10 Amazing Survivors Of Unusual Natural Disasters

10Queen Of The Sea The Queen of the Sea was a Sri Lankan train that tragically lived up to its watery name. One December, the overloaded locomotive was approaching its final destination when it was hit by an enormous wave caused by the devastating Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004. All eight carriages were instantly flooded and flung off the tracks with incredible force. Daya Wijaya Gunawardana, a Colombo restaurateur, miraculously survived when the coach he was in flipped over four times....

February 4, 2023 · 13 min · 2601 words · Pamela Benz

10 Amazing Ways Tree Dwelling Animals Fool Predators

10The One-Bird Army A tiny Australian bird, the brown thornbill understands the strategic power of lying. Whenever a predator bird threatens its nest, the thornbill creates an incredible auditory illusion, mimicking real alarm calls of several other bird species. Specifically, it uses alarm calls warning of a hawk approaching, which is usually more than enough to scare the smaller predator off. And the thornbill is a talented mimic, capable of reproducing the fearful cries of up to four different species....

February 4, 2023 · 9 min · 1877 words · Sabrina Watkins

10 Attempts To Better People S Lives That Went Horribly Wrong

The demand for land significantly outweighed the availability of land leases. As a result, more than 10,000 families who had made a hopeful trek to Rondonia were left empty-handed. But as disappointed as those landless families must have been, many who did obtain land tasted a far bitterer defeat. Thousands of would-be farmers discovered that the soil was ill-suited for traditional food staples like rice and corn. As a result, many found themselves jobless after making the long journey and clearing acres of land to set up shop....

February 4, 2023 · 15 min · 3114 words · Maria Wiley

10 Awesome Feats Of Wartime Engineering

10 The Siege Ramp At Masada High atop a rocky plateau in the Judean desert, 500 meters (1,500 ft) above the Dead Sea, the fortress of Masada frowned down upon any would-be invader. Here, after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in AD 70, a band of Zealots fled to continue the Jewish rebellion. For three years, they defied the besieging Romans. The 10th Legion under Flavius Silva tried to starve the rebels....

February 4, 2023 · 18 min · 3657 words · Eliza Dellosso

10 Barbaric Medical Procedures Still Practiced Today

We’re not saying people are secretly chlorinating your water source or recycling dead bodies, but several medical procedures we seem unable to get past are largely crude and horrifyingly barbaric by today’s standards. If it works, stick with it, right? 10Scraping The Womb The fields of obstetrics and gynecology are probably among the bloodiest in medicine. Most women, due to problems with their uterus, have to undergo at some point in their lives what is known as “curettage,” or the scraping of the womb....

February 4, 2023 · 7 min · 1426 words · Paul Williamson

10 Best Courtroom Scenes In Movies

“Ladies and gentlemen, a tap dance.” Taye Diggs’ lead-in sets the stage (figuratively and literally) for Richard Gere’s Billy Flynn to engage in some courtroom histrionics. Claiming “I’ve never lost a case,” Flynn’s tap dance is juxtaposed with him working over Velma Kelly (Catherine Zeta-Jones) and makes prosecutor Harrison (Colm Feore) look like a complete fool. He even manages to imply that Harrison is complicit in setting up Roxie. The coup de grace is when he furiously bangs the judge’s gavel several times, and then, out of breath, turns to the courtroom and exclaims, “The defense rests!...

February 4, 2023 · 6 min · 1112 words · Cindy Howell

10 Bizarre Attempts At Vertical Takeoff And Landing Aircraft

10 The XFY-1 Pogo Project Hummingbird, a study on vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft, was commissioned by the US Navy and Air Force. The aim was a versatile fighter which could take off and land from ships at sea and act as air defense for a fleet. Contracts were awarded to two companies to build one prototype each. The Convair Company’s XFY-1 Pogo proposal was one of the winners and proved to be the more successful of the pair....

February 4, 2023 · 8 min · 1639 words · Catherine Thaxton

10 Bizarre Celebrity Suicide Tales

10 Elton John Tried To Gas Himself Suicide and Elton John have been linked in the past. In interviews, he has recounted a failed suicide attempt in the early 1970s when he swallowed a hefty number of pills and then jumped into a swimming pool. But this wasn’t the first time; a 2007 biography claimed that Elton tried to gas himself with an oven in 1969 due to a personal struggle to reconcile his sexuality....

February 4, 2023 · 10 min · 1999 words · Kelly Houser

10 Bizarre Ways Famous Brands Got Their Names

10Volkswagen Volkswagen means “Car of the People” in German, and there’s a good reason it has such a name. The Volkswagen came into existence as a spearhead of the Nazis’ plans to make good on their promise to look after the average citizen. Cars were only reserved for the social elite, so Hitler proposed an affordable car, allowing everyone to enjoy the benefits of the rich. The problem was that even when constructing cars for the elite, the German car production wasn’t at its best....

February 4, 2023 · 6 min · 1184 words · Dennis Kemp

10 Bloody Prison Riots

10The Battle Of Alcatraz Since it’s stuck in the middle of San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz Island Federal Penitentiary was considered inescapable and probably seemed an impractical place to stage a riot. However, on May 2, 1946, bank robber Bernard Coy was working as an orderly in C Block when he suddenly attacked the guard responsible for overseeing the prison’s weapons. After taking the man’s key and unlocking the other prisoners from their cells, Coy and five accomplices—Joseph “Dutch” Cretzer, Marvin Hubbard, Clarence Carnes, Sam Shockley, and Miran “Buddy” Thompson—grabbed weapons and managed to disarm all of the guards in the building....

February 4, 2023 · 13 min · 2637 words · George Collis

10 Burning Facts About The Ku Klux Klan

10 The KKK Isn’t One Big Group A cursory examination of history might suggest that the Ku Klux Klan existed, in one form or another, since the end of the Civil War. However, the Klan has gone through a few distinct eras. The first organization formed almost immediately before the end of the Civil War, but it only existed a few years before disbanding. Some 45 years later, the Klan resurrected after the release of the 1915 film The Birth of a Nation....

February 4, 2023 · 10 min · 1940 words · Lucille Miles

10 Cases Of Murder By Suicide

10 Telecom Terror Tactics In 2016, a Paris prosecutor filed a 193-page requisition recommending seven executives from France Telecom face involuntary manslaughter charges for causing at least 35 employees to commit suicide between 2008 and 2009. In October 2006, the company’s CEO announced massive restructuring. 22,000 employees had to leave, and 14,000 were forced to change positions to make room for 6,000 younger recruits. France Telecom’s “extremely brutal management techniques” involved providing a bonus for each employee pushed out as well as forcing working mothers to commute over two hours to work....

February 4, 2023 · 8 min · 1571 words · Robert Peeples

10 Celebrities With Goofy Hobbies Nobody Would Have Expected

Some of these side interests—running restaurants, making fine wine, or collecting rare and expensive cars—just scream, “I’m a rich rock star and my used floss is worth more than your entire house.” Others are more pedestrian in nature. They’re just about the last things you’d expect multi-millionaire rock gods to care about, but keep in mind that they’re human beings, just like anybody else. Just because they pay the bills by stringing together a few chords and singing bad poetry into a mic, doesn’t mean their off-the-clock interests can’t be as goofy as our own....

February 4, 2023 · 11 min · 2311 words · Mike Quagliano

10 Cheap Thrift Store Finds That Were Worth Thousands

10A Copy of the Declaration of Independence Michael Sparks frequently visited the Music City Thrift Store in Nashville. On one of his weekly trips, he picked up a yellowed, shellacked, rolled-up document. When he unfurled it, he discovered that it was a copy of the Declaration of Independence. Sparks had passed over many copies of the Declaration before; however, this one was clearly something special. The copy was so exceptionally beautiful that he first thought that it was an engraving....

February 4, 2023 · 10 min · 1948 words · John Jauregui

10 Controversial Apocalyptic Theories

The Book of Apocalypse from the Bible (also known as the book of Revelation) is probably the most well known end of the world prophecy (at least in Western Culture). There has been endless debate on what parts of the Bible are meant literally, and what parts are meant symbolically, and this is doubly true for this specific book. With vivid imagery and strange statements that leave room for interpretation, people all around the world have spent their lifetimes trying to decode the Book of Apocalypse....

February 4, 2023 · 12 min · 2552 words · Robert Russell

10 Countries With Bizarrely Specific Downsides

See Also: Top 10 Countries With Bizarre Obsessions 10Venezuela Is Running Out Of Toilet Paper When Hugo Chavez finally trotted off to dictator heaven earlier this year, he left a Venezuela marred by human rights abuses, teetering on the edge of an economic collapse, and virtually starved of a vital necessity: toilet roll. You read that right: Since early 2013, Venezuela’s government has been fighting a losing battle against the nation’s dwindling wiping material stocks....

February 4, 2023 · 10 min · 2059 words · Chester Bourgoin

10 Craziest Places People Went For Youtube

From crime-infested ghettoes to breakaway states, here are ten insane places that only a lunatic would go—or somebody who puts views above all else. 10 Chechnya, Russia—Bald and Bankrupt This Russian-speaking British adventurer is no stranger to a walk on the wild side, having made videos in the Sahara, Sinaloa, and Bolivia. But it is the former Soviet Union where his heart lies. Journeys in Belarus and war-torn Ukraine have been well-received by his three million subscribers....

February 4, 2023 · 7 min · 1467 words · Eddie Gonzalez

10 Crazy News Stories You Probably Missed This Week 9 28 19

This week there are quite a few bizarre crime-related tales that involve a wrathful walrus, a camel with sore testicles, and 25,000 pills of ecstasy. Unfortunately, those three are not part of the same story. In other news, a French woman discovers she has a 700-year-old masterpiece in her kitchen and we look at prostitution in the notorious frontier town of Deadwood. SEE ALSO: Top 10 Bizarre And Offbeat Stories Involving Serial Killers...

February 4, 2023 · 10 min · 1978 words · Harold Taylor

10 Creative Ways To Enjoy Coffee Besides Drinking It

Next time you think about throwing those used coffee grounds away, think again. They can be recycled and used throughout your home or garden. Here are 10 creative ways to enjoy coffee besides drinking it. 10 Insect Repellent Mosquitoes are pesky and annoying. The little bloodsuckers can ruin a relaxing night outdoors. You will find yourself busy swatting them away instead of enjoying the time with friends and family. Coffee grounds are an unusual solution to this annoying little problem....

February 4, 2023 · 8 min · 1625 words · Frank Greene

10 Creepy Accounts Of Sleeping With The Dead

In every one of the following instances, a living person curled up in bed or on the floor to sleep with someone who was well past their expiration date. Strange bedfellows, indeed. 10 Wellman’s Arctic Expedition All alone in a stone hut on Franz Josef Land, Bernt Bentsen and Paul Bjorvik made each other a solid promise. If one of them died, the other would keep the body inside the hut to protect it from polar bears until it could be buried....

February 4, 2023 · 10 min · 1996 words · Bessie Lambdin