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Early civilizations have repeatedly made discoveries and invented techniques that we still can’t quite reproduce, even with all of our modern technology and insight. This list is dedicated to those ancient wonders and highlights ten of the most surprising, ingenious, and fascinating ancient technologies that remain a mystery. 10 Greek Fire Greek Fire is an interesting historical technology in that it sounds fantastic, was completely real, and its composition remains a mystery....

Fish are poikilothermic organisms, or in simpler terms, cold-blooded animals, which means that the lower the temperature of their surroundings is, the harder it is for them to maintain their metabolic functions. Furthermore, as temperatures go lower, ice crystals can form in the organism’s cells and thus the animal might suffer irreversible damage and ultimately, death. However, arctic fish—while lacking the luxury of generating their own body heat like seals and other marine mammals that live in the same freezing waters—seem to thrive; the way in which they manage this has puzzled scientists for a long time....

For example, we have yet to understand how so many wild creatures can predict earthquakes in advance by days and even weeks. Current information about their abilities is mostly speculation, but it’s certainly no coincidence when toads abandon their ponds days before an earthquake. Reportedly, even snakes have been spotted waking up from hibernation in the middle of winter and venturing out in deadly temperatures an entire month before an earthquake strikes....

10 The Cash WinFall Scandal Shortly after the lottery game Cash WinFall was released by the Massachusetts State Lottery in 2004, people with extensive knowledge of probability and statistics found a strange quirk in the prize structure. The game would build up to a $2 million jackpot about every three months, and then there would be a draw for the $2 million. As long as no one won the $2 million, which had only happened once in seven years, the game paid out a large number of smaller prizes in what was called a “rolldown week....

It’s not as crazy as it sounds, either, and it turns out there are a lot of valuable things that can be learned from the study of zombies. Some things are serious, some are fun, but they’re all pretty fascinating. 10Smelling Like The Dead Will Work It’s one of the standard ways that the heroes always manage to get through a zombie horde at some point. Smear some blood and guts on yourself, walk slowly, and don’t draw attention to yourself....

Using quick thinking and sometimes very creative weaponry, these women surprised their attackers by fighting back. From new mothers to mothers-to-be, the very old to the very young, they protected not only their homes but their own lives—and in some cases, the lives of their families. 10 Semantha Bunce On the morning of November 3, 2015, in Charlotte, North Carolina, 21-year-old mother Semantha Bunce was breastfeeding her newborn son, Bentley, when someone started ringing her doorbell....

10Germany’s 50-Pfennig Emergency Money Germany was already suffering shortages in coins and metals when World War I kicked off in 1914. With the advent of hostilities, silver prices skyrocketed, and copper and nickel were diverted to the war effort. Without coinage, commerce became nearly impossible, and municipalities and private businesses began printing paper money called notgeld or emergency money. At first, these notgeld were plain, issued in 25, 50, and 75 pfenning (penny) notes, along with some in marks....

10 Rose De Savage On a January morning in 1280, a group of men kidnapped a woman named Rose de Savage while she was walking to church. The band’s leader, John de Clifford, moved Rose to his house and made her undress. He then raped her, and after he was finished, he locked Rose in an upper-story bedroom. Over the next 21 months, Rose was held prisoner in the same room, forbidden to leave....

Found guilty of sexual assault and murder, 28 year old Michael Anderson Godwin was sentenced to death in South Carolina. An appeal rescued him from the electric chair, but destiny apparently wasn’t done with him. In March of 1989, Godwin was perched on a steel prison toilet, attempting to fix a pair of headphones attached to his television set. He bit into the wire, and was electrocuted. The city-state of Singapore is well known for its bizarre, often draconian laws....

10She Is Really Old In Age of Ultron, viewers are given a glimpse, via flashback, of some of Black Widow’s training in Russia’s Red Room. She mentions that one of the side effects of the experiments that turned her into a super soldier is that she can’t have children. In the comics, a more interesting side effect is that she seemingly doesn’t age at all. Indeed, the comic Black Widow was born in 1928 and recruited by Soviet intelligence sometime in the late 1930s....

It is a natural human trait to try to make sense of the unknown, to give it a familiarity, to understand it. So often, sightings that could be explained away as mists or birds or other completely natural phenomena are explained as ghosts. People love to share their ghost stories, and it seems that celebrities are no different. Here are ten celebrities who have had offscreen brushes with the unknown....

10Flight Attendants Today, the stereotypical flight attendant is a beautiful woman in a tight skirt. But the very first flight attendants were exclusively male. Known as “couriers,” they often included the young sons of the businessmen who sponsored early flights. As air travel became more common, the responsibility of attending to passengers and serving drinks actually fell to the co-pilot. Professional flight attendants were only hired again in the 1930s, when the first female flight attendants are recorded....

Flinders Street in Melbourne saw its first railway station, a collection of weatherboard train sheds, called Melbourne Terminus, in 1854. To do away with this makeshift construction, a worldwide design competition was held in 1899, which saw 17 entries. Interestingly, the contest was won not by an architect, but by two railway employees of the same railway station. They named their French Renaissance style design Green Light. In 1962, a nationwide contest held for designing the headquarters of the municipal government of Boston saw the entry of 256 different designs....

10Squishy Robots If you’ve watched the movie Terminator 2 then you’ve seen the T-1000 robot squeeze through tight areas by changing into a liquid. It could repair itself that way, too. Now, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have made their own version of the shape-shifting T-1000 a reality. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wanted deformable (or “squishy”) robots that acted like an octopus. That means they could squeeze through tight spaces and enlarge afterward to move around a larger space....

10 The Gambia The fact that the first Gambian president was reelected five times and the second ruled for over two decades, for a total of 53 years between them, should tell us volumes about the politics and history of this country. Dawda Jawara, the country’s first leader, took up his post (initially as prime minister) in 1962, just before Gambian independence from the UK. Jawara was, by all accounts, somewhat better than other African leaders of the era....

10 Wayne And John Schreiner On August 22, 2012, 52-year-old Windsor, Ontario, resident Allen Lucier and his 82-year-old friend (who asked for his name not to be released) were out driving around. The men were on Crawford Avenue, heading onto Wyandotte Street when a red Pontiac cut them off. The 82-year-old, who was driving, honked his horn in response. Both vehicles stopped at an intersection near Tim Hortons. The Pontiac was blocking the crosswalk, where an elderly man in a wheelchair was trying to cross....

In 1824, John Quincy Adams became president even though he lost the election. It was as bad an idea then as it is now. It caused major problems, and its fallout changed American politics forever. 10President Adams Lost Both The Popular Vote And The Electoral College John Quincy Adams didn’t just lose the electoral vote—he lost everything. His main opponent, Andrew Jackson, won by every definition possible. He had the popular vote and the Electoral College—and he still didn’t become President....

We believe that Listverse does that for you at least three times a day. But even here, it’s possible to miss some simple facts that are just so cool that when we think about them a little deeper, the magnitude of the information really hits us, leaving us bewildered and astounded. Without any further ado, here are 10 crazy facts that will wow you. 10 You Were Once The Youngest Person In Existence We expect two main responses to this fact....

But forecasting the future is a difficult, almost impossible task. Although people from the past managed to guess some things right—driverless cars and advanced communication, for example—some things they predicted have yet to come true. 10 Houses Will Cost Only $5,000 And Last Only 25 Years In 1950, Popular Mechanics published an article titled “Miracles You’ll See In The Next Fifty Years.” The article suggested that building materials such as wood, brick, and stone would become too expensive by the year 2000....

Combining the isolation and desolation of cave exploring with the powerlessness and (often literal) madness that can come with scuba diving, cave diving is quite obviously a tremendous challenge. Only the bravest and most skilled adventurers attempt this most extreme of extreme sports, and even then, their success is far from guaranteed. The list gathers ten stories from cave divers who unfortunately found themselves in the creepiest of circumstances. Whether it’s close calls with death, brushes with the paranormal, or just plain tragedy, here are ten of the creepiest tales of cave diving....