That’s not to say the crisis doesn’t deserve the airtime it’s getting, but there’s more to life than an apocalyptic pandemic that’s sweeping across the globe. These are the stories that should have been bigger news this week — or, they would have were the world not collectively freaking out right now. Of course, Wuhan flu looms on many of these stories, but the virus can’t get all the attention....
10 Christine Falling In 1963, Christine Falling was born in Florida to an unwed teenage mother. She never had an easy life: Her mother briefly married an 84-year-old junkyard worker before abandoning Christine and her sister, Carol. The girls were later adopted into an abusive home, where Christine lived for two years before reuniting with her mother and marrying her new stepbrother. It was around this time that she began working as a babysitter and carer....
One theory of why Albert Einstein was so brilliant at mathematics has to do with a physical abnormality: he was born without the visual reasoning center of his brain. This is the center that enables you to comprehend the difference between a zebra and a trash can. Assuming Einstein had never seen either, he would not have been able to reason which was which. But to make up for this, his mathematical computation center grew to twice the size of yours and mine, because it was able to use all the room next door where visual reasoning was absent....
10 The Titanic’s Cemeteries Halifax, Canada When the RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and sank on April 15, 1912, search-and-rescue teams from Halifax, Nova Scotia were sent to assist with recovery. Many of the deceased (mainly crew members and third-class passengers) were laid to rest there following the sinking. Fair Lawn Cemetery is the final resting place of 121 of these victims. Many of these names have become culturally significant, including a J....
There is always going to be an inevitable comparison drawn between movies and the books upon which they’re based. However, such is perhaps a fool’s errand, given that the two forms are so markedly different as to render any such comparison worthless, not to mention the fact that, as art-forms, their respective interpretation is a matter entirely subjective and thus dependent on individual perspective. The point of this list then is not one of comparison but rather revelation, for, aside from the obvious likes of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings, a remarkable number of outstanding movies surprisingly owe their genesis to literary works....
10 Dracula’s Descendants If you think Prince Charles might be cool in the role of a vampire, maybe it’s because he is related to a real “vampire.” The Prince of Wales is a great-grandson 16 times removed to Vlad III, the 15th-century Wallachian nobleman known as “the Impaler,” whose orgies of torture and blood inspired the vampire legend and Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Charles and the royal family can trace their lineage back to Vlad through Princess Mary of Teck, who wed King George V and was Queen Elizabeth II’s grandmother....
10The Drumkeeragh Bog Body The very first bog body ever found was discovered in 1780, and we’re not entirely sure what happened to it. We do have a description of it written by the Irish countess Moira before it was reburied somewhere else. When it was first discovered, and before it got into the hands of the countess, the body had been pretty extensively damaged. Pieces were broken off and, strangely, some of its clothing had been removed to be used again by the peasants that had discovered the body....
The Cydonian region on Mars attracted a great deal of attention because one of the hills in that region looked remarkably man made. The region was first imaged in detail by the Viking 1 orbiter, which was launched in 1975. Several images were taken by the Viking, including one taken in 1976 showing that one of the Cydonian mesas had the appearance of face. Scientists dismissed the face as a trick of light and shadow, but then a second image also showed the face at a different sun-angle....
10 The Riddled Jar A clay vase at a Canadian museum holds more questions than its 180 pieces. Once restored, the true novelty of the pot surfaced—it was created with holes. Storing food or fluids in something like this would be a bad idea. A hole piercing the bottom also ruled out its usage as a type of lamp, and it doesn’t resemble any known ancient animal containers. Archaeologists from the Museum of Ontario Archaeology consulted Roman pottery experts, but nobody recognized it....
10 Hidden Text in England’s Oldest Bible Today, you can’t go into a hotel room without finding a copy of the Bible. They’re seemingly everywhere, but that wasn’t always the case. Translating the Bible into English was once deadly work, and by the time Henry VIII started re-writing centuries of religious beliefs to suit his own needs and was well on his way to making the country Protestant, owning an unapproved version of the Bible could earn a person a death sentence....
The world of pathogens is a strange world indeed, and there are some pretty nasty critters out there that would love nothing more than to take a bite out of your flesh—and sometimes bone. Some pathogens hijack the minds of their human hosts, controlling their behavior, their thought patterns, and even their actions. Others lodge themselves inside you and consume you from the inside out. Here are ten nightmarish flesh-eating pathogens and their destructive ways....
With so many stories going around, it’s hard to differentiate between what’s real and a hoax. Stories of being medically experimented on, being tied down on an alien craft, or being taken without knowledge are some of the encounters we hear about often. The ten women listed below did just that. Except, their encounters didn’t turn out bad. Their encounters were frightening, for sure, but they seemed to end rather… calmly....
10 The Military Liaison Missions After the end of World War II and the division of Germany into four occupation zones, the Western Allies and the Soviets signed a series of agreements, allowing a small number of military personnel from each side (usually less than two dozen) to deploy in each other’s occupation zones. These soldiers would monitor the other side and ostensibly facilitate better relations between the superpowers. However, these so-called “Military Liaison Missions” ended up being used by both sides to spy on the other....
10 Joseph StalinLeaving Crude Notes On Nude Male Drawings Stalin had a bizarre habit of leaving crude notes written in blue or red pen on reproductions of male nudes sketched by 19th-century Russian painters. He occasionally defaced the pictures themselves but usually stuck to leaving comments in the margins. Some of the notes were political in nature, aimed at comrades living and dead. Next to a 19th-century male nude drawn by artist Vasily Surikov, Stalin left a note for Bolshevik activist Karl Radek, whom he had quarreled with and later executed: “Radek, you ginger bastard, if you hadn’t pissed into the wind, if you hadn’t been so bad, you’d still be alive....
10Billiard Balls Sometimes, a duel is the proper and honorable way for gentlemen to settle their differences, whatever they may be. Other duels seem more like frat party dares gone really wrong. On what was an otherwise quiet September day in 1843, a game of billiards in Maisonfort, France went terribly sideways. The two opponents, Melfant and Lenfant, began to argue about how the game was going and whether or not any rules had been broken....
However, in order to keep people’s interests, they must find either someone or something that will draw in viewers. Unfortunately, this process has caused networks to create some of the most head-scratching and random reality shows to ever grace the small screen. 10 The Briefcase The Briefcase was a show that aimed to be seen as inspirational television. Instead, it wound up being torn apart for what many perceived to be its exploitation of the poor....
10 The Tangiwai Disaster 1953 In the late hours of Christmas Eve, as a passenger train carrying nearly 300 people came barreling down the tracks near the Whangaehu River in New Zealand, tragedy struck: The bridge had been severely weakened due to flooding from nearby Crater Lake. Nearly 350,000 cubic meters (12.4 million ft3) of water came pouring down the valley, picking up dirt and debris until it was a deadly mudslide....
Most of the festive stories will be found in the uplifting list, although we do talk about Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Robber. There is another Christmas-y crime tale as we explore an Arctic bank robbery. There are also a lizard which breathes underwater, a space hippo, bright blue lights above New York City, and a new prime number. 10 Rudolph Makes The Naughty List Someone is trying to besmirch the good name of Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer....
There’s a bit of everything this week. We learn new stuff about the celestial objects around us, both near and far. We solve two decades-old mysteries but end up with a new 3,000-year-old one. We find out that animals can do some pretty neat things like scale giant buildings and count to zero. And not to dismiss human endeavor, we also look at the people who set the world skinny-dipping record and the ones who built the first psychopath AI....
10 The Mokele-Mbembe By 1912, one of the world’s foremost naturalists was convinced that there was a prehistoric creature living in the depths of Africa. Carl Hagenbeck was an early pioneer in zoology and the humane treatment of animals. He wrote of identical stories from Rhodesia that told of a half-dragon, half-elephant creature that lived in remote swamps there. Supposedly, ancient cave paintings depicted the creature. But Hagenbeck’s expeditions met with disaster and returned with no new information....
