duck, jab, dance, and counterpunch, while the other simply can’t get it, we see the existence of “talent.” IQ tests are used to measure universal truths in mental acuity. Is it fair to say that the boxer with more aptitude for the sport is the more intelligent of the two? IQ tests do not root out such natural prodigies.

Of course intelligence is rather important to life as a human, and the higher one’s is, the better, but only if it is put to good use. The film Good Will Hunting deals with this requirement to use one’s “gift” for the improvement of mankind and the world. Everyone knows Einstein was a genius. But is he famous because of his 186 IQ? Or did his papers on Relativity and the photoelectric effect have anything to do with it? He was also rather involved in the creation of the atomic bomb. Time Magazine calls him the Man of the 20th Century.

Ever heard of William James Sidis? He lived from 1898 to 1944 and is reputed to have had a “ratio IQ” between 250 and 300. This IQ is a matter of very heated debate to this day, because the sources don’t agree and all of them are hearsay. There is, however, no doubt that he had an extremely fast aptitude for learning anything. By his 20s, he was able to speak in over 40 languages, and claimed to be able to learn one in a day. He invented his own language, called Vendergood, which was a mishmash of Ancient Greek, Latin, and about 8 other European languages. J. R. R. Tolkien did the very same thing with Elvish, and spoke at least 30 languages. But we don’t think of Tolkien as having an IQ above 250, and yet he wrote a lot more than Sidis, and Tolkien’s literature is popular. Sidis invented a rotary calendar that would always be accurate even to the leap year. But why is that important? We already have working calendars. With a 300 IQ, it’s a shame he didn’t invent the time machine or a real lightsaber.

Rene Descartes, probably another high IQ holder, famously wrote, “Cogito, ergo sum.” “I think, therefore, I am.” While this lister definitely agrees, he has always thought of this statement as incomplete. William Sidis proves it. He squandered his natural talents on the trivial. Einstein reached the heights of his greatness with “only” a 186. What could Sir Isaac Newton have done with a 300? Perhaps the phrase should be, “Cogito, ergo sum. Facio, ergo recordaremur.” “I think, therefore I am. I do, therefore I will be remembered.”

FlameHorse is a writer for Listverse. He has no idea what his IQ is.

The post 8 Reasons The IQ Is Meaningless appeared first on Listverse.

We’ve all heard of the Pyramids of Giza—thousands of years old, and just about the most famous buildings of all time. But ancient Egypt doesn’t have a monopoly on pyramid construction; mankind ever since has been pretty keen on the idea, coming up with all kinds of different twists on the same general theme. Here are some of the greatest alternative pyramids we’ve managed over the years (including a few we didn’t quite pull off):

Famously, the Egyptian pyramids were built to host the body of the king. They became temples to the dead, and a new source of worship. That’s all very nice—but perhaps a little elitist. That was the thought of Thomas Willson in 1829, when he proposed a new solution to London’s ongoing problem with graveyard overpopulation: a pyramid mausoleum which could contain the corpses of five million people, and which, if completed, would have been ninety-four floors high (by comparison, the Chrysler Building has just seventy-seven floors). And it would have been located in the middle of London.

Willson thought the idea compact, hygienic, and ornamental, and he hoped that people would come from afar to have picnics and admire it. He also calculated that it would bring in a tidy profit of around ten million pounds. Not all envisaged the idea in the same way, however: one historian has described it as a “nightmarish combination of megalomaniacal Neo-Classicism and dehumanized Utilitarian efficiency”, which is an old-fashioned way of saying “this stinks.” In the end, public opinion turned against it—Londoners most likely deciding that they would rather picnic a park than beneath a colossal pyramid of death.

We associate the Romans with amphitheaters, temples, and statues—but one thing we don’t tend to think of is pyramids. Well, think again. Smack-bang in the middle of Rome is a two-thousand-year-old, 121-foot (37m)-high pyramid.

The Romans had only recently made Egypt a province, and were obviously impressed with their huge tombs to ancient kings. “I like the sound of that,” a Roman magistrate called Gaius Cestius probably said—and had one built for himself, Roman-style, upon his death. Alas, as with the Egyptian pyramids, advertising your tomb in such grand style isn’t always a good idea; both his body and the pyramid’s other contents were plundered in antiquity.

What do you do when you want to build a sixty-five-floor pyramid in the middle of crowded Mexico City? Why, you turn it upside-down and build it underground, of course. That’s the proposal of a Mexican architectural firm. They want to give the city’s main square a glass floor, and build a pyramid of offices, homes, and shops underneath it.

Mexico has a rich history of pyramid building from the Maya civilization, and according to one of the architects, the proposed pyramid would “dig down through the layers of cities to uncover our roots.” Because there’s nothing like building a vast, hi-tech underground shopping centre to discover your roots. At a projected $800 million, the city hasn’t yet expressed much enthusiasm for the idea.

What’s the biggest pyramid in the world? The Great Pyramid of Giza? No—there’s actually one that’s twice as big.

Though not as tall as the Great Pyramid of Egypt, the Great Pyramid of Cholula—which also has the less catchy name of Tlachihualtepetl—is much wider. It can be found in central-east Mexico, and was built over a period of a thousand years, from the third century B.C. to the ninth century A.D.  

Some say that it was built by a giant called Xelhua, but archaeologists, predictably, disagree. They claim that the pyramid was constructed by a series of ancient Mexican civilizations, who added layer upon layer over the years. These days it’s quite overgrown, and doing its best impression of a hill—so much so that the Spanish built a church on it in the sixteenth century.

Everybody thinks of Egypt as the pyramid capital of the world, but there’s another country that has twice as many pyramids: Sudan. Located directly to the south of modern Egypt, they were mostly built around the third century B.C.—around eight hundred years after the last Egyptian pyramids were built.

There are more than two hundred and fifty of them, ranging from twenty feet (6m) to one hundred and twenty feet (36m) high. Many of these have only been discovered in the last few years, suggesting that either the Sudanese were fantastic at hiding their pyramids, or that archaeologists prefer more glamorous locations in which carry out their digging.

It may not be much to look at these days, but the mausoleum pyramid of the first Emperor of China is deadly. It was built from 246 B.C. to 208 B.C., supposedly by as many as 700,000 men—and it was filled with more traps than would fit into an Indiana Jones movie.

It was supposed to be a representation of the Emperor’s palace and universe, and in this vein he had all his childless concubines killed and buried with him. Lovely. Workers, too, were buried alive, in order to preserve the pyramid’s secrets, and trees and grass were planted to make it seem like a hill. The Chinese are yet to excavate, claiming that archaeology isn’t sophisticated enough to do the job properly. But it could well be that they’re simply scared of the traps; for instance, it’s known that the pyramid was filled with a moat of mercury. More than two millennia later, mercury readings from the site are still dangerously high.

Being an architect is tough work. You spend months getting your drawings and measurements perfect—only to have the builders read your plans the wrong way round. That looks like what happened in 1983, for the construction of the 262-foot (80m)-high Slovak Radio Building, in Bratislava, Slovakia. Inside is a concert hall—and it proudly boasts one of the largest organs in Slovakia. If you’re visiting in a group, make sure everyone is spread around evenly; it looks like it could topple at any moment.

Sure, it didn’t last long—but for a while, New York had its own pyramid. At the end of World War One, thousands of helmets from captured German soldiers were taken back to America, and in a somewhat macabre victory display, they were piled up into a pyramid at Grand Central Terminal.

Somehow, we don’t think this would be received very well today. Still, it’s a touch more civilized than the similar actions of fourteenth-century Central Asian emperor Tamerlane. During one siege, he built a pyramid of 90,000 human skulls in front of a besieged city to intimidate them. We imagine that it worked.

Pyramids of death don’t die that easily. In 2007, a group of German entrepreneurs unveiled their designs for a 1900-foot (580m)-tall pyramid to house the bodies of up to forty million dead people. It would also be multi-colored, as if to compensate for the fact that it would be filled with dead bodies. For around $1000, anybody could sign up to have their ashes encased in a block after they die—and the color would be of their choosing. At around ten times the size of the original Great Pyramid, it would have almost literally cast a shadow over the neighboring villages.

Remarkably, the group were given $115,000 of funding from the German government to pursue the idea; since then, however, the plan seems to have faded due to lack of interest and local objection to having a gigantic multi-colored pyramid full of dead people on their doorstep. But don’t worry: if you’re interested, you can still sign up here.

Why restrict pyramid building to our own planet? The Curiosity rover sent by NASA to examine Mars found something rather curious. This pyramid looks like it’s been copied from the ancient Egyptian ones—or perhaps it’s the other way round.

NASA scientists say that the pyramid is most likely the product of wind erosion; but in the minds of ancient aliens theorists, it’s “hard evidence” that our world today has been shaped by mystical space aliens from Mars. One thing is for sure, however: if the aliens who built this rock were the ones who visited Earth, they must have been pretty tiny. The Pyramid of Mars is about the same size as a football.

N. Christie is currently traveling the world to determine once and for all what the Seven Wonders of the World really are.

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We’ve all had “that” journey: the one which saw us miss our flight, get snowed in somewhere in Delaware, and which ended up with us being forced to spend the night warming ourselves with a cigarette lighter. But no matter how awful our worst journeys might have been, they just don’t compare with the following eight trips from hell. You may say that missing Christmas with your family “killed you”—but at least that wasn’t literal. The same cannot be said of:

In late 1957, the Soviets needed a snappy follow-up to Sputnik. Given thirty days by the Kremlin to come up with something impressive, or else to get packing for Siberia, Russian scientists decided to do the only logical thing: send a stray dog into space.

On October 31 that year, “Laika” was placed into a narrow rocket and left on a frozen launching pad for three days. In all likelihood, this was the highlight of her trip; the actual lift-off subjected her to enough G-Force to push her heart rate into the ‘danger’ area. At the same time, a malfunction caused the rocket’s thermal control system to shut down, essentially turning the cabin into the space-borne equivalent of a sealed car in a sun-baked parking lot. Within five hours, Laika had become both the first creature to reach orbit, and the first creature to die in orbit: a bitter consolation prize rendered even worse by her patent inability to understand it.

During the Winter of 1719, Swedish Lieutenant-General Carl Gustaf Armfeldt was stuck in Norway with 6,000 battle-weary soldiers. In a desperate attempt to make it home, Armfeldt ordered his men back across the Tydal Mountain range—a useful shortcut into Sweden, provided it isn’t midwinter and your troops aren’t carrying summer equipment.

What followed was one of the biggest logistical screw-ups in military history: the first leg of the journey saw two hundred men die of exposure as the army scrambled for shelter in a tiny village. Rather than be put off by the screaming agony all around him, Armfeldt decided that the best course was to carry on—right into the heart of a blizzard.

In the horror that followed, frostbite set in, horses perished, equipment was burnt for warmth, and wolves descended on hapless victims. By the time the remnants of the army had finally reached Sweden on January 15, nearly four thousand men were dead, with another six hundred maimed for life. Because life laughs in the face of justice, Armfeldt was “punished” for his incompetence with a massive promotion.    

Burke and Wills were the Laurel and Hardy of exploration. Tasked in 1860 with finding a land route from Melbourne to Australia’s north coast, the duo set out with such ‘essential’ supplies as 1,500 pounds (680kg) of sugar, a filing cabinet, a heavy wooden table and matching chairs, and a giant gong. In normal circumstances, you’d like to think that God would have taken pity on their amusing incompetence. But Victorian Australia was not “normal circumstances.”

Having timed their trip to coincide with a blisteringly hot summer, the two quickly ran out of supplies, temper, and luck. The original party splintered, with mass-desertions leading to Burke and Wills running for the coast almost entirely by themselves. When they finally got there, their goal was obscured by miles of mangrove swamps – meaning they technically failed, as well as dying in the process. A year or so after setting out, the two explorers expired over ninety miles (145km) from safety, having accomplished nothing and wasted £60,000 of public money in their very successful suicide attempt.

Any trip that ends with you eating a significant proportion of your loved ones is never going to wind up on a list of “10 Loveliest Journeys.” But did you know the Donner trip was awful even before the cannibalism began?

It’s true: the party had every sign of being totally doomed from the start. For one thing, the guy they were meant to be following across the brand new trail turned out to be a fruitcake. Rather than guide them through the mountains, he left letters tacked to trees and generally led them into areas so dangerous you’d swear it was an assassination attempt. This included the Great Salt Lake Desert—an area of the world so inhospitable that even the Elder Gods fear it. Unsurprisingly, this slowed them down.

Secondly, local native tribes decided to start killing their animals like crazy—an inconvenience made worse by the simmering tensions within the group. This leads nicely to number three: they all hated each other. No kidding: two members of the group even had a whip/knife duel at one point. With that sort of animosity, the cannibalism was probably something of a relief.

We all know the phrase “Doctor Livingstone, I presume?” But what you probably didn’t know was the full extent of misery Livingstone had undergone before he heard it.

In 1866, Livingstone became determined to find the source of the Nile. How determined? Well, he leapt in a boat for Africa, leaving everything he loved behind, and vanished for six years—eventually resurfacing up as the comical “pet” of a local tribe. And he really was something like their pet: despite the fact that he was riddled with dysentery, suffering from malaria, and bleeding internally, the tribe who found him would only offer him food on the condition that he eat it in full view, for their amusement. They were certainly amused, falling over themselves with hilarity while watching this stuffy white man scrabble for survival—much as we now watch Bear Grylls sleep inside a camel for cheap kicks.

Those six years didn’t exactly end well, either; shortly after the famous words above were spoken, Livingstone plunged back into the jungle and promptly died—seven years after setting out, and no closer to discovering the source of the Nile.

You know those days when nothing goes your way, and life feels hopeless? Well, Robert Falcon Scott had roughly sixty of those—consecutively. They also culminated in his death, which is something we can’t often say about our own bad days.

The year was 1911. No one had yet reached the South Pole, and the race was on to claim it in the name of one or another superpower. In the British corner was Scott: a Navy officer and scientist with some decidedly odd ideas about Antarctic travel. In the Norwegian corner was Amundsen: an expert in cold weather exploration, and one of the greatest explorers of his day.

Despite being clearly fated to lose, Scott made a game effort for the pole: by which I mean he wasted days collecting rock samples, and arrived five weeks late. The return journey was even worse: the weather reached previously-unrecorded savageness; temperatures dropped so low that the snow became like sand; and an unprecedented super-storm pinned down and killed the team just a few miles from safety. In the end, Scott’s pole attempt achieved nothing, killed everyone involved, and made the British look like fools.

Mungo Park was one of the first Europeans to properly explore central Africa. In the process, he managed to set a standard for awful journeys, against which all future disasters could be measured.

Planning to sail down the Niger River and into the Congo (thought at the time to be joined), Park’s expedition was crippled by dysentery even before it reached the river proper. What followed was an exercise in how not to navigate through nineteenth century Africa. Park’s river boat cruised into various territories where it really wasn’t wanted, often resulting in ferocious attacks. Luckily, the Europeans had enough firepower to save their skins—at least until the boat got snagged on a rock.

Thousands of miles from safety, outgunned and outnumbered, Park’s crew were massacre by arrows, leaving Park no choice but to jump into the rushing river. Unsurprisingly, this resulted in his immediate death by drowning—a fact which sadly escaped his son, who died on an expedition to rescue his father some eleven years later.

This is it: the granddaddy of all nightmare journeys. In 1914, Ernest Shackleton set off for Antarctica. Before long, his ship became trapped in pack ice, which forced the crew to make a perilous journey across the ice to the only solid ground for miles: a desolate lump of rock called Elephant Island. And that’s when shit got real.

With no other options, Shackleton organized a desperate expedition to the island of South Georgia: eight hundred miles north, across storm-lashed seas. Not your ordinary storm-lashed seas, either: Shackleton reported waves bigger than any he’d seen in two decades of sailing. Ice gripped the boat and sea-spray drenched the occupants, and sleep was impossible. It took fourteen days to reach their destination—and the journey wasn’t over yet.

Thanks to the unfavorable ocean currents, the team was forced to land on the wrong side. Since it was impossible to sail round to safety, they were forced to cross the harsh interior on foot, without maps, more or less navigating through guesswork. After fighting their way for three days through thick fog over mountains, they finally reached humanity—at which point Shackleton very nearly slipped and fell to his death. But he didn’t, and here we come to the uplifting bit: everyone survived. In the face of the harshest conditions on Earth, Shackleton managed to keep every single one of his men alive and to bring them home. So remember that next time you’re having the “journey from hell.”

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Saber-toothed tigers never fail to capture our imagination. They’re an (albeit extinct) example of just how terrifying teeth can get—but as we’ll find out, the dangers of extreme dentition aren’t merely confined to the past. In this list, we’ll take a look at the most dangerous, bizarre, and shocking teeth you could ever hope to avoid encountering:

There are some animals so bizarre and disturbing that we begin to question how evolution managed to create such creatures. The four species of babirusa possess exceedingly bizarre weaponry, with which they carry out acts of aggression.

Native to Indonesia, these “Deer Pigs” not only possess massive lower canines that curl, fang-like, over the upper jaw—but their upper canines also come in backwards, pairing with the lower tusks and curling back towards the head. Males slash each other with their sabers during vicious mating disputes. The upward direction allows them to be effective in combat, but if the Babirusa fails to grind them down, they may grow into the animal’s skull—with fatal results.

Yes—saber-toothed deer. The thought is so strange and terrifying that one might be tempted to dismiss it as fantasy. In fact, several species of ungulate known as “musk deer”, native to Eurasia, possess massive fangs, which develop from outgrowths of the canine tooth.

Musk deer fangs extend several inches past their lower jaw. Unlike the infamous cats of the distant past, musk deer go to battle against other males with their canine sabers, sinking them into each other during mating disputes. The creatures are genetically distinct from true deer (cervids), and are named after the powerful scent they produce to mark their territory.

Back when the saber-toothed tiger was still roaming around on land, the terrifying payara was evolving exactly the same weaponry for domination of the rivers—but in reverse. Growing to lengths of more than four feet (1.2m), payara stalk the waters of the Amazon, sinking their three-to-four-inch fangs through the vital organs of their prey.

As the stricken prey sinks towards the bottom, the payara’s cavernous jaws engulf it. Unlike most saber-toothed animals, its fangs remain entirely inside its mouth, sliding into two holes in the upper jaw. The ghastly appearance and potential danger of a bite from the “vampire characin” sends chills through the spine of even the most seasoned fisherman.

At first glance, the goosander looks like a typical waterfowl; but when feeding ducks at the pond, you might not want to offer your hand to the members of this unusual species. As the largest of the “Sawbills” of the genus Mergus, the goosander inhabits rivers, estuaries, and park lakes throughout Eurasia, Canada, and the USA.

Extending from its bill are more than one hundred and fifty razor-sharp teeth, curved backwards, which can slice through the bodies of fish like a hot knife in butter. A bird with teeth is always going to be an anomaly—but even more eerily, this dinosaurian “devil duck” may at times saw up small mammals, and even other birds, as though it were some form of aquatic raptor.

The fact that an animal is a herbivore should never tempt you into the belief that it poses no danger to you. Some plant eaters still have particularly wicked canine teeth.

Take the familiar and apparently blasé dromedary camel, for instance. Although this species has long been used as a pack animal and grazer, those thick lips hide impressive teeth that reach over three inches (7.5cm) in length. With such massive jaws and sharp teeth, it is easy to understand how owners have been killed—sometimes in their sleep—by camels with a mind for revenge. It is well within their power to crush a human skull. Fatal bites, such as the one recently reported in China, may also occur during mating season, when the animals are defensive and territorial.

This is the only extinct species on this list. The helicopron was a shark, twenty feet (6m) in length, which used its enormous teeth in a manner unlike that of any known living creature. Attached to a circular muscle, the shark’s mouth apparatus would shoot out and shred prey into bite-sized pieces, much like an actual chainsaw.

The shark’s bizarre form of dentition was misunderstood by scientists for years, before the strange and disturbing truth was eventually revealed. The two-inch (5cm)-long teeth were tightly packed in a descending spiral, ensuring that the prey was torn to pieces with great speed.

The “unicorn of the sea” was afforded mythical status by explorers and researchers—until the moment when the bizarre creature was properly documented and found to be real.

In a bizarre twist of physiology, this relatively small, thirteen-foot (4m)-long whale developed a lethal “spear” atop its head, which could be used during territorial disputes and in self-defense. Occasionally, it is used to break up ice in the whale’s arctic habitat.

In a departure from the norm of symmetry in the animal kingdom, the narwhal’s enormous weapon is actually a modified right canine tooth that angles forwards and extends through the animal’s forehead. The narwhal has no other teeth in its oddly-shaped jaws, but on occasion, the left canine socket may sprout a second “tusk,” sometimes of equal length to the first.

Baboons are the largest monkeys on Earth, filling out at more than eighty pounds (36kg). Despite being around half the size of most humans, the average baboon’s fang-like canines often reach two inches (5cm) in length—even longer than the teeth of most adult lions. Although these simian sabers appear fit to kill even the most intimidating prey, they are more often used in mating season fights among rival males—suggesting that it was sexual selection which led to the development of oversized fangs. But this doesn’t afford much comfort to those who stray into baboon territory.

The hippopotamus may reach a length of more than sixteen feet (5m), and can put on an incredible nine thousand pounds (4000kg) in weight, making it the third-most massive land animal. The hippopotamus (to avoid the contentious plural) also has the largest canines of any land animal, with two sword-like teeth that reach a whopping sixteen inches (40cm) in length.

Essentially, we are dealing with a truck-sized river monster with teeth capable of running through two humans in one bite. And we grew up thinking that crocodiles were our biggest enemies on the Nile… 

In one notable case, a tour guide was partially swallowed by a hippopotamus, and his arm was lost. And in a final fascinating twist, genetic research has shown that these saber-toothed creatures are relatives of whales, rather than pigs as once thought.

With a name like that, anything is possible—this is one fish you do not want to meet on a diving trip. Reaching well over two feet (60cm) in length, these tropical reef inhabitants can be found in shallow waters. They are known to fiercely defend their territories against intruders, including human explorers. Triggerfish teeth—their purpose being to crush rock-hard coral—are shockingly sharp and powerful, and appear almost human-like.

Triggerfish teeth are unusual in that they are straight yet extremely thin. This makes them exceptionally sharp, yet they’re also extremely strong, and resilient to damage.

Ron Harlan investigates of the mysteries of nature and the bizarre findings that often crop up on this planet. He is a freelance writer and student of science.

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Turns out the world isn’t all about lions, giraffes, dogs, and cats. Our planet contains many animals that are just now being discovered by scientists. Not only at the bottom of the ocean, either; a six-foot-long tree lizard and a new kind of African antelope have been among the discoveries so far this year. Here are ten animals—both recently discovered and otherwise—which you should know about:

The Angora rabbit is the product of hundreds of years of domestic breeding; generation after generation of humans have bred it for its wool. Its appearance can be described with any number of metaphors: a cat that touched a power line; a cotton ball with a face; and a sheep with a straightener, among them.

There are actually multiple breeds of this rabbit, and they were very popular among French royalty.

The dumbo octopus can be found at really, really deep parts of the ocean. Seven thousand meters deep, to be more precise. It’s not called the dumbo octopus because of its intelligence, either; it’s thus named because it actually uses its ears to swim. 

Despite being one of the only octopus species that swallows its victims whole, we have to admit that these guys are pretty cute. We don’t need to fear for ourselve,s either; he’s only about twenty centimeters in length at his full size. Apart from that, scientists don’t know much else.

The rather hideous blobfish isn’t a particularly fast swimmer. In fact, it doesn’t really have much going for it at all; it hangs about at the bottom of the ocean, waiting for its micro-organism dinner to drift by. It doesn’t even have to swim most of the time, as its body tissue is slightly less dense than water, allowing it to float at the bottom of the ocean.

But how does it avoid being eaten? Well, it turns out that the blobfish doesn’t even taste very good; in fact, it’s inedible for humans. They’re still endangered, however, since overfishing leads to large numbers of them being hauled out of the ocean at a fast rate. We can’t help but feel a little sorry for the blobfish.

The kakapo is a New Zealand parrot, which owes its existence to the lack of native mammalian predators on the islands. Among its numerous qualities, the kakapo smells weird, barks like a dog, and is nocturnal. Its numbers have been declining ever since Europeans brought dogs and cats to New Zealand, and it is now critically endangered.

Let’s list some general characteristics of the olm: it has three toes on its front limbs, and two toes on its back limbs; it is blind; it lives to one hundred; and it can go ten years without food.

That’s one remarkable creature. In addition to all that, olms have great hearing and olfactory systems. Its olfactory system is so well made, in fact, that it can sense quantity of small organic organisms around it. Many fisherman are said to have developed a belief in sea monsters, after catching one of these creatures.

The matamata turtle’s shell and head may look extremely tough—and probably are—but they are actually designed primarily for camouflage. Just imagine if you were looking at this guy from above; he would be very difficult to distinguish from the bottom of a creek. You would also get a fairly nasty surprise if you were to step on one; although they’re rather harmless, the creep-factor of camouflaged matamata turtles surely approaches that of spiders or snakes.

The barreleye in the picture above is one of the only ones ever seen alive. They have been documented since 1939; but most of the time, nets or lines have pierced the fluid bubble that makes this fish so unique.
 So why exactly does this fish have a transparent head? Well, it essentially functions like a cockpit. Its advanced eyesight can be directed backwards and upwards through a swiveling of the eyes, allowing it to see prey and predators alike.

Tarsiers are peculiar creatures, which stand at a diminutive height of five inches. Most of their diet is comprised of insects, but they have been known to jump from tree to tree in search of heedless birds. They’re also nocturnal, and move incredibly fast with the help of their dextrous fingers (and long tail). Females usually have about one little baby tarsier per year. Much like owls, they’re able to swivel their heads 180 degrees.

I couldn’t find much information on the flying squid, because many people mistake it for flying fish. Only within the last twenty years has the flying squid begun to be seriously discussed in academic circles.

It has been recently confirmed by scientists that a kind of flying squid indeed exists, and is known as the red, or neon, flying squid. We don’t know how they jump out of the water, or why. It’s possible that their motives are similar to those of regular flying fish—but they’re very hard to track down, so we can’t be sure just yet.

Darwin’s bark spiders were discovered as recently as 2009. Interestingly, their silk is much stronger than the silk of other spiders that have previously been studied. It is even ten times stronger than kevlar (which is used to make bulletproof vests).

Somehow, these spiders manage to string their webs across rivers. One can only guess at how they manage to do so; it’s possible that they float across in the breeze.

The best way to study them is by boat, because that’s the only way scientists can analyze their behavior up close. They eat bees, dragonflies, and mayflies (up to thirty-two mayflies have been found in one web at the same time).

Kevin Shaw is a not-so-intelligent student who is trying desperately to understand the cause of oppression and hatred all over the world.

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Very few science fiction stories would be complete without the staples of the genre—laser rifles, robots, and above all, flying cars. Intrinsically distinct from aircraft, flying cars are defined by their ability to perform equally well on the ground as in the air. Indeed, the popular image of a flying car looks no different from a normal auto on the ground—it just happens to be able to fly, at least if you push the right button.

Well, the twentieth century certainly wasn’t short on innovation—and it should come as no surprise that we’ve made a few decent attempts at flying cars over the years. Some were genius, others hilariously misguided, but they all add an extra little pinch of flavor to the legacy of our era. Here are ten amazing examples of flying cars from over the years.

The Curtiss AutoPlane is pretty much the first glimpse the world got of a flying car, outside the pages of fiction. In 1917, an aviation engineer named Glenn Curtiss dissected one of his own airplane designs and slapped some of the pieces onto an aluminum Model T. The airplane it was based on was called the Curtiss Model L trainer, a triplane (three rows of wings) with a one-hundred-horsepower engine (which is about as powerful as a decent tractor).

Like a car, the front two tires could be turned with a steering wheel inside the cabin, and it was propelled on the ground and in the air by a propeller attached to the back. Unfortunately, the “limousine of the air” never really flew—by all accounts, the most it could manage was a series of short hops before it was discontinued at the start of WWI.

This flying car is almost a legend, and besides this photo and a brief mention of the vehicle in a newspaper clipping from Andalusia, Alabama, it might as well have not existed at all. According to the story, the photo above is of Jess Dixon; it was supposedly taken sometime around 1940. Although it’s considered a flying car by aviation history buffs, the machine is actually closer to a “roadable helicopter,” due to the two overhead blades spinning in opposite directions. In other words, it’s a gyrocopter that can also roll.

The Flying Auto was powered by a small forty-horsepower engine, and foot pedals controlled the tail vane on the back, allowing Mr. Dixon to turn in mid-air. It was also supposed to be able to reach speeds of up to one hundred miles per hour (160 kph), and was able to fly forwards, backwards, sideways, and hover. Not bad for a flying car that was never heard from again.

The Convair Model 116 Flying Car took flight for the first time in 1946, and looked like nothing more than a small airplane welded onto a car. And essentially, that’s exactly what it was. The wings, tail, and propeller could be detached from the (plastic) car, allowing it to be driven like a regular vehicle on the road. When it needed to go where no roads could take it, the plane attachment was fitted on.

The 116 model only had one prototype, which itself managed a whopping sixty-six flights. A few years later, designer Ted Hall recreated the machine as the Convair Model 118, bumping the engine from a 130-horsepower model to a 190-horsepower beast that gave it more power in the air. Convair planned to build 160,000 for their first production run—but that never panned out, thanks to a tragedy which saw one of the prototypes crash in California. When the pilot took the car into the air, he had assumed that the fuel tank was full. But the ConvAirCar had two fuel gauges—one for the car’s engine and one for the plane’s—and while the car still had plenty of gas, the plane engine ran dry in mid-air. Such are the dangers of multi-tasking.

The Curtiss-Wright VZ-7 resulted from one of the first attempts by the US military to get involved in the flying car industry. Ideally, the VZ-7 was meant to be a type of flying jeep. Like a jeep, it allowed the pilot to maneuver through rough terrain on the ground—but with the not-insignificant bonus that it could also fly. It was developed by Curtiss-Wright, which, interestingly, formed through the merger of the Wright Company (the Wright Brothers) and Curtiss Aeroplane (Glenn Curtiss). Curtiss and the Wright Brothers had been fierce rivals during the early days of aviation.

The VZ-7 was designed as a VTOL craft—Vertical Take-Off and Landing. It flew with the aid of four upright propellers, which were positioned behind the “cockpit,” more or less just an open-air seat. In order to maneuver, the pilot could change the speed of individual propellers, tilting the craft forwards, backwards, or to the side. Technical aspects aside, the entire thing was a death trap, since none of the propellers were covered—and in 1960, the army cancelled the project just two years after its commencement.

With the VZ-7 grounded forever, the army turned to a very different prototype: the Piasecki VZ-8 AirGeep. Bear in mind that helicopters had already become popular by this point; but it turned out that the military was interested in something smaller than helicopters, which could be successfully flown with less training.

The AirGeep went through seven different versions before it was finally deemed “unfit for military use,” but they all kept the basic design: two large vertical propellers in the front and the back of the craft, with a seat in the middle for the pilot and either three or four wheels for ground use. While the first model was flat, later ones curved upwards at the front and back to form a flattened V-shape. The navy even tried to fit one model with floats, with the hope of using it at sea—but that idea was eventually abandoned, along with the rest of the program.

In 1971, the Advanced Vehicle Engineers company in California decided to design a flying car that was reminiscent of the ConvAirCar of the 1940s. They took a Ford Pinto, welded a Cessna Skymaster to the top, and essentially called it a day. The bizarre hybrid monster that resulted was dubbed the Ave Mizar.

The car-half of the craft was fairly similar to any normal Ford Pinto on the street. The Pinto’s engine brought the plane up to speed for take off, at which point the plane’s propeller took over. Upon landing, the car’s brakes were responsible for slowing it down. Unfortunately, in 1973—just a year before the car was scheduled to begin mass production—the right wing of one prototype crumpled in mid-air. The car plummeted to the ground, taking any future it might have had with it.

As we broach the modern era, it’s surprising to see how far we still are from developing a practical flying car. Case in point: the Butterfly Super Sky Cycle, which doesn’t look much different to Jess Dixon’s fabled Flying Auto. Like the 1940s incarnation, the Super Sky Cycle is technically a road-able gyrocopter, with a single folding propeller and a swiveling tail to steer the craft in flight.

The Super Sky Cycle was built in 2009 and is now (as of 2012) fully legal to drive, provided you have a motorcycle license and a pilot’s license. It even folds down to seven feet (2.1m), allowing it to fit into most garages. The gyrocopters are manufactured by Butterfly Aircraft LLC, and sold as kits that you assemble at home. It may not be what most people envision when they think of flying cars; regardless, they’re available to anyone with an spare $40,000.

In 2009, the Terrafugia Transition had its first successful test flight. Since then, it’s gone through a whirlwind of upgrades and remodels, resulting in several completely new designs and a second successful test flight in 2012. In any case, the Transition finally offers something that at least looks futuristic. It has the aerodynamic shape of a plane, with wings that fold in and then swivel into a vertical position while on the ground. It can reach up to seventy miles per hour (110 km/h) on the highway, and 115 miles per hour (185 km/h) in the air.

One problem that the company faced in designing the Transition was that it was too heavy to comply with FAA regulations, due to all the extra parts needed to be safe on the road—such as bumpers and airbags, for instance. In 2010, the FAA decided to let the flying car slide through the regulations, which changes its classification and makes it easier to get the appropriate pilot’s license. Unfortunately, it still costs more than a Lamborghini.

Bringing some much needed style to the world of autogyros, the PAL-V One is a Dutch design, which makes some huge changes to the traditional format. For starters, it only has one engine; the power is automatically switched between the tires and the propeller, depending on whether or not it is making contact with the ground.

What’s especially interesting about the PAL-V craft is that it’s only meant to fly below four thousand feet (1,200 m), which essentially means that you don’t have to file a flight plan to use it—a huge hurdle for flying cars in modern times. This could well lead to GPS-guided “digital corridors,” invisible highways in the sky that would allow airborne traffic to remain organized, like cars upon a regular highway.

The AirMule is more like an airborne ambulance than a car—but the idea is still the same. It’s being developed by the Israeli company Urban Aeronautics, and its main purpose would be assisting search and rescue missions. While it could feasibly reach the same speeds as a regular helicopter, it uses less than half the airspace, so it can also squeeze into areas that would be impossible for a helicopter.

If you’ve been reading, you can probably tell that it looks a lot like the AirGeep designs the military tried to hatch in the 1970s. But it has one crucial difference: it’s flown remotely. That’s right, the AirMule is unmanned, which either means it’s going to be instrumental in saving lives, or—based on the way UAVs have been used in the past—taking them. Even so, it won’t necessarily be on autopilot—Urban Aero plans to use a remote pilot with flight controls and a bank of monitors to control the AirMule in real time—a little like the way we might control planes in a complex video game.

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Temperature is one of the fundamental measurements in physics, and it’s absolutely crucial to all kinds of life. But at ultra-high and ultra-low temperatures, things can get very weird—as you’ll see. Here’s a list of ten interesting facts about this important factor in our world:

The hottest man-made temperature ever recorded is 7.2 trillion degrees fahrenheit, or about four billion degrees celsius. Since we hope to minimize the use of superlatives in this list, let’s just say: that’s pretty hot. 

In fact, it’s about 250,000 times hotter than the temperature at the core of the sun. The extreme recording was made at the Brookhaven Natural Laboratory in New York, in their 2.4-mile-long Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Scientists had been smashing gold ions together, in an attempt to recreate big-bang like conditions by creating a quark-gluon plasma. In this plasma state, the particles that make up the nucleus of atoms—protons and neutrons—break apart, and create a “soup” of their constituent quarks.

We’ve already made mention of the Bose-Einstein condensate. It’s a phenomenon that occurs to matter at a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Though previously seen only at these super-cold temperatures, scientists were able to recreate the effect at room temperature, by using light instead of matter.

They managed to do this because of the relative density of the matter and the light; one of the scientists involved, Jan Klars, explained that “Our photon gas has a billion times higher density, and we can achieve the condensation already at room temperature.” They forced light to travel through two mirrors with particles of dye between them. As the light bounced back and forth, it lost a little bit of energy each time it passed through some dye. And when it reached room temperature, the light effectively began to behave like an ultra-cold gas made of traditional matter. 

This result takes on a whole new relevance when we learn that it could lead to new types of lasers—which, after all, should be the ultimate goal of all physics research.

Some of you may be familiar already with the following comparisons—but take a moment to think about what they really mean, in relation to the normal temperatures of human experience. 

The sun—to borrow an understatement from an earlier entry—is pretty hot. It’s at its hottest in the centre, which reaches around twenty-seven million Fahrenheit (fifteen million Kelvin). In comparison, it’s actually less than ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit at its surface (about 5,700 K).

The centre of the Earth stands at about the same temperature as the surface of the sun. Apart from the sun’s centre, the hottest part of our solar system is the core of Jupiter, which, remarkably, is five times hotter than the Sun’s surface.

And the coldest-known place? That’s actually on our own moon, where temperatures in the shadows of some craters are only thirty Kelvin above absolute zero. The temperatures, measured by NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, are even colder than those on Pluto.

The SI unit of temperature is the Kelvin. The temperatures used to define this are absolute zero—the bottom limit of temperature—and what known as the triple point of water. A triple point is defined as the temperature by which a substance’s traditional three states of matter exist in an equilibrium. At this point, the most infinitesimally small alteration to temperature or pressure can be used to alter its state one way or another.

To define one Kelvin, you take the difference in temperature between the triple point of water and absolute zero and divide it by 273.16. There are limited practical applications of the triple point of water, but its proximity to the melting point is key to causing the watery cushion needed to allow people to ice-skate.

The rules of nature that govern temperature are known as the Laws of Thermodynamics. Originally there was only a first, a second, and a third law—but then scientists came up with a fourth law. The newest law stated that “if two systems are each in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are also in thermal equilibrium with each other.”

That basically means that if two objects don’t have a net exchange of heat with a third object, they’d not do so with each other—which is how we define them as being at the same temperature.

Scientists soon realized that this law is fundamental to the whole field of thermodynamics; they also realized that it should have been the first rule they formulated. Because “first law” was already taken, they gave it due respect by calling it the “zeroth law.”. It was around 1935 when the law was coined—meaning that scientists didn’t get around to formally defining what temperature meant until a couple of hundred years into the development of the field.

Some people have established their homes in the most unlikely of places. The coldest permanently inhabited places in the world are the towns of Oymyakon and Verkhoyansk in Siberia, which we’ve mentioned before. During winter, temperatures there average below minus fifty degrees Fahrenheit.

The coldest city in the world is also in Siberia. Yakutsk, with a population of 270,000, is not much warmer in the winter than its smaller cousins—often dropping below minus forty degrees Fahrenheit. But at the height of summer, temperatures can swing all the way up to the other end of the scale, to almost ninety degrees Fahrenheit.

The highest recorded average temperature belongs to the abandoned town of Dallol, in Ethiopia, which recorded an average temperature of ninety-six degrees in the 1960s. The record for hottest city is Bangkok, with average air temperatures breaking above ninety-three degrees between March and May.

But the record for hottest workplace likely goes to Mponeng gold mine, in South Africa. At two miles below the surface, rock temperatures can reach 150 degrees Fahrenheit. Ice must be pumped into the mine—and the walls insulated with concrete—to allow people to work there without perishing.

Making things cold has produced a lot of interesting and important results in science. Humans make the coldest known things in the universe, many orders of magnitude colder than anything that occurs naturally. Refrigeration allows temperatures of a few milliKelvin to be accomplished. The coldest temperature ever achieved is slightly below one hundred picoKelvins, or 0.0000000001 K. It’s necessary to use a type of magnetic cooling to achieve temperatures this low. Similar temperatures can be achieved on a small scale using lasers.

At these temperatures, matter behaves differently to the way it does normally (see Bose-Einstein condensate above as an example)—a fact which is key to revealing the many odd quirks of quantum mechanics.

If you were to take a thermometer out into deep space and leave it there, far from any source of radiation, it would read 2.73 Kelvin—a little lower than minus 454 degrees Fahrenheit. That happens to be the coldest naturally-occurring temperature in the universe.

Space is kept above absolute zero by background radiation left over from the Big Bang. Although space is nevertheless very cold, it’s interesting to note that one of the biggest problems encountered by astronauts is actually heat. Bare metal on orbiting objects can reach five hundred degrees Fahrenheit (260 C) due to the unimpeded heat of the sun, and needs to be covered in special coatings to lower the touch temperature to “only” 250 Fahrenheit (120 C).

Outer space itself, however, is constantly getting cooler. Theory has long predicted this, and recent measurements have confirmed that the universe is cooling by around one degree every three billion years.

It’ll continue heading towards absolute zero, though it will never quite reach it (an impossible feat). The background heat of the universe makes little difference to us; the effect of celestial bodies in our solar system and galaxy dwarf it. So it’s not going to counteract global warming, in case anyone has ideas.

Heat is a mechanical property of matter. Put simply: the hotter a thing is, the more energy its particles have as they move around. The atoms in a red-hot solid are vibrating more quickly than the atoms in a cold piece of material. Likewise, those in a liquid or gas whizz about with a speed which depends on how hot they are. That’s pretty basic stuff, which you probably learned in high school—but for hundreds of years until the late nineteenth century, scientists believed that heat itself was actually a substance. This is known as the caloric theory.

The gas of “heat”, scientists believed, would evaporate from a hot substance, thereby cooling it. It would flow from a hot object into a cooler one. Many of the predictions arising from caloric theory actually hold true, and a lot of scientific progress was possible in spite of this fundamental misunderstanding. Caloric theory even had proponents up until the late nineteenth century, at which point the mechanical theory of heat was established beyond dispute.

This list has made many mentions of absolute zero. We’ve even mentioned it on Listverse before. But what about the other end of the scale? How hot can things get? 

The short answer is that we don’t know for certain; and it’s a question at the forefront of modern fundamental physics.

The hottest temperature commonly mentioned in science is known as the Planck Temperature. It’s the hottest temperature believed to have occurred in the universe, a mere fraction of a moment after the Big Bang. It’s about 10^32 Kelvin. To give you some perspective, that’s about ten billion billion billion times hotter than the temperature mentioned earlier, which was itself 250,000 times hotter than the core of the sun. And you thought your bath water was hot. The Planck Temperature is the highest temperature possible, according to the Standard Model. Any hotter, and conventional laws of physics begin to break down.

It’s possible that temperature might continue to increase even after this point; and we simply don’t know what would happen if it did so. Anything hotter than that is basically too hot to exist in our current model of reality.

Alan is an aspiring writer trying to kick-start his career with an awesome beard and an addiction to coffee. You can hear his bad jokes by reading them aloud to yourself from Twitter where he is @SkepticalNumber or you can email him at mailskepticalnumber@gmail.com.

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Consumerism and the practice of flaunting one’s status through clothes, jewelry, and other things has existed since the dawn of civilization. Yet, the endless cycle of working to buy has never been more rampant than it is now. How did the United States, a nation founded on Puritan, non-materialistic tenants become filled with the biggest shoppers on the planet and end up occupying 29% of the World’s consumer market? As it turns out, Americans were carefully and systematically manipulated into becoming insatiable shoppers.

The man who is largely responsible for introducing advertising as we know it was none other than Sigmund Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays. Bernays’, nicknamed the “father of public relations,” studied his uncle’s writings on psychology and group mentality and learned humans react to feelings not facts. With this knowledge, he saw an opportunity to capitalize on people’s subconscious desires by selling goods with the promise of delivering power, status, sex appeal, glamour, health, and other things with emotional connections. His uncle also taught him that humans often act irrationally when emotions are involved and can be led to believe objects are a symbol of their character. Bernays used these theories to manipulate people into buying products they didn’t necessarily need or want.

One of Bernay’s first widely known marketing campaigns was for the American Tobacco Company where he was tasked with attracting more female smokers. Of course, he had one major hurdle to overcome—it was 1928 and there was a longstanding taboo about women smoking in public. So, Bernays’ consulted a psychoanalyst to help him get at the root of the taboo and was told that cigarettes symbolized the penis. Bernays shrewdly decided to center the Lucky Strike campaign on female power and independence, by advertising cigarettes as “torches of freedom,” equating smoking to female equality. His advertising efforts caused a national stir and almost immediately made it acceptable for women to smoke.

Bernays dominated the marketing arena throughout much of the 20th century and is the reason why those in the US consider bacon and eggs the quintessential breakfast, why Ivory soap is preferred by doctors, and, according to some, is the reason why people believe water fluoridation is safe and beneficial. He had so many successful campaigns that “Life Magazine” named him one of the most influential Americans of the 20th century.

From the start, it seems the idea of a consumerist, malleable society was linked with government ambition. Some of Bernays’ earliest work was as a press agent for the American Committee on Public Information during World War I. In that position, he promoted President Woodrow Wilson as a liberator, spread the tenants of democracy, and was so accomplished he joined the President at the Paris Peace Accords in 1919.

After seeing the effectiveness of propaganda, those in authority weren’t too keen on putting the art of manipulation back in the bag, so to speak. So, even after the war, both the government and businesses continued to use propaganda as a way to control citizens, and occasionally the interests of the government and corporations aligned.

For example, manufacturers were worried the high production and sales they’d grown accustomed to would dwindle once the war was over. Naturally, they didn’t want to see diminishing profits, so they used Bernay’s advertising strategies to convince people to buy more by linking goods to unconscious desires. At the same time, many presidents touted the ‘buy, buy, buy,’ mantra in the hopes it would boost the economy. President Herbert Hoover said to Bernays, “You have taken over the job of creating desires and have transformed people into constantly moving happiness machines, machines which have become the key to economic progress.”

Once consumerism settled in as the basis for the American economy, those in power gradually quit seeing Americans as citizens, but regarded them, above all else, as consumers.

Indeed, it seems today’s leaders treat us like potential buyers, and instead of giving us well-formed, fact-based arguments, they offer sales pitch-esque communications and package their platforms as if they’re destined for the marketplace. In 2002, when George W. Bush’s chief of staff Andrew Card was asked why the administration waited months to explain the reasoning for invading Iraq, Card replied “You don’t roll out a new product in August.”

Overtime, the habit of referring to “citizens” as “consumers” became increasingly common, and now the terms are used interchangeably. This evolution, however, doesn’t sit well with everyone. According to a recent study conducted by Northwestern University, many folks take offense at being called a consumer, “as if their sole purpose and reason for existence on this planet is to consume—to eat, drink, use, watch, and buy stuff.” Interestingly, the study also found that being labeled a consumer automatically makes people behave more selfishly.

In an interview shown in the BBC documentary “The Century of Self” Bernays said the word “propaganda” developed a negative connotation after World War I and II, since it was associated with something Soviet Communists and Nazis used to perpetuate their command. To distinguish his profession Bernays quit calling his industry propaganda and renamed it “public relations.” Still, public relations was little more than a euphemism, as it continued to rely on the fundamentals of propaganda: half-truths, persuasion, and attempting to change public attitudes. Although advertisers weren’t coercing people into supporting a particular political party, they were using their messages to influence how citizens felt about clothes, cars, beauty, and everything in between.

Nowadays most of us know we can’t take any advertisement at face value. In other words, we understand celebrities are paid to carry a certain brand of bag, we see the Coke can placed blatantly front and center in our favorite TV shows, and we know cars are supposed to represent male sexuality. Yet, even knowing these ideals were completely manufactured, it’s nearly impossible to keep them from seeping into our own beliefs — that’s the strength of the propaganda.

Apparently, Bernays didn’t realize his form of marketing so closely resembled fascist strategies and was shocked to learn Joseph Goebbels, Hitlers Reich Minister of Propaganda, kept copies of Bernay’s writings and used them to engineer the rise of Nazism.

Early advertisers understood the only way to keep consumers buying was to ensure they were never wholly satisfied. Although most companies didn’t make shoddy products (although planned obsolescence is currently an issue), they did use ads to convince viewers they were somehow inferior if they didn’t have the newest, most expensive gizmo on the market.

Wall Street banker Paul Mazer made it clear when he said, “We must shift America from a needs- to a desires-culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America; man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”

It was no secret customer dissatisfaction was the goal for many manufacturers. Charles Kettering, director of General Motors, wrote an article for a 1929 magazine which he candidly titled “Keep the Consumer Dissatisfied.” In it, he tried to persuade readers that continual consumption was the only way to sustain the economy. He said, “You must accept this reasonable dissatisfaction with what you have and buy the new thing, or accept hard times.”

While it may seem like it’s our economic duty to continually spend (and subsequently work harder), in truth we could all work a fraction of the time and still have enough goods and services to meet everyone’s needs. Secretary of labor James J. Davis discovered this fact in 1927 and discussed it in an interview with “Nations Business,” pointing out that America’s textile mills “could produce all the cloth needed in six months’ operation each year” and only 14% of the country’s shoe factories were needed to provide every citizen with footwear for a year. Later in the interview it was suggested that all the world’s needs could be met by only three work days a week.

Facts aside, intuitively it seems like we should be working significantly less than our ancestors. After all, we have machines, assembly lines, computers, the internet, and a wealth of technology meant to make our lives simpler, yet, according to an ABC News article, we are working longer hours than at any time since statistics have been kept, and Americans are working more than anyone else in the industrialized world.

So, what gives? Why isn’t technology making our lives easier and why aren’t we all jumping on board the three day work week that was shown viable in 1927? Unfortunately, it’s all done for the sake of business profits. Working employees everyday and getting greater numbers of products to market is more profitable for business owners than just meeting everyone’s needs—that is, of course, if they can convince people to buy the products. But, thanks to Bernays and his followers, corporations know how to turn citizens into consumers, trigger their unconscious cravings, and make them purchase unnecessary products.

In his later life, Sigmund Freud became increasingly withdrawn from the world as he felt humans were innately evil and civilization was a largely ineffective construct meant to restrain our animalistic sides. Bernays and others latched onto this notion and felt it was their obligation to direct the masses towards what was best for society.

Bernays’ own daughter said her father felt the public’s judgment was not to be relied upon since people could very easily vote for the wrong man or want the wrong thing, so they had to “be guided from above” by a group of enlightened despots. As expected, Bernays deemed himself one of the enlightened and used his advertising messages to influence the people towards his will.

Walter Lippmann, a 1920s political commentator, had similar notions and believed people would operate under a mob mentality if not adequately governed by the intellectually elite. He argued that the average person had too many limitations (selfishness, preconceptions, limited social contact, prejudices, etc.) to make socially responsible decisions. Such philosophies gave those in power the ability to justify their manipulative tactics.

For the elites to maintain dominance over the average man and keep him on the perpetual work/ buy machine, they had to link consumption with an emotion nearly all Americans share: patriotism. And nothing is a greater symbol of Americanism than democracy.

Those who judged themselves enlightened, like Bernays, saw nothing wrong with manipulating the public into thinking consumption was a democratic necessity. In fact, he may have believed it himself, as he said, “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country… we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons… who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

The idea of consumption being fundamental to consumerism became so ingrained that today when someone speaks of anti-consumerism or anti-capitalism they are immediately pegged as a socialist or communist. Yet, others would argue a capitalistic, consumption-based society is by definition undemocratic because it perpetuates low wages and creates class divisions which prevent all citizens from having an equal say in the decisions affecting their lives. In other words, those with the most money have the most power and influence.

There were a few who spoke out about how unbridled consumerism led by corporations could result in excessive waste, depletion of resources, and a submissive working class.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt particularly stood out in his distrust of a corporate-run economy. In his 1936 “Acceptance Speech for the Democratic Nomination for President” he said, “It was natural and perhaps human that the privileged princes of these new economic dynasties, thirsting for power, reached out for control over government itself. They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction. In its service new mercenaries sought to regiment the people, their labor, and their property. And as a result the average man once more confronts the problem that faced the Minute Man.”

Fearing Roosevelt’s sentiments could undermine their influence, the industrial elite from corporations like General Motors, DuPont, and General Foods came together and formed the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Together they started spreading the message that Roosevelt was running the country into debt and was responsible for the slow economy. In a 1936 internal memo, NAM was tasked with “re-selling all of the individual Joe Doakes on the advantages and benefits he enjoys under a competitive economy.” NAM packaged its message with the idea that sacrificing a free economy would lead to the handing over of all freedoms to the government, including free speech, religion, and press.

In the 1920s, manufacturers realized they could expand their profits even further by targeting a largely untapped market—the poor and lower-middle classes. Obviously these folks didn’t have much disposable income, so businesses came up with a sort of workaround: the installment plan. These plans allowed consumers to buy expensive goods by agreeing to pay for the product in increments over a set period of time. Often this setup resulted in the buyer paying far more than the product was actually worth, yet it made it possible for many more people to purchase costly items such as cars, appliances, furniture, washing machines, and other luxury goods.

Creditors, debtors, and installment plans were nothing new for the time, but being in debt always carried a certain stigma. Savvy advertisers knew they had to remove the shame of debt if they had any hope of the masses taking advantage of the installment programs. And so they did. “A small cash payment,” “convenient monthly payments,” “a reasonable down payment,” and other persuasive sayings, which are all too familiar today, became mainstream. In some publications the number of advertisements mentioning installment plans more than tripled through the 1920s. Also, the overwhelming success of installment buying in the auto industry (thanks in large part to GMACs marketing efforts) made it socially acceptable to use installment plans to buy other types of goods.

Unfortunately, the Great Depression that followed the roaring 1920s was more painful for those who participated in installment plans, since their lack of income also meant the repossession of many of their belongings.

Unfortunately, it seems neither businesses nor citizens have learned from the mistakes of the 1920s and ’30s, since we’re still persuaded to rack up debt and live outside our means.

Content and copy writer by day and list writer by night, S.Grant enjoys exploring the bizarre, unusual, and topics that hide in plain sight. Contact S.Grant here.

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Premiering in 1969, Sesame Street has been one of the cornerstones of childhood for over forty years. Utilizing the Muppets of Jim Henson, songs, animation, and above all a deep empathy for children, the show has become a cultural phenomenon around the world, earning hundreds of millions in revenue and even spawning its own theme park.

According to author Malcolm Gladwell, “Sesame Street was built around a single, breakthrough insight: that if you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them”. Although a show expressly for the little ones (there are none of the ‘adult’ jokes floated in shows like “Spongebob Squarepants”), “Sesame Street” has continually been at the forefront of major societal issues that programs for mature audiences have ignored, including death, racial tolerance, and the differences between us. The show seeks not only to educate and entertain, but to help children understand the world around them. Below are ten fascinating facts which contribute to Sesame Street’s legend.

In recent years, as many around the world have begun pushing in earnest for gay marriage to become legal, a grassroots Internet campaign has surfaced urging longtime Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie to finally acknowledge their homosexuality and tie the knot. Although the show has been renowned for preaching a message of tolerance, they carefully backpedaled away from these claims, stating: “Bert and Ernie are best friends. They were created to teach preschoolers that people can be good friends with those who are very different from themselves. Even though they are identified as male characters and possess many human traits and characteristics (as most Sesame Street Muppets™ do), they remain puppets, and do not have a sexual orientation.”

Although blasting loud music to psychologically torture people is not an entirely new concept, its use has really come to the forefront since the opening of the US’s Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. The purpose of the camp was to detain and interrogate subjects captured in the “War on Terror” begun since the events of 9/11. A great deal of controversy has arisen as pictures and stories have leaked to the public, and President Obama has made promises to close the camp that have yet to materialize. Amongst far more sinister and humiliating tactics, the soldiers at Guantanamo have been known to inundate Al-Qaeda operatives with blaring, repetitive songs including hard rock music and the Sesame Street theme that are known to break down mental resistance. Amnesty International has condemned this ploy, while the Pentagon has called it a mere “disincentive”.

One of the original human characters on the show, Mr. Hooper ran a general store that served as a focal point and served such fare as birdseed milkshakes. When actor Will Lee died of a heart attack in 1982, there was some debate by the show’s producers how to handle the situation. Some leaned toward having the character retire, but eventually it was decided to deal with the issue. A child psychologist was consulted and the situation was handled gently, but head-on, with Big Bird unable to understand that his friend wasn’t coming back. When Big Bird expresses concern that it “won’t be the same” without Mr. Hooper, another of the adults tells him “You’re right, Big Bird. It’ll never be the same without him. But you know something? We can all be very happy that we had a chance to be with him and to know him and to love him a lot, when he was here.”

The episode aired on Thanksgiving Day, 1983, to ensure that the children who saw it would be around family that could help them with their feelings when they saw it. In retrospect, Mr. Hooper’s passing has been honored by many as one of the most important moments in television history.

The main focus of Sesame Street is a 3 apartment brownstone building (Bert and Ernie live in the basement). The show itself is filmed in Astoria, Queens, but the actual location of Sesame Street has been under debate for years. It is intended to be a neighborhood in Manhattan, though which exactly is up for debate, even amongst staffers of the show. Some suggest the Upper West Side, and others claim that it is modeled after the Alphabet City area of the Lower East Side. Some detail oriented investigators have tried to pin down the location based on clues from the show itself, including zip codes printed on envelopes and background shots of characters walking around.

Despite the terror they invoke, vampires are really terribly vulnerable creatures, with a laundry list of weaknesses: sunlight, garlic, and religious symbols amongst others, depending on which franchise you are considering. But folklore speaks of one of the more rarely considered chinks in the vampire’s armor; arithmomania— an aspect of obsessive-compulsive disorder that in an uncontrollable urge to quantify and count things. Should one find himself confronting by a ravenous, undead ghoul, he could merely throw a handful of rice on the ground. The vampire would be helpless but to fall on his knees and count every single grain. This vulnerability has been rolled into the popular Sesame Street character “Count von Count”, the world’s least intimidating vampire, who teaches children basic concepts of arithmetic.

Elmo is one of the most popular (and obnoxious) denizens of Sesame Street, a bright red puppet known for his falsetto voice and habit of talking about himself in the third person. Elmo has been around for years, but he was relegated to the background for some time, until he was picked up in 1984 by young puppeteer Kevin Clash. Clash breathed life into Elmo, and over the next decade, his star rose exponentially. Elmo hit is stride in the mid to late 90s, with the release of the “Tickle Me Elmo” toy and the film “Elmo in Grouchland”. And then in 2012, 22 year old Sheldon Stephens emerged, claiming that he had Clash had an inappropriate sexual relations when Stephens was underage. Clash acknowledged the two had shared a relationship, but that it had been between two consenting adults. Stephens later recanted his statement, but other men came forward, claiming that Clash had also slept with them when they were teenagers. Clash quickly resigned. When he left the show, he made the statement: “Personal matters have diverted attention away from the important work ‘Sesame Street’ is doing and I cannot allow it to go on any longer. I am deeply sorry to be leaving and am looking forward to resolving these personal matters privately.” Since leaving, additional allegations have been levied against Clash. He has recently come back into the spotlight when he was nominated for four Emmy Awards, despite the scandal.

Aloysius Snuffleupagus is a woolly mammoth Muppet who spent fourteen years as Big Bird’s “imaginary” friend. Whenever adults would appear, Snuffy would vanish by way of coincidence, and the grownups would disbelieve Big Bird that he ever existed. Snuffy was revealed to the entire cast in 1985. According to Martin P. Robison, who plays the character, the producers decided that due to stories of abuse of children, they did not want to portray a situation between adults and a child character who wasn’t believed despite being honest. They were afraid they were giving kids the message that their parents might not listen to them in case they had a “unbelievable” story to tell, such as being sexually abused by a relative.

AIDS devastates sub-Saharan Africa like no place in the world; hundreds of thousands of children are born with the disease each year. Most of them die before the age of five. A staggering percentage of the children in the area have been orphaned by the virus. First appearing on 2002’s “Takalani Sesame” in South Africa, Five year old Kami is an upbeat yellow “monster” Muppet like Grover. She is portrayed with a perpetual case of the sniffles as a nod to her condition, which has also claimed the lives of her parents. Kami contracted HIV from a blood transfusion. Along with educating the children of South Africa and Nigeria about the disease, Kami helps them to deal with the societal stigma attached to HIV/AIDS and the inherent sense of loss and fear. Kami has since been appointed a representative of UNICEF projects throughout the world.

Africa is not the only place to host its own version of “Sesame Street.” There are varieties throughout the world, in Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East. The earliest international adaptation was Brazil’s Vila Sésamo. Many other versions exist, each tailored to the specific language, environment, and social circumstances of the area in which it aired. While many of the characters carried over, others were added or replaced. In the Canadian version, the main character was a giant polar bear named Basil, who learned French from his bilingual friend. In the version from the Philippines, the Big Bird character is a giant pink turtle named Pong Pagong; in Israel it is a hedgehog named Kippi Kippod, and in Kuwait it is a camel named No’Man. According to Joan Ganz Cooney, one of the creators of the Sesame Workshop, she was stunned at the international interest in the show: “To be frank, I was really surprised, because we thought we were creating the quintessential American show. We thought the Muppets were quintessentially American, and it turns out they’re the most international characters ever created.”

In 1990, Jim Henson, the creator of Sesame Street’s Muppets, died suddenly of a bacterial pneumonia. In the wake of his passing, two memorial services (one in New York and one in London) were staged wherein both characters from Henson’s “The Muppet Show” and “Sesame Street performed”, including a heartrending version of “Being Green” by Big Bird. Henson’s only request was that no one wear black. Although the services were open to the public, they were not televised, and only certain recorded segments exist. Along with Muppet performances and eulogies from friends and collaborators, excerpts from Henson’s correspondence to his children were read, including this passage: “Please watch out for each other and love and forgive everybody. It’s a good life, enjoy it.”

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist. As Muppets go, he prefers Kermit.

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According to the great tragedian, Euripides, “The first requisite to happiness is that a man be born in a famous city.” Although his statement may not be far from the truth, the pursuit of happiness is not relevant for this list. The focus of this list is to collect ten small places which had or still have a great impact in the world. From Athens, Beijing and Rome to New York, Paris and London, big cities have always been the magnet for culture, arts, wealth, political influence and human population. But what about the small cities and towns with legacies and influences that far exceed the size of their city walls? The criteria for the selection were simple: ten places with a great impact and influence around the world, with a population of less than 125,000 citizens. The aim of this list is twofold; to stimulate the curiosity of readers on one hand and to promote thought as to what other small places with a great impact could or should have been included.

The Town of Bethel was brought to the world’s attention in 1969 when nearly 500,000 people (almost 100 times more than the population of the town) gathered at Max Yasgur’s Farm for “Three Days of Peace and Music.” The Woodstock Festival was a four-day (not three as originally planned) rock music festival, which started on the 15th and ended on the 18th of August 1969 and made Bethel one of the most famous places in the world that summer. The turnout of spectators was expected to be sixty thousand. However, the area was attended by approximately half a million people, most of who belonged to the hippie movement. The end of the festival created the largest traffic jam in United States’ history and paralyzed many main streets of NY state. The Woodstock Festival remains today, almost 45 years later, the most powerful and influential music festival ever, even though its anti-war and peaceful messages were never really delivered to the “recipients”.

Maastricht is a municipality and the capital of the province of Limburg. The city’s name is derived from the Latin name “Trajectum Ad Mosam”, which refers to the bridge that was built by the Romans under the reign of Caesar Augustus. The city would not gain global attention until the signing of “The Treaty of Maastricht” in the early 1990s, which is officially known as “The Treaty of the European Union,” and it is considered to be the most important treaty in the European continent’s modern history. Historically, there is no similar treaty with such an extensive economic, political, social and cultural content, which involves so many countries and participating states. The Treaty of Maastricht was signed on 7 February 1992, and placed the city in the world map of fame.

Probably the vast majority of the readers has never heard of this city and might wonder why it is in the list in the first place. This is a very rare case that the actual city doesn’t get the recognition it deserves because it hides in the bigger picture. Now if you had read about Transylvania or The Carpathian Mountains, what would be the first thing coming to mind? Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia maybe? Not likely. Vlad the Impaler? Maybe so. Dracula? Sure thing.

What most people ignore though is that the man who inspired Bram Stoker to write one of the best selling books in the history of horror fiction and influenced the film industry to make hundreds of movies related to his name and legacy (with billions of dollars profit), is that he was born and raised in the small city of Sighișoara in Romania. Transylvania, which many people often mistake as the city of Dracula’s birthplace, is the region in which the city of Sighișoara belongs. Today, Dracula’s building of birthplace is used as a museum-themed restaurant and the specialty of the menu is, of course, rare blue steak which swims in blood.

During the first century B.C., Julius Caesar gave the land which took from The Massalian Greeks and the local tribes, to the victorious Roman Legions. It eventually became a kind of second capital of the Roman Empire, known as “The Little Rome of Gaul.” As befitting a major Roman center, it had a number of impressive public buildings. Most of these remain part of the city’s life even today and many monuments have been designated as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Many centuries later and more specifically during the 19th century, one of the greatest painters ever, Van Gogh, would connect his name and legacy with the city’s, since he lived and worked in and around Arles. When, in 1888, Van Gogh cut off his ear, he was taken to the Hotel-Dieu, a 16th-century hospital with a galleried garden which he painted. Also some of the great painter’s paintings such as “Starry Night over the Rhone” portray various locations of Arles and are known as “Paintings of Arles”.

Yorktown is a small and peaceful census-designated place in York County, Virginia, which is not known for its large tourism or intense lifestyle. On its lands however, took place the most decisive and tough battle (also known as Siege of Yorktown) of the American War of Independence, which actually ended the war and lead to the recognition of the United States as an independent nation from the United Kingdom. The consequences of this battle were the collapse of the British Government, even though turf wars followed before the new British Government would finally accept defeat and officially acknowledge the independence of the United States. Unfortunately, the only attraction that Yorktown has to offer to its few visitors nowadays, is the impressive “Victory Monument,” which was installed back in 1884.

The city of Dachau became famous around the world and connected its name with one of the darkest and most ghastly war crimes in modern history. Dachau’s concentration camp was the first of the Nazi concentration camps established in Germany. It was located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, from which it took its name. In this camp, the Nazis initially tortured and brutalized its own German people who were against the Nazi regime, while later it was used for captives of all ages and nationalities, mainly Jews and various other ethnic groups and minorities, from the countries Nazis conquered during WWII. The Dachau concentration camp functioned until the collapse of Nazi Germany in 1945 and unfortunately thousands of brutal crimes against humanity were committed there during the war.

This small area in Greece has incredible history and a global influence that exists even now. The tradition of lighting an Olympic Flame comes from the Ancient Olympics which took place in this small city exclusively. During the Ancient Olympic Games, a sacred flame was lit from the sun’s rays at Olympia, and stayed lit until the Games were completed. It was first introduced into our Modern Olympics at the 1928 Amsterdam Games. Since then, the flame has come to symbolize the light of spirit, knowledge, and life. The torch is traditionally lit in this small but historic city named Olympia, which every two years (including Winter Olympics) becomes the center of the world, since it is estimated that over a half billion of people around the globe watch the specific event and the torch relay that follows.

Pisa is a small, but very historical and important city of Italy. The University of Pisa is one of the oldest in all Europe and opened in 1343. The biggest attraction of the city, however, and the basic reason this city is so famous around the world (and attracts millions of tourists every year) is the Leaning Tower of Pisa, which was built entirely of marble during the period from 1172 to 1350. It consists of 6 floors and because it was built on loose ground, inclined towards the south (an incline that is gradually increasing each year). It is 56 meters tall and many scientists and top architects from all over the planet, visit Pisa just to study and admire the specific architectural “miracle.” The Cathedral Square (Piazza del Duomo) is also another top touristic and historical building of the city, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site as well.

Waterloo is a very small city which does not attract many tourists, yet it’s one of the most famous cities in history, and its military impact is unquestionable. The Battle of Waterloo is one of the most famous battles in military history, and it took place in modern day Belgium on June 18, 1815. It marked the final defeat of one of the greatest generals of all time, French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, who conquered a big part of Europe in the early years of the 19th century. The Battle of Waterloo, in which Napoleon’s forces were defeated by the British and Prussians, signaled the end of his reign and the end of France’s domination in Europe. Today, nearly two centuries later, Waterloo is still used as a term around the western world to define or characterize disastrous or decisive defeat, especially in fields such as politics, sports and of course, military. Waterloo was also the title of the second studio album by the legendary Swedish pop group ABBA. The song was victorious in the Eurovision Song Contest of 1974 and was recently voted as the greatest song in the history of the contest.

If the boxing term “pound for pound” existed to measure the historical influence and impact of a city, it’s quite possible that the city of Corinth would earn that title. Corinth is located in one of the most powerful ports of the Ancient world and was the first Greek city-state that colonized Italy (Syracuse) and gave birth to another city (Corfu). By 730 B.C. Corinth had emerged as a highly advanced Greek city-state (probably the most powerful at the time), way before traditional and well-known ancient Greek cities developed, such as Athens, Sparta and Ancient Macedonia.

Corinth was the homeland to one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Periander, while the greatest cynical philosopher of all time, Diogenes of Sinope, spent most of his life there, where he met Alexander the Great and the two had one of the most historic dialogues in history.

The two most important athletic events of the Ancient times (after the Olympic Games), the Isthmian and Nemean Games, took place in Corinth. But the Corinthian legacy doesn’t stop here. The contributions of the city in architecture were immense as well. The Corinthian order was the latest of the three principal classical orders of ancient Greek architecture. It took its name from the city-state that it originated, but it was followed and adored mostly from the Ancient Romans originally and most European architects and artists during the Renaissance.

Nonetheless, Corinth is probably more known through religion. Over a billion and a half Christians around the world are aware of The First and Second Epistle (also known as Corinthians,) which Paul the Apostle, who lived and preached in Corinth, wrote to “the church of God which is at Corinth” as the bible mentions.

During the modern years, Corinth became famous once again worldwide, for another unique achievement, in construction this time. The Corinth Canal, which was first attempted by the Ancient Greeks and Romans, was finally constructed. On July 25, 1893, the Canal of Isthmus was first used and was, at the time, one of the most impressive artificial constructions in the world. It attracts to this day thousands of tourists from all over the world.

Theodoros II is a collector of experiences and a law graduate. He loves History, Sci-Fi culture, European politics, and exploring the worlds of hidden knowledge. His ideal trip in an alternative world would be to the lost city of Atlantis. His biggest passions include Writing, Photography and Music. You can view his photostream here.

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Mathematicians like to classify and organize numbers in all kinds of ways. Natural numbers are used for counting and ordering; nominal numbers are used for naming (like a driver’s license number); integers are numbers that can be expressed without a fraction or decimal; prime numbers can only divided by 1 and by themselves; and so on. But there is no limit to how we can understand and use numbers; accordingly, there is a branch of pure mathematics, primarily based upon the study of integers, called “number theory.” Though we now understand that number theory has boundless applications, uses, and purposes, it can appear to be frivolous to the point of pointlessness – especially the subset known as “recreational number theory.” Number theorist Leonard Dickson once said, after all, “Thank God that number theory is unsullied by any application.”

But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t provide a measure of nerdy fun for those so inclined. Read on to learn what makes a number “interesting,” “weird,” “happy,” “narcissistic,” “perfect,” and more!

Ah, amicable numbers. They love each other so much. How much? Well, let’s take a classic pair—284 and 220—and see just how friendly they are. Let’s take all the proper divisors of 220 (that is to say, all its divisors that leave no remainder, including the number 1, and excluding the number itself) and all them up:

1 + 2 + 4 + 5 + 10 + 11 + 20 + 22 + 44 + 55 + 110 = 284

Now, let’s take 284 and do the same thing:

1 + 2 + 4 +71 + 142 = 220.

Voila: a pair of amicable numbers. Other pairs include (1184, 1210), (2620, 2924), and (5020, 5564). This type of number pair was discovered and studied by the Pythagoreans, and has been the subject of much research through the centuries – Fermat, Descartes, Iranian Muhammad Baqir Yazdi, and Iraqi Th?bit ibn Qurra are among the many mathematicians who have delved into the world of amicable numbers. Topics of further study include attempts to discover if there is an infinite amount of pairs, to discern patterns, and to better understand why and how this happens.

Because mathematicians would never be satisfied with mere amicable numbers, “betrothed numbers” are pairs where the sum of the proper divisors of each number is equal to the other number +1.

“Emirp” is the word “prime” spelled backwards, and it refers to a prime number that becomes a new prime number when you reverse its digits. Emirps do not include palindromic primes (like 151 or 787), nor 1-digit primes like 7. The first few emirps are 13, 17, 31, 37, 71, 73, 79, 97, 107, 113, 149, and 157 – reverse them and you’ve got a new prime number on your hands.

Mostly, saying “emirp” over and over is kind of a blast. Give it a whirl!

There is an old paradox in the world of mathematics that is known as the “interesting number paradox.” Simply put, if you keep counting natural numbers, eventually you’ll encounter one that isn’t interesting; where it gets paradoxical is that by virtue of being the smallest uninteresting number, that number has now become interesting.

Of course, this is all subjective, as it relies on a vague definition of the word “interesting.” Very generally speaking, a number is considered interesting if it has some type of mathematical quality that sets it apart; 19 is interesting because it’s prime, 999 is interesting because it’s a palindrome (and the UK version of 911); 24 is interesting because (among other reasons) it’s the largest number divisible by all numbers less than its square root. Mathematicians

Achilles was a powerful Trojan War hero who was extremely powerful but had one flaw—his achilles heel. Like him, Achilles numbers are powerful but not perfect.

So, let’s begin with a powerful number. A number is considered powerful if all of its prime factors remain factors once they are squared. 25 is a powerful number because its one prime factor, 5, remains a factor once its been squared (25, which goes into 25 once). Now let’s move onto perfect powers, number that can be expressed as an integer power of another integer; 8 is a perfect power, as it’s 2 cubed.

So now, back to the original premise – Achilles numbers are powerful, but they are not perfect powers. 72 is the first Achilles number, as it is powerful, but it is not a perfect prime. Others include 108, 200, 288, 392, 432, 500, and 648.

What are weird numbers? To understand them, we must first begin with “abundant” numbers. Abundant numbers, also known as “excessive,” are bigger than the sum of their proper divisors. 12, for instance, is the first (smallest) abundant number—the sum of its proper divisors, 1+2+3+4+6, is 16. 12, therefore, has an “abundance” of 4, the amount by which the sum of its divisors exceeds the number. There are many even abundant numbers, but we don’t get to an odd one until the number 945.

Some abundant numbers are “semiperfect” or “pseudoperfect,” meaning that they are equal to all or just some of their proper divisors. 12 is an imperfect abundant number because some of its divisors can be added together to form 12.

At last, we arrive at weird numbers. A number is weird if it is abundant but NOT semiperfect; in other words, the sum of its divisors is larger than the number itself, but no subset of divisor sums equal the number. Weird numbers are uncommon – the first few are 70, 836, 4,030, and 5,830.

While weird numbers are not equal to the sum of any of their divisors, untouchable numbers take it a step further. For a number to be untouchable, it must not be equal to the sum of the proper divisors of ANY number. A few untouchables are 2, 5, 52, and 88; in fact, 5 is thought to be the only odd untouchable number in existence (though it hasn’t been formally proven). There are an infinite number of untouchable numbers, meaning there is no such thing as the largest one.

So having discussed the weird and the untouchable, it’s time to check in with the grandaddy of all proper divisor-related numbers: perfect numbers. A perfect number is one that is exactly equal to the sum of its proper divisors (again, excluding itself). The first perfect number is 6, as its divisors (1, 2, 3) all up to 6. Six is followed by 28, 496, and 8,128. Early Greek mathematicians knew only of these first 4 perfect numbers; Nichomatus discovered 8,128 by the year A.D. 100. Three more were discovered, the first circa 1456 (33,550,336) by an unknown mathematician, and in 1588 (8,589,869,056 and 137,438,691,328) by Italian mathematician Pietro Cataldi in 1588.

All known perfect numbers are even; it is not yet known whether an odd prime exists or is even possible. English mathematician James Joseph Sylvester wrote “…a prolonged meditation on the subject has satisfied me that the existence of any one such [odd perfect number]—its escape, so to say, from the complex web of conditions which hem it in on all sides—would be little short of a miracle.”

Some numbers are weird; others are happy. If you’d like to find out if a given number is happy, you’ll need to perform the following set of operations. Let’s take the number 44:

First, square each digit, then add them together:

4^2 + 4^2 = 16 + 16 = 32

Then, we’ll do it again with our new number:

3^2 + 2^2 = 9 + 4 = 13

And again:

1^2 + 3^2 = 1 + 9 = 10

And finally:

1^2 + 0^2 = 1 + 0 = 1

Voila! It’s a happy number. Anytime you take a number, perform this “procedure,” and eventually arrive at the number 1, you have yourself a happy number. If your number never reaches 1, then sadly, it’s unhappy. Interestingly, happy number are extremely common; there are 11 of them between 1 and 50, for example.

As a final note, the greatest happy number with no recurring digits is 986,543,210. That is a happy number indeed.

Narcissistic numbers, also known as Armstrong numbers or “pluperfect digital invariants,” are numbers that—listen closely—are equal to the sum of each of its digits when those digits are raised to the power of the AMOUNT of digits in the number.

Ok. What? Let’s take an example of the four existing narcissistic cubes:

153 = 1^3 + 5^3 + 3^3 370 = 3^3 + 7^3 + 0^3 371 = 3^3 + 7^3 + 1^3 407 = 4^3 + 0^3 + 7^3

In these cases, each digit is cubed because there are three digits in the number. Then, those cubed numbers are added together to produce a sum equal to the original number. There are no 1-digit narcissistic numbers, nor 12 or 13-digit ones; the two 39-digit ones are:

115132219018763992565095597973971522400 and 115132219018763992565095597973971522401.

English mathematician G. H. Hardy recognized the frivolity of such numbers by proclaiming in his book “The Mathematician’s Apology” that “These are odd facts, very suitable for puzzle columns and likely to amuse amateurs, but there is nothing in them which appeals to the mathematician.”

A repdigit is a natural number with one repeating digit; the name, in fact, comes from the term “repeated digit.” The most famous redigit is the so-called “Beast Number” 666, a common symbol of the antichrist or of Satan. A repunit, then, is a repdigit that only uses the number 1; repunits pop up frequently in binary code and are related to that most famous of primes, Mersenne Primes. It has been conjectured that there are an infinite number of repunit primes, so if you’d like to try to prove it, please do so at your leisure.

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It’s not easy being a politician. The pressure is high, the rewards low and there simply aren’t enough hours in the day for screwing the electorate. Yeah, that’s right: screwing. For all they claim to be representing us, the truth is our politicians are almost-exclusively looking out for number one. How else do you explain stuff like:

Lobbying is bribery for rich people. Only instead of being super-illegal it’s encouraged, and instead of letting them bend the law it allows them to simply change it. Take gun control. In the months after Sandy Hook, it looked like there would finally be some movement on this issue. Public support for new laws was over ninety percent, both sides of the house seemed interested and it looked like a vote would sail through. Then the day came and the vote came back ‘no’. So what happened? The pro-gun lobby put forward a convincing argument and senators rationally changed their minds, right?

Wrong. In the immediate aftermath of the vote, the Guardian revealed that all but 3 ‘no’ senators had received thousands of dollars in pro-gun money. In other words: they’d been bribed. And, thanks to lobbying laws, that bribe was legal.

Now, lobbying is rarely this overt, but it’s happening all the time—usually in the form of Washington’s ‘revolving door’. Put simply: a senator will align himself with a lobby group, vote their way and—the moment he’s kicked out of office—get a lucrative job at that same group. It’s about as openly corrupt as you can get in a democracy and guess what? There are approximately zero plans to change it.

If there’s one group of people politicians of all colors are happy to piss on, it’s welfare recipients. Whether they’re talking about ‘Welfare Queens’ existing on the government teat, Obamacare bankrupting us all or food stamps becoming unaffordable; politicians sure do like to put the boot into those taking government money. So it should come as no surprise that the biggest ‘Welfare Queens’ of all reside on Capitol Hill.

In 2011, it was revealed that 23 members of congress were claiming farm subsidies. Of those 23, five were sponsored by the Tea Party: the very same Tea Party that opposes all Federal hand-outs. Between them, the Washington Welfare Queens had raked in over $18 million of your money, often while demonizing others for doing exactly the same thing. No matter where you stand on social security, you gotta admit that’s pretty low.

Remember how I said lobbying was the most-corrupt you could get in a Western democracy? Turns out I lied. Welcome to Britain, where the UK parliament could give Silvio Berlusconi lessons in corruption.

Four years ago, an investigation by the Telegraph revealed that British MPs were using their expense accounts to pay for anything they felt like. And while you or I might be tempted to charge the odd drink or meal to whatever company we work for, these guys were charging for freaking houses. Not only were the charges highly-immoral, they were frequently ludicrous: one politician had the taxpayer pay £1,600 for a duck house and £30,000 for 28 tons of manure; while another claimed £2,200 to have his moat cleaned. As in his actual moat: as in something you only have if you already live in an actual castle. One MP even submitted rental costs for a non-existent property. By the time the dust settled, it became clear the government had been screwing the taxpayer for years, so the whole lot of them were locked in the tower of London and summarily beheaded. At least they would have been if there was any justice in this world.

Nepotism is where useless people get money or power because their mommy or daddy was kinda important. While some families, like that of Kim Jong-Un, take a direct approach—our Western version is more to do with handing out lucrative jobs and contracts to people on the basis of nothing more than sharing a handful of genes.

Last year, the New York Times ran this story reporting on the findings of Washington watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. After trawling through a heck-load of records, the group had discovered 82 lawmakers diverting public and party funds to their relatives, often in the form of lucrative salaries for doing not very much. This included 20 members who used money raised for their own campaigns to campaign on behalf of a son, daughter or spouse. Worst of all, as the NYT editorial noted, the revelations came at a time of eight percent unemployment and worsening poverty: a time when hundreds of thousands of young people were getting thrown on the scrapheap. In other words, plenty of intelligent graduates are being frozen out these jobs in favor of people of no discernible talent—effectively creating a ‘political class’ with no connection to real life whatsoever.

Let’s flip back to the UK for this one. Over there, lying has gotten so routine that two separate stories of made-up government statistics broke in one week. First, an important minister was caught out justifying welfare-robbery by making up facts. Then another high-ranking politician was caught quoting figures from an opinion poll commissioned by a motel-chain, which is about as scientific as it sounds. And that’s just in one week: go back even further and you have a guy who was caught speeding on camera and blamed his wife—despite her being at a public conference at the time.

But these are just a handful of examples. Time and again, we encounter politicians breaking election promises, breaking contracts and just flat-out lying whenever they’re caught being racist. These are the same people trying to make a living off their ‘honest image’: yet experience often shows them to be anything but.

It’s a cliché to say someone thinks he or she is ‘above the law’, but our politicians apparently didn’t get the memo. Whether it’s driving while under the influence, sleeping with prostitutes, embezzlement, getting drunk and starting fights or simply being Nixon, our politicians break the law like it won’t apply to them. And they’re usually right: penniless people who smoke crack get the best part of a decade in prison; rich guys apparently get off with a wrist-slapping six months.

But none of that even begins to touch on the issue of government law-breaking. Put simply, sometimes the entire government makes a law then completely ignores it—as happened recently in England. After a court ruled the government had violated its own minimum wage laws by forcing hundreds of people into near-unpaid labour; the sociopaths in charge voted to bring in another law making them immune from liability. So, to recap: government makes law, government breaks law, government changes law to cover its own ass. There’s a word these sort of people need to hear more often, and that word is “guillotine”.

But our politicians aren’t completely stupid: often they simply vote for what would benefit them to begin with, rather than what would benefit the country. Take the expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and the collective hissy fit Washington threw at the thought of a few rich guys paying a little extra each month. But did you ever stop to think who might benefit from those cuts—aside from millionaires?

That’s right: politicians. According to the New York Times, two thirds of senators were millionaires in 2008, while the poorest senator is still earning around 3.5 times the average American wage. Then there’s the massive $19,000 pay rise they awarded themselves in 2009—in other words, at the exact same time the economy was in free-fall and we were being told the country was broke. Not to be outdone by their American counterparts, British politicians later went one further by voting themselves a £31,000 salary increase—about $50,000. That’s a 30 percent increase; seemingly-timed to coincide with devastating UK cuts to public services.

Earlier this year, the daughter of a Mexican official was refused a table at a Mexico City restaurant, so responded by getting her Dad’s inspectors to close the place down. While that case is pretty overt, we here in the West are just as adept at abusing high office—so much so that Business Insider regularly publishes its list of ‘most corrupt members of congress’, and it sure makes for some ugly reading. Their 2012 edition includes a congresswoman who forced her staff to spy on an opponent; a congressman who used campaign funds to finance his daughter’s graduation party; another who offered foreign donors Green Cards in exchange for money; another who allegedly bribed a Federal witness; one who ran a giant Ponzi scheme; several who accepted inappropriate gifts and several more who violated Federal laws. And this list is updated every year with new infractions, new abuses and new redefinitions of the word ‘corruption’. In other words, we could give a Banana-Republic lessons in abuse of power, and no-one’s willing to do a thing about it.

Most of the items on this list deal with some form of hypocrisy—but sometimes, it gets really overt. It may be the moral hypocrisy of talking up God and family values while cheating on your three wives, or evangelizing about raising taxes when you don’t pay any yourself, or running your whole campaign on honesty when you’re really as corrupt as the rest of them.

But what really sticks in the craw is this constant mantra that we’re all suffering equally from this economic Armageddon. We’re not: most of us have seen our taxes rise, our incomes shrink and our jobs get a heck of a lot more precarious. Our politicians, meanwhile, have been living it up: installing hundred thousand dollar beds on five hour flights, ordering expensive designer cushions to perch on and enjoying $60 breakfasts at taxpayer expense. Out of touch is one thing, but these guys seem to be living on a different planet.

Here’s some quick facts: ninety one percent of Americans back moderate gun control measures. Eighty seven percent want the tackling of Federal corruption to become a priority. Fifty percent back legal marijuana. Fifty three percent favor gay marriage. At the time of writing, literally none of those things are being dealt with. Now, I’m not trying to say that majority opinion is always right, or that the government should be ruled by opinion polls. However, when the government consistently supports unpopular measures in the face of hard, scientific evidence, you have to start wondering who they’re working for in the first place. ‘Cause, right now, it sure as hell isn’t us.

The post 10 Ways Our Politicians Are Screwing Us appeared first on Listverse.

Insects represent more than eighty percent of all species. Currently, there are around 900 thousand different kinds of insects known to science, with estimates of at least a million still waiting to be discovered. Many of us find them disgusting or scary, while others are fascinated by their huge variety, as they have colonized most terrestrial environments in the most surprising and fascinating ways. This list reveals ten insect superlatives ranging from the smallest to the most dangerous to the most daring of these creatures:

The giant weta native to the Little Barrier Island of New Zealand (Deinacrida heteracantha) proudly bears the name of the heaviest and largest adult insect in the world, the record weight for one being of 71 grammes or 2.5 oz and more than 8.5 centimeters or 3.4 inches in length. A relative of the grasshopper and of the common house cricket, the giant weta is nowadays a vulnerable species.

Fairyflies are tiny members of the wasp family and the smallest family of insects known to science. Dicopomorpha echmepterygis is a fairyfly native to Costa Rica, the males of the species being no more than 0.14 mm in length, about the same size—if not smaller—than the single-celled paramecium we normally find in lake waters. This species feeds on the eggs of other insects.

The harvester ant (Pogonomyrmex Maricopa) is the world’s most venomous insect—however, it does not pose any threat to humans at all. Its venom is roughly 25 times stronger than that of the honey bee, but it is delivered in small doses, therefore rendering the harvester ant quite inoffensive. Most of you probably expected the Japanese giant hornet, the African killer bee or the bullet and of South America as contenders to this title; surprisingly enough, the winner turned out to be in your very back yard, as members of these species are generally found throughout the US.

The Globe Skimmer (Pantala flavescens) has recently been found to be the insect with the longest migration of all insects, its journey dwarfing that of the famous monarch butterfly. Using the monsoon, these dragonflies travel from India to East and Southern Africa and back again, which adds up to between 14,000 and 18,000 kilometers. Furthermore, the long migration of these insects renders them as an accessible food source for migratory birds, which means that if anything happens to this species, many species of birds would find it very difficult, if not impossible, to perform their annual migrations.

This species of dragonfly (Austrophlebia costalis) has been clocked to a speed of 35 mph, which makes it the fastest insect in the world in terms of flight speed. Although there are previous claims that it would top 60 mph, most experts disagree on their veracity. Nevertheless, there are many who consider that the title of fastest insect remains disputed among dragonflies, hawk moths, and horseflies, with various unverified measurements circulating about each one of these species.

Locusta migratoria, or the migratory locust, is arguably the most feared species of insect known by humankind. Although the mosquito is responsible for the most human deaths, the locust is the one insect that has made men cry in horror throughout history. Although locust swarms are rare nowadays, locust plagues still occur in some parts of the world, as was the case in Madagascar, last year, or the 2004 locust outbreak that affected several countries in West and North Africa that resulted in losses of around $2.5 billion in terms of agricultural devastation.

I suppose few people will be surprised by the title of this entry. I mean, everyone knows the allegations that cockroaches are capable of survival nuclear fallout and so on… Therefore, in hopes of raising at least a few eyebrows, I would like to mention a case in which a German cockroach nymph (Blattaria germanica) managed to live inside another very hostile environment: a human colon. The nymph probably arrived there after having been inadvertently swallowed by the 52-year woman while she was eating, and somehow managed to survive the digestive enzymes of her stomach.

This rather large member of the stick insect family lives on the Lord Howe Island found between Australia and New Zealand. It is also an example of what biologists refer to as the Lazarus effect, namely when a species is thought to be extinct, but it is found again afterwards. The current population of wild Dryococelus australis is thought to consist out of less than fifty individuals (24 at the moment of their rediscovery); with so small a population, however, the species remains critically endangered. Nevertheless, there are efforts to breed the Lord Howe Island stick insect, the Melbourne Zoo of Australia managing to breed over nine thousand individuals within their specially designated breeding program.

A species of cicada, the water boatman (Micronecta scholtzi) is the loudest animal on Earth for its size. Although the entire cicada family is famous for their loudness (with some species managing to sing in almost 120db), the water boatman, at only two millimeters in length manages to make a noise 99.2 db loud, is similar to standing in the front row of a loud orchestra or listening to a jackhammer from fifty feet away.

Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) have been recently found to be the insects with the largest colony in the entire world, whose domination may rival that of humans! Scientists have discovered that the members of the species living across America, Europe and Japan actually belong to the same colonies, as they will refuse to fight one another. Furthermore, a series of experiments hinted that these super colonies might actually be one worldwide colony of ants, as their members did not exhibit hostile behavior towards one another and recognized their familiar pheromone scent, despite being separated by thousands of miles. Furthermore, this unusual phenomenon seems to have been created by humans, who inadvertently introduced them to all continents from South America.

Victor Pintilie is a student of the natural world who likes to discover the intricacies of nature; his ambition is to become a reputable freelance writer about nature-related subjects.

The post Top 10 Extreme Insect Species appeared first on Listverse.

Space exploration is a grand adventure. Its mystery has always captivated us and the inevitable discoveries to come will add to the many cosmological insights we already have. But let this list serve as a warning for any weary inter-solar travelers. The universe can be a very frightening place. I hope no one should ever find themselves stuck in one of these ten worlds.

Our planet maintains a high ratio of oxygen to carbon. Carbon actually makes up only about 0.1 percent of earth’s bulk (hence the scarcity of carbon based materials like fossil fuels and diamonds). Near the center of our galaxy however, where carbon is more plentiful than oxygen, planet formation is very different. It is here that you find what cosmologists call carbon planets. The morning sky on a carbon world would be anything but crystal clear and blue. Picture a yellow haze with black clouds of soot. As you descend farther down into the atmosphere you find seas made of compounds like crude oil and tar. The surface of the planet bubbles with foul smelling methane pits and black ooze. The weather forecast doesn’t look good either: it’s raining gasoline and asphalt (…no smoking). But there would be an upside to this “oil-well hell.” You may have guessed it. Where carbon is plentiful you also find high quantities of diamond.

On Neptune, one can find constant jet stream winds that whip around the planet at terrifying speeds. Neptune’s jet-stream winds push frozen clouds of natural gas past the north edge of the planet’s Great Dark Spot, an Earth-size hurricane, at a staggering 1,500 miles per hour. That is more than double the speed needed to break the sound barrier. Such wind forces are clearly beyond what a human could withstand. A person who happened to find himself on Neptune would be most likely be ripped apart and lost forever in these violent and perpetual wind currents. It remains a mystery as to how it gets the energy to drive the fastest planetary winds seen in the solar system, despite it being so far from the sun, at times farther from the sun than Pluto, and having relatively weak internal heat.

Nick-named Bellerophon, in honor of the Greek hero who tamed the winged horse Pegasus, this gas giant is over 150 times as massive as earth and made mostly of hydrogen and helium. The problem is that Bellerophon roasts in the light of its star at over 1800 degrees F (1000 degrees C). Bellerophon’s star is over 100 times closer to it than the Sun is to Earth. For one thing, this heat creates an extremely windy atmosphere. As the hot air rises, cool air rushes down to replace it creating 1000 km per hour winds. The heat also ensures that no water vapor exists. However, that does not mean there is no rain. This leads us to Bellerophon’s main quirk. Such intense heat enables the iron composing the planet to be vaporized. As the vapor rises it forms iron vapor clouds, similar in concept to water vapor clouds here on Earth. The difference though, is that these clouds will then proceed to rain a relentless fury of molten iron down upon the planet (…don’t forget your umbrella).

The densest and most massive exoplanet to date is a world known as COROT-exo-3b. It is about the size of Jupiter, but 20 times that planet’s mass. This makes COROT-exo-3b about twice as dense as lead. The degree of pressure put upon a human walking the surface of such a planet would be insurmountable. With a mass 20 times that of Jupiter, a human would weigh almost 50 times what they weigh on Earth. That means that a 180 pound man on Earth would weigh 9000 pounds! That amount of stress would crush a human beings skeletal system almost instantly. It would be the equivalent of an elephant sitting on your chest.

On Mars a dust storm can develop in a matter of hours and envelope the entire planet within a few days. They are the largest and most violent dust storms in our solar system. The Martian dust vortices tower over their earthly counterparts reaching the height of Mount Everest with winds in excess of 300 kilometers per hour. After developing, it can take months for a dust storm on Mars to completely expend itself. One theory as to why dust storms can grow so big on Mars starts with airborne dust particles absorbing sunlight, warming the Martian atmosphere in their vicinity. Warm pockets of air flow toward colder regions, generating winds. Strong winds lift more dust off the ground, which in turn heats the atmosphere, raising more wind and kicking up more dust. Surprisingly, many of the dust storms on the planet originate from one impact basin. Hellas Basin is the deepest impact crater in the Solar System. The temperatures at the bottom of the crater can be 10 degrees warmer than on the surface and the crater is deeply filled with dust. The difference in temperature fuels wind action that picks up the dust, then the storm emerges from the basin.

Simply put, this planet is the hottest planet ever discovered. It measures in at about 4,000 degrees F (2,200 degrees C) and orbits its star closer than any other known world. It goes without saying that anything known to man, including man himself, would instantly incinerate in such an atmosphere. To put it in perspective, the planets’ surface is about half the temperature of the surface of our sun and twice as hot as lava. It also orbits its star at a blistering pace. It completes a full orbit once every Earth day at a distance of only about 2 million miles (3.4 million km).

Jupiter’s atmosphere brews storms twice as wide as the Earth itself. These goliaths generate 400 mph winds and titanic lightning bolts 100 times brighter than ones on Earth. Lurking underneath this frightening and dark atmosphere is a 25,000 mile deep ocean of liquid metallic hydrogen. Here on Earth, hydrogen is a colorless, transparent gas, but in the core of Jupiter, hydrogen transforms into something never seen on our planet. In Jupiter’s outer layers, hydrogen is a gas just like on Earth. But as you go deeper, the atmospheric pressure sky-rockets. Eventually the pressure becomes so great that it actually squeezes the electrons out of the hydrogen atoms. Under such extreme conditions, the hydrogen transforms into a liquid metal, conducting electricity as well as heat. Also, like a mirror, it reflects light. So if you were immersed in it, and caught under one of those ferocious lightning bolts, you wouldn’t be able to see anything.

(Note: Pluto is technically no longer classified as a planet). Do not let the picture fool you; this is not a winter wonderland. Pluto is an extremely cold world where frozen nitrogen, carbon monoxide, and methane blanket the surface like snow during most of its 248 year plutonian year. These ices have been transformed from white to a pinkish-brown due to interactions with gamma rays from deep space and the distant Sun. On a clear day the sun provides about as much heat and light as a full moon does back on earth. With Pluto’s surface temperature of -378 to -396 F (-228 to -238 C) your body would freeze solid instantly.

The temperatures on the star-facing side of this planet are so hot that they can vaporize rock. Scientists who modeled the atmosphere of CoRoT-7b determined that the planet likely has no volatile gases (carbon dioxide, water vapor, nitrogen), and is instead likely made up of what could be called vaporized rock. The atmosphere of CoRoT-7b could have weather systems that unlike the watery weather on Earth cause pebbles to condense out of the air and rain rocks onto the molten lava surface of the planet. And if the planet doesn’t already sound inhospitable to life, it also could be a volcanic nightmare. Evidence suggests that if CoRoT-7b’s orbit is not perfectly circular, gravitational tugs from one of its two sister planets could push and pull the surface, creating friction that heats the interior of the planet. This heating could cause extensive volcanism across the planet’s surface, with even more explosive activity than Jupiter’s moon Io, which has over 400 volcanoes.

Little was known about Venus (where the dense atmosphere is opaque to light at visible wavelengths) until the Soviets launched the Venera program back in the space race days. When the first probe touched down and began transmitting data back to Earth, the Soviets effectively achieved the only successful landing on the surface of Venus to this very day. The terrain was so incredibly volatile, the longest any of the probes lasted was 127 minutes before they were simultaneously crushed and melted. So, what would it be like to live on Venus, the most dangerous planet in our solar system? Well, almost instantly, you would be suffocated by the toxic air and crushed by the tremendous gravity of the planet. With pressures up to 100 times more than Earth’s, its 40 miles thick atmosphere is so dense that walking on Venus’ surface would be like walking under 3,000 feet of water here on Earth. Simultaneously, you would be incinerated by the extreme 475 degree C temperatures, and eventually dissolved by the high concentration of sulfuric acid, which actually rains down on the surface of Venus.

Ross is a law student and long time Listverse reader.

The post 10 Terrifying Planets You Don’t Want To Visit appeared first on Listverse.

Radio contests, should, in theory, be quite simple: offer a cool prize for a cool challenge to draw in listeners. Sometimes, however, radio stations think cool means “horribly tasteless” or “exceedingly dangerous”, and then things like this happen:

Some people will go to great lengths to see their favorite band or artist live in concert, so radio stations have long hosted contests to win tickets to such events. Some have more trouble drawing the line than others, as KOMP 92.3-FM of Las Vegas demonstrated in 1999.

DJ Greg McFarlane was trying to think up a radio contest for listeners to win Mötley Crüe tickets, and after he used his idea of making them re-enact the Pamela Anderson-Tommy Lee sex tape live on-air (albeit clothed) he was stumped. But, in a flash of inspiration, he decided he would make listeners drink a few ounces of his own urine (presumably after consulting a group of five year old children).

Three contestants actually came into the studio prepared to face the challenge, but got cold feet when they realized McFarlane was in no way kidding. Then, in McFarlane’s own words, “The fourth guy walks in, pushes everyone out of the way and throws it down like it was Pepsi.” So congrats to that guy, for winning tickets to the show, and condolences to McFarlane, who was immediately fired.

Weddings can be expensive. So BRMB radio in Birmingham, England, generously offered to cover the costs of matrimony for one lucky couple. There was a tiny catch, however—they would only do it if the couple agreed to walk down the aisle nude.

The winners of 65% of a listener vote, Kelly Clinton and Lee Wiggets, had been together for eleven years but had never married due to financial concerns. So they jumped on BRMB’s offer to cover all their expenses, and got married on March 15, 2011, wearing almost nothing but their birthday suits. The groom used a top hat to cover his crotch (which is admittedly a pretty classy way to cover one’s crotch), and the bride was able to wear a veil and some barely-there underwear.

An inability to conceive is undoubtedly one of the biggest problems a couple can face, and is sure to come packaged with its share of frustration and anxiety. Luckily for citizens of Ottawa, Ontario, local radio station Hot 89.9 was there to capitalize on that frustration and anxiety.

In 2011, Hot 89.9 started a contest called “Win a Baby” in which one couple would be chosen by listener vote to receive in-vitro fertility (IVF) treatments, a value of around $35 000. The contest naturally came under fire for commoditizing babies, as well as taking a financial and emotional problem for many couples and turning it into a popularity contest. To its credit, in spite of being pretty tasteless, it did promote political discussion about the lack of government aided IVF treatments in Ontario.

Sadly, most of us will never get an opportunity to attend our own funerals. But listeners of the German radio station Radio Galaxy in Aschaffenburg, north Bavaria, got the next best thing when they were presented with a chance to win their funeral.

No, the radio station wasn’t going to kill anyone (that’ll be later on the list). Instead, listeners sent in their own epitaphs in the hopes of winning 3000 Euros (around $4195 at the time of the contest) to be spent on death insurance, which would cover funeral costs. For those who don’t know, an epitaph is simply the writing on one’s tombstone. For example, the epitaph on the tombstone of Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, is “That’s all folks”. Winston Churchill’s is “I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”

Not everyone has such a sense of humor about death, however, and the radio station came under some criticism including a lawsuit from the Association of German Undertakers.

When people have trouble getting a date, there’s only one place to turn: radio contests. One of these people, a man named Travis Harvey, did just that, and wound up the subject of Waukegan radio station WXLC’s “Win a Date with Travis” contest. It was a fairly straightforward contest, and a woman going by the name Jane Doe ended up winning herself a date with the man the station hailed as a “kind” and “great guy”.

Except he wasn’t, though, because he raped her. Originally slated to take her out to dinner, he told her he was too tired and instead invited her to his home for dinner. After one drink she felt extremely drowsy, and that’s when Harvey raped her.

Can this one really be blamed on the radio station? Doe thinks so, as she began a lawsuit against parent company NextMedia for $50,000 worth of damages. She insists they were negligent by not doing a background check on Harvey, who had been twice convicted of violating a domestic order of protection that had previously been taken out by another woman. She also sued Harvey, who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting her.

90.3 Amp Radio in Calgary, Alberta, in response to the body issues that many women have as a result of the glorified and pervasive images of airbrushed female models and celebrities, held a contest in which those same women could compete for a breast augmentation operation (hey, I didn’t say it was a helpful response).

The contest was called “The Breast Summer Ever” (because nothing goes together like sexual degradation and puns), and all contestants had to do was submit pictures of themselves and reasons for wanting to get the surgery. The reaction to the contest was mixed; some listeners were disgusted, though hundreds of people entered the contest.

In the end the winner was a transgender known only as Avery, who received 76% of the 30 000 online votes. Avery said in an interview that the breast implants will help her to not “have to face so much bigotry on a daily basis,” so the contest at least ended up helping someone in need.

German radio station RTL 89.0 had a MINI Cooper to give away, but they couldn’t be bothered to actually come up with a contest to do so. So they pretty much shrugged their shoulders and said they’d give it away to whoever would perform the craziest stunt.

Enter 39 year old Andreas Muller. Muller, who really, really liked MINI Coopers, needed a way to top the list. So he decided to offer up some valuable skin real estate and get a tattoo of the word MINI, in the one place where showing it off in public would likely get him arrested (his penis, for those who skipped the title and/or are really slow). Yes, this man really did get the word MINI permanently inked onto his Cooper, and he did it live on air with the female host looking on. And yes, he got the car.

If you’ve ever thought of a wife as something to be won in a contest, then you’re not alone! Because apparently there are a lot of radio stations who share your point of view.

100.3 The Bear in Edmonton, Alberta is one of many examples of radio stations that have offered the chance to win a foreign bride, and all of them have been highly criticized for demeaning women. The Bear’s “Win a Wife” contest sent the winner to Russia to be taken care of by a matchmaking service called Volga Girl.

Another radio station called Q104, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, created a contest called “The Male is in the Czech” where the winner would be flown to Prague, in the Czech Republic, to participate in a “dating-service” and the opportunity to pick a bride. The contest met with protestors who showed their disapproval by picketing the station. Also, because they were going for completely tactless, the last day of the contest was on International Woman’s Day.

Oh, and New Zealand radio station The Rock FM (we’ll talk more about them later) got in on the fun, too, sponsoring their own contest in which the winner would be flown to the Ukraine to pick a bride from an agency. After complaints, they changed the name of the contest from “Win a Wife” to, no kidding, the “Win A Trip To Beautiful Ukraine For 12 Nights And Meet Eastern European Hot Lady Who Maybe One Day You Marry” contest.

It’s starting to become clear that radio stations will turn anything into a contest, as long as they can make a pun out it. “Hold Your Wee for a Wii”, sponsored by KDND 107.9 of Sacramento, California, is no exception. And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.

This was back in 2007, when people were still pretty excited about the Nintendo Wii. As it happened, KDND 107.9 had themselves one and were willing to part with it to the listener who could go the longest without urinating. Every fifteen minutes, contestants were given eight ounces of water. The last one to break and go to the bathroom would win.

As it turns out, people don’t just urinate for fun, and holding it in can lead to some big consequences. For one of the competitors, a woman named Jennifer Strange, the consequence was death. Strange drank around seven and a half litres of water before relieving herself, and died hours later of a condition called acute water intoxication. This tragic turn of events resulted in 10 employees of the radio station being fired, as well as a lawsuit that resulted in a 16.5 million dollar settlement for Strange’s family.

New Zealand radio station The Rock FM needed a contest for Valentine’s Day 2012, but didn’t want to deal with annoying restrictions like basic human decency. So DJs Jono Pryor and Robert Taylor came up with a brilliant idea for a prize: they would take care of all the costs of one lucky couple’s divorce. Provided the breakup occur live on-air, of course.

The Rock ended up choosing a winner, whose name was Sam. Sam (a woman) was scheduled to call her husband Andy on February 14, 2012, and tell him that she was leaving him. Instead of a depressing and heartbreaking phone call, what happened next was actually pretty awesome.

When the DJs called who they thought was Sam’s husband Andy, a woman answered. Confused, they asked if they were speaking with Andy, and the woman answered, “No, it’s not Andy and it’s never gonna be Andy and it wasn’t Andy to start with, you fucking idiots.” It turns out it was Sam’s lesbian partner Amber, who with Sam proceeded to tell Pryor and Taylor exactly how terrible they are and how disgusting their contest was.

The hosts clearly had no idea how to react, and pretty much just let themselves be berated. At one point one of them said “I feel like I’m in an episode of Scooby Doo, and we’re finally figuring out how you caught us out, and we woulda gotten away with it if it weren’t for you dastardly lesbians.” So, lesson learned? By the way, it’s really the kind of sabotage that has to be heard to appreciate fully.

Michael Alba is on twitter @MichaelPaulAlba. Follow him for your chance to win a baby!

The post 10 Insanely Misguided Radio Competitions appeared first on Listverse.

Sometimes construction projects can take a while to get done. And hey, that’s understandable—we’re talking about huge, complicated jobs that require a ton of skill and foresight to pull off properly. Starting them up, on the other hand, only takes a bit of money and some workers. What follows are ten famous structures that had the money, but not the skill and foresight—they’re “works in progress,” or, if you’d prefer, “colossal screw-ups.”

You’ve probably heard of Westminster Abbey. It’s one of the most famous and beautiful churches in the world—let alone England—and is by all accounts an architectural masterpiece. Surprisingly enough, however, it is not the mother church of Catholicism in the country—that honor belongs to Westminster Cathedral, which is literally right down the street from the Abbey. Another honor belonging to Westminster Cathedral? It’s never actually been completed.

Work is still ongoing, supposedly, but almost the entire interior is undecorated—leaving nothing but unfinished brickwork in its place. This is quite contrary to most Catholic churches, as anyone who’s ever been inside one can attest—and indeed, the Cathedral was (and is) supposed to look just as fancy as the rest. Work began in 1895, but apparently it’s been too expensive to finish decorating the mother church of literally all of England. And Wales.

The ‘German Stadium,’ as it’s called in English, broke ground in September of 1937 in Nuremberg, Germany. If you’re at all familiar with world history, that should probably raise a red flag.

Yes, the stadium was the brainchild of one Adolf Hitler, who wanted to build a gigantic, Roman-style arena for various nefarious purposes (including, but not limited to, hosting various Nazi rallies and replacing the Olympics with something called the Aryan Games). Thankfully, World War Two halted production before they could get any serious work done, and (also thankfully) the Nazis didn’t do so well in that. Thus the only remains of Deutsches Stadion are some crumbling pillars and walls from a test site, and a big lake in Nuremberg that filled in the former construction pit.

The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine is one of the largest Christian churches in the world, and an iconic feature of Manhattan in New York. By all means it should be considered a landmark, but officials in charge of that sort of thing are waiting until the building—which was started in 1892—is actually finished.

Construction on this thing has pretty much been a mess from the start—it’s been plagued by everything from financial woes to engineering problems to wars and fires, not to mention the fact that the designers switched up its whole architectural style a couple times (just for the hell of it, presumably). Church officials are still trying to figure out exactly how to finish this thing, but in the meantime it enjoys the affectionate nickname ‘Saint John the Unfinished.’

This one definitely fits into the realm of colossal screw-ups. The Super Power Building is to Scientology as the Vatican is to Catholicism, according to church leader David Miscavige. Work began in 1999 in Clearwater, Florida, and was estimated to take two years and $40 million. In 2003, work was abandoned for six years so that the church could re-plan the entire interior and solicit their followers for donations, despite the daily $250 fines it was getting for just sitting around. Work commenced in 2009, but the building has still never opened. Many followers left the church in disgust, having donated millions to the cause, and in January 2013 Luis and Rocio Garcia actually filed a lawsuit against the church for wasting their money.

The International Space Station (ISS) isn’t so much a building as it is a ‘modular structure,’ but it belongs on this list because it’s in a state of perpetual construction. Unlike most of the items here, the ISS kind of has to exist that way—and considering it’s operated and maintained by countries from all over the world, the fact that construction hasn’t fallen apart yet is actually pretty impressive. The first ‘component’ of the ISS, called Zarya, was launched into orbit in 1998, and the most recent one was added in 2011. Now, to be fair to the premise, the ISS was technically supposed to be ‘completed’ by 2005—but due to changes in technology and science, this date never really stood a chance. Hence, we have several new components scheduled to be attached over the next couple of years, and construction has been vaguely deemed ‘nearly halfway’ finished.

Not only is the Ajuda National Palace in Lisbon a famous tourist attraction, but it was also the official residence of the Portuguese royal family. That of all things, you’d think, would put it on the Portuguese builders’ priority list. Apparently not, though, because construction—which began in 1796—was never actually completed. Unfortunate finances and a series of wars led to the project being repeatedly adjusted and scaled back, but construction continued in spite of these setbacks all the way up until the Portuguese revolution in 1910, which abolished the monarchy. Currently, the half-finished palace functions as a museum.

If you’ve heard of Woodchester Mansion, it’s possibly because it’s been featured on a few ghost-hunter type TV shows under the presumption that it’s haunted. To be fair, a mental hospital was interested in setting up shop there at one point, and soldiers were stationed in the surrounding area during World War Two—but seeing as no one ever actually lived in the place, I’d take any rumors of ghosts with a grain of salt. No, the real reason Woodchester Mansion is famous is because it’s a hell of a shell of a house—an outer mansion with an almost completely unfinished inside. See, the guy who commissioned it, William Leigh, was kind of a perfectionist. An increasingly poor perfectionist, though—whenever he managed to get any money to have his mansion worked on, he always personally supervised construction and/or changed up the plans. So the half that’s built is built well, at least. The mansion is open to visitors, in case you ever wanted to see the inside of a house that only has an outside. Which, let’s be honest, sounds kind of awesome.

Like the poor Portuguese kings and queens who had to live in Ajuda Palace, the good parliamentarians of New Zealand have been working out of an unfinished building for over a century. Plans for the then-new headquarters were drawn up in 1911, and involved two stages of construction: one for the important chambers, and the other for the apparently-not-so-important chambers, like a library, and the Crown Law Office. The whole thing was supposed to take just two years, but they didn’t even get started until 1914, and they didn’t get the first stage done until 1922 (in fairness, there was a war going on at the time). In any case, the second stage of the official parliament buildings was never built—so it wasn’t ‘officially opened’ until 1995. It’s still not finished, technically speaking, but a different library/office building called the Beehive has been put up in the extra space. So at least they’ve got something.

Most of the items on this list, despite being incomplete, are still being used for something or other. But as promised, some of them are nothing more than useless, colossal screw-ups. Marble Hill falls into that latter category.

This nuclear plant in Indiana was started in 1977, and for about 7 years was all set to become a fully functioning, power-generating cornerstone of the nuclear power industry. Then, in 1984, after sinking $2.5 billion (with a ‘b’) into getting the reactors to about the halfway point, the company behind the project up and abandoned it—they simply couldn’t afford to continue. They ended up selling some of the equipment to recover a few million (not with a ‘b’) in lost costs. The plant’s been sitting half-finished ever since, although the company that owns it now is currently in the process of demolishing it.

Unlike Saint John’s Cathedral up there, the Sagrada Família church in Barcelona has received a lot of prestigious recognition—despite being a work in progress since 1882. Not only has it been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site, it’s also been visited by the Pope and proclaimed a basilica (which for churches is kind of like winning the Super Bowl). The Sagrada Família is the brainchild of the famous architect Antoni Gaudí, who spent most of his life building it up into the grotesque, nature-inspired work of art it is today. Tragically he passed away in 1926, after being hit by a tram. His masterpiece, at that point, was less than a quarter complete.

But it’s been carried on ever since, inspired by Gaudí’s vision, and funded almost exclusively by the millions of tourists who flock to it every year. Today, the Sagrada Família is more than halfway done, with an optimistic completion date of 2026—the centennial of Gaudí’s death. Barring that, the current head architect is confident that it will be finished “perhaps in less than a century.” So keep your calendar open.

If you like unfinished works of art and/or colossal screw-ups, MJ Alba urges you to check him out on Twitter @MattJAlba. If you want to help him get more followers than his brother, that would be pretty cool too.

The post 10 Most Famous Unfinished Buildings appeared first on Listverse.

Throughout the years, both men and women have contributed to the steady growth and evolution of mankind in their own special ways; some sought to work in the realm of mathematics whilst others opted towards the development of heavy machinery or musical devices. All of the many contributions brought forth by innovative minds around the world have in some way made things easier or transformed previously perceived “impossibilities” into realities. Unfortunately, many of the world’s most influential inventors received little to no recognition throughout their lives despite the seemingly obvious importance of their ideas. Here are the top ten inventors who received less recognition than they deserved for their efforts.

The first person to ever formerly invent a form of glue was Peter Cooper (he patented a kind of fish glue). Chances are you’ve never heard of him or any of the people who patented other forms of glue. Of course, you’ve definitely never heard of glue’s original inventors as they resided in Roman and/or Greek civilizations centuries ago. Everyone uses glue now but nobody ever really remembers glue makers for their achievements in the creation of sticky stuff.

Ever wonder who invented something as simple as play-doh? Of course you have since the inventors are barely remembered to this day. Much like a large number of other inventions, “play-doh” was created by accident. It was originally developed to be used as wallpaper cleaner before its potential as modeling clay for kids was noticed. When it first began being sold (in 1956), it came in a single color that was close to white (but not quite). The very next year, “play-doh” was released in different colors and kids everywhere rejoiced (though not all at once).

If you are in doubt of this simple invention’s implications in our society then you surely are omitting the fact that just about every child in the world knows what the fuzzy pumper barber shop version of this toy looks like.

Although something as simple as a zipper may hardly seem like an invention to most people nowadays as we are all quite accustomed to them, they were not around since the dawn of time. The zipper in its modern form was actually invented by Gideon Sundback in 1917 and was originally named the “continuous clothing closure” (which just rolls right off the tongue).

Initially, it was not adopted into the clothing industry as people felt it looked far too uncouth to be effectively used as a part of any garment. Instead, it slowly made its way into the world by being used in the creation of boots and tobacco pouches. Later on, it received its catchy name from the marketing group at B.F. Goodrich and it has been used in most forms of clothing ever since. No thanks were ever really given to the creator of the modern design though so its importance must have been overlooked.

Lyman was known to be a very dedicated inventor; he worked hard to come up with a truly useful idea that people now use every day, the can opener. Although it was not his only invention, it is known to have been his most famous one. In 1870, Lyman successfully created the world’s first rotating wheel can opener. Prior to Lyman’s invention, the only can openers that were available were basically just variations of a knife. With Lyman’s novel device, the procedure of opening a can was made much simpler. Unfortunately, Lyman’s invention (though ingenious) was not utilized by many due to the fact that the can needed to be pierced before you could use it. In 1891, Lyman died with very little recognition for his achievement besides the patents he had been awarded for it.

Henry Blair’s misfortune as an inventor came primarily due to his race. In his patent records, Henry Blair is listed as a “colored man” (the only description of this kind in early patent records) and all of his patents were signed only with an “x” as he was illiterate. His most notable creation was an automatic cotton planter that tilled the ground and dispensed seeds through a special wheel-powered device.

Blair was presumably a slave; however, the law for the issuing of patents allowed both slaves and free men to obtain patents at the time. In 1858, this law was changed to exclude slaves from obtaining patents. It was not changed back until 1871. Unfortunately, Blair died in 1860, eleven years too early to have benefitted from this change.

Walter Hunt was an American mechanic born in New York in 1796. Throughout his life he worked as an inventor and he managed to create a variety of different devices. The lockstitch sewing machine, safety pin, a forerunner of the Winchester repeating rifle, a successful flax spinner, knife sharpener, streetcar bell, hard-coal-burning stove, artificial stone, street sweeping machinery, the velocipede, and the ice plough are his most notable creations.

Many of his creations have served as indispensable additions and improvements to basic activities and devices in modern times. This is especially true for things like the simple safety pin and the complicated sewing machine. Unfortunately, none of his extremely useful inventions managed to win him an award throughout his life (nor afterwards).

Something as common as simple Velcro was not always used for clothing purposes nor was it always taken seriously. In fact, the idea and its creator were both scoffed at initially. De Mestral’s invention was refused by many people due to the fact that it was not “aesthetically pleasing” (its materials were originally wool and scraps of leather) and it was known to wear out quickly.

De Mestral struggled to get his invention used until his patent expired in 1978. He died in Commugny Switzerland without any awards for his efforts; however, the municipality named an avenue after him posthumously upon recognizing his accomplishment afterwards. He was also later inducted into the Inventor’s Hall of Fame in 1999 for his invention.

Philo Farnsworth was an inventor from the U.S. who crafted a couple of extremely important devices during his life (1906 – 1971). He is known now as the first person to create an electronic television device which he called the image “dissector”. He also helped to bring forth the idea of nuclear energy through fusion with the “Farnsworth-Hirsch fusor,” a device that could produce electrons in abundance and is known to be the main source for the approach taken to modern fusion design. He held 165 patents mostly in the fields of radio and television.

He was presented an Eagle Scout award when people noticed that he had earned it; too bad this didn’t happen until 2006 (over thirty years after his death). The award was given to his wife who then died four months later.

Winkel was living in Amsterdam in 1814 when he first discovered that a pendulum that was correctly weighted on either of its pivot’s sides could steadily keep time, even very slow tempos. He called his invention the “musical chronometer” and donated the first model to the “Hollandsch Instituut van Wetenschappen, Letterkunde en Schoone Kunsten” in Amsterdam.

Unfortunately, poor Winkel failed to adequately protect his idea and in only two years, Johann Nepomuk Mälzel had successfully patented his own version of the device under the name of “Mälzel Metronome” which featured a scale. This forever cast a shadow over Winkel and to this day people still miscredit Mälzel with being the inventor of the device.

William Austin Burt was the original inventor, maker and patentee of the very first typewriter in America as well as the first solar compass that was workable as a surveying instrument for boats (the equatorial sextant). His typewriter was far ahead of its own time unfortunately and it was actually his great grandson who built the most recognized version of the machine (though even his version struck ahead of its own era and saw very little success in his lifetime).

William Austin Burt’s equatorial sextant was adopted by the General Land Office as a standard instrument for all major boundary lines (particularly in regions of magnetic disturbance). The device’s popularity steadily grew; however, congress refused to renew his patent when it expired in 1850 and he apparently never even received the $300 for his right in the invention.

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Since we were very young, school has been teaching us all about animals—and so has television (unfortunately). What this means is that our ideas about animals are, like many things, misinformed. While popular culture is excellent at doing its job of entertaining us, it often fails when it comes to teaching us new things. In this article we explore ten common myths about animals that just don’t want to die.

False: Touching a toad will give you warts.

This is a surprisingly common one, with many people searching google to ascertain whether there is any truth to it. And the truth is that there isn’t any truth to it at all. This belief likely stems from the fact that toads have warts and parents wanted to convince their kids not to touch that gross slimy animal they just found. It turns out, however, that warts can be picked up from just about anywhere, and the sole cause is actually the Human Papilloma Virus—it has nothing to do with toads. However, parents can still give their kids a good reason not to touch toads; their skin contains a bufotoxin that can cause irritation.

False: Goldfish have poor memories.

Another common myth is that goldfish have essentially no memory and are pretty stupid animals. It turns out the goldfish are actually pretty intelligent creatures and probably wouldn’t appreciate the attempt to denigrate their intelligence. Goldfish memories are actually quite the opposite of what you might think, they are able to remember things weeks later and can be trained to perform complex tasks. Among the complex tasks they have been trained for are pulling levers, ringing bells and jumping through hoops, in other words they are at least as smart as a rat.

False: Cheetahs are the fastest animal in the world.

There is some truth to this because the Cheetah is the fastest land animal in the world, reaching speeds of 68 MPH for short sprints, which is faster than the speed limit on many US highways. However, the Cheetah is not the fastest animal on the planet—that position actually goes to a bird. The spine tailed swift has been clocked at over 69 miles per hour at level flight, which makes it the fastest living creature on the planet. A close relative of this bird has been clocked much faster but the record is not considered official by scientists because the method for how it was clocked has not been verified. Also, the fastest fish in the world, the sailfish, essentially ties the Cheetah for second place having been clocked swimming at speeds of 68 MPH.

False: Daddy Long Legs are incredibly poisonous.

Daddy Long Legs are one of the strangest looking spiders in the world, and it turns out the reason for this is that they are not spiders at all. These critters are officially Opilones, and are in the order of the arachnids. Colloquially they are also known as harvestmen. Aside from people confusing them with spiders, there is actually a much bigger misconception. Many people believe that Daddy Long Legs are extremely venomous spiders and that we are only safe because their mouths are too small to bite us. The popular myth also says that some people in other countries eat them but they are safe because they cook out the venom first. While it is possible some people eat these spiders, it turns out Daddy Long Legs aren’t really venomous at all, and are zero threat to humans even if eaten raw.

False: Ostriches bury their heads in sand.

This is one of those myths that have become incredibly ingrained, due mainly to the popular saying that causes us to basically accept it as fact without question. We have all heard that when someone doesn’t want to deal with an issue, that they are “burying their head in sand like an ostrich”, which is supposedly something the birds do when danger is near. While ostriches do tend to run off if they feel that danger is approaching, they have a powerful kick to defend themselves. It turns out that while ostriches may hold their heads low in an attempt to be harder to see, they certainly do not actually bury their heads.

False: Bulls get angry and violent when they see red.

While we humans (and some of our close relatives) can see a lot of colors, many animals have trouble distinguishing them and the bull is among these. In scientific studies it was found that bulls actually didn’t respond any differently to different colored flags, they responded based on movement. The bull myth is popular and seeing red is a common expression now for getting angry. However, the bull has never been agitated by color, but rather by a flamboyantly dressed man waving a cape at him while a bunch of people surrounding him make a horrendous amount of noise.

False: Snakes hear and react to music.

Snake charming is one of the most fascinating abilities, and while it sounds dangerous we can’t help but feel it would be an incredibly cool thing to learn. The snake charmers play their flute and the snake sways to the music, charmed by the soothing notes. Well, except everything in that last sentence is not true. It turns out that snakes don’t hear the way that humans do, they can feel vibrations but in a snake charming act they are actually responding to the movements made by the snake charmer and not the sound of the flute. It turns out that like many street performing arts, snake charming is more about making it look like you are doing something than actually doing it. Also, while some may find it hard to feel sorry for a snake, some charmers don’t take very good care of their pets and many put their snake through a dangerous process to remove their fangs.

False: Koalas are bears.

Many people when talking about the cuddly little furry things that live in gum trees in Australia will refer to them as Koala bears. This assumption is fairly understandable because they do look a lot like a miniature bear—but they are actually a marsupial. A koala is considered a marsupial because it has a pouch, something bears lack. It turns out that koalas are actually related in a much closer way to wombats than they are to bears. In fact, the webpage I previously linked to seems to exist solely to debunk the myth of koalas being bears.

False: You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

Everyone has heard this saying and not only memorized it by rote but many have accepted it as gospel. It turns out that this myth is not only not true for dogs, it’s not true for humans either. Studies have been done on old dogs and found that with proper training they could learn new tricks just like a young dog. Similar studies have been conducted on humans and have found that while many believed that younger people learned better, it turns out older people may be able to learn just as well.

False: Dolphins are your friendly ocean buddies.

If there is one thing we can safely take for granted it is that Dolphins are the friendly guardians of the ocean who may save you from sharks one day and help you find your way back to shore. Except, in reality, they are murderous maniacs! Scientists have recently made some very disturbing discoveries about dolphins, mainly that they have been torturing baby porpoises to death and sometimes harming their own kind as well. Experts are at a loss to explain why dolphins are murdering porpoises, but some people the attacks may actually be sexual in nature. While disturbing, the fact that dolphins have learned to get enjoyment out of killing may mean their intelligence is growing. There are not many animals that are capable of such a thing, except perhaps for humans.

You can follow Gregory Myers on twitter.

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Theatre can hit you hard and fast if you’re in the right mood. It is more immediate than film and television, it asks you to sympathize with the characters, no matter how cruel they can be, and it is never exactly the same each time you go. While musicals and comedies tend to do better at the box office, it takes a great artist to make the audience go home both satisfied and horrified. This is a list of some of the best and most twisted minds that the theatre presented us with in the last century. Definitely keep your eyes peeled for these names in your local theatre’s upcoming seasons.

The only reason that Strindberg lands so far away from number 1 is that most of his work was done in the 19th Century. But he lived in the 20th Century and he is one of a great many responsible for shaping and inspiring the playwrights listed below. I can’t think of one of his plays that could be described as a happy experience. He certainly wrote great experiences—but not happy ones. He wrote a realist manifesto in his introduction to Miss Julie then swiftly left it behind, moving into weirder and creepier forms represented brilliantly in his A Dream Play and Ghost Sonata later in his career. He was a self-absorbed misogynist, expressing his frustrations and mental-daemons sweepingly with his paintings, poetry and essays, as well as play scripts.

Straddling the 19th and 20th Centuries, Maxim Gorky jump-started his career with only the second play he ever wrote, aptly titled The Lower Depths. While pursuing a style of realistic theatre, Gorky wrote The Lower Depths with a greater focus on creating fascinating characters rather than a memorable plot. It is speculated that, while developing these characters, Gorky might have made regular visits to a local homeless shelter, offering booze in exchange for stories and time. First reception of this play was extremely negative, criticizing the bleak hopelessness and amoral content of the character’s lives. Despite these initial reviews, it is considered today as one of the cornerstones of Modern Theatre. Though The Lower Depths remains his most popular play; he went on to write fifteen more plays after, maintaining his taste for the ruthless examination of human struggle.

As of yet, Manjula Padmanabhan has only written five plays. Her most famous, Harvest, is a science fiction about an impoverished part of the world where people agree to let their bodies become available for harvest by wealthier Westerners who offer all kinds of luxuries in return. It’s a pretty clear metaphor for the globalized affects of capitalism on third-world workers. What Padmanabhan brilliantly does, however, is represent both ends of this equation in a single family in a small apartment in India. As the character Om spirals into fear inspired, in part, by the people who obsess over his health and control his life, his mother gradually sedates herself in the luxuries brought to her by his sacrifice. The person who owns Om, represented by weird holographic apparitions, believes herself to be generous and helpful to him. Through these, and other characters, the audience is forced to watch magnified versions of the different mercenary parts of themselves. Even Om ends up dishonest, ever the victim.

Brendan Behan makes this list for two reasons: the chilling content of his two most famous plays, and the short horrible life that he led. He was a member of the Irish Republican Army who, even after Irish home-rule, took it upon himself to visit Liverpool and blow-up strategic parts of their harbor. He was arrested, unsuccessful of his intentions. He spent three years in jail and later, not even yet twenty years of age, was arrested again for an assassination attempt. His most famous play, The Quare Fellow, is about a group of prisoners awaiting the execution of their fellow inmate. Behan presents the situation with humor and intensity. At the end of the play, the deceased is deceased and the characters are still coping with themselves behind bars. Behan killed himself with alcoholism. After the successes of The Quare Fellow, The Hostage, and his book The Borstal Boy, he continued to write but never as brilliantly or successfully. The diminishment of his craft was clearly a result of his drinking. “I’m a drinker with a writing problem,” he used to say, “There’s no bad publicity except an obituary.”

Though not all his works are particularly terrifying, this list would be amiss without the great Arthur Miller. He wrote over 50 stage and radio plays, spanning his active career over seven decades. His darker side comes across more subtly than other members of this list, drawing his audiences to examine their existential selves with the nuances of his story-telling rather than relying on gimmicks in form or spectacle. Plays like All My Sons and A View from the Bridge start in the recognizable workaday world and carry us expertly into haunting scenes of violence at the plays’ climaxes. Death of a Salesman hardly needs mention as the “great American tragedy;” a portrait of life’s futility, built almost artificially by the failing social system we all cling to. Miller wrote with Shakespearian grandeur of story, mingling the lives of ordinary people with the devastating realities of all the things bigger than us—God, philosophy, truth, and social structures. He made the most devastating familiar and the familiar to be devastating.

Even more prolific than Arthur Miller, Howard Barker invented an entire genre called “The Theatre of Catastrophe.” He takes inspiration from the most horrific of historical events and shows them to us openly and provocatively. By often writing characters that are imperfect or anti-heroic he invites his audiences to make their own judgments and fall into discourse among themselves. Philosophically Barker is noted for his rejection of Realism’s goal to evoke a common reaction from a crowd; we all take what we take from a play and the experienced truth lies across a spectrum. In terms of content, however, Barker is not shy of harrowing circumstances and exacting images: he takes advantage of his character’s trust in the world, describes the smell of battlefields, makes old flesh wounds into important character traits, he even pours a wave of horse blood across a huddled group of desperate workers.

Sartre is so iconic of existential thought and art that, in 1948, the Catholic Church attempted to ban his books entirely. He was an academic who, before his experience as a soldier in the Second World War, professed a sort of rationalism: the utility of one’s actions makes their existence acceptable. The war shook Sartre deeper into this self-floundering direction and he came out even more existentially tormented (if you can imagine it). His most famous play, Huis Clos (No Exit, in English), puts the three most terribly matched people in the same room for all of afterlife so that they can torment each other as they watch their loved-ones slowly forget them on earth. All of Sartre’s creative writing is extremely symbolic and bleak in style, expertly reserving language as necessary to convey his sadistic messages.

Known for some of the longest play titles in history, Peter Weiss’s style and subjects of interest are pretty hard to miss at face value: The Persecution and Assassination of John-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of the Marquis de Sade is one example, or how about Discourse on the Progress of the Prolonged War of Liberation in Viet Nam and the Events Leading up to it as Illustration of the Necessity for Armed Resistance against Oppression and on the Attempts of the United States of America to Destroy the Foundations of Revolution as another example? His plays are clearly at once specific and sweeping in subject. Often inspired by the power abuses of military formality, Weiss uses metatheatrical conventions to push the audience emotionally in and out of his stories. His writing is capable of making an audience feel simultaneously triumphant and disgusted by the curtain-fall, forcing, in turn, a deeper consideration of what we think about ourselves.

Along with Arthur Miller, Beckett is one of the most celebrated playwrights of the 20th Century. He was a master of combining imagery with timing in order to build the most bitingly visceral productions possible. Best known for Waiting for Godot as a landmark for theatrical surrealism, Beckett’s work burrows significantly deeper in that direction with some of his shorter plays. Despite this he resented being given labels such as surrealist, expressionist, or even minimalist … though even he couldn’t deny his minimalist aspirations. Arguably his best play, Endgame, opens with a lone man on a nearly empty stage, sitting ghostly still under a tea cloth. The play is set at the end of the world where the characters are locked in a house, enduring the final stages of their painful existence. His work is incomparable to other playwright’s, beautiful to see, beautiful to hear and, when well produced, can be literally staggering to experience.

Sarah Kane only wrote six plays before her death in 1999, moving from realistic stories of intense violence to more poetic and experimental pieces nearer the end of her career. She is a pioneer of the British literary movement, “In-Yer-Face-Theatre,” attacking her audiences with the cruel and obscene. Probably because of the grotesque pushiness of her plays, they were not well received by her own community during her lifetime. She has, however, had pieces played for large audiences in Mainland Europe and very successfully revived in the Americas. Her writing is violent in content and affect, shocking her audiences with the darkest possibilities of human action; Kane wrote about sex, pain, torture, death, racism, and rape. She was a brilliant wordsmith, building poetry with the slightest necessity of language, but certainly not a playwright for the more sensitive theatergoers.

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In the last half of the twentieth century, medical science came up with some pretty astonishing ways to replace human parts that were starting to wear out. Though the idea is commonplace now, the invention of the artificial pacemaker in the ’50s must have seemed like science fiction come to life at the time; today’s innovations routinely restore a modicum of hearing to the deaf, sight to the vision-impaired, and if a pacemaker won’t cut it, we can just replace that faulty heart like the water pump in your old Ford.

These technologies that were in their infancy just a few decades ago are now so well-established as to seem downright mundane. The medical tech that is in its infancy today likewise seems like science fiction—and if history has taught us anything, it’s that this means we’ll probably see a lot of it in use very soon (if it isn’t already). Oh, and while there are certainly applications for many of these to replace those worn-out parts, many others are intended specifically to improve upon perfectly good parts in unprecedented ways.

A “BCI” is exactly what it sounds like—a communication link between the human brain and an external device. BCIs have been the realm of sci-fi for decades, but believe it or not this hasn’t been speculative technology for some time—there are many different types of completely functional interfaces for a variety of applications, and the earliest devices of this type to be tested in humans showed up in the mid ’90s. And, it’s safe to say that the research is not slowing down.

It has been known since the 1920s that the brain produces electrical signals, and it was speculated since then that those signals might be directed to control a mechanical device—or vice versa. Since research into BCIs began in earnest in the ’60s (with monkeys as the usual test subjects), many different models with different levels of “invasiveness” depending upon the application have been produced, with research progressing particularly quickly within the last 15 years or so.

Most applications involve either the partial restoration of sight or hearing, or the restoration of movement to paralysis sufferers. One completely non-invasive prototype was demonstrated to enable a paralyzed stroke victim to operate a computer in early 2013. In a nutshell, the device picks up the eyes’ signals that are routed to the back of the brain, and analyzes the different frequencies to determine what the patient is looking at—enabling them to move a cursor on a screen using only eye movements, using a device that amounts to a helmet.

The general public’s concept of the powered exoskeleton is more like “powered battle armor” on account of the Robert Heinlein novel “Starship Troopers” and also a very popular character from an increasingly pervasive multimedia franchise. The tech that’s actually being developed is less geared toward battling giant robots and invading aliens, and more toward either restoring mobility to the disabled, or augmenting endurance and load-carrying capacity.

For example, one company manufactures a 50 pound aluminum and titanium suit called the Ekso that has seen use in dozens of hospitals around the U.S. It has made people with paralyzing spinal cord injuries able to walk, an application that was once too impractical due to the bulk and weight of such a suit.

The same technology was licensed by Lockheed Martin for their Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC, oddly enough), which has been extensively tested and may be deployed for military use within a year. It enables a normally conditioned man to carry a 200 pound load at ten miles per hour, pretty much indefinitely, without breaking a sweat. While the Ekso takes pre-programmed steps for its users, the HULC uses accelerometers and pressure sensors to provide a mechanical assist to the user’s natural movements.

We should note that a Japanese firm has produced a similar device with medical applications called “Hybrid Assistive Limb” or HAL, which—as the name of a famously murderous machine—we’re thinking might not have been such a hot idea. Oh, and the company’s name? Cyberdyne. We are not kidding.

A neural implant is any device which is actually inserted inside the grey matter of the brain. While a neural implant can be a BCI and vice versa, the terms are in no way synonymous. What exoskeletons do for the body, implants do for the brain—while most are meant to repair damaged areas and restore cognitive function, others are meant to give the brain a power assist or a pathway to external devices.

The use of neural implants for deep brain stimulation—the transmission of regularly spaced electrical impulses to specific regions of the brain—has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat various maladies, with the first approval coming in 1997. It has been proven effective at treating Parkinson’s disease and dystonia, and has also been used to treat chronic pain and depression with varying degrees of efficacy.

Thus far, the most commonly used neural implants are cochlear implants (approved by the FDA in 1984) and retinal implants, both pioneered in the 1960s and proven effective at partially restoring hearing and vision, respectively. Fun fact: the inventor of the cochlear implant was Dr. House—William House, who passed away in 2012, and whose brother Howard was also a physician.

Prosthetics have been used to replace missing limbs for decades, but the modern version—cyberware—strives not for just an aesthetic replacement, but a functional one. That is, to restore a missing limb with a natural functionality and appearance. And while the use of aforementioned brain interfaces to control robotic prosthetic devices is already happening, other explorations in this field seek to remove limitations inherent to this scheme.

Many existing devices use non-invasive interfaces that detect the subtle movements of, say, chest and/or bicep muscles to control a robotic arm. Modern devices of this type are capable of some pretty fine motor movement, improving drastically in this respect over the last decade or so. Also in this field, research is underway to provide a two-way interface—a robotic prosthetic that will allow the patient to FEEL what they are touching with their artificial limb; but even this only scratches the surface of what’s being envisioned for the future of this tech.

At Harvard, the emerging fields of tissue engineering and nanotechnology have been combined to produce a “cyborg tissue”—an engineered human tissue with embedded, functional, bio-compatible electronics. Says research team lead Charles Lieber: “With this technology, for the first time, we can work at the same scale as the unit of biological system without interrupting it. Ultimately, this is about merging tissue with electronics in a way that it becomes difficult to determine where the tissue ends and the electronics begin.” And we are officially talking about full-on cyborg technology, in development right now.

Extrapolating many concepts from the previous examples into the future, consider the Exocortex. This is a theoretical information processing system that would interact with, and enhance the capabilities of, your biological brain—the true merging of mind and computer.

This doesn’t just mean that your brain would have better information storage (though it would mean that), but better processing power—exocortices would aid in high-level thinking and cognition, and if that sounds a little heavy, remember that humans have long used external systems for this purpose. After all, we couldn’t have modern mathematics and physics without the ancient technologies of writing and numbers, and computers are merely another plot on that same long, long technological graph.

Also, consider that we already use computers as extensions of ourselves. The Internet itself can be thought of as a sort of prototype of this very technology, as it gives us all access to vast stores of information; and the devices we use to access it—our computers—give us the means by which to process and assimilate that information with our brains, which are just bigger processing devices. Merging the two processors can theoretically give us the means by which to truly level the playing field in terms of human intellect, and enable us all to perform the most complex of high level mental functions with just as much ease as you are reading this article. Theoretically.

Human gene therapy and genetic engineering holds at once the most promise AND the most potential for a vast array of complications than perhaps any other scientific development ever. The understanding of evolution and the ability to modify genetic components is so new to science that it is a gross understatement to say that its implications are not yet understood; of the applications that are known to be possible (and there are many), the majority are still in the “too dangerous to even attempt on humans” phase of development.

The most obvious application is the eradication of genetic diseases. Some genetic conditions can be cured in adults by gene therapy, but the ability to test for said conditions in embryos is where the real promise lies—however, the ethical implications here are staggering. It’s possible to test not only for genetic diseases and abnormalities, but for other “conditions” like eye color and sex—and the possibility of actually being to design your baby from the ground up is absolutely within sight. Of course, we all know how expensive technology works in a free market, and it’s easy to envision a future where only the wealthy are able to afford “enhancements” to their offspring. Considering that we humans have demonstrated a very limited ability to reconcile differences in race, gender and sexuality, it’s safe to say that this technology may very well lead to the most complicated social issues in the history of humanity.

Indeed, researchers have been able to easily create mice with enhanced strength and endurance, and this field also includes stem cell research, with its promise to eventually be able to cure damn near anything. When it comes to the potential for increasing the durability and longevity of the human body, not many fields hold more promise—except perhaps for one…

Nano tech is quite prevalent in the public imagination as a likely cause of the end of the world, but this is a technology that is coming along at a lightning pace—and its medical applications, taken to their logical endpoint, hold the promise of nothing less than the eradication of all human diseases and maladies—up to and including death.

Current nano medicine applications involve new and highly accurate ways to deliver drugs to specific locations in the body, along with other treatment methods involving tiny particles—tiny on a molecular level—dispersed into the body. For example, an experimental lung cancer treatment uses nano particles that are inhaled by aerosol, settling in diseased areas of the lungs; using an external magnet, the particles are then superheated, killing the diseased cells. The body’s own response eliminates the dead cells AND the nano particles. This method has been used successfully in mice, and while it will not yet kill 100% of the diseased cells in an affected area, it’s close—and the tech is in its infancy.

Speculative uses of this technology involve the use of nano bots—microscopic, self-replicating machines that can be programmed to target cells for destruction, drug therapy or rebuilding. Of course, this could theoretically apply not only to diseased cells but damaged ones—perhaps allowing for much speedier recovery from injury and even the reversal of aging. The logical progression here ends with a remarkably durable, age-proof human body—but even if that never comes to fruition, it’s not as if this is the only way we’re attempting to cheat death with science…

It is here that we get into the realm of what has become known as “Transhumanism“—the notion that we may one day be able to surpass our physical limits, to perhaps even discard our bodies or live beyond them. This notion was first suggested as a realistic prospect by Robert Ettinger, who in 1962 wrote “The Prospect Of Immortality”, and is considered a pioneering Transhumanist and the father of Cryonics.

That is essentially the study of the preservation of humans or animals (or parts of them, like the brain) using extremely low temperatures (below ?150 °C, or ?238 °F), which was the best means of preservation available at the time Ettinger wrote his book. Today’s brain preservation studies focus more on chemical preservation, which has been demonstrated on brain tissue (but not an entire brain) and does not require the ridiculous temperatures demanded by Cryonics.

This is, of course, an inexact science—researchers in the field are well aware that it’s impossible (at this point) to determine how much, if any, of what makes up a person’s mind is preserved along with the brain, no matter how physically perfect the preservation. It’s a field that relies on the further emergence of developing, overlapping sciences that are still in the purely speculative region, such as…

As we’re able to replace more and more of our body parts with versions that have been engineered, grown in a lab or both, it stands to reason that we’ll one day reach an endpoint—a point at which every part of the human body is able to be replicated, including the brain. Right now, a collaborative effort between 15 research institutions is underway trying to create hardware which emulates different sections of the human brain—their first prototype being an 8 inch wafer containing 51 million artificial synapses.

Oh, the “software” is being replicated too—the Swiss “Blue Brain Project” is currently using a supercomputer to reverse-engineer the brain’s processing functions, with many elements of the activity of a rat brain having been successfully simulated. The leader of this project, Henry Markram, stated to the BBC that they will build an artificial brain within ten years.

Our muscles, blood, organs—artificial versions of all are in various stages of development, and at some point the prospect of assembling a fully functional artificial human body will be within sight. But even if we develop the software to run such magnificent machines—and having androids would be pretty cool—their applications for us would be incredibly significant with the development of a complementary technology, one that is less farfetched than it may seem…

We’ve previously mentioned futurist Ray Kurzweil and his insanely accurate rate of predicting new technologies. Kurzweil is of the opinion that by 2040 to 2045, we will be able to literally upload the contents of our consciousness into a computer—and he’s not even the only one who thinks so.

Of course, many argue that brain functions cannot be reduced to simple computation—that they are not “computable” and that consciousness itself poses a problem that science will never be able to solve. There is also the matter of whether an uploaded or otherwise “backed up” mind is indeed a different entity from that which was copied, a different consciousness altogether. Hopefully, these are questions that neuroscience will soon be able to answer.

But if indeed we are ever able to inject our very minds into the digital realm, the obvious implication is that our consciousness need never terminate—we need never die. We can hang out indefinitely in fantastically rendered digital worlds, and load ourselves into a Cyberdyne X-2000 Mind Vessel when we have business in the real world; transmit ourselves through space, perhaps even through time, and share knowledge instantaneously across all of humanity.

Smarter people than us are expecting these developments within your lifetime. Even if they are only partially correct, we’re going to go out on a limb and say that despite the exponential explosion of technology within the last couple decades, we ain’t seen nothing yet.

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The art of dance is a unique form of expression, employing a universal body language that everyone understands. From ballet to contemporary, from hip-hop to salsa, and from oriental to flamenco, dance is certainly enjoying something of a renaissance lately.

But when it comes to individual dancers, who has the best moves? The greatest poise, power, and poignancy? This list showcases ten of the greatest dancers of the twentieth century—selected for their fame, popularity, and influence around the globe.

Vaslav Nijinsky was one of the most talented male ballet dancers in history; perhaps even the greatest. Unfortunately, there isn’t any clear footage of his incredible talent in motion, which is the main reason he ranks so low in this list.

Nijinsky was well-known for his amazing ability to defy gravity with his magnificent leaps, and also for his ability of intense characterization. He is also remembered for dancing en pointe, a skill not commonly seen by male dancers. Nijinsky was paired in leading roles with legendary ballerina Anna Pavlova. He was then partnered with Tamara Karsavina, a founder of London’s Royal Academy of Dancing. He and Karsavina have been referred to as the “most exemplary artists of the time.”

Nijinsky retired from the stage in 1919, at the relatively young age of twenty-nine. His retirement was believed to be brought on by a nervous breakdown, and he was also diagnosed with schizophrenia. Nijinsky spent the last years of his life in psychiatric hospitals and asylums. He danced in public for the very last time during the final days of World War Two, impressing a group of Russian soldiers with his complex dancing abilities. Nijinsky died in London on April 8, 1950.

Martha Graham is considered to be the mother of modern dance. She created the only fully-codified modern dance technique, choreographed more than one hundred and fifty works during her lifetime, and has had a remarkable impact on the entire field of modern dance.

Her technique’s deviation from classical ballet, and its use of specific body movements such as the contraction, release, and spiral, has exerted a profound influence on the dancing world. Graham even went so far as to create a movement “language” based upon the expressive capacity of the human body.

She danced and choreographed for over seventy years, and during that time was the first dancer to perform at the White House; the first dancer to travel overseas as a cultural ambassador; and the first dancer to receive the highest civilian award, the Medal of Freedom. As the mother of modern dance, she will be immortalized for her intensely emotional performances, her unique choreography, and especially for her homegrown technique.

Although Josephine Baker is primarily associated with the Jazz Age, her influence is still alive and kicking, as it were, almost one hundred and ten years after her birth.

Many decades before Madonna, Beyonce, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears and Jennifer Lopez, there was Josephine Baker; one the world’s first celebrities of African origin. Josephine traveled to Paris in 1925 to appear in La Revue Nègre. She made quite an impression on French audiences, with her exotic charm and her talents forming a perfect combination.

She performed in the Folies Bergère the following year—and this was what really made her career. She appeared wearing a skirt made of bananas, and wowed the crowds with her style of dancing. She later added singing to her act, and remained popular in France for many years to come. Josephine Baker returned the affection of the French people, becoming a French citizen herself in 1937.

In France, she did not feel the same level of racial prejudice that was prevalent in the United States at the time. Near the end of her life, Josephine Baker hoped to create a “world village” at her estate in France, but these plans collapsed under financial troubles. To raise funds, she returned to the stage. This comeback involved a short but triumphant run on Broadway in the 1970s; and in 1975, she opened a retrospective show in Paris. She died on that same year of a brain hemorrhage, a week after the show opened.

Gene Kelly was one of the biggest stars and greatest innovators during Hollywood’s golden age of musicals. Kelly considered his own style to be a hybrid of various approaches to dance, including modern, ballet, and tap.

Kelly brought dance to theaters, utilizing every inch of his set, every possible surface, every sweeping camera angle to break out of the two-dimensional limitation of film. And by doing this, he changed the way directors thought about the camera; it became a fluid tool, as much a dancer itself as the things it was documenting.

Kelly’s legacy permeates the music video industry. The photographer Mike Salisbury photographed Michael Jackson for the cover of “Off the Wall” in the “Gene Kelly white sox and loafers”—a signature look for the movie star, which would soon become the singer’s own recognizable brand.

Paula Abdul, originally known primarily for her dancing and choreography, referenced Kelly’s famous dance with Jerry the Mouse in her kitschy video for “Opposites Attract,” which includes a final tap-dance breakdown. Usher was yet another top-selling artist to pay explicit tribute to Kelly. There will never be another like Kelly; his work continues to resonate with generation after generation of American dancers.

At forty-eight, Sylvie Guillem continues to defy the laws of ballet—and of gravity. Guillem has changed the face of ballet with her extraordinary gifts, which she has always used with intelligence, integrity and sensitivity. Her natural curiosity and courage has led her down daring paths, beyond the usual boundaries of classical ballet.  

Instead of spending her entire career in “safe” productions, she has made bold choices, equally capable of performing at the Paris opera house as “Raymonda“, or as part of the groundbreaking “In The Middle Somewhat Elevated” by Forsythe. Almost no other dancer has such scope, and it is no wonder that she has become the model for most dancers around the world. Like Maria Callas in the opera world, Guillem has re-shaped the popular image of the ballerina.

Michael Jackson was basically the man who made music videos a trend—and without a doubt the one who made dancing an essential element of modern pop music. Jackson’s moves have now become standard vocabulary in the pop and hip-hop routines. Most modern pop icons—such as Justin Bieber, Usher, and Justin Timberlake—admit that they have been heavily influenced by Michael Jackson’s style.

His contributions to dance were original and extraordinary. Jackson was an innovator who was primarily self-taught, designing new dance moves on his gifted frame without the often-limiting effects of formal training. His natural grace, flexibility, and astonishing rhythm contributed to the creation of the “Jackson style.” His collaborators called him “the sponge,” a nickname which referred to his knack for soaking up ideas and techniques wherever he found them.

Jackson’s chief inspirations were James Brown, Marcel Marceau, Gene Kelly, and—perhaps surprisingly to many people—various classical ballet dancers. Unbeknownst to many of his fans, he had previously tried to “pirouette like Baryshnikov” and “tap like Fred Astaire,” and had failed miserably. His dedication to his own unique style, however, gave him the glory he was looking for—and today he stands alongside the other giants of popular music, such as Elvis and The Beatles, as one of the greatest pop icons of all time.

Joaquín Cortés is the youngest entry on this list—and even though he’s still in the process of building his legacy, he’s one of the very few dancers in history who has managed to become a phenomenal sex symbol, loved by men and women alike. Elle Macpherson described him as “sex on legs”; Madonna and Jennifer Lopez publicly claimed to adore him; while Naomi Campbell and Mira Sorvino are among the women whose hearts he has (allegedly) broken.

It’s safe to say that Cortés is not just one of the greatest Flamenco dancers alive, but also the one who cemented the Flamenco’s place in popular culture. His male fans include Tarantino, Armani, Bertolucci, Al Pacino, Antonio Banderas, and Sting. Many of his fans refer to him as a Flamenco God—or simply a Sex God—and when you get the chance to watch one of his shows, you’ll be able to see why. But at the age of forty-four, Cortés remains single, stating that “Dancing is my wife, my only woman.”

Astaire and Rogers were certainly a formidable pair of dancers. It’s said that “He gave her class, and she gave him sex appeal.” They made dancing much more appealing to the masses during rather prudish times. This perhaps owed something to the acting involved in the performance, as Rogers made dancing with Astaire look like the most thrilling experience in the world.

The timing was ideal, too; during the Depression Era, many Americans were struggling to make ends meet—and these two dancers offered many people a way to escape from reality for a while, and to have some fun.

Mikhail Baryshnikov is one of the greatest ballet dancers of all time; many critics consider him to be the greatest. Born in Latvia, Baryshnikov studied ballet at the Vaganova School in St. Petersburg (then known as Leningrad) before joining the Kirov Ballet in 1967. Since then, he has held the lead role in dozens of ballets. He played a key role in making ballet part of popular culture back in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and he was the face of the art form for more than two decades. Baryshnikov is probably the most influential dancer of our time.

Baryshnikov captured the hearts of critics and fellow-dancers, but Rudolf Nureyev was the one who managed to enthrall millions of ordinary people around the world.  Born in Russia, he became a soloist for the Kirov Ballet at the age of twenty. In 1961, when his life offstage made him the subject of scrutiny from Russian authorities, he sought political asylum in Paris and then toured with the Grand Ballet du Marquis de Cuevas.

In the 1970s, he broke into film. Most critics claim that technically he wasn’t as good as Baryshnikov, but Nureyev still managed to charm the crowds with his amazing charisma and his emotional performances. Nureyev and Fonteyn’s “Romeo and Juliet” remains to this day one of the most powerful and emotional performances by a dancing duo in the history of ballet.

Unfortunately, Nureyev was one of the early victims of HIV, and died from AIDS in 1993. Twenty years on, we can still witness the incredible legacy he left behind him.

Donnie Burns is a Scottish professional ballroom dancer who specializes in Latin dance. He and former dance partner Gaynor Fairweather were World Professional Latin champions a record sixteen times. He’s the current president of the World Dance Council and also appeared on the twelfth season of Dancing with the Stars.

He’s considered the greatest ballroom dancer of all time, and his championship performances with his partner are now considered to be classics. But things weren’t always so great for Burns. During an interview with the Daily Sun, he admitted: “I never thought a wee boy from Hamilton would ever experience a fraction of what I’ve gone through in life. I was relentlessly teased at school and I used to get into fights because I wanted to prove I wasn’t a “Dancing Queen.”

We are quite sure that he wouldn’t mind the epithet commonly applied to him today; Donnie Burns is now widely thought of as the “Dancing King.”

Theodoros II is a collector of experiences and a law graduate. He loves History, Sci-Fi culture, European politics, and exploring the worlds of hidden knowledge. His ideal trip in an alternative world would be to the lost city of Atlantis. His biggest passions include Writing, Photography and Music. You can view his photostream here.

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Battles, rebellions, skirmishes, disputes, and tiffs have occurred in America right up to the 20th century. Here are 10 historic conflicts that took place within the land borders of the United States of America and didn’t happen during the Revolutionary or Civil Wars. For the purposes of this list, we’ve also excluded the American-Indian Wars.

The Lone Star State suffered a few growing pains in its earlier days, not helped by the near constant threat of invasion from neighboring Mexico. In 1842, the capital of the Republic of Texas was Austin. After receiving a demand for surrender from a Mexican general backed by an army, Texas president Sam Houston and the state Congress decided Austin might be in danger and ordered the seat of government—and its accompanying archive of official public documents and records—moved to the city of Houston.

The citizens of Austin weren’t pleased. Fearing the president’s namesake city would become the new state capital, they formed a vigilante committee and swore armed resistance. The first attempt failed when the man appointed by the president to accompany the archive on its move was refused horses and wagons by the angry residents. The second attempt ended in humiliation when contemptuous citizens flouted the president’s authority, shaved the manes and tails of his messengers’ horses, and refused to let the men carry out their duty. At the end of 1842, a frustrated President Houston was forced to send a company of thirty Texas Rangers, with orders not to provoke bloodshed, to take the government archive from Austin.

The Rangers entered the town on the morning of December 29th and began quietly loading the archive into wagons, unnoticed by the citizens—except one. Upon witnessing the soldiers’ activities, Angelina Belle Peyton Eberly, who ran the local boarding house, hurried to a six-pound cannon kept loaded with grape shot in case of Indian attack, and set off the charge (fortunately, no one was injured). By the time the vigilante committee members assembled, the Rangers raced out of town, taking the precious archive with them.

Undaunted, the leader of the vigilantes, Captain Mark Lewis, commandeered a cannon from the nearby arsenal and took off after the Rangers with a couple of dozen furious citizens right behind him. They caught up to the company of Rangers the next day at Kenny Fort and at cannon-point, forced them to hand over the archive, which was returned to Austin.

At that point, President Sam Houston gave up, the government archive remained in Austin, and the Archive War ended with only a few shots fired and no one hurt.

Not to be confused with the Red River War in 1874 (U.S. Army vs. Southern Plains Indians). The Red River Bridge War in 1931 began with, unsurprisingly, a bridge spanning the Red River between Denison, Texas and Durant, Oklahoma.

This was a free bridge built jointly by Texas and Oklahoma, much to the annoyance of a nearby older toll bridge also spanning the Red River, now made redundant. In July 1931, the toll bridge company filed for and received a court ordered injunction against the Texas Highway Commission, citing an alleged, unfulfilled agreement to purchase the toll bridge and pay out the company’s contract. The injunction prevented the bridge’s opening. Governor Sterling ordered barricades erected on the Texas side.

However, neither the injunction nor telegrams from Sterling prevented Oklahoma Governor Murray from issuing an executive order to open the new free bridge by asserting his state’s claim to ownership of the land on both sides of the river. He sent workers to destroy the Texas barricades, causing Sterling to respond by sending a couple of Texas Rangers to rebuild the barricades. The situation continued to escalate when Murray ordered crews to block the Oklahoma side of the toll bridge, and traffic flow across the Red River came to a halt. Finally, the Texas legislature granted the toll bridge company the right to sue the state, the injunction was withdrawn, and the free bridge opened. But that isn’t the end of the story.

The toll bridge company went to federal court to prevent Murray from continuing to block their bridge. The Oklahoma governor’s response? Declare martial law and post a National Guard Unit at the sites of both bridges on both sides, prompting Texans to fear an invasion. Murray led guardsmen across the toll bridge while brandishing an antique revolver, and ordered the toll booth torn down and burned. The two Texas Rangers inside fled.

In August, the guardsmen were withdrawn and the Red River Bridge War ended.

A dispute took place over a piece of land called the “Toledo Strip”—where the city of Toledo, Ohio would later be located—which in 1835, gave U.S. President Andrew Jackson a headache by touching off the border skirmish called the Toledo War.

The situation was a tad complicated and boils down to: the original surveyors of the land in question made a mistake and assigned it to Ohio when that state’s border was created. In 1835, another survey corrected the error and set the land within the border of Michigan (not yet a state but a territory). However, this property became hotly contested because of its location at the mouth of the Maumee River. Canals were planned to connect to the Mississippi River, then a vital commercial artery. A city in that location had great potential for wealth.

Hating the prospect of losing a future major trade center, the Ohio legislature called for another survey. This time, the borders were adjusted to no one’s satisfaction.

Matters boiled up again when Michigan applied to the US government to become a state. Ohio Congressmen managed to block the application and wouldn’t budge unless Michigan agreed to revert back to the old boundary line and give up the Toledo Strip. Adding insult to injury, Ohio governor Lucas refused to negotiate, created a county from the disputed land (named after himself), and appointed a judge and sheriff. Michigan governor Stevens promptly mobilized troops and marched to Ohio.

During the brief Toledo War, both states were involved more in bluffing and posturing than actual fighting. The Michigan militia arrested a few Ohio surveyors and officials they caught on the border. They also passed a slightly larger military budget than Ohio in a blatant “mine’s bigger than yours” display. Ohio sent militia to guard their interests, though the only casualty was a Michigan sheriff stabbed to death by an Ohio man in a bar brawl, and the only shots fired were over the heads of the “enemy.”

In 1836, President Jackson ended the Toledo War by proposing to give the Toledo Strip to Ohio and assign a nice chunk of resource rich land to Michigan in compensation. If Michigan rejected the compromise, he would refuse to sign the bill giving the territory its coveted statehood. Needless to say, Michigan took the deal.

In 1841 in the smallest U.S. state, Rhode Island, one man and his supporters instituted insurrection against what they considered unfair voting practices and the disenfranchisement of many of the states’ residents. Their cause became known as the Dorr Rebellion.

Immigration caused an increase in Rhode Island’s population as well as a workforce for the burgeoning Industrial Revolution. Due to the original charter, only property owners had the right to vote, and at the time, more than half the state’s male residents didn’t qualify. Previous attempts to change the qualification through official government channels failed. Finally in 1841, Thomas Dorr and like-minded citizens decided if state legislators couldn’t be bothered, they’d hold a People’s Convention and effect change themselves.

The Dorrites drafted and ratified a People’s Constitution which reformed the voting qualifications, giving all white male residents the franchise. They also “elected” Dorr as governor. Dorr and his supporters were opposed by state legislators including the officially elected Governor King, who used intimidation and force against the popular rebellion.

Backed by many militia members, Dorr attempted to lead an attack on the arsenal in Provincetown in 1842, but the attack failed. He and his followers retreated to regroup, only to find their retreat cut off by government forces. The rebellion fell apart and Dorr fled the state. On his later return to Rhode Island, he was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to life in solitary confinement at hard labor, but he was pardoned and released in 1845.

The Rhode Island legislature did eventually reform the state Constitution, giving the vote to white male residents who owned property or could pay a $1 poll tax.

As a consequence of the Yazoo Land Fraud Scandal of 1795, in 1802 Congress passed a rather vaguely worded law granting certain tracts of land to Georgia which appeared to include the “Orphan Strip”—a small, isolated, and unwanted region surrounded by North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Nobody wanted to govern the wilderness, yet this troublesome bit of real estate would spark a conflict ending in tragedy.

The area had a checkered history. First inhabited by the Cherokee, the Orphan Strip was claimed by South Carolina, who later ceded it to the US government, who in turn passed it back to the Cherokee. The Cherokee still didn’t want it, so tribal leaders handed it over to Washington D.C. a second time. The Orphan Strip became public domain. Despite its isolation and popularity with outlaws and fugitives, some settlers from North and South Carolina decided to make the region their home.

The trouble began in 1803, when Georgia annexed the Orphan Strip and named it Walton County. The state of North Carolina didn’t care, but the 800 some-odd settlers did. Their land grants had been issued by North Carolina and in some cases, South Carolina, so they refused to pay taxes to Georgia in 1804. Walton County tax officials responded by ramping up the pressure with intimidation and attempts to dispossess. Tensions peaked when a Georgian official, Sam McAdams, killed North Carolina constable, John Hafner.

Governor Turner of North Carolina sent his state’s militia marching into Walton County to arrest the men responsible for Hafner’s murder. Ten Walton officials were captured and sent to North Carolina for trial. They escaped jail and went on the lam.

Disputes between North Carolina and Georgia over the land continued. Finally in 1811, a new survey put Walton County within North Carolina’s border, and Georgia accepted the findings … until 1971, when a state commission reported Georgia still had a legal claim to the region. The governor of North Carolina called out the militia to defend the border. Fortunately, both sides kept their heads this time and the matter was resolved peacefully.

Also known as the “Lumberjack War” or the “Pork and Beans War,” the Aroostook War was a border dispute between Maine and Canada (and the US and Great Britain) in 1838. While no one died, the conflict did mange to achieve its own theme song.

At the time of the Treaty of Paris, which ended the Revolutionary War, the border between what would become Maine and New Brunswick, Canada (British territory) was vaguely set at the St. John’s River. Since the region on both sides of the boundary line was covered in timber, Acadian loggers and trappers quickly settled there, ignoring the border. When Maine applied for statehood in 1820, legislators were surprised to find French-Canadian settlers on their side of the river. They gave land grants in the nearby Aroostook River valley to Americans, who soon began disputing with their Acadian neighbors.

King William I of the Netherlands was asked to arbitrate, but Maine rejected his compromise in 1831. The conflict heated up in 1837 when officials from Maine and New Brunswick began making arrests for trespassing in the Aroostook area. Canada accused Maine of timber theft and feared an invasion. The arrival of British forces from Quebec triggered Maine legislators to send a force of 200 militiamen to oppose them.

The US Congress dispatched 10,000 volunteer troops to enforce peace while negotiations with Britain’s representative went on—and if hostilities broke out, to defend the border by force. To everyone’s relief, no fighting occurred and no one was killed—though folklore speaks of a Canadian pig or possibly a wandering cow shot by mistake.

In March 1839, a settlement was finally reached, though a final decision on the border between Maine and Canada wouldn’t be achieved until 1842.

Following World War II in 1946, violence erupted when returning American soldiers discovered their Tennessee county had been taken over by political corruption. Their plan to take it back involved bullets—lots of bullets—and dynamite.

Why Athens in McMinn County, Tennessee became a battleground was due to Paul Cantrell, a Democrat running for sheriff in the 1936 election. He won over his Republican opponent, although the victory was tainted by rumors of fraud. Cantrell was a corrupt sheriff—for example, since state law allowed his office to collect fees for each person booked, jailed, and released, deputies boarded buses passing through the city and arrested passengers on bogus charges of drunkenness, forcing them to pay fines. Prostitution, gambling, and kickbacks from illegal drinking establishments were commonplace.

The tide began to turn in 1945 when GIs returning to Athens were subjected to arrest on the flimsiest excuses and heavily fined. When the fed up soldiers attempted to support their choice for sheriff against Pat Mansfield (by then, Cantrell had been elected to the state Senate and backed Mansfield’s bid), matters boiled over into direct conflict on Election Day 1946.

Mansfield hired several hundred armed “deputies” to patrol the voting precincts in Athens—and no doubt to assist in the typical ballot stuffing and voter intimidation. The volatile situation escalated when Walter Ellis, an ex-GI and volunteer poll watcher, was arrested by Mansfield’s deputies and held without charge. A black resident, Tom Gillespie, was refused the right to vote, beaten, and shot. More GIs were arrested and threatened with violence. By the end of the day, the former soldiers had enough.

They broke into the town armory for weapons and besieged the jail, where Mansfield and his deputies had taken the ballet boxes. Battle continued sporadically throughout the night, resulting in wounded on both sides. When the GIs ran out of bullets around dawn, they began throwing dynamite. The deputies inside the jail surrendered.

The highly publicized Battle of Athens not only ousted corruption from one county in Tennessee, the lesson learned would ultimately lead to great reforms in Southern politics.

A border dispute in 1839 between Missouri and Iowa culminated in the Honey War—a bloodless if slightly rowdy conflict whose mark can still be seen in the landscape today.

The border between Iowa and Missouri had originally been drawn in 1816 by J.C. Sullivan, a surveyor, creating the “Sullivan Line.” However, less than a decade later, the exact whereabouts of the boundary line were in question. The matter didn’t cause trouble until 1838, when Missouri legislators ordered a new survey done. The result, adopted by the Missouri government, shifted the border north into Iowa.

Settlers in the annexed area considered themselves Iowans, so were understandably disconcerted when Missouri officials attempted to collect taxes from them. Their refusal caused several valuable bee trees—a source of honey—to be cut down and taken as partial payment, a definite crime in the citizen’s eyes. Next time, the tax agents threatened, they’d come in force. Incensed Iowans chased them away and contacted Iowa Governor Lucas.

Expecting a fight, Missouri mustered a militia force of 600 men, who marched to the disputed area. Iowa lacked a militia, but eventually close to 1,200 volunteers armed with pitchforks showed up to defend their state’s honor … and were too late to do anything except stand around since the Missourians had already got tired of waiting and gone home. Missouri Governor Boggs and Governor Lucas quarreled over where the true border lay. In the end, the U.S. Marshals intervened to keep the peace.

At last in 1849-1850, the US Supreme Court decided to retain the old official Sullivan Line between Iowa and Missouri. Large, cast iron pillars were driven into the ground every ten miles to the Des Moines River to mark the boundary. A few survive today.

No one likes to pay taxes, and early Americans hated the idea with a passion. So when US Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton persuaded Congress to impose a tax on distilled spirits in 1791, he found himself with a rebellion on his hands.

The new federal government needed revenue, not only to run the country, but to pay off debts incurred during the Revolutionary War. Since a national income tax wasn’t yet in the cards, Hamilton felt it necessary to levy taxes on goods including a very unpopular “whiskey” tax which frontier farmers in western Pennsylvania felt was unfair. Many of these small scale farmers grew rye and corn. Distilling the grain into whiskey allowed indefinite storage and gave them a more reliable source of income than shipping the harvest east.

The farmers expressed their displeasure by refusing to pay the tax. While US President George Washington sought a peaceful solution and Hamilton urged military force, the farmers continued to ramp up the hostilities in the Whiskey Rebellion.

In 1794, a group of 400 rebels marched on Pittsburgh and burned the home of John Neville, a tax collection supervisor. Washington was left with no choice. Concerned the rebellion might spread to other states and end in the destruction of the federal government, he mustered a sizable militia. Under the command of Hamilton and Henry Lee, governor of Virginia, 13,000 troops marched into western Pennsylvania to put down the rebels.

When Hamilton and Lee’s militia reached Pittsburgh, the rebels fled and the Whiskey Rebellion ended. About 150 men suspected of being involved were arrested, but freed for lack of evidence. Two were tried, convicted of treason, and pardoned by Washington.

In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson, who had never agreed with the tax, repealed it.

In 1857-58, the so-called “Mormon problem” caused the conflict known as the Utah War or Buchanan’s Blunder, much to the eventual embarrassment of the US President.

The Church of Latter-Day Saints faced a great deal of persecution in the United States. Members were eventually forced to head west to establish a sanctuary in Utah. About 55,000 Mormons occupied the Salt Lake City, and Brigham Young acted as territorial governor. Against federal law, Young governed the territory as a theocracy, allowing church doctrine to take precedence over civil matters.

In the years since the Mormons had settled in the Great Salt Lake Valley, tensions between the church and the US government continued to rise over such issues as polygamy. Matters came to a head when hostilities against three federal judges by members of the church caused them to flee Utah, claiming they’d barely escaped with their lives (an exaggeration).

To deal with the problem, President James Buchanan appointed a new territorial governor and sent him to Utah accompanied by 2,500 U.S. Army troops. The commander of the expedition was given strict instructions not to attack citizens except in self defense. Unfortunately, no one thought to inform the Mormons.

In response to what they believed was an invasion, Utah mustered the militia and began collecting firearms, ammunition, and food stores. Citizen drills were established. A reconnaissance unit sent to infiltrate the US Army camp brought back renewed fears of mass hangings and abuse of Mormon women. The severely outmanned and under supplied Utah government declared martial law and prepared for the worst. Young told militia commanders to avoid bloodshed if possible.

In the meantime, the advance force of 1,250 US Army troops were harassed by the Utah militia and mounted scouts, who did not return fire even when shot at. Their orders were not to engage, but hinder and delay. Despite the reluctance to strike first, injuries and fatalities happened on both sides. Eventually, winter set in, bringing the “war” to a halt.

By spring 1858, Buchanan’s requests for further funding for the “Utah Expedition” were ignored by Congress. Mormon sympathies and the slavery debate made the action in Utah unimportant and unpopular. The Army was recalled. For the Mormons, life returned to normal. And while Buchanan’s Blunder had the unintended effect of generating sympathy for the Mormons, it also ended Young’s control over the Utah territory.

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For most of us, the cute animals of the world fall strictly into the mammal or bird category. Bugs, insects, and other creepy crawlies are viewed with disgust, and most often end up squished on the bottom of our shoes. But this is a photo list which aims to change your perception of the little nasties, by showing you ten bugs that even the biggest insect-haters can agree are at least a little adorable.

Sure—if you enlarged this guy to, say, elephant size, he’d be more than a little horrifying. But at his tiny scale, he has kind of a sweet, Yoda-esque vibe about him. Despite their delicate appearance, praying mantids are voracious hunters, disguising themselves as leaves before darting out at lightning fast speeds to ensnare moths, grasshoppers, crickets, flies, and other insects.

Venomous spines are a little intimidating—we’ll concede that—but what’s cuter than a bug with his own saddle? Admittedly, attempts to find a rider have so far proved unsuccessful. These interesting critters live in the eastern half of the United States, and develop into an ordinary looking brown moth.

A ladybug’s bright, cheerful color is actually used to warn off predators. Ladybugs secrete an awful tasting fluid in their legs, and their distinctive markings remind predators (who have sampled their kind before) that they taste disgusting.

Even though snails are mollusks rather than bugs or insects, they tend to hang out in the same areas—and they’re far too cute to refrain from putting on this list. Interestingly, white-lipped snails act as their own cupid before mating, as they literally shoot their partner with a “love dart” before getting it on. Scientists believe that the dart helps to improve their chances of reproduction.

With its suave good-looks and Elvis-like hairdo, have you ever felt a stronger urge to give a bug a high-five? Sadly, that’s not really his face—and being a stink bug, this fella is not so much a hipster as he is merely smelly. As with many bugs, his bold colors are designed to make predators think that he’s either venomous or bad tasting.

Moths are generally considered to be ill-favored by the god of beauty, especially in contrast to butterflies—but here’s one moth that gives butterflies a run for their money. Rosy maple moths are found throughout North America, and are most often found around dusk, which is their favorite time to mate and lay eggs.

Even as adults, grasshoppers aren’t too bad looking—but the baby ones are so adorable that you may even be willing to let them ravage your crops. Except for the freezing North and South Poles, grasshoppers can be found nearly everywhere on Earth.

Damselflies have existed on Earth for an impressive two hundred million years. You can distinguish them from dragonflies by their comparably longer bodies, closed wings (when at rest), and their beautiful, charming eyes—which surely make them a contender for animals with the most incredible eyes

Although the bug in the photo above looks a little bit like a friendly Martian, he’s actually just one of many types of treehoppers found throughout the world. Sadly, individual treehoppers live only for a few months. As a species, however, they have existed for forty million years.

These lovable, anime-eyed caterpillars technically don’t have big eyes at all—just conveniently-placed spots that resemble eyes. But if you add these spots to their bright green color, they end up doing a pretty good job of mimicking green snakes—which turns out to be the whole point of their unusual appearance.

Content and copy-writer by day and list writer by night, S.Grant enjoys exploring the bizarre, the unusual, and the topics that hide in plain sight. Contact S.Grant at s.grantwriter@gmail.com.

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If you were asked to imagine an aspect of modern healthcare, there are a number of things you might come up with—an operating theatre, perhaps, or an ambulance with sirens ablaze. There are some things in medicine that are so ubiquitous it’s hard to imagine a world without them—but as with everything, there had to be a first time. This is a list of ten important breakthroughs which have all gone on to become iconic aspects of modern medicine.

Ambulances are fundamental to modern healthcare. A minute can be the difference between life and death, so getting medical personal to a patient and the patient to hospital quickly is essential. The earliest ambulances were horse-drawn, first used on battlefields to carry wounded soldiers to safety and treatment. By the 1860s, hospital-based ambulances for civilians were introduced—capable of dashing to emergencies within thirty seconds of a call.

The first motorized ambulance was introduced in Chicago in 1899, donated by five hundred local businessmen. New York received motorized ambulances a year later. They boasted a smoother ride, greater comfort, more safety for the patient, and a faster speed than horse-drawn ambulances. An article from the New York Times from September 11, 1900, describes them as having a range of twenty-five miles and a top speed of sixteen miles per hour.

The three-wheeled Pallister ambulance, introduced in 1905, was the first to be powered by gasoline. In 1909, James Cunningham, Son & Co—a hearse manufacturer—developed the first mass-produced ambulance, which was powered by a four-cylinder internal combustion engine. Rather than the modern-day sirens with which we’re all familiar, this ambulance featured a gong. How cool is that?

The defibrillator is a key prop in TV hospital dramas. A doctor, paddle in each hand, yells “clear!” and zaps a patient into consciousness. It is one of the most recognizable pieces of medical equipment, famed for its ability to bring people back from the very brink of death. It works by shocking the heart back from an abnormal rhythm to the correct pace. Contrary to many people’s perception, it doesn’t actually restart a stopped heart. These days, automated defibrillators can often be found outside hospitals—and like fire extinguishers, they can save lives even when used by completely untrained passersby.

The very first defibrillation was performed in 1947. Since the start of the twentieth century, experiments on dogs had shown that there could be some benefit to shocking a heart in ventricular fibulation (VF), a type of abnormal rhythm. Surgeon Claude Beck was a proponent of the potential of this treatment. He was operating on a fourteen-year-old boy when the heart, irritated by anesthesia, went into VF. The heart was massaged by hand for forty-five minutes, and then shocks from paddles were applied directly, restoring normal rhythm. The boy went on to make a full recovery—and Hollywood’s favorite medical device was born.

Blood transfusion is vital in saving lives. In the popular imagination, it involves blood being pumped into an accident victim by a team of ER doctors—but blood donations also allow life-saving surgery, and a wide range medical treatments.

The history of blood transfusion goes back to the seventeenth century. Early experiments were carried out between animals, and also from animals to humans. Eventually human-to-human transfusion was tried, but one key problem was that blood left outside the body for just a few minutes would coagulate and eventually become solid. A donor needed to give their blood directly to the receiver. This presented obvious practical issues.

The very first donation of blood that didn’t come directly from donor to recipient was volunteered by Albert Hustin, a Belgian doctor, in 1914. He mixed the blood with sodium citrate and glucose, as an anti-coagulant.

The same procedure was repeated by Luis Agote in Argentina a few months later. The technique of “citration” allowed blood to be donated and stored for later use. Today, ninety-two million people donate blood each year worldwide, helping to save millions of lives.

If you can give blood, please do so. Readers in the US can visit http://www.americasblood.org, or you can search for blood donation centers wherever you are in the world. You will save lives—and can even read Listverse on your phone while you do it.

Medical journals are the basis upon which medical knowledge is shared and subjected to peer review. The oldest medical journal still in print today is the New England Journal of Medicine, which was first published in 1812. There are now hundreds of thousands of scientific journals published each year, and many of these are dedicated to medicine.

The earliest journal dedicated entirely to medicine was published in French in 1679, and the first English-language medical journal—“Medicina Curiosa”—came five years later.

Medicina Curiosa’s full title was “Medicina Curiosa: or, a Variety of new Communications in Physick, Chirurgery, and Anatomy, from the Ingenious of many Parts of Europe, and Some other Parts of the World.” Its first issue was published on June 17, 1684, and featured instructions for treating ear pain and a tale about death from the bite of a rabid cat. Sadly, the journal lasted only two issues.

Cholera was one of the most feared diseases in nineteenth-century Europe. It triggered a flurry of medical research and subsequent advances—and the hunt for its cause features later in this list. There was no known cure for cholera. As a bacterial infection, it took more than a hundred years—and the invention of antibiotics—to come up with a way of targeting the illness. Treatment in the mid-1800s was focused on relieving the symptoms. Cholera often killed its victims by causing severe dehydration, since people who were stricken by it could produce up to five gallons of diarrhea per day. Simple consumption of water isn’t adequate to rehydrate a person with cholera.

The physician Thomas Latta, like many of his time, took a keen interest in discussions over the disease. A doctor named W. B. O’Shaughnessy had lectured about the idea of intravenous injection, but had never tried it in practice. Latta was inspired, and decided that the procedure should at least be attempted. He described his decision, writing, “I at length resolved to throw the fluid immediately into the circulation. In this, having no precedent to direct me, I proceeded with much caution.”

He pumped six pints of fluid into an aged female suffering from the effects of cholera, and witnessed a remarkable—practically instant—improvement. Unfortunately, she died several hours later after having been turned over to the hospital surgeon, who failed to repeat the procedure. Regardless, the success of the new treatment was taken on board by many other doctors, and it quickly rose to prominence. The enormous potential of intravenous fluids wasn’t fully realized until the end of the nineteenth century; today, the IV drip is an iconic piece of medical equipment, and helps to keep alive even the most severely ill among us.

Almost everyone reading this will have taken a powdered pill at some point in their lives. Uncountable numbers of pills are produced each year; a single pill factory will often produce an output numbering in the billions.

While pills in some form go back thousands of years, they were often little more than squished up bits of plant matter. Early nineteenth century attempts to produce pills based on specific chemicals, ran into many problems. Coatings would often fail to dissolve, and the moisture required in pill production could often deactivate ingredients.

In 1843, English artist William Brockedon was facing similar problems with graphite pencils. So he invented a machine which was able to press graphite powder into a solid lump, thereby producing high-quality drawing tools. A drug manufacturer saw that the device had potential for other uses, and Brockedon’s invention was soon being used to create the very first powder-based tablets. This technology was adapted to mass manufacturing before the end of the century, giving rise to the pill-fueled world we live in today.

Modern surgery is certainly capable of spectacular feats—but these are only made possible by anesthesia. The ability to sedate a patient, rendering them motionless and free of pain, is essential in almost any invasive procedure. The first reputable, recorded instance of surgery under general anesthesia took place in 1804, performed by Japanese doctor Seishu Hanaoka.

Hanaoka gave a mixture of plant matter to a sixty-year-old woman suffering from breast cancer. Called tsusensan, this mixture contained a number of active ingredients that make a person impervious to pain after around two to four hours, ultimately knocking them unconscious for up to a day.

While this mixture was not as safe as modern anesthetics, it was certainly effective—and its effects allowed Hanaoka to perform a partial mastectomy. He continued to use the mixture to perform a number of operations. By the time of his death over thirty years later, he’d operated more than one hundred and fifty times on cases of breast cancer alone, at a time when the idea was just beginning to dawn in the Western world.

We’ve mentioned before how important the invention of vaccination was to the world, and the amazing things it’s achieved. One of the most important factors in vaccination is herd immunity, ensuring that enough people are immunized to prevent the spread of a disease through a community. This helps protect those people who for various reasons can’t be immunized, such as young babies or cancer patients. Achieving herd immunity requires a large percentage of uptake—often more than ninety-five percent of a population. Persuading that many people to do anything requires a lot of effort, so a lot of vaccination is government-mandated.

In 1840, the United Kingdom passed the “Vaccination Act,” which provided free vaccinations for the poor. By 1853, vaccination was compulsory for all babies younger than three months—and in 1867, everyone under the age of fourteen had to be vaccinated against smallpox. Not complying with the laws could land you a fine or even imprisonment.

While this use of compulsion made great headway in eradicating smallpox, it also gave birth to the anti-vaccination movement. Many saw it as an intrusion into personal liberty, and there were riots in many parts of the UK. In 1898, the laws were relaxed to allow people to conscientiously object to receiving vaccines—but the benefits of vaccination programs to public health are well-supported with evidence.

Epidemiology can be summarized as the study of illness in a population. Epidemiologists use observation and statistics to find patterns, causes, and ways to prevent or treat disease. It is the basic science behind public health policy. The word derives from epidemic, and was originally used to describe their study, before taking on a broader meaning.

Dr John Snow, who is considered the “father of epidemiology,” was responsible for the first and most classic example of the uses of epidemiology. In the mid-nineteenth century, the prevailing theory was that cholera and many other diseases were caused by miasmas, which are basically poisonous gases. Snow, on the other hand, was an early proponent of germ theory—though he opted to keep this quiet as very few respected it at the time. He believed that cholera was possibly spread by polluted water, which he cleverly described as potentially containing a “poison”.

During an outbreak in London in the 1850s, Snow analyzed the water supplies of those killed. He found that many of the victims had been drinking water whose source contained sewage.

Critics still weren’t convinced—so when another outbreak occurred, Snow made a map of all of the victims, and found that a whole cluster of them lived near a particular water pump. Many of those who didn’t live near the pump could remember drinking from it in passing. Nearby communities with separate water supplies weren’t impacted by the outbreak. Snow persuaded authorities to remove the pump’s handle, and the epidemic soon ceased. Unfortunately, the established miasma theory was still firmly entrenched in accepted theory.

Snow struggled to persuade any but a small minority of the truth of his own theory. He died of a stroke in 1858, largely unrecognized for his pioneering work. It was decades later that his efforts were rediscovered, giving rise to an entire field of science and earning him a deserved place in medical history.

The clinical trial allows us to find out what works—and what doesn’t work—in medicine. Other types of evidence, such as anecdotes or expert opinion, are comparatively unreliable. You can’t rely on an anecdote to say a drug cured you, because you may have simply recovered on your own, without the aid of the drug.

The only way to know that a medical intervention is efficacious—that is to say, that it has more than a placebo effect—is to test it on groups of people and see if there is a pattern of improvement among those receiving the treatment. It’s the core to almost all medical research done today.

The first clinical trial was carried out on a ship. Twelve patients suffering from scurvy were divided into six groups of two, and each group was subjected to different remedies. Vinegar was tried on one group, and sea water on another—but the real breakthrough came when one group was given oranges and lemons. We know now that scurvy is a disease caused by lack of vitamin C, so the group receiving citrus showed a marked improvement. Within six days, the two sailors receiving oranges and lemons had almost fully recovered; one was able to return to duty, the other was appointed to nurse the remaining patients due to his improved health.

James Lind, the doctor responsible for the test, concluded: “I shall here only observe that the result of all my experiments was that oranges and lemons were the most effectual remedies for this distemper at sea . . . perhaps one history more may suffice to put this out of doubt.” Not only were his conclusions about scurvy shown to be true; he had unwittingly established the core of medical experimentation, as it would remain almost three hundred years later.

Alan is an aspiring writer trying to kick-start his career with an awesome beard and an addiction to coffee. You can hear his bad jokes by reading them aloud to yourself from Twitter where he is @SkepticalNumber or you can email him at mailskepticalnumber@gmail.com.

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Civil wars are merely an indication that even people who are closely related by ethnicity, culture, history, and geography, can have deep and divisive differences. Civil war has also been connected with genocide in many instances, and for many people, it is considered the most shameful kind of war, even though according to the great François Fénelon, “All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.”

The Bosnian War was a brutal, complex, and ugly conflict that followed the fall of communism in Europe.

In 1991, Bosnia and Herzegovina joined several republics of the former Yugoslavia and declared independence, which triggered a civil war that lasted for four years. Bosnia’s population was a multicultural mix of Muslim Bosniaks, Orthodox Serbs, and Catholic Croats. The Bosnian Serbs, well-armed and backed by neighboring Serbia, laid siege to the city of Sarajevo in early April, 1992. They targeted mainly the Muslim population, but killed many other Bosnian Serbs and Croats with rocket, mortar, and sniper attacks that went on for nearly three and a half years.

As shells fell on the Bosnian capital, nationalist Croat and Serb forces carried out brutal “ethnic cleansing” attacks throughout the countryside. Finally, in 1995, UN air strikes and United Nations sanctions helped bring all parties to a peace agreement. Estimates of the war’s fatalities vary widely, ranging from 90,000 to 300,000.

The Nigerian Civil War, also known as Nigerian-Biafran War, was the result of economic, ethnic, cultural, and religious tensions among the various peoples of Nigeria. Like many other African nations, Nigeria was an artificial construct of imperialism—in this case created by the British, who had neglected to consider religious, linguistic, and ethnic differences when they drew up the borders of the new country.

The civil war began on July 6, 1967, when Nigerian Federal troops advanced in two columns into Biafra. Nigeria, which won independence from Britain in 1960, had at that time a population of sixty million people consisting of nearly three hundred different ethnic and cultural groups. The war cost Nigeria a great deal in terms of lives, money, and its standing in the world. It has been estimated that up to three million people may have died due to the conflict—mostly from hunger and disease. It was one of the bloodiest civil wars of the last few decades.

The War of a Thousand Days was a Colombian civil war between the Conservative Party, the Liberal Party and its radical factions that resulted over 100,000 deaths, extensive property damage, and national economic ruin.

The Liberal Party represented coffee plantation owners and rich merchants who favored a laissez-faire economic policy. Largely excluded from participation in government after the Conservative victory of 1885, they were further distressed by the drastic downturn in the international price of coffee; by 1899, many coffee growers were operating at a loss.

During the next three years, disorganized but highly disruptive guerrilla-style warfare raged in the rural areas, with great destruction of property and loss of life. Unable to pacify the countryside by force, the Conservatives finally offered amnesty and political reform in 1902. By November of the same year, the two most important Liberal leaders, Rafael Uribe and Benjamín Herrera, surrendered after negotiating peace treaties which promised amnesty, free elections, and political reform.

In April 2011, the UN released a report on human rights violations during the last phase of the twenty-six-year-long Sri Lankan Civil War, in which over 100,000 people lost their lives. The war was fought between the brutally effective Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the local government, and it is estimated that at least 40,000 civilians died in the five months before the war’s end in May 2009, when the Tigers surrendered.

Most locals greeted the end of the civil war in 2009 with jubilation—but although the fighting has stopped, the restoration of the rule of law and the proper investigation of rights abuses and alleged war crimes by both sides has not yet occurred. On February 12, 2013, the UN Human Rights High Commissioner Navi Pillay stated that Sri Lanka has broken its promise to improve human rights, and has failed to investigate wartime atrocities

The people of Angola fought bravely against occupation and tyranny to gain their independence from imperialist rulers. Unfortunately, right after Angola became a free nation, the local authorities and political wings lusted after power over the newly formed country. Civil war seemed to be inevitable.

The chief cause of this war, in the end, was a power struggle between the popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), and the National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). It was one of the bloodiest and most prolonged civil wars of modern history, lasting for nearly twenty-seven years.

The war began immediately after Angola became independent from Portugal in 1975, and finally ended only when Jonas Savimbi, leader of UNITA, was killed by government troops in 2002. The two sides then agreed to a ceasefire, soon to be followed by elections. The war left at least 500,000 people dead, and an economy in ruins.

The “Secret War” in Laos was a crime committed by the American government (by now this has been attested as historical fact, rather than personal opinion).

It was characterized by political planning steeped in ignorance, deception, and arrogant self-interest; and by a disregard of the real problems and issues at hand. Unfortunately, the government’s evil little power games had a human cost. It has been estimated that as many as 450,000 civilians in Laos, and 600,000 in Cambodia, lost their lives. Figures for refugees exceed a million.

In addition, the widespread use of toxic chemical defoliants created a massive health crisis, which naturally fell most heavily on children, on nursing mothers, and on the aged and the already sick—and its effects still linger to this day. The Secret War was the very definition of what we should call a War of Shame.

Somalia is not only populated by Somalis; it’s actually home to a number of different peoples, several of which opposed Siad Barre, the Dictator of Somalia, in the late 1980s. In response, he began attacking them with his army—but they fought back and removed him from power.

Barre was still popular with many Somalis, however, and a revolution took place in the early 1990s to reinstate him. After his return to power, a large part of northern Somalia declared itself independent from the rest of the country, though it remains largely unrecognized.

After years of war, Somalia lies in ruins—and the UN continues to send peacekeeping forces to facilitate the distribution of aid and the rebuilding of Somalia’s society. It’s unofficially estimated that nearly a million of people lost their lives from war-related causes.

This is one of the most massive and most bloody civil wars the world has ever known. No other event devastated nineteenth-century China like the Taiping Rebellion. It was sparked by the leadership of one man from South China, Hong Xiuquan, who in 1847 failed the imperial examinations for the third time and fell into a delirium which lasted thirty days.

When he recovered, he believed that he had been chosen to conquer China and establish the Taiping Tianguo—the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Harmony. Gathering followers (at first from the poor masses), he and his recruits gradually built up an army and political organization that went on to sweep across China. By the late 1850s, they controlled over a third of the country. Their movement was so strong and popular that it took the central government millions of dollars and fifteen years to defeat them. Not until 1864 was the rebellion brutally put down; it’s estimated to have been responsible for the deaths of more than twenty million people.

The Wars of the Roses were some of the most important historical events of the medieval era. Their impact in England was immense. They were sporadic civil wars fought between members of the House of Lancaster, whose symbol was the red rose, and the House of York, whose symbol was the white rose. Both houses were branches of the House of Plantagenet, tracing their descent from King Edward III.

The rivalry began in 1399 when King Richard II was overthrown by his cousin, Henry Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster. But the actual wars didn’t break out until 1455, when Richard, Duke of York, defeated the Lancastrians in the First Battle of St Albans.

The Wars of the Roses ended with the accession of King Henry VII, who founded the Tudor dynasty and symbolically united the White and Red Roses to create the Tudor Rose.

This civil war is often overlooked and ignored—and it’s definitely one war China would like to forget. It remains to this day the deadliest civil war in world history. The death toll surpassed even that of the Taiping Rebellion, and has been topped only by a couple of regular wars since then, with World War II being one of them.

The An Shi Rebellion as it is also known took place during the Tang Dynasty, from A.D. 755 to A.D. 763, and spanned the reign of three Tang emperors. Fortunately for the Tangs, An Lushan’s competing Yan Dynasty soon began to disintegrate from within.

In January 757, An Lushan’s son became upset by his father’s threats against his friends at court, and killed him. Shortly afterwards, he in turn was murdered by An Lushan’s old friend, Shi Siming. This friend attempted to continue An Lushan’s program of rebellion, but also ended up being murdered by his own son in 761. But although the Tang eventually defeated the An Lushan Rebellion, the effort left the empire weaker than ever before—and it is estimated that over thirty-five million people lost their lives during this blood-bath of a war.

Theodoros II is a collector of experiences and a law graduate. He loves History, Sci-Fi culture, European politics, and exploring the worlds of hidden knowledge. His ideal trip in an alternative world would be to the lost city of Atlantis. His biggest passions are Writing, Photography and Music. You can see his photostream here.

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Riker sits down: given the height of those chairs, it seems pretty fluid but you’ll quickly notice that no one else does that.

fartscroll.js: this is exactly what The Onion‘s open-source contribution would look like. Oh, and they got one of the best pull requests I’ve come across. [UPDATE: Someone made a Chrome extension.]

With the largest GDP in the world, it’s not hard to imagine most of the inventions of the modern day coming from the United States. Any system based on capitalism and free enterprise is bound to drive innovation, even if the motives for that innovation aren’t exactly sparkling white. But the truth is, some of the most common things we use today were invented outside the borders of the ol’ Stars and Stripes, even if they went on to live a fruitful life in the hands of American consumers—saturating the market to the point that it’s hard (for an American at least) to imagine them coming from anywhere else. Here are 10 “American” inventions that were invented neither in America nor by an American.

The battery is a staple of modern life. They’ve changed a lot over the years, but the core principle is still the same—and it’s probably about 100 years older than you’d think. Most of the electrical pioneering in the world was happening in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s. Thomas Edison, Nicola Tesla, Heinrich Hertz—these and other great minds were filing hundreds of electrical patents that shaped the 20th century into what we know today.

So it might come as a surprise to learn that the battery was invented a century before any of this—in 1800, by Alessandro Volta (an Italian). His “battery” was called the Voltaic Pile and combined layers of copper, zinc, and cardboard soaked in saltwater. The design was modeled the work of another Italian, who noticed that a dead frog’s legs will twitch if an electrical charge touches them. Volta simple replaced the frog legs with salt water to create a circuit.

As a matter of fact, nearly every stage in the evolution of the battery has come from a different country. An Englishman improved on Volta’s battery, a Frenchman developed the first rechargeable battery, and a Swede invented the nickel-cadmium battery, which we still use today. Really, the only American influence came from Benjamin Franklin, who was the first person to use the word “battery.”

As everyone knows, coffee beans naturally have caffeine. That’s why most people drink it. But millions of “health conscious” Americans reach for decaf over the caffeinated brew. Easy enough, since it’s available in every coffee shop and every office across the country. It’s as American as apple pie.

Except, of course, that it’s not American at all (incidentally, neither is apple pie). The process of decaffeination was invented by a German named Ludwig Roselius in 1903. It was later widely marketed in the U.S. under the brand name Sanka. In addition to caffeine, coffee also has more than 400 other chemicals, all of which add their own personality to the overall taste, texture, and smell. So removing one specific chemical while keeping everything else intact isn’t the easiest thing in the world. Roselius’s process involved steaming the coffee beans with acid and then soaking them in benzene, which pulled out the caffeine. Since benzene has an annoying tendency to cause bone marrow cancer, modern decaffeination is slightly different.

Once the telephone was invented, it didn’t take long for someone to invent a way to screen calls from unwanted callers. Thus, the answering machine was born. For the most part, the answering machine is credited to Benjamin Thornton, an American inventor who filed his patent in 1936. However, just a year earlier a man named Willy Mueller patented an answering machine in Switzerland. Yet this article from the 1930 issue of Popular Mechanics describes a new device as “a robot that answers the phone for you,” five years before Mueller. In all honesty, the history of the answering machine is as confusing as a caterpillar orgy, but one thing is for sure—it was not invented in America.

That’s because it was a Danish inventor named Valdemar Poulsen who built the first device that was able to record a message and play it back later, all the way back in 1898. It was just too bulky and cumbersome to be practical. As far as modern machines go, it wasn’t until 1960 that answering machines were even sold in America—the Ansafone, brainchild of Japanese inventor Kazuo Hashimoto and the first digital answering machine in the world.

The notepad is one of those things that’s so common we just take it for granted. But this one tiny innovation ended up setting the standard for nearly a century of paper binding. The same process was later used to bind books, especially the American pulp fiction novels of the 30′s and 40′s that brought commercial reading to the mainstream.

Before the 1900′s, most paper was just stacked in a pile and kept that way. But in 1902, Australian J.A. Birchall decided to put a thin strip of glue across the top of a stack of paper and slap a sheet of cardboard on the back. And just like that, the notepad was born. They were originally sold as Silvercity Writing Tablets, and went on to become one of the most popular products in the world.

Thirty-eight million Americans wear contact lenses instead of eyeglasses every day. By all accounts, eyeglasses have been around since 13th century Italy, and the design of these haven’t changed much over the years, except of course for different types of frames, which change according to whatever fashion is current. However, it took over five hundred years before, in 1887, a German named Adolf Fick made the decision to do away with frames altogether and simply stick the lens right in his eye.

The first contact lenses were huge—21mm (0.8 inches) wide and made from blown glass, with a sugar solution between the lens and the eye to cut down on friction. They were bulky and uncomfortable, but blown glass contacts stuck around for 50 years until they were replaced with plastic ones in 1936.

Even though Adolf Fick was the first person to make a practical (well, semi-practical) contact lens, he certainly wasn’t the first to try. Leonardo da Vinci is said to have invented a type of contact lens in 1508 made out of a bowl of water. Similarly, Rene Descartes supposedly built a water-filled tube that was designed to go into the eye, but the idea never took off because it stuck out so far you couldn’t blink.

When you think of pesticides, you probably picture something like DDT. Currently banned in 170 countries, DDT was for a time one of the most common pesticides in the U.S., with thousands of farms using tens of thousands of pounds of the chemical to spray their crops. DDT was especially common during WWII, when Allied soldiers used it to fight off typhus. Out in the South Pacific, the army was literally spraying DDT into the air around their soldiers to keep mosquitoes (and malaria) at bay.

But it wasn’t invented in the same country that brought it to such global prominence. That honor goes to Othmar Zeidler, a German chemist who first synthesized dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (that’s DDT) in 1874. Even so, it wasn’t until another chemist in Switzerland named Paul Hermann Muller discovered that it could be used to kill insects in 1939 that it experienced its infamous boom. For his discovery, Muller was awarded the Nobel Prize.

Compact discs, or CDs, were one of the defining technologies of the 1990′s and 2000′s. They successfully killed cassette tapes, and they’re probably the last physical audio technology that we’ll ever have, now that mp3′s and digital formats pretty much dominate the music industry. But CD’s had a longer lifespan than most people might realize. When do you think were they invented? Early 90′s? Late 80′s? It was actually 1974, nearly a decade before they even became available to the public market.

And the inventors were none other than the Dutch company Philips and the Japanese company Sony, which actually isn’t surprising at all. In the mid 70′s, both companies independently began working on technologies that could imprint digital sound onto a small plastic disc. In a move rarely seen among industrial giants, the two companies decided to join forces to develop the technology as fast as possible. The first album ever recorded on CD was ABBA’s The Visitors in 1981.

If America can’t claim decaf, DDT, and contact lenses, at least we have the TV going for us, the most American invention of all time. Well, wrong again. TV is actually a Russian invention. Specifically, it was a Russian engineer named Boris Rosing who, in 1907, used a cathode ray tube to receive images, creating the earliest framework for transmitting light and pictures to a receiving screen.

The invention was born, but like most technologies it took a few years and several participants to make it happen. In 1925, a Scottish scientist named John Logie Baird transmitted moving images to a cathode ray tube with a 30 line resolution (lines, not pixels). And back to Russia, a Leon Theremin boosted the quality of early TV’s up to 100 interlocking lines, bringing us closer to what we have today. At least, what we had before LCD screens. You can bet that very few Americans at the height of Commie hate during the Cold War realized they were getting their news from a Russian technology.

Aerosol spray cans are fairly common all over the world, but the first ones were sold in the U.S. in 1931. Since then, the core idea has remained relatively unchanged—a payload and a propellant are contained in an airtight metal can, and they’re released by pushing a button at the top of the can. Buy any can of spray paint right now and it wouldn’t be terribly different from what was being used in the 30′s.

If they were introduced to the world in America, then it makes sense that they were invented by an American company. In reality, an American company bought the patent for 100,000 kroner from a Norwegian scientist named Erik Rotheim, who had patented his aerosol invention in Oslo, Norway five years earlier.

Ask any Canadian where the telephone was invented, and they’ll proudly point right down at the permafrost under their feet. Ask an American, and you’ll get the same answer—a finger pointed straight down at American soil. Despite the fact that Alexander Graham Bell filed the patent for the first electric telephone in the U.S. Patent Office in 1876, his work in the early 1870′s took place mostly at his family home in Brantford, Ontario. That’s where he and his assistant, Thomas Watson, first transmitted an audio tone over a wire by plucking a metal reed, like a harp. This was the first time a sound had ever been sent from one place to another electronically—the framework of the telephone was born.

However, Bell had already promised his investors that he would register his device as an American invention, so the patent was filed in the U.S., and thus America got to claim the telephone as its own, even though the invention itself took shape on Canadian soil. If you’re interested, you can read Bell’s entire lab notebook online.

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Everyone has heard of the Bermuda Triangle and the mysteries that surround it. Theories about this area range from reasonable to just plain ridiculous, but whether you believe it’s the site of time warps, alien abductions, or just plain paranoia, it certainly abounds with strangeness. It’s not the only place you can find creepy things happening, however—here are 10 other places on Earth with their fair share of mysteries:

The Superstition Mountains are a mountain range located east of Phoenix, Arizona. Already it’s off to a great start with the name.

According to legend, sometime in the 1800s a man named Jacob Waltz discovered a huge goldmine within the mountains that has since been dubbed the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine (because Waltz was German, and eh, close enough). He kept the location a secret until his deathbed, upon which he may or may not (depending on which version of the story you’re reading) have told a single person the secret. Regardless, the mine has never been found, in spite of many expeditions. Some say the spirits of people who’ve lost their lives in search of the gold still haunt the mountains.

One reportedly Native American legend goes that the treasures of the mountains are guarded by creatures called Tuar-Tums (“Little People”) that live below the mountains in caves and tunnels. Some Apaches believe that the entrance to hell is located in the mountains. This is, of course, ridiculous, as we all know the entrance to hell is in Sunnydale.

Did you ever wonder if there was a Bermuda Triangle in Space? No? Well you’re probably wondering it now, and you’re in luck! Because there totally is, and it’s called the South Atlantic Anomaly. The SAA is the area where the band of radiation known as Earth’s inner Van Allen belt comes closest to the Earth’s surface.

It’s an area centered just a bit off the coast of Brazil, and it’s responsible for numerous problems with satellites and spacecraft, from messing up their programs to actually shutting down their function. The Hubble Telescope is actually turned off from taking observations when passing through the Anomaly, and the International Space Station avoids scheduling spacewalks when passing through it (which happens up to 5 times a day). It’s not just technical problems, either—some astronauts report seeing “shooting stars” in their visual field as they pass through.

The cause of all these problems isn’t fully understood. The main suspect is the high levels of radiation that accumulate at the anomaly, but scientists aren’t sure exactly how or why the effects occur. So let’s just pin this one on aliens.

Not content with just a few individuals disappearing, Lake Anjikuni decided to take things to the next level and provide the locale for the disappearance of an entire village. It all happened in November 1930, when a trapper named Joe Labelle was looking for shelter for the night. Labelle was familiar with the Inuit village, whose population ranges from 30-2000, depending on who you believe. He made his way there and found quite an eerie scene—the villagers were nowhere to be found. Everything else, including food and rifles, had been left behind.

Labelle telegraphed the RCMP and an investigation began. In the Village Burial Ground it was discovered that at least one (sources vary) grave had been opened, clearly not by animals, and emptied. Furthermore, about 300 feet from the village, the bodies of around 7 sled dogs were found, having starved to death despite open stores of food at the village. Some versions of the story even report strange lights being seen above the lake around the time of the disappearance.

So what really happened? There have been all sorts of claims about the cause for the disappearance, including aliens (of course), ghosts, and even vampires. The RCMP’s own website disregards the story as an urban legend, but with so many versions of it floating around from so many years ago, it’s hard to be certain. Except about the vampires, I think we can be certain it wasn’t vampires.

The Devil’s Sea (or Dragon’s Triangle, take your pick of which sounds more ominous) is an area of the Pacific Ocean as riddled with strange happenings as its Atlantic counterpart near Bermuda. Located off the coast of Japan, it’s been the site of countless claims of unexplained phenomena including magnetic anomalies, inexplicable lights and objects, and of course, mysterious disappearances. The area is even considered a danger by Japanese fishing authorities.

One story has it that in 1952 the Japanese government sent out a research vessel, the Kaio Maru No. 5, to investigate the mysteries of the Devil’s Sea. Naturally, of course, the Kaio Maru No. 5 and its crew of 31 people were never seen again. Another story tells of Kublai Khan’s disastrous attempts to invade Japan by crossing the Devil’s Sea, losing at least 40 000 men in the process.

The usual theories abound for what’s really going on: from aliens, to gates to parallel universes, even to Atlantis (because why not). Some suggest that high volcanic activity in the region is responsible for some of the disappearances (the Kaio Maru No. 5 may have been caught in an eruption). Our advice? Just stay out of the ocean, period.

Bigelow Ranch (formerly known as Skinwalker Ranch and Sherman Ranch) is a 480-acre property in northwest Utah that is home to countless UFO sightings, animal mutilations, and other strange occurrences. Though mysterious happenings have been documented since the 50’s, some of the most bizarre stories happened to a pair of ranchers named Terry and Gwen Sherman after they bought it in 1994.

The first day they moved on to the property, they saw a large wolf out in the pasture. They even went to pet the wolf as it seemed tame (to the curious reader, yes, this is always a good idea). It was docile with the Shermans, but ended up grabbing a calf by the snout through the bars of its enclosure. When Terry shot at the wolf with a pistol, the bullets had no effect. It finally left after Terry brought out the shotgun, though even that didn’t do any actual damage. The Shermans tried tracking the wolf, but it’s tracks stopped abruptly as if it had vanished.

And that wasn’t the end of things. The Shermans were constantly plagued by such events as UFO sightings, intelligent floating orbs (reputed to have incinerated three of their dogs), inexplicable cryptids, and gruesome cattle mutilations. It got so bad that the Shermans actually sold their ranch to Robert Bigelow in 1996, the founder of the National Institute for Discovery Science, who wanted to study the mysteries surrounding the ranch. Bigelow owns the ranch to this day and NIDS keeps a tight lid on their findings.

Point Pleasant was probably aptly named at one point, but it is now so shrouded in tales of mysterious and creepy events as to be nothing but an ironic alliteration. The most famous of these events involves a creature known as Mothman, who reputedly terrorized the small West Virginia community from November 1966 to December 1967. Over a hundred different citizens of Point Pleasant are eyewitnesses to this creature, a 7-foot tall broad chested man with hypnotic, glowing red eyes, and wings that stretch 10 feet long and drag behind him on the ground.

The Mothman, who’s been the subject of both a book and a movie (and who has his own statue in Point Pleasant), has many possible explanations. Some believe him to be an extraterrestrial, others a mutant or a cryptid, and some suggest the people of Point Pleasant were actually being scared by owls or a Sandhill Crane. Whatever the case, reports of Mothman stopped after the Silver Bridge collapsed on December 15, 1967, killing 46 people and leading many to believe that the two events were somehow connected.

In addition to Mothman, several other paranormal tales from Point Pleasant include UFO sightings and reports of so-called “Men In Black”—human looking creatures who unnerve others by the sheer abundance of peculiarities in their speech, appearance, and mannerisms. These “men” supposedly appear looking for information about the paranormal (or rather, people who have this information).

The Michigan Triangle is another geographical triangle, located in the middle of Lake Michigan. It, too, is the site of mysterious disappearances of both land and sea craft. Some of the more famous ones include:

Captain Donner: On April 28, 1937, Captain George R. Donner of the O.M. McFarland was on his way from Erie, Pennsylvania, to Port Washington, Wisconsin, and had to pass through the triangle. As the story goes, he was exhausted and retired to his cabin, leaving the second mate to wake him when they neared their destination. About three hours later, when the second mate went to do so, Donner was not in his cabin. Nor was he in the galley. An exhaustive search of the ship was conducted, but he was never found.

Flight 2501: On June 23, 1950, Northwest Airlines Flight 2501 was on its way from New York to Minneapolis at the hands of experienced pilot Robert C. Lind, and was carrying 58 passengers. Due to bad weather, when the flight was near Chicago it changed course and turned over Lake Michigan. Around midnight, Lind requested permission to drop altitude from 3500 ft to 2500 ft, without ever specifying a reason. His request was denied, and that was the last communication Flight 2501 ever had. It’s last known position was supposedly within the Michigan Triangle.

While sources vary as to what amount of wreckage of Flight 2501 has been found (some say nothing, whereas others specify assorted floating debris such as seat cushions and the like), it seems clear that the plane crashed into the water. Mysterious, however, is that the plane was in perfectly good condition and in capable hands at the time of the disappearance. What’s more, despite searches still being conducted annually, neither the body of the plane nor complete human remains have ever been recovered.

San Luis Valley, in southern Colorado, is an area high in inexplicable phenomena including UFO sightings and hundreds of unexplained farm animal mutilations. UFO sightings are so common that a woman named Judy Messoline has even set up a UFO watchtower on her property, which has witnessed over 50 UFO sightings since 2000 alone. Some of these are observed by dozens of people at a time.

For the UFO skeptics out there, far more chilling are the tales of animal mutilations from the region. They began in 1967, with a horse named Snippy. Snippy was found one morning with her brain missing, and her neck bones completely cleaned. Since then, hundreds if not thousands of inexplicable animal mutilations have occurred in the region, sharing several things in common—firstly, there is never a trace of blood around the animals, and secondly, the animals are all damaged with precise cuts, distinctly not the work of predators. Finally, all of the mutilations happen overnight to otherwise healthy creatures.

Investigations into the incidents haven’t wielded any results, yet they continue to this day. Some farmers report seeing strange lights in the sky the nights before finding a carcass, leading some to believe that extraterrestrials are involved. Though it’s hard to imagine aliens caring so much about farm animals in Colorado, the alternative isn’t much more appealing—that humans are the so-called “Phantom Surgeons of the Plains”. Personally, I’d rather it was aliens.

Oh look, another triangle. This one is found in southwestern Vermont, and is the site of a string of 5 mysterious disappearances between 1945-1950, related in no way but geographic location. These include:

Middie Rivers, 75 years old, was out leading a group of hunters on November 12, 1945. On their way back, he got ahead of his group and was never seen again. Only a single rifle shell found in a stream was recovered as evidence.

Paula Welden was an 18 year old sophomore of Bennington College who was out hiking on December 1, 1946. She never returned and no trace of her was ever found.

Exactly 3 years later, on December 1, 1949, a veteran named James E. Tetford was taking a bus back to his home at the Bennington Soldier’s Home, returning from a visit with relatives. Witnesses saw him on the bus the stop before this, but when the bus arrived at his destination he was nowhere to be seen. His luggage was still on the bus.

Eight year old Paul Jepson disappeared on October 12, 1950, while his mother was busy feeding the pigs. Despite having a highly visible red jacket, none of the search parties formed were able to find the boy.

The last disappearance was a woman named Frieda Langer. On October 28, 1950, she was hiking with her cousin on Glastenbury Mountain when she slipped in a stream. She decided to go back quickly and change her clothes, and, if you’ve been paying attention so far, you’ll surmise that she was never seen again. Well, not exactly—she’s the only victim whose body was ever recovered, though it was only found on May 12, 1951 (about 6 months later), in an area that had been thoroughly searched after her disappearance. The body was in such a mangled shape that no cause of death could be determined.

Though many theories abound, including aliens, bigfoot-like monsters, or some unknown serial killer, there’s one thing we know for sure: it’s a good idea to stay the hell away from triangles.

No, seriously—stay away from triangles. Especially this one. The Bridgewater Triangle, an area of about 200 square miles in Southeastern Massachusetts just south of Boston, is like an all you can eat buffet of the supernatural.

Among other things, the area has been subject to numerous cryptozoological sightings. Since the 1970’s there have been several reports of tall, hairy, ape-like creatures roaming the swamp. There have also been numerous sightings of Thunderbirds, giant Pterodactyl-like creatures that have been seen fighting in midair. In 1976 there was a report of a man who saw a giant, ghostly, red-eyed dog rip the throats out of two of his ponies.

Besides these cryptids, there have been numerous reports of mutilated animals (mainly cows and calves) in the region. Some credit these mutilations to satanic cults, but no one has come forward and no one even knows where the animals came from.

As if all this weren’t enough, the Bridgewater Triangle is a hotbed of UFO sightings, dating all the way back to 1760, when a “sphere of fire” was reportedly seen hovering over New England. Since then there have been numerous sightings of unexplained objects in the sky—including mysterious black helicopters. One from 1976 describes two UFOs landing along Route 44 near the city of Taunton, and another from 1994 recounts a strange triangular object with red and white lights seen by a Bridgewater Law Enforcement Officer. In 1908 on Halloween night, two undertakers who were traveling to Bridgewater noticed in the sky what looked like a “giant lantern”. They watched it for almost 40 minutes before it disappeared.

Bermuda isn’t looking so bad anymore.

Michael Alba has a skeptical fascination with the supernatural. He’ll have a skeptical fascination with you, too, if you follow him on twitter @MichaelPaulAlba.

The post 10 Places As Mysterious As The Bermuda Triangle appeared first on Listverse.

This article is going to examine a collection of people who have experienced extraordinary life events or have predicted rather shocking occurrences in their life. I wanted to select individuals who haven’t been featured in many lists and might present new material for even the most dedicated reader. For this reason, the people selected don’t follow a specific guideline except for the fact that they have tackled a rather difficult and often controversial issue in their lifetime. This article will discuss a wide range of topics including the death penalty, homosexuality in sports, predictions of life on Earth, and time travel.

In the May 6, 2013 issue of Sports Illustrated NBA center Jason Collins became the first openly active gay athlete in the history of North American major team sports, which includes football, baseball, basketball, and hockey. Collins is quoted: “I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete in an American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation.” In college, Collins played at Stanford University and was the 18th overall pick in the 2001 NBA Draft. As a rookie he made an immediate impact in the league with the New Jersey Nets and helped the team reach the NBA Finals in 2002.

In 2004, Collins signed a $25 million dollar contract with the Nets and played in New Jersey until 2008. Since that time he has played with five separate NBA teams. In 2013, Jason was involved with a trade and became a member of the Washington Wizards. He has averaged 3.6 points and 3.8 points per game in his 12-year NBA career. After the 2013 season, Collins became a free agent and will be looking for a new team this offseason. After he made the announcement, a large collection of NBA players came to his support. Kobe Bryant said: “Proud of Jason Collins. Don’t suffocate who you are because of the ignorance of others.” A number of high ranking US officials, such as former president Bill Clinton and current president Barack Obama have also released statements in support of Jason Collins. However, some others have questioned the timing of his decision and feel sexuality in sports should be kept private.

Robert Liston was a Scottish surgeon that lived during the first half of the 1800s. He was one of the most talented doctors during an era when surgical care was much different than today. During the first part of the 19th century, doctors didn’t understand the importance of cleanliness and of washing their hands before invasive surgery. In many operations, the main goal was speed. The faster you got the job done, the better chances of survival. During his career Robert Liston was known as the fastest knife in the west and was a renowned surgeon. He could amputate a leg in a couple minutes and remove an arm in under 30 seconds.

During his work day, Liston was known to wear a blood-stained bottle-green coat with wellington boots. He would often invite his students to watch his operations and have them time his amputations. In many cases, Liston was said to keep his bloody operating knife in his mouth while he worked. Sadly, despite his reputation as a great surgeon, many of Liston’s patients died because of the general lack of interest in keeping infections away.

In the last years of his life, Robert Liston became the first doctor to perform an operation with modern anesthesia by using ether. He also invented a leg splint device that is still used in some hospitals today. Liston was a great surgeon that saved many lives. However, he has also gained a reputation for some sloppy work and bizarre operations. Some of the most unbelievable medical cases are attributed to Robert Liston.

In one instance, it is said that Liston performed a surgery with a 300% fatality rate. He amputated the leg of a patient in less than three minutes, but also cut the finger off his assistant and slashed through the coattails of a spectator. When all was said and done all three people died from their injuries. In one case Liston was said to have accidentally removed the testicles of a man during a leg amputation. In another example Liston was presented with a young patient who had a pulsating tumor on his neck. Liston proclaimed to have never seen a tumor on the neck of a small child, so he cut it off. The boy quickly fell to the ground and bled to death from the wound. Finally, it is written that Liston removed a 45-pound scrotal tumor from a man that had to carry the tumor around in a wheelbarrow.

On March 14, 2013 a man named Marlin Pohlman was arrested at the Portland International Airport in the US state of Oregon and charged with multiple sex crimes. He is accused of drugging four separate women with LSD, ecstasy, and laughing gas, then kidnapping and raping the women. Pohlman is thought to have used a syringe filled with an unknown chemical substance to disable his victims. After police entered his home they found a makeshift drug lab that appeared to have a large collection of unidentified chemicals. By all accounts, Pohlman was a smart man who worked for EMC Corporation, which is a company that specializes in data storage. He is currently being held in jail under a $2 million bail and has yet to face trial as of early May, 2013.

Interestingly, Marlin Brandt Pohlman has also been making waves on the Internet since 2004 for other reasons. On October 1, 2004 Marlin Pohlman registered the patent US 20060073976 A1, which is a “Method of gravity distortion and time displacement.” The description of the patent device is extremely detailed and works in accordance with Geroch’s theorem (Geroch 1967). In the patent, a large section of the schematics was provided by John Titor. For those unfamiliar with the story of John Titor, he is said to have been a time traveler from the year 2036 that began to post messages on the Internet in 2000 with information on time travel.

Over a two years span, John Titor posted a huge amount of information about time travel and the future of humans of Earth. According to Titor, the world was supposed to enter a World War III in 2004. The poster claimed that the United States will be split into five separate sections due to Civil War. Strangely, the message parallels the ideas of Billy Meier, who will also be discussed later in this article. As of 2013, none of John Titor’s future predictions have come true and he is widely regarded as an Internet hoax that caught the world’s attention. However, the connection with Pohlman is interesting.

Artie Moore was a Welsh man that made many contributions to early radio and wireless communication technology. At a young age he constructed a home-made radio station that allowed him to receive signals from around the world. In 1911, Moore intercepted a message from the Italian government that was a declaration of war against Libya. In 1912, Moore became world famous after he decoded a message from the ill-fated RMS Titanic in the hours before its demise.

On April 15, 1912 Moore was managing his radio equipment when he received a Morse code signal from the Titanic. The signal gave the ships location and announced that it had struck an iceberg and was sinking. The final message read: “Come as quickly as possible old man; our engine-room is filling up to the boilers.” Moore immediately gave the information to the local authorities, but they did not believe his story as the ship was thought to be unsinkable.

It wasn’t until two days after the accident that the official news of the disaster reached the mainstream press, and it was told that Moore had decoded the Titanic’s distress code from over 4,000 miles away. News of Moore’s home-made radio spread around Europe and he was offered a job by Guglielmo Marconi, which he accepted. Moore would then go on to make many contributions to radio and wireless communication. However, for the rest of his life, he was known for decoded the Titanic’s distress signal before anyone else.

The story of Anna Bågenholm is one of survival. In 1999, the 29-year-old Bågenholm was living in Narvik, Norway when she decided to go for a skiing trip outside of Narvik with two friends. While skiing down a steep hill Anna lost control and fell headfirst onto a frozen river near a waterfall. After she landed, a hole opened up in the ice and Bågenholm became trapped beneath the water with only her legs and skies visible.

After arriving at the scene, Anna’s friends attempted to pull her out of the water, but they were not strong enough. They called for a rescue team approximately seven minutes after Anna had fallen into the freezing cold water. At this time, she was able to find an air pocket under the ice and stay conscious for forty minutes until she passed out from circulatory arrest. Once the rescue team reached the location, they were able to cut a hole in the ice to retrieve Anna’s motionless body.

At the time of her rescue Bågenholm had been in the water for 80 minutes and wasn’t breathing. She was taken to the hospital with a body temperature of 13.7 °C (56.7 °F), and it took over 100 doctors and nurses to save her life. When all was said and done, Bågenholm survived the lowest body temperature ever recorded by accidental hypothermia. She has made almost a full recovery and returned to work as a doctor. After the accident, it was discovered that Anna’s metabolism had slowed down to almost 10% of its baseline rate while in the water, which saved her life. Doctors were able to learn some valuable information about hypothermia and how the body reacts to cold water due to the case of Anna Bågenholm.

One of the most mysterious deaths of the 20th century is the case of US biological weapons specialist Frank Olson. In 1943, Olson was one of the men who helped start the United States bio-weapons program. In the late 1940s, he conducted experiments on biological weapons, toxins, and human mind control drugs. He was involved in the infamous Project MKUltra that looked into the behavioral engineering of humans. It is unclear exactly what Olson did with the US bio-weapons program, but it has been suggested that he was spotted in the area of Pont-Saint-Esprit in 1951 before the mass poisoning event that killed seven people and left fifty others in asylums.

In 1953, Olson traveled to Europe and visited a series of chemical research facilities. At this time he may have witnessed some extreme experiments with biological weapons, which caused him to regret his work. It has also been said that Frank might have discovered information regarding the use of biological weapons in the Korean War. During 1951, the Communists made various claims that they were being attacked by disease stricken mosquitoes.

According to the initial versions of the death of Frank Olson, it was said that he suffered a nervous breakdown and committed suicide by jumping from the tenth-floor room at the Hotel Pennsylvania in New York on November 28, 1953. However, in 1975 it was revealed that the United States government had purposefully given Frank Olson a large dose of LSD before he became unstable. It was also written that Olson was looking for a way out of the biological weapons business in the weeks prior to his death.

In response to the news, the US government offered the family of Frank Olson a $750,000 settlement, which they accepted in 1975. In 1994, Frank Olson’s body was exhumed and a second autopsy was carried out which showed signs of blunt force trauma before Olson fell out the window. The evidence pointed to a possible homicide and in 2012 the sons of Frank Olson officially filed suit in a US district court seeking damages and answers in the bizarre circumstances of their father’s death.

Some people have claimed that Thomas Midgley, Jr. has caused more damage to the Earth’s environment than any other single organism in the history of the world. Midgley was an American chemist who developed the tetraethyllead (TEL) additive to gasoline and some of the earliest chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Chlorofluorocarbon is a compound that was widely used in the middle of the 20th century in products such as solvents, refrigeration, and air conditioning.

In 1916, Midgley began working for General Motors and found that when you mix a tetraethyl lead (TEL) substance with gasoline the car seemed to run smoother. In response to the positive results, GM decided to promote the new product as a more fuel efficient gas and advertised it as Ethyl. However, the company failed to include mention of the potential harmful effects of the lead being used in the combustion of the gas. Ethyl quickly became a standard ingredient in motor fuel and the substance wasn’t largely removed from the market until the early 2000s when it was proven beyond a doubt that the neurotoxicity of lead was damaging the world’s environment. Over the course of his time experimenting with TEL, Midgley received lead poisoning on numerous occasions. In October of 1924, Midgley had a press conference where he poured TEL all over his hands and inhaled the substance for sixty straight seconds. The demonstration almost killed Thomas and he spent over a year recovering from the lead poisoning.

In the late 1920s, Midgley turned his attention to solving the problem of air conditioning and refrigeration systems, which were unstable. He synthesized the first chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), which was named Freon. Freon soon became widely popular in refrigerators and other products. It wasn’t until the middle of the 1970s that it was discovered that the release of Freon creates severe ozone depletion in the upper atmosphere. CFCs can be measured in the air all over the world and have a lifespan of over 100 years. This has caused many nations to push for the complete elimination of CFCs.

In 1940, Thomas Midgley, Jr. contracted polio and became severely disabled. To cope with the immobility he made a system of ropes and pulleys to get around. However, in 1944 he got trapped in the ropes and was strangled to death. Thirty years after his death it was realized that the creation of Freon and lead-based gasoline has caused serious damage to the world’s environment.

In 1937, Eduard Meier was born in the Swiss town of Bülach. At a young age, Meier became interested in spiritual exploration and his first described extraterrestrial experience was the age of five. According to Meier, he has been periodically visited by a collection of extraterrestrials named Plejarens throughout his lifetime. Meier has identified the Plejarens as coming from beyond the Pleiades, which is an open star cluster located in the constellation of Taurus. The Pleiades is the most clear star cluster from Earth.

Meier has described his alien visitors as humanoid Nordic aliens who look similar to European Caucasian humans. They are typically six to seven feet tall, have blond hair, blue eyes, and are extremely athletic. Some contact reports have indicated that Nordic aliens hold a strong concern for the Earth’s environment and world peace. They are said to be smiling, affectionate, youthful, and all-knowing beings.

Billy Meier has suggested that the Plejarens agreed to provide him with visual evidence of their existence if he published their ideas in a collection of books. Meier agreed and over the last 60 years he has put together a huge collection of Contact Notes that describe a wide range of topics that he claims were discussed with the aliens. Some of the most important notes include information on human history, space, the environment, and the dangers of modern religion. He has also put together a huge collection of future predictions and prophecies for human life on Earth. Billy has published countless photographs, video clips, and artifacts of alien crafts that he says proves his theories are true.

Some of the predictions are noteworthy. In the early 1950s, Meier made the statement “negative events on Earth lead solely back to overpopulation and to the irresponsibility, selfishness, and overbearingness of Earth’s human beings.” According to some, Meier has predicted numerous world events and disasters. The amount of information that is attributed to Meier is enormous, so it is impossible to discuss all his ideas.

Probably Billy Meier’s most famous note is named the Henoch Prophecies and was provided in 1987. The prophecy is extremely depressing and discussing a wide range of world problems, including the mention of the World Trade Center terrorist attacks. The Henoch Prophecy includes many ideas that parallel an earlier message delivered by Meier in 1958 titled Warning to all governments of Europe. In the note Meier describes horrible events. He tells a story of World War III and the complete destruction of the planet Earth due to modern weaponry.

According to the prophecy, in the future the United States will be completely destroyed and separated into five separate sections due to an intense series of Civil Wars and conflict with Russia and China. Meier says the world with enter an unthinkable series of disasters for 888 days where 1 in every 4th person on Earth will be killed, mainly due to hunger, plagues, and nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. According to Meier, the horror will begin after the final Pope of the Catholic Church is elected which will be an evil man named Petrus Romanus—Peter the Roman—that will destroy the church and be the second Pope after Pope John Paul II. This note has gained more attention of late because of the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI and the election of Pope Francis, who is the second Pope after John Paul II.

The Henock Prophecies mention specific cases of war in which Russia starts causing serious problems in Europe and attacks Canada and the United States by way of Alaska. The notes mention computer guided nuclear warheads that will become uncontrollable to humans and devastate the world. It mentions experiments that have gone horribly wrong, including a human and pig hybrid fighting machine that has no conscious and will cause havoc on the world. The note predicts that China will attack India and kill around 30 million people. Russia will begin by attacking Scandinavia, which will put all of Europe in war. It is predicted that this event will occur months after a terrible tornado will have swept across northern Europe. The attack by Russia is said to come in the summer months by way of Arkhangelsk. However, all of the blame should not be placed on Russia and China, as the notes mention on numerous occasions that the United States has become too aggressive in thinking it can control under developed nations with a world police force. “American politics will aspire to gain absolute control of the world concerning supremacy in economy.”

Vitali Nevski and Artyom Novichonok are the two Russian astronomers that discovered the comet C/2012 S1. The object was found on September 21, 2012 at the International Scientific Optical Network (ISON) near Kislovodsk, Russia. For this reason, the comet is often referred to ISON. ISON is a sungrazing comet that will pass extremely close to the Sun on November 28, 2013. It has been difficult for Nevski and Novichonok to determine exactly how large the comet is, but the nucleus is thought to be around 5 kilometers (3.1 mi) in diameter, which makes the entire comet pretty big. ISON will make its closest pass to Earth on December 26, 2013 and then reach perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) on November 28, 2013. At this time, ISON will pass within 730,000 miles (nearly 1.2 million kilometers) of the Sun.

It appears that the discovery of the comet has gained extreme interest by world space organizations. On April 30, 2013, the online Slooh Space Camera broadcast a live image of ISON as it traveled towards Earth. NASA has organized a massive global campaign to track the comet using space and ground-based telescope technology. In fact, they are going to develop a huge balloon that will be strapped with a telescope and camera equipment that will watch ISON as it nears the Earth next fall. This will include infrared and visible-ultraviolet imagers that can track emissions from the comet.

It is thought that ISON is making its first pass into our inner solar system from the Oort cloud. However, it has been recognized that the comet holds an extremely similar orbit to the Great Comet of 1680. Due to the similarity, it was originally hypothesized that the two objects could have come from the same parent body. It should be said that the comet does not appear on the Torino scale, which is used to measure the potential danger of future impact events on Earth. This indicates that NASA has found a 0% chance that the comet with directly hit Earth, suddenly change direction and have a chance of hitting Earth, or break apart and move towards the Earth.

This being said, if ISON is not completely destroyed by the Sun, the comet will display a marvelous light show on Earth. It has been estimated that the comet has the potential to become so bright in the sky that it will rival the moon and be visible during the day. It may also have an enormous tail that covers a large part of the Earth’s sky. There is the possibility that the comet with get destroyed by a coronal mass ejection (CME) as it passes the Sun. It really just depends on how large the object is. Currently, the scientific consensus is that there isn’t a connection between large comets and coronal mass ejections, but there have been some threatening comets destroyed by CMEs in the last ten years, including C/2002 V1 (NEAT) and C/2010 X1 (Elenin).

In April of 2013, NASA released a picture of ISON as it passed by Jupiter’s orbital path. The article indicated that the nucleus of ISON has started to take form and was quite impressive. If the comet turns out to be large enough to survive the Sun, it could provide a marvelous show towards the end of 2013. Despite the opinion that the comet holds no threat to Earth, some have become concerned with the possibility of seeing an object so large and bright in the Earth’s sky, especially only one year after the 2012 apocalyptic predictions. If this event occurred last year, it would have garnered much more attention. The ultimate conspiracy being that NASA knows the Earth is in danger of being stuck by ISON, but has covered the truth. Some have connected the comet to the Nibiru cataclysm and claim that it has moons.

On October 31, 1981 somebody entered the St. Francis Roman Catholic Convent in Amarillo, Texas and raped, beat, and stabbed a 76-year-old nun named Tadea Benz to death. After the crime, police soon turned their attention to a 17-year-old teenager named Johnny Frank Garrett. On November 9, 1981 Garrett was arrested by the police for the murder of Benz after circumstantial evidence was gathered against him, including his fingerprints at the scene. During his interviews, it was soon realized that Garrett was mentally slow because he was viciously abused by his stepfather and experienced severe brain damage.

During the interrogation of Garrett, police said he gave a written confession detailing the murder of Benz. However, Garrett refused to sign the confession and later recanted any responsibility in the crime. He maintained his innocence throughout the trial, conviction, and death by way of execution. During the trial, Garrett took the stand and denied raping or murdering Sister Benz. However, he said that he entered the convent two days before the crime looking for items to steal. He said that he entered multiple rooms and left fingerprints. After a short deliberation, Johnny Garrett was found guilty of the murder of Sister Benz and sentenced to death. On February 11, 1992 he was executed in the state of Texas.

Johnny Garrett was scheduled to be executed in early January of 1992, but was given a month reprieve due to the urging of Pope John Paul II. Despite fingerprint evidence against Garrett, a large amount of important facts were ignored by the jury, including statements where multiple witnesses saw a dark skinned man near the convent at the time of the murder. Also, Garrett’s case involved a pathologist named Ralph Erdmann who was later accused of evidence tampering and perjury. Erdmann discarded valuable semen samples during the autopsy of Benz.

In the years following her son’s execution, Johnny Garrett’s mother attempted to get him exonerated due to DNA evidence found at the scene that didn’t match her sons. However, the state of Texas has refused and even threatened her with a lawsuit. In 2004, the entire case against Garret was turned upside down when it was revealed that DNA evidence identified a man named Leoncio Perez Rueda as the rapist and murderer of another elderly woman named Narnie Box Bryson, who was killed near Amarillo four months prior to Sister Benz.

Immediately, the investigators knew the cases were connected because the killer used the same type of murder weapon, inflicted similar wounds, and left black hairs on both bodies. After a DNA test, it was proven beyond a doubt that Rueda’s black hairs were found on the body of Sister Benz. Rueda’s fingerprints were also found in the convent where Sister Benz was murdered. Rueda was arrested by the police and admitted to the murder of Narnie Bryson and the attack of a nun in Amarillo. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison. Despite the DNA evidence, the state of Texas refuses to exonerate Johnny Garrett for the murder. His final words were reported: “I’d like to thank my family for loving me and taking care of me. And the rest of the world can kiss my ass.”

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If you are an avid fan of Listverse, chances are that you love reading. We read and soak up knowledge like sponges because we enjoy it! But there are those in the world who have no such desires. They would rather hug a cactus than snuggle up on the coach with a good book. Luckily, life has a way of educating us all. Every now and then the perfect mind-boggling or bizarre picture surfaces, awakening such curiosity or consternation that even the most uncompromising non-readers take note and open their browsers—finding out things they never thought they would.

If the day comes that you fall off a building and Superman saves you, try not to look into his eyes because this is exactly what they might look like. A person with two pupils may have improved eyesight in more ways than one. They might be able to escalate the amount of visual information they take in as well as have enhanced focus. As the condition mostly appears in fiction many believe it to be myth—but there is sufficient proof of historical figures, most notably the famous Chinese emperor Liu Ch’ung, who were born with the condition.

No it’s not a bunch of lively worms, just medical marijuana. In a study that was recently published in “The Journal of Leukocyte Biology” researchers found that THC, the chemical compound in Cannabis that gets the user stoned, impairs and depresses the most common and widely found strain of HIV. The study is very detailed and technical, but what they basically did was to inject the virus into macrophages (the white blood cells that helps to defend your immune system) and then subject them to THC. To everyone’s amazement the cells became stronger at fighting against and keeping the virus out.

Scientists have predicted that the world’s natural coral reefs will all be gone by 2050 if preventative measures aren’t taken. Jason de Caires Taylor’s underwater sculpture museums were all designed and constructed to boost the growth and habitation of threatened sea life. The sculptures are always strategically placed on the ocean floor from where they start to take on a life of their own—eventually disappearing completely. New coral reefs are formed and the surrounding ecosystems get a chance to recuperate. His first underwater sculpture park founded in 2006 off the coast of Grenada was recently named one of the 25 Wonders of the World by National Geographic.

Hopefully you won’t remember this image when you have a very deep wound or ulcer that won’t heal. In many of today’s leading medical practices doctors make use of the maggots (or larva) of bluebottle flies to clean wounds situated away from organs or body cavities. The larva are sterilized and placed inside wounds, where they feed on the dead tissue and so assist the body in producing new cells. As ugly as they are, even their saliva helps to sustain the area’s sterility as it has anti-bacterial chemicals. The maggots are mostly used in the treatment of diabetic ulcers that form on the feet.

Mercury is the smallest planet in our solar system and the closest to our sun. NASA’s Messenger probe has been circling Mercury since March 2012 taking hundreds upon hundreds of very boring grey images. Imagine the scientists’ childlike joy and delight when this image was discovered! Mercury has almost no atmosphere and as such, can’t stop any impacts. The planet is literally covered with craters. This picture was taken to the northwest of the “Magritte” crater that lies in Mercury’s south. The surprising Mickey Mouse likeness were created by the build-up of craters of Mercury’s past and perfect shadowing at just the right time.

I’m afraid it’s not a hoax. Atretochoana eiselti is one of the most important discoveries of 2011. This particular amphibian (yes, it’s not really a snake) was thought to be extinct until it was rediscovered in 2011 by a team of engineers who were draining the Madeira River in order to build a new dam. After the discovery two of the six snakes removed from the site were taken to laboratories for scientific studies where scientists marveled at the fact that they not only looked like, well, male sex organs, but that these animals also have no lungs. Up to date nobody has figured out how Atretochoana eiselti actually breathes.

Cutaneous horns are made of the same protein we have in our nails and hair—keratin. It is also the same protein that makes up hooves and feathers. They are quite common in older people and can be cancerous or benign, but it is very seldom that they grow to be as large as Zhang Ruifang’s. The 102-year old grandmother’s growth has already grown to 6cm in length and another is busy forming on the other side of her forehead. These growths can be removed but it doesn’t treat the underlying cause which can be anything from common warts to actinic keratoses.

In this awesome image recently released by NASA, earth is seen as it moves through space, surrounded by a huge magnetic cloud. Far from the typical blue planet we normally see, this powerful image illuminates the energy and momentum of the magnetosphere that surrounds our planet as we twirl around the sun. As the earth moves, the magnetosphere forms a bow wave, just like the water in front of a moving ship. Everything that happens to earth’s magnetic field depends on what happens at the front of our bow wave. Scientists are now using the data they obtained to better understand space weather and how external energy affects the earth’s magnetosphere.

One may be tempted to believe that this picture comes from some post-apocalyptic movie, but fact can sometimes be stranger than fiction. Miyakejima Island lies on an active volcanic chain in the Izu Islands and it has one of the highest concentrations of poisonous gasses (mostly sulphur) in the world. After a series of eruptions in 2000, these levels became so high that mass evacuations were instituted and flights were cancelled over the area for many years. In 2005, the residents of Miyakejima Island were allowed to return to their homes but to this day they are required to carry their gas masks with them at all times.

The Museum of the History of Medicine in Paris houses more than 1,500 objects, some of the oldest in Europe. Their fascinating but creepy collections feature a lot of anatomical specimens, medical models, prosthetics and surgery-related art. The item in our picture is a table that is made up entirely of petrified human body parts. The centerpiece is an actual human foot. It is said that this table was given to Napoleon in 1866 by an Italian doctor by the name of Efisio Marini. In a weird twist of fate, it also happens that one of their most prized collections is the authentic autopsy tools that were used on Napoleon himself.

Hestie makes a living in Pretoria, South Africa. She would however, love to visit all the places she writes about.

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