Every culture has its fair share of mythological beings, but when it comes to wicked creatures, Native American folklore offers a truly chilling roster. From shadowy spirits that lure travelers to monstrous hybrids that roam the tundra, these legends have terrified listeners for generations.

Wicked Creatures of Native American Folklore

10 Bookwus

Also known as “Bakwas,” “Bokwus,” or “Bukwis,” the Bookwus is known as the “Wildman of the Woods” among the Kwaqiutl tribe. The Bookwus is a spiritual being associated with the souls of those who have drowned, and it lives around ocean shores at the edges of forests. The main danger of encountering a Bookwus is their desire to lure humans into their invisible home. They will share food such as salmon and berries that will prove too good to resist. In truth, the food is cursed, and those who eat it become a Bookwus themselves. They are shy of humans in general, and their favorite food is cockles.

Masks of the Bookwus are often crafted with great care and feature large eyebrows, round eyes, and a pointed nose. There is a dance of the Bookwus where performers wear the masks and overalls with cedar branches pinned to them and proceed to act out the Bookwus’s shyness of humans and his search for cockles to eat.

9 The Rolling Head

The Midwestern tribes feared a head that rolled around by itself. It had long hair and an intent to hunt down and devour anyone that it caught. The origin story of the rolling head has several different versions.

The first story claims that the rolling head began as a person who licked one of their wounds to help it heal. The person decided they enjoyed the taste of human blood and devoured the rest of their own body until only the head was left. Now, they roll around looking for the next victim to satisfy their taste for blood.

Another version states that the rolling head started from a murder performed by a loved one. Some stories tell of a husband who murdered his wife and force‑fed the flesh to their children. Others say the husband fed the wife her own flesh before finally killing her off. In either case, the person who was murdered rose again as the rolling head to seek revenge on their murderer. Once vengeance was attained, the head continued to terrorize people until it was put down.

8 Baykok

One creepy tale among the Chippewa people is that of the Baykok—giant skeletons with translucent skin and black eyes that turn red when they stalk prey. The Baykok are believed to have come into existence after a hunter was left to die in the cold after being trapped. The hunter was angry that his fellow tribesmen had failed to help him from his predicament, so he held onto his life force and transformed into the hulking skeleton which the Chippewa people have come to know.

The way to detect a Baykok’s approach is to listen for his taught skin stretching and his bones popping. He prefers to attack at night by putting people to sleep with invisible, poisoned arrows. Once the victim is unconscious, the Baykok slices open the victim with a knife, cuts out the liver, and replaces it with a stone. The Baykok gets a free meal while the victim, unable to remember the attack, slowly dies from the lack of their liver.

7 Unhcegila

Also known as Unk Cekula or Unktehi, this creature is described by the Lakota tribe as a large dragon. Stories of the Unhcegila began to appear after neighboring Lakota tribes began to report numerous rumors of a shadow that appeared from the sea and nestled within the mountains of the Black Hills.

At first, it was described as having no visible form, and its entire body was shrouded in smoke. Over time, the Unhcegila revealed itself to have a long, scaled body that proved impenetrable to spears and arrows. Despite this, the Unhcegila was defeated. How it met its fate has multiple stories attached to it.

One tale claims that the Unhcegila once coexisted with the tribesmen. Soon, however, the dragon’s offspring developed a taste for human meat, and the tribesmen fought back. Another variant says that a warrior was instructed by a weasel spirit to be swallowed by the creature. The warrior cut his way out from the inside of the beast and killed the Unhcegila. A third origin claims that two children had a bow and some magic. They managed to strike the Unhcegila’s only weak spot, killing the being. In any case, it’s probably a good thing that it’s dead.

6 Apotamkin

In modern times, the Apotamkin got exposure after the movie Twilight gave reference to the real‑world myth about the case of “The Cold One.” The closest thing to what the movie might be referencing is the Native American Apotamkin, which people believed were vampires. The truth is, the actual case for what an Apotamkin is is up in the air.

One source states that the Apotamkin are indeed vampires that come with the full range of powers you’d expect (empowered abilities, super strength, and the desire to gain sustenance from human blood). Unlike the modern vampire, Apotamkin could also feed off animals and had more of a zombie corpse aesthetic to them, hence the name “Cold One.”

Another tale claims that the Apotamkin was not a vampire at all. It was a sea serpent that dwelt along the Passamaquoddy Bay. When people became careless and walked too close to the water’s edge, the Apotamkin would snatch them and drag them into the water. Some say the Apotamkin was a woman who had turned into a serpent with long, red hair.

Both origins state that the Apotamkin was used mainly as a story to warn children of the dangers of acting incautious. Vampire or not, the Apotamkin probably made a few children stay safe over the course of its mythical history.

5 Kee‑Wakw

Also known as the “chenoo,” “kiwakwa,” or “giwakwa,” the kee‑wakw was a giant in the Wabanaki tribe’s mythology.

Meeting face‑to‑face with a kee‑wakw probably wasn’t the best idea. If you angered one, the beast rapidly increased in size until it was taller than the trees. These creatures had gigantic fangs and a taste for human flesh. The only chance of surviving was to hope that the kee‑wakw wasn’t hungry . . . and they were always hungry.

The origins of what made the kee‑wakw varies. Some legends say that a powerful shaman had the magic to rise from the grave as the creature itself. Other stories tell of someone possessed by an evil spirit or committing a serious crime (such as allowing a tribesman to starve) that caused their heart to turn to ice and them into a kee‑wakw. Some legends claimed it wasn’t a transformed human, but a monster by birth. The ice chunks within them were the source of their power. To defeat the kee‑wakw, you had to make it vomit up the ice or dissolve the creature with salt. Sometimes, doing so would turn the kee‑wakw back into the human they once were.

4 Puckwudgie

Originating from Wampanoag folklore, the Puckwudgie was a 60‑ to 90‑centimeter‑tall (2–3 ft) demon that haunted the woodlands. They looked fairly human except for their giant nose, fingers, and ears. Rumors of the demon’s abilities were quite varied. A few of these included the ability to disappear at will, use magic, poison arrows, create fire, or to transform into a walking porcupine.

The story of how the Puckwudgie came to be goes back to a story of the giant called Maushop, another key element in Wampanoag folklore. The Puckwudgie became jealous of the praise that the tribesmen gave Maushop, so they decided to help out the tribe as well. Their well‑intended plans didn’t turn out so good, so they decided to become a malevolent force of evil instead. Maushop was called upon to scoop up the Puckwudgies and scatter them across the land. Many died, but some survived the drop.

Once Maushop had left the tribe for a while, the Puckwudgies returned and burned the villages and kidnapped the children in revenge. Maushop sent his five sons after them, who were all killed. An enraged Maushop took matters into his own hands, but he, too, fell to the hands of the gremlins. Ever since, the land has been plagued by these malevolent imps seeking revenge on the Wampanoag people.

3 Basket Ogress

Also known as the Basket Woman, this legend doesn’t originate from just one tribe. Most of the tribes along the Northwest coast know of the giant Basket Ogress, and she acts more of a Native American boogeyman than other creatures.

The Basket Ogress’s biography sounds like it came from a fairy tale. She enjoys kidnapping people (naughty children in particular) and placing them in her giant basket. When she’s collected enough for a meal, she takes them back into her lair and eats them.

There’s one crucial flaw to the Basket Ogress, and it is usually her downfall in the tales. While she is strong, she is also dim‑witted and easy to trick. One story has several captured children watching as the ogress prepares some hot rocks to cook them on. They manage to convince her to do a song and dance before cooking them. While distracted with her dance routine, the children work together to push her into the hot rocks.

2 Akhlut

The tale of the Akhlut comes from the Inuit and tells of a man who became so obsessed with the sea that he wanted to live in it. One day, upon returning to his village, it appeared that his desire to live underwater had changed him. The rest of the villagers didn’t recognize him anymore and exiled him, so he wandered the lands seeking revenge.

While traveling, he came across a pack of wolves. The nature of the wolves matched his hunger for revenge, and he became a wolf himself. He realized he could transform into the animal that matched his desire. With his newfound ability, he leaped into the ocean and became an orca. He swam around the seas until his desire to ravage humans overtook him. He jumped onto the shore as a wolf and hunted the tribesmen.

It is said that if you’re in the realm of the Inuits and come across wolf tracks that lead directly to the sea, there’s a good chance you’ve come across the prowling grounds of the Akhlut.

1 Adlet

Another Inuit‑based creature is the Adlet, and it’s one of the more twisted stories. The Adlet themselves are the resultant offspring between a human Inuit woman and a red dog. There were 10 children in total, all of a mixture of human and dog. Some stories claimed that the Adlet had the lower half of a dog and the upper half of a human. Others said they had the body of a dog with the intelligence of a human.

After the children were born, the family was exiled to an island. Every day, one of the children swam back to the mainland and received boots filled with meat from the woman’s father to help feed the family. One day, the father loaded the boots with rocks instead of meat and drowned the dog on his voyage back. The woman was outraged and unleashed her children to the mainland to kill her father and anyone that stood in their way.

A simpler version says that the woman didn’t travel anywhere. She sent five of her offspring overseas to ravage other nations. The other half of her children stayed home, and together, they populated the land with deadly Adlets, who drank the blood of recently killed tribesmen.

Alfred Nobel patented his newfangled invention—dynamite—in 1867. Since then, the explosive material has been behind countless catastrophes, and today we’ll count down ten of the most harrowing tragedies caused by dynamite.

Tragedies Caused by Dynamite: A Grim Overview

10 Bellevue, Pennsylvania

In November 1882, coal miner Mr. Forsythe bought several sticks of dynamite for blast‑fishing. The cold snap froze the sticks, and, unaware of how lethal the material could be, he set the frozen explosives beside a lit kitchen stove to thaw them. Afterward he headed to work, only to learn later that his home had blown apart. The stove turned into a shrapnel storm, ripping through the back of the house. His eight‑year‑old son lost a leg at the knee and suffered catastrophic torso injuries. His wife endured more than thirty shrapnel wounds, and his other two children were mortally injured.

9 Baltimore, Maryland

March 1913 saw a maritime nightmare in Baltimore Harbor when 340 tons of dynamite being transferred from a barge to the British steamer Alum Chine detonated without warning. The blast killed 50 transport workers and injured 75 others, its shockwave felt as far away as the Philadelphia Naval Yard and three neighboring states. A second explosion ripped two more ships apart, and a rain of burning steel and unexploded dynamite rained down within a 400‑meter radius. The foreman, Bomhart, was accused of negligence and arrested, though his ultimate fate remains unclear.

8 Valparaiso, Chile

On New Year’s Day 1953, a mischievous boy tossed a lit firecracker into a government warehouse stocked with blasting powder and roughly ten tons of dynamite. The resulting explosion nearly flattened an entire city block and ripped apart the waterfront. Three nearby fire stations were destroyed, and many of the dead were volunteer firefighters. As crowds gathered to watch the blaze, panic spread when the fire surged toward the spectators, leading to a deadly stampede. A concurrent bus strike hampered medical response, and the death toll climbed to at least 47 with more than 350 injured.

7 Bolivia, North Carolina

Before modern airline terror threats, there were suicide bombers. On January 3, 1960, a National Airlines DC‑6B bound for Miami exploded over Bolivia, North Carolina, killing all 34 passengers, including Julian Andrew Frank. Investigators discovered Frank had recently faced financial and legal troubles and had purchased a million dollars in life‑insurance policies. Evidence showed he had slipped into the aircraft’s restroom, rigged a dynamite bomb with a dry‑cell battery, and set it off, hoping to make his death look accidental so his wife could collect the payout.

6 Saigon, Vietnam

In August 1965, during the Vietnam War, a terrorist duo drove a car packed with dynamite into the wall of Saigon’s special police headquarters. The blast killed four policemen and wounded 17 others, including four Americans. The attackers leapt clear before the impact, then opened fire with machine guns as a second vehicle arrived. One terrorist fell in the ensuing gunfight; the others fled. U.S. officials blamed the Viet‑cong, while Vietnamese investigators pointed to supporters of the late Colonel Pham Ngoc Thao seeking revenge.

5 Jersey City, New Jersey

February 1911 turned the Jersey Central Railway Pier into a demolition site when twenty tons of dynamite being shifted from rail cars to a boat detonated spontaneously. The explosion obliterated the boat and two neighboring vessels, and its shockwave was felt up to ten miles away. The pier, packed with freight from steel mills, turned into deadly shrapnel, injuring over a hundred workers. Glass shattered in New York City, and windows on Ellis Island and Governors Island were blown out. In total, 20 people died and hundreds were wounded.

4 Melrose, Massachusetts

September 1904 saw a trolley car returning passengers from Boston strike a 50‑lb box of dynamite that had mysteriously fallen onto the tracks. The blast hurled pedestrians up to 30 meters away, shattered windows, and killed ten people—including a child—while severely wounding 17 more. Rescuers later discovered the box had slipped off the back of a wagon; by the time the driver realized the loss, the explosion had already claimed its victims.

3 Santander, Spain

In November 1893, a steamer loaded with over 500 cases of dynamite caught fire in Santander’s harbor. As a man‑of‑war attempted to combat the flames, the fire reached the cargo hold, triggering a massive explosion that destroyed both vessels, their crews, the entire quay, and the crowds gathered there. The blast instantly killed 300 people, including most of the local police force, and is estimated to have caused up to 500 deaths overall, with hundreds more injured. The surrounding waterfront and nearby buildings were reduced to rubble.

2 Tultenango, Mexico

March 1936 brought disaster to a railroad station 125 miles northwest of Mexico City when a coal car caught fire, broke loose, and rolled into a freight car loaded with dynamite. The impact set off a colossal explosion that shredded the coal car, the dynamite car, and extensive sections of track. A nearby water tank, ten other freight cars, the station itself, and many village houses were heavily damaged. The blast killed 30 people outright and wounded about 60, most of them railroad workers or local residents. Mutilated remains and body parts were found hundreds of meters from the epicenter.

1 Georgian Bay, Ontario

In August 1938, 21‑year‑old playboy Daniel George Dodge—heir to the Dodge Motor Company fortune—decided to impress his new wife, Lorraine, by playing with dynamite at his lakeside lodge. After lighting sticks and tossing them out the window for fun, a stray stick struck a sill, bounced back, and landed on a pile of blasting caps. The ensuing explosion injured everyone present, including a camp caretaker and his wife. While the group scrambled for help in a speedboat, Dodge fell overboard and drowned. Although rumors swirled about foul play, Lorraine faced no charges and later inherited the lodge and a generous estate.

Thanks in large part to modern technology, anyone can become an autodidact throughout history, mastering any subject with just an internet connection and a spark of curiosity. Beyond the digital highway, all it takes is a dash of initiative.

In the grand tapestry of human achievement, some individuals forged their expertise outside the traditional classroom. These self‑taught pioneers—sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse—show us that formal schooling is just one path to mastery.

Why Autodidacts Throughout History Matter

Studying autodidacts throughout history reveals how curiosity, grit, and relentless self‑education can reshape entire fields, from art and science to politics and crime‑fighting.

10 Leonardo Da Vinci The Renaissance Man

Most people recognize Leonardo da Vinci as the genius behind The Last Supper and the enigmatic Mona Lisa, yet his impact in 15th‑century Europe stretched far beyond the canvas. He learned basic reading, writing, and arithmetic at home but never attended a formal academy.

After a ten‑year apprenticeship with Andrea del Verrocchio in Florence, da Vinci turned largely to self‑directed study. He filled countless notebooks with scientific sketches, inventive concepts, and designs for inventions that never left the page.

Among his wild ideas was a 20‑meter (65‑foot) mechanical bat, a precursor to modern aviation. His fascination with anatomy even inspired a flying‑machine sketch that mimicked a bat’s wing‑beat.

Sigmund Freud famously described him as “a man who awoke too early in the darkness, while the others were all still asleep.”

9 Frank Bender The Recomposer

Frank Bender, who called himself the “recomposer of the decomposed,” wielded his artistic talent to crack cold cases. With zero formal training, he emerged as a leading forensic sculptor in the late 20th century, carving lifelike faces from fragmented skulls.

Before his forensic career, Bender served in the Navy and worked as a commercial photographer. His most famous creation—a clay mask of the elusive murderer John List—directly led to the killer’s capture.

Bender’s uncanny intuition, combined with a deep compassion for victims, made him a unique figure in crime‑solving. He passed away in 2011 after battling pleural mesothelioma.

8 H.P. Lovecraft The Hermit Of Horror

H.P. Lovecraft reshaped the horror genre with his dark, cosmic tales. A life marked by isolation and familial mental‑health struggles left him penniless at his 1937 death, but his influence blossomed posthumously.

Both of his parents spent time in an insane asylum, a backdrop that seeped into his unsettling narratives. His stories inspired creators like Robert Bloch—author of Psycho—and later giants such as Stephen King and Guillermo del Toro.

Lovecraft’s legacy birthed the subgenre of “cosmic horror,” forever changing how we confront the unknown.

7 Julian Assange The Whistle‑Blower

Julian Assange epitomizes the modern autodidact. Best known as WikiLeaks’ founder, his hacking and coding prowess grew from a teenage fascination sparked when his mother bought him his first computer at 16.

Assange’s releases—ranging from DNC emails to war‑crime videos—have ignited fierce debates about transparency versus national security. He attended 37 schools, briefly enrolled at the University of Melbourne, but never earned a degree.

Whether viewed as a crusader for truth or a reckless provocateur, his self‑taught expertise reshaped global discourse.

6 Adolf Hitler The Racist

Adolf Hitler, the architect of Nazi Germany’s atrocities, rose from a dismal youth marked by school dropout, parental loss, and a string of orphanages. By 18, he had already abandoned formal education.

Initially a hopeful painter, he faced rejection twice from Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts. The disappointment, coupled with exposure to anti‑Jewish agitators like Mayor Karl Lueger and politician Georg von Schonerer, fueled his burgeoning extremist worldview.

Hitler’s toxic nationalism eventually triggered World War II and the systematic murder of six million Jews.

5 Granville Woods The Black Edison

Granville Woods never achieved the household fame of Thomas Edison, yet his inventions revolutionized 19th‑century railroads. Born in 1856 in Columbus, Ohio, he left school early to support his family.

Hands‑on work across various railroad jobs sharpened his mechanical insight, leading to breakthroughs like the “troller” and the “induction telegraph.”

With no formal education, Woods amassed 60 patents, founded his own company, and advanced telecommunications and railroad safety technology.

4 Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. The Great Impostor

Ferdinand Waldo Demara Jr. turned deception into an art form, slipping into dozens of identities over his lifetime. By 16, he had fled home, joined a monastery, and then embarked on a spree of impersonations.

His résumé includes stints as a religious psychologist, military soldier, and law student. The most astonishing chapter? Posing as Dr. Joseph Cyr, a Canadian Royal Navy surgeon, he performed life‑saving surgeries aboard a destroyer during the Korean War.

Demara’s chameleon‑like abilities were likely fueled by a high IQ and photographic memory. His escapades landed him in prison, and his story inspired a 1961 film starring Tony Curtis.

3 Kato Lomb The Polyglot

Kato Lomb’s claim to fame is mastering 16 languages without any innate linguistic gift. She championed motivation as the key driver, insisting that self‑imposed inhibitions were the only real barrier to rapid language acquisition.

Born in early‑20th‑century Hungary, Lomb earned a PhD in chemistry and physics, yet her true passion lay in languages. It wasn’t until her mid‑twenties that she began tackling English, eventually adding fifteen more tongues.

Her memoir, Polyglot: How I Learn Languages, continues to inspire adult learners worldwide.

2 Booker T. Washington The Wizard Of Tuskegee

Booker T. Washington emerged as a pivotal African‑American leader in the post‑Civil‑War era. Born on a slave plantation to a white father and Black mother, he experienced both oppression and opportunity.

After early labor on the plantation, he attended Hampton Institute, where he cultivated a belief in economic self‑reliance for Black Americans. This philosophy sparked controversy, earning him adversaries like W.E.B. Du Bois.

Washington advised President Theodore Roosevelt on Black affairs and founded the Tuskegee Institute, a school dedicated to training teachers and promoting vocational skills.

1 Harry S. Truman The Haberdasher

Harry S. Truman’s journey from a modest Missouri farm to the Oval Office exemplifies self‑made success. After high school, he juggled odd jobs and helped his father rather than pursuing college.

At 33, he enlisted in the National Guard, earning distinction in the Meuse‑Argonne campaign. His wartime connections propelled him into politics, first as a county judge, then U.S. Senator, and eventually Vice President under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

When Roosevelt died, Truman authorized the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World II. He also spearheaded post‑war European reconstruction and desegregated the U.S. military—achieving all this without ever earning a college degree.

When you think of fame, you might imagine glitz and glamour, but even celebrities are just people who can find themselves in the most perilous situations. Here are ten stories of celebrities narrowly dodging death, proving that luck can be as unpredictable as a plot twist.

How These Celebrities Narrowly Escaped Death

10 Elvis Presley

In April 1936 a series of ferocious tornadoes tore across Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Tennessee, leaving a trail of destruction that would rank among the deadliest natural disasters in U.S. history. The most violent of them struck Tupelo, Mississippi, where an estimated F5 twister claimed 216 lives in the Gum Pond area alone.

Among the survivors was a one‑year‑old baby named Elvis Presley, living with his family in Tupelo. The young King of Rock ’n’ Roll grew up far from those storm‑raked fields, only to become a cultural icon before his own untimely death on August 16, 1977.

9 John Lydon

Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon, better known as Johnny Rotten, missed a 1988 flight from London to New York because his wife, Nora, wasn’t finished packing when it was time to head to the airport. After a heated argument, they caught the next available flight.

The flight they had originally booked was Pan Am Flight 103, which later exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, after a bomb detonated in its cargo hold. Everyone aboard perished. When Lydon and his wife learned what could have happened, they “almost collapsed.” The experience has haunted Lydon for years, even prompting him to walk out of a reality‑show segment when producers wouldn’t tell him whether his wife’s flight had arrived safely.

8 Fats Domino

By the mid‑1950s, Fats Domino had sold millions of records and boasted 35 hits on the U.S. Top 40. After a celebrated career that culminated with the National Medal of Arts from President Bill Clinton in 1998, he settled in New Orleans. When Hurricane Katrina rolled in 2005, the 77‑year‑old musician chose to stay home with his ailing wife and wait out the storm.

When rescue crews finally arrived, the house was flooded and a graffiti tag read, “RIP Fats. You will be missed.” The news broke on September 1 that Fats and his family had been rescued, but they had lost everything. Their home was rebuilt the following year, and President George W. Bush later replaced the Medal of Arts that had been lost in the flood.

7 Nate Berkus

Interior‑design guru Nate Berkus, known for his regular segments on The Oprah Winfrey Show, faced a life‑changing tragedy on December 26, 2004. While vacationing at a popular beach resort in Sri Lanka, the Indian Ocean tsunami struck without warning. Nate and his partner, Fernando Bengoechea, clung to a telephone pole as the wave surged. Though Nate believed they would survive, Fernando was swept away, never to be seen again.

In 2014, Nate married Jeremiah Brent, and the couple keep Fernando’s memory alive through photos and stories, especially for their daughter, Poppy.

6 Drew Barrymore

In February 2001, Drew Barrymore and her then‑fiancé Tom Green were awakened by their dog Flossie barking furiously at their bedroom door. Investigating the commotion, they discovered their canyon‑side Beverly Hills home engulfed in flames. The couple and their dog escaped unharmed, but the fire devoured the mansion, requiring more than 50 firefighters to bring it under control.

The blaze’s cause was never definitively determined, and the couple’s marriage lasted only nine months, ending in December 2001.

5 Elizabeth Taylor And Kirk Douglas

Mike Todd, film producer and Elizabeth Taylor’s third husband, was slated to fly to New York in 1958 to accept a Friars Club award. Elizabeth begged to accompany him, but Todd insisted she stay home due to a cold. Hours before take‑off, he tried to persuade his friend Kirk Douglas to join the flight, joking that he wouldn’t let the plane crash.

Tragically, the private plane “Lucky Liz” suffered engine failure and crashed in New Mexico, killing Todd, screenwriter Art Cohn, and the pilot and copilot. Had Elizabeth or Kirk been aboard, they too would have perished. Douglas lived to 100, while Taylor passed away in 2011.

4 Michael J. Fox

It was no surprise after the success of the first Back to the Future movie that a sequel would be made. And then another one. It was during the filming of the third installment that tragedy almost stuck its star, Michael J. Fox.

He was filming a scene in which his character gets hanged. For the first few shots of the scene, Fox was standing on a box with a rope around his neck. They were filming only the top half of his body, but Fox couldn’t get his reaction to be authentic enough to his own liking. So he decided to try the scene without the help of the box. It went fine until his third try, during which a slip of the hand caused the rope to tighten around his neck, cutting off his carotid artery. He was unconscious for a good couple of seconds, hanging from the rope, before the director realized something was wrong.

Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s a year after the movie’s release.

3 Ryan Reynolds

Ryan Reynolds is a very popular actor, with most fans agreeing that he really came into his own playing the role of Deadpool. However, we very nearly didn’t have any Ryan movies at all.

At the age of 17, Ryan decided to go skydiving. During his plummet to the ground, he pulled the cord, but the parachute wouldn’t open. Panicking, he pulled again—still nothing. He remembered that the reserve chute could save his life, but in his terrified state, he couldn’t bring himself to launch it, convinced it wouldn’t work, either, and that he was falling inevitably to his death. Luckily, he got himself together and pulled the reserve chute cord. The chute opened, helping Ryan to land safely.

Shortly after this, his instructor lost his life during a dive that went wrong. Ryan never went back to skydiving.

2 Jet Li

Nate Berkus wasn’t the only celebrity caught up in the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004. Jet Li was vacationing in the Maldives with his family when the tidal wave hit. Recalling his fear during an interview, he remembered how quickly he had to grab his daughters and pull their nanny along, all the while running away from the giant waves.

By the time he’d moved only a couple of steps, the water was up to his waist, but he just kept running. Everything was swept away around them, with the water eventually reaching Li’s face. Fortunately, Li and his family made it back to their hotel, where they put on life jackets while bracing for even bigger waves to hit the island. Out of gratitude for life, pure empathy, and sorrow for the victims, the movie star donated more than $150,000 to the relief fund set up after the disaster.

1 George Clooney

During the filming of the 2005 movie Syriana, George Clooney hit his head after falling over during a scene in which he was tied to a chair. Afterward, he experienced terrible headaches, constant pain, and memory loss. Doctors struggled to diagnose exactly what his injuries were. Clooney couldn’t take painkillers, either, for fear of falling into addiction like many of his family members.

Only after almost a year did a neurologist identify the cause of Clooney’s incessant pain. He had torn his dura mater, the outermost meningeal layer around the brain and spinal cord, resulting in a brain injury. Looking back on the terrible experience, Clooney recalled contemplating suicide because he simply couldn’t deal with the pain. In that same year, he also lost two family members and a beloved dog.

Fortunately, a series of operations took care of the splitting headaches and other physical pain. In June 2017, George and his wife Amal became the proud parents of twins, Alexander and Ella.

Welcome, fellow curiosity‑chaser! If you thought length, width, height, and time were the whole story, think again. The universe (and the stories we tell about it) hide a slew of mind‑bending dimensions that stretch imagination to its limits. Let’s dive into ten of the most fascinating theoretical realms that twist space, time, and everything in between.

10 The Super‑Sargasso Sea

In The Book of the Damned, eccentric researcher Charles Hoy Fort conjured the Super‑Sargasso Sea—a mysterious layer that hoards everything that ever disappears on Earth, only to fling them back out later. Fort pointed to the baffling phenomenon of animal rains as proof, suggesting that the sea above (or perhaps hovering with) our world periodically disgorges its cargo.

He imagined daring aviators soaring into this ethereal ocean, hoping to harvest whole shoals of vanished creatures or even cryptic messages from other realms. Fort claimed the sea stretched from Britain to India, though he admitted that future discoveries might rewrite that map.

9 Hammerspace

Ever watched a cartoon character yank a giant hammer out of thin air? That whimsical stash is courtesy of Hammerspace—a pocket dimension that lives just beyond the camera’s view. Fans of Ranma 1/2 coined the term, but the concept explains everything from clown cars to endless inventory tricks.

Hammerspace comes in flavors: Basic Hammerspace holds a handful of items, Game Hammerspace is reserved for role‑playing adventures, and Infinite Hammerspace lets characters step through a door and emerge on the opposite side of the globe.

8 Paraspace

Science‑fiction writer Samuel R. Delany introduced Paraspace to label those uncanny realms where characters are whisked away from their home reality. Before “Paraspace” entered the lexicon, writers called similar zones “subspace.”

Delany emphasized that Paraspace isn’t a lesser plane—it’s just as real as the world the character knows. The term has since broadened to cover experiences where alien stimuli become so bizarre that the traveler’s awareness shifts from their surroundings to the strange new sensations.

7 Flatland

Published in 1884, Edwin Abbott Abbott’s novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions imagines a world of only two dimensions. Its protagonist, A Square, lives in a society where social standing is measured by the number of edges one possesses.

Every millennium, Flatland receives a visitor from the third dimension—a Sphere—who tries to convince its denizens that a whole other world exists. Abbott’s detailed description of cardinal directions, inheritance laws, and even gender roles serves as a satirical mirror of Victorian Britain.

6 The Time Vortex

Doctor Who’s iconic TARDIS travels through the Time Vortex—a bubble of warped spacetime that lets the ship move forward or backward in time while appearing larger on the inside. Recent scientific papers have even coined the term “Traversable Achronal Retrograde Domain in Spacetime” to describe how such a bubble could, in theory, function.

From the outside, observers would see two bubbles separate and then merge, while the traveler inside follows a circular trajectory—much like the apparent retrograde motion of planets in the night sky. In practice, the exotic matter required to violate energy conservation makes real‑world implementation impossible.

5 L‑Space

Terry Pratchett imagined L‑Space as a magical conduit linking every library in the multiverse. In this boundless hallway of shelves, the equation “Books = Knowledge = Power = (Force × Distance²) / Time” holds true, turning every tome into a source of literal power.

Massive libraries can become their own L‑Space, stretching infinitely and containing every book ever written, every future manuscript, and even unwritten works that were merely imagined. Senior librarians guard the rules—silence, timely returns, and no meddling with causality—to keep the dimension from spiraling into chaos.

Why L‑Space Is So Mind‑Bending

The idea that a single hallway could house the sum total of all human knowledge—and that stepping into it could let you read any book instantly—makes L‑Space a truly mind‑bending concept.

4 Hyperspace

Hyperspace has become a sci‑fi staple, offering a shortcut that lets ships zip across the galaxy faster than light by tapping into another dimension. The notion dates back to 1634, when Johannes Kepler’s novel Somnium described a demon‑opened route to an island high above Earth.

Kepler’s demons administered opium to keep travelers asleep and used an undefined accelerating force to thrust them through space. Modern fiction often replaces demons with wormholes, but the core idea—a dimensional tunnel that shortcuts the vastness of space—remains the same.

3 Five‑Dimensional Black Holes

In 2002, theorists proposed ring‑shaped black holes that would exist only in five dimensions. Fourteen years later, supercomputers finally simulated these exotic objects, revealing bulges that pinch off into new black holes—much like droplets falling from a tap.

Because they live in five dimensions, these black holes could expose a naked singularity on our side of the event horizon, threatening the very foundations of General Relativity. If such a singularity ever formed, it could unravel the laws governing our universe.

2 Pocket Universes

Cosmologist Alan Guth, famed for his work on cosmic inflation, suggested that as the universe expands, it spawns endless “pocket universes.” Each pocket is a region where the laws of physics and fundamental constants remain uniform, but stepping outside that pocket could flip those constants on their head.According to Guth, we occupy one such pocket, while an infinite tapestry of other pockets surrounds us—each a self‑contained reality where anything that can happen, does happen, forever.

1 The Theory Of Ten Dimensions

Beyond the familiar three spatial dimensions and time, superstring theory posits a suite of additional dimensions that shape reality in ways we can’t directly perceive. The fifth dimension runs alongside our own, differing just enough to be measurable.

The sixth dimension hosts a plane containing every possible universe that began the same way ours did. The seventh holds worlds that sprang from different origins, while the eighth contains infinite histories for those seventh‑dimensional realms. The ninth dimension houses worlds governed by completely alien physical laws, and the tenth dimension contains everything imaginable—and then some—beyond our capacity to conceive.

When you think of badass gangs, images of modern cartels or movie crews probably pop up first. Yet the world’s most notorious crews have been roaming the streets long before video games and blockbusters took over—think Parisian crooks, Japanese samurai outlaws, and even a band of daring women in London. Below we dive into ten truly badass gangs that left an indelible mark on history.

Badass Gangs Through the Ages

10 Les Apaches

Les Apaches prowled the streets of turn‑of‑the‑century Paris, earning their nickname because a flustered policeman once likened their ferocity to that of actual Apache warriors. These guys weren’t just brutes; they rocked striped shirts, berets, and a dandy‑like swagger that turned them into the original Parisian hipsters. When the fashion crowd caught on, the Apaches were already mastering savate—a gritty martial art built on kicks and open‑handed punches—using it to mug gentlemen in groups so large that the upper class felt compelled to hire their own muscle.

But style wasn’t their only weapon. They wielded a bizarre hybrid called the Apache pistol, which doubled as a knife and could be folded into brass knuckles. In short, they practiced over‑kill on a whole new level—over‑over‑kill.

9 The Forty Elephants Gang

What sets the Forty Elephants apart from the rest of the roster is that every member was a woman. Long before feminism became a buzzword, these ladies turned the very sexism of their era into a strategic advantage, slipping through department stores under the veil of privacy that shoppers were granted. Together, they could strip a boutique clean of clothing, jewelry, and anything else worth stealing. Operating from the late 1700s up until the 1950s around London, the gang’s hierarchy placed men in a strictly subordinate role.

Their leader, Maggie Hill, was as lethal as she was striking—diamond‑studied rings doubled as makeshift brass knuckles, ready for any messy situation that required a good old‑fashioned punch.

8 The Know‑Nothings (aka The Bloody Tubs)

The Know‑Nothings were a cadre of hard‑edged thugs from Civil War‑era Baltimore, but their battlefield wasn’t about drugs or turf—it was politics. Acting as muscle for nativist politicians, they coerced voters into supporting their chosen candidates. The moniker “Know‑Nothings” came from the politicians they backed, who would famously protest, “I know nothing!” when interrogated about the gang’s tactics.

These enforcers blocked polling stations, stabbed voters with awls, beat people senseless, and even dunked victims into vats of blood, earning them the grisly nickname “The Bloody Tubs.” They also clashed with volunteer firefighters over control of fire hydrants, sparking bloody riots while houses burned. Legend has it that poet Edgar Allan Poe was one of their unwilling victims, falling ill after a night of intimidation and dying shortly thereafter.

7 Kabukimono

The Kabukimono—literally “crazy ones”—were the unruly offspring of lordless samurai who turned their swords into fashion statements and their rebellion into a street‑level rock show. Clad in women’s clothing, flamboyant makeup, and absurdly long hair, they roamed feudal Japan like a band of glam‑rock samurai. Armed with razor‑sharp swords, they turned the streets into dueling arenas, committing petty crimes while shouting their motto, “I have lived too long!”

Although their appearance might suggest a theatrical troupe, the Kabukimono were deadly. Some historians speculate they laid the groundwork for the modern yakuza, even if today’s organized crime groups prefer to distance themselves from such flamboyant ancestors.

6 The Vorovsky Mir

The Vorovsky Mir, translating to “thieves in law,” emerged from the bleak gulags of Soviet Russia. United by a shared need for protection, these thieves, bandits, and murderers forged a criminal code that mirrored, in a twisted way, the ideals of communism. Breaking the code meant a gang‑run trial, reinforcing their internal discipline.

Members identified each other through elaborate tattoos—a tradition that lives on in contemporary Russian organized crime, as seen in the film Eastern Promises. With the Soviet economy struggling to provide basic luxuries, the Vorovsky Mir turned to smuggling clothing and food, eventually evolving into the modern Russian mafia.

5 Mohocks

Inspired by a delegation of Native Americans visiting the Queen, a group of London youths christened themselves the Mohocks—an 18th‑century gang that could have walked straight out of a horror film. They prowled the night, slashing faces, cutting noses off with knives, and even stuffing women into barrels to roll them down hills.

Rumors that the Mohocks were upper‑class aristocrats sent shockwaves through both the lower and upper echelons of society. Their drunken riots saw them disfiguring pedestrians for sheer sport, reminiscent of the brutal scenes in A Clockwork Orange. The sheer terror they inspired cemented their place in London’s dark folklore.

4 The Five Points Gang

The Five Points gang ruled the gritty streets of Manhattan’s Five Points district from the mid‑19th to early‑20th century. Among its ranks was a young Al Capone, who earned the infamous scar that birthed the nickname “Scarface” during a bar fight while serving the gang.

While later Mafia outfits would popularize the sharply‑dressed Italian gangster image, the Five Points gang was the first to enforce a dress code—every member had to look dapper. Their reputation as New York’s—and perhaps America’s—most feared gang attracted even the Mafia, which began poaching members from their ranks.

3 Thuggee

The Thuggee of 1800s India were a secretive brotherhood of killers, robbers, and assassins whose name literally gave us the word “thug.” Operating under the guise of ordinary tradespeople, they blended into society while plotting murders. Membership was hereditary—if your father was a Thuggee, you inherited the family business of murder.

Victims were selected seemingly at random, guided by signs believed to be left by the goddess Kali. A Thuggee would befriend the target, travel with them, and, upon hearing the code phrase “Bring the tobacco,” strangle the victim, then loot the spoils. Their brutal efficiency earned them a Guinness World Record for the highest gang death toll.

2 Live Oak Boys

The Live Oak Boys terrorized mid‑19th‑century New Orleans with a brand of violence that made the city quake. Armed with the oak clubs that gave them their name, they would storm bars and saloons, smashing everything in sight. Often hired by rival proprietors to eliminate competition, they sometimes simply acted out of boredom.

Leading the pack was Red Bill Wilson, a man whose beard was so rugged it could conceal a hidden knife. If the Forty Elephants’ Maggie Hill ever crossed paths with Red Bill, the chemistry would have been explosive—perhaps even romantic.

1 Scuttlers

“Scuttlers” is the collective name for the teenage gangs that plagued Manchester, England, in the 19th century. Each sub‑group took its name from the neighborhood it claimed, and they fought over territory with bottles, knives, sticks, and iron bars—often for no more reason than sheer dominance.

Their look was unmistakable: scarves, peaked caps perched on bald heads, and a fringe of hair covering one eye. So ferocious were they that the term “hooligan” was coined to describe their chaos. At the height of a brawl, up to 600 Scuttlers could clash over a single street corner, prompting locals to barricade themselves inside for safety.

These infamous youths left a legacy that still echoes in modern street culture.

Welcome to a tour of the most strange scientific sound discoveries that are reshaping how we think about everything from medicine to music.

10 It Can Possibly Explain Anesthesia

Traditional medical teaching says nerves “talk” via electrical impulses, shuttling signals that make your hand wave or your cat purr. Physicists, however, find that puzzling because electrical currents generate heat, yet the human body’s interior stays cool.

Why This Is a Strange Scientific Discovery

Some researchers have tossed out the electricity‑only model and suggested that nerves might actually use sound waves to convey messages. Though the idea is controversial, it could finally illuminate why anesthetics work the way they do. Nerve membranes need to stay at body temperature for sound pulses to travel; enough anesthetic changes that temperature, effectively muting the acoustic signal and blocking pain during surgery.

9 The Visual System Can Hear

Monkeys were trained to tap a light whenever it lit up. Bright spots were easy to find, dim ones were tricky—until a brief sound accompanied the low‑light cue. The monkeys then pinpointed the spot at lightning speed, indicating that the brain was borrowing auditory information to boost visual perception.

This finding overturns the long‑standing belief that hearing and sight operate in isolation. In the study, 49 visual neurons responded as if the dim light were brighter, proving a direct link between auditory and visual regions. Such cross‑modal abilities might explain why people who are blind often develop heightened hearing, and why deaf individuals sometimes exhibit superior visual skills.

8 New Way To Test Blood

Blood tests are indispensable for diagnosing disease, yet current methods can be slow, damage samples, and risk contamination. A fresh approach now uses sound waves to separate cells, platelets, and tiny messenger particles called exosomes, delivering rapid, accurate results without harming the specimen.

By exposing a blood sample to acoustic pressures at specific frequencies, scientists can isolate the components they need. The technique promises faster diagnoses, the ability to test organs that were previously out of reach, and the potential to replace many invasive biopsies. One exciting prospect is a portable kit that could be used in ambulances or remote villages.

7 The Answer To Levitation

Scientists have long tried to defy gravity with magnets and lasers, but a Scottish university discovered that carefully timed sound pulses can actually lift objects. Pressure waves moving through air generate a force that, when coordinated just right, can counteract gravity.

The initial experiments struggled because the wave patterns needed to be released in a precise order. Recent work used advanced software to decode the original data, creating an acoustic hologram with 64 tiny speakers. This field successfully levitated polystyrene beads, even allowing researchers to grasp, cage, or spin them using sound alone.

6 Sound Can Extinguish Fire

Two engineering students at George Mason University set out to put out flames with acoustic waves, despite skepticism from their chemistry‑focused faculty. They discovered that low‑frequency tones (30–60 Hz) can create a pressure void that starves a fire of oxygen.

When the fire was bombarded with these low‑frequency waves, the oxygen supply was temporarily displaced, causing the flames to die instantly. While a portable, universal sound‑based extinguisher is still years away, the concept opens a path toward fire‑fighting tools that leave no toxic residues.

5 It Alters Taste

Low‑frequency sounds can amplify bitterness, while high‑frequency tones add a hint of sweetness. Experiments in labs and restaurants have shown that background music can modulate the perceived flavor of foods ranging from coffee to cake.

The effect isn’t happening at the taste buds themselves; instead, the brain’s focus shifts depending on the pitch, emphasizing either bitter or sweet notes. Loud, chaotic environments also dampen our ability to taste salt and sweetness, which explains why noisy eateries often receive poor reviews.

4 Data Symphonies

Mark Ballora grew up surrounded by music, and during his PhD he turned that upbringing into a career in sonification—transforming raw data into sound. Over two decades he crafted musical pieces that represent neutron‑star energy, Arctic squirrel body‑temperature cycles, solar wind, and tropical storms.

When creating a piece, Ballora first immerses himself in the study’s context, then selects tones that echo the data’s nature. For instance, swirling sounds mimic a tropical storm, while a “shifting and shimmery” melody captures solar‑wind activity. Blind astronomer Wanda Merced uses these sonifications to hear stellar explosions that sighted colleagues missed in visual graphs.

3 Cocktail Party Effect

To decode why we can focus on a single conversation amid a noisy room, researchers enlisted epilepsy patients who already had electrodes placed on their brains. While the electrodes were meant to monitor seizures, they also provided a window into how the brain processes garbled speech.

Participants first heard a distorted sentence they could not understand. When the clear version played immediately before a repeat of the garbled line, everyone suddenly grasped the meaning. Brain scans showed that the previously dormant auditory and speech regions lit up, highlighting the brain’s rapid plasticity that lets us filter out noise and zero in on relevant words.

2 Pink Noise

While many insomniacs swear by white noise, a series of studies found pink noise—where high and low frequencies share equal power—to be even more beneficial. The gentle sounds of wind, rustling leaves, or rain can slow brain activity, leading to deeper, more restorative sleep.

Chinese researchers reported that pink noise helped 75 % of volunteers achieve better sleep, and daytime nappers who experienced it showed a 45 % boost in restorative power. For older adults, exposure to pink noise improved memory performance threefold compared to a silent control group.

1 There Are People Who Hate Sound

Misophonia is a genuine medical condition where certain everyday sounds—like pen clicks or chewing—trigger intense emotional and physiological reactions. UK scientists discovered that sufferers have a smaller, under‑developed region in the frontal lobe compared to non‑sufferers.

In experiments, both misophonic participants and controls heard the same irritating noises, which activated the anterior insular—a brain area tied to emotion and the fight‑or‑flight response. However, misophonics showed a dramatically stronger response, along with rapid heartbeat and sweating, linking the heightened insular activity to the structural frontal‑lobe difference.

When we think of brilliant directors, we often picture cinematic masterpieces and visionary storytelling. Yet behind some of those iconic films lies a harsher reality: a handful of directors were notorious for turning the set into a battlefield for their talent. Below, we count down the most unforgettable brilliant directors whose methods left actors trembling, bruised, or even injured.

Why These Brilliant Directors Became Notorious

From firing real guns to demanding real arrows, these auteurs believed that authentic terror or raw emotion could only be coaxed through extreme means. Their legacies are a mix of artistic triumph and on‑set terror, reminding us that genius can sometimes wear a very dark coat.

11 Masanori Hata

Occasionally, the cruelty of a director isn’t directed at humans at all. In the 1989 children’s adventure The Adventures of Milo and Otis, the majority of the cast were animals, yet the production was shrouded in rumors of severe mistreatment. Allegations surfaced that more than 20 cats met untimely ends during filming, a claim that, though never officially confirmed, casts a long shadow over the whimsical story.

Scenes such as the titular cat plummeting hundreds of feet into the ocean or confronting a bear raise eyebrows, especially since the film omitted the standard American Humane Association disclaimer. Instead, its credits offered a vague statement, fueling speculation about the true cost of the animal performances.

10 William Friedkin

After the smash hit The French Connection, William Friedkin terrified audiences with 1973’s The Exorcist. The horror masterpiece racked up ten Oscar nominations and walked away with two wins, but its chilling success came at a steep price for its cast.

Channeling D.W. Griffith’s shock tactics, Friedkin would fire real guns behind actors to startle them and even slapped William O’Malley moments before rolling the camera to capture a genuine reaction. The set’s temperature was lowered below freezing for Regan’s icy bedroom, causing crew sweat to freeze on skin. Young Linda Blair, who played Regan, spent the entire shoot in a nightgown and still recalls the unbearable cold.

The most infamous incident involved Ellen Burstyn’s character being thrown backward by a demonic force. A rope harness yanked her violently, resulting in a permanent spinal injury that haunted her for years.

9 Francis Ford Coppola

Francis Ford Coppola’s magnum opus, The Godfather, sits beside his 1979 war epic Apocalypse Now as a testament to his cinematic brilliance—but the latter’s production read more like a nightmare than a masterpiece.

Martin Sheen was eventually cast after multiple attempts, while Coppola wrote the script on the fly. The jungle shoot turned into a health hazard: crew members fell ill, Sheen was kept drunk and locked in a hotel for two days, and he later suffered a heart attack in the dense foliage.

Coppola pushed Sheen to channel pure evil, telling him, “You’re evil. I want all the evil, the violence, the hatred in you to come out.” The set’s chaos mirrored the film’s descent into madness, with actors indulging in drug binges, Dennis Hopper being paid in cocaine and alcohol, and even a prop master scattering real dead bodies among fakes.By the end, Coppola had lost 45 kilograms, suffered an epileptic seizure, and attempted suicide multiple times. The project, originally slated for six weeks, ballooned to 16 months, later chronicled in the documentary Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse.

8 Michael Bay

Michael Bay’s explosive spectacles may dominate the box office, but his reputation for on‑set tyranny is equally legendary.

Megan Fox described Bay as a tyrant while filming the first two Transformers movies, recalling his directive, “Just be sexy,” and insisting the leads perform dangerous stunts. After Fox likened Bay to Napoleon and Hitler, Spielberg intervened and Fox was promptly removed from the franchise.

Kate Beckinsale recounted Bay’s sexist remarks on the set of Pearl Harbor, noting that while he praised male leads Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett, he dismissed Beckinsale as “not so attractive that she would alienate the female audience.”

Bay’s volatile relationship with Shia LaBeouf and his condescending response to Hugo Weaving—“Be happy you even have a job—let alone a job that pays you more than 98% of people in America”—further illustrate his focus on spectacle and profit over humane treatment.

7 Werner Herzog

German director Werner Herzog’s partnership with the volatile Klaus Kinski was a roller‑coaster of brilliance and brutality. Their tumultuous relationship is chronicled in Herzog’s 1999 documentary My Best Fiend, which reveals that Herzog once held Kinski at gunpoint, threatening to kill them both if Kinski left the set.

Herzog’s obsession with realism led him to extreme lengths: for Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1998) he recreated the harrowing experience of being captured by the Viet Cong, and for Rescue Dawn (2006) he reportedly “tortured” Christian Bale on set. He’s even dragged a 320‑ton steamship up a hill and filmed inside an erupting volcano to achieve his vision.

Unlike many on this list, Herzog often subjected himself to the same ordeals he demanded of his actors, resulting in his own injuries and multiple bouts of malaria.

6 Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski’s personal tragedies—surviving the Holocaust and losing his wife and unborn child to the Manson Family—make him a somewhat sympathetic figure, yet his perfectionism clashed violently with Faye Dunaway on the set of 1974’s Chinatown.

Polanski modeled Dunaway’s look after his late mother, vetoed makeup designs, and covered her face in powder. When asked for motivation, he snapped, “Say the f—ing words, your salary is your motivation.” The tension escalated when Polanski plucked a stray hair from Dunaway’s head, prompting her to explode.

The most infamous showdown came when Polanski barred Dunaway from using the bathroom; she retaliated by hurling a cup of her own urine at him, to which he replied, “You c—t, that’s piss!” The incident cemented their legendary feud.

5 Henri‑Georges Clouzot

French auteur Henri‑Georges Clouzot, famed for suspenseful gems like The Wages of Fear and Les Diaboliques, demanded unflinching realism from his cast.

During Les Diaboliques, actors were forced to eat actual rotten fish to capture genuine disgust. He also slapped cast members to stir emotions and even administered a real blood transfusion to Bernard Blier for Quai des Orfevres.

His treatment of Brigitte Bardot on the set of La Vérité (1960) was especially harrowing: after feeding her alcohol and a cocktail of sleeping pills, he had her stomach pumped post‑shoot. When he shook her by the shoulders, shouting, “I don’t need amateurs in my films. I want an actress!” Bardot slapped him back, retorting, “And I need a director, not a psychopath!”

4 Alfred Hitchcock

Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, famously declared that actors should be treated “like cattle.” His unsettling behavior spanned decades.

On the 1935 thriller The 39 Steps, he would announce lead actress Madeline Carroll with the shouted phrase “Bring on the Birmingham tart!” and then leave her handcuffed to her co‑star for hours, claiming he’d lost the key—resulting in bruises.He also used crude sexual jokes to agitate his blonde leading ladies, even fabricating a story about sleeping with Ingrid Bergman. The most notorious abuse involved Tippi Hedren on The Birds (1963); after she rebuffed his advances, Hitchcock insisted live birds be attached to her, causing hospitalization.

Hedren’s contract even demanded sexual availability, and Hitchcock later sabotaged her career by turning down film roles on her behalf. The 2012 HBO adaptation The Girl finally brought her harrowing experience to light.

3 Akira Kurosawa

Akira Kurosawa’s visual brilliance shines in classics like Seven Samurai, yet his quest for authentic fear pushed lead actor Toshiro Mifune to the brink.

During the filming of 1961’s Throne of Blood, Kurosawa was dissatisfied with Mifune’s reaction to arrows. He ordered professional marksmen to fire real arrows at the actor, creating a genuine terror that, while effective on screen, left Mifune with a haunting memory of near‑death.

2 Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick’s reputation as a perfectionist is legendary. He could demand up to 50 takes for a single scene, a method that tested the stamina of his performers.

The 1980 horror classic The Shining epitomized Kubrick’s relentless approach. Shelley Duvall endured 12‑hour days, isolation from family, and a relentless schedule that left her emotionally exhausted. Scatman Crothers reportedly broke down in tears on set and vowed never to work with Kubrick again. Behind‑the‑scenes footage captured by Kubrick’s teenage daughter shows the intensity of the process, from Jack Nicholson’s manic improvisations to Duvall’s hair loss and chain‑smoking.

Despite the strain, many actors later praised Kubrick’s ability to deepen their craft, noting that his exhaustive discussions about character often yielded transformative performances.

1 David O. Russell

David O. Russell is as famous for his Oscar‑nominated films—like 2010’s The Fighter and 2013’s American Hustle—as for his volatile temperament.

George Clooney and Russell’s relationship soured on the set of 1999’s Three Kings. After Clooney intervened when Russell yelled at a crew member, Russell escalated the confrontation with multiple headbutts, prompting Clooney to grab his throat. Clooney later called the incident the worst experience of his life.

Russell’s explosive behavior resurfaced on the set of 2004’s I Heart Huckabees, where heated arguments with Lily Tomlin were captured on leaked video, showing the two exchanging profanities. Though they eventually reconciled, rumors of further clashes—such as with Jennifer Lawrence during 2015’s Joy—persist.

When we think about clubs and societies from the past, the first image that pops up is often a stuffy gentlemen’s club, but the reality was far more colorful. Hidden among the polished wood and cigar smoke were some truly bizarre clubs that pursued odd passions, quirky rules, and unusual camaraderie.

Bizarre Clubs: A Glimpse into Unusual History

10 Flirt Club

Born in the early 1920s in Washington, DC, the Anti‑Flirt Club aimed to shield young women from unsolicited advances by men cruising in automobiles. Its rules were printed in The Washington Post in 1923.

Rule No. 5 warned, “Don’t wink—a flutter of one eye may cause a tear in the other.” Rule No. 8 cautioned women not to fall for “the slick, dandified cake‑eater”—the unpolished gold of a real man outweighs the glossy lure of a lounge lizard.

Chapters sprouted in Manhattan, Chicago, and elsewhere. Intriguingly, Manhattan’s branch was run by men who wanted women to prosecute the “mashers”—aggressive suitors who flaunted their intentions.

A “masher” was a man who made brief, bold advances, while a “lounge lizard” was a well‑dressed charmer who used deceptive charm. Manhattan’s slogan read “Jail the flirt,” and its emblem featured a lizard pierced by a hatpin.Although the movement sparked headlines, it faded from the press by the 1930s.

9 Nose Club

During the 19th‑century syphilis epidemic, many sufferers lost their noses, turning the condition into a startlingly common deformity. This led to the formation of the No‑Nose Club.

On February 18 1874, the Star newspaper reported that an eccentric gentleman using the alias “Mr. Crampton” had witnessed so many noseless individuals on London’s streets that he invited them all to a tavern dinner.

The club convened monthly until Mr. Crampton’s death a year later, after which it dissolved. Its final meeting featured an elegy recited in memory of the members.

8 The Ugly Face Club

In the 18th and 19th centuries, people with facial deformities often faced social exclusion and even street harassment. The Ugly Face Clubs emerged as a defiant response—gentlemen’s societies where members proudly celebrated their eccentric visages.

These clubs rejected physiognomy, the pseudo‑science claiming that facial features revealed character. Members, ridiculed on the streets for their deformities, turned those very features into a badge of honor.

Take Liverpool’s Ugly Face Club: a group of bachelors who lampooned their own appearances and were fined if they ever married. Its roster boasted merchants, clergy, doctors, sea captains, and architects, who affectionately called each other “shark,” “pig,” “cod,” and the like.

7 The Blizzard Men Of ’88 Club

The Great Blizzard of 1888—one of America’s deadliest snowstorms—raked the corridor from Washington, DC, to Maine, killing over 400 people and dumping up to 55 inches of snow in some locales.

Survivors in New York, unwilling to let the catastrophe fade, founded an exclusive society of storm survivors in 1929. Until 1933, the group was male‑only and called the “Blizzard Men of ’88.”

Annual gatherings featured storytelling, but also whimsical pastimes: for the 50th anniversary, members staged a mechanical snowstorm to relive the fury.

Members liked to proclaim that every storm after 1888 was a mere joke. The club’s final chapter closed in 1969 when its last leader passed away.

6 The Potato Club

The Potato Club—also known as the Potato Society—was founded by Tsar Nicholas II and the brothers Alexander, Sergei, and George Mikhailovich. Its name supposedly traces back to a paper‑chase incident where a peasant exclaimed that the “fox” had “shot into the potatoes.”

Each member wore a gold pendant shaped like a potato around their neck. When Sergei Mikhailovich’s body was uncovered in Alapayevsk after his exile and execution by the Bolsheviks, the gold potato pendant was found clinging to him.

5 The Lying Club

In 1669, a witty gentleman named Harry Blunt allegedly founded the Lying Club at the Bell Tavern in Westminster. Blunt was famed for his uncanny ability to spin convincing deceptions.

The club arose as travelers’ hunting tales grew ever more fantastical and harder to believe. While the stories lacked reliability, they made up for it in sheer amusement.

Members of the Lying Club dedicated themselves to crafting elaborate falsehoods, judging each other’s “genius” based on the strength and creativity of their lies.

4 The Wig Club

Rooted in a Scottish Tory tradition, the Wig Club centered on wine, dining, and a curious reverence for a particular wig. The famed wig originally belonged to the Beggar’s Benison club and was rumored to be fashioned from the pubic hairs of King Charles II’s mistress.

After a quarrel among Beggar’s Benison members, the wig transferred to the Wig Club and became its mascot. Each member kissed the wig and contributed a hair from his own mistress to replace any that faded.

The wig even had a personal servant, and locking it away signaled the conclusion of the formal portion of a meeting.

3 Not Terribly Good Club Of Great Britain

Founded in 1976 by journalist Stephen Pile, the Not Terribly Good Club of Great Britain admitted only those who could demonstrate sheer incompetence. Meetings featured members showcasing their ineptitude at everyday tasks—from botched small talk to disastrous art attempts.

Pile later chronicled the club in his book The Incomplete Book of Failures, which recounted tales like “the worst tourist” who spent two days in New York convinced he was in Rome, and the “slowest crossword solution” that took 34 years.The book included a membership form, and within two months it attracted 20,000 applications—far too many for a club built on failure. By its own rules, the club was forced to dissolve.

2 The Molly Club

Molly Clubs—also called Molly Houses—were public houses in 18th‑century England that catered to a male homosexual clientele. The nickname “Molly” began as a pet form of “Mary” and a slang term for women in the oldest profession, eventually shifting to denote effeminate men.By the mid‑1720s, London authorities had identified at least 20 such establishments around Westminster. A particularly strange ritual was the mock birth ceremony, where a man pretended to give birth to a baby during Festival Nights in late December. The purpose of these mock births remains a mystery.

1 The Fat Men’s Club

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Fat Men’s Clubs blossomed across America, championing the motto “We’re fat, and we’re making the most of it!” Their secondary slogan declared, “I’ve got to be good‑natured; I can’t fight, and I can’t run.”

Membership required a minimum weight of 90 kg (200 lb), a $1 fee, and knowledge of a secret handshake and password. Meetings, held twice yearly, featured copious amounts of food. In 1884, the New York Fat Men’s Association’s president purportedly gained 4 kg (8 lb) just from one dinner.

Variations sprouted worldwide: France’s Les Cents Kilos formed in 1897 but never thrived; Serbia created a club in Belgrade in 1932; British versions added a twist—if a member fell short of the weight threshold, they were fined.

History loves its headline heroes, but the truly remarkable stories often belong to the amazing forgotten explorers who slipped through the cracks of popular memory. In this roundup we shine a light on the intrepid men and women whose daring quests rewrote maps, opened trade routes, and pushed the limits of human endurance.

Amazing Forgotten Explorers

10 1826

In the early 19th century, Timbuktu was the African equivalent of a mythic El Dorado. British army officer Alexander Gordon Laing set out from Tripoli in July 1825 with only a hazy notion of where the fabled city lay. His local guide promised a swift journey, yet the caravan drifted for 13 months across scorching deserts, dodging hostile nomads and battling thirst and hunger.

After traveling roughly 1,600 kilometres, Laing’s guide betrayed him to bandits. The scuffle left Laing with cuts and fractures across his face, head, and neck, but he reported the incident as casually as a burnt chip in a letter to his father‑in‑law, concluding, “I am nevertheless, as already I have said, doing well.”

Laing finally reached Timbuktu a few months later, only to vanish along with his journal. His murder was later confirmed in 1828 by the second European to set foot in the city.

9 1962

Swiss physicist Auguste Piccard began his career rubbing shoulders with Albert Einstein, but his fascination soon turned to cosmic rays. The Earth’s atmosphere proved a stubborn barrier, so Piccard engineered a solution that literally took him above it.

He built a balloon equipped with a pressurised cabin and, over more than two dozen flights, ascended to altitudes between 15,000 and 23,000 metres (50,000–75,000 ft)—higher than any human before him. These stratospheric forays opened new windows on high‑energy particles and set the stage for future high‑altitude research.

8 114 B.C.

During the second century B.C., the Han dynasty was curious about the lands west of China. They dispatched their envoy Zhang Qian to locate Central Asian kingdoms and spark new markets for Chinese wares.

Qian trekked as far as Bactria (modern Afghanistan), where he encountered the Greco‑Bactrians—Hellenic settlers who had arrived after Alexander the Great’s conquests. They introduced grapevines, European horses, and skilled artisans, all of which Qian reported back to the Han court.

Despite occasional kidnappings by the Xiongnu, Qian continued to traverse the Central Asian steppe, noting the astronomical prices silk fetched there. Within a decade of his death, Chinese merchants were regularly crossing routes that would become the famed Silk Road, forging a commercial network that linked East and West.

7 Pytheas4th Century B.C.

Greek sailor Pytheas set out from the Mediterranean to chart lands beyond the familiar Pillars of Hercules. He navigated past Carthaginian blockades at modern‑day Gibraltar and became one of the first Greeks to glimpse the British Isles.

His most astonishing discovery was a mysterious northern land he called Thule, located roughly a week’s sail north of Britain. Pytheas described Thule’s seas as “congealed” and its days as fleeting—an early account that likely points to the Arctic coast of Norway, where icy waters indeed solidify.

Although ancient scholars mocked his claims, modern scholars recognise Pytheas as history’s first polar explorer, having ventured into the Arctic Circle long before anyone else dared to imagine such a place.

6 1962

Piccard’s achievements didn’t stop at the stratosphere. After World War II, he turned his inventive mind toward the ocean’s abyss, creating a steel‑hull submersible he named a “bathyscaphe.”

His third bathyscaphe, the famous Trieste, featured a pressure‑resistant cabin capable of withstanding more than 16,000 psi—enough to crush a conventional submarine. Backed by the United States, Piccard’s son Jacques and US Navy officer Don Walsh piloted the Trieste to the Challenger Deep, the deepest point on Earth, a feat not duplicated for half a century.

5 1368

Born to a middle‑class Moroccan family, Ibn Battuta was poised for a conventional legal career until a pilgrimage to Mecca sparked an insatiable wanderlust. After completing the Hajj, he resolved to travel as far and as often as possible, never retracing the same route.

Over three decades, Battuta covered roughly 120,000 km (75,000 mi), journeying through Persia, Baghdad, the Indian subcontinent, and beyond—all within the Muslim world. His privileged status granted him unparalleled access to local customs, which he chronicled—sometimes with embellishment—in The Travels of Ibn Battuta.

4 Hanno The Navigator6th Century B.C.

Carthage’s Hanno the Navigator may not be a household name, but his expedition was massive. He commanded a fleet of 60 ships carrying some 30,000 men and women, setting out south along the West African coast to establish colonies.

Although his supplies ran low and he abandoned a bid to circumnavigate Africa, Hanno’s account offers early references to African geography and wildlife—most famously a vivid (if ethically questionable) description of “women with hairy bodies” that scholars interpret as an early mention of gorillas.

3 Harkhuf Approx. 2280 B.C.

Long before the age of Stanley or Livingstone, Egyptian courtier Harkhuf embarked on four daring expeditions deep into the African interior during the 23rd century B.C.

His tomb inscription boasts a seven‑month trek to the Kingdom of Yam—likely in modern Chad—traversing unforgiving deserts on foot. The same inscription claims he encountered a pygmy tribe, making Harkhuf the earliest recorded explorer of the imperial variety, the very first to leave a written trace of his journeys.

2 1526

While most know Ferdinand Magellan was killed before completing the first circumnavigation, fewer realise his successor Juan Sebastian Elcano shepherded the remaining crew home.

After Magellan’s death at the Battle of Mactan, half the original fleet remained. Considered pirates by the Portuguese, Elcano refused to dock in any Indian‑Ocean port, opting for a grueling, starvation‑filled crossing. His perseverance paid off: one‑third of the original crew survived to return to Spain aboard the Victoria, albeit in a ghastly state.

1 857

When James Holman died in 1857, he may have been the most well‑travelled individual the world had ever seen, having logged about 400,000 km (250,000 mi) across his lifetime. A sudden illness at 25 robbed him of his sight, derailing his dream of a Royal Navy career.Undeterred, the blind traveler—dubbed “The Blind Traveler”—set out on foot across Europe and later attempted an overland circumnavigation of the globe. Russian authorities once suspected him of espionage, fearing his “sighted” reports were a cover.

Holman’s adventures included scaling an erupting Mount Vesuvius and confronting a rampaging elephant in Ceylon. Unfortunately, 19th‑century prejudice dismissed his observations, and his achievements remained largely ignored until later explorers like Charles Darwin and Sir Richard Burton highlighted his contributions.