Keeping up with the news is hard. So hard, in fact, that we’ve decided to save you the hassle by rounding up the most significant, unusual, or just plain old mind-blowing stories each week.

This week, the phrase “spoke too soon” is the one that probably applies best to the news. You may recall last week’s column opened with us saying how it had been a blissfully dull week, with no major attacks. No sooner had we filed the dang thing than a mass killing in Kashmir threatened to send nuclear-armed India and Pakistan spiraling into war. More on this brewing crisis below, alongside all the other important stuff that happened this week.

10 A Terrorist Attack Pushed India-Pakistan Tensions To Boiling Point

A mountainous region in the Himalayas, Kashmir is a beautiful slice of Asia that also happens to be one of the biggest potential triggers for a nuclear war. Partially administered by both India and Pakistan, and wholly claimed by both, it’s a troubled place where unrest is common, and violence is never far from the surface.

Last Thursday, after this column had been written, that violence came erupting out. A suicide bomber attacked a convoy of India’s security forces, detonating a car bomb that killed 40. The attack was claimed by Pakistani militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed. It was the deadliest attack in Kashmir in decades.

Bad as this was, what comes next could be even worse. India believes Jaish-e-Mohammed is linked to Pakistan’s intelligence services. There’s now a real chance that these two nuclear-armed states could go to war.^[1]

So far, India has only implemented economic sanctions against Pakistan. Still, military options are said to be on the table, and even a limited military strike against Jaish-e-Mohammed could trigger countermeasures and spark a conflagration.

9 16 US States Sued To Stop Trump’s Border Wall

Late last week, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to redirect federal funds and build his border wall. This week, the fallout from that announcement blanketed the news, in the form of 16 US states suing the White House.^[2]

Trump’s national emergency declaration was always going to be controversial. Controversial on the left because Democrats see the wall as a monument to racism. Controversial on the right because building the wall will eat up a ton of federal funds and involve eminent domain land purchases, all of which smacks of the sort of big government project many Republicans did not sign on for.

Now, the battle moves to the US courts, courtesy of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Virginia, and Michigan. If the decision goes to the Supreme Court, it could set a precedent for the use of executive power for decades to come.

8 Brexit Began To Rip Apart The UK’s Main Political Parties

Ah, Brexit. The gift that keeps on giving like a recurring bout of malaria. With barely a month to go until the UK exits the European Union and no Brexit deal in sight, the tensions in Westminster are starting to reach breaking point.

On Monday, they finally made a crack in the opposition Labour Party. Seven MPs, including former leadership contender Chuka Umunna, split from the party over Jeremy Corbyn’s handling of Brexit and a recent anti-Semitism scandal. They aligned themselves to something called the Independent Group, a brand-new, moderate political entity that didn’t exist last week. One day later, an eighth Labour MP joined them. Shortly after that, three MPs defected from the ruling Conservative Party, saying Theresa May was in thrall to Brexit extremists.

The Independent Group is now the joint fourth-largest force in the UK Parliament, behind the Conservatives, Labour, and the Scottish National Party and equal with the Liberal Democrats.^[3]

In a 650-seat House, 11 doesn’t add up to very much, but it’s what this could mean for the future that’s important. Already, there’s talk of yet more Conservatives defecting. Should it look like Britain is really about to go over the Brexit cliff-edge, the Independent Group might become much bigger.

7 A Wave Of Anti-Semitism Swept France

France is home to the single largest Jewish community outside of Israel and the US. Sadly, there are some who don’t see this as something to be proud of, and their numbers are apparently growing. This week, a wave of anti-Semitic incidents across the country prompted tens of thousands to take to the streets in protest.^[4]

The attacks were the standard litany of hate that unfortunately goes with this territory. In Alsace, a Jewish cemetery was vandalized with swastikas. The German word for “Jew” was spray-painted on a bakery. A synagogue was shot at with an air rifle. More swastikas were painted on pictures of a Holocaust survivor in Paris. A tree planted to commemorate a Jewish man tortured to death was chopped down.

Perhaps most disturbingly, this anti-Semitism seems to have found a home in the yellow vest protest movement. On the weekend, a gang of yellow vests surrounded a prominent Jewish philosopher and peppered him with verbal abuse.

6 A Prominent Actor Was Charged With Faking His Homophobic Attack

So, this was a scandal few of us saw coming. Way back on January 29, Empire star Jussie Smollett was hospitalized, saying he’d been the victim of a racist and homophobic attack that had included a noose being tied around his neck. It was the sort of awful story that’s sadly all too common, only Smollett’s version came with a twist.

This Thursday, Smollett was formally arrested by the Chicago police. The reason? It’s now believed that he orchestrated his own attack for reasons that remain totally unclear.^[5]

It’s said that Smollett knew his two attackers and may have paid them to assault him. On top of that, he’s been charged with sending a threatening letter to the studio where Empire is filmed. Smollett vehemently denies all charges.

5 North Carolina’s 9th District Voter Fraud Case Got Even Bigger

Remember the 2018 midterms? After all the dust settled, the House races were left with a puzzling postscript. North Carolina’s 9th district race remained uncertified, despite the Republican candidate, Mark Harris, winning by 905 votes.

This was because credible allegations of voter fraud began to swirl not long after. Harris, it was alleged, had used a firm to go around various towns and collect absentee ballots by hand. This is already illegal under NC law, but then came accusations that Harris’s operatives had gone further by potentially “misplacing” or agreeing to pick up and then not picking up absentee votes for Democrat Dan McCready. There’s even been talk that Harris’s people may have filled in absentee voter ballots themselves.

On Monday, the executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections laid out the state’s evidence that voter fraud did take place. While far from conclusive, it certainly looks plausible. It was enough that the five members of the election board unanimously ordered a new election on Thursday afternoon.^[6]

4 A Bangladesh Fire Killed Around 80 People

Chawkbazar is a centuries-old district in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, that houses just about everything from residential homes, to shops, to businesses storing propane in super-unsafe conditions. That last item is exactly why you’re reading about it right now. Late Wednesday night, a fire broke out in Chawkbazar. In no time at all, it had killed somewhere in the region of 80 people.^[7]

Buildings in Chawkbazar are built insanely close, with mere inches separating them. It’s this that allowed the fire to spread with such speed. After a minibus caught fire outside a chemical shop, it caused an explosion that set half the district ablaze. By Thursday morning, 78 had been confirmed killed, with many more still missing.

Dhaka is no stranger to devastating fires. A 2010 fire that killed over 100 people was similarly blamed on the storage of dangerous chemicals in residential areas. It’s just a shame that no lessons were learned.

3 Bernie Sanders Unveiled His 2020 Presidential Bid

In the febrile atmosphere of 2016, it briefly looked like both major parties were going to have a populist outsider running as their candidate: Donald Trump for the Republicans and Bernie Sanders for the Democrats.

Clearly, this didn’t happen. Hillary locked down Southern Democrats’ votes and, with a little help from the anti-Bernie DNC, first sealed the nomination and then went down in flames in the election. Ever since, many Democrats have wondered, “Could he have done it? Could Bernie have beaten Trump?”

Well, they may soon have an answer. On Tuesday, the Democratic Socialist from Vermont announced he was running for the Democratic nomination again. Less than 24 hours later, he’d already raised over $5.9 million in donations.^[8]

Sanders is a known quantity with a fervent fan base and amazing fundraising prowess. Should he get the nomination, he could also do well in the Midwest states Trump won in 2016. However, Bernie’s also getting challenged from the left this time, something he definitely didn’t have to worry about in 2016.

2 The Supreme Court Slapped Down Civil Forfeiture

Civil asset forfeiture has long been one of the craziest things that a supposedly pro-individual rights country like the US allows to happen. In short, state and local governments can seize your stuff if they think you’ve committed a crime. In some cases, this has meant states grabbing everything they can get their hands on, even when the crime in question has been on the petty side, or even if the suspect has never been proven guilty.

The basic unfairness of all this still hasn’t gone away, but it’s gotten a little more palatable. This week, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling that civil asset forfeiture was covered by the Eighth Amendment’s Excessive Fines Clause, which prevents governments or corporations issuing disproportionate fines.^[9] From now on, anytime the state seizes your stuff, they will have to go to court to explain why they did so and why it was fair.

Some of the abuses of civil asset forfeiture have been jaw-dropping. The plaintiff in this case had been fined $1,200 for selling $225 of heroin but also had his $42,000 Land Rover seized. The Rover had been bought using his dad’s life insurance policy, not drug money.

1 A Shocking Attack Derailed Nigeria’s Elections

Last Friday, Nigeria’s government made a surprise announcement. They were delaying the country’s elections by one week due to violence. When asked why, they pointed to an attack on a Muslim minority community in Kaduna state earlier in the week.

At first, the attack was reported as having killed scores. By last Friday, the number had climbed to 66. On Tuesday, we got a final body count that was shocking. Over 130 people had been killed in the assault, making it equal in death toll to the horrific 2015 Paris attacks. According to the state governor, the attack had been intended to “wipe out certain communities.”^[10]

Last October, violence in the region led to the deaths of 55 people, mainly from the local Christian communities. This latest attack, which hit two villages at once, was apparently revenge-driven.

If that’s the case, it’s certainly upped the ante. With 130 dead, it seems the region of Kaduna could now be trapped in a cycle of bitter ethnic violence.

With another week in the history books, it’s time to sit back and review some of the stories that made the news over the last few days. Click here if you want to learn all about the major headlines. Otherwise, read on for unexpected and outlandish stories.

This week’s list is a collection of international affairs. There is the Canadian iceberg heist, the German Smurf party, and the French lightsaber duel. We find glow-in-the-dark spider fossils in Korea and striped horses in England. The Japanese get naked to uphold a 500-year-old tradition while an Australian woman dresses up as a gorilla to catch a flasher.

10 Smurf-tastic

Thousands assembled in the German village of Lauchringen to set the new world record for the largest gathering of Smurfs.

The event was organized by a group called Da Traditionsverein. According to the group’s Facebook page, the occasion drew 2,762 people who donned pointy hats, white pants, and blue paint to resemble the characters from the beloved comic book.

The Record Institute for Germany was there to officially confirm the number of the crowd, although it is still waiting for approval from Guinness World Records. To be eligible for the record, each participant had to have their skin either painted blue or covered by clothing. The white cap was also mandatory, although red was allowed for people dressed up as Papa Smurf.

This was actually the second time that organizers attempted to break the record. They first tried it in 2016 but managed to assemble only 2,149 people. This time, their efforts overshadowed the previous record of 2,510 Smurfs set in 2009 at Swansea University in Wales.^[1]

9 Spider Glow

Scientists found fossils of spiders whose eyes still glowed in the dark even though they died 110 million years ago.

Researchers from the Korea Polar Research Institute and the University of Kansas were exploring a Mesozoic shale deposit in South Korea called the Jinju Formation. They uncovered 10 spider fossils.

This was noteworthy enough on its own. These kinds of finds are exceedingly rare because soft, squishy spiders don’t make very good fossils and are typically found only in amber. However, two of them were even more exciting because their eyes still shone in the dark even after all this time.

Most likely, the source of the glow was the tapetum. This is a reflective layer of tissue in the eye that many animals have. It helps with their night vision but also causes the eyes to shine in the dark. Researchers believe that this could be the first preservation of a spider’s tapetum in the entire fossil record.^[2]

Scientists are also curious about the circumstances that led to the arachnids being preserved in shale. Other creatures such as fish and crustaceans were also present in the rocks, so they could have all fallen victim to a disastrous event like an algal bloom.

8 A Cool Heist

One of the most bizarre heists in recent memory occurred in Newfoundland, Canada, as thieves made off with 30,000 liters (7,925 gal) of iceberg water from a vodka distillery.

The criminals targeted a warehouse in the historic community of Port Union. The victim was Iceberg Vodka. As its name suggests, the company uses real iceberg water in the manufacturing of its product.

CEO David Meyers says the stolen liquid could have been used to make 150,000 bottles of vodka. However, he does not expect the company to suffer too much after its loss. The water was insured, and it was only valued at C$9,000 to C$12,000. That being said, the biggest problem is that the giant ice blocks can only be harvested once a year when the icebergs move closer to the Newfoundland coast.^[3]

Meyers does not believe that the crime was one of simple opportunity. The thieves went through “a bit of work” to bypass the locked gate and door and brought along some kind of tanker to load and transport tens of thousands of liters of iceberg water. The original tank which contained the liquid had been drained and left behind.

7 Wickedness In Creswell Crags

There was a time when people were really, really afraid of something in Creswell Crags, a limestone gorge on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, England. That’s the conclusion of heritage experts after they found inside what could be Britain’s largest assemblage of apotropaic signs—which are intended to ward off evil.

The markings include hundreds of symbols, letters, and patterns which were likely carved from the 16th century onward when fear of witchcraft became widespread.

It is truly remarkable how long it took for people to realize the markings were there. This is especially surprising given that ice age art was found inside the cave in 2003 and attracted a lot of attention.

However, it wasn’t until last year that two keen-eyed cavers spotted a couple of symbols and alerted members of the Creswell Heritage Trust as to their meaning. The director of the trust embarrassingly confessed that they had been telling people the markings were Victorian graffiti.

This prompted a closer inspection of the cave. Researchers were shocked to discover that the walls were covered in symbols. So far, they have found a thousand and counting.^[4] Most of them are generic, such as PM for Pace Maria or a double V meaning Virgin of Virgins. It might be hard to tell exactly what it was about Creswell Crags that terrified people so much.

6 The Luckiest Men In Japan

Thousands of Japanese men in Okayama stripped down to their loincloths and crowded together to search for two sticks believed to bring them good luck in the year to come.

The tradition is called Saidaiji Eyo, and it dates back over 500 years to the Muromachi period. Last Saturday, an estimated 10,000 men gathered at the Kinryozan Saidaiji Buddhist temple in Okayama to participate.

First, they took off their clothes and put on white loincloths. Then they all bathed in the cold waters of the Yoshii River as part of a purification ritual.

At around 10:00 PM came the main event. The mass of naked men watched as the temple’s chief priest stood on a balcony. The lights were turned off, and he threw two sticks into the crowd. A mad scramble ensued to find them.^[5]

The sticks are called shingi. It is believed that the two participants who located them will be the luckiest men of the year.

5 Cop Kong Gets Her Man

A determined citizen donned a gorilla cop disguise to stake out a pervert who had been flashing women in a park in Perth, Western Australia.

According to the anonymous woman, she had fallen victim to the sex pest several times. She talked with other women in the park and discovered that they had all suffered similar experiences. Typically, the man rode his bicycle with his shorts pulled up high around his waist so that his genitals were hanging out. On occasion, he had stopped and approached women on foot.

Determined to do something about it, the crime fighter took matters into her own hands. First, she put up posters around public areas warning people of a flasher. Then she began staking out the park he liked to frequent. Fearing he might recognize her, the woman wore a costume of a gorilla dressed up as a cop.

The bizarre gambit paid off. The concealed crusader spotted the offender and was able to follow him to his home without being spotted. She then relayed the information to the police, who charged him with four counts of indecent acts in public.^[6]

4 Radiation At Grand Canyon

For almost two decades, people who visited the Grand Canyon National Park museum could have been exposed to radiation thanks to uranium ore being stored in the vicinity.

Earlier this month, park staff members received a distressing email which said, “If you were in the Museum Collections Building (bldg 2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were ‘exposed’ to uranium by OSHA’s (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) definition.”^[7]

It came from safety manager Elston Stephenson. He discovered that three 19-liter (5 gal) buckets of uranium ore had been stored near the taxidermy exhibit for nearly 20 years.

Things weren’t as serious as they sounded, though. The ore contained only low amounts of radiation. Levels were below those needed for concern about public safety, although they were higher than “background radiation.” Legally, this is why employees had to be notified. OSHA inspectors don’t expect any health problems and currently label the area as “no risk.”

That being said, employees could have done a better job of disposing of the uranium. They finally decided to get rid of it last June. They moved the buckets using gardening gloves and mop handles. They took the ore to the Lost Orphan uranium mine from which it had come.

3 A Joker On Mars

Most of us have a preconceived notion of what astronauts should be like. They need to be tough (both physically and mentally), smart, determined, and cool as a cucumber. In the words of Tom Wolfe, they need to have “the right stuff.” However, research suggests that, if colonization missions to Mars are to be successful, at least one of those astronauts should be more of a class clown than a class president.

It all has to do with boosting morale and diffusing tense situations. Anthropologist Jeffrey Johnson from the University of Florida has been studying overwintering crews in Antarctica for four years to identify the importance of informal roles in helping teams work smoothly together. He pinpointed multiple vital characters such as the leader, the peacemaker, the counselor, and the clown (whose role is essential in creating group cohesion).

Johnson puts it simply: Groups who have the right combination of characters do well, and those who do not do badly. He uses the famed Amundsen polar expedition as an example. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen understood the importance of a friendly face and selected the rotund and jolly chef Adolf Lindstrom to be on his team. He later wrote that Lindstrom “rendered greater and more valuable services to the . . . expedition than any other man.”^[8]

Johnson has begun working with NASA to monitor groups of astronauts placed inside a mock space habitat in Houston, Texas. They want to see if the same informal dynamics are maintained in space environments.

2 May The Foil Be With You

In a galaxy far, far away, the French Fencing Federation has officially recognized lightsaber dueling as a competitive sport.

Fencing clubs all over the country have been equipped with lightsabers and even offer training for those looking to live out their Star Wars fantasies. According to the federation’s Secretary General Serge Aubailly, this move was an effort to get young people to exercise more. He believes that they lead sedentary lifestyles that involve sitting on the couch and only exercising their thumbs.

In the past, cape-and-sword movies have had a big impact on fencing as a sport. Popular characters like Zorro and Robin Hood helped bring in a lot of new people interested in giving it a shot. Aubailly simply sees the Star Wars franchise as the next step.^[9]

The rules are similar to regular fencing, but they have been modified slightly to give the sport more visual appeal as one would expect in the movies. The rooms are darkened so that the glowing lightsabers are easier to see.

In order for a blow to count, the tip of the saber must first have been pointed behind the fighter’s head. This is to encourage more brazen, over-the-head blows as seen in Star Wars duels instead of the lightning-quick, tip-first strikes common in fencing.

1 Why The Zebra Got Its Stripes

In a new study published in the scientific journal PLOS One, researchers from the University of Bristol concluded that the striped pattern on zebras appeared to confuse and deter flies.

According to coauthor Dr. Martin How, the stripes affect the insects’ landing. Close-up footage showed that the flies zoomed quite fast into the zebras. Some turned away completely, while others crashed into the animals instead of doing controlled landings.^[10]

The stripes only appear to work as a deterrent from close range. Researchers believe that the low-resolution vision of flies will cause the zebras to look like regular gray horses from a distance of a few meters. The sudden reveal of the stripes might surprise the insects enough to make them veer away, or it might interfere with their ability to gauge correctly how fast the object is coming at them.

To be thorough, scientists needed to be sure that it was the stripes turning away the flies and not something else, such as a scent. Therefore, they dressed up horses in zebra coats to see if they would get the same results.

They also put plain white and plain black coats on other horses to act as a control. Indeed, the flies landed noticeably fewer times on the horses wearing stripes as compared to the ones clad in the other garments.

When a state has newspaper headlines that read, “Avoid reptiles as a holiday gift,” then you know there’s a problem. Florida has a reputation as the number-one state in the US for invasive species. Over the past decade or so, more than 260 exotic animals (that we know of) have escaped their cages and fled into the Florida wilderness. We’re not only talking about lions and tigers and bears (oh my) but also rhinos, jaguars, wolves, orangutans, and just about any exotic creature you can imagine. Many of these escaped convicts remain at large.^[1] However, this list is concerned with the species that, as exotic pets set free in the wild, were able to stick around and multiply. As the wise Jeff Goldblum predicted in Jurassic Park, life will always find a way . . .

Many of us dream of having an exotic pet, like Frida Kahlo with her monkeys or Tippi Hedren’s pet lion. Well, in Florida, you don’t need any special license or certificate to own many types of exotic pets. At the University of Florida, researchers confirm that the pet trade is the main reason for the introduction of invasive species. Exotic animals often begin as innocent pets but are released or escape into the Florida wilderness, for one reason or another, where they can wreak some serious havoc. Kenneth Krysko, manager of the Florida Museum of Natural History, says, “It’s like some mad scientist has thrown these species together from all around the world and said, ‘hey, let’s put them all together and see what happens.’ ” He warns that if the trends continue, Florida may have more invasive species than native. A wildlife ecology professor at the University of Florida likened the situation to “a slow-burning fuse lit to an ecological bomb.” Meanwhile, the exotic pet industry in the US makes $15 billion annually, and people continue to buy that flashy, unique pet that sounds alluring but is severely dangerous to both them and society at large.

10 Burmese Python

The largest Burmese python discovered in the Florida wild was 5.4 meters (18 ft) long and weighed 58 kilograms (128 lb). The man who found it in the brush, being a run-of-the-mill Floridian, grabbed it by the neck and held it up to his friends to see how big it was. The python quickly wrapped its muscled body twice around the man’s legs and then reached his waist. The man’s quick-thinking friend handed him a 23-centimeter (9 in) blade, which the soon-to-be victim used to decapitate the python.^[2]

Now, it is illegal to buy a Burmese python in Florida and for good reason. People used to buy these tiny snakes, which would grow to be about 1.8 meters (6 ft) long in a year’s time. That’s either too much work or slightly horrifying, so the owners would release their beloved pets into the Everglades. This happened enough that the pythons started to breed and thrive in the wet, subtropical climate. In no time, the snakes, who can produce up to 100 hatchlings at once, became the apex predator in the region.

There was a glimmer of hope that native alligators would be able to control the rapid rise of Burmese pythons, but instead, the gators are actually being eaten themselves. In one famous case in 2005, a python tried to consume a 1.8-meter (6 ft) alligator whole, but the snake exploded in the attempt. These battles are becoming a common occurrence. Since the pythons have mostly killed all of the marsh rabbits, bobcats, and other small mammals, the Everglades now call upon hunters to eliminate as many pythons as they possibly can. The hunters are paid minimum wage by the state, plus $50 for every 1.2-meter (4 ft) snake and $25 for each additional foot. In about a year’s time, hunters have bagged 1,000 pythons.

9 Rhesus Macaque

Most people don’t know that you can ride an inner tube down the Silver River in Ocala, Florida, and likely see wild monkeys swinging from the trees as you float by. In the 1930s, the owner of a privately owned park had the harebrained idea to release an entire colony of rhesus macaques as a tourist attraction. The park staff, being the clever humans that they were, put the monkeys on an island in the Silver River for safekeeping. Surprise! They can swim. Now there are hundreds that are spreading like wildfire through Central Florida.

These feral troublemakers travel in large gangs, and they can be aggressive when they feel threatened. They have been terrorizing people in their own backyards, but that’s not even the worst part.^[3] Recently, it was discovered that these macaques carry a herpes virus that spreads to humans through excrement and other bodily fluids. Having feces flung at you from a primate is horrifying enough without the fear of contracting herpes, thank you very much.

On that note, above is a hilarious video of the rhesus macaques chasing down a terrified family. Enjoy.

8 Green Iguana

Iguanas are Florida’s most invasive species. This green menace creates mayhem in suburbia, from leaving gifts in swimming pools and gobbling up gardens to disrupting electrical grids and causing power outages. People discard iguanas as pets because they are more work than expected, as they grow up to 1.8 meters (6 ft) long and require a ton of food. During mating season, they become increasingly hostile and lash out at their owners by biting them. On top of that, they may just try to escape through the doggie door.

Sadly, Floridians have resorted to combating this pest problem they created by using blunt-force trauma. In other words, people are paid to sneak up on them in the dead of night while they sleep and bash in their skulls. Jenny Ketterlin, a wildlife biologist who works for this $63,000 project commissioned by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, ensures the public that swiftly smashing their brains open is actually the most humane way to kill them.^[4] Well, it’s good practice for the zombie apocalypse, I suppose.

7 Nile Monitor: Largest Lizard In Africa

The Nile monitor is yet another escapee from the pet trade that is now calling Florida home, sweet home. Instead of soaking in the sun along the Nile Delta, where they belong, they have wormed their way through Cape Coral’s extensive canal system since the 1990s. These skilled swimmers can reach a gruesome 2.1 meters (7 ft) long. They consume whatever they can get, whether that’s a wasp nest, poisonous cane toad, or venomous rattlesnake. Like wolves, they hunt in packs. Occasionally, they pop up from the canals to make a surprise appearance in someone’s backyard. Hopefully they aren’t hungry because they’ve been known to snack on cats and dogs.

It is incredibly difficult to eradicate them, as nobody has ever found a single monitor lizard nest. There are estimated to be at least 1,000 of these giant beasts currently roaming the Florida canals, tidal creeks, and mangroves. These giant lizards may also be seen if you happen to look up, as they are expert tree-climbers, so beware.^[5]

6 Capybara

Do you know what doesn’t sound like an ideal pet? The largest rodent in the world. A capybara is basically like a 45-kilogram (100 lb) guinea pig that’s semiaquatic. It turns out, that’s not as cute as some pet owners thought it would be. Go figure! As of 2016, there were about 50 capybaras running amok in Florida. In its South American home, it has predators like the puma and jaguar, but in Florida, there are no coyotes or dogs big enough to take down a capybara.

It doesn’t help matters that they are social animals, traveling in groups through thick forest.^[6] As if Florida hunters didn’t have enough game to contend with, let’s throw a giant guinea pig in the mix.

5 ‘Testicle-Eating’ Pacu Fish

The South American pacu fish has an unusual bite because of its eerie, humanlike set of teeth. They are a cousin to the flesh-eating piranha, but instead of the razor-sharp teeth of their cousins, they have teeth that are blunt like our molars. The pacu also grows to be much, much larger. They typically reach about 22.7 kilograms (50 lb) throughout South-Central Florida.

Even though the pacu is normally not an imminent threat to men’s genitalia, it did receive the moniker of “testicle-eating” fish for a good reason. According to Henrik Carl, a fish expert at the National History Museum of Denmark, “There have been incidents in other countries, such as Papua New Guinea, where some men have had their testicles bitten off. They bite because they’re hungry, and testicles sit nicely in their mouth.”^[7] It’s no wonder why owners released these exotic fish! Suddenly, the bizarre allure of a human smile on a fish feels a bit more sinister.

4 Giant African Land Snails

The giant African land snail is not to be confused with any meager snail of small proportions. It is, in fact, the world’s largest terrestrial mollusk. We’re talking a 20-centimeter-long (8 in) snail that’s 10 centimeters (4 in) in diameter. This destructive little creature carries a parasitic worm that burrows into humans and spreads meningitis. It consumes at least 500 types of plants and causes permanent damage to the plaster and stucco of buildings. An adult lays up to 1,200 eggs in a single year, and with no natural predators in Florida, there’s no end in sight for its infestation.

It’s a bit of a mystery why giant African land snails populate South Florida. They are illegal to import into the United States without a permit, and no permits have ever been issued. While no one is positive, it seems the pet trade is to blame for the giant snail takeover. The last known invasion was in 1966, when a young boy smuggled three snails into the country as his secret pets. When his grandma found out, she made him set them free in the garden. It cost more than $1 million to eradicate the 18,000 snails that this incident created.

Another suspicion is that the current infestation of hundreds of thousands of giant African land snails in South Florida has been the result of religious ritual. Santeria is an Afro-Caribbean religion steeped in traditions that developed from the Cuban slave trade. Some of the religious rituals put emphasis on the juice of these snails. It’s suspected that they are smuggled into the country for this purpose.^[8]

3 Wild Boars

Wild boars have been roaming free throughout the Sunshine State since the 1500s, when Hernando de Soto brought them to Florida, not as a beloved pet but as a food source. Now, it has been over 500 years, and these feral pigs are nowhere near domesticated. Four million wild boars have spread across the United States, but in Florida alone, there are half a million.

They are an aggressive, tusked, 91-kilogram (200 pound) Old World swine that carry up to 24 diseases, from tuberculosis to cholera, and constantly consume farmers’ feed and even livestock. They are difficult to control, to say the least, as they are basically one giant muscle. There are also all the usual unpleasantries of invasive species, like damaging native plants and competing with native species. It basically messes up the proper chain of events that lets an ecosystem flourish.

As a result of their continued population growth, Florida hunters have trained bloodhounds to track them down at night. There are no rules that limit hunting to a certain season. There are no size, bag, or gender restrictions. Behind the white-tailed deer, the wild boar is the second most popular animal to hunt in Florida. Some inventive entrepreneurs are even flipping the boar problem on its head, making profit by serving them up on a platter and calling them prime pork.^[9] Bacon anyone?

2 African Clawed Frog

Before modern-day pregnancy tests were invented, doctors used an African clawed frog to assess the situation. The procedure involved exposing the frog to a woman’s urine, commonly via injection, and waiting for hours to see what would happen. If the frog laid eggs, it meant the woman was having a baby. This method of pregnancy detection remained popular until the 1970s, when modern pregnancy kits went on the market.

Needless to say, there was a high demand for African clawed frogs until this time. Thousands of these little critters were shipped from South Africa to labs and hospitals, not only in the US but all over the world. To supply the high demand, they were bred in captivity. They were easy to care for, so a pet trade developed around them in the 1950s and 1960s. From unwanted pets and escapees to doctors releasing them from their labs due to technology advancements, they multiplied fast. These frogs with clawed toes live for up to 15 years in the wild, and females create 27,000 eggs per reproductive cycle.^[10] Their growing numbers are alarming, to say the least.

1 ‘Man-Eater’ Nile Crocodile

The Nile crocodile can grow over 6 meters (20 ft) long and weigh as much as a small car. They eat whatever they can get hold of, including the occasional human (hence its description of “man-eater”). From sub-Saharan Africa, they were introduced to South Florida, presumably via the pet trade, even though whoever thought that a crocodile would make a great pet clearly didn’t have a permit.

Nile crocodiles are much more dangerous than the native alligator population in Florida. In six years, American alligators and crocodiles were the cause of 33 human fatalities, but in the same time period, the Nile crocodile killed 268 people. As far as we know, they have been surviving and breeding for at least six years in the Florida swamps.^[11] As if Floridians didn’t have enough monsters lurking in the water.

Far too often, the media focuses on negative events while positive news items take a back seat. That’s not the case here as this list covers only stories that inspire, amuse, and uplift. If weirdness is more your thing, you can check out the offbeat list, too.

There are several stories this week of elderly people who prove that age is nothing but a number. A neighborhood bands together to help a deaf girl while a hockey ref fights against Alzheimer’s with a little support from AC/DC.

10 The Senior Junior Ranger

A centenarian became a junior ranger of the Grand Canyon National Park to encourage newer generations to protect and learn about the great outdoors.

Rose Torphy made her first trip to the Grand Canyon back in 1985. Now, on her second visit, she heard about the junior ranger program and wanted to be a part of it. Her parents taught her to care for the land, and in turn, she desires to do the same for other kids.

Although the junior program is intended for children, it is available to everyone from ages four and up. Therefore, Rose was able to enlist even though the 103-year-old is actually older than the national park she has sworn to protect. On February 26, the Grand Canyon will be celebrating 100 years since its designation as a national park.^[1]

9 An Unlikely Savior

A Florida inmate used his criminal expertise for good to rescue a baby trapped inside a locked car.

It all started when the father of the child strapped his one-year-old daughter in the safety seat in the back of his Chevy Tahoe and threw the keys in the front seat. He then exited the SUV and instinctively closed the door. Only then did he realize that he had just locked himself out of the vehicle.

Meanwhile, a group of low-level offenders was repairing medians nearby under the supervision of Pasco County deputies. They heard the commotion and rushed to help. One of them used a coat hanger to jimmy the lock and open the door of the car. The whole thing took about five minutes, and the baby was completely safe.

Her mother, Shadow Lantry, filmed the whole thing and then posted it on social media. She was grateful to the men who had dashed to her rescue, saying that she respects them all.

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco admitted that such opportunities are rare where a criminal breaks into a car for the right reasons. However, he also extended his appreciation toward the inmates by claiming that they are individuals who have made mistakes but want to “do the right thing in life.”^[2]

8 Rowing Seniors Claim World Record

Two English grandfathers in their early sixties became the oldest duo to row across the Atlantic Ocean while simultaneously raising money for veterans’ charities.

Neil Young and Peter Ketley have the combined age of 123. Despite this, the two former paratroopers were able to row 4,828 kilometers (3,000 mi) from the Canary Islands to Antigua in just 63 days. Moreover, they had no previous rowing experience apart from a year-long training regimen they underwent before departing in December 2018.

Ketley and Young took part in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. Started in 1997 by Sir Chay Blyth as the Atlantic Rowing Race, this endurance event touts itself as the “world’s toughest row.” The aging duo managed to raise over £30,000 to support charities such as Dreams Come True, Support Our Paras, and the Royal British Legion Industries.^[3]

7 It Takes A Village

All the people of a neighborhood in Newton, Massachusetts, have begun learning sign language so that they can communicate with their deaf two-year-old neighbor.

Samantha Savitz is just like many young kids her age: She’s happy, outgoing, and loves to chat up people. There is just one problem, though. Sam is deaf. She knows sign language, but that is not a skill many other people have. Therefore, her attempts at social engagement often go unanswered. Sam is left visibly frustrated, even sad, when she is unable to communicate.

Her neighbors have noticed this and decided to do something about it. They got together, hired a teacher, and began taking American Sign Language classes. The instructor, Rhys McGovern, has been impressed with the kinship and care shown in this community.

Rhys remarked that, in other cases, not even the parents of a deaf child bother learning sign language, let alone the neighbors. Sam’s mother, Glenda Savitz, already sees a difference in her daughter’s behavior and is still looking for a way to express her gratitude for her neighborhood’s “shocking and beautiful” gesture.^[4]

6 One Good Deed Deserves Another

An amateur Canadian hockey ref has been doing marathon skate sessions to raise money and awareness for Alzheimer’s disease. This year’s session came with a surprise donation from his favorite rocker, Angus Young from AC/DC.

Steve McNeil has been skating for charity since 2012 in honor of his mother who died from Alzheimer’s. She was born in 1926, so McNeil skates for 19 hours and 26 minutes in every Canadian city that has an NHL team. Since he started, McNeil has raised over C$40,000, which he donates to the local chapters of the Alzheimer Society.^[5]

Sometimes, it gets really cold and tiresome on the ice. When that happens, Steve has two things to keep him going. He thinks of his mother’s home cooking, and he cranks up AC/DC on his headphones. He has always been a massive fan of the band, but they’ve been on his mind more in recent years after Malcolm Young died of dementia.

Word of Steve McNeil’s efforts reached Malcolm’s brother, AC/DC lead guitarist Angus Young. To show his approval, the rocker donated C$19,260 to the Alzheimer Society of Ontario. The money will be distributed to support music programs for people with dementia across Canada.

5 Remembrance Of Things Past

An antique dealer found a letter from World War I among a stack of old papers she bought for a dollar. It was a “thank you” from Canadian soldier Earl Sorel to the sister of another fighter who had sacrificed his life to save Sorel at the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

Amanda Kehler owns a cafe and antique shop in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. She was going through a bunch of recently purchased documents when she found the letter from Sorel, a soldier with the 78th Battalion. It was postmarked May 1917.

The letter detailed the heroics of Sergeant Gorden. He was in charge of a platoon at the Battle of Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917. They had pushed for about 1,100 meters (3,600 ft) when Sorel heard a loud “bang” and felt a sharp burning in his back and left arm. He had been shot, but Gorden carried him to a shell hole.

Sorel was eventually taken to a dressing station and survived his injuries. He found out the next day that Gorden had been killed in the charge. However, Sorel wanted the sergeant’s sister to know that her brother “died a hero, along with many others that day.”^[6]

4 Grateful Like Gary

Celebrities and veterans banded together this week to create a heartwarming video thanking actor Gary Sinise for all the charity work he has done to benefit military families and first responders.

Titled #GratefulLikeGary, the video was made to surprise Sinise after the release of his book Grateful American: A Journey From Self To Service. Jay Leno, Rob Lowe, Robert De Niro, and Steve Buscemi are just a few of the actors who appeared in the clip alongside many firefighters and soldiers.

Sinise became involved with charity work for veterans after starring as Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump, which is celebrating 25 years since its release later this year. He founded the Gary Sinise Foundation which raises around $30 million a year for veterans.

He also built dozens of smart homes for soldiers with disabilities and organized over 400 benefit concerts. He is even part of a cover group called the Lt. Dan Band which does USO shows.

Fittingly, the tribute video ends with his Forrest Gump costar Tom Hanks saying simply, “Thanks, Lt. Dan.”^[7]

3 Back From Extinction

It has been a good week for large species of animals thought to be extinct. The world’s biggest bee has been found alive in Indonesia, and a giant Galapagos tortoise was sighted for the first time in over 100 years.

Megachile pluto is also known as Wallace’s giant bee, named after Alfred Russel Wallace who first collected and described it in 1858. The female can reach a length of 3.8 centimeters (1.5 in) with a wingspan over 6 centimeters (2.5 in) long.

It was considered extinct in modern times until scientists found a few specimens in the Indonesian Bacan Islands in 1981. Then the species was not seen again and was feared extinct once more.

This January, however, a team of wildlife experts journeyed to the North Moluccas islands and caught sight of Wallace’s giant bee once again. They only found one female, but it was enough to give them hope that the insect is still thriving in areas left alone by man.

On the Galapagos island of Fernandina, a scientific expedition found a tortoise species not seen since 1906. According to the Ecuadorian government, researchers found an adult female Fernandina giant tortoise believed to be over a century old.

Moreover, they also discovered tracks and scents which suggest that she is not the only one of her species still around. Conservationists are hoping to find other tortoises, including males, to start a breeding program.^[8]

2 The Crochet Whiz Kid

An 11-year-old kid from La Crosse, Wisconsin, has won over the online world thanks to his mad skills at crochet.

It’s not exactly a typical pastime for young boys, but Jonah Larson’s newfound fame has turned him into an ambassador of the crochet world. He started learning when he was five years old by watching YouTube videos. Jonah quickly discovered that he had a knack for it, and now he gives his own online lessons.

The young man also started selling his creations through his own crochet business called Jonah’s Hands. His story went viral after being recently featured in a local paper, and Jonah had to temporarily stop taking requests to fulfill a backlog of over 2,500 orders. He also makes sure to give back to the community and regularly donates money and goods to the Ethiopian orphanage from which he was adopted.

Right now, Jonah is happy with his role of introducing new generations to crochet. His ambition, however, is to put his skillful hands to a different use in the future as he wants to become a surgeon.^[9]

1 Flyby For Fallen Soldiers

The story of one man’s dedication led to 10,000 people attending a flyby over Endcliffe Park, Sheffield, to honor 10 American airmen who died there in 1944.

It all began in early January when BBC presenter Dan Walker was walking his dog and ran into octogenarian Tony Foulds. The latter was tending to a memorial dedicated to the crew of US bomber Mi Amigo. On February 22, 1944, the plane was coming back from a bombing run. It crashed into the woodlands of Endcliffe Park, and all 10 men aboard died.

Foulds was there that day. He was an eight-year-old boy playing with his mates in the open field. He feels guilty about the crash because he believes the pilot wanted to land in the field but veered at the last moment to avoid smashing into the children. Since then, Foulds has spent decades looking after the memorial.

Walker told Tony’s story and began campaigning for a flyby to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the crash. Word spread on social media, and the campaign was a success. On Friday, Foulds was joined by around 10,000 people who gathered to witness American and British aircraft take off from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk and do a flyby over the park.^[10]

Mankind’s love of records left behind countless documents. Needless to say, some are so common that the very sight of them makes people regret going to the museum.

Then there are the secret codes and oaths, unique manuscripts, and caves marked with people’s fear. Text-obsessed scholars are talking in dead tongues and admit once again that the ancient Egyptians did some amazing things.

The world of rare words and pictures is a magnetic one. Sometimes, it’s even downright funny.

10 Oldest Near-Death Case

In 1740, a French doctor called Pierre-Jean du Monchaux described a curious case. An unconscious patient had recovered, only to describe a light so pure and white that the man was convinced he had stood with one shoe in Heaven. The case was included in the doctor’s book, Anecdotes de Medecine.

It might have gone unnoticed if not for Phillippe Charlier, who recently riffled through an antique shop. Ironically, he was also a French doctor. He found the book by chance and bought it for less than $1.

When he read about the case, Charlier realized he was looking at the world’s oldest report of a near-death experience. It was a time when people leaned on religion to explain such things, but the ancient physician stayed professional. He suggested a medical reason—too much blood rushing to the brain.

Monchaux’s assessment nearly matched modern explanations. Today, researchers think a lack of blood flow and oxygen to the brain cause the sensations of a near-death experience.^[1]

9 The Mysterious Devourer

In 2017, archaeologists took their shovels to a shrine-like building. The small structure stood at Zincirli in Turkey and soon yielded a pot. The stone vessel originally held cosmetics but was reused to display an incantation.

A story was carved over the surface, describing the capture of something called a “devourer” which was said to bring “fire” to its victims. The only way a person could recover was to use the devourer’s own blood.

The incantation did not specify how the blood was to be administered or the creature’s identity. Illustrations suggested that it was either a centipede or a scorpion. The “fire” sounds like a painful sting.

The author was a magician called Rahim, who carved the advice in Aramaic 2,800 years ago. This made it the oldest Aramaic incantation ever found. Archaeologists believe that the incantation was important enough to preserve after the magician’s lifetime because the inscription was already over a century old by the time the temple was built.^[2]

8 Dirty Bathroom Jokes

Ancient bathrooms with floor mosaics are rare. When one was found in 2018 in Turkey’s ancient city of Antiochia ad Cragum, it was a cause for celebration. However, the images were not beautifully rendered legends or geometric patterns. The tiny tiles told dirty jokes.

As Roman men visited the latrine around 1,800 years ago, they would have been amused by the antics of Narcissus and Ganymede. Both men belonged to real myths. Narcissus was in love with his own image. Ganymede was kidnapped by the god Zeus as a slave but also as a love interest.

The mosaics twisted the stories, first by giving Narcissus an ugly nose. Instead of admiring his reflection, he appeared to be fixated on his genitals. Ganymede’s scene was even more detailed. He was getting his private parts sponged clean by a heron. The type of sponge was usually reserved for cleaning toilets, and the bird represented Zeus.^[3]

The unusual theme stunned archaeologists but at least proved that bathroom humor is nothing new.

7 The Creswell Marks

The border of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire is marked by a limestone gorge. Called Creswell Crags, the site is historically significant. Apart from past discoveries of ancient remains, Creswell holds the only Ice Age art in Britain.

After years of investigations, the caves managed to deliver a big surprise in 2019. A tour group stumbled upon the country’s largest collection of apotropaic marks. The engravings had nothing do to with the Ice Age gallery. The latter were thousands of years older, while the newfound carvings were from medieval times until the 19th century.

Historians recognized several of the symbols. Also called witches’ marks, their purpose was to protect the living from bad supernatural influences. Among the most popular was “VV,” invoking the Virgin Mary. Others—like boxes, mazes, and diagonal stripes—captured whatever mysterious evil brought diseases and made the crops fail.^[4]

Dense clusters of symbols lined the ceilings and walls of the caves, a testament to the local people’s fear of the unknown.

6 The Nag Hammadi Library

Around 1,400 years ago, a jar was buried in Egypt. Containing 13 codices, the vessel was rediscovered in 1945 near the town of Nag Hammadi. The rolls contained Gnostic records of Jesus. The Gnostic tradition, an early and sometimes mystical branch of Christianity, is considered to be heretical by mainstream Christians. Most were traditionally penned in Coptic, a language that was spoken in Egypt for centuries.^[5]

In 2017, researchers in Texas found that one codex was different. Instead of Coptic scribbles, the text was Greek. This was exceptional. The work in question, the First Apocalypse of James, had never been recovered in ancient Greek before. The piece covered a conversation between Jesus and James, the latter taking instructions on how to continue teaching after Jesus’s death.

Another feature that set the scroll apart was little dots that divided the text into syllables. This rare technique is known from educational texts, which suggested the writer used the heretical gospel to teach Greek to students.

5 Unique Palimpsest

Centuries ago, writing material was expensive. Sometimes, an old manuscript would be scraped clean and inked with new information. These recycled documents are known as palimpsests.

In 2018, Dr. Eleonore Cellard assessed fragments containing Quran script. She noticed ghostly letters behind the eighth-century Arabic text and identified several Bible passages. Written in Coptic, they belonged to the Old Testament’s Book of Deuteronomy.

The find was extraordinary. Quran palimpsests are rare enough, but never before had a Christian document been erased to make space for the Islamic holy book. The writing style dated the Arabic text, but the Coptic was more difficult to place.^[6]

The fragility of the manuscript prevented carbon dating. Even if the document was strong enough, the technique can only date the paper and not the writing. Once again, the style was the only clue.

Unfortunately, it was a very broad one. The original Coptic was not written before the seventh century. Despite the dating issue, the palimpsest remains invaluable for its uniqueness.

4 Earliest Record Of Algol

The star Algol is actually a 3-in-1 deal. Officially discovered in 1669, the three suns move around each other, causing the “star” to dim and brighten. A papyrus studied in 2015 suggested that the ancient Egyptians discovered it first.

Called the Cairo Calendar, the document guided each day of the year, giving auspicious dates for ceremonies, forecasts, warnings, and even the activities of the gods. Previously, researchers felt the ancient calendar had a link to the heavens, but they never had any proof.

The study found that the calendar’s positive days matched Algol’s brightest days as well as those of the Moon. The appearances of one deity, Horus, also matched the star system’s 2,867-day cycle.

This strongly suggests that the ancient Egyptians were the first to follow Algol around 3,200 years ago. More remarkably, they did so without a telescope even though the system was almost 92.25 light-years away.^[7]

3 Unique Ninja Oath

In Japan, rumors of a written ninja oath persisted for almost 50 years. If true, this was a historic gem. Unlike movie ninjas, the real guys used stealth to gather intelligence and rarely used weapons. Most of their traditions and training were passed down verbally from master to student. A written document, especially an oath, would be a first.

In 2018, the piece finally surfaced. It was donated to a museum by the Kizu family, once a ninja clan from the town of Iga. The donated cache consisted of 130 ancient documents, but the oath was the most remarkable. Written by a man called Inosuke Kizu, he thanked his masters for the ninjutsu training and vowed to never reveal the secret knowledge. Not even to his immediate family.

The 300-year-old paper also captured the penalty of sharing ninja techniques with outsiders. The author accepted that his betrayal would cause his descendants to be tortured by the gods for generations. The letter was probably handed to his masters and returned to the Kizu family after his death.^[8]

2 Ferdinand’s Code

To safeguard military information from his enemies, King Ferdinand of Spain wrote in secret code. It was a little too effective. His correspondence with a commander named Gonzalo de Cordoba went undeciphered for 500 years.

Ferdinand sponsored Christopher Columbus’s trips to the Americas and fought several enemies. He recaptured Spain from the Moors in 1492 and battled France for the Mediterranean.

The letters promised interesting insights into the war king’s mind. Spain’s intelligence agency picked up the challenge. Ferdinand’s alphabet had 88 symbols, 237 letters, and six accompanying characters (such as numbers and triangles) that made each letter’s meaning more complex. In addition, the “language” ran continuously without breaks to indicate words.^[9]

In 2018, after six months, the agency cracked enough of the code to read four pieces of correspondence. They revealed details ranging from instructions on troop deployment in Italy to berating the commander for making decisions without Ferdinand’s approval. The breakthrough is a good step toward cracking the rest of the royal mail.

1 Extinct Language Spoken Again

A Cambridge academic loved ancient Babylonian so much that he decided to learn the language. Not just to read it but to speak it correctly. Babylonian went extinct around the time that Jesus was born.

Nearly 2,000 years of silence did not deter Dr. Martin Worthington, who already spoke Sumerian, Assyrian, English, Italian, and French. For over 20 years, he dove into ancient scripts and compiled a unique archive of research.

After gleaning correspondence, treaties, letters, and scientific reports written in Babylonian, Worthington arrived at a point where he could speak it. He was the first to admit that the project was not perfect. Although he could give a speech in the lost language, he was not fluent.

Worthington now teaches the language to Assyriology students, mainly to bring them closer to the ancient world they chose to study. Interestingly, if the two were to meet, ancient Babylonians might understand modern speakers because the language is related to Hebrew and Arabic, which replaced Babylonian as the Middle East’s dominant language.^[10]

There are times when we would all like to have superpowers. For most of us, this has to remain an idle daydream. However, there are people walking among us who already have totally legitimate and totally cool superhuman powers.

And who knows, perhaps these are the tip of the iceberg. There may be lots of them, living in the shadows or hiding in plain sight, waiting for their chance to save (or destroy) the planet! Here are ten real-life people with honest-to-goodness superpowers.

10 The Real-Life Batman

As a baby, Daniel Kish developed retinoblastoma, a cancer which affects the eyes. He had to have both eyes removed before he reached his first birthday. In order to navigate his environment, Kish developed his own echolocation system, using the same techniques that bats use to fly in the dark. In fact, he has been referred to as “the real-life Batman.”

As he moved around, Kish would make clicking noises with his tongue. He realized that every surface had its own sound. He could recognize a tree, for example, because the trunk produces a different echo than the branches and the leaves.^[1]

By listening to the echoes from his clicking, Daniel Kish is able to build a 3-D image in his mind of the objects around him. It is thought that the clicking noises activate the visual functions of the brain, which enhance spatial and depth perceptions. Kish says that he can often find his way out of a concert hall quicker than a sighted person because he can identify the exit from a long distance away. If he is in a noisy place, he just increases the volume of his clicking sounds.

9 The Real-Life Mr. Freeze

Like all good superheroes, Wim Hof discovered his superpowers by accident. When he was 17, he was walking along a frozen canal in his home city of Amsterdam when he felt a powerful urge to jump in. So he did. He soon discovered that he has superhuman ability to withstand the cold, which has led him to claim 26 world records.

He tried to climb Everest in a pair of shorts. Although he made it through the Death Zone unharmed, he was forced to turn back, not by the temperature but by a foot injury. Hof has run barefoot marathons in the snow and broken his own record for ice submergence four times.

Researchers studying Wim Hof’s remarkable abilities have discovered that he is able to override the stress responses in his brain through breathing and meditation techniques. When he is exposed to extreme cold, his brain releases opioids and cannabinoids into his body, inhibiting the signals that register cold and pain. What is not yet clear is how this breathing affects other physical and biological processes, such as Hof’s superhuman ability to resist frostbite, which should be unaffected by his breathing technique.^[2]

8 The Real-Life Flash

Dean Karnazes can run forever. He is one of the most remarkable endurance athletes on the planet. He once ran nonstop for 563 kilometers (350 mi) over three days. He ran nonstop across Death Valley and even ran to the South Pole. Even among ultra-endurance athletes, Dean Karnazes is a superhuman.

Most runners are limited by their body’s lactate threshold. The body breaks down glucose for energy, producing lactate as a by-product. When you reach your lactate threshold, the body is no longer able to convert the lactate quickly enough, leading to an acid buildup in the muscles and a burning pain runners call “hitting the wall.” Running beyond your lactate threshold will lead to muscle fatigue, breathlessness, and a racing heart, until eventually you collapse in a sweating, gasping heap.

Dean Karnazes does not have a lactate threshold, which means that, theoretically, he can run forever.

Karnazes has never experienced any form of cramp or muscle ache, even during runs that last more than 160 kilometers (100 mi). The only thing that stops him is his need for sleep, and he has even sometimes experienced bouts of “sleep running,” where he was able to keep on moving while nodding off.^[3]

7 The Real-Life Spider-Man

Nicknamed the “French Spiderman,” Alain Robert is one of the best climbers on Earth. He is famous for his free solo-climbing exploits up skyscrapers, without the use of ropes or safety harness. The only “equipment” that he carries is a bag of chalk dust. Robert has climbed over 160 skyscrapers, including the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the Taipei 101 in Taiwan, and the Lloyd’s building in London.^[4]

Robert was arrested in October 2018 after scaling the Salesforce Tower in London. He climbed the 202-meter (662 ft) tower without safety equipment, while a crowd gathered below to watch him. Though he reached the top safely, he was soon arrested “on suspicion of causing public nuisance.”

Following a court hearing after the stunt, which only took around 45 minutes to complete, Robert was banned from climbing any building in the UK, which seems a shame. But, then again, the world is full of friendly neighborhoods with tall buildings.

6 The Real-Life Professor X

The actress Marilu Henner has superhuman mental powers. She has Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM), an extremely rare condition which allows her total recall of basically every single moment of her life. Fewer than 100 people with the condition have been documented worldwide. Though HSAM would make life easier in many ways (imagine never having to wonder where you put your car keys), there are some disadvantages, too. People with HSAM are more likely to have anxiety disorders and suffer from depression or OCD.

Marilu Henner can recall the month, day, and time of every event that has happened in her life and can also recall things that were on the news or happened to other people. She first became aware of her ability at the age of six.

MRI tests have revealed that people with HSAM have larger temporal lobes and caudate nuclei than normal, but researchers are not sure whether this is the cause or the result of living with the condition. Whatever the cause, Henner has found living with HSAM pretty useful at times, particularly when learning lines.^[5]

5 The Real-Life Elastigirl

Javier Botet is a Spanish actor with a peculiar gift. His extremely long limbs and lean body give him the look of a human skeleton. When he made a screen test in 2013, many people assumed that they were watching a puppet because Botet was able to move his limbs in very unexpected and disturbing ways. Botet suffers from Marfan syndrome, which results in hyperflexibility.

His condition has allowed him to carve out a career in horror movies, where he has appeared as aliens, lepers, monsters, and mummies, as well as the urban folklore-inspired Slender Man. He first noticed the condition as a child and liked to fold his arms and legs into unusual shapes.^[6] (Well, we all need a hobby.)

Marfan syndrome is a rare genetic disorder, resulting in extreme height and slenderness as well as hyperflexibility. It can also cause heart defects and blindness. For the moment, however, Javier Botet is using this elastic powers to conquer Hollywood.

4 The Real-Life Overseer

An unnamed family from Connecticut has been the center of much study by genetic scientists due to their unusually high bone density. Just like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, the family has a genetic mutation that means their bones never break.

No one in the family has ever had a fracture, and it is thought that they have the strongest bones on the planet, which is impressive. It appears that the condition is genetic. Scientists tested 20 members of the family, with just under half of them being found to have extra dense bones. It is hoped that by studying the DNA of those family members with the condition, researchers will be able to more fully understand the factors affecting bone density, which could lead to treatments for osteoporosis.^[7]

The condition means that the Connecticut family will never need a plaster cast, though they may find themselves spending a lot of money on plastic ponchos. (That’s an Unbreakable joke.)

3 The Real-Life Invisible Woman

It is a universally accepted truth that we all have a unique set of fingerprints. Even identical twins differ when it comes to the minute whorls and loops on a set of dabs. Modern technology has made use of this unique property when it comes to things like cybersecurity, which must make Cheryl Maynard feel pretty invisible.^[8]

Fingerprints are usually fully formed even before we are born. People with adermatoglyphia, however, are born with no fingerprints. (In the picture above, Cheryl’s finger is compared with a normal one.) It is believed that there are only four extended families in the world with this condition, caused by a genetic mutation.

The condition has left Cheryl Maynard feeling pretty invisible. Having no fingerprints has even made it difficult for her to get jobs. However, if she fancied a career as a criminal, she would have a head start.

2 The Real-Life Vision

In 1972, when Veronica Seider claimed to be able to see small objects 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) away, no one believed her. However, eyesight is pretty easy to test, so it soon became clear that Seider’s vision was truly exceptional. She was soon listed by Guinness World Records with eyesight 20 times more powerful than normal human beings.

Not only is she able to distinguish people and objects from 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) away, but she is also able to judge distance and position, which can be useful. And she can distinguish the individual colors that make up the color on a television set. Not so useful.^[9]

1 The Real-Life Deadpool

Okay, well maybe this isn’t exactly like Deadpool, but a woman identified only as “SM” has a condition known as Urbach-Wiethe, which has damaged parts of her brain. As a result, she feels no fear. At all. Totally fearless.

The condition manifested first as a complete lack of fear from all external stimuli—such as the large, venomous spiders and snakes she picked up as a child. Once, when she was being held up at knifepoint, her attacker was so unnerved by her lack of fear that he let her go.

Like all superheroes, however, SM does have one weakness. After a barrage of tests where she had shown no fear responses, she was exposed to carbon dioxide and suddenly had a panic attack. Neurologists studying her brain hypothesized that impending suffocation finally produced a fear response where no other stimuli could. However, when the test was repeated, SM did not show any anxiety until the gas started to take effect, proving that her response had been a physical reaction to suffocation rather than a psychological manifestation of fear.^[10]

It could be worse. She could be afraid of cows.

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels, and an occasional travel writer.

Fish tanks are tranquil until scientists want answers and drunk people want some fun. Then the fish stories start to get interesting . . . and more than a little weird.

Beyond the laboratory and fish-related emergency room visits, some of the best tales come from public aquariums. From lifesaving firsts to the mysterious case of a shark abandoned at a worm farm, no fishbowl will ever look the same again.

10 Infectious Fish Pedicures

A trendy way to exfoliate feet is to get a fish pedicure. Clients soak their feet in a container full of tiny fish that consume dead skin cells.

In 2018, a woman in New York allowed the fish, called Garra rufa, to feast on her toes. Months later, her toenails fractured. The bottom layer could be seen underneath the top.

Since it was painless, she did not visit a doctor for six months. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with onychomadesis. This condition occurs when something stops nails from growing and, eventually, they fall off. When all other causes of onychomadesis were ruled out (injury or a family history of nail disease), the woman became the first case linked to a fish pedicure.^[1]

In the past, Garra fish had tested positive for several bacteria that cause skin and tissue infections. Hygiene is another problem. Since the fish are in the tubs, the containers cannot be properly cleaned between customers. Sanitary risks include individuals with foot diseases who use the tub before other clients.

9 Oldest Fish In Captivity

In 2018, an Australian lungfish in San Francisco celebrated her 80th year at the California Academy of Sciences’ Steinhart Aquarium. Her age is closer to 90 as she arrived as an adult in 1938. Named Methuselah, she measures 1.2 meters (4 ft) long.

The oldest fish in captivity loves figs and prawns, belly rubs, and certain volunteers. Methuselah also prefers her own tank. When caretakers placed her in a larger aquarium with two younger lungfish, she insisted on hovering upside down until they moved her back.

Genetics play a role in her long life, but the species is extraordinary in other ways. Lungfish, which are primitive and go back 400 million years, use a swim bladder to float and breathe air. Some even walk over the ground to search for a new pond.

Methuselah seems happy to aim for a century. According to her caretakers, she eats like a pig and loves human interaction. For this reason, the aquarium’s coddled group of lungfish are often called “underwater puppies.”^[2]

8 Fish Have Personalities

Scientists tackled a tricky question in 2015. Wondering if fish had personalities, they decided to create a horror show. They scared guppies with a fake heron beak plunging into the water. On another occasion, they used “Big Al.” He was a carnivorous fish called a cichlid which would suddenly appear on the other side of the glass.

When a guppy was moved to this scare tank, the only shelter was a small plastic cover. After getting the holy sin frightened out of it, the single fish would be returned to a well-protected tank full of other guppies. After three days, it went back to the scare tank to endure five minutes of terror. This continued for a month.

After putting each of the 105 guppies through this experiment, scientists concluded that the fish had personalities. All reacted in a unique way. It was not accidental. The guppies repeated their chosen behaviors (hiding, fleeing, freezing) during the follow-up encounters with the heron and cichlid every three days.^[3]

7 Catfish Drinking Game

In 2016, a drunk man arrived in the emergency room with a bizarre injury. That evening, the unnamed 28-year-old had partied with friends in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. They had decided it would be a good idea to swallow live fish.

Several goldfish were taken from a home aquarium and gulped down without a problem. Then someone suggested another tank occupant—a small catfish. However, it was a Corydoras aeneus, a toxic creature with spines. When threatened, these catfish stiffen their venom-filled needles to avoid getting eaten.

Needless to say, the spiky creature got stuck in the man’s throat. Choking, he threw up blood and beer—but no fish. His drunk friends applied the Heimlich maneuver incorrectly. The man tried to wash the fish down with beer, ice cream, and honey. Finally, after waiting several hours, he went to the hospital.^[4]

Delicate surgery ultimately removed the dead catfish. It was preserved in the Rotterdam Natural History Museum, joining a collection that highlights dramatic encounters between humans and animals.

6 Wrasse Recognize Themselves

There is a simple test for self-awareness. A mirror shows the subject an artificial mark on their body. Any related reaction, like rubbing the spot, suggests an awareness that the image represents their real body. Animals that have passed include dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants, pigeons, and crows.

In 2018, researchers wanted a self-aware fish. They picked the cleaner wrasse. One ability made them the perfect candidate. Wrasse feed on parasites. They have evolved to notice unusual spots on other fish.

When 10 wrasse were isolated in individual mirrored tanks, things got interesting. At first, they mistook their reflections for rivals and fought with themselves. However, within days, they performed “friendly dancing” in front of the mirrors.^[5]

Wrasse are solitary and do not dance for other fish. Although hard to prove, they could have been dancing to see themselves move. When colored gel was applied to their heads (only noticeable in the mirror), seven wrasse spent more time with their reflections or rubbing their heads against things in the tank.

5 Fish Floaties

Leafy sea dragons resemble seahorses that ate too much plant fertilizer. The entire fish is covered with leaflike fronds.

In 2018, the Florida Aquarium in Tampa acquired three young sea dragons. While observing the Australian fish, the aquarium’s vet noticed something distressing. They ate badly and kept sinking to the bottom of the tank.

Leafy sea dragons float for a reason—to look like seaweed and not food. For them to hit the dirt meant something was seriously wrong. Surprisingly, it was discovered that all three suffered from the same condition—a swim bladder that never developed. The organ is responsible for buoyancy, and without it, the trio could not get off the floor.

In a genius move, the vet created floaties. He used black rings made of neoprene, a buoyant material that was both comfortable and resistant to salt water. The rings were looped around the sea dragons’ fragile midsections and sewn together at the ends. It worked. Once the fish found themselves floating, they started feeding and growing again.^[6]

4 The Stickleback C-Section

Stickleback females spray eggs for hopeful dads to fertilize. There is no hanky-panky or pregnancy with this species. In the 1950s, a pregnant stickleback was found in Scotland. No investigation was done. But in 2016, researchers trawled Scotland for more and found a heavily pregnant stickleback. Since she was dying, the fish was humanely destroyed and the eggs removed via C-section.

Although three cases are known (where egg-laying fish got pregnant), this was the only time that the embryos survived. They hatched in the laboratory and became healthy adults.

But how did a member of a species that doesn’t get pregnant carry healthy young in her belly?

DNA tests showed that she did not clone herself because the babies had two parents. The stickleback likely swam through a sperm cloud and was fertilized through her egg tube.

Beyond being a major evolutionary leap, the mother’s body also aced a crucial male role. To stimulate a healthy development, stickleback dads fan the eggs. The C-section fry were normal, meaning a mysterious internal process had replaced the father’s fanning.^[7]

3 Robot Guppies

The Trinidadian guppy does something weird with its eyes. Although the eyes are usually silver, anger turns them black within seconds. As researchers are curious creatures who go the extra mile, they decided to create robot guppies to find out if the change was voluntary and what it communicated within this fishy population.

In 2018, they took a dead specimen and made silicone replicas. The incredibly realistic fakes had either silver or black eyes. They were positioned over food and given lifelike movements thanks to a small motor. The social dynamics that followed showed that black eyes had a very specific meaning.

Smaller guppies approached the food when the robot had silver eyes. However, a dark look communicated what researchers called “honest aggression”—the guppy’s absolute readiness to fight. It also meant that the guppy was guarding a worthy resource.

When the real guppies were bigger, they beat up the robot. This was to loot the resource and thrash a smaller fish that dared to use the look. It remains unknown how guppies flood their eyes with black.^[8]

2 The Sandwich Ray

Macduff Marine Aquarium in Aberdeenshire is home to several thornback rays. Late in 2018, staff decided to clean one of the tanks. It was filled with ray eggs, known as a mermaid’s purse. In this case, they had to be removed as all the babies had hatched and the cases were empty.

However, when an employee tried to push the air out of one purse, it would not give. He peeled back one side and was surprised to find an unhatched ray. The unlucky creature had been trapped inside its egg. Since the case was destroyed and the ray was still an embryo, a surrogate shell had to be found.^[9]

The solution was as simple as it was unusual—a sandwich bag. The ray happily incubated inside the plastic for two months and eventually “hatched.” The day came when staff decided that it was ready to leave the bag. The baby thornback was removed and placed with 10 others where it thrived, seemingly unaffected by its peculiar past.

1 The Abandoned Shark

In 2012, a wildlife sanctuary was closed down outside of Melbourne, Australia. The operator was supposed to preserve a species of giant earthworm but was caught running an illegal animal park.

One of the creatures that was definitely not an earthworm was a great white shark. The enormous predator was supposed to stay there temporarily while its real home was being prepared elsewhere. However, when new owners took over the park, they kept the shark.^[10]

When the park was closed due to irregularities, the animals were handed over to the RSPCA. At this point, the shark’s story gets muddy. Not only was it left behind at the worm sanctuary, but it also somehow ended up in a tank of formaldehyde. This preserved the 4-meter-long (13 ft) great white.

The empty park could be considered spooky, but the shark tank was downright haunting. The corpse, hanging motionless in green water, recently became an Internet sensation after urban explorers encountered the beast and posted the video to YouTube.

Recently, there was a GoFundMe scam, which raised $400,000 to assist a homeless man who had allegedly given his last $20 to a damsel in distress on the side of the highway to refill her gas tank. This story was completely made up. Then there’s the Manchester attack’s homeless “hero,” who may have pulled nails from the arms and faces of children after a terrorist bomb killed 22 people, but then he robbed the victims. Judge David Hernandez, who sentenced him to four years and three months in prison, even said, “You presented yourself as a hero. Sadly you were not the hero that you pretended to be. You were just a common thief.”^[1]

Society seems to eat up these stories that fuel their distaste for the homeless, but there are plenty of cases of true heroism that should be remembered and honored. The purpose of this list is to highlight the moments when those who have lost everything in life act as heroes despite societal expectations. In the wake of these “homeless heroes turned rotten” stories, we need to be reminded of some real heroes. There are so many cases when homeless individuals have thrown themselves into a situation, even putting their own life on the line, to help another in need.

10 No Pulse, No Hope

In 2017, a Boston man named George Dakin was strolling down the sidewalk to meet his wife when a heart attack hit him, and he fell to his knees. It was called a “widowmaker” heart attack because 100 percent of his LAD artery was blocked. He lost his pulse for a full 28 minutes. Luckily, he happened to be in front of a group home for people seeking transitional housing. Most people pull out the picket signs when a group home tries to move into their neighborhood, but it saved Dakin’s life.

Austin Davis was staying at the group home at the time, and he raced to Dakin’s side. He performed CPR that kept Dakin alive until the ambulance arrived. It turns out that Davis had performed CPR four times in the past. Each time, he saved a person’s life. Davis said, “All I did was pump and pray, you know. I just hoped he’d make it.”^[2]

Dakin’s family was so grateful that they set up a GoFundMe for Davis. They bought him a used car and set him up in an apartment with the funds. They even helped to secure him a full-time position working at a Holiday Inn. Dakin’s daughter, Jodi, said, “Odds of escaping homelessness are about as bleak as walking away from a heart attack.” As of February 2018, $13,000 had been raised for Davis to help him transition into a new life.

9 A Chilling Splash

At around 2:00 AM on July 28, 2018, Shane Drossard (left above) was resting on the bank of the Mississippi River in Minneapolis when he heard a splash. A woman had jumped off a bridge to kill herself but survived the fall. Now, she was struggling against the current. Drossard reached his hand toward her from the riverbank, but the woman lost the strength (or the will) to hold on. She let go of his hand. Drossard said, “Help’s coming!” and jumped into the dark water.

He struggled to hold onto her against the current. She wanted to give up. Still, he fought to keep their heads above water while reassuring her that she was beautiful and had a full life ahead of her. Someone else heard her screams and called 911. Finally, both were pulled from the river and saved. Can someone please give this guy a medal? And why not a roof over his head while we’re at it?

In November 2010, another damsel in distress needed a knight in shining armor, but again, it probably wasn’t what she expected. Adan Abobaker (right above) was beside the River Thames when a woman attempted to plunge to her death from Blackfriars Bridge. Not only did he get hypothermia from the freezing water, but all of his precious possessions left onshore were stolen. Afterward, he said, “I took a long time to get over it . . . I still dream about it. I remember the waves coming over my head and swimming down towards her.” At least this guy did receive a medal.^[3]

8 Move Over, Flames

Anival Angulo is a young man with a hardened face and neck tattoos who lives in Las Vegas. He may not be what you imagine a hero looks like or even someone you want lurking in your neighborhood. He was doing just that, however, when he noticed smoke billowing from an apartment in 2017. Then, Angulo heard children screaming.

The gate was locked, so he jumped over it into the yard. He went to the door and saw a three-year-old girl. A 10-month-old infant was also inside. There was a steel deadbolt security bar on the door. He pulled until it bent upward and unlatched. Seriously, this is the kind of guy you want on your team when the apocalypse breaks out.

Las Vegas Fire and Rescue wrote on their Facebook page that the three-year-old “ran to him and wrapped her arms around his waist. He could see through the smoke the leg of an infant on the floor. He reached down and pulled the infant out.”^[4] So, it turns out that neck tattoos aren’t something to be afraid of, after all.

7 Baby Abduction

They say abuse happens closest to home. That was the case in Minden, Louisiana, in August 2017, when a family friend stole a two-month-old baby boy when the parent left the room to get a bottle from the fridge. He walked for miles with the infant before abandoning the boy under an overpass on Interstate 20. He then hitched a ride to a casino, where he confessed his crime to a complete stranger.

The kidnapper may have seemed a nutjob to some (especially since he claimed, “God made me do it,”) but the stranger who he confessed to wasn’t willing to take that risk. Even though the police have never endeared themselves to the homeless, this homeless man called them immediately. Police arrested the kidnapper and found the baby wrapped in a blanket, fast asleep. Chief Steve Cropper said, “The scariest thing about it—if [the baby] were able to roll off that ledge, he would have hit that concrete retaining ledge and probably would have rolled right out into the interstate.”^[5] So, another homeless gentleman acts fast and saves the day. Not all heroes wear capes!

6 ‘Trolley Man’ Fights Terrorist

What do you do when you see a knife-wielding man attempting to stab police officers? Run in the opposite direction, perhaps? Well, one man, lovingly dubbed “Trolley Man” online, had a different guttural reaction that was pure awesome sauce. At this point, mind you, the attacker, Hassan Khalif Shire Ali, had already killed a cafe owner and injured two others in his rampage on November 9, 2018, in Melbourne. Also, he had just set fire to a car full of gas cylinders near a busy street. So, the scene was literally red-hot. The terrorist was attempting to stab two policemen when Trolley Man lunged the shopping cart he was holding straight into Ali several times, helping to fend him off. (Ali was ultimately shot dead by police.)

Well, it turns out that living on the street leads to acts of desperation. Go figure. Sadly, the day before his heroic act, Trolley Man had broke into a CBD cafe and stole $500 from the register. He had also reportedly stolen a bicycle. So naturally, police wanted to have a chat about the burglaries after he had made his YouTube debut. Despite years of avoiding police at every turn, Trolley Man had an incentive to turn himself in. He was so beloved in the public eye that $155,000 had been raised on his behalf to get him off the streets. The community wanted to give him a second chance when they raised that life-changing sum of money for him. Now, Trolley Man, or Michael Rogers, is in a closely monitored support program where he can get the help and counseling he needs.^[6] Hopefully, harmless acts of burglary don’t disqualify hero status? There’s always redemption.

5 Defender Of The Elderly

Early during the morning of Mother’s Day 2018 in Brooklyn, an elderly woman in her seventies pulls her shopping cart while the woman beside her walks on a cane. They are minding their own business when a peculiar man approaches, mumbling to himself. He violently attacks them out of the blue, but another man quickly appears from the shadows to save the day. People stop and stare from the sidelines as the situation escalates. One of the women is bleeding profusely from her head. Both women are in a daze. The assailant tries to run away, but the Good Samaritan wrestles him to the ground and holds him down until police show up.^[7]

Perhaps this anonymous, homeless hero still wanders the city streets, Batman-style, keeping his eyes peeled for any funny business.

4 Accident Leaves Mother And Son Helpless

One moment, a mother and son are safely inside their car, and in the next instant, the car loses traction and slides off the highway. It was completely submerged underwater when the paramedics arrived. It January 2016 in Salinas, California, and a mother and her eight-year-old son had landed in a creek that was flooded from a recent downpour. It quickly swept them away. They traveled the length of five football fields as they battled the raging current. They were even sucked under the highway at one point and spit out on the other side.

A man named Rick Biddle was camping along the embankment when he heard his dog start barking. The dog alerted the man to the flailing woman in the murky water below. It was a close call, but Biddle managed to rescue both mother and son, who were utterly exhausted. It’s a good thing that the drainage ditch ran through Biddle’s camp, or they may not have been so lucky.^[8]

3 Puppy Love

It takes a real lowlife scumbag to hit-and-run in any situation, but somehow it’s even worse when the victim is a dog that can’t even call for help. There’s no excuse not to stop for a defenseless animal except, oh yeah, heartlessness. Thankfully, a homeless gentleman in Jackson, Mississippi, saw a dog get hit in November 2018 and scooped him up in his arms. He walked for miles with the wounded pooch until he found a vet. Despite some injuries, the dog (pictured above) was saved.

In another instance of puppy love, a Salt Lake City man named Ron Howell was panhandling on the side of the highway in 2018 when a woman dropped off a baby chihuahua in his lap. He knew he couldn’t take care of the tiny puppy, but now he didn’t have a choice. He met a woman who offered him a cigarette one day, and she listened to his story about the abandoned pup. She took some cutesy pictures, posted them on Facebook, and voila! The puppy found an owner, and $500 was raised for the chivalrous man who took the puppy in when no one else would.^[9]

2 Burglary Bungled

Jesse Green lived in a tent by a Shell gas station in San Franciso. He would often walk down there to wash windshields for some spare change. One day in January 2018, he happened to glance inside the mini-mart, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man trying to rob the clerk. The attacker had the young woman pinned to the floor in a choke hold. Jesse yelled for help as he rushed inside and leaped onto the attacker to pry off his strangling grasp. Two other men followed suit, and they all worked to pull the robber off the clerk.

The attacker made a run for it, but police found him lingering in a stairwell close by, where they arrested him for aggravated assault and burglary. When told that he was a hero, Green said casually, “Aren’t we all, naturally, I mean we got to help each other when we see stuff like that, right? I mean, it made me start crying. It’s not something to get happy on, you know?”^[10] Spoken like a true hero.

1 A Bag Containing $17,000

What would you do if you found a plastic grocery bag stuffed with $20 bills? Okay, now be honest. By the way, the money totals $17,000. Well, Kevin Booth of Sumner, Washington, is a man who’s about as honest as they come. As an adult with special needs who had a brain tumor removed in high school, Booth was at a severe disadvantage in life straight out of the gate. After living on the streets for over seven years, he remains drug-free despite daily struggles.

A surveillance video shows Booth discovering the money at the door of the Sumner Food Bank in 2018. “I kind of looked at the bag a little bit, put it on the trash can here . . . that’s when I pulled out a twenty, sniffed it to make sure it was real, which it was real.” Kevin said. “It is a lot of money. It was hard to turn it in, at first. I’m going, ‘Do I do this? Do I turn it in?’ ” He waited for the first person to arrive at the food bank and turned it in.

After 90 days without anybody claiming the money, the food bank claimed it. Booth said, “This story here . . . this has been, I’d say, the most terrific story ever in my life. This is a story to talk about for years to come.” The pride that he feels in doing the right thing is priceless. It props him to “hero” status for sure.^[11]

+ Rags To Riches: A Hollywood Story

Rock bottom has to be sleeping with your toddler in your arms on the floor of a public toilet at a railway station because you have run out of options. This happened to Chris Gardner when he was 27 years old. The odds were stacked against him from the very beginning. He was raised in poverty. His stepfather was an abusive alcoholic who eventually pushed his mother to attempt murder. Then Gardner was placed in the foster system, where so many children flounder. It didn’t seem that his life would work out so well, and it didn’t right away. He was homeless for a year in San Francisco before he eventually became a multimillionaire and had Will Smith star in the Hollywood movie of his life: The Pursuit of Happyness.

You may be wondering if this qualifies him as a hero. Well, some may argue that having unshakable hope in the face of despair is the quality of a true hero, not to mention his steely perseverance to not only survive but thrive for the sake of his son. However, I see your point. Gardner doesn’t just bask in his estimated worth of $60 million by buying private islands, a golden toilet, or $10,000 pajamas, as you may imagine millionaires do. Instead, he continues to be a champion for the homeless. He travels the globe 200 days of the year, giving motivational speeches. He also sponsors countless homeless charities and domestic abuse organizations.^[12] He’s still not giving up the fight.

For some reason climate change is still being debated in some circles. This may be because we live in a world where people just want to argue about literally everything no matter what it is or even why.  For the purposes of our question today we’re going to take it as a fact that climate change is a real thing, and it’s going to have real consequences for you and me and everything else in the world.

Accepting climate change is a fact is one thing, but understanding what it means is quite another. People aren’t wrong when they say that the Earth has gone through periods of climate change in the past. We’ve had at least five ice ages, we’ve had periods of warming, and there’s still life on earth. Does that mean we could weather a serious climate change with little difficulty? How much climate change is too much? And, most seriously, is it possible climate change could wipe out humanity?

Those are some weighty questions and since it’s all speculative, we can’t be one hundred percent sure. But we can rely on what some experts think!

Climate vs Weather

One thing to remember is a thing deniers over overlook intentionally or otherwise. Just because it’s cold one day doesn’t mean climate change isn’t real. Climate refers to average conditions over a longer period. 

If the temperature on November 1st is below freezing and that’s not normal, you can go online and arrogantly say “pfft, so much for climate change” but it misses the big picture of the fact it’s actually abnormal to be freezing on November 1. It also disregards that maybe June 1 was 10 degrees hotter than it has ever been in history. These are trends, not individual instances. 

Too many people think of climate change like it’s the money in their wallet. “Hey look, I have $100, that’s awesome!” But their bank account is overdrawn and they’re actually $1,000 in debt. That $100 is weather. The debt is climate change. Big picture stuff!

Global Temperature Trends

If you’re still not 100% sure about climate change we can look at global temperature trends. Have there been warmer days in the past? Absolutely. But remember, we’re looking at trends. 

Global records of temperature began in 1850, and we’ve been recording temperatures since then. As of the beginning of 2024, 2023 was the warmest year on record. It was 1.18 C above the 20th century average. These aren’t big numbers we’re dealing with across the board and that’s why we can get a freak snowstorm in late April 2023 when Spring is supposed to be springing and still experience the warmest year on record. Because later that same year, over 2,700 people in the US died and had heat-related complications listed on their death certificates. That’s a record for heat related deaths and shows that people need to focus beyond one random cold day to argue against warming temperatures when there are too many random hot days pushing the mercury in the other direction throughout the year.

The ten warmest years in recorded history were all in the past decade. That means every year is now one of the warmest years in recorded history as of 2014. It just keeps getting worse. As of November 2024 was on track to become the new warmest year on record. 

By 2030, temperatures are expected to be 1.9 C to 2.7 C higher. This temperature increase has been attributed to countries like China which have seen swiftly rising emissions from fossil fuel burning over the last years. While their use is hitting a plateau, it also rose faster than anticipated. 

Likewise, there is a fear that the US government may abandon any promises it made to stem emissions and combat climate change, which could see further increases across the board.

How Hot is the World Getting?

In 2016 the Paris Agreement was signed and ratified by 55 countries that agreed to reduce greenhouse emissions in order to prevent global temperatures from rising by 1.5 C above pre-Industrial levels by 2030. However, 2024 is already on track to have hit that 1.5 C marker. It’s believed this trend will continue for at least one of the next five years. In the year 2015  it was believed there was a 0% chance this would happen. Now it’s at about an 80% chance.

Since 1980, the number of places in the world that experience extreme heat events has increased 50 times. We’re not trending in a good direction.

Why 1.5C?

The 1.5 C mark didn’t come out of nowhere. There has been serious study about the potential effects of long-term global heating. So, if 2024 was 1.5 above pre-industrial levels it doesn’t necessarily mean that the world is ending. The problem is, if those temperatures are sustained over some decades. If we can’t decrease the temperature, and 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial becomes the norm then there are various ecosystems and regions on the earth that will not be able to sustain their current conditions. Basically, we’re talking about creating deserts and destroying farmland, forests, that sort of thing.

Some people who sound fairly educated on the topic will argue that climate change is not a thing to worry about because it’s a natural part of Earth’s history. So why not take a look at some of their statements and why they may not be as accurate as climate change deniers think? 

Climate Denial Arguments

If you ever get into a debate online with a climate skeptic, they will probably bring up the idea that the Earth’s climate has changed many times over history. We already mentioned ice ages and periods of warming and yes, the earth’s climate has changed many, many times in the 4 billion years this planet has been here. But that isn’t the full story.

To say there’s no need to worry because greenhouse gasses have spiked throughout history is to overlook what happened next, not to mention the fact we’re making it happen faster than it ever did naturally.  

These spikes have been followed by massive ecosystem changes, species extinctions, and ice ages. The effects are long term but they are fairly consistent. Humans only focused on the next ten years won’t see or maybe even care about these longer-term effects, but history shows they are real. 

Some people will also try to claim there is dissension in the science, that not all experts agree on climate change. And sure, not all experts agree, but some people will argue that the earth is flat, that doesn’t mean there’s any real debate among scientists. According to NASA, 97% of scientists still working in the field agree humans are causing climate change. 

There have been stories published in the media about how climate change could have benefits like nicer, milder days in places like Canada. Again, that’s true. Canadians won’t have to endure as many harsh winters, but it kind of overlooks the bigger picture. 

The consequences of climate change include things like those 2,700 deaths that we mentioned earlier. Also increased tornado activity, floods, droughts, loss of crops, species extinction, ecosystem destruction and so on.  It’s even directly linked to modern slavery where those affected by climate disasters are forced into poverty and slavery to survive. So sure, you might get to enjoy a green Christmas, but when July comes around, maybe a whole town full of people on the other side of the world die because it’s over 50° C.

Trying to find a silver lining in climate change is a fool’s errand at best. It’s believed the total cost to the global economy could be around $23 trillion by 2050.

How Hot Would The World Need to Get to Be Unlivable?

So, let’s say we all agree that climate change is happening, humans are causing it, and it’s not a good scene. There are various ways to interpret that last part. We know that we’re causing the extinction of various species, serious weather events are becoming more common, and human lives are being lost as a result. But at what point does it become untenable? How hot does the world need to get before all of us are hurtling towards certain doom?

We don’t need to hunt down isolated stories of heat related deaths; they happen regularly around the world. In 2024, over 1,000 people died when temperatures hit 52° C during the hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. In Europe, about 47,000 deaths were linked to heat extremes. It’s already happening.

Research has shown that humans can only endure 31°C at 100% humidity before they can no longer regulate their temperature. That’s for young, healthy people. If you’re older or suffer any health conditions, it’s going to be lower. That means you need help to lower your temperature if it gets to that point because you can’t do it on your own, and you’ll suffer consequences including heat stroke and potentially death.

You need to remember when you look at these temperature figures that the humidity is what really causes the problem. If you live in a dry climate like Arizona, you can handle higher temperatures because you’re going to sweat and cool yourself down. If Arizona’s hottest day came with 100% humidity, you’re not sweating anything away. You’d have to endure that heat in all its glory and that could be lethal.

This temperature/humidity rating is also very subjective. If identical twins are in the same place at the same temperature, but one has been working all day, that one is going to fall victim to heat stroke sooner, and at a lower temperature or humidity. As global temperatures rise, larger areas fall into this zone for longer periods of time, making it impossible for some people to survive. 

If we hit 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels, then 2.2 billion people in the Indus River Valley throughout India and Pakistan, another billion in China and 800 million in Sub-Saharan Africa will be in that intolerable zone for extended periods every year. Add that up and that’s four billion people, or half of the entire world. 

If we reach 3 C, you can expect those same conditions in the US all along the east coast and as far inland as Chicago. South America and Australia would endure the same. We’re expecting to reach that 3° by the year 2100 if we can’t turn climate change around. If we even hit 2 degrees higher by then, it’s been predicted that as many as one billion lives will be lost as a result. 

If temperatures get to a consistent point between 40 C and 50 C then many species, humans included, will be unable to survive. That’s an extremely unlikely outcome on a global scale, thankfully, but it may happen in some isolated areas that will force populations to flee as a result. 

Keep in mind, it’s not just the heat that we need to worry about. Melting ice causes the sea level to rise which swallows coastal cities. More hurricanes, floods, tornadoes and droughts all contribute as well.

Can Humanity Survive Global Warming?

That 1 billion deaths figure that we say that earlier is an outlier. That’s the extreme end. Some predictions are as low as 40 million. That’s like all of Canada dying, or both Michigan and Texas going out together. Now take a moment to appreciate the fact that you just heard us refer to 40 million deaths as the low end of things. That’s the best-case scenario kind of outcome and that is absolutely horrifying. 

In general, few climate scientists think that climate change is going to wipe humanity off the map, but it’s also something we shouldn’t rule out entirely. We will probably endure this and we will adapt. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to be pretty, there won’t be severe consequences, and we won’t lose a lot of people along the way. It’s going to be ugly.

What we’re going to see is mass migrations to survive climate change. People who live on islands are going to be forced to flee because, as sea levels rise, islands will disappear. Tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people are going to have to migrate out of the extreme temperature zones that are no longer fit for human life. 

Crops are going to have to be adapted to prevent starvation and farmers will need to switch to new ones in certain places. Growing seasons will change, availability of water will change, or a dozen other factors affecting agriculture will need to be addressed all around the world.

Climate change has happened, is happening and will continue to happen. How bad it gets is only something we can guess, but here’s hoping we continue on a path towards preventing as much damage as we can.

Sleep. It’s the place where we’re all Vikings. Or donuts. Whatever it is that happens to you in your dreams. It’s the most horizontal you can be in a day, and it’s usually pretty relaxing. Man, who doesn’t love a good sleep? But what happens if you don’t get enough of it?

Everyone’s probably pulled an all-nighter at some point in their lives, whether for work or pleasure. You stay up all night, the morning comes around, you just figure “oh well. Been up this long, might as well stay up for a whole day.” 

At some point, though, that gets old. Usually we don’t go beyond a day or two at the most. And it’s fairly well known that at some point, you’ll start suffering some ill effects from not getting sleep.

The mechanics of how this works are not as well known, however. Nor is it always really clear exactly what goes wrong when you don’t get enough sleep, or just how bad things can get for you. So let’s take a look at what medical science tells us about sleep, how much you need, and what you’re risking if you don’t get enough. 

How Much Sleep Do You Need?

Most of the world seems to be based around the idea that we need 8 hours of sleep per night. We’ve divided our 24 hour periods into 8-hour segments as adults in the western world. You work for 8 hours you sleep for 8 hours and the other 8 hours is when you fit in everything else you need to do.

Realistically, it’s not always that simple. Medically speaking, as an adult, you should be getting at least 7 hours of sleep per night. The younger you are the more sleep you’re going to need. Babies are out there living the high life getting a recommended 16 hours of sleep per day. They’re basically cats until they’re a year old.

Hours of sleep is not a blanket thing, however. People are different and you can’t say specifically that everyone needs this many hours. Some people can function on less sleep, and some people are going to need more. In general, it’s the quality of your sleep that you need to be concerned about, as opposed to how much of it you get.

Sleep quality is concerned with how well you slept, rather than how long. Some nights you hit the pillow, you’re out like a light, and you wake up with your alarm in the morning. Ideally, you feel refreshed, and ready to start your day. That was a good, quality night’s sleep.

On the other hand, sometimes you lay down and you stare at your ceiling, you stare at the display on your clock; you toss and turn; you wake up three times to go to the bathroom, and in the morning you somehow feel worse than you did when you went to bed the night before. You could have had the exact same number of hours, but that was not quality sleep.

If you’re getting good sleep, you probably don’t need more than 9 hours as an adult. That’s not to say anything bad is going to happen to you if you sleep from 12:00 to 12:00 on a Sunday, it’s just that you probably won’t get a ton of benefit from those extra hours. 

How Long Can You Go Without Sleep?

In 1986 a man named Robert McDonald broke a world record by staying awake for nearly 19 consecutive days. His total hours was just below 454. That’s a hell of a long time to be awake and it’s generally not recommended. He had to be monitored the entire time and, as you might expect, people had to observe him non-stop to make sure he didn’t fall asleep. 

You can start feeling the effects of sleep deprivation after as little as 24 hours. Sleep deprivation has been likened to drunkenness. Going without sleep is like having a blood alcohol level of 0.1%. in most places in the world, that’s above the legal limit. That means you’re going to be suffering some cognitive impairments, slow reaction time, brain fog, all that stuff. The symptoms are all very similar to drunkenness. 

In addition to those various impairments, your stress hormone production actually begins to go up. So you’re going to start producing more cortisol and adrenaline. This is because your body knows you’re lacking sleep and trying to help you out.

By 36 hours of not having sleep, you’ll start having physical symptoms. They may not be obvious from the outside, but you’ll be suffering from hormone imbalances. Your appetite and body temperature can suffer, and your mental state will continue to deteriorate. Irritability is a very common symptom.

After two days of not having sleep, you can start experiencing something called microsleep. That happens when you’re still trying to stay awake but your brain has had enough of your shenanigans and actually shuts off for several seconds. You may not even notice it happens, and it’s like a little reset switch went off for less than a minute.

You’ll begin to notice some serious symptoms within three or four days of not sleeping. This can include hallucinations, paranoia, and even psychosis. Interestingly, there isn’t a ton of research on what happens when you stay awake this long because it’s not considered ethical to make someone do it. At this point, sleep deprivation is essentially torture, and your average doctor doesn’t want to do that to a patient. At least not in a way that would allow them to write about it in a scholarly journal after the fact.

We do know that your hallucinations can become longer and more complex at this level. It’s hard to speak without slurring, even walking without stumbling around is difficult. And by 120 hours you can experience psychotic breaks with reality.

But, just like not everyone needs the same amount of sleep, not everyone’s going to have the same experiences. The world record holder for sleep deprivation suffered very few ill effects from his experience, so your mileage may vary. As a general rule though, you probably don’t want to try it yourself.

Sleep Deficiency and Deprivation

A lack of proper sleep can manifest itself as either sleep deficiency or sleep deprivation. The terms are similar enough that you might want to use them interchangeably, but there is a technical difference between the two. Sleep deprivation could be considered more acute while sleep deficiency is more of a chronic issue. Sleep deprivation is one factor or symptom of sleep deficiency.

Additionally, sleep deficiency might involve sleep disorders that affect the way you sleep, the inability to get to sleep when you want to, or consistently poor-quality sleep.

About 1 in 5 people in America get less than 5 hours of sleep per night which qualifies a sleep deprivation. That’s essentially an epidemic. Your bad sleep can be caused by a number of things, some of which are in your control and some of which aren’t.

Sleeping at night can be hard if you take naps during the day. This throws off your natural cycle. Likewise, using devices like phones before bed has been shown to cause poor sleep. Caffeine and other drugs can affect your ability to get good, consistent sleep as well. All of this contributes to sleep deprivation which can spiral into sleep deficiency if it’s allowed to keep happening.

What Happens Physically When You Don’t Sleep

We briefly looked at what happens when you don’t get enough sleep, at least in general terms. Now let’s get a little more specific about what’s going to happen to your mind and body if you find yourself suffering from sleep deprivation for too long.

When you suffer from a lack of sleep, and that doesn’t mean not sleeping at all, that just means not getting the full, proper amount of sleep you need, you can expect that it will affect your mood the next day. There’s a good chance you’re going to be more irritable and experience other negative feelings but you otherwise or shouldn’t be affected by. You’ll also be feeling stress more acutely. 

People who did not have depression before developing sleep disorders have nearly double the risk of developing depression as those who don’t have sleep disorders. As many as 80% to 90% of people with depression suffer from insomnia. The effect on your mental health really can’t be overstated.

Poor sleep will also affect both your memory and ability to learn. In fact, your ability to learn new things can be reduced by as much as 40% if you’re not getting the proper sleep. This ironically flies in the face of the idea of a college student pulling an all-nighter to study for an exam, as you’re actually working against yourself at this point.

Just one night of sleep deprivation could affect both your balance and coordination making you clumsier and slower to react during the day. You literally walk differently when you haven’t had enough sleep.

There are also noticeable, physical tolls of not sleeping properly. Your immune system will suffer from a lack of sleep and that means you are more likely to get sick and stay sick longer. Even a simple cold is going to hit you harder and last longer when you suffer from sleep deprivation.

We have probably all seen somebody and thought they looked tired, and there’s a reason for that. You literally look different when you’re not getting enough sleep. You’re more likely to have puffy, red, or drooping eyes. Dark circles, pale flesh, and a drooping mouth were all noted as well. And because sleep affects cortisol levels, a lack of sleep could lead to more wrinkles. 

A lack of sleep has also been linked to weight gain. The same regions of your brain that are stimulated by smoking marijuana that can lead to the munchies are stimulated when you don’t get enough sleep. That means you’re inspired to eat more when you sleep less which can lead to obesity.

A lack of sleep later in life can also lead to dementia and Alzheimers. It can also put you at risk of hypertensive heart disease. Basically, sleep deprivation is bad for you across the board. There aren’t a lot of areas of your personal health that are going to improve if you’re not sleeping, but there are plenty that are going to get worse.

Arguably, the most Insidious thing about this is that it’s a game of inches. Each of these things grows slowly. So nothing is affected terribly at first, it’s just many little things chewing away at your overall health to make you feel worse in a way that’s really hard to even notice at first.

Can Lack of Sleep Kill You?

There are two ways to look at this question. If you fail to go to sleep for a long time, it’s not like your body is just going to seize up and you’re going to crap out. Lack of sleep isn’t like a gunshot wound. Lack of sleep has never directly killed anyone that we’re aware of. That said, chronic sleep deprivation can lead to accidents and earlier death. And there is evidence of lack of sleep being lethal to animals. 

There is actually a genetic condition called fatal familial insomnia which can develop over time and increase in severity the longer it goes. As it progresses mental and physical deterioration occur, including a breakdown of your body’s autonomic systems. Your ability to regulate your breathing and heart rate can suffer and that can ultimately be fatal to those who suffer from it. This is, of course, different from simply not getting enough sleep and suffering a fatal result.