Doctors have grown things in strange places and traced the bizarre origins of the most normal of features. When life goes wrong, body parts can also unveil gruesome mysteries, suffering buried in history, and medical problems that beggar belief. 10 The Yo-Yo Injury In 2005, Dazzling Dave visited schools in North Dakota. The professional yo-yo performer entertained kids for up to 12 hours at a time. A week later, the man, whose real name was David Schulte, noticed that his right index finger warmed more slowly than the rest....

10 Scapegoat Today’s meaning: A person who is blamed for the mistakes of others Real goats may be saddened to learn the origins of “scapegoat,” which was birthed in an ancient Hebrew tradition. Yom Kippur was a day of atonement and the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Made from the Hebrew words for “goat for Azazel,” “scapegoat” was first used in 1530 by William Tyndale. In Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible, the word “Azazel” only appears in the context of one particular Jewish ritual....

10 He’s A Prototype For Batman At first, the claim that Daredevil (introduced in the 1960s) served as a prototype for Batman (introduced in the 1930s) seems absurd. However, Daredevil became a prototype for the Batman that many people know and love today, namely the grim, no-nonsense Batman who emphatically believes he’s above the law. Of course, Batman didn’t start out that way. When Robin was introduced, Batman’s comics were very lighthearted, leading to the iconic and campy Batman TV show starring Adam West....

10 ‘Furvin Kryakutnoy’ Fans of Monty Python know that the Montgolfier brothers kick-started the age of flight when they launched their hot-air balloon in 1783, proving that living creatures could safely head up into the wild blue yonder. For decades, the Russians firmly believed that they had beat the French to it by nearly 50 years. In the 19th century, a Russian forger named A. Sulukadzev wrote about the exploits of Furvin Kryakutnoy of Nerekhta....

10 Mato DukovacCroatia When Croatia became an independent country in 1941, its government organized an air army that would help the Nazis invade the Soviet Union. Mato Dukovac was among the first batch of Croatian pilots trained by the Germans. They headed off to the Eastern Front as soon as their training was over. On Dukovac’s 12th mission, he shot down a Soviet I-16 fighter plane. However, a few days later, his squadron left combat on a transfer back to Croatia....

The truth is that we eat many mainstream products in our daily lives that could lead to poisoning or even death. Here are 10 of these surprising foods and spices. 10 Cinnamon Cinnamon comes in two forms: “regular” and “true.” Ceylon is “true” cinnamon, and cassia is the “regular” alternative sold by most grocers. Ceylon is often pricier, so most people are eating the cassia alternative. While cinnamon does have many benefits, it can also be a contributing factor to certain health issues....

Many people may consider the list to be “too American” but it’s just what research yielded. It can be concluded that the U.S. has a bit more of a gambling culture than other countries because it is home to Las Vegas, Atlantic City, and multiple other gambling cities and towns. Enjoy. In January, 1995 Reid Errol McNeal defied roughly 1 million to 1 odds and hit a monster keno jackpot of $100,000 at Bally’s Park Place Casino Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey....

10Baron HaasTook Lunch With A Lioness The son of a Czech businessman ennobled in the late 19th century, Baron Georg Haas Jr. took perverse pride in showing up the old aristocracy. A fierce bohemian with immense wealth and a castle to play around in, he kept over 80 mistresses and delighted in causing scandal. But his Casanova exploits pale beside his eccentricities. Baron Haas had a single goal in life: to make sure his beloved pets never left his side, even in death....

If you’re going to choose an animal to give birth to, you might as well choose something small and inconspicuous, right? Put it this way, you’re not going to choose a shark. Mary Toft of Godalming, England, opted for the humble rabbit—but not just one of the furry little thumpers. When surgeon John Howard was summoned to the Toft household in 1726, he witnessed the birth of nine rabbits, all dead and not all whole....

10 Catterina Vizzani Catterina Vizzani was born in Rome in 1719, and hers is the first story we have of a woman examined by a doctor in search of a physical cause for her attraction to other women. By the time she was 14, she had fallen in love with the young woman who had been teaching her embroidery and took to dressing in men’s clothes in an attempt to woo her....

Margorie woke and let out a loud scream as one of the body snatchers tried cutting her swollen finger to retrieve the ring. One account states that the shocked robbers died on the spot, while another states that they fled and never raided another grave again. Margorie left for home, where her husband, John McCall, died of shock the moment he saw her. He was buried in the same grave she had just left....

10 Pig Basket Massacre After the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies, a group of about 200 British servicemen found themselves stuck in Java during the invasion. They took to the hills to fight as a guerrilla resistance force, but they were captured and tortured by the Kempeitai. According to over 60 eyewitnesses testifying at the Hague following the war, these men were then forced into 1-meter-long (3 ft) bamboo cages meant to transport pigs....

10 Nigerian Fraud Scheme The “Nigerian prince” scam has existed in some form since at least the 1800s. As our society has grown more conscious of fraud, the ploy has become prime fodder for Internet memes and the occasional Sony commercial. So you’d expect that someone receiving an email from a Nigerian “dignitary” offering riches in exchange for a hefty financial investment would simply delete the message. Yet in 2006, County Treasurer Thomas Katona in Alcona, Michigan, fell for that obvious con, costing taxpayers dearly....

10De Palomares Tomb Miguel de Palomares was one of the first Catholic Priests to arrive in Mexico after the Spanish conquest in 1521. His grave was discovered by accident when, in 2016, workers dug a pit for a lamp post. When archaeologists widened the space, they discovered a large slab with the name de Palomares carved on it. The two-meter-long gravestone marks an unusual burial place for a Catholic priest—beneath the floor of an Aztec temple....

Sometimes, it seems like there isn’t a sequel idea they won’t greenlight—but there are a few. For all the sequels out there, there are some so crazy that they didn’t get made. That doesn’t mean we didn’t get pretty close to having every one of these, though. 10 Batman Unchained Back when Joel Schumacher was making all your least-favorite Batman movies, he started working on what he thought was going to be his greatest Batman film....

After requesting the crew to take off again, he proceeded to jump out of the plane and into the night. He was never seen again. Here are ten interesting facts about the man the media (incorrectly) dubbed “D.B. Cooper.” 10 He Was Never Identified Or Found The most mysterious fact surrounding the hijacking in November 1971 is that the FBI never identified the man. It remains the only unsolved air piracy crime involving a commercial airliner....

This was possible thanks to the moving assembly line invented by Henry Ford. However, that is not the only notable fact about the vehicle. There are a few more, from how it got its famous nickname (the “Tin Lizzie”) to claims that it was the cause of Prohibition. 10 The Model T Did Not Cause Prohibition There are claims that Henry Ford designed the Model T to run on ethanol instead of gasoline....

The St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (Massacre de la Saint-Barthélemy in French) was a wave of Catholic mob violence against the Huguenots (French Calvinist Protestants), during the French Wars of Religion. Traditionally believed to have been instigated by Catherine de’ Medici, the mother of King Charles IX, the massacre took place six days after the wedding of the king’s sister to the Protestant Henry of Navarre. This was an occasion for which many of the most wealthy and prominent Huguenots had gathered in largely Catholic Paris....

10The Magic Trick We don’t know which entertainer first sawed an assistant in half, but by the 1920s, the illusion had become relatively common. There are many variations on the trick, but the most shocking was a version called “The Miracle of 37” performed by magician Rajah Raboid. Raboid made use of three people in his act—Johnny Eck, brother Robert Eck, and a dwarf. Johnny Eck had a rare condition called sacral agenesis, which gave him tiny, undeveloped legs and feet without making him a true dwarf....

Africans were not the only people to ever be enslaved, however. Almost every nation has experienced bondage at some point in their history. Christian slaves from as far away as Russia and Austria could often be found in the slave markets run by the Ottoman Turks. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, the Barbary pirates of North Africa enslaved as many as one million Christians from Southern Europe. During the age of the First Crusade, the Turks themselves were often slave-soldiers called Mamluks....