Whether it’s for the sake of development, spite, or just plain stupidity, unfortunately sometimes important historical sites get demolished. Here is a list of some of the worst offenders.

10Everything Destroyed by MoMA

One would think that if anyone would be against destroying important pieces of culture and history, it would be a museum. When it comes to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, however, that’s completely wrong. Over the years, the MoMA has acquired and destroyed several historically significant sites in order to make room for expansion, and just recently added another to that list when it purchased the American Folk Art Museum and promptly announced plans to demolish it.

One of the other buildings the people at the MoMA have destroyed is an old brownstone home, which would likely be just another in a long line of traditional Brownstones in the area but for the fact that it once belonged to John D. Rockefeller himself. Of course there is a catch to that one, as the MoMA was co-founded by Rockefeller’s wife, and the family donated the home to the museum, which then tore down the house and turned it into a garden. However, several of the other houses were not donated and were at the center of an effort to preserve what remained of the neighborhood. It was an effort that ultimately failed, with many of the historic homes being razed, along with buildings like the Dorset Hotel and the City Athletic Club.

9Civil Rights Site

Now here is an entry that would almost be funny if it weren’t so incredibly sad. George Elmore, owner of a small South Carolina store, had the audacity to put his name on a lawsuit calling for the end to all white primaries in the state. His participation in the lawsuit cost him his business and put him on the path toward financial ruin. For his part, however, he has been remembered as a civil rights pioneer and a historic marker was placed in front of his old storefront at a 2012 ceremony attended by city leaders and church members, praising Elmore for his bravery.

And then a week later the store was bulldozed, leaving that historic marker standing in front of a pile of rubble. Did we mention that church members were present at the ceremony honoring Elmore? Well this is the part where we tell you that it was the First Nazareth Baptist Church, which sat right next door, that had the building demolished despite the pleas of Elmore’s son. Did we mention that Elmore won that lawsuit back in 1947? That’s right, the people who tore down his store were the same people he helped achieve equality 65 years earlier.

8William Shakespeare’s Home

Let’s take our time machine back to jolly old 18th-century England — or rather, to not-so-jolly old England, and the final home of the one and only William Shakespeare. The home, in the small town of Stratford-upon-Avon, was where Shakespeare is said to have written some of his later works, including The Tempest, and the site of his death in 1616. Fast forward to 1753 when a man named Reverend Francis Gastrell purchased the home. Six years later, he had it demolished.

Why would he have the home completely destroyed, you ask? Well, it boils down to bitterness and irritation. As is the case with famous homes, it turned out to be a pretty popular spot for tourists. People, after all, were curious to see Shakespeare’s house. Think of it as the 18th-century version of a Hollywood Star Homes Tour. Gastrell quickly got fed up with people constantly walking by and looking at his home that he decided to just tear the whole thing down. It was a move that, as you might guess, did not exactly endear him to the townsfolk, and he eventually moved out of town to escape the people’s anger.

7Ancient Chinese Grave Sites

Despite what Lara Croft may lead you to believe, tomb raiding is not cool. In fact, it is very much the opposite of cool, in that, while the likes of Lara Croft and even Indiana Jones may accidentally muck up some history while trying to preserve it, real-life tomb raiders do nothing but destroy history. Of course these grave robbers think only of financial gain, which is exactly why it has become a huge problem in China, with tomb raiders using dynamite and even bulldozers to blunder their way into ancient grave sites.

These thieves break into tombs and steal whatever looks valuable, selling the priceless valuables within days on the black market. Sadly, this means huge parts of history are being lost, and these ancient and historic burial grounds are being desecrated in the process. To put into perspective just how bad this problem has gotten, a team of archaeologists investigated 900 tombs, only to find that each and every one had been raided. Unfortunately for China, it’s not just thieves doing their best to destroy ancient culture, as you’ll see in our next entry …

6Ancient Taoist Temple in Beijing

When Beijing hosted the Olympics in 2008, a lot of work needed to be done to prepare the city for the enormous event. That included building new, state-of-the-art stadiums and event centers, and in a city like Beijing, the land for such huge structures is difficult to come by. That’s why the government gave no second thought to demolishing countless pieces of Chinese history, including a 680-year-old Taoist temple that had been named one of the most significant cultural sites in the entire country.

Historic homes and statues were bulldozed in order to make way for shopping malls and skyscrapers, with the government winding up spending more than $22 billion — yes, that’s “billion”, with a “b” — to almost completely redo the city for this one event. Despite the fact that the Olympics have the capability to generate an enormous amount of revenue for the host country, that is still an insane amount of money spent to renovate one of the world’s most historic cities, and the real cost, as it turns out, was the loss of a huge part of Chinese culture.

5…And Most of China, Really

And unfortunately, as it turns out, there’s a staggering lack of care for preserving Chinese history within the country. Thanks to the continued land development throughout the country, a survey revealed that approximately 31,000 historical sites have been completely destroyed. This report comes from the State Administration for Cultural Heritage, from data collected over the past three decades.

Among some of the sites destroyed either in part or entirely, according to some reports, is a portion of the Great Wall of China. Illegal mining along the wall has led to the partial destruction of some segments. This all came about when the folks at the SACH set about trying to examine the hundreds of thousands of historical sites they had listed throughout the country, only to learn that tens of thousands had completely vanished thanks to the aggressive urbanization of the country. In one of the more ironic twists, included in the historic sites that has since been destroyed was the home of legendary architect I.M. Pei, which was demolished to make way for more modern architecture. Sadly, it’s probably a McDonald’s or something equally depressing at this point.

4Buddha Statues

In the Hindu Kush Mountains in Afghanistan, there once stood 1,700-year-old Buddha statues of tremendous historical and cultural significance. We say “once stood” because back in 2001, the Taliban decided that all non-Islamic statues should be destroyed, including those ancient Bamiyan Buddha statues. The United Nations begged the Taliban to spare these statues, but shockingly found it impossible to reason with a group of extremists.

And so the Taliban drilled holes into the Buddha statues, filled them with dynamite, and proceeded to blow them up and reduce them to rubble. The edict issued by the Taliban that all statues be destroyed did not allow for any to be removed and transported to another country, meaning every bit of non-Islam heritage fell as the Taliban attempted to wipe all pieces of evidence of other religions from Afghanistan. Not surprisingly, the wanton destruction of all of these statues, particularly the Bamiyan Buddha statues, did little to endear the Taliban to the rest of the world.

3A Mayan Pyramid

Imagine the embarrassment of a work crew when they’ve been tearing away at a big stone structure in order to create gravel to repair the roads, only to learn that you’ve just accidentally demolished a 2,300-year-old Mayan pyramid. Oops. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened just a month ago in Belize when a construction company tore down the pyramid, which was actually part of the protected Noh Mul ceremonial center.

According to experts, the construction company absolutely should have known it was in fact a Mayan pyramid, and the fact that the company has denied knowledge is almost laughable. To make matters worse, the maximum penalty is a $10,000 fine, which could never come remotely close to covering the damage since Mayan pyramids are pretty much, you know, priceless. Considering remnants of the lost Mayan civilization are relatively scarce, the fact that a piece of that ancient history was destroyed simply to fill in a few pot holes seems unfathomably stupid.

2The Berlin Wall

Before you say anything, yes, we realize that the Berlin Wall was partially destroyed as a result of the end of the Cold War. We remember Reagan’s famous words, too. That’s not the part we are talking about, however, because part of the wall remains and has become a cultural icon in the two decades following that historic event. Of course, now the rest of the wall will be torn down to make room for luxury apartments, a move that has angered many and led to thousands of Berliners protesting the decision.

Now, whether you think the wall should stay or go is irrelevant, despite the fact that it is a symbol of communist oppression. At this point, it has indeed truly become a symbol and a place of historical significance. Heck, even David Hasselhoff flew to Germany to join in the protests. Unfortunately, the Hoff’s German-sounding name wasn’t German enough, because the developers have decided to move right on ahead with the demolition anyway.

1Mecca

Mecca, for those who are unaware, is the holiest site in all of Islam. The city was the birthplace of the prophet Muhammad, the founder of the religion, and it is the place where Muhammad said that all Muslims would be equal. And now, today, it is slowly being transformed into the Middle Eastern version of Las Vegas. The holy city has become a victim of swift and progressive urbanization and capitalism, with its culture being paved away in favor of shopping centers, skyscrapers, and luxury hotels. Perhaps the saddest part is that much of the demolition has been ordered by the city’s actual Wahabi clerics, who believe that keeping the shrines equates to the sin of idolatry.

To a degree, the city has begun to look less like the holy land it once was and more like another Dubai. It has been argued that the city was in desperate need of at least some renovation and an improved infrastructure due to the massive number of pilgrims who make their way to Mecca each year, but the extent to which it has been changed and its culture buried has angered many historians and members of Islam, though few have spoken out for fear of losing access to the city and its remaining historical sites. One particularly egregious example is the fact that Muhammad’s first wife’s home has been demolished and turned into a public toilet. The symbolism in that alone speaks volumes about the current views these developers have on the city’s heritage.

The post 10 Historically Significant Sites Destroyed For Awful Reasons appeared first on Listverse.

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 were one of the most videotaped events in history. The majority of the footage comes from lower Manhattan in New York City. There was so much video captured that the Internet Archive has enough coverage to virtually replay the day. The material is extremely graphic, violent, and heart-wrenching. It shows the pain experienced in New York and the complete destruction of three high-rise structures.

For those of you who were not old enough to understand 9/11 in 2001, you can now get a sense of the day by examining the footage. This article is going to examine ten raw clips captured on 9/11, all from New York City. The videos are not edited and contain bad language, so discretion is advised.

One of the most common conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 is that the WTC buildings were destroyed by a controlled demolition. In 2006, a group named the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth movement was formed with the goal of getting the U.S. Congress to perform an independent investigation into the September 11 attacks. The group has submitted a petition with the signatures of over 1,600 professional architects, engineers, and demolition specialists who feel the evidence shows that the towers were destroyed by controlled demolition.

The current explanation is that WTC 1, WTC 2, and 7 WTC were brought down by the impact of two large airplanes, which caused the inward bowing of vital building columns. The impact of the aircraft also created large fires that buckled the buildings core. The description is plausible, but it immediately drew criticism from engineers around the world who concluded the evidence shows the buildings were demolished by explosives. Some anomalies include the “free fall acceleration of the structures, the durlateral ejection of steel, and the mid-air pulverization of concrete.”

It has been suggested that the lack of “large gradual deformations” associated with the collapse shows the buildings were brought down by controlled demolition. It has also been pointed out that the buildings fell through the “path of greatest resistance” which requires the removal of critical columns. AE911 has examined the debris from Ground Zero and discovered signs of molten iron, thermite, and unignited nano-thermite, which is evidence for highly explosive materials.

In the videos captured on 9/11, very few (if any) bombs are heard or witnessed by the camera. The best evidence for the presence of bombs on 9/11 includes a series of video interviews taken on the day of the attack. In the footage, many people can be seen describing the sound of large explosions and falling debris in the WTC. One such case is a famous clip that shows two firefighters describing three large explosions that occurred in the lobby of one of the buildings. The men are clearly distraught and the video shows the horror felt by the FDNY as they attempted to save lives on 9/11.

The Expedition 3 mission to the International Space Station was launched on August 10, 2001. It was the third expedition to the ISS and included American astronaut Frank Culbertson and Russians Mikhail Tyurin and Vladimir Dezhurov. The three men are recognized as being the only people that were not on Earth during the September 11 terrorist attacks. As the International Space Station moved over the New York City area, Culbertson captured pictures and video of lower Manhattan. The video is quite revealing and shows just how large the destruction was. It gives a good sense of exactly where the damage occurred on Earth and how influential the smoke was.

The International Space Station is potentially the most expensive item every constructed. It is the largest artificial body in orbit and can be seen from Earth with the naked eye. The station provides some of the most detailed landscape portraits of Earth and gives an amazing view. On 9/11 as Frank Culbertson was filming the damage, he gave America some assurance saying that “the city still looks very beautiful from space.” It is the only time in history that a disaster on the scale of 9/11 was filmed from space.

In the years since 9/11, a collection of first responders have experienced a wide range of respiratory problems due to the dust at Ground Zero. The first NYPD officer whose death was attributed to the toxic chemicals was James Zadroga, who passed away from respiratory illness in 2006. In the months following 9/11, Zadroga began to experience a persistent cough and extreme shortness of breath. The exact cause of his death is under dispute. However, his autopsy says he had “unidentified foreign materials” in his lungs. On January 2, 2011, President Obama signed the James Zadroga Act which allocated $4.2 billion to create the World Trade Center Health Program.

This video shows the South Tower being hit by Flight 175. It is not the best footage of the event, but is said to include an anomaly that is not witnessed in other clips. Since 9/11, there have been thousands of videos posted on the Internet with claims of strange objects around the towers. Some have pointed to orbs, bizarre helicopters, unexplained shadows, or weird lights. In this clip, a large black spot can be seen flying toward the ground at a high speed right after the plane hits the tower. You can also see a large piece of debris flying out of the North Tower. The footage is one example of the countless videos that are said to show strange activity on 9/11. View another one here.

The majority of the videos on this list show footage taken in the vicinity of the WTC. However, there are approximately 69,464 residents per square mile (26,924/km²) in New York County (Manhattan) and everyone was impacted by 9/11. After the North Tower was struck, thousands of people grabbed their video cameras and took to the streets. For this reason, an enormous amount of video footage was captured. Many of the videos have since been released to the public. However, people all over New York still have footage taken on 9/11 that has never been uploaded to the Internet or submitted to the authorities.

A couple years back a video surfaced that shows the reaction of a collection of New Yorkers who lived a short distance from the WTC. The footage was taken by a man named Chris Ryan and his brother Sean. It starts with Chris reacting to the initial attack on New York. He then travels to his house and watches the disaster from the rooftop of his apartment building with some friends. During the recording, it is revealed that one of the men on the roof worked on the 83rd floor of South Tower, which was completely destroyed by Flight 175.

The video then follows Chris as he rides his bike through the streets of New York towards the WTC. It becomes clear that the citizens of Manhattan are panicked and concerned about the possibility of another attack. It is revealed that the borough of Manhattan has been completely shut down after the second plane struck the South Tower. Toward the end of the footage, Chris captures a collection of people going about their daily activities, which is bothersome to Ryan, as he feels the city might be in further danger.

After the WTC towers collapsed it was reported that 20 people were pulled out alive from the rubble. Some of the most famous cases include police officers John McLoughlin and William Jimeno, who were on the main concourse between the two towers when the South Tower collapsed. They were saved after entering a freight elevator, but almost died from their injuries. Another incredible story is that of Genelle Guzman, who survived a fall from the 13th story of the South Tower. She was knocked unconscious during the initial crash and woke up alive in the rubble. Guzman was the last person found alive. She was discovered by a German Shepherd named Trakr 26 hours after the collapse.

This video shows the initial response to 9/11 after the towers had been struck by the aircraft. The impact caused significant damage to the streets below the buildings, which can be seen in the footage. You can also see people hanging off the towers. In one case, the tape captures a man falling to the ground. The footage is horrifying, but shows a common event that occurred on 9/11.

The video also shows a minor explosion in the tower which causes a large object to shoot out from the building. The cameraman responds by saying “did you see that blowout.” This section of the video has been reposted many times under the title of WTC exploding man, with the suggestion that the clip shows a man being blown from the tower. The video finishes with some shots of firefighters entering the buildings. Sadly, many of these workers were killed in the terrorist attacks.

One of the most popular documentaries made about September 11 is named 9/11. The movie was directed by Jules and Gedeon Naudet, and FDNY firefighter James Hanlon. The footage follows Chief Joseph Pfeifer and the 1st Battalion as they responded to the North Tower of the WTC. On the morning of 9/11, the crew was filming in the streets of New York when Airlines Flight 11 flew overhead and collided with the North Tower. As the plane crashed, Naudet turned his camera and captured the best available video of the plane hitting the tower. Actually, there are only three known clips of Flight 11 hitting the North Tower. You can view Naudet’s footage here.

After the WTC was attacked, the film crew followed the first responders into the North Tower and recorded the scene. The video is chilling and shows the reaction of the workers as the South Tower is struck by the second aircraft. The footage is some of the most raw taken on 9/11, but is often hard to locate online. For this reason, the provided copy is shaky and a bit blurry.

As the camera enters the lobby of the North Tower, you can hear people screaming and the narrator indicates that he saw people on fire, but didn’t record the individuals. The lobby seems to have sustained damage in the impact and you can see Chief Pfeifer controlling the situation. The camera then captures the aftermath of Flight 175 crashing into the South Tower and debris can be seen dropping to the ground. Firefighters in the North Tower recognize that people are falling from the South Tower into the streets, which was a dangerous situation. The falling people caused Chief Pfeifer to order all the firefighters to stay in the lobby.

The next part of the video shows a loud explosion followed by the collapse of a section of the lobby. The entire picture goes black and the firefighters are forced to attempt to escape the rubble. People are killed in the collapse and Chief Pfeifer can be seen ordering the evacuation of the building, which saved many lives. The footage is intense and has been used by some to show evidence for explosives in the basement of the WTC (as you can tell by the name of the video). However, others feel the destruction was caused by falling debris, sonic booms, or Flight 11.

One of the largest conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 is the sudden collapse of the 7 WTC, which was a 47-story building that fell at 5:20 p.m. The building contained the emergency operations center for the city of New York in case of a disaster. In the aftermath of the attack on New York, 7 WTC sustained heavy damage and was evacuated. A collection of New York officials responded to the building as planned, but found it empty. Two of these people were named Barry Jennings and Michael Hess. Sadly, both of these men have since died, but during the last years of their lives, Hess and Jennings proclaimed that they experienced a large explosion while fleeing 7 WTC. The story was supported by a video released by the NIST which shows Hess yelling from the 8th floor of 7 WTC, apparently unable to leave the building. Watch the video here.

Unfortunately, the conspiracy theories surrounding 7 WTC were allowed to spread for seven years before the NIST released a statement on the cause of the disaster. The report indicates that the building experienced a complete failure after several fires buckled critical structural columns and caused the 13th floor to collapse. The collapse triggered a failure of column 79, which caused floors 8 to 14 to give way, followed by the east penthouse and the entire building.

Despite the explanation, many professional engineers feel the claims don’t provide scientific evidence for a complete failure. 7 WTC is the first and only steel framed high rise building to collapse from fire damage. In order to account for the free fall of the structure, the building must have experienced a near-simultaneous buckling of 58 perimeter columns and 25 core columns over eight stories. The scientific model that the NIST used to explain the failure is not available to the public because of U.S. national security concerns. The collapse was also reported twenty minutes early by BBC anchor Jane Standley.

The NIST report considered the possibility that 7 WTC was destroyed by explosives, but concluded that “the use of thermite to sever columns was unlikely.” The investigation was not allowed to use any physical evidence from Ground Zero because the material was lost and could not be positively identified. The report cited evidence that no blasts were heard in videos of the collapse, as well as the fact that no explosions were witnessed. People have responded by posting videos online that are said to include the sound of bombs. The selected clip shows the collapse of 7 WTC, including the clear failure of the east penthouse. This particular clip has gained notoriety because someone has edited out the penthouse collapse in some copies, making for multiple versions.

After the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) released the Cumulus Database of 6500 video clips, people were left with a huge collection of information that didn’t have much organization. For this reason, individual clips have emerged over the years that show important details. One of the most famous is a video taken by a man right after the South Tower collapsed. In the footage, the cameraman shows no fear for his life and runs directly into the rubble in order to give the world a glimpse of the horror.

The video starts just after the South Tower gave way. The cameraman moves toward Ground Zero and begins to interview people in an attempt to figure out what happened. He then enters the 7 World Trade Center building, which shows significant signs of damage and blown out windows. The lobby of 7 WTC is destroyed and filled with dust. The footage inside of 7 WTC was used by 9/11 researchers to help calculate how much damage was sustained to the building during the collapse. However, the majority of critical damage sustained to 7 WTC on 9/11 was caused by the failure of the nearby North Tower.

The cameraman then goes directly toward the South Tower to Ground Zero. The footage includes some of the first pictures taken of the damage. The sound of running water and creaking metal can be heard. After a short time, the video captures the tail end of the collapse of the North Tower. People can be seen sprinting from the dust cloud, while the cameraman just stands there in shock. The footage includes some of the most revealing scenes taken on 9/11. It runs for the first 30 minutes of the included 55 minute long video.

At 9:58 EDT on September 11, 2001 the South Tower of the WTC collapsed and created an enormous gray-white cloud of pulverized concrete and gypsum that moved through the streets of New York. After the collapse, people near the towers were unsure of what happened because they couldn’t see the buildings. However, it soon became clear that most everything was gone. Like no other event in history, thousands of people were killed without a trace.

Farther away from ground zero, people with cameras watched in horror as the South Tower tumbled to the ground. The people immediately understood the magnitude of the tragedy, which caused panic and shock. After the tower collapsed, the entire event reached a higher level of uncertainty. Some felt the people of New York were under attack.

On 9/11, the collapse of the South Tower was captured on video by dozens of different people. The footage selected shows a group of individuals watching the collapse from a good distance away. The cameraman is not in danger of getting covered by the concrete cloud, but you can feel the reaction of the crowd as the building falls. Some conspiracy theorists have latched on to the footage claiming it shows evidence for molten iron on the South Tower moments before the collapse. You can watch another chilling video of the collapse here.

One of the most chilling events of 9/11 was when Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower. The force of the plane caused the tower to collapse 56 minutes after impact and the crash was captured by hundreds of video cameras that were focused on the North Tower. The footage clearly shows the plane hitting the tower at a high speed. It was the first time in history that a large number of news anchors reported on such an influential event as it happened on live television. Some proclaimed on TV that the impact provided evidence for a coordinated terrorist attack.

When Flight 175 collided with the South Tower, all 60 people on board the plane were instantly killed. The video shows the aircraft making a sharp left turn before hitting the building. If the turn had not been carried out, the plane would have missed the tower or clipped the building with one wing. During the aircrafts decent, passengers on the left side of the plane had a clear view of the WTC. Some attempted to make cell phone calls, which revealed that both pilots had been killed and a flight attendant had been stabbed. The final moments of Flight 175 are covered in a documentary titled Flight 175: As the World Watched.

A large number of videos of the crash show a close-up view of Flight 175 slamming into the building, while other clips show the impact from a distance. For this article I have focused on a compilation clip that does a great job showing a series of different videos taken of the crash. You can see the plane and explosion from almost every angle. I will also include a video of some men watching the crash in horror from a downtown apartment building. It shows that some people of Middle Eastern heritage were also shocked and disturbed by the violence. You can view the footage here. You can also watch the best available clip of the crash in slow motion here.

The post 10 Disturbing Raw Videos From 9/11 appeared first on Listverse.

The Carnac stones are a dense collection of more than three thousand standing stones around the French village of Carnac—the largest such collection in the world.  The stones were erected between 4500 and 3300 B.C.

There is a variety of theories as to the purpose of the stones. Some claim that the stones are aligned astronomically, with the intention of creating an observatory or a calendar system.  Others believe that they were actually used as primitive seismic instruments, with the balanced stones acting as earthquake detectors.  The Carnac site is also thought to support the controversial idea of the “megalithic yard”, a theoretical common unit of measurement that was used to build most megalithic sites.

In the ancient quarries near Aswan, Egypt, lies a gigantic piece of stone which was intended to be erected as an obelisk.  The obelisk was never finished, likely due to cracks which formed in the stone during the quarrying (although some believe the builders may have been violently interrupted).  

The sheer size of this object is what makes it remarkable. It would have been a full third larger than any other ancient obelisk known to us.  Standing 137 feet (42m) tall and weighing 1200 tons, this single piece of rock would have been taller than a ten-storey building.  There are very few modern cranes that could move such a massive object—so how exactly did the ancient Egyptians plan on transporting and erecting it?

The three most important dolmens (or passage mounds) in Spain—Cueva de Menga, Cueva de Viera, and the Tholos of El Romeral—are some of the largest in the world.  The largest stones used in their construction weigh one hundred and eighty tons, and were transported from at least a mile away.  The sites, which are located near the town of Antequera, are believed to have been established around 3700 B.C.—making them a contemporary of many famous megalithic sites such as Stonehenge.

Many of the walls feature anthropomorphic illustrations.  Menga is aligned with the summer solstice, and El Romeral shares several traits and characteristics with tholos dolmens discovered on Crete, which suggests contact with the Minoan civilization.

Ggantija is a complex of two megalithic temples on the Maltese island of Gozo.  The stone temples were constructed around 3600 B.C., making them the second-oldest religious structures ever found, just behind Gobekli Tepe.  For a little context, it’s worth remembering that this was a time when metal tools were not available to the natives of the Maltese islands, and the wheel had not yet been invented.  

It is believed that Ggantija may have been the site of a fertility cult, as figurines and statuettes associated with fertility have been discovered there.  Small spherical stones have also been discovered, which archeologists believe may have been used as ball bearings in the transport of the massive stone blocks which make up the temples.  All that being said, we still don’t know how or why the temples were built.

Ranging in size from a few centimeters to more than two meters in diameter, and weighing fifteen tons, a collection of over two hundred stone spheres has been found in Costa Rica. The spheres are believed to have been carved between 1500 and 500 B.C. by a civilization long since disappeared, although exact dating is impossible.  

There are numerous myths and legends relating to the spheres, with some claiming that they are relics of Atlantis, and others claiming that the builders possessed a potion which softened rock.  Although the stones have been weathered, damaged, and eroded over the centuries, some believe they were originally carved into perfect spheres. Once again, we still don’t know what purpose was served by these stones.

The Olmec heads are a collection of seventeen colossal heads, carved from stone.  The heads date from 1500–1000 B.C., and weigh between six and fifty tons.  Each head is carved with a unique headdress, leading some to believe that they were meant to be representations of powerful Olmec rulers.  Others claim that the face structure featured on the heads resembles that of an African male, suggesting that this might be evidence of an advanced African civilization visiting the Americas in prehistoric times.

In 1987, a group of strange formations was found underwater off the coast of Yonaguni Island.  These formations feature flat parallel edges, right angles, sharp edges, pillars, and columns—leading many to believe that the site could be man-made.  

The last time this area would have been dry land was eight to ten thousand years ago, during the most recent ice age—and so if Yonaguni really was constructed by humans, it would be one of the oldest structures on Earth, and would drastically change what we think we know of prehistory.

In 2001, evidence of a sunken city was found off the coast of India, in the Gulf of Cambay.  Several manmade structures have been identified using sonar, including large buildings and canals.  Artifacts such as pottery shards and hearth materials have been dredged up from the bottom.

The scale of the city is quite large, especially considering the fact that one piece of wood has been dated from as early as 9500 BC.  If it really existed back then, the city would be thousands of years older than the previous oldest city found in India, and would have existed thousands of years before humans were thought to be building cities of this size.  

There are some people who scoff at the suggested date, saying that the carbon-dated wood proves nothing—but all the same, there is enough evidence to make this site one of the most intriguing in the world.

On Easter Island—one of the most remote inhabited islands on Earth—lies one of the world’s most famous mysteries.  The giant stone statues (Moai) of Easter Island are a favorite of tourists—but little is actually known about them.  Although it was thought at first that the statues were merely heads, excavation has shown almost all of them to have bodies.   Very few of the statues were ever actually erected; most were left in quarries, or abandoned during transport.  

Archeologists don’t know why the statues were built, what they signified, how they were transported and erected, or why they were abandoned unfinished.  There is a form of hieroglyphic writing on some of the statues, which nobody has been able to translate.  The people of Easter Island themselves are something of a mystery; it remains unclear where they originally came from.  

One of the wildest theories about Easter Island has it that the island is actually the peak of an underwater mountain—and all that remains of the lost civilization of Mu.

Gobekli Tepe is generally considered to be the oldest religious structure ever found.  Radiocarbon dating puts the site at between 10,000 and 9000 B.C. To put this age in perspective, more time passed between the building of Gobekli Tepe and the building of Stonehenge than between the building of Stonehenge and present day.

The site contains stone structures and stone pillars which feature carvings of various predatory animals. The stone pillars—some of them reaching nearly twenty tons in weight—date to a time when humans were thought to be simple hunter-gatherers. Gobekli Tepe seems to have been built before the advent of agriculture, religion, written language, the wheel, pottery, the domestication of animals, and the use of anything other than simple stone tools.  

How were these structures built at a time when humans are basically thought have been cavemen?  How did they quarry huge pieces of stone, and cut them to size with no metal tools?  What was the purpose of such a site, before religion was thought to have been established?  The discovery and ongoing excavation of Gobekli Tepe could eventually change our conception of prehistory forever.

Mark Thompson is an animal lover from Canada who wishes he was an animal lover from somewhere warmer.

The post 10 Mysterious Prehistoric Sites From Around The World appeared first on Listverse.

Today, the country exists as a “federal semi-presidential republic”, with a president, a prime minister, and a cabinet—but many allege that the power belongs squarely with hardline President Vladimir Putin. Putin enjoys considerable popular support, though some within the country believe him to be responsible for several nefarious doings.

With vast natural resources, a government in flux, and a dwindling population inexorably steeped in alcohol, Russia remains one of the most fascinating places on earth.

Anyone with an internet connection will have seen some pretty crazy dashcam footage. Sometimes it comes from police cars—and the rest of the time it comes from cars in Russia.

Although the footage provides entertainment—such as by capturing film of the meteor strike over the Chelyabinsk region in February 2013—the real reason Russian drivers so frequently employ dash cams is to protect themselves from fraud. An unfortunate cottage industry has sprung up in the country, which involves the staging of accidents in order to profit from insurance claims and lawsuits. The scams can be elaborate—but they’re often as simple as a pedestrian throwing himself in front of a slow moving car and then feigning injury.

There’s a Russian proverb which goes: “The church is near but the road is icy; the tavern is far but I will walk carefully.” And there is no more inexorable stereotype of the Russian people than their traditional love of vodka, traditionally guzzled neat.

The holiday season is usually marked by a weeklong binge; during this period, the average Russian is said to spend $400 on alcohol alone. Such risky behavior is not without consequence; in excess of 23,000 people die of alcohol poisoning each year in Russia—and alcohol-related homicides, assaults, and suicides are all among the highest in the world. Life expectancy is lower than in many developing countries, with the average man expected to live the tender age of sixty-three.

There have been several attempts by the government to stem this national tragedy—but as seen in America’s recent history, measures of prohibition can lead to more problems than they solve:

In 1985, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced an anti-alcohol campaign that sought, among other methods, to decrease alcohol production and to raise prices. While this proved mildly effective, the fall of the USSR six years later turned into a party; all of a sudden, alcohol was available in massive quantities, and the population rejoiced.

As a result, the country went into a tailspin from which it has yet to recover. On top of legally-produced vodka, a great deal of “surrogate” alcohol began to be manufactured illegally. A great deal of this is “samogon”, a homemade liquor of wildly varying quality, reminiscent of moonshine. Other alcohol-deprived Russians are desperate enough to consume any product containing alcohol, ranging from cologne to aftershave and even window cleaners. Some of these substances can have alcohol levels twice as high as standard vodka, and contain plenty of toxic ingredients as well.

It is almost impossible to determine just how serious the alcohol problem is, but certain measures—such a 2010 policy to double the minimum purchase price of vodka—have only made things worse.

The final death toll of World War Two remains a subject of contention, but there can be little doubt that the Soviets suffered far more casualties than any other nation. Charged with single-handedly defending an entire front against the Germans, the Soviets may have lost in excess of thirty million people, including civilians—around fourteen percent of their entire population. In the Battle of Stalingrad alone, it is believed that more Soviets died than the Americans lost during the whole war.

In 2005, the regional governor of Ulyanovsk, an area in central Russia, decided to deal directly with his country’s dwindling population. Governor Sergi Morozov introduced September 12 as a “Day of Conception”, which grants couples a half day off from work to procreate. Nine months later, women who give birth closest to June 12—Russia’s National Day—receive prizes which include cars, cash, and appliances.

While the contest seems a little tongue-in-cheek, participants have numbered in the hundreds, and the area’s birth rate generally triples every June. Russia’s population has declined sharply since the dissolution of the USSR, with some claiming that it may fall below one hundred million by 2050. While the federal government doesn’t quite offer flashy automobiles to encourage potential parents, it does provide subsidies and vouchers to many families with children.

It is perhaps not surprising that in a country and a culture obsessed with the preservation of state secrets, journalists frequently lose their lives for peering too close. Along with hotspots like Egypt, Mexico, and Iraq, Russia leads the world in the murder of reporters.

Perhaps the most notable of these was the killing of Anna Politkovskaya in 2006. She was an outspoken critic of the Chechen conflict, and often criticized President Vladimir Putin, a former Lieutenant Colonel in the KGB whom she accused of trying to lead Russia back toward a Soviet-style dictatorship.

These allegations led her to be beaten, poisoned, threatened, and eventually killed—shot dead in an elevator at her apartment building in Moscow. Since the early 1990s, dozens of journalists have met similar fates. Most of these cases go unsolved, and prosecution is always unlikely.

While the United States is definitely the serial killer capital of the world, Russia has also had its fair share. The country’s serial killers are often given lurid nicknames, such as “The Butcher of Rostov”, “Raskolnikov in a skirt”, and “The Chessboard Killer” (so-named because he confessed to wanting to kill sixty-four people, equal to the number of squares on a chessboard).

Particularly frightening is the case of Nikolai Dzhumagaliev, or “Metal Fang”, who—you guessed it—wore a vicious set of metal teeth. Dzhumagaliev was caught in 1981 and accused of killing seven prostitutes, although it is believed that he may have killed as many as one hundred. He was a cannibal, and sometimes served his victims to unwitting friends. He was eventually found not guilty by reason of insanity, and spent some thirty years in mental facilities before being released.

Russia is already the world’s leading importer of heroin, but in recent years, an even more insidious opiate has been hitting the streets. Easily derived from over-the-counter codeine drugs, krokodil is eight to ten times more potent than morphine. It is so-named because it leaves addicts with scaly, reptilian skin.

Unfortunately, horrible skin is just the beginning of the nightmare. The codeine itself is relatively harmless, but the drug is manufactured with adulterants such as gasoline and paint thinner. The flesh around injection sites rapidly becomes necrotic and gangrenous, and amputations are not uncommon. Krokodil users rarely live for more than two or three years after becoming addicted to the drug. Although the phenomenon has been largely confined to Russia, cases of abuse have begun popping up throughout Europe.

In the 1950s, the space program because something of a microcosm for the entirety of the Cold War, with American and Soviet scientists scrambling to be the first to reach various milestones. The Soviets achieved the first major success with Sputnik in 1959, as well as the first manned flight by Yuri Gagarin in 1961.

As in America, these excursions did not come without sacrifices—including the death of Vladimir Komarov, whose Soyuz 1 spacecraft was known to be faulty before launch. There are rumors—probably exaggerated—that the Soviets covered up other deaths, including those of the famous “Lost Cosmonauts”, who have been mentioned before on Listverse.

These stories were likely exacerbated by the USSR’s habit of editing cosmonauts out of photos. While it is easy to believe that his was done with sinister intent, it was usually done to erase “disgraced” (and still very much alive) cosmonauts from the records of their space program, which they wanted to the world to believe was infallible.

As an interesting aside, Russian cosmonauts once traveled into space armed with a triple-barreled pistol called the TP-82, which was chambered with two shotgun rounds and a rifle round. The weapon wasn’t intended to defend them from alien forces, but to protect them in case they landed in a hostile area. In 2006, the TP-82 was retired in favor of a semi-automatic handgun.

In prehistoric times, the people we now call Native Americans moved over a land bridge that crossed the Bering Strait from Russia, and they began to colonize the New World. The land crossing has since been replaced with impassable ocean, but Russia has begun to advance a program which would see three tunnels constructed beneath the sea, joining Russia with Alaska.

The project, dubbed the TKM-World Link, is estimated to cost about $65 billion. Once completed, it would certainly rank as one of the most phenomenal feats in the history of engineering. Construction is already nearing completion on a railway which would allow the movement of supplies to the farthest reaches of Siberia.

Some people have questioned the practicality of the project, given the remoteness and the challenging climate of the region—but others allege that the tunnels could save billions in shipping costs. And the idea of driving from New York to London does seem pretty cool.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist. He likes vodka and bears.

The post 10 Fascinating Facts About Russia appeared first on Listverse.

Xolotl takes the tenth spot on this list for one main reason: he doesn’t quite fit the bill as much as his Western counterparts. The god of lightning and death didn’t usually guide the dead to Mictlan, the Aztec underworld, but had been known to on occasion. He was said to have brought fire from the underworld for humans, just like Prometheus in Greek mythology.

His most common form is that of a man with a dog’s head—but he can also be seen as a skeleton. Xolotl’s most famous transportee was the sun, which the god was said to protect when it ventured into the underworld at night.

A staple of Greek mythology, and more famous than some of the others further up this list, Charon ranks lower than them because he didn’t guide souls from the Earth to Hades but merely ferried them across the rivers Styx (hate) and Acheron (pain).

Unlike many other psychopomps, Charon did not do this for free; he required a donation to be given to him. To pay this, people would place coins in the mouths of the deceased, hoping to placate Charon. If payment was not made, the soul in question is said to have wandered the shores for a hundred years.

Coming in at number eight are those flying female figures known in Norse mythology as Valkyries (though Frejya and Odin would also sometimes act as psychopomps for the Norse). They could be seen flying above battlefields, picking and choosing which soldiers would live and which would die. The men chosen for special consideration by the Valkyries would be taken to Valhalla, where they would become einherjar (Old Norse for “single fighters”), and await the onset of Ragnarök, the climactic “twilight of the gods”.

When there were no battles taking place on Midgard, the Old Norse name for the place where humans dwell, the Valkyries could be found serving mead to the einherjar.

While Azrael, the Angel of Death, features in Jewish and Christian mythology as well, he only really takes on the role of a psychopomp in Islamic mythology. He is said to take every soul straight to Allah upon their death. However, since only Allah is said to know the precise moment when someone is supposed to die, Azrael has no real power of his own—he can only do what he is told. Berber men were once said to shave their heads, leaving a single tuft of hair, so that Azrael would have something to grab on to.

Mercury—the god of commerce, trickery and communication—was one of the Roman psychopomps. Much of his personal mythology was based on the Greek god Hermes, although he borrowed a little from the Etruscan god Turms as well. Mercury’s job was to guide souls upon death to Avernus, a crater in Italy which was said to be the entrance to the Roman underworld.

One of Mercury’s more famous transportees—originating solely from Roman mythology—was the beautiful nymph Larunda, with whom Mercury fell in love. He in fact made love to her on the way to the underworld, and sired two children.

In Etruscan mythology, Charun—not to be confused with Charon—was known as the “Demon of Death”. He was often depicted with Vanth, a goddess of the underworld. His role in death and soul recovery was a little different in comparison most of the others on this list. When someone was ready to die, Charun would come up to them and beat them over the head with his hammer until they were dead. He and Vanth would then take the soul to the underworld.

Charun also administered punishment to those who were evil, by striking their souls repeatedly for eternity.

Hermes was the Greek god of commerce, thieves, and athletes. Famously, he was also the messenger of the gods—and this job required the fleet-footed Hermes to be able to traverse between worlds with ease, which probably explains why he’s also the god of border crossings.

It was also his job to lead the souls of the dead to the entrance of Hades, where they waited for Charon to pick them up. Hermes was the only Olympian god able to visit Heaven, Earth, and Hades—a fact he enjoyed bragging about to the other gods. Some of his most famous transportees include the suitors of Odysseus’ wife Penelope, who were killed when the hero finally returned from Troy.

Anubis (who was later replaced by Osiris as the Egyptian psychopomp) comes in at number three on the list. The jackal-headed god was tasked with guiding souls to Duat, the Egyptian underworld, where they would be judged according to their lives. Under Anubis’ supervision, their hearts (which were believed by Egyptians to contain their souls) were weighed against a feather representing truth. If their heart was lighter than the feather, they were allowed to continue on. If their heart was too heavy with sin, Anubis would give it to Ammit, a demon known as the “Devourer of the Dead”, who would consume it.

Thanatos may not feature as prominently as Charon or Hermes—but as the personification of death, he deserves a higher place. He was hated by mortals and immortals alike, because he was merciless and indiscriminate. For all his cruelty, he was known to have been tricked on occasion—most famously by Sisyphus—or just beaten physically, as he was by Heracles. Thanatos is usually depicted as a winged youth, carrying a sword, and he is almost universally shown with his brother, Hypnos, the god of sleep.

It probably comes as little surprise that the number one spot on the list is taken by the Grim Reaper. Represented as a skeleton carrying a scythe and wearing a black cloak since around the fifteenth century, he has become the most widely known (and feared) of all the psychopomps. There is some argument as to whether or not the Grim Reaper actually kills his prey by touching them with his finger, or simply collects the souls as their bodies die of other causes. He could be bargained with or tricked by mortals looking to secure longer life, such as in “The Seventh Seal”, where he played chess against a knight for his soul.

The post Top 10 Psychopomps of Ancient and Modern Mythology appeared first on Listverse.

Yeah: you. See, unlike most big sites, Listverse doesn’t require you to have a degree or previous experience or anything like that. When I submitted my first article, I’d never written ANYTHING before. All I had was a cool idea, which the editors liked enough to publish. That article led to more and more work, until eventually I was earning enough to become a full-time writer. How great is that? Since then, I’ve been swamped with emails from people wanting to know how to get on the Listverse bandwagon. So here’s the deal: I’ll tell what I’ve picked up writing 40-odd articles, if you promise to try writing one too. Interested? Then read on:

This is it: the golden rule of writing. Yet, for some reason, it tends to worry newbies. Lots of people read ‘write what you know’ and worry they don’t know anything—like maybe you need a degree in ‘Listology’ before we’ll let you tackle certain subjects.

Well trust me, you don’t. Not only that, but I guarantee you’ve got an idea in you right now. See, the great thing about list-writing is your topic can be as broad or as narrow as you want it to be. So let’s say the only thing you know about is Chinese culture. Great! Write a broad list like 10 Bizarre Aspects of Chinese Culture. Or let’s imagine you love space photography: you could try your hand at something ultra-specific like 10 Astounding Examples of Pareidolia in Outer Space.

Both of those examples got published because their authors followed this golden rule. Whatever you’re into, there’s a list in there. So come on: what do you ‘know’?

Once you’ve found your topic, find an unusual way of looking at it. The more unexpected your take is, the more likely it’ll be published. Just this month, we’ve had 10 Medicines That Made Things Worse. Something like that instantly gets attention because it turns our notions of medicine on their head. Or try something unusual, like 10 Bizarre Theories About the Earth that People Still Believe. And don’t be afraid to be controversial.

Yeah: we’re not shy about controversy. One article that caused a recent storm was 10 Reasons Creationism Should be Taught in Schools. An article like that not only challenges accepted wisdom, it invites the reader to form their own opinion. Which people did: that particular article racked up over 750 comments within days. So look for your angle—that little twist that will make your article on North Korea stick out from every other article on North Korea. With a good topic and a good angle, you’re halfway there.

All websites have editorial guidelines, and Listverse is no exception. Before you start physically writing, you need to have a look at them. You might be a kickass writer who gets rave reviews on another website, but mimicking their ‘house style’ on a Listverse piece will just make the editors wonder why you bothered sending it here.

As embarrassing as it is to admit, I’ve been guilty of this. My second-ever article was an absolute train-wreck and should be held up as an example of how not to write for Listverse. Where did I go wrong? Simple: I didn’t follow the guidelines and just wrote what I wanted. Big mistake: doing that is insulting to the editors and readers and makes you look pretty dumb. So take it from me: download and read the rulebook before you write a single word. It may be time consuming, but you’ll be glad you did it.

It’s widely acknowledged that the best English is simple English. George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy and Hunter S Thompson all wrote about big complex things using short, simple sentences. No excessive sub-clauses. No ‘ten dollar’ words. They wrote so any casual reader could understand them, and so should you. Keep it short, keep it punchy and don’t overload sections with information. There’s a simple reason for this: people are here to kill time. They’re sitting at work or the back of some classroom and want to be entertained for five minutes. That’s why lists like the 10 Greatest Benefits of Capitalism will break their complex topic down into short, easily-digestible concepts. It allows us readers to feel smart—like we’re learning something new—and keeps your writing from veering off into academic territory.

You may have noticed most lists on here are pretty informal. Writers drop in the odd-joke, use occasional slang and basically do their best to keep it sounding like a conversation. Why? Because that’s what it should feel like: a casual chat with an entertaining friend. A friend you might disagree with, sure—sometimes even a friend you kind of hate. But still a friend: someone on your level who you can imagine talking to in real life. Reading writing that goes the opposite route and becomes too formal is like listening to a lecture. It can be interesting, you learn a lot, but it’s not something you want to spend your spare time doing—especially if you’ve just got back from a long day at college. Listverse should be a place to unwind and learn some trivia; an informal(ish) tone will really help that.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret: your title is kind of a big deal. As the first thing readers see when they hit the homepage, it can make the difference between them reading your article or thinking ‘can’t be bothered’.

So what makes a great title? Simple: it’s something that shocks the reader, grabs their attention and explains the entire concept in around 5 words. Need an example? One of my favorites is 10 Things the Nazi’s got Right. How could anyone resist a title like that? It sums up everything that’s great about Listverse: the promise of obscure information, controversial opinion and a weird take on a well-known concept. Fit a title like that to your piece and you’ll be ahead of the game.

So you’ve found a topic you know, a great angle, written it up in an entertaining way and given it an awesome title. You press send, sit back… and get a polite rejection email a few days later. What happened?

Well, it could be anything. Maybe your angle wasn’t as interesting as you thought it was. Maybe a near-identical article was published three months ago. Maybe it just wasn’t right. Whatever the reason, don’t take it personally. No, really, don’t. It’s easy to get upset when you spend hours working on something only for someone you’ve never met to say ‘nah’. Trust me, I know. When I first started writing for Listverse I had about one rejected article for every one published. But here’s the thing: it’s not personal. Honestly, it isn’t. Just because your first submission got declined doesn’t mean your second, third or fourth will. The thing is: we want you to succeed. If we publish your article it means we get an awesome piece of content to stick on our front page. So we don’t turn down stuff just for the hell of it. If you get rejected, figure out where you went wrong and try again. Then keep trying till you get it right.

The comments section is the curse of the internet writer. If it’s too complimentary, you run the risk of believing your own hype. If it’s too negative, your confidence can take a heck of a beating. But it’s the name of the game: if you’re getting paid to write, you have to take all the stuff that comes with it—and every writer has their own method of dealing with comments.

Personally, I never read them. Ever. I just figured it was easier that way: but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to. Some writers enjoy getting below the line and having an argument. Others just skim-read them as a way of figuring out what they’re doing right and wrong. But just remember this: even if all the comments on your article are violently negative, that can only be a good thing. Whenever I cause a reaction in someone—good or bad—I know I’m on the right track. After all, what’s worse: scrolling down to find 600 comments all calling you a jackass; or finding no comments at all?

A final piece of advice: consider leaving a contact email so people can get hold of you. Not everyone does this, but I’d strongly recommend it. Put simply: it’s one of the best things about the job. Every day I log on to a slew of emails from Listverse readers—some good, some bad, but all interesting. And here’s the thing: they’ll say things you’d never see below the line. Over five months I’ve had people write to me about their struggles with depression; their own writing careers; odd opinions about topical events and little stories from their own lives. And I love it—even if I don’t always reply, just logging on to find them there puts me in a great mood.

But best of all are the ones from people your work has somehow affected. I recently wrote an article that touched on the horrific siege at Sarajevo. A few days later I got an email from someone who had been there and survived the massacre telling me I’d done an amazing job. Getting something like that in your inbox reminds you why you’re doing this in the first place. It reminds you why you want to write. So yeah, maybe consider leaving that email address. Just in case.

So that’s it: 40 articles’ experience squashed into one quick list. Now it’s your turn. If you’ve ever wanted to be a writer, I want you to follow this link and give it a shot. Just try it, because I promise you will never, ever regret it. Aside from the $100 every article gets, and the knowledge that over 8 million people are reading something you’ve written; you may just find that it’s one of the most-rewarding things you’ve ever done. So what are you waiting for? Get writing!

The post 10 Tips For Getting Paid To Write For Listverse appeared first on Listverse.

In June 1942, German submarine U-202 carried a small group of would-be saboteurs to a position off the coast of Long Island, New York. The four spies, led by George John Dasch, were expected to perform acts of violence including blowing up bridges, railways, and factories in New York City and the East Coast over a planned two year period. Dasch and his men comprised half of the assignment known as “Operation Pastorius” (see #4 for the other half), Hitler’s pet project which his intelligence advisors told him didn’t have a chance of success. The chosen men were inexperienced, and had very little training in intelligence operations.

The mission didn’t get off to a great start. The U-boat became stuck on a sandbar off Amagansett. Heavy swells made getting to shore in an inflatable raft an extremely hair-raising prospect. The men barely had enough time to bury their supplies—explosives, blasting caps, and timers—and strip out of their uniforms, when a Coast Guard patrolman, John Cullen, almost literally stumbled over them. A nervous Dasch lost his cool, threatened Cullen, and forced a significant cash bribe on him to keep his mouth shut.

Cullen did no such thing. He reported the suspicious incident. A little digging on the beach turned up four crates of explosives and equipment, German uniforms, and the stubs of German cigarettes. The FBI was brought into the case, and a search of Amagansett and Long Island began, but Dasch and his group had already made their way to New York City.

While the other three Nazi spies hid out in a hotel, Dasch went to Washington, DC, where he turned himself in and rolled over on his fellow saboteurs. He got a sentence of thirty years in prison, instead of being executed like six other members of the ill-fated Operation Pastorius. He received clemency in 1948, and was deported to West Germany.

In November 1944, two German agents were landed in America—not to commit sabotage this time, but to gather intelligence on U.S. military ships, aircraft, and weapons. If possible, they were also to cause delays in America’s development of the atomic bomb. The spies were Erich Gimpel, a native of Germany and former Abwehr courier who spoke English, and William Colepaugh, an American of German descent, a Nazi sympathizer, and a shady character who had little experience of spy craft.

German submarine U-1230 dropped Colepaugh and Gimpel ashore near Bar Harbor, close by Hancock Point, Maine. Their clothes weren’t suited for the cold New England weather and the falling snow, but they managed to walk from the beach on back roads carrying their expensive new luggage full of fake IDs, guns, cameras, cash, and diamonds to a railway station, where they took a train to Boston and then to New York City.

Once in NYC, rather than getting down to the business of spying and surreptitious activities, the unstable and alcoholic Colepaugh began a spree of drinking, partying, and womanizing, much to Gimpel’s vocal disgust. In one month, Colepaugh ran through $1,500 of the money they’d been given for operating expenses. Shortly before Christmas, Colepaugh abandoned Gimpel and absconded with the rest of the money—more than $40,000—and a female companion of dubious repute, ending up at an expensive hotel.

After a final drunken binge over the holiday, Colepaugh turned himself in to the FBI on December 29. Neither he nor Gimpel had done any actual spying during their brief time in NYC. Colepaugh told authorities everything he knew, including where to find Gimpel.

Despite his cooperation with the American government, Colepaugh was tried in a closed military tribunal with Gimpel. Both men were sentenced to death, but the end of the war delayed the executions and the sentences were commuted to life imprisonment. Gimpel was released in 1955 and returned to West Germany to write his memoirs, while Colepaugh was granted parole in 1960, and settled down to a quiet life in Pennsylvania.

Born in Germany, Maximilian Gerhard Waldemar Othmer came to the U.S. in 1919. The affable, likable man became a naturalized citizen by 1935, married an American woman, and settled down with his family and a temporary job as a vacuum cleaner salesman. Despite the fact that he made frequent trips to Germany, no one guessed that Othmer was a sleeper agent for Abwehr.

He became involved with the pro-Nazi German-American Bund, eventually becoming the leader of the Trenton, New Jersey, branch while working in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. After establishing himself as a hard-working, average guy, he got a job at Camp Pendleton (Norfolk, Virginia) military base, on the orders of German intelligence. In this position, he was able to send information to his handlers in Germany about British and American military vessels, convoys, and merchant ships in the port as well as Allied ship movements. In 1942, he was transferred by the Army to Knoxville, Tennessee.

An ongoing FBI investigation into Othmer, due to his open Nazi sympathies, proved inconclusive. By 1944, a new FBI investigation turned up some crucial facts—including Othmer’s unusual request to a New Jersey dentist for Pyramidon, a common European painkiller used by Abwehr agents as an ingredient in invisible ink. He was brought in by the FBI’s Knoxville division for questioning, and immediately confessed to being a Nazi espionage agent. He’d been sending information written in code in invisible ink to his handlers, but he denied sending any letters after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Othmer refused to name other agents, but he did turn over a microfilm containing a code he used when communicating with Abwehr, which was linked to other espionage cases. He was tried as a spy, convicted, and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

Born in Chicago, Illinois to an Austro-Hungarian father and raised in Germany, Guenther Gustav Rumrich returned to America in 1929 and served in the U.S. Army’s Medical Corps in Panama until his desertion in 1936.

He became suspected in 1938 of possible spy activities because of Mrs. Jessie Jordan in Dundee, Scotland. She was a woman under surveillance by Britain’s intelligence agency, MI-5, who believed her to be an operative working for the Germans by acting as a mail drop, passing letters to and from a Nazi spy ring in New York City. Mrs. Jordan’s communications with “Mr. Crown” were intercepted by MI-5. As it turned out, Crown was Rumrich’s code name, and the letters were orders and instructions from his Abwehr handlers.

The head of MI-5 turned the information over to the FBI. Rumrich was put under federal surveillance, and a trap was set—but he didn’t fall for it. Instead, in February 1938, he called the Passport Office in NYC. Masquerading as the U.S. Undersecretary of State, he requested thirty-five blank passports be sent to his address. The suspicious clerk he spoke to over the phone reported the incident to the authorities. Rumrich was arrested in what became America’s first major prewar espionage case.

Rumrich supplied information about his fellow agents, who were also arrested. At their trials, he acted as a witness for the prosecution. For his cooperation, he was given a light sentence of two years in prison. Unfortunately, more important Nazi spies escaped the FBI’s net, and the case was not considered to be a complete success. The New York spy ring case pointed out America’s vulnerability to foreign espionage efforts, and prompted government action.

The Rumrich case was fictionalized in the 1939 film, Confessions of a Nazi Spy.

Born in Vienna, Austria, to wealthy and respectable parents in 1914, Lilly Stein’s early activities included exhibition ice skating and tennis. However, her contacts with Viennese café society, separation from her family, and possibly her affair with an American career diplomat and U.S. State Department official, Ogden H. Hammond, Jr., led the willowy and buxom brunette socialite to be recruited by Abwehr as an intelligent agent.

In 1939, Lilly was sent to New York City, where she opened a dress shop with new friends. She recruited agents for Abwehr and acted as a forwarding address, successfully moving letters containing orders or sensitive stolen information to and from Germany for fellow spies. Her affair with Hammond continued, though she later claimed that their relationship was “purely platonic.” According to the FBI, Lilly was a cautious spy; she put nothing in writing and carried nothing incriminating on her person except the occasional microfilm.

The dress shop venture soon failed, however, and the pay from her Nazi handlers was usually late, often leaving her scrambling to pay the rent. To make ends meet, she worked as an artist’s model. It wasn’t long before her constant complaints and demands for money tested Abwehr’s patience to the limit—eventually forcing them to cut her loose from their operations.

Lilly was rounded up in June, 1941, as part of the infamous Duquesne spy ring (see #1). Despite her assertion that she was forced into the espionage business because she wasn’t purely Aryan—and therefore faced being put in a forced labor camp, deported, or worse when the Nazis took Austria if she refused to cooperate—she received a ten year prison sentence.

Although he moved to New York City in 1927 at the age of twenty-five and worked towards naturalization for years, Hermann W. Lang always remained loyal to the country of his birth: Germany. That loyalty would lead him to acquire valuable intelligence for the Nazi spy agency, Abwehr, after he was recruited during a visit home in 1938.

A draftsman by trade, Lang worked in a factory for the Carl L. Norden Corp., which manufactured top secret U.S. military and defense equipment and materials. One of their most guarded projects was an improved bombsight for the Navy and Air Force—considered so vital to U.S. interests that the fact of its existence was kept under lock and key. Not even America’s closest allies, including Britain, were given access to the Norden bombsight, since the government wished to maintain the country’s neutrality at the beginning of war in Europe.

As a factory inspector, Lang had access to the bombsight’s blueprints. Company policy forbade anyone from taking the blueprints out of the office, but he managed to sneak a set home and make a copy, which was later smuggled to Germany in an umbrella carried by another agent on a passenger cruise liner. Lang continued to work at his job and send other details via a German network until he was arrested as part of the Duquesne spy ring operation.

He pleaded guilty, and received a sentence of twenty years in prison. During the trial and its aftermath, prosecutors and government spokesmen assured the public that the Norden bombsight hadn’t been entirely betrayed to the Germans and the secret remained safe. They claimed no one person at the factory had access to the full plans. However, it’s been noted the bombsight used by the Luftwaffe after 1938 bore a resemblance to the one stolen by Lang.

In Adolph Hitler’s planned Operation Pastorius, two groups of >Nazi saboteurs were landed on American shores in June 1942.

Like their counterparts, the mission of the Ponte Vedra foursome was simple: commit acts of sabotage and terrorism such as blowing up railways, locks, and canals; plant suitcase bombs in Jewish owned shops; and destroy New York City’s water system. The Florida group was led by John Edward Kerling, a German who had lived in America for years before returning to his homeland. These men didn’t have much training in spy craft, apart from some basic knowledge on how to set explosives. Regardless, they carried a fortune in cash and crates of equipment, which they buried in the sand on the beach where they came ashore.

They took a bus to downtown Jacksonville and then traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio, without incident, where they waited as instructed to rendezvous with the Long Island team headed by George Dasch. Unknown to Kerling, Dasch had blundered, causing his team to be arrested by the FBI, and he told the federal authorities everything he knew, including the when and where of his scheduled meeting with Kerling’s sabotage team.

Kerling and his three men were arrested, tried before a military tribunal, and executed by electric chair in August 1942, along with two from Dasch’s group.

After serving with the German Army in WWI, Dr. Griebl—an obstetrician and surgeon—immigrated to the United States in 1925 and, after becoming a citizen, resided in New York City in Manhattan’s Yorkville district. Here, he became a community leader and a member of the U.S. Army Reserve. However, the apparently respectable doctor harbored a dark secret: he’d worked as an Nazi undercover agent since 1934.

By means of his diligent work, social contacts, and loyalty to the Nazi cause, Griebl gained the trust of Abwehr to such an extent that he became the primary coordinator and head of a widespread spy ring operating across the country. Information flowed from German intelligence agents in other cities like Boston, Norfolk, and Baltimore, directly into Griebl’s hands. He also sought out engineers with German-American backgrounds, and recruited them as moles to betray secret technical military and defense plans. Since no single federal agency in the U.S. had charge of investigating subversive acts, he was able to run his operation for years with virtual impunity, undetected. For his dedication, he received generous payments and an honorary commission as a captain in the Luftwaffe.

In 1938, one of his New York spies, Guenther Rumrich, was arrested by the FBI—and during his confession, he gave up Griebl’s game. In turn, after he was brought in for questioning, Griebl betrayed everyone in his network, naming names and offering details so readily that the FBI chose to release him, assuming he’d show up for the federal grand jury hearing.

He didn’t. The doctor wasted no time boarding a ship to Hamburg and escaping the United States. He eventually settled in Vienna, where he re-opened his medical practice, and did no further spying for Nazi Germany. As an interesting sidenote, Griebl was the only person to hold simultaneous commissions in both the U.S. and German military services.

An often-depressed, unmarried loner who seemed a bit of a harmless kook according to his co-workers, Guellich was actually a Nazi agent working for Ignatz Griebl’s spy network, and stealing America’s secrets through his job in a New Jersey shipyard.

The German born Guellich came to America in 1932, and was recruited by Griebl in 1935 due to his work as a metallurgist at the Federal Shipbuilding Co. in Kearney, NJ. Because of his position in the laboratory, Guellich had access to secret and restricted projects developed for the U.S. Navy, including guns and shells, destroyer blueprints, and samples of cables used on ships. The material was sent to Griebl, who forwarded it to Germany. It wasn’t long before Guellich’s diligence earned him a top spot in the Nazi spy network.

A report crossed Guellich’s desk detailing work by Robert H. Goddard, a pioneering rocket-propelled missile researcher. He sent a copy to Griebl. Berlin received the report with great interest, and ordered Guellich to obtain more information. He traveled to Goddard’s laboratory in Roswell, New Mexico to observe a test launch of the Nell missile. Guellich’s continued ferreting-out of secrets assisted German scientists in developing their own rockets.

Guellich was betrayed by Griebl following the latter’s arrest by the FBI. Like the other spies in the New York ring, he received a light sentence despite his espionage.

Admittedly, this one’s claim to a place on this list is a little tenuous—but given its relation to many of the spies mentioned already, it seems fitting to include the matter here.

South African Frederick “Fritz” Duquesne’s hatred of Britain, which had its origin in the Boer Wars, caused him to become a turncoat and spy for the Germans in WWI. He saw no reason to switch his loyalties when he moved to New York City and became a naturalized U.S. citizen. He eventually volunteered as a spy for Abwehr. Working at 120 Wall Street, Duquesne set up an extensive professional espionage network, collecting information from Nazi agents and moles at strategic locations in the United States.

Unknown to Duquesne, the Gestapo and Abwehr attempted to recruit another potential spy, William Sebold—a native German who had become a naturalized U.S. citizen—during his visit home in 1939. His family still lived in Germany. Afraid they might face reprisals if he refused outright, Sebold agreed to be a Nazi spy, but as soon as possible, he quietly went to the U.S. Consulate in Cologne and offered his services to America as a double-agent.

After returning to the U.S. in 1940, Sebold assisted the FBI in setting up a surveillance operation against Duquesne’s spy network. With his cooperation, federal agents were also able to use his assigned codes to send disinformation by shortwave radio to Abwehr.

In December 1941, just six days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the FBI began arresting members of the Duquesne spy ring, including Fritz Duquesne himself—reaching a total of thirty-three spies in all. The operation was the largest round up of foreign intelligence agents in America. Some pleaded guilty, others went to trial—and all were convicted.

William Sebold, however, disappeared—and his fate remains uncertain. Some believe that he was given a new identity to protect him from Nazi revenge. The 1945 film, The House on 92nd Street, is a fictionalized account of William Sebold and the Duquesne spy ring.

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Airborne allergies such as hay fever are among the worst allergies one can experience. While foods that trigger allergies may be readily avoided and many chemical exposures can be reduced, avoiding grass, dust, pollen and mold may be exceedingly difficult. However, scientific research indicates that there may be a bright side to the scourge of spring and summer. Exposure to airborne allergens appears to tinker with the immune system in such a way that the risk of cancer is mitigated in allergy suffers. Preliminary research suggests statistically significant reductions in cancer among human study samples suffering from hay fever due to an immune stimulation effect similar to inoculation.

Sexually transmitted infections are a scourge of modern society originating in behavioral, socio-economic and medical education shortcomings. Syphilis is a mutilating and eventually fatal disease if not treated that is often flagged as prime example of the STI problem. Believed to have originated from ancient human deviance with animals or unsafe consumption syphilis is widely seen as a sexually transmitted illness. However, the illness is also transmissible through mere kissing as a Kissing Transmissible Infection (KTI). Spirochete bacteria infection manifests in the form of oral sores, and even boils on the hands and face. The first manifestation during the infectious stage is a small chancre sore in the mouth. If the patient kisses another human, they may become infected with the diseases in certain cases.

Humans frequently consider the possibility of a sixth sense. However, humans possess far more than 5 distinct senses. Vision is actually a combination of senses for light and color, while evidence shows that humans share some of the avian ability to detect magnetic fields. Humans also have the ability to detect their relative position, which is known as procerioception. The diversity of human sensory experience becomes even more complicated in the disorder known as synesthesia, where sounds may be associated with particular colors, or colors may be attributed to the descriptions of letters. Human senses are surprisingly subjective and may become highly confused as the brain interprets raw data collected through the body’s many sensory systems.

Accusing someone of being “allergic to work” is a frequently used method of encouraging industry or taking laziness to task. But for those with Exercise-induced anaphylaxis, being allergic to work is no joking matter. In fact, it may be a disabling reality that is at worst, life threatening. Suffers break out in hives upon exercise, often in concert with exposure to an aggravating food. The exact mechanism of the reaction is unknown, but a related condition known as Cholinergic Urticaria triggers allergic symptoms upon exposure to heat. It is thought that production of stress chemicals and changes in metabolism associated with exercise set the stage for the anaphylactic reactions to occur. Without treatment, complications can lead to potentially fatal shock.

Humans, like many other animals display a startling degree of symmetry between body parts. Surprisingly, a small number of humans may be born with Heterochromia iridum, or dual eye coloration. One eye may be blue, and the other brown or hazel. Causes of eye color discrepancies may stem from genetic mutations, combinations of distinct cells. Although most people with this “condition” are born with it, rare cases of medication induced Heterochromia have been reported. A more common discrepancy is in breast size. Human females tend to have a slightly larger left breast than the mammary gland on the right. Additionally, the vestigial breast tissues in males may display the same discrepancy.

In developed countries, up to 60 percent of the population caries the Herpes Simplex virus, responsible for the distressing skin lesions euphemistically referred to as “cold sores”. While this viral disease is seen by many people as an unappealing nuisance, Cold Sores are in fact potentially dangerous, and rank as a leading cause of blindness worldwide. Herpes Simplex resides in the facial nerves, and emerges into the skin causing lesions during active phase. However, the virus may also inhabit the optic and trigeminal nerves. During the active phase, virulent herpes can then form lesions on the cornea of the eye. Complications of the outbreaks may lead to blindness through keratosis and subsequent scarring, or even necrosis of eye tissues.

Traditional western models of psychology and physiology tend to view the brain as the center of human intelligence where thoughts are formed and memories are stored. However, numerous reports from organ donation recipients claiming changes in personality have sparked interest in some researchers who believe that memories and thoughts that do not appear to be their own may originate from a more systemic consciousness that features cell memory. Cases where food preferences and even sexual orientation have switched have been reported, and in one especially eerie case, the recipient of a heart from a murder victim led police to the killer. It is unknown whether these changes could be purely stress related, or whether something much more mysterious is at work when human body parts are merged…

When we look at the world around us, we must remember that the veil of human perception means things are not always what they seem. When you glance at an object, the image received actually appears inverted on the retina. Our eyes in fact see everything upside down, but incredibly, our brain compensates by default, allowing us to perceive the world right side up. The brain’s ability to be misled in this regard presents an eerie insight into the potential for manipulation of human experience. In a series of experiments, volunteers wore lenses to turn the world upside down. This reversal caused the brain of the subjects to stop compensating for the retinal inversion in order to see upright. When the lenses were removed, the participants saw upside down for a time.

Humans are normally equipped with 24 symmetrical ribs to protect the vital organs, but around 1 in 500 people are born with an extra rib extending from the neck and shoulder section, known as the thoracic outlet. The cervical rib, or in even rarer cases, extra pair may interfere with the blood supply to the arm, causing a loss of pulse when the arm is moved in certain directions. The vestigial rib is believed to be connected with genes that suppress cancer risks, but the nature of this effect unknown. In some cases, complications include numbness, tingling, coldness in the hands and most disturbingly, a protruding sensation in the arm. The ribs are useful in other mammals, but are vestigial in humans.

Human babies are certainly not as precocious as many other mammal species such as ungulates that are born ready to walk on their own. Teeth in humans normally start to appear after 6 months, but around 1 in 2,000 infants are born with neonatal teeth appearing through the gumline. Although mildly startling, newborns with teeth are often perfectly healthy, as the condition may not be associated with harmful genetic mutations. The often loose teeth may form a chocking hazard, and are known to be capable of inflicting rather painful bites if the infant is allowed to nurse. Normally, only one or two teeth appear in cases of neonatal dentition development.

Mike Williams is an ardent follower of science with a passion for the unexplained or unusual. His writing interests include medical facts, mysteries and new technology.

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One of humanity’s most-enduring questions is: ‘is there a God?’ For millennia, people have fought and killed each other over the issue and wasted a ton of ink justifying their opinions. So you’d think by now we’d have learned to debate the question sensibly. In reality, nothing could be further from the truth.

The trouble is, both sides (atheists and believers) have their minority of fundamentalists who will do their level-best to ‘win’ the argument by being as condescending as possible. Atheists accuse their religious counterparts of ‘believing in sky fairies’ and compare religious upbringing to child abuse; while the religious faction simply resort to attacking the concept of science.

The weird thing is, most of us have probably met plenty of atheists and believers and never encountered a single lunatic. From personal experience, I know my Christian and atheist friends largely respect each other’s opinions and never try to ‘convert’ others to their side. In fact, watching a debate between these guys would likely be genuinely informative—so why is it only the diehards who ever make it onto message boards?

Around the world, there are dozens of ‘contested’ territories: Northern Ireland, Kashmir, the Falklands, Gibraltar and the Western Sahara, to name a few. Many of them have long, turbulent histories, periodically spill over into violence and one of them (Kashmir) nearly triggered a nuclear war. So why is it only the disputed Israeli/Palestinian border that whips up such emotion?

Let’s be clear here: I’m not saying there’s nothing to get worked up about. The situation is undoubtedly tense, not-helped by such things as rocket attacks on Israel, Israeli airstrikes, the seizure of Palestinian land and the violently anti-Semitic propaganda prevalent in the region. If you have to deal with it on a daily basis it’s only natural you’d form a strong opinion. But what’s puzzling is how the entire internet has chosen this specific land-dispute to jump onto—and invested it with such emotion that rational argument becomes impossible.

Tax is more-or-less a fact of life: none of us want to pay it, most of us don’t like what it gets spent on, but most of us use some of the stuff it buys—so we begrudgingly pay up. If we think about it much beyond that, it’s probably because we’ve either heard about some company refusing to pay a single cent; or some dumb government introducing a ridiculously unfair rate. But mention taxation on a message board and watch the lunatics come crawling out the woodwork.

Now, to be fair, I’ve voiced some strong opinions on tax on these very pages. So feel free to call me a hypocrite. But I’ve never argued for a one hundred percent tax rate or literally equated taxation with slavery—which is what you’ll hear on any forum devoted to the topic. Like everything else on this list, it seems to be only the extremists who leave comments on these articles: the beret-wearing Che Guevara wanabees and Ayn Rand worshippers.

As much as people like to get their hackles up at the thought of atheists and Christians or that chunk that comes out their paycheck each month, nothing compares to the vitriol evoked by feminism. Simply put: a good deal of the population seem to see the term as an invite to either spew violent misogyny or get into an oppression competition. And that’s before we even get onto the various strands of feminism that spend more time attacking each other than the patriarchy.

Now, if we’re being honest, there are some forms of feminism that really do suck. Equally, a lot of serious articles about ‘men’s issues’ often get shouted down under sarcastic calls of ‘lolz what about teh menz?’ But the sheer hatred feminism seems to stir up is way out of proportion to any of this. After all, the basic concept is something we should all be able to get behind. For example: do you think everyone deserves equal pay for equal work, the freedom to make their own life choices and to live without the threat of violence, no matter what type of genitals they have? Then congratulations: you’re a feminist.

There are two types of circumcision: male and female. Female circumcision is better known by its more-truthful name ‘female genital mutilation’ (fgm) and everyone pretty-much agrees it’s a really bad thing. Male circumcision, on the other hand, is an absolute powder keg.

That last link, by the way, goes to a representative article on the subject—if you have time, follow it and check the comments. That’s how most discussions about circumcision look: a whole mass of people screaming child abuse, threatening to call the police and comparing the practice to witch burning. To clarify: I’m not trying to take sides here. If you have a particular bugbear about this issue, that’s your opinion and I’ll respect that. But for the life of me, I can’t see why this particular issue might drive people into a howling frenzy. Yet venture below the line on any article mentioning it, and that’s exactly what you’ll see.

Sticking the word ‘Islam’ in an article is like lobbing a hand grenade into a hornet’s nest. Simply put: a lot of people have some very strong opinions on the subject—and they’re not afraid to let you know it. Unlike some of the entries here, the reason is pretty clear: a decade of news stories linking radical Islam to bomb attacks, assassinations and violent riots have left most of us in no doubt that we need to tackle religious extremism.

But debates on Islam rarely focus on ‘extremism’. For whatever reason, a vocal minority of our online community have gotten used to speaking about it as a monolithic entity: as if there’s no difference between, say, a moderate Indonesian leading a regular life and a Sudanese extremist. What’s weird is how this rarely applies to any other religion. Can you imagine someone seriously being unable to differentiate between Oprah and Fred Phelps because they’re both Christian; or between Jerry Seinfeld and a member of Israel’s Ultra-Orthodox community? Well, apparently that’s how some people view 1.6bn of their fellow human beings.

If there’s one thing the internet loves, it’s freedom of speech. We’re kinda libertarians in that respect: there’s little more likely to invoke the wrath of Anonymous than a serious attempt to curtail our right to it. However, it’s often taken as read that this freedom extends to anything and everything; and not everyone agrees.

See, although freedom of speech may be enshrined in American law—to the extent that even scum like Westboro Baptist Church are constitutionally protected—the same logic does not apply elsewhere. In Germany, for example, it’s a criminal offense to display a Nazi flag and you WILL do time for it. In France, denying the holocaust can get you a prison sentence. The online clash usually comes when American ideology crashes up against European—with neither side willing to accept their system isn’t ‘best’. So let’s be honest here: free speech may be an idea worth fighting for, but just because parts of Europe have taken a different route on certain subjects does not make them any less ‘free’. Minor restrictions do not automatically make an Orwellian dystopia—any less than total freedom automatically results in the anarchic Wild West.

Most scientists wish the public would get excited about their chosen field. Mention awe-inspiring concepts like string theory, Hawking radiation or gravitons to the man on the street and he’ll probably go out of his way to avoid you. For climate scientists, however, it’s a case of ‘be careful what you wish for’.

Thanks to decades of programs, books and blogs written on the subject, just about everyone now considers themselves an expert. And part of that expertise apparently involves shouting down the other side—bizarrely enough, for the exact same reason. Those who don’t believe in it see a vast conspiracy by scientists, liberals and other boogeymen to put us all in FEMA prison camps, while those who do see a vast conspiracy involving the Koch Brothers and big oil to manipulate the ‘sheeple’ into believing otherwise. It’s a perfect storm of paranoia centered around an issue most of us aren’t qualified to understand—and, every time someone brings it up, the sparks are sure to fly.

As you may have noticed, I’ve tried to maintain a largely neutral tone on most of these. That won’t happen here. For whatever reason, despite the mountains of evidence and eyewitness testimony proving otherwise; there are still people out there who honestly believe the holocaust was either exaggerated or simply didn’t happen. And their brand of mental sickness is virulent enough to infect the comments section of any article that cares to mention it.

There are a few things in the world that mark you out as a bad person; and denying the holocaust is one of them. It’s not just the extent of human suffering that occurred in moral blackholes like Auschwitz and Treblinka; or the sheer hatred required to send millions of Jews, gays, Poles and disabled people to certain death. It’s all that plus the stubborn refusal to learn from history—to pretend genocide never happened. And trust me, if there’s one mistake we never want to repeat from history, it’s this one.

Here it is: the most-divisive issue you will ever encounter. With feelings running so high on both sides, it’s impossible to take any sort of stance on abortion without seeing the entire comment section explode in your face—so I’m remaining one hundred percent neutral on this one.

You’re probably aware of the basic arguments. Pro-lifers believe with the utmost intensity that killing a fetus is as bad as killing a child. Pro-choice supporters believe with an identical passion that criminalizing abortion is State intrusion into women’s bodies, and completely incompatible with a free society. Politicians meanwhile try to search for a middle ground—a point where termination remains acceptable and a point where it unequivocally isn’t. But this is one argument that’s never going away: so long as there’s a human race it will continue to rage—and nowhere is this more apparent than on the internet. Now, I’m not going to make any value judgement on this, and I appreciate that people have strong feelings about it. But wouldn’t it be great if both sides could debate this and other issues—just once—without resorting to hysterical name-calling? I guess we’ll find out in the comments.

The post 10 Topics Guaranteed to Start an Argument appeared first on Listverse.

What it means now: “Completely lacking in subtlety; very obvious.”

What it used to mean: A thousand-tongued beast from hell.

In the 1600s, British began using the word blatant as a way to describe people who were vulgar and noisy. Granted, that’s not a major change to the present day definition, but before 1596, blatant wasn’t even a word; it was invented by Edmund Spenser in his fantasy story “The Faerie Queen” to describe a monster from hell, a giant beast with a thousand tongues—the Blatant Beast.

“The Faerie Queen” was essentially a long, drawn out allegory for 16th century English religion, and each character symbolized either a person or ideal in the real world. The Faerie Queen, for example, was Queen Elizabeth I. The Blatant Beast represented slander and wickedness, and as the story became popular, people began using the idea of the Blatant Beast as an insult to people who were too loud. It would be like calling a person who’s obnoxiously silly today a “Spongebob.” Eventually blatant lost the negative connotations of “vulgarity” and just became a synonym for obvious.

What it means now: “An unfashionable or socially inept person, or someone with an eccentric devotion to a particular interest (a computer geek).”

What it used to mean: A circus sideshow freak.

We all know what a geek is nowadays; the internet’s covered in them. Aside from the whole socially inept stereotype, geeks are also usually seen as pretty smart, even if that intelligence manifests as an encyclopedic knowledge of which enhancement gems give more agility to a Feral Druid in World of Warcraft, or something like that.

But originally, the word meant something completely different: a circus sideshow freak. As recent as the early 1900s, traveling circuses would display what they called “geek shows,” featuring either performers with some utterly bizarre ability or feature (The Bearded Lady, Pretzel Man, etc.), or a performance in which something bizarre happened. Usually, that meant a person eating something disgusting, like biting the heads off live chickens.

And as a further departure from the intelligent geeks of today, it’s believed that the word geek in those shows came from the old German word geck, which was basically a stupid person.

What it means now: “A danger or risk.”

What it used to mean: A gambling game played with dice

In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer wrote “The Canterbury Tales,” one part of which describes young men playing a dice game called Hazard. This was a fairly popular game of chance in France at that time, in which one person rolls a dice while onlookers place bets on how a series of rolls will turn out. The rules were complicated to say the least. Try to make sense of this:

“The caster begins by throwing the dice to determine the Main Point. This must be a score between 5 and 9. Now the caster throws the dice again. If the score is the same as the Main Point, this is known as a nick and the caster wins. If a 2 or 3 was rolled, that’s an out and the caster loses. 11 and 12 are also outs, except in certain cases: a roll of 11 after a Main Point of 7 is a nick, and so is a roll of 12 after a Main Point of 6 or 8.”

Over time, the negative image of gambling led to the name of that particular game, Hazard, being used to describe any type of chance game, such as “He’s off playing hazards again.” Over about two hundred years, the word further evolved to mean any kind of risk. Interestingly, the game stuck around in a sense—craps is a simplified version of Hazard.

What it means now: “To exclude someone from a society or group.”

What it used to mean: A government procedure to literally ban someone from Athens for ten years.

The Athenian Democracy was incredibly influential from 550 BC to around 320 BC. They practically created the model by which many other Greek city-states built their own democratic governments. Nevertheless, they had a few customs that might seem strange to us today. One of those was the Ostracism. Every year, Athenian citizens were given the chance to vote for any person to be banned from the city-state for a decade. There was no specific list of people they could choose from—they could vote to ostracize a criminal just as easily as they could vote to get rid of their brother (although usually a political figure was chosen).

As long as at least 6,000 people voted, whoever received the most votes was given ten days to leave. If they returned before the ten year period was over, they were put to death. But they wouldn’t return penniless—their possessions and status would all be restored. It would be like they never left.

Archaeologists have discovered something close to 12,000 “ostraka,” the pottery shards used for writing the votes. Out of those, nearly 5,000 are votes for a man named Megacles. Talk about unpopular.

What it means now: Poisonous

What it used to mean: Greek archery

In ancient Greek, the word toxon means bow, as well as “the arrows shot from the bow”—and really just archery in general. The Greeks later added to that, creating the word toxicus, which means “poison for use on arrows.” Toxicus made its way through Latin, then French, and finally English, ending up as the word we use today, toxic. The unusual combination of poison and bows, however, started with Hercules.

In the story of Hercules, the mythical hero had to face twelve Labours, or challenges. The second challenge he faced was the Hydra—a serpent with nine heads and poisonous blood. The Hydra was seemingly invincible—chopping off one of its heads only caused it to grow two more heads in that spot. Hercules eventually defeated it by cauterizing each neck with a torch after slicing off a head. Then, after removing the Hydra’s final head, Hercules dipped his arrow tips in the blood—he “made his toxons poisonous.”

What it means now: “A person guilty or capable of a crime or wickedness.”

What it used to mean: A farm worker

Everybody, especially Batman, is familiar with villains—thanks to over half a century of movies, we all know that the villain is the bad guy. Back in the 14th century though, villains were the backbone of agriculture. That is to say, they were the guys who worked on farms. The word villain is actually an old French word that pulls its roots from the word “villa,” Latin for country house.

Over time, the meaning of the word gradually changed: Farm workers were poor, practically peasants. Peasants, being poor, are untrustworthy. Untrustworthy people commit crimes. And eventually we ended up with the modern day definition of villain, which is a rich person who gets killed by James Bond.

What it means now: Well, you know.

What it used to mean: An abrupt sound from a wind instrument.

The word poop means quite a few things, all of them completely different. In nautical terms, the poop is the stern deck of a ship, a phrase which came about in the 1700s. As a verb, the word poop was originally used in the 1500s to describe a short blast of sound from a wind instrument, such as a horn. By the 1700s, the sound of a “short blast of wind” had already begun to be associated with something else that involved gas moving through pipes.

From there, it was only a matter of time until it reached its modern-day definition. At first it was a phrase used by children, then poop slowly seeped into modern culture and by the turn of the 20th century it was a household word—about the same time indoor plumbing became commonplace, as a matter of fact.

What it means now: “An angry argument or disagreement.”

What it used to mean: A square-headed crossbow bolt.

Technically, nobody really uses the word quarrel on a day to day basis. “Argument” works just as well. That said, it’s still a universally known word in the English language. Quarrel usually means something like a verbal shouting match, but it can also mean a long-standing dispute between two people, such as an old quarrel between families that goes back for generations. That definition was widely used during the 15th century.

Go back to the 13th century, though, and quarrel is a special type of arrowhead on a crossbow bolt—four sided, which stems from the Latin word quadrus. Quarrel also became the word used for a square pane of glass, again coming from the Latin root for “four.” There’s no indication of how quarrel went from describing a crossbow bolt to becoming the word for an argument, but we’d like to think it’s because arguments were resolved with crossbow fights during the Middle Ages.

What it means now: The symbol of the Nazi Party and the Third Reich.

What it used to mean: Well-being and good luck.

Well before Hitler plastered a swastika on every flag and military uniform in Germany in 1932, the symbol had already been around for nearly 3,000 years. The oldest known record of the use of the swastika comes from pieces of pottery dated to ancient Troy circa 1,000 BC. The word itself comes from the word svastika in the Sanskrit language, which translates to “being fortunate.” As Sanskrit originated in the Indo-Aryan region, especially around India, it’s no surprise that swastikas appear heavily in Buddhism and Hinduism symbolism. To Buddhists, the swastika represents eternity; Hindus use a swastika to represent the god Ganesha.

When Hitler commandeered the swastika for his own purposes, he was attracted to its Indo-Aryan significance, claiming that it represented the “mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan race.”

What it means now: “Deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct.”

What it used to mean: To walk noisily wearing wooden shoes.

In 13th century France, wooden shoes were unfashionable. These wooden shoes were called sabots, were worn by lower class citizens because they were cheaper than leather shoes. Now, if you’ve ever tried to walk more than a few steps in a wooden shoe, you know it’s difficult, clumsy, and noisy. The French noticed that fact as well, and came up with a word to describe it: saboter, to walk noisily wearing sabots.

Eventually saboter changed to sabotage and the meaning we know today, but the jump from “noisy walking” to “deliberate destruction” comes with a fun story: when French workers went on strike, they would angrily hurl their wooden shoes into the factory machinery, damaging them beyond repair. Thus wooden shoes became a symbol of destruction.

Unfortunately, that story hasn’t been verified, and most etymologists think that the modern meaning came about through a comparatively boring story: Wooden shoes make you clumsy, and so saboter became known as any sort of bungle, like getting the words wrong in a speech and completely bungling the whole thing. By 1910, saboter had further progressed to malicious bungling, and the word was changed to sabotage.

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