Many people will argue against this entry, either because they aren’t familiar as to why it is here, or aren’t familiar with this event at all. Theo van Gogh was a Dutch Film Director, who worked in close collaboration with Somalian writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali to produce the film ‘Submission.’ This film depicted the harsh and cruel treatment of Muslim women in Islam, and as a result sparked considerable controversy amongst the Muslim Community. On November 2nd 2004, Gogh was assassinated by Dutch-Moroccan Muslim Mohammed Bouyeri.

Uproar ensued after his death, and on the weekend of 5-7 November, mosques were attacked in the Netherlands, and many were set alight. The Dutch Monitoring Centre of Racism and Xenophobia reported 107 acts of assault against Muslims on that weekend alone. Mosques were targeted 47 times, it is said, and Churches 13 times. The reason this is on this list is due to large amount of violence against the Muslim community, and how that could have been the ignition on a very short fuse in the Muslim community. If they had retaliated in equal measures, it would have continued in a vicious circle until other countries had to get involved; hence a potential World War.

This entry is a more obvious one, but that doesn’t deduct from it being a significant event in the history of the United Kingdom, but also of other countries anticipating retaliation. A series of coordinated attacks were carried out in the early morning rush hour on 7th July 2005 in London. As this was the busiest time of day, there were many casualties. 700 were injured, and 52 people killed in the 4 bombs that were detonated on the fateful day, one of them being a double-decker bus.

After any offensive attack from an opposite nation, whether it was the country directly or even a small minority, an enemy is made. And with this many wondered as to whether the United Kingdom would retaliate. Of course, we now know they didn’t. Governments and media outside the UK have regarded successive British governments as unduly lenient towards radical Islamist militants, so long as they were involved in activities outside the UK. People at the time were filled with anger, and many would have waged war had they had their way because of their deluded visions of revenge; of course the war raging through Afghanistan may have sparked the attacks, but the attacks that caused innocent civilians to fall will never be condoned.

This was was 9-year conflict spanning from 1979-1989 (9 years 50 days) between the Marxist supporting Soviets against the Afghan-Mujahideen, the latter who were all receiving aid, money, and armaments from the USA, UK, China, Saudi Arabia and many more. Toward the end of the Cold War, the engagement between the Soviets and Mujahideen became known as a Proxy War, where the countries use third-parties to attack each other directly, as opposed to wasting their own military. The attack was launched under leaded Brezhnev, and the last troop withdrawal was carried out by Gorbachev.

The reason this features on the list is the fact the UK and USA, amongst others, were aiding the Afghans fighting back against the Soviets, when now in the present day a war rages through their country, with our countries at the helm. Jimmy Carter is quoted saying that the attack was “the most significant thread to world peace since the Second World War.” Now his troops march those streets, shedding blood through an almost progressive-less war.

Dubbed the ‘Hunt for Gaddafi,’ Libya’s 42-year Dictator has finally been cast aside from a joint effort of the NATO forces and Libyan Rebels. His cruel, strict regime has been rejected for years but to no avail, that was until the recent uprising. The rebels have fought their way through the capital of Tripoli and other cities close by, and with the aid of NATO air support they have bombarded Gaddafi’s home complex.

NATO have been heavily involved with the uprising in Libya, seemingly nonchalant that Libya’s allies Venezuela and Zimbabwe could attack at any time in assistance. Of course, these two countries don’t hold massive amounts of military power, but they could provide enough armaments to fight the NATO forces leading to more countries being called in. Should this happen, and given Libya’s position bordering countries such as Egypt, it would be easy for many countries to join the battle. World War III could be closer than we think, however unlikely it seems now.

I am sure that the following entry has found a place in the knowledge of many of you, whether that is through relatives talking to you about it or through history lessons; and of course Billy Joel’s hit ‘We Didn’t Start the Fire.’ The Suez Canal Crisis occurred in 1956 when Israel carried out the auspicious move of invading Egypt. An ultimatum was handed to Egypt by Britain and France, and after a dismissal of this, they began bombing Cairo.

What is most significant about this event, is that shortly after the attacks many people became to blame the whole thing as planned, and despite heavy denials by France, Britain and Israel, people began questioning their motives. France was seen as the aggressor, the instigator. Britain was seen as the belated partner, feeling obliged to fight alongside their ally. The entire war was caused by President of Egypt Gamal Abdel Nasser’s decision of 26 July 1956 to nationalize the Suez Canal, after the refusal to help fund the construction of the Aswan Dam. The Suez Canal Crisis found its way onto the list because of the persecution the allies faced after being told they had ‘planned’ the whole thing for months. This could have caused other opposing countries to aid Egypt in their time of peril, and would have made a minor dispute (in the scale of war) into a full fledged assault.

Another recent entry, and for many a very traumatic resurfacing of a memory best left buried. This event occurred in November of 2010, when North Korea launched 160 missiles onto the island of Yeonpyeong, occupied by South Korean troops.

It will be common knowledge for Listverse readers about the relationship between North and South Korea, and how whenever a conflict between the two countries appears in the news we all worry that the hostility has reached its pinnacle. Well this story was one of those times. The world held its breath to see if the border that separated the two nations was no longer enough, and that World War III was on the ever-drawing-near horizon.

The Persian Gulf War will be fresh in the minds of almost all of you due to its recency. And of course, any video game fans will be familiar with Conflict: Desert Storm, set in the era of the gulf war.

This war began when the State of Kuwait was annexed by Iraq, and as a response 34 Nations led by the USA waged war against Iraq. U.S. President George H. W. Bush deployed American forces to Saudi Arabia, and urged other countries to send their own forces to the scene. An array of nations joined the Coalition. The great majority of the military forces in the coalition were from the United States, with Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom and Egypt as leading contributors, in that order. Around US$36 billion of the US$60 billion cost was paid by Saudi Arabia.

Probably the entry with the most connotations of sadness for readers, this would probably be higher if it weren’t for number two, which due to obvious reasons has to be higher. The Twin Towers were the most iconic structures in New York, and most of America for that moment.

On September 11th 2001, 4 flights were hijacked and diverted back to America. One of these airliners, carrying hundreds of passengers crashed into The Pentagon, another was rescued by the brave occupants and crashed in a field near the White House. The other two, however, found their destination in The Twin Towers. Over 3000 people lost their lives on this fateful day, and because of the act of hatred orchestrated by Osama Bin Laden, Number 2 on this list shows how one act of aggression becomes a brutal campaign, potentially leading to a future global war.

On October 7th 2001, less than a month after the attack on the Twin Towers, The War in Afghanistan began. US and British troops began aerial bombing campaigns in an attempt to quell Taliban activity in the region. Known simply as Operation Enduring Freedom, the goal was stated to be ‘dismantling the terrorist organization known as Al-Qaeda and ending its use of Afghanistan as a base.’

The War In Afghanistan is still active today, and many question why the war has gone one for so long, and whether the substantial loss of life is in vain. When the invasion began in October 2001, polls indicated that about 88% of Americans and about 65% of Britons backed military action in Afghanistan, but in today’s community it is hard to find anyone who backs the war and those who give their lives for a seemingly unobtainable goal. This war is as close as we can get to World War III at the current moment in time, but it seems unlikely that further countries will get involved unless they are directly attack through Terrorism, similar to 9/11, in which case they will almost certainly join the war.

And we arrive at the number 1 spot, and take a few steps back in time to 13 days of anarchy. The Cuban Missile Crisis will be known by all reading this list, and during the 13 days that Missile Silos were stationed on Cuba, America was in range for global nuclear annihilation. The White House was the scene of nervous dispositions and sickening worry as the USA prepared to be a part of a Thermonuclear war.

The Cold War, nicknamed so as there wasn’t any direct fire fighting conflict other than Vietnam, was a stressful period for not only America and the USSR, but the world. The missiles stationed on Cuba could hit any city in America, except for the Pacific Northwest, and would have easily wiped out the majority of America at the press of a button. When they were removed, in the eyes of the world, Kennedy had won. But behind closed doors, and to the less-known knowledge of the public, Kennedy had removed his missiles in Turkey as part of the deal struck with Khrushchev. Kennedy had actually backed down his own weapons, and Khrushchev and succeeded in applying sufficient enough pressure. to the American Government. The generation that did not live through the 13 days of trepidation will never know how close their world came to a Nuclear War.

“This Pangram contains four a’s, one b, two c’s, one d, thirty e’s, six f’s, five g’s, seven h’s, eleven i’s, one j, one k, two l’s, two m’s, eighteen n’s, fifteen o’s, two p’s, one q, five r’s, twenty-seven s’s, eighteen t’s, two u’s, seven v’s, eight w’s, two x’s, three y’s, & one z.” (183 Letters, English)

Means: Pretty straightforward, it addresses all the letters in the sentence, even the ones that wouldn’t be there, if the whole alphabet hadn’t been mentioned. Created by Lee Sallows.

Some verbal horseplay between Douglas Hofstadter, Rudy Kousbroek, a Dutch linguist and essayist, prompted Lee Sallows to create a self-enumerating pangram. Hofstadter had posed the problem of sentences that describe themselves. The original pangram Sallows came up with was well over 300 letters and wasn’t even a complete pangram, missing a j, q, and z. Meanwhile, Kousbroek published a Dutch equivalent, which spurred Sallows to use his electronic engineering background to program The Pangram Machine. The machine accepted a description of the initial sentence fragment and tried to fill in the blanks. resulting in the pangram above. It was published in Scientific American in 1984.

“a-b-c-d-e-f-g
h-i-j-k-l-m-n-o-p
q-r-s
t-u-v
w-x
y and z
Now I know my “ABCs,”
Next time won’t you sing with me” (68 letters, English)

Means: It’s the singing of the alphabet! Created by Charles Bradlee, Arranged by Louis Le Maire.

The song was first copyrighted in 1835 by the Boston-based music publisher Charles Bradlee, and given the title “The A.B.C., a German air with variations for the flute with an easy accompaniment for the piano forte.” The musical arrangement was attributed to Louis Le Maire, an 18th century composer. The theme that is used is by Mozart for the piano variations (above) and is called: “Ah, vows dirai-je, maman.” This variation is more commonly recognizable as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” and “Baa Baa Black Sheep.”

“Victor jagt zwölf Boxkämpfer quer über den großen Sylter Deich.” (53 Letters, German)

Means: Victor chases twelve boxers across the great dam of Sylt. Author Unknown.

The German “Victor-jagt” pangram, used since before 1800, contains all the letters of the German alphabet, including the 3 umlaut letters: ä, ö, and ü. It is widely used and is considered the German equivalent to the “The quick brown fox” pangram (see below).

“Iro wa nioedo
Chirinuru o
Wa ga yo tare zo
Tsune naramu
Ui no okuyama
Kyō koete
Asaki yume miji
Ei mo sezu.” (47 letters, Japanese archaic hiragana)

Means: Even the blossoming flowers / Will eventually scatter / Who in our world / Is unchanging? / The deep mountains of vanity– / We cross them today / And we shall not see superficial dreams / Nor be deluded. Author disputed.

This perfect Japanese pangram, in a poem no less, was originally attributed to Heian era Japanese Buddhist priest and scholar Kūkai (774–835 AD). However, this is unlikely as it is believed that in his time there were separate e sounds in the a and ya columns of the kana table. The poem holds a special place in Japanese culture, often used as motifs and by the Japanese military. Japanese weapons made before 1945 were numbered in series with the opening syllables of the original poem, and they were also used to denote the rank of submarines of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II. Iroha is also used in numbering the classes of train car: I is first class, Ro is second class and Ha is third class.

“The quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog.” (33 letters, English)

Author Unknown; The earliest known appearance of the phrase is from The Michigan School Moderator.

“The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is an English pangram. It has been used to test typewriters and computer keyboards, and in other applications involving all of the letters in the English alphabet. Owing to its brevity and coherence, it has become widely known.

“Pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs.” (32 letters, English)

Created by Mark Dunn.

Ella Minnow Pea is a 2001 novel by Mark Dunn. The plot is conveyed through mail or notes sent between various characters, though with the banned letters missing, creating passages that become more and more phonetically or creatively spelled, and requiring more effort of the reader to interpret.The novel is set on the fictitious island of Nollop, off the coast of South Carolina, and home to Nevin Nollop, the supposed creator of the well-known pangram “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.”

“Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.” (29 letters, English)

Author Unknown.

An ominous pangram of sorts, this sentence’s claim to fame is that it is used in Adobe’s Publishing software, InDesign for English. A bit carelessly, the pangram was then translated to all the languages the program supported and went unnoticed for several months until a multilingual user fluent in German and English spotted the mistake.

“Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.” (28 letters, English)

Means: Dance slower forest creature because fast dancing angers Bud (presumably a character). Created by Dmitri Borgmann.

Dmitri Borgmann authored this pangram in his book “Language on Vacation.” While it is one of few to make sense with so few letters, it also uses a proper name: Bud. If this were allowed in the strictest of pangrams, a simple perfect pangram could be: “I am Joseph Qrutzlfwycxdbvngk.”

“Mr. Jock, TV quiz PhD, bags few lynx.” (26 letters, English)

Means: In headline-esque fashion we are told that Mr. Jock does not win that many lynx. Author unknown.

Researching for pangrams is not easy, but this pangram seems to have achieved universal acclaim for those searching for perfect pangrams that make sense. Granted, it can be interpreted a few different ways and does not follow the strictest rules for pangrams, such as no abbreviations or proper nouns, it still is a more logical choice for an example for a perfect pangram.

“Squdgy fez, blank jimp crwth vox!” (26 letters, English)

Means: A short brimless felt hat barely blocks out the sound of a Celtic violin. Created by Claude Shannon.

Claude Shannon, otherwise known as the Father of Information Theory, authored this highly complex and practically nonsensical perfect pangram, which follows the strictest of rules for pangrams: no abbreviations, acronyms, contractions, initialisms, proper nouns or Roman numerals. Pangrams of this nature all seem to suffer from the same flaw, missing a required article (a, an, or the) before the object which follows the verb.

Like many other styling features on this list, spare tire humps were attempts to mimic the custom-bodied cars of the early 20th century. The first Lincoln Continental sported a covered spare, which was both functional and attractive. Lincoln designers pushed this feature on many Continental models over the years, even when they were no longer used for housing a spare and looked awkward, if not tacky, on more modern luxury cars. However, some (like the Continental Mark III) wore their tire humps tastefully, leading me to place this styling feature at number 10.

Those who lived during the 1970s will likely remember the immense popularity of two door “personal” luxury cars. These luxury coupes almost always featured small, fixed decorative rear passenger windows that were separated from front windows by a thick b-pillar. The idea was to give rear passengers a sense of privacy, or to some, claustrophobia, while complementing the luxurious appearance of the car. Even less expensive coupes like the Chevrolet Monte Carlo sported small rear windows reminiscent of a formal carriage. Though sometimes tacky, these windows were still somewhat useful (and a few looked good). Thus, they are rightfully placed at number 9.

Who wouldn’t want pillow-topped seats for those long, boring road trips? While present-day luxury cars often feature stiff, conservatively padded bucket seats, in the 1970s designers stopped at nothing to provide the utmost in derrière comfort. Cars like the Cadillac Eldorado Biarritz featured thick button-tufted pillow-topped seats, which were literally pillows attached to additional padding below. It is perhaps the closest thing to driving your couch down the expressway. Of course, today these comfortable seats appear geriatric at best and downright garish at worst.

Anyone who has driven a large car of the decade can attest to the excellent carpeting these vehicles usually featured. Some looked like cuts of shag carpet pulled straight from the designer’s own living room, or perhaps a creepy motel room. With carpet like this, it was difficult not to take your shoes off and relax. Nonetheless, these carpet jobs appear gaudy today, especially in typical ‘70s colors. If you don’t mind the look, however, they are quite fantastic.

Today, upscale versions of a model are often identified with simple letter or number monikers, like Volvo’s S80 “T6,” or Cadillac’s CTS “V” series. This, of course, doesn’t sound very fancy, now does it? Forty some years ago, however, fancy was in. The most famous upscale trim package term was “Brougham.” Various automakers of the time slapped the Brougham badge on their distinctively-trimmed (and pricier) versions of a particular model. The boxy Ford Grenada even had an upscale “Ghia” version. Yes, “Ghia,” like the Italian firm. But it was General Motors that seemed most keen on this practice, coming up with trim packages like the Monte Carlo “Landau,” Ninety Eight “Regency,” Seville “Elegante” or my personal favorite, the Sixty Special “Brougham d’Elegance.”

Opera lamps are small decorative lights mounted on the exterior b-pillar. They were all the rage on ‘70s, and even ‘80s, domestic luxury cars. These lights, aside from looking pretty, had little practical application. But they did give the car a more formal appearance similar to a limousine, or formal carriage (a recurring theme). Designers didn’t take opera lamps lightly either, as they developed from simple lens-over-bulb accents to more complex electro-luminescent ordeals. Looking back, they seem both tacky and somewhat unnecessary, perhaps like just another set of bulbs to replace.

Royal-looking crests aren’t just for those who hold real titles, it seems. They can also be drawn up for businesses, military units or, in this case, car models. Take for instance the Buick Century Regal or Chrysler New Yorker Brougham, each of which received its own attractive, albeit retrospectively kitschy, royal crest. Many less expensive models even wore such fancy crests. In a similar vein, auto designers often convinced famous fashion designers to sign onto creating their own upscale variants of a particular model. Thus, models like the Continental Mark IV Cartier Edition or Seville Gucci left the factory wearing the designer’s logo here and there.

Fender vents were also a nod to custom-bodied luxury cars of the early 20th Century. For instance, large V-12 Cadillacs of the time featured a series of cowl flaps much like an aircraft might. Many years later, designers at Buick, Lincoln and Chrysler, to name a few, thought it a good idea to continue with such flaps, or at least fender vents or ports. These vents were generally unnecessary and usually not even functional. The otherwise attractive R-body Chrysler New Yorker Fifth Avenue sported such “gills,” as did the Lincoln Continental Mark V and Buick Electra 225 (Buicks were already well known for their “VentiPorts”). Faux fender vents remain with us today, much to the chagrin of many an auto enthusiast.

Luxury cars have long sported wooden dashboards, often of finely polished burl with beautiful lacquer finishes. Of course, this costs more and adds a little weight (not that it mattered on a 5,000 lb. car). By the 1970s, designers were already in love with faux wood and even things like clock radios and 35mm cameras featured the stuff. One day an auto designer (or their boss) thought it a good idea to scrap the real wood and make a sort of stick-on stuff. It was great for “woodie” station wagons and dashboards, or so they thought. It doesn’t help, of course, when the “wood” began to fade and peel under the sun.

While chrome plating can look remarkable when done correctly (think anything from the 1950s), it can also come off as quite tacky. This is especially true when it’s applied to plastic, which used to have an annoying tendency to flake off once the car was close to pay-off. Apparently, even automakers themselves were aware of how tacky this was, as Chrysler ads once boasted that the grills on ‘70s Imperial and New Yorker models were chromed zinc rather than mere chromed plastic, like the grills found on contemporary Cadillacs. There’s just something about tapping on a piece of chromed plastic that makes one immediately think “cheap.” Oddly enough, automakers continue to use chromed plastic, though it doesn’t seem to flake quite so badly these days.

While these rifles were a good increase in firepower for the people of the Old West starting in the 1830s, they had some very noticeable drawbacks. For all variants, there was a leak of the gases of firing at the front of the cylinder and a corresponding drop in muzzle velocity. For the double-action variants, as the cylinder cycled for each shot the just-fired tube had a tendency to send hot gas at the hand of the firer. This only ranks a 10 on the list because the problems were tolerable in comparison to the benefits of more firepower.

The Liberator was a single-shot pistol stamped out of sheet metal for dropping behind enemy lines into the hands of resistance movements during WWII. It was lacking because you only got a single .45 ACP shot at an enemy who probably had a semi-automatic pistol/rifle or a fully automatic submachine gun. Also reloading was extremely troublesome as you had to push a stick down the barrel to push the spent cartridge out.

The Gyrojet was a hand-held rocket launcher developed in the 1960s. It fired 13mm rockets. Differing from most firearms in that the velocity increased after the projectile left the barrel. One major problem though was that it often lacked the power to kill at close-range which is really not good for a pistol design. On some occasions the projectile just fell out the end of the barrel.

The Boys Anti-tank rifle was an early anti-tank weapon unsuccessfully used at the beginning of WWII. It was a five-shot rifle that weighed 16.33kg (36lb) and fired a 13.97mm (.55) caliber armor-piercing round capable of penetrating 21mm of armor at 300m. It was under-powered at the start of WWII as it could not cope with German panzers armor. It was also a bit heavy for a soldier to lug around and its recoil was ferocious.

The Nock Volley gun first appeared around 1780 and fired seven .50 caliber slugs at the same time. It was good in repelling boarders in navel combat but its recoil could break the firer’s shoulder. It also had a tendency to set ships rigging on fire from the muzzle blast.

Perhaps one of the least well-known firearms on the list, the Cochran revolvers had a cylinder that revolved horizontally. Basically it meant that every time you fired it you had a loaded round pointed at you. Everything had to have been machined precisely because if a tube was bored just a fraction of an inch too deep it meant that the round pointed at you would fire as well.

A Japanese pistol design of WWII that fired 8mm Taisho 14 rounds. It was underpowered, cumbersome, awkward to use, and extremely unsafe. Since the firing sear projects from the sides, it is easy to fire by accident. It was possible to fire a cartridge before it was fully in the chamber, and was considered more dangerous to the user than its target.

The pepper box revolver was used mainly before the colt style of revolver caught on. It was heavy because of the multiple barrels, sometimes all of the shots would go off at once because of chain-firing and break one’s wrist, sometimes it would explode, and it was widely inaccurate. According to some wits the safest place to be when it went off was right in front of it.

This pick is more literally a firearm than the other ones on the list as it is a German WWI era flamethrower. It was manned by a 2 person team and was only operated by convicts because of extreme danger. Basically it was a bomb with a guaranteed 2 people in close proximity. It was large and heavy and made an ideal target. Also since the Allied soldiers found it to be barbaric, they were very unlikely to let the operator surrender alive.

A French light machine gun that was so bad that soldiers issued it threw it away in favor of rifles. Issued during WWI it was so shoddily constructed that the parts were not interchangeable from one chauchat to another. The magazine with its big holes in the sides begged for dirt and mud to mix with the cartridges which resulted in immediate jamming, leaving the weapon useless especially since trench warfare is all about mud and dirt. The main reason the Chauchat is at the top of the list of worst firearms is that there were so many decent light-machine guns around at the time of issue, and they still issued this piece of junk instead.

I am fascinated with last survivors of any historic event. For me it is incredible to think that with that individual resides the last living memory of something the impacted the entire world – surviving the Hindenburg or Titanic disasters, participating in world wars, etc. When that last person dies, all of that memory dies with them. With their death the event passes into history. It surprised me to learn that there were still American Civil War veterans alive almost up until the year I was born. Union soldier Albert Henry Woolson died in 1956 at the age of 109. Just this year we saw the passing of three such last survivors – Frank Buckles and Claude Choules, the last known and verified WWI combat veterans and Audrey Lawson-Johnston, the last survivor of the Lusitania sinking.

In an attempt to be consistent in calculating when the last known veteran of these 20th Century wars and conflicts will die, I came up with the following criteria. First – most young men who sign up for any war do so, at the youngest, at about the age of 16. Any younger and most militaries will toss them out. Of course this is not a guarantee and in some conflicts (Vietnam War) we can assume even younger men and women participated. However, in general, for most world armed forces, 16 years of age is the youngest they will knowingly allow a person to enlist. Go here for data on the recruitment ages for different countries.

Two – we can assume the last survivor of that war or conflict enlisted when they were 16 years old at the tail end of the war, or the last year of the war if the war was fought over multiple years. Therefore – we can assume this person will be the last known participant of that conflict to sign up, at the very end of the war, at the youngest possible age. Third – we can assume a maximum life expectancy for any man or woman of about 114 years. True, some rare individuals may live to the age of about 120, but this is very rare and for some reason, 114 appears to be the age where most super centenarians finally give out and die. If you want to read more on the science of why people generally clock out at the age of 114, read this.

Given these assumptions, we can calculate with a degree of certainty, when the last known veteran of any conflict should die. To test this theory, let’s look at one of the last surviving veterans of WWI – Frank Buckles. Buckles was born on February 1, 1901 and died on February 27, 1911 at the age of 110. He enlisted at the end of the war in 1917 at the age of 16. Had he lived to the maximum age of 114 (and died in 2015) he would have exemplified my assumptions. He was, quite possibly, one of the youngest and last to enlist, and lived almost to the maximum age of 114. Only one WWI veteran lived longer than Buckles (to the age of 111). Given shorter life expectancies of those born at the turn of the last century, it may not have been realistic to assume the veterans of this war could reach 114 years of age.

So here we go – here is a list of ten expected dates when the last veteran of a 20th Century war or conflict should pass away.

The Mexican Revolution was a major armed struggle that started in 1910, with an uprising led by Francisco I. Madero against longtime autocrat Porfirio Dí­az. Over time the Revolution changed from a revolt against the established order to a multi-sided civil war. Though it continued with sporadic bloodshed through the 1920s, the Mexican Revolution is generally thought to have ended about 1920 with the adoption of the Mexican Constitution of 1917.

The last known and verified participant died in 2010, Juan Carlos Caballero Vega who was Pancho Villa’s driver. However, two men claim to have fought in the revolution and are still alive, Guillermo Flores Reyes and John Redhawk, both born in 1898.

Therefore, assuming both of these men did in fact fight in the Mexican Revolution and either lives to the age of 114, the last veteran of that conflict will pass into history on or about the year 2012.

Józef Kowalski was born on February 2, 1900 and at the age of 111 is thought to be not just Poland’s oldest living man but also the oldest military veteran in the world. He is also the only living verified veteran of the 1919-1921 Polish-Soviet War.

Kowalski served in the 22nd Regiment of the Polish Army. He took part in the September Campaign in World War II, and was later held in a concentration camp. On his 110th birthday, he was awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta for his war service by President Lech Kaczyński.

Assuming Kowalski lives to the age of 114 the last known veteran of the Polish-Soviet war will pass away on or about the year 2014. However, as we know the veterans of conflicts from this era seem to die at the age of 110-111, it may be safer to assume next year, 2012, will be the end for Mr. Kowalski.

World War I was one of the two greatest wars of the 20th Century and involved at least 20 different countries around the world . World War I was called the World War or the Great War or The War to End All Wars from its occurrence until 1939, when we decided we should have a second world war and add numbers next to the title. World War I was a major war centered in Europe that began in July 1914 and lasted until November 11, 1918. It involved all the world’s great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies and the Central Powers. More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilized and more than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of great technological advances in firepower. A staggering number of deaths and that does not include the millions more who died as a result of the war and the Great Influenza Pandemic that followed.

There is one verified person from the era of the World War I conflict still alive – though she did not fight in the war in any capacity. Still, she alone holds the last possible living memory of a participant to that historic event. Her name is Florence Beatrice Green and she was born on February 19, 1901 in England. Green joined the Women’s Royal Air Force in September 1918 at the age of 17 where she served as an officers’ mess steward. She is one of the 10 oldest people in Britain. She was identified as a Great War veteran in January 2010.

Assuming Ms Green makes it to the age of 114, we can assume the last surviving veteran of World War I will die on or about the year 2015.

The Spanish Civil War began as a right-wing rebellion against the leftist Republican government of Spain. Led by General Francisco Franco, the Nationalist rebels fought a long and bloody civil war against their Republican foes. Franco’s forces received significant military aid from Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The Republican side was aided by the Soviet Union. Franco won the war in 1939 and set up a Fascist government. This war is considered one of the precursor conflicts leading to World War Two.

We can predict with some accuracy when the last Spanish Civil War veteran will die because we know the age of the youngest surviving participant. The youngest known veteran on either side of this war is Hans Landauer, from Austria, who, at 90 years old, was born on April 21, 1921 (he fought on the Republic Side). He joined on February 12, 1937 and was wounded on September 4, 1937. He was arrested in November 1940 and sent to Dachau concentration camp.

Assuming he is the last survivor of this war and lives to a maximum age of 114, then the last surviving veteran of the Spanish Civil War should die no later than the year 2035.

World War Two, fought between the Allied and Axis powers and which involved dozens of countries around the world and the participation of tens of millions of combatants, needs no introduction or explanation. It was the single greatest war or conflict of the 20th Century, and that was saying something for the 20th Century.

Around the world the veterans of this the greatest of all 20th Century conflicts are dying off. Soon, this Great War will pass into history as the last of the millions of combatants passes away. In the US alone, of the estimated 16 million members of the United States armed forces during World War II, approximately 2 million American veterans are still living. However, these WWII veterans are dying at a rate of 310,000 per year. At that pace, the last US veteran should die in about 7 years, or 2018. However we know the pace of WWII veterans dying off is not steady and some will live until about the age of 114. Therefore, a more accurate estimate of when the last veteran of WWII will die would be around the year 2043. This assumes the youngest enlistee in WWII, from some country, was 16 years of age and enlisted at the very end of the war in August 1945 (a birth date of around 1929).

If that last veteran lives to be 114 years old, then the last veteran of World War II should die on or about 2043.

The Korean War or Korean Conflict has a big personal connection for me as my father fought in this war. Sadly, he never lived to the age of 114, but I had 75 great years with him anyway.

As most know, the Korean War was a conventional war fought between the United Nations forces, allied with South Korea, against the North Korean forces allied with China and the Soviet Union. The war ended with the division of Korea into North and South along the 38th parallel. About 20 nations participated in this war.

The Korean War ended with the signing of the armistice in July 1953. Assuming a 16 year old enlisted for one of the combatant’s armies at that time, just in time to participate in the end of the conflict, then that would mean they were born about 1937. Assuming that last veteran lives to the age of 114, then the last Korean War veteran, somewhere on Earth, will die on or about the year 2051.

The Six-Day War also known as the Third Arab-Israeli War, was fought between June 5 and June 10, 1967, by Israel and the neighboring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The war ended quickly with a decisive victory for Israel.

By far the easiest war to know when the youngest combatant may have registered (June 10, 1967), let us assume again they were 16 at the time. That means they were born in the year 1951. Assuming they live to be 114 years old, the last veteran of the Six-Day War will die on or about the year 2065.

The so-called “Vietnam War” was really a regional and international conflict involving not just North and South Vietnam and the U.S. but also embroiling Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and other countries. It ended in April 1975 with the fall of Saigon. About 20 nations participated in the Vietnam War either directly or as allies of the United States/South Vietnam and North Vietnam.

If the youngest enlistee for any of the combatants was 16 years of age at the end of the war in 1975, then that gives them a birth year of 1959. Assuming they live to be 114 years old, then the last known and verified combatant of the Vietnam War should die on or about the year 2073. As 1959 was the year I was born, the Vietnam War will be the last 20th Century war where I have even the slightest possibility of outliving the last combatant (hardly likely, but possible).

The Falklands War also called the Falklands Conflict/Crisis, was fought in 1982 between Argentina and the United Kingdom (UK) over the disputed Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.

The Falklands War started on Friday, April 2, 1982, with the Argentine invasion and occupation of the Falkland Islands and South Georgia. Britain launched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Argentine Air Force, and retake the islands by amphibious assault. The conflict ended with the Argentine surrender on June 14, 1982, and the islands remained under British control. The war lasted 74 days. It resulted in the deaths of 255 British and 649 Argentine soldiers, sailors, and airmen, and the deaths of three civilian Falkland Islanders.

Assuming the youngest Argentinean or British service person enlisted in 1982 at the age of 16 and lives to be 114, the last known survivor of this conflict would die on or about the year 2080.

One of the bloodiest and least known wars of the latter half of the 20th Century was the eight year conflict between Iran and Iraq. Over a half million soldiers on both sides died. The Iran-Iraq War lasted from September 1980 to August 1988, making it the longest conventional war of the twentieth century. It was initially referred to in English as the “Persian Gulf War” prior to the “Gulf War” of 1990. The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory in September 1980.

Once again, assuming the last veteran enlisted in 1988 at the age of 16, the last known veteran of this war will die on or about 2086.

The Persian Gulf War (August 2, 1990 – February 28, 1991), commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from thirty-four nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of the State of Kuwait. Using the aforementioned criteria, the last known veteran of this war should die on or about 2089.

Thus, for some of the major conflicts and wars of the 20th Century, the last living participant from these wars will not make the 22nd Century. That is, assuming, huge new advances in medical technology and improvements in longevity do not make it possible (or even normal) to live past the age of 114.

In June 1945, the United States of America launched Operation Magic Carpet to return over eight million Americans back to their homeland, and out of Pacific and European theaters that saw war. The name of the operation is rather simplistic, but it speaks volumes about the glory of leaving a devastated region of the world for your homeland, and how peaceful the idea can be. The men were being transported on a “magic carpet” back to their safe-haven of America, and this is truly an interesting operation name. A European variation of Operation Magic Carpet was launched in 1946 to rescue European soldiers in foreign lands.

Taking place in 1991, Operation Desert Storm was the operative name for the Persian Gulf War. While the name may not be the most interesting of them all, it is quite intriguing. The title shows what the United States planned on doing in Iraq: unleashing a desert storm. Bombs, ammunition, and artillery would be deployed, and the sand in the deserts would create a massive storm as a result. That’s at least what I surmise from it. While I am fascinated with this operation name, there are a few others that I find to have a much better title.

Lasting for only sixteen hours in December 2003, this operation was performed to seize any weapons or materials in certain villages in Iraq that could pose a threat to coalition forces during the War on Terrorism. This is one of those military operations that has quite an interesting title. I honestly could not imagine what this has to do with the actual actions the soldiers had to perform; the only idea I could conjure is if they were seizing these harmful weapons so quickly, it was like lightning. In warfare, operations have to be performed somewhat effectively. Putting “lightning” in the title may lead to some inspiration for the soldiers involved. Overall, this is one of the better operation names, and also one of the most recent. Kudos for a great choice of words.

This may seem a little ridiculous, but this is yet again, another operation pulled from a conflict involving the United States, coalition forces, and Iraq. This operation was launched to uncover insurgents and weaponry to ensure the safety of soldiers fighting in Iraq. The idea of the people involved in this operation being known as “valiant guardians” gives insight into the purpose of the plan: to simply protect our troops. However, by using the term “valiant,” this also shows the true power of the forces that the Iraqi forces are fighting against; the battle that they are embroiled in will not be an easy one to win when your opponents believe they have a grand level of valiance. I digress. All in all, this operation name definitely ranks as one of the best in history.

In 1983, the United States, supported by other Caribbean island nations, invaded the island of Grenada because of a military coup that had occurred in the country. This invasion was codenamed Operation Urgent Fury. Plain and simple, fast and furious aggression was needed to subdue the revolution in Grenada, and that is exactly what the United States did. It is tough to explain why this operation name caught my eye, but then again, it is a very interesting title. The “fury” portion of this name is what really intrigued me. Urgency is a given in any invasion, but fury is a totally different monster in itself. Fury is dangerous on all levels. When someone is furious, you know their anger/rage is at a near-maximum level. Anyway, Operation Urgent Fury definitely ranks as one of the best operation names of alltime. Don’t like it? Well, it’s not anything to get furious about.

Leave it to Jimmy Carter to order an operation that would fail miserably. Operation Eagle Claw was performed to try and rescue the Americans that were being held amidst the Iran Hostage Crisis. Eight helicopters were sent out, and none of them returned. One crashed into the helicopter carrying fuel and supplies for the other six, and once that was downed, the remaining ones were left helpless in the air. Sure, Operation Eagle Claw was a failure. However, its title is one of the greatest of all time. The Americans, whose symbol is the eagle, were going to use their “claw” (helicopters) to rescue the innocent hostages. A very American name for an operation, yes, but that does not take away from its amazing quality. The only aspect that could have changed its position on the list? Perhaps, if it was actually a success… but it all worked out for the best anyway, so I think it is fine at number five.

What better way to follow-up a miserable failure, then with a success. In October and November of 2001, almost immediately after the terrorist attacks on 9/11, British and American air forces led strikes in Afghanistan attempting to weaken the Taliban. This led the way for further ground campaigns that continually weakened the government and Taliban as well. The name of this operation? Operation Crescent Wind. The title of this operation is pretty incredible. The wind is created by the bombing from the skies; and the crescent not only applies to the crescent moon, a symbol of Islam, but also the fact that the area that Afghanistan is situated in was once referred to as the Fertile Crescent. A heap of historical references in one simple operation name. Stunning, is it not? Anyway, I am definitely a major fan of this operation title. A great way to kick-off a war that still continues to this day.

The “War on Terrorism” must be a topic that you are sick of by this point on the list, but there have been some pretty interesting titles from this time period. Operation Spartan Scorpion was launched in June 2003 to help clear the Iraqi countryside of remaining non-compliant forces and paramilitary groups that wanted to harm coalition forces. This title is a dynamic duo of harrowing power. A Spartan, in itself, is a terrifying creature. These ancient Greek soldiers were well-known for their propensity for fighting to the death, and a scorpion is an animal that can kill various other creatures in numerous ways. Essentially, this title was assigned to the operation to show that the forces fighting would be merciless in conducting their warfare. Two prolific death-bringers put into one operation name is sure to strike fear into the opponent. If I was fighting against an operation titled “Spartan Scorpion,” I would feel one thing coursing through my veins: terror.

Nearly ever history buff has heard of this one. June 6, 1944: the largest amphibious invasion of all time. 160,000 troops crossing the English Channel to try and take back German-occupied western Europe for the Allies. Most people know this event as D-Day, or the Battle of Normandy. The official title for this invasion was Operation Overlord. An overlord, by definition, is someone who has authority over another person or group. This operation was most likely given this title to show the Germans who was the more powerful side during World War II. The French, who were a part of the Allies, were the rightful overlords of the land of Normandy and its surrounding areas, and were going to fight to take it back. This was truly a turning point in the war, and from here-on-out, the Allies really did appear to be overlords in almost every battle. Less than one year later, in April 1945, the Germans surrendered to the overlords, and this portion of the war had ended. “Overlord” is truly representative of how power and momentum was swung back in the Allies’ favor, and the war took on a different look from there-on-out.

Lasting from March 1965 until November 1968, Operation Rolling Thunder was a lengthy, aerial bombardment performed by the United States on North Vietnam. Sure, it was much like “Operation Eagle Claw,” in the aspect that it was a colossal failure, but unlike the aforementioned plan, its title was much more indicative of its murderous intentions. Essentially, Operation Rolling Thunder was initiated to emaciate the Northern Vietnamese land, and to try and force the Viet Cong out of its holes and hills that helped them elude being caught. The idea of rolling thunder is terrifying, especially when the “thunder” portion of the term is a seemingly-endless bombardment that lasted for years. The operation was named as such because the bombs would just keep “rolling” and never stop. This gave a quality to the operation that made it seem as if it was perpetual. Again, while the bombardment was a failure, and did not accomplish its goals, the North Vietnamese land was completely destroyed as a result. Over three years of constant bombing is quite a bit for a small territory to handle, and it must have truly seemed endless during the time. Congratulations to Operation Rolling Thunder: while it was one of the biggest failures in the overall mistake that was the Vietnam War, it also has the greatest name for any operation in all of history.

On Friday February 13, 1970, Black Sabbath released their first album in the United Kingdom. Given only two days of studio time to record it, the band played all of the songs live, saving the second day to mix what they had recorded. The album “Black Sabbath” went on to reach #8 on the UK album charts and when released in the USA, it reached #23 on the Billboard charts. The album remained in the Billboard charts for over a year and was a commercial (though not a critical) success. The album went on to earn platinum selling status in both the US and the UK. The band wasted no time capitalizing on the success of their first album and were back in the studio in June 1970 to record their second album “Paranoid” which had the hit single of the same name.

On Friday January 13, 1988, the US Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the case Hazelwood School District et al. v. Kuhlmeier et al. that gave public school administrations broad power to censor school newspapers. In a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that student newspapers not established specifically for the purpose of providing students with a forum for free expression, are subject to lower levels of First Amendment protection. Thus the court allowed public schools to put restrictions on what could appear in school-sponsored student publications.

In the case in question, a public school in Missouri published a school paper (The Spectrum) that was fully paid for and supported by the school district. The issue had stories on teen pregnancy and divorce which the school principal felt needed to be removed. When these stories were removed, three of the students sued claiming the decision to remove the articles from the paper violated their First Amendment rights. The Supreme Court held that “the First Amendment protection for student expression described did not compel a public school to affirmatively sponsor speech that conflicts with its “legitimate pedagogical goals.” The school-financed newspaper at issue was also not considered to be a public forum under the totality of circumstances present in the case, and therefore, its editors were entitled to a lower level of First Amendment protection than is applicable to independent student newspapers or those newspapers that have, by policy and practice, opened their page to student opinion.” Source – Wikipedia.

On Friday February 13, 1981, in the city of Louisville Kentucky, it seemed like the city was under attack. A series of underground explosions in the city’s sewer system destroyed more than two miles of streets. Somehow, there were no fatalities but the damage was so extensive the National Guard was called in.

It began around 5:15 a.m. on the morning of Friday the 13th when a spark from a car at the intersection of 12th and Hill streets ignited flammable vapors in the sewer system. Two women on their way to work at the local hospital were driving under the railroad overpass when the sparks from their car ignited the vapors. The force of the explosion hurled the car onto its side but neither occupant was killed. Overhead, a police helicopter happened to be traveling above the city. What they saw was incredible – a series of explosions like demolitions detonating up and down city streets, one after the other. The pilot described what they saw as looking like “a bombing run.” More than two miles of streets were left with craters where manhole covers for the sewer had once been. Many business and homes were damaged by the explosions.

The source of the blast was traced back to hexane vapors, which had been illegally discharged by a Ralston-Purina soybean processing plant. The hexane (which is a solvent) was used in the processing of the soybeans and the plant had a system to recover and reuse the hexane. However, that night, the system was broken and hundreds if not thousands of gallons of the hexane went into the public sewer system. Inside the sewers, the vapors from the hexane accumulated and reached an explosive mixture with air. The flammable and explosive vapors came out of the manhole covers and all it needed was a spark to set it off. Ralston-Purina would later pay $18 million to the city and $9 million to the people of Louisville.

In 1960 the United States was rushing to catch up to the Russians in the space race. That year, the US introduced the Delta family of rockets meant to be the backbone of the US military, commercial, and space exploration business. The Delta rockets were designed to be versatile, expendable launch vehicles that could be used to launch different size and weight satellites and other hardware into different levels of orbit. The first launch of a Delta rocket was scheduled for Friday, May 13, 1960. Perhaps they should have waited until Saturday?

That day, the Delta rocket was set to launch the first US experimental communications satellite called Echo. Echo was essentially a large metal-covered balloon that would circle the Earth and be able to bounce communication signals from one area to another.

On May 13, 1960, at Cape Canaveral, the launch took place. The first stage of the multi-stage rocket worked fine and the vehicle rose off the launch pad. However, troubles developed with the second stage of the rocket and the Echo satellite never reached the intended orbit. Echo only orbited the Earth for a few months.

In spite of the dubious beginning, the Delta rocket has proven to be remarkably successful. Over 300 Delta rockets have been launched since 1960 with a 95% success rate. The Delta II and Delta III launch systems are still in use today.

On Friday August 13, 1993, the Royal Plaza Hotel in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, Thailand, collapsed killing 137 people and injuring 227.

Thought to be the finest hotel in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima, the Royal Hotel was hosting several large conferences for teachers and oil company workers that day. At around 10:10 a.m., the building suddenly and quickly collapsed. The entire collapse was estimated to have taken less than 10 seconds as all of the upper floors fell down onto the lower floors.

In 1990, the then three-story building was renovated and three additional stories were added to the building. The three additional stories were added without permit and without strengthening the support structure of the building. Somehow, the building stayed vertical for three years. Eventually, the lower ground floor support structure weakened beyond the point it could hold the force of the five stories above it. This led to an almost completely vertical collapse of the building.

The engineer who designed the additional floors was arrested and jailed. Safety inspectors had taken bribes to allow the construction to take place. Remarking on the lack of safety and regulations, corruption, bribery and building construction in Thailand, the Prime Minister, Chuan Likphai noted, “It seems we Thais do not respect regulations and this has resulted in frequent problems.”

A terrible tragedy occurred in Delhi, India on Friday June 13, 1997, when the Uphaar Cinema building caught fire. The resulting fire and stampede killed 59 people and injured another 103.

The multi-floor theater was packed with a crowd to see the Hindi movie “Border” when the fire stared at around 5:00 p.m. Below the theater was a parking garage and though it was capable of handling 18 cars, 36 cars were crammed into the space. Also in the basement-parking garage was a 1000 kVA electrical transformer. Earlier that day, the transformer had caught fire but the fire was put out and repairs made. At around 5:00 p.m. however, the transformer began to leak oil and this ignited. Quickly the cars in the garage also caught fire. The fire then spread to the rest of the five-story structure, which housed the cinema and offices. Most of the victims were trapped on the balcony, unable to reach dimly marked exits, and crushed by the stampede of people who found some of the exits were locked. Due to a similar transformer fire incident 14 years earlier, the licenses for 12 cinemas, including the Uphaar, had been canceled due to multiple serious safety violations. However in those 14 years between the citation and the deadly fire, none of the safety violations had been corrected.

It was Curt Flood who in 1970 first challenged baseball’s reserve clause, the contract provision that kept players indentured to a single team. Flood lost both a Supreme Court case and his career. But his sacrifice allowed Jim “Catfish” Hunter to rack up a win. On Friday December 13, 1974, just months after Hunter’s Oakland A’s had won the World Series, an arbitrator ruled that by breaching part of Hunter’s contract, A’s owner Charles O. Finley had invalidated the entire contract, including the reserve clause.
Hunter had a contract with the Athletics that stipulated the team make a payment into an insurance fund. A’s owner Charles Finley refused to pay the money. Hunter challenged this and the arbitrator decided in his favor. By ruling that the contract and the reserve clause in the contract were void, as a result of Finley refusing to pay the insurance cost, the arbitrator set Hunter free of the Athletics, making him the first free agent in baseball history. Hunter would go on to sign a $3.75 million contract with the New York Yankees which at the time ranked as the largest in baseball’s history.

On Friday May 13, 1917 the first apparition of the Virgin Mary appeared to three shepherd children in the village of Fatima Portugal. The three children were Lúcia dos Santos and her cousins Jacinta and Francisco Marto. While tending sheep in the fields outside the village the children reported seeing a woman dressed in white and “brighter than the sun, shedding rays of light clearer and stronger than a crystal ball filled with the most sparkling water and pierced by the burning rays of the sun.” The woman asked the children to return to the spot at the same time every 13th of the month for the next six months. As this was the time of the horrors of World War One, she then added, “Recite the rosary every day to obtain peace in the world and the end of the war.”

In total there were six apparitions of the Virgin Mary from May 13 to October 13, 1917. After the first apparition, the children returned on June 13th, this time with hundreds of believers. After the people prayed, the Virgin Mary reappeared before Lucy and announced to Lucy: “I will soon take Francisco and Jacinta to heaven, but you will remain here for some time. Jesus wants to use you to make me known and loved.” Both Francisco and Jacinta would be dead within three years time. Both children died during the 1918-1920 pandemic flu outbreak.

During the July 13th apparition, the Virgin Mary reveled herself to and spoke to Lucy once again (the crowd of people, estimated to be 4,000 or more, could not see or hear her, only Lucy). She told Lucy: “I want you to continue to say your rosary every day in honor of Our Lady of the Rosary to obtain the end of the war and peace in the world”. She also told Lucy three prophecies that Lucy was to keep secret for some time. Two of these secrets were disclosed in 1942, the third in 2000. These secrets became known as the Three Secrets of Fátima.

On October 13, 1917, during the final visitation, there occurred “The Miracle of the Sun.” This was the miracle the Virgin Mary had predicted she would unfold to cause unbelievers to believe. A crowd estimated to be 30,000 strong was at the site of the previous apparitions when many witnesses saw unusual affects on and of the sun. There was a brief period of rain, then the clouds broke, and when the sun reappeared it was seen as an opaque, spinning disc giving off many colors on the ground, the people, and the clouds. Many thought it was a sign of the end of the world, others reported the sun zigzagged through the sky. Still others claimed their clothing, which had become wet from the rain, instantly dried and the mud at their feet baked dry.

On Friday April 13, 1883, Alfred Packer was convicted of murder and sentenced to death for allegedly killing and eating five people. He was one of only two Americans ever convicted of the crime of cannibalism. Later his crime was lowered to manslaughter and he was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

In late November 1873, Packer and five other men, Shannon Wilson Bell, James Humphrey, Frank Miller, George Noon and Israel Swan, broke off from a larger party of prospectors heading into the mountains of Colorado near Breckinridge to prospect for gold. In January 1874 the men consulted with a well-known Indian familiar with their destination who advised the men to wait until spring before setting off to avoid the deadly winter months. They ignored his advice and set off into the mountains headed for Gunnison Colorado on February 9th, 1874. Quickly the men became lost and ran out of provisions. Packer later claimed that he went off scouting for food and when he returned to camp he found Bell roasting human meat over the fire. Packer claimed Bell rushed him with a hatchet in hand. Packer shot him dead. He then ate the other men and in mid April finally wandered into Gunnison. There he was arrested and tried for the murder of the five men, and eating them for food. Though he claimed he did not kill the men, he did admit to eating them, and eventually signed a confession.

Packer would escape prison, be recaptured, and then paroled by the Governor in 1901. He died in 1907. His legend lived on though. He was once quoted as having said, in jest, “the breasts of man… are the sweetest meat I ever tasted.”

The asteroid Apiophis is named after a mythological Egyptian god of evil who was determined to cast the world into darkness. It appears the asteroid was appropriately named. On Friday April 13, 2029, Apiophis (which is the size of The Rose Bowl, about 1,100 feet across) will come closer to the Earth than the orbit of satellites (at a distance of only 18,000 miles from Earth). Though it will be closer to Earth than many satellites, fortunately, it will come in towards the Earth at an angle that keeps it out of the densely populated Earth satellite region and collisions with satellites should not occur. The asteroid will be close enough to Earth that, even in daylight, observers will see a bright object move across the sky. If the asteroid enters a specific trajectory known as “they keyhole” then the influence of Earth’s gravity will ensure that the asteroid heads off towards the Sun on a trajectory that will guarantee it will strike the Earth the next time it comes around the Sun and approaches our planet. Seven years after that close Earth approach, should the asteroid go through “the keyhole,” Apiophis will hit the Earth in the year 2036. Should it miss the keyhole, the asteroid will not hit the Earth in 2036.

However, should Apiophis collide with the Earth, it will cause major damage. The impact would be the equivalent of 100,000 nuclear bombs and would destroy thousands of square miles. Should it land in the ocean, the resulting tsunami would devastate coastal areas. Let us hope Friday the 13th of April 2029 is a lucky, and not an unlucky Friday the 13th.

This is the ability to understand information regarding agriculture. For those who work as farmers, this is rarely a problem, but to a city-dweller, reading that “90% of farmland was lost due to drought” might not seem a serious problem due to an utter lack of understanding of how farming works. People who are agriculturally illiterate fail to understand how important agriculture is, how dependent we all are on it, and make statements like “lack of farmland never causes famines, it’s just farmers being unreasonable and complaining” or “if they can grow this food overseas, then we can grow it here just as easily.”

Computer illiteracy is a specific form of technological illiteracy. It is the lack of ability to use computers at a basic level, often despite being shown how to use them. Being unable to turn a computer on, thinking that a mouse needs to be fed, or trying to click by snapping one’s fingers are real examples of computer illiteracy. People who are computer illiterate, an increasingly disabling trait in modern society, say things like “I’ll ring you on your email number” and “I deleted the internet. How do I fix it?”

This form of illiteracy is where someone is able read text and to understand its overall meaning, but lacks the ability to think about it critically and consider the possibility of unreliable or biased information. Gullible people often have critical illiteracy. The statement “all people who were democratic in the nineteenth century are now dead, so democracy kills people!” is taken as fact, and the underlying political agenda or the actuality that the data does not support said agenda is missed. Critical illiteracy is taken advantage of by many forms of media to present opinions as fact.

Everyone belongs to a culture of some sort. Cultural illiteracy is a lack of familiarity with one’s culture. This often becomes apparent when common sayings are misunderstood, or when references to folklore are completely missed. Although we are all culturally illiterate to many other cultures, those who are illiterate of their own culture lack a feeling of comfort when surrounded by what should be familiar memes. A British person thinking that “porky-pies” require pastry, an Australian thinking that “bogans” are from Bougainville, or a Chinese thinking that “Buddha jumps over the wall” actually involves Buddha are strong examples.

No matter how far we try to remove ourselves from the natural world, we are still dependent on the Earth’s resources. Ensuring that environments are maintained in turn helps us maintain our own way of living. Ecological illiteracy is the inability to understand this, and the belief that we are not actually dependent on the Earth. People who feel this way are quick to damage the environment for pleasure, and make statements like “the Earth can support as many humans as we want; population control is unnecessary” and “recycling is a waste of time.”

People who are emotionally illiterate are unable to properly understand the emotions of themselves and of others. They often do not realize when they are behaving erratically due to anger or stress, and thus are less likely to recognize and stop destructive behaviors. They are poor at interpreting the emotions of others and often attribute laughing or crying as deliberate attempts to annoy. These people often have trouble expressing themselves and seem to respond oddly or even inappropriately in some situations. A person who laughs hysterically when they hear a friend has died, despite feeling sad, may be emotionally illiterate.

People who feel overwhelmed when the topic of budgets comes up may suffer from some degree of financial illiteracy. These include people who spend money irresponsibly, such as using a week’s pay to buy a video game when bills are due, or not saving money for future hardships. Frighteningly, many adults when surveyed state that they are financially literate, yet are unable to solve simple finance problems, showing that many suffer from a false sense of security. Although the level varies between countries, between 30% and 50% of adults are financially illiterate, and is a strong predictor of future poverty.

Conservative estimates state that 20% of all adults are functionally illiterate. This means that they can read or hear words and understand their meanings, but cannot properly comprehend the meaning of a sentence as a whole, and are unaware that they lack this perception. At an extreme level, the words in “beware of the dog” are individually understood, but the meaning of required cautiousness is lost. At a more common level, a statement like “genetics is bad” shows that someone lacks a basic understanding of what genetics is yet thinks their knowledge comprehensive enough to make decisive statements.

Health illiteracy is the inability to understand basic healthcare facts, causing an inability to make good health decisions. In developed countries about 10% of adults have health illiteracy. These people are eager to believe audacious health claims, despite a massive amount of evidence to the contrary, and will undergo dramatic and often dangerous lifestyle changes as a result. Unfortunately this often affects their trusting children. Beliefs such as “doctors are paid by corporations to kill patients,” “immunizations do more harm than good,” and “vegan diets are healthy for newborns” have lead and continue to cause poor health and even death.

Information illiteracy is the inability to realize when one’s own knowledge or understanding has reached its limit. The information illiterate is the person who argues despite having been proven wrong, or the person who does not realize they are making a fool of themselves when speaking to a room of experts about a topic they themselves know little about. Information illiterate people are unable to see their own intellectual faults. It has been said that a truly educated person is aware of the limits of their knowledge, and, sadly, over 60% of adults have some degree of information illiteracy.

We rely on a variety of media to provide us with useful information about the wider world. Unfortunately, in order to maximize profits, or to simply stay in business, many media companies sensationalize situations to attract a larger audience. As a result, much of what we hear has been skewed a certain amount. A specific type of critical illiteracy, media illiteracy causes people to interpret everything heard in the media as fact. Statements like “I heard it on TV, it must be true!” and “the news would never lie” are signs of media illiteracy.

Mental health illiteracy is a type of health illiteracy. It is an unawareness or misunderstanding of mental disorders, making problems difficult to recognize or treat. This is the husband who interprets his wife’s talk of suicide as meaningless, or the mother who thinks her son’s eating disorder is merely a phase. Negative and incorrect media portrayals of mental disorders and psychiatric care make this illiteracy common. A widespread but much milder expression of mental health illiteracy is the belief that “shyness isn’t a normal mental state, and if you overcome it you’ll be happier.”

Numerical illiteracy, or a lack of numeracy, is a lack of the basic arithmetic skills that are required in day-to-day life. Simple tasks, like calculating 50% off a price, are very difficult for numerically illiterate people. Although related to statistical illiteracy, numerical illiteracy includes not noticing anything amiss when a merely buying a liter of juice is charged at over one hundred dollars due to a machine error, and may find themselves the victims of extortion without ever realizing it. Although this extreme version of the illiteracy is rare, over half of all adults suffer from mild numerical illiteracy.

Racial illiteracy is the inability to understand issues connected with race and racism. A student claiming that a teacher failed him purposely “because he’s black” may be suffering from racial illiteracy. Similarly, people who hold incorrect or generalizing beliefs about races also suffer from racial illiteracy. The damaging stereotypical views that “all Asians are smart” or “all white people are rich” are both expressions of not only prejudice and ignorance, but of racial illiteracy.

This is what most people think of when they hear the word “illiteracy.” This is the basic inability to understand or produce written information. There are several degrees of illiteracy, such as understanding individual letters but not whole words, understanding some words but not enough to understand a sentence, and not recognizing letters or words at all. Through more widely-available education, world illiteracy has more than halved in the last fifty years. This means that even people living in the poorest countries enjoy better lives as they are able to read medicine instructions or avoid drinking water signposted as “poisonous.”

Science is a carefully built framework of all known truths to humanity. If a scientific hypothesis is disproved, it is either altered or discarded, and thus up-to-date science is never wrong. Science is self-correcting and reflects the culmination of all knowledge at any point in time. Sadly, 75% of adults are scientifically illiterate. These people make statements like “people who drive expensive cars live longer, so if I buy a nice car I’ll live longer too,” even though the car does not cause a long life span but rather both are probably caused by a higher socioeconomic status. Other illiterate statements include “science has proven it to be good for you” and “it’s only a scientific theory, it might not be true.”

People who are statistically illiterate fail to grasp that statistics can be presented in ways to mislead. These people feel that if numbers or data support a particular idea, then it must have merit. Closely linked to critical and numerical illiteracy, a person who is statistically illiterate will interpret the statements “10% of people are allergic to peanuts” and “90% of people are not allergic to peanuts” differently, despite the fact that they say the same thing. Believing that gambling is financially beneficial in the long term is unfortunately common for those with statistical illiteracy.

A person who is technologically illiterate has trouble learning to use new technologies as they become available. Learning new things, especially as an adult, can be slow, but these people find themselves baffled by relatively simple items like binoculars despite being patiently taught to use them hundreds of times. Not understanding a technology because of a lack of contact with it is normal, but not understanding it when exposed to it and when taught several times is illiteracy. These people can experience great trouble in keeping up with modern society.

A trans-illiterate person is unable to transfer information from one form of media to another. For example, they may be able to understand a picture, but have trouble describing it or writing about it. Trans-illiterate people have trouble applying the information they gather from various sources to their daily lives, such as a person who reads that junk food is bad but never thinks to limit their own consumption of junk food. In a society where we are constantly fed information from all kinds of sources, the ability to apply what we know easily and smoothly is becoming increasingly useful.

Visual illiteracy is the inability to understand or process information in visual form. These people struggle to read graphs and info graphics. Specific types of brain damage can cause an innate inability to understand and recognize faces or vision entirely, but most people with visual illiteracy have no such underlying cause. A form of visual illiteracy that all people have at one point but most grow out of is seen in young toddlers. They will tend to think that when a single biscuit is broken in half, the two pieces represent more food than the original biscuit. Similarly, four grapes close together are seen as “more grapes” than the same four grapes spaced far apart. [Full infographic can be found here]

Ever drive down the road and notice most of the cars you see are colored in four colors (mostly black, white, silver, or gray)? Part of the reason why is resale value – people who want to resell their car later know they are far more likely to find a buyer if the car is one of these common colors. Though other colors are out there, (mostly brightly colored new small cars and new muscle cars), we have lost some of the variety of colors we used to see on cars.

Anyone who remembers car colors from before the 1990s, and especially car colors from the 1950s-1980s, remember there being a whole range of vibrant, sometimes weird colored cars on the road. Where did these cars and these wild and weird colors go? They didn’t go anywhere really, the colors (for the most part) still exist and some even get used today. An example of an almost extinct color that was invented for the automobile paint industry was Quinacridone Gold. Today it is all but extinct because the only manufacturer of this pigment discontinued it long ago and no one else makes it today. It is highly prized by some artists for use in watercolor and oil painting. What did change was paint technology itself, and how paints are applied to modern automobiles.

For sure, more eye-popping and vibrant-looking colors were used on cars in the 1950s-1970s (my older sister had a bright yellow 1975 Mercury Capri that screamed “canary!”) but the paint also looked different because of the way it sat on the car. It wasn’t just that there were different and more vibrant pigments, paints of that era mostly sat flat on the car. Modern paints seem to flow with the car, and appear different from different angles. Finishes were a lot more matte than today’s high glossy car finishes. The older paint colors also resulted from the use of acrylic lacquer and enamel paints. The acrylic lacquer paints allowed for high color pigmentation and were more glossy (though not as glossy as today’s paints). Problem was, they required the use of a lot of fast-drying solvents, which have widely been phased out of car paints because of their toxicological and environmental problems. These acrylic paints also became brittle and cracked when exposed to UV sunlight. The colors would fade over time. I had a bright red Saab 900 that, by the time I finally sold it almost fifteen years later, was the color of the pink you see in breast cancer awareness posters. Enamel paints were somewhat better than acrylic car paints, but still had quality problems.

Today, car manufacturers paint their vehicles with high-tech paints that need to meet tough environmental and durability testing requirements (they are far better at resisting chips, fading from sunlight, effects of road salt, etc.). They are more durable and give off almost translucent properties unimagined in the 1960s. Still, there was nothing like those old car colors of that era that are now relegated mostly to museums and car shows.

One of the enduring mysteries of the “terrible lizards” has always been – what did dinosaurs really look like? Were they just dull green or brown or black creatures as commonly depicted in books and films? Or were the brightly colored and patterned like many moderns animals? And did they have colors that we no longer see in animals today? Though these colors are now as extinct as their owners, can we rediscover them by studying fossils?

Until very recently, this question could not be answered but recent scientific discoveries have started to pull back the veil on what dinosaurs may have really looked like, color-wise, millions of years ago. Studies at the cellular level of dinosaur fossils have extrapolated from primitive pigment-giving organelles known as melanosomes. Melanosomes contain the coloring pigment melanin found in modern animals. Fossilized dinosaur feathers have revealed melanosome structures that indicate these feathered dinosaurs may have had black bodies with bright red (ginger-like) color and banded patterns. In fact, the presence of color pigments is what allowed the dinosaur feathers to be preserved and fossilized. If the feathers had been white (no pigment) they would not have fossilized. Though the actual melanosomes no longer exhibit their original pigment (which disappeared through chemical reactions over the millions of years), scientists can still guess at the type of color and pigment based on the size and shape of the melanosome. Modern animals have melanosomes of specific shapes and sizes, for say, black or red. If scientists see similar shaped and sized melanosomes in the fossils of the dinosaur feathers, they can assume that was the color the dinosaur also had.

Scientists have also studied feathers of modern animals to determine what melanosome structures exhibited other color characteristics such as iridescence. Based on these models, they looked at preserved melanosomes of other dinosaur feathers and determined these dinosaurs had feathers with iridescence. This added the possibility of the feathers having purples, blues, and greens.

Hamsters come in many different colors and patterns including Banded, Dominant Spot, and Roan. One specific variation, close to the Dominant Spot hamster (which has a white belly and dominant spot patterns on its back) was the Piebald. Unlike the Dominant Spot hamster, the Piebald hamster was a colored hamster with white spots on its body. The Piebald hamster had spots of varying number and size, and the hamster did have a colored (rather than all white) belly, unlike the Dominant Spot hamster. The colored belly could also have spots, unlike the Dominant Spot which has an all white belly. The Dominant Spot hamster was first seen in America in 1964 and quickly became more popular than the Piebald hamster because they were easier to breed. Today the Piebald colored hamster is believed to be extinct as none have been seen in years.

Pink dolphins, sometimes referred to as the “Boto,” inhabit the Amazon River and some rivers in China and are fresh water cousins of the better-known dolphins of the worlds oceans. They have been listed by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as a “vulnerable species-threatened” and recently was moved to “endangered species-threatened.” Of the five species of river dolphins (the other four being functionally extinct), the Amazon River pink dolphins are still hanging on, though increased river traffic on the Amazonian rivers (they are very curious animals and swim right up to boats and are killed or injured as a result), environmental pollution, and habitat loss are beginning to impact their numbers.

The Amazon River dolphins belong to the genus Inia and are not the same as dolphins in the oceans. Ocean dolphins have dorsal fins while pink dolphins have humps on their backs. Though their color may vary from blue-grey, to brown, to cream-white or just plain gray, most pink dolphins do in fact look pink. Why this is, is a mystery. Scientists feel it may be related to their diets which consist of many shelled animals which have a red pigment in their muscle tissue. Scientists believe that as the dolphins age and mature, this red pigment builds up in their skin and leads to their pink color. Dolphins also have a large number of blood capillaries near the surface of their skin which may be another contributing factor. Hopefully the pink dolphins will be protected so we always have this unique color in our world.

This paint color is as extinct as its source – Egyptian mummies. Caput mortem was a brown pigment sometimes referred to as “mummy brown” or “Egyptian brown” because it was made from ground up mummies. Caput mortuum means, “worthless remains” and was a pigment made in the 16th and 17th centuries. The use of Caput Mortuum pigment fell out of favor by the 19th century when artists became aware of the origins. For a time it was used to color robes of religious figures and was referred to as Cardinal Purple.

A pigment that would be at the top of modern day animal protection activists everywhere would be the now extinct Indian yellow. Though its origins are today disputed, it has long been held that this transparent yellow pigment used in oil paints came from the urine of specially fed cows in India. Indian yellow is a clear, luminescent, and deep yellow pigment and was widely used by oil and watercolor painters. Because of its fluorescent properties, Indian yellow is especially vivid in sunlight.

However, an investigation into the manufacture of this pigment in 1883 turned up some disturbing information. It was claimed that Indian yellow pigment came from the urine of cows fed only mango leaves. The resulting urine was collected, dried, and rolled into yellow balls of pigment. European traders then imported the “piss balls” of pigment for processing into the Indian yellow pigment for paint. In 1908 the process was declared inhumane and stopped. This was because the cows became undernourished on the mango leaf only diet. However, today this source of Indian yellow is disputed as no investigation has turned up anyone in the areas of India where the pigment was supposed to have been manufactured that can recall ever making it using cows. Still, Indian yellow is now replaced by synthetic Indian yellow hue, which is nickel-based.

Designed and introduced to the public in the 1930s, Fiesta ware is a line of solid-colored dinnerware manufactured by the Homer Laughlin China Company of Newell, West Virginia. The original Fiesta ware was discontinued in 1973 but later brought back. The bright and vivid red or orange color is one color of the original Fiesta ware that you can no longer buy (though you can still see the color in vintage Fiesta ware from the time period).

The five original colors of Fiesta ware were red, blue, green, yellow, and ivory. The colors were specific because the idea was people could mix and match pieces and colors of the dinnerware, so the colors had to be complimentary. The most popular of the original colors was red Fiesta ware, which got its bright red (orange) color through the use of uranium dioxide in the glaze. The red Fiesta ware was also the most expensive because of the amount of uranium dioxide that went into the glaze (up to 15% by weight) and a more complicated firing process. The result, however, was a brilliant and vibrant red or orange color like none seen before or since. From 1936 until 1943 (when the uranium was needed for use for atomic weapons development), red Fiesta ware was made using uranium dioxide in the glaze. Later the company switched to using a depleted uranium product but for the first 6-7 years the product was made, it was made with a lot of radioactive uranium. Today these surviving examples of original red Fiesta ware are known for being beautiful as well as potentially deadly. There are three hazards of the radioactivity of the red Fiesta ware. First, the person handling the Fiesta ware can be exposed to gamma rays being emitted by the radionuclides in the uranium glaze. Second, a person handling the Fiesta ware can be exposed to the beta particles emitted by radionuclides in the ceramic glaze, which get onto their hands. Third, a person could be exposed to radionuclides that leach from the glaze into food when they eat food served in the Fiesta ware.

Other colors of the Fiesta ware (such as the ivory) also contained small amounts of radioactive uranium, but the bright reddish-orange original Fiesta ware is the most radioactive by far. It is not a color you will likely see again in a dinnerware, or any other consumer product, due to the hazards of uranium.

The transparent blue-green colored pigment, verdigris (meaning, green of Greece) was used from antiquity until the Middle Ages as a pigment in paints and other materials. Until the 19th century, verdigris was the most vibrant green color available and was widely used by artists in the Renaissance and Baroque movements. Unfortunately, verdigris gets its color from copper acetate, which is highly toxic to humans. Verdigris is also a highly reactive copper pigment and will age to dark brown or black. As more stable green pigments became available, the use of verdigris disappeared. Therefore, it is hardly used today as an artists pigment.

Another old pigment that would be on the PETA hit list today is ivory black. This deep blue-black color was derived from the burning of ivory from elephant tusks. The left over waste product was charred in oil and refined into this pigment. True ivory black was derived this way and, for obvious reasons, is not used today as the source of the ivory, elephants, are becoming extinct. Ivory black is sometimes referred to as “bone char” which is a granular material made from the charring of animal bones. But bone char can be made from any animal bones, where as ivory black came only from the use of ivory. Rembrandt was one Master painter who often used ivory black in his work.

Did you ever see an old metal bridge painted red? At one time, almost all metal structures such as bridges (and especially any metal that was near bodies of water and the sea air that could be easily corroded by the salt and moisture) were painted with red lead paint. Red lead or “minim” got its name from the Minius River in northern Spain where it was first mined. It is a bright orange or red pigment made from lead tetra oxide. Until the 1970s, the lead tetra oxide pigment was mixed with linseed oil to make a thick and corrosion-resistant paint often referred to as “red lead” paint. The red lead paint was most frequently used as primer paint on iron objects, which needed protection from the elements. Probably the most famous example is the Golden Gate Bridge, which had its distinctive orange color from red lead paint. The bridge was painted with a red lead primer and topcoat. The original red lead paint used on the Golden Gate Bridge was 68% red lead paste.

Today, the bright red and orange structures are giving way to zinc-based primers and topcoats because of the environmental and toxicity hazards of lead. For example, since 1968, the Golden Gate Bridge has been repainted with inorganic zinc silicate primer with vinyl topcoat (later changed to acrylic topcoat to meet more stringent air quality standards). In the United States and many other countries, the use of lead-based paints is highly regulated. Zinc-based colors on bridges and metal structures are usually green. The old red-colored bridges are still out there, but are fading away. It is estimated there are thousands of old bridges in the United States that are slowly deteriorating, many of which are unsafe. The original red lead needs to be removed carefully so as not to expose workers to high lead levels and to protect the environment, before the bridges are repainted, usually with zinc-based paint.

In 2007, if you followed the news media, it appeared that our redheaded friends were doomed to extinction. That’s right. According to these articles, red heads (or gingers) would be extinct as early as the year 2060. No longer would we see the fiery red and orange hair of Archie or Ginger. Fortunately, all of the so-called “genetic scientists” quoted in these articles were wrong, red heads, like blondes, are going nowhere and will not become extinct.

These mistaken articles often cited something called the Oxford Hair Foundation as their source and relied on the unfounded belief that recessive genes like those that cause red hair will naturally “die out” over time. This is nonsense. Recessive genes are, in fact, more rare than dominant genes, but the only way these recessive genes can go extinct is if everyone carrying them died all at once or failed to reproduce. And since the world still contains many redheaded people, it is highly unlikely such a catastrophe could happen (in spite of Cartman’s evil intentions).

In 2007 National Geographic magazine ran an article on world populations of redheaded humans. In it they stated there was a belief that redheads would someday become extinct, but they did not support this. In fact, they stated “while redheads may decline, the potential for red isn’t going away.”

Q: Will an asteroid collide with Earth in the near future?

As we move into 2012, astronomers have located a collection of near-Earth asteroids that may pose a future threat. 2011 AG5 is a near-Earth asteroid and potentially hazardous object. It was discovered on January 8, 2011, by the Mt. Lemmon Observatory, which is located near Tucson, Arizona. The object has a diameter of about 140 meters (460 feet) and is noted for a potential close approach to Earth in the year 2040. In fact, the asteroid has a 1 in 625 chance of impacting Earth between the years of 2040 and 2047.

In September 2013, 2011 AG5 will make another pass by Earth, which will give astronomers a chance to make adjustments to their projected trajectory of the object. 2011 AG5 is currently rated on the Torino Scale at Level 1, which means it poses no immediate threat, but has caught the attention of space agencies around the world. It has been estimated that if an asteroid the size of 2011 AG5 was to hit Earth, the explosion would produce a major event equivalent to 100 megatons of TNT.
2007 VK184 is an asteroid with a rating on the Torino Scale of Level 1. 2007 VK184 and 2011 AG5 are currently the only near-Earth objects to be listed above Level 0 for potential impacts within 100 years. The object was discovered on November 12, 2007, by the Catalina Sky Survey. 2007 VK184 has a 1 in 1,820 chance of hitting Earth during June 2048. It is estimated that the asteroid has a diameter of 130 meters (426 feet), and travels through space with a speed of 15.63 km/s relative to the Earth.

Most recently, on February 23, 2012, an asteroid named 2012 DA14 was discovered by the OAM Observatory, La Sagra in Spain. Calculations show that on February 15, 2013, the distance between 2012 DA14 and Earth will be only 27,000 km (17,000 mi), which is closer than most orbiting satellites. The diameter of 2012 DA14 is about 44 meters (144 feet), and it has been estimated that an impact with the asteroid would produce an explosion similar to the 1908 Tunguska event.

Currently, 2012 DA14 rates 0 (No Hazard) on the Torino scale, but the asteroid has showed signs of a potential impact (1 in 83,000) in 2020. Scientists are currently interested in the asteroid’s orbit, which is not fully understood. For the most part, as we enter the middle of 2012, it appears that humanity has no immediate threat from a near-Earth asteroid. However, we always need to keep our eyes on the sky.

Q: What really happened to Sonny Bono?

Most people identify Sonny Bono with music and Cher. However, he was also a United States politician and member of the House of Representatives from California. Bono entered politics after experiencing frustration with the state of California. In the House of Representatives, he was vital in the restoration of the Salton Sea. Bono helped bring the lake’s plight to national attention. He was also extremely popular in the United States. In fact, in 1997, if you asked a high ranking official who they saw winning the Republican nomination for the 2000 presidential election, Bono’s name would have been mentioned.

Sonny Bono died on January 5, 1998, due to injuries sustained when he crashed into a tree while skiing on the Nevada side of Heavenly Ski Resort near South Lake Tahoe, California. In a bizarre coincidence, his death occurred a little less than a week after Michael Kennedy, a son of Robert F. Kennedy, died in a similar skiing accident in Aspen, Colorado. Bono remains the only member of the U.S. Congress to have scored a #1 pop single on the US Billboard chart. After his death, Sonny Bono’s body was buried and his autopsy was not made public for a couple years. In 2008, the U.S. Globe tabloid published a shocking story that was picked up by news agencies around the world.

The story claims that Sonny Bono, who was a great skier, was actually assassinated and beaten to death at Heavenly Ski Resort. It says that Bono had uncovered information that linked a series of U.S. government officials to a group of arms and weapons dealers in Central America and Southeast Asia. “He was going to make it his No.1 priority. There’s no doubt in my mind that Sonny was murdered by someone who needed him silenced.”

It was reported that Bono had discovered corruption in the government, including videotaped evidence. His autopsy apparently revealed severe head trauma. According to the report, Bono had “a black eye, swollen lips, bloody nose, bruised jaw, and two upper teeth knocked out, all on the right side of the head,” as well as several “fractures in a central depressed region on the right side of the skull.” Finally, the article added that “the back of Bono’s clothes was soaked with blood, but he had no back wounds.” Sonny Bono’s death is mysterious and shows signs of foul play. We can only wonder where his political career would have taken him.

Q: Who is the unknown woman of the Seine?

As the story goes, in the 1880s, the body of a young unidentified woman was pulled from the Seine River at the Quai du Louvre in Paris. The woman’s body showed no signs of violence and her death was ruled a suicide. After the corpse was brought to the Paris morgue, a pathologist was so taken by her beauty that he had a plaster death mask made. The woman’s age was estimated to be no more than 16 and her face quickly became famous at the end of the 19th century. The woman’s smile was compared to the Mona Lisa and girls all over the world, most notably in France and Germany, copied her look. According to Hans Hesse of the University of Sussex, “the image became the erotic ideal of the period, as Brigitte Bardot was for the 1950s.”

L’Inconnue de la Seine was a major inspiration for artists of all kinds, including Albert Camus, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Anaïs Nin. In fact, the first aid mannequin Resusci Anne (Rescue Annie) was modeled after the death mask. Resusci Anne was created by Peter Safar and Asmund Laerdal in 1958 and used in numerous CPR courses. Since its introduction, several versions of Resusci Anne have been produced and people all over the world use the dolls for different rescue techniques. For this reason, the face of the unknown woman of the Seine has been called “the most kissed” of all time.

The true details surrounding the death of the woman have been debated for years. Some people feel that the image is too lifelike to have been taken from a dead woman. They have claimed that the picture shows a living girl that is closing her eyes. People often point to the fact that the woman’s body doesn’t show any signs of water decay, which is often evident with drowning. Whatever the case, the picture remains one of the most influential portraits in history.

Q: What happened to Charlotte Moberly and Eleanor Jourdain?

The Moberly-Jourdain incident was an event that occurred on August 10, 1901, in the gardens of the Petit Trianon, located on the grounds of the Palace of Versailles in France. The event involved two female academics, Charlotte Anne Moberly (1846–1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863–1924). In 1901, the two women planned a trip to the Palace of Versailles. After investigating the gardens for a while, they became disoriented and found themselves on an unknown road. At this moment, the women claimed to have been overcome with a feeling of oppression and dreariness.

During the event, Moberly and Jourdain described a collection of palace gardeners who told them “to go straight on.” Moberly later described the men as “very dignified officials, dressed in long grayish green coats with small three-cornered hats.” She also said that she suddenly felt the atmosphere change and wrote: “Everything suddenly looked unnatural, therefore unpleasant; even the trees seemed to become flat and lifeless, like wood worked in tapestry. There were no effects of light and shade, and no wind stirred the trees.”

The women then ran into a man with smallpox and another person described as “tall with large dark eyes and crisp curling black hair under a large sombrero hat.” After crossing a bridge, the pair reached the gardens in front of the palace, and Moberly noticed a lady sketching on the grass who looked at them. She later said it was Marie Antoinette. However, Jourdain did not see her. The women were then directed to a party. They had tea at the Hotel des Reservoirs before returning to Jourdain’s apartment. After leaving Versailles, neither Jourdain nor Moberly mentioned the incident to one another for a week.

Convinced that the grounds were haunted, Charlotte and Eleanor decided to publish their findings in a book titled An Adventure (1911), under the pseudonyms of Elizabeth Morison and Frances Lamont. The book contained the claim that the women had experienced a time slit and that Marie Antoinette was encountered. It caused an instant sensation and received a large amount of ridicule. The identity of the authors of An Adventure was not made public until 1931. During their lifetime, both women were reported to have a large number of paranormal experiences. The incident is said to have influenced the work of J. R. R. Tolkien.

Q: In the future, will humans be able to remove rare materials from asteroids?

Asteroid mining refers to the possibility of exploiting rare materials from asteroids in order to make a profit on Earth. A large number of asteroids hold rare minerals and volatiles, including iron, nickel, titanium, platinum, and cobalt. In fact, a relatively small metallic asteroid with a diameter of 1.6 km (0.99 mi) contains more than 20 trillion US dollars worth of industrial and precious metals. Another startling fact is that all the gold, cobalt, iron, manganese, nickel, platinum, rhodium, ruthenium, and tungsten found on Earth once came from an asteroid impact.

Asteroid mining is an important issue because the key elements needed for modern industry, including antimony, zinc, tin, silver, lead, indium, gold, and copper, could be exhausted within 50-60 years. Currently, the cost of returning material from asteroids outweighs the market value, but this could change once precious metals become extinct on Earth.

433 Eros is a near-Earth asteroid discovered in 1898. It was one of the first asteroids to be visited by a spacecraft, and the first to be orbited and soft-landed on. In 2000, NASA’s NEAR Shoemaker entered orbit around Eros and came to rest on its surface in 2001. The asteroid is known to have an enormous gold deposit. In fact, the gold on 433 Eros has been valued in excess of a thousand billion dollars, which is 200,000 times the amount of gold that has ever been mined on Earth.

On August 25, 2011, an extrasolar planet named PSR J1719-1438 b was found in the Serpens constellation. After the discovery, it was announced that the planet is most likely made of crystalline carbon, or one huge diamond. At the time, PSR J1719 -1438 b was the densest planet ever found, at nearly 20 times the density of Jupiter. It has been hypothesized that the object is the remnant of a white dwarf, but it doesn’t retain enough temperature to emit light like all other white dwarfs, so the true classification of PSR J1719-1438 b remains unclear. The discovery might be the first true example of a carbon or diamond planet.

Q: Who took the hands of Perón?

Juan Domingo Perón was an Argentine military officer and politician. During his lifetime, Perón was elected the President of Argentina on three separate occasions. He and his second wife, Eva Duarte, are immensely popular among many Argentines and are considered icons by the Peronists. After Juan Perón’s death in July, 1974, of heart failure, his body was embalmed and placed in a coffin in the Perón family tomb in Chacarita Cemetery, Buenos Aires. In July 1987, the Peronist Justicialist Party received an anonymous letter that claimed that Juan Perón’s hands had been removed from his body, along with his army cap and sword. The letter demanded that the party pay a US$8 million ransom for the items return.

After an investigation, it was confirmed that Juan Perón’s tomb had in fact been broken into and his hands were removed with a surgical instrument or electric saw. The perpetrators also took a poem from the tomb that was written by Perón to his last wife, Isabel. Following Argentina’s policy, the head of the Justicialist Party, Vicente Saadi, refused to allow the ransom to be paid. A criminal investigation was launched, but nobody was ever charged in the case and the hands of Perón remain lost to this day. In an interesting twist, many of the people involved with the case have since died under mysterious circumstances.

It has been suggested that the theft had some official support because the robbers used a key to enter the tomb. Some journalists feel that Perón’s hands were taken because they were seen as a symbol of his power and had a great cultural meaning in Argentina. People who have examined the case have written that the act may be an attempt to promote democracy in Argentina, as Juan Perón was seen as a dictator by some. In their book Unveiling the Enigma, Damian Nabot and David Cox wrote that the P2, also known as the Propaganda Due, were involved in the theft, and that they used a ritual ceremony to remove Perón’s hands.

Q: What is the deal with the Salton Sea, Meteor Crater, lost ships in the desert, and the San Andreas Fault?

This entry will examine some bizarre geological occurrences in southern California and the Four Corners region of the United States. The Salton Sea is one of the strangest places in the world. The sea was formed accidentally between 1905 and 1907, when the Colorado River burst through poorly built irrigation controls. The resulting flood destroyed farms and communities. Currently, the Salton Sea sits directly on the San Andreas Fault in California’s Imperial Valley. It is the largest lake in California and occupies the lowest elevations of the Salton Sink.

In the middle of the 20th century, the Salton Sea turned from a freshwater lake to a sea. The Salton Sea’s salinity, about 44 g/L, is greater than that of the waters of the Pacific Ocean (35 g/L), but less than that of the Great Salt Lake, which ranges from 50 to 270 g/L. The salt is thought to have come from a prehistoric ocean. The Salton Sea is also home to a large amount of toxic run-off and industrial waste. The greater part of the Salton Sink is submerged under highly polluted water. The adjacent land is under military control and the habitat of the area has resulted in the death of millions of birds and fish.

The San Andreas Fault is a fault that runs for 810 miles (1,300 km) through California. In the past, the southern part of the fault has been the site for a large number of earthquakes. On average one every 180 years. However, such an event has not been recorded for 300 years. For this reason, researchers have become concerned that the current dams on the Colorado River are contributing to the quiet streak. If so, a large amount of pressure could be building up in the fault, which could ultimately cause an enormous earthquake.

The Lost Ship of the Desert is a legend about ancient ships found in California’s Colorado Desert. Since after the U.S. Civil War, stories have been told about buried ships hidden in the desert north of the Gulf of California. The most famous example is the Lost Galleon. The Galleon stories started shortly after the Colorado River flood of 1862. In the Los Angeles Daily News of August 1870, the ship was described as “a half buried hulk west of Dos Palmas, California, and 40 miles north of Yuma, Arizona.”

Finally, we need to discuss the Meteor Crater and its possible impact on the geological landscape of this region of the United States. Meteor Crater is an enormous hole and impact crater located approximately 43 miles (69 km) east of Flagstaff, Arizona. It is said to be “the first proven, best-preserved meteorite crater on earth.” It has been estimated that the crater was formed about 50,000 years ago, but others argue for a more recent date. The diameter of the hole is 1.186 kilometers (0.737 mi) and the impact is known to have devastated the area. Most studies on the crater examine the fact that it is an impact crater, but little is written about the predicted effect the object had on the geological landscape of America.

Q: What was the gelatinous substance that fell on Oakville, Washington in 1994?

On August 7, 1994, a bizarre gelatinous substance fell on the town of Oakville, which is a small logging community on the western edge of Washington State. Over a period of three weeks, the rain was spotted a total of six times, mostly in the middle of the night. By the afternoon of August 7, the residents of Oakville began to complain of a mysterious illness. They described having difficulty breathing, extreme vertigo, blurred vision, and an increased sense of nausea. One of the town’s residence Beverly Roberts was quoted as saying that everyone in town contracted a flu-like illness that lasted two to three months. Additionally, several cats and dogs that came into contact with the substance fell ill and died.

A sample of the substance was taken to a hospital and found to contain a large amount of human white blood cells, but nobody could identify how it came from the sky. The sample was then sent to the Washington State Department of Health for further study and determined to have two species of bacteria, one of which lives in the human digestive system. Because of the findings, the substance was initially speculated to be human waste from an airplane, but that was disproven. Evidence from the sample has supported the fact that the substance was alive.

Some people have linked the strange rain with a series of U.S. bombing runs that were carried out over the Pacific in August of 1994, while others are convinced that the town was used for a U.S. military experiment designed to test a new form of biological weapon. During the event, Oakville residents reported a significant, almost daily increase in the amount of slow-moving military aircraft in the skies over their town, but not much ground traffic was observed. Before the first rain was reported, a series of black helicopters were spotted in the area.

Some people have also connected the history of gelatinous rain with chemtrails in the United States. The chemtrail conspiracy holds that some trails left by streaking jets are actually chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for purposes undisclosed to the general public. There actually is a patent (United States Patent 6,315,213) which describes a method for artificially modifying the weather by seeding rain clouds of a storm with suitable cross-linked aqueous polymer. However, the current benefit of such a process in unknown. Others have connected the Oakville blobs with the historic accounts of star jelly.

Q: What happened to the paintings, gold, diamonds, and precious jewels stolen from the Hungarian Gold Train?

On March 7, 1944, as the Soviet Army was approaching Hungary, Hitler launched Operation Margarethe (the invasion of Hungary). At the time, the fascist government of Hungary, led by Ferenc Szálasi, was collaborating with the Third Reich, and forced over 800,000 Jewish citizens of Hungary to concentration camps. The government also took the people’s belongings, including gems, gold, jewelry, wedding rings, and anything else considered of high monetary value. In the spring of 1944, the Red Army was almost to Budapest, so Hungarian officials put together a plan to evacuate the Jewish loot by train to avoid Soviet capture.

A large collection of the valuables were placed on a 42 car freight train and sent to Germany. According to various reports, the contents included gold, gold jewelry, gems, diamonds, pearls, watches, about 200 paintings, Persian and Oriental rugs, silverware, chinaware, furniture, fine clothing, linens, porcelains, cameras, stamp-collections, and currency. In 1945, the estimated total value of the train’s contents was $350 million or almost $4 billion in 2007. In May of 1945, the train was seized in Austria by Allied troops, first the French Army and then the United States. The majority of the assets were sold through U.S. Army exchange stores in Europe in 1946 or auctioned off in New York City in 1948 with the proceeds going to the International Refugee Organization (IRO). The auction receipts totaled $152,850 or approximately $1.3 million in 2007.

In the end of the 1940s, notable objects from the train kept showing up in the possession of high ranking U.S. Army officers who were stationed in Central Europe, most notably chinaware, silverware, glassware, rugs, and bed linen. The fate of approximately 200 paintings seized from the train remains unknown. The art was deemed a “cultural assets” under U.S. restitution policy, so it should have been returned to the country of origin, but instead found its way to Austria and was lost. A huge amount of gold has also been unaccounted for.

Most of the details of the Hungarian Gold Train were kept secret from the public by the United States government until 1998. In that year, United States President Bill Clinton prepared a report which detailed the handling of the train’s assets by the United States, including a multitude of “shortcomings” of the restitution effort. In 2001, a lawsuit against the United States government was filed by Hungarian Holocaust survivors in Florida over the mishandling of assets on the Hungarian Gold Train. In 2005, the government reached a settlement worth $25.5 million. The money was allocated for distribution to various Jewish social service agencies for the benefit of Holocaust survivors.

Q: How close are humans to achieving transhumanism?

As we move into the 21st century, people have begun to question the degree of scientific advancement in the world. There is no doubt that a large discrepancy exists in the proportion of money spent to discoveries made in the field of neurological science. In many countries, a large number of experiments are kept secret from the public in hopes of gaining a military edge. This is understandable, but it makes you wonder exactly what the human population has discovered. Could we have found a way to enhance human strength or intellectual ability? Is it possible that people could map a human’s brain and control bodily movements? Is it possible that we could eliminate aging?

Transhumanism is an intellectual and cultural movement that assumes scientists are trying to find a way to alter the human condition by developing a wide range of techniques to eliminate aging and to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. People who follow transhumanism predict that humans may eventually be able to transform themselves to have greatly expanded abilities. If this happens, it will cause a shift in the food chain, which will brand certain human genes superior. The theory states that the current version of humanity is not at an endpoint of evolution, but rather in an early phase.

Many transhumanist theorists seek to apply technology for the purposes of reducing poverty, disease, disability, and malnutrition around the globe, rather than the improvement of humans at the individual level. Basically, what makes you better than me? The theory states that humanity may eventually enter a state of existence where natural evolution is going to be replaced with deliberate change, either purposefully or not. Transhumanists who foresee this massive change generally maintain that it is a good thing, but should be handled responsibility. The theory has been condemned by one critic, Francis Fukuyama, as the world’s most dangerous idea. One proponent, Ronald Bailey, says the “movement epitomizes the most daring, courageous, imaginative, and idealistic aspirations of humanity.”