History is full of amazing stories, adventures, and thousands of years of male dominance. As a result, women wishing to breach their normal positions in families and society have had to go to extraordinary lengths to make their mark. Over the centuries, numerous women chose to pass themselves off as a man. This was often
Month: July 2021
Mysteries are not exclusively ancient, ghostly, or terrifying. Some are fascinating, giving insight into a different type of world while, at times, an unsolved mystery gives rise to increased interest in an old mystery of the same kind. Some mysteries are so obscure, it is hard to tell whether they even exist, or whether they
Becoming famous is a dream for many. Some work towards it for years, others achieve it by accident. But what if you were to become internationally famous without ever knowing or even being around to enjoy the benefits of your notoriety? Here are ten people who only hit the big time after their death. Who
Ever since Jaws hit theaters, folks have feared stepping into the water for fear of becoming a giant fish’s snack. The book and films paint sharks as evil killing machines, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Sharks rarely harm people, and they don’t ride around in tornadoes as much as people think. Still, there
New York City is home to perhaps the most famous island in the world: the 13-mile long, 2-mile wide parcel called Manhattan. In fact, of NYC’s five boroughs only one – The Bronx – is connected to the mainland US. Far smaller tracts dot the East River, Long Island Sound and other bodies of water
Many of the most powerful agencies and administrative bodies of the United States government keep watchlists. Although these lists are not without problems, criticisms, and legal challenges, they do aid federal intelligence and federal, state, and local law enforcement organizations in the apprehension of ruthless suspects, many of whom are fugitives. For example, James Earl
Parents would like to think that the content that is advertised as child friendly is child friendly, but unfortunately that is not always the case. Throughout the history of children’s television, many programs have been produced that contain explicit content that is not meant for children. While these productions have been called out by parents
It seems like every day you stumble across some new animal fact on the internet or news, and that’s because there actually are more facts every day. At any given time, there are thousands of ethologists- the biologists who study animal behavior- carrying out thousands of studies and experiments, helping to fill in our knowledge
Short-run TV series enjoy advantages their multi-season counterparts lack: free from the constraints of long-term plots and character arcs, they can empty the creative tank in one condensed burst. Showcasing the best miniseries ever reveals one truth: TV has gotten better over the years. As the number of available platforms – network, cable, streaming services.
One of the most depressing things to come at the onset of the 2020 pandemic was that, suddenly, unemployment became a big part of millions of people’s lives. Even worse was that millions of others were forced to admit some version of, ‘welcome to the club.’ Though any expert will tell you that a small,
Most famous vacation spots suck. It’s just a fact. They used to be great but time and opportunism have reduced them all to expensive, crowded, commoditized versions of themselves. Nowadays taking the family to see Mount Rushmore is not so much about admiring the megalithic majesty as it is about taking a photo, buying a
Video games. As long as they’ve existed there have been easter eggs (video game secrets). In fact, the earliest known video game secret—in the 1979 Atari game “Adventure”—is what gave us the phrase “easter egg” in the first place. It shouldn’t be any surprise. Games are built on millions of lines of computer language which
I’ve got news for you: in physical terms, you’re just a walking sack of meat that keeps threatening to rot unless you constantly clean it and replace it with new meat. It’s not just the wet, lumpy contents of the sack that are gross. The sack itself is its own special brand of flaky, oozing,
It’s no secret that McDonald’s food is unhealthy and the company is prone to scandals. But it might surprise you just how unhealthy it really is and how many scandals there truly are. The company—the single largest restaurant corporation in the world and one of the largest in general—has a long history of mistreating its
Life can change in an instant. One minute you could be holding your breath as the plane carries you upward for the first time, only for it to be falling to the ground the next. The whole scenario might even make you think of Ironic by Alanis Morrissette as the plane nosedives into the deepest
Court jesters were powerful figures in the courts of monarchs around the world. Often kitted out in distinctive outfits they enjoyed the extravagant luxury that most people could only dream of. As long as they made the monarch laugh the jester was secure in their position. It was also position of unique power because they
Not surprisingly, many horror movie villains suffer from serious mental illnesses, mental disorders, or physical diseases that cause bizarre behavior. Becoming monsters, they commit atrocities on innocent victims, stalking, murdering, raping, molesting, and bullying their prey. A vicious cycle of torment, suffering, madness, and crime is sometimes created in which the victims become the victimizers
Weather is notoriously unpredictable. A sharply dressed weatherman smiles brightly through your TV set on a Monday morning, promising a sunny day, only for you to get caught up in a hailstorm of note and arrive at work late in a car peppered with dents. Weather can also be extremely dangerous. Tornadoes, hurricanes and blizzards,
For many people around the world, the golden age of video games didn’t come in the ’70s; it came in the 1980s. That’s the decade the Sega Genesis, Nintendo Entertainment System, and the Nintendo Gamy Boy were all released. The ’80s featured some of the best arcade games ever made, many of which continue to
On June 25, 2021, just in time for Washington’s usual “when nobody’s looking” Friday information dumps, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its assessment of “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” or UAP (that’s government-speak for UFOs). The assessment was a disappointing 6 pages (not counting title page and appendices). It, nevertheless, had a
Treason alert: this list intentionally omits some of history’s most infamous traitors, because a search for “history’s most infamous traitors” delivers page after page of pretty much the same list. Apparently some writers are traitors against originality. So while we absolutely had to include the man synonymous with treason, Benedict Arnold – who singlehandedly almost
The Bible is a Christian’s documentation of the life of Jesus Christ, the guide for living a Christ-like life, and is filled with the accounts of God interacting with the Israelites—it is the Book. So I know you’re reading this title like, “This sounds like blasphemy.” Well, we certainly don’t intend for it to be blasphemy. Within
We all know spices make food taste great and that different cultures use them to make their cuisine special and authentic. You can often quickly identify the origin of a dish you are enjoying by the spices it contains; but do you know spices can be used for things other than cooking? Spices have been
There’s a really obscure and interesting fact about prisons that many people don’t seem to know: they’re pretty hard to break out of. I know this must seem arcane and inscrutable, but it’s true. They really build those things to keep people in. Guards, walls, snipers, barbed wire, fences, moats, guard dogs, cameras, floodlights, even
It was evolutionary biologist (and real love-him-or-hate-him guy) Richard Dawkins who coined the term “meme” in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. He wrote that in the same way that a gene is a self-replicating unit of biological evolution, a meme is a self-replicating unit of cultural evolution. That is to say, it’s an idea that
If you’ve ever worked in customer service, hospitality, retail, or just ever had a terrible boss, then the phrase malicious compliance will be music to your ears. We’ve all had bosses tell us to do something phenomenally stupid. Sometimes that’s all they ever tell us. And so at some point, we all have (or at
The world is going to end. You can define the end of the world in a few different ways—the end of human civilization, the end of all life, or the destruction of the entire hunk of rock—but no matter how you slice it, it’s all coming undone eventually. The only question is when. Over the
It wasn’t very long ago that anyone with a noticeable mental condition was locked away in a cold, bare cell inside a so-called lunatic asylum. Yet in that same era, and for a couple of millennia before, if that same mentally ill person was of the royal family, you just kind of rolled with it.
South America is widely considered to house some of the most incredible and most dangerous wildlife on the planet. While the former is certainly true, the latter may be overstated somewhat, as we’ll promptly examine today. This, though, isn’t to say that being careful is wrong; wild animals will always pose a threat and some
Video games became popular throughout the world in the 1980s, but they weren’t invented in that decade. In fact, the first video game came into existence in October 1958, though it took some time for the format to evolve. By the 1970s, video games were more widely available, and some of the best games of