In this voodoo-inspired test, the ingredients of said cake were rye meal… and urine from the girls said to be afflicted by the witch’s evil incantations. The test had dogs eat this cake, after which the alleged witch should scream out in pain – for in the process of her cursing the victims, she sent invisible particles of herself (the embodiment of pure evil, that is), which would show up in the urine....
Spanish soldiers were instructed (initially by Queen Isabella of Spain, and later by the Pope) to actively enslave or subdue either the cannibals of the Americas or any infidels who resisted conversion. Tribal cannibalism has most certainly occurred. But the horrors of man-eating in the “civilized world” have sometimes been equally bad. 10 The Real Cannibals Were the Europeans It’s true. From the Middle Ages to late Victorian times, Europeans swallowed just about every part of the human body as medicine....
However, entire families are sometimes murdered by a lone psychopath or somebody bent on revenge. Tragically, some of these rare cases are never solved. 10 The Tan Siblings In Singapore, Tan Kuen Chai and his wife, Lee Mei Ying, owned and drove a bus for schoolchildren. The Tans had four children of their own: a daughter in kindergarten named Chin Nee and three sons in primary school named Kok Peng, Kok Hin, and Kok Soon....
10 Ying-chi The ying-chi are arguably the first official, independent prostitutes in Chinese history. Their acknowledged existence is credited to Emperor Wu, who was said to recruit female camp followers for the sole purpose of escorting his armies and keeping them entertained on long marches. Ying-chi literally means “camp harlot,” a title that was no doubt a flattering one in 100 BC. Some sources question these girls’ claim as the first Chinese prostitutes, though....
SEE ALSO: 10 Ways Edison Treated Tesla Like a Jerk 10Alleged Eidetic Memory It’s often claimed that Tesla never needed to write anything down because he had either a photographic or eidetic memory. While scientists have not ruled out the claim, the researchers who have studied the phenomenon have admitted that they can’t even prove its existence, although others have pointed out flaws in their methodologies. As a brilliant scientist and inventor, it’s quite possible that Tesla had excellent visual memory, but it was never tested....
Wolfsheim were a Hamburg, Germany industrial-pop band that took their name from a character in The Great Gatsby. They rose to fame in their native country in 1991 with “The Sparrows and the Nightingales,” and soon became MTV Germany mainstays with their song “Dream of You.” Their music was a hypnotic blend of Darkwave and synthpop. Thanks to such momentous tracks as “Find You’re Gone” and “Kunstliche Welten,” they remain a great impact on European industrial music....
This week has been full of stories of people doing random, small gestures that meant a lot. There’s a runner who carried a puppy, a mechanic who checked on a car by the side of the road, a dispatcher who became a math tutor, and a lawyer who held an umbrella. 10 As Seen On The Office A man from Tucson, Arizona, used the knowledge he learned from The Office to perform lifesaving CPR on a woman until the paramedics arrived....
10 Disproving The Earth Is Flat One day in 1870, Alfred Russel Wallace saw an ad in the newspaper: John Hampden, a fanatical Flat-Earther, was waging £500 that nobody would be able to prove the Earth to be round using a certain experiment, today known as the Bedford Level Experiment. “Easy money,” thought Wallace, a respected geographer and biologist. The original experiment was conducted in 1838 by Samuel Rowbotham, pioneer of the modern Flat Earth movement....
10Exporters Are Experiencing Economic Chaos Cheap gasoline is ravaging the economies of oil exporters around the world. Russia has been one of the hardest hit—it needs oil at around $100 a barrel to balance its budget and fund government services like pensions, education, and the military. The decline in oil prices has also helped fuel a currency crisis, producing inflation of over 11 percent by the end of 2014. The country’s banking system is also in crisis, while Moody’s recently cut the credit ratings of Russian government bonds and the country’s largest oil company, Gazprom, to one step above junk status....
10Dark Matter May Cause Mass Extinctions Michael Rampino, a biology professor from New York University, believes that Earth’s movement through the galactic disk (our region in the Milky Way galaxy) may have caused mass extinction events on Earth. This happened because our movement disturbed the orbit of comets in the outer solar system (known as the “Oort Cloud”) and increased the heat in our planet’s core. With its planets in tow, the Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way every 250 million years....
As they’re portrayed, they’re not going to be the people you invite for dinner. The media paints psychopaths as cold, calculating individuals who can’t tell right from wrong. They are just downright evil in many people’s eyes. Sure, they’re not wired like the average person. But they’re not all sinister characters like Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, either. Today, we’ll tell you the truth about psychopaths. It may not be what you expect....
10 Gives You High Cholesterol A 1990 study at the University of California, Irvine, studied the cholesterol levels in children, investigating whether or not watching TV or playing video games had an effect. What they found was shocking: Children who watched more TV had elevated cholesterol levels; those who sat in front of the television for four hours a day were nearly four times as likely to suffer from heart disease later in life....
It is amazing that this one still lingers in the public consciousness as much as it does, especially considering so many of the things Al Gore really has said that are so far from reality. Part of the reason could be that Gore himself has joked about this on several occasions. But the truth is that he never said this. In 1999, he gave an interview in which he stated that as a member of Congress, he had pushed legislation to create the internet, meaning develop it so it could be used on a much wider scale....
The pressure to have children has forced some women to steal other women’s babies and pass the kids off as their own. Sometimes, the babies are kidnapped from the hospital or the homes of their mothers. In the most extreme cases, however, an expectant mother is murdered and the fetus is removed from her womb. Here are 10 times that women stole other women’s babies and passed them off as theirs....
This is our warmup item as it has appeared on a previous list. Esprit d’Escalier (literally the spirit of the staircase) is that witty comeback that you think of moments after leaving the situation in which you might have been able to use it. The staircase is a reference to your departure from the scene. This is a dreadful thing to experience, and most of the time we don’t get a chance to say the clever thing we come up with....
10Arius (d. A.D. 336) Arius, the Presbyter of Alexandria, believed that Christ was a lesser, separate being from God the Father. For this reason, he and his Christian followers were bitterly opposed as heretics by those who believed in the Trinity. This issue divided the fourth-century Church, and the pendulum swung as the Roman emperor Constantine alternately favored one faction over the other. In 324, the Council of Nicea condemned Arius, and Constantine banished him....
We start our list with Keira Knightley as Cecilia Tallis in Atonement. She may not be given the benefit of the doubt, but this and A Dangerous Method (2011) show that when she is given good scripts, she can make the most of the material. She plays Cecilia with alternating lust and vindictiveness toward James McAvoy and Saoirse Ronan, respectively. She breaks free of Elizabeth Swann and gets a chance to play a three-dimensional character, and makes the most of it....
Quote: “If nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve.” What he actually said: “I will not accept if nominated and will not serve if elected.” It means exactly the same thing, but the actual language is less poetic than the misquote. Quote: “Those who do not remember history are condemned to repeat it.” What he actually said: In “Life of Reason,” Santayana wrote, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it....
Buttock Parter International Patent WO02069773 Yes – you read that right. This patent is meant to part your buttocks whilst sitting on the toilet. The text of the patent describes this far better than I: The invention relates to a toilet seat comprising a seat surface for the user and an opening limited by the seat surface. The invention aims to facilitate defaecation for the user in a simple, comfortable manner and preventing soiling in the area around the anus when defaecating....
See Also: 10 Secret Rooms Inside The World’s Most Famous Landmarks 10 The Beehive The Beehive (home to the executive branch of the government of New Zealand) was meant to be the final wing of the classically styled parliament buildings, but a modern style was chosen instead due to earthquake risk. The shape is so impractical (all the interior rooms are wedge shaped) that a square front had to be added to provide a security wing....
