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10 Disturbing Foods That Might Harm You

2025-02-20T08:14:06Z

Christian Marlberg is a freelance writer with an interest in travel, nature, and exotic food. His experiences include cooking with nettle, downing live ants & limpets, and picking wild onions. He is always on the lookout for quality fried eel.

When we consider our food, we rarely give it too much thought, and in fact, we sometimes note how ordinary it may be. However, there are some foods so unusual, and in fact horrific that they may simply remove any trace of an appetite. While past Listverse entries looked at some undoubtedly bizarre foods, this riveting account takes culinary cringing to an entirely new level. We will look at poisonous shark meat, neurotoxic fruits, and Bullfrog salad….

A previous list covered the dangers of Greenland Sharks to humans, including Inuit hunters who may be turned over in their Kayaks. However, a more subtle risk is posed by Greenland Sharks – to your palate, and health. Greenland Sharks lack the ability to urinate, causing massive amounts of ammonia and trimethyl oxide to instead be processed through the tissues of these sharks. The ever enterprising Greenland natives have devised a traditional meal known as Harkal, which is basically aged shark flesh. Not only is the smell of the shark flesh nearly unbearable, but the consumer faces potential organ strain, intoxication and sickness from the poisons still present in the flesh.

Kivaq is an extremely stomach straining and in fact dangerous food that completely tops any other bird based dish. The Icelandic heritage food known as Kivaq consists of the fermented (some might say decomposed) corpses of small marine birds related to puffins—murres, and gulls. The birds are captured with hunting nets, and sewn into aged sealskins before being buried underground for up to three years. The birds slowly marinate in seal oil in the cold arctic tundra. The resulting meal, when finally dug up, is not only somewhat repulsive, but in fact, may be deadly due to the potential for botulism. A famous research biologist’s last meal was Kivaq.

African Poison Bullfrog

The African Bullfrog is disturbing to consider but it is classified as a delicacy in the African country of Namibia. However, bullfrog flesh is infused with the potent toxin known as Oshiketakata, which may lead to kidney failure, muscle damage and even death. Recommendations for processing the fickle frog meal include lining a pot with special wooden planks, which supposedly “neutralize” the toxin. The poison levels are reputed to be lower at certain times of year, which make the food acceptable to the brave, or maybe foolhardy, if combined with the wood planks. We cannot guarantee that the consumer will not croak….

There are some foods which simply defy the imagination. Possibly the most counterintuitive food is Asian Bat soup, which contains an entire bat placed in a soup bowl after boiling with chicken broth. The bat is dissected with a knife and fork, and the broth is then eaten with a spoon, along with the innards of the bat. Hair is present in the dish, along with the membranes of the bat’s wings. The dish is rather delicious, but we are forced to conclude that it is very unappetizing to see an entire bat floating in front of us. The bats are also capable of carrying a number of human transmissible diseases, and the practice is considered unsustainable by many conservation organizations.

Star Fruit is the most seductive and innocent looking food on this list. While other dishes may be complex or disturbing, Star Fruit is simply beautiful. The Asian plant contains five huge ridges, which form perfect stars when the plant is served sliced crossways. After eating this plant, you may begin to see stars in your head due to the neurotoxins contain in the “fruit”. Star fruit also contains massive quantities of Oxalic acid, the same poison found in Rhubarb leaves. Star fruit may therefor strike down those with weak kidneys, leading to death in some notable cases. The author has personally sampled and prepared Star Fruit. The “bite” of the plant and sense that it was not meant to be eaten were strongly experienced.

A number of exotic Japanese and Korean restaurants, including those seeking to appeal to western tourists are offering sushi that is not only raw, but partially alive. Miniature Octopus are brought into the sushi bars alive, and are quickly chopped in two pieces, leaving the writhing, reflex operated tentacles to be served on a plate with soy dip. Because the animal is an invertebrate with a partially de-centralized nervous system, the tentacles continue to grap, coil and squeeze as they are consumed. In several unfortunate and eerie cases, death has resulted from the disembodied tentacles conspiring to block the airways of diners.

The sturgeon eggs known as caviar are a popular dish in Russia, while Escargot, or snails are a popular French Dish. Extreme delicacy entrepreneurs are popularizing a new dish known as “snail caviar“, which consists of the raw eggs of land snails themselves. The eggs are placed on hardboiled quail eggs, or served alongside roast vegetables and exotic salads. Coming neatly packaged in little tins, there is a catch to this marvelous condiment, which carries the taste of fresh Earth. The eggs cannot be cooked, and deaths have been documented from the consumption of raw snails infected with brain parasites.

In the Southwestern US, Rattlesnakes are not only feared, but they are raised as food by specialty suppliers. Proponents of “rattler rations” note that snake flesh is biologically similar to Chicken, due to the reptilian ancestry of birds. It is a surprisingly Southwestern dish that makes a trip to the desert very….authentic…In southeast Asia, eateries are actively marketing their own snake snacks in the form of actual snake burgers, made from cobras and other snakes. Because Snakes are venomous, rather than poisonous, it is perfectly safe to eat snake flesh itself, as the toxin is not distributed through the tissues. After filleting and frying, you would never know you were not eating beef or chicken.

The insides of the digestive, reproductive and nervous system of certain animals forms the basis of some grotesque, but surprisingly popular dishes. A number of dishes feature the stomach linings, intestinal sections and even testicles of cows and sheep. The “trimmings” must be carefully cleaned due to the sometimes questionable body parts involved, but can be surprisingly flavorful to the strong-stomached diner. The lamb testicles are among the most popular, and are served breaded, while bull testes come marinated in sauce. In Europe, a most distressing food known as “chitterlings” may be served. The content is nothing less than pig intestines. Sheep’s heads and fish eyes also appear on “nose to tail” menus….Risks of deadly parasite infections have led to stronger regulations on the consumption of entrails and sheep heads.

Telling someone to “eat crow” is not exactly far-fetched, or even insulting if you are in Lithuania. Crow Pie is a traditional bird based dish derived from the meat of Carrion Crows. The birds are hunted at a fairly young age, and cooked at a high heat in oil before being served on a plate of roast vegetables. The meat is rumored to act as an aphrodisiac, and ostensibly is used to “manage” crow numbers. Crows have served as a traditional component of Lithuanian food, but consumption declined sharply during Soviet occupation of the country. Crow hunters are pleased to re-vitalize the dish, and have driven hundreds of kilometers in pursuit of crow flocks. Concerns have been raised over the possibility of contracting diseases from these scavengers. Crow is not considered Kosher or Halal for these reasons.

10 Apocalypses That We Survived

2025-02-20T08:07:17Z

It seems we’re obsessed with the end of the world some days. Zombies, massive meteors, or nuclear annihilation—we run the gamut in our fiction and in our fears. But what if we’ve already been through the end of the world? What if we’ve already survived not one, not two, but 10 different doomsday scenarios? Humans are nothing if not resilient and tenacious.

10 The Dust Bowl

Lasting eight years, the Dust Bowl was a severe drought in the 1930s, the roughest time of the Great Depression. It affected parts of Texas, Colorado, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, driving thousands from their states to seek a better life elsewhere.

The combination of over-farming, reliance on a small number of crops, and lack of rainfall led to soil depletion, which turned normally fertile topsoil into fine-particle dust. The storms kicked up by the prevailing west-to-east winds of the Great Plains caused dust clouds to bury entire towns in suffocating grit.

But lest you think it was confined to the Midwest, on April 14, 1935, the dust storms were so massive that they blotted out the Sun in several states (as well as Washington, DC) and ships in the Atlantic Ocean reported dust falling upon their decks. Ironically, a member of Franklin Roosevelt’s cabinet was testifying before Congress on the need for soil conservation when the storm hit. He reportedly pointed out the window and stated, “This, gentlemen, is what I’ve been talking about.”

A combination of soil conservation laws and programs as well as rain finally returning to the Plains states in 1939 brought a close to what must have seemed like the end of days to many.

9 The Mongol Conquests

Ruthless and dispassionate, the Mongol hordes descended upon the societies of Asia and Europe like a force of nature. During the 13th century, Genghis Khan forged the many tribes and clans of the central Asian steppes into an effective and devastating war machine, conquering China, the Middle East, Russia, and parts of Europe.

That the Mongols killed many is not in doubt, but the exact number can be hard to pin down. Some regions such as China had excellent census figures, but other places did not (or their records didn’t survive). While we may not know exactly how many people perished as the hordes swept through Eurasia, we do know that there was a sudden drop-off in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere—a drop-off that cannot be explained except by the deaths of millions of living, breathing animals.

The Mongols, though, eventually lost momentum and fragmented. Their massive empire eventually fractured and dissolved, a mere 100 years after they started.

8 The Black Plague

Most people are aware of the massive, devastating plague known as the Black Death, which swept through Europe in the 14th century. It is reported to have killed around 50 percent of the European population.

But what many people don’t know is that the Black Death didn’t just affect Europe but Africa, the Middle East, and Asia as well. The plague, caused mainly by the microbe yersenia pestis, was phenomenally virulent.

It spawned not just the plague itself but widespread panic and the rise of crazy superstitions, such as that the disease was caused by God’s displeasure. The disease struck down the rich, poor, weak, powerful, pious, and heretical alike and led to massive social upheavals.

The plague returned periodically afterward but lacked the impact of the 14th-century outburst. Yet it still remains in our collective memory, albeit in the form of a poetic misconception: “Ring Around the Rosie”, which most people believe chronicles the stages (and attempts to prevent) the Black Death. On the contrary this famous nursery rhyme appears to have no connection to the plague—nor, indeed, any sinister origins at all.

7 Potato Famine

In the mid-19th century, the reliance of many working poor upon a single crop (potatoes) led to millions of deaths. Most people associate this disaster with Ireland, and they’re partly right. Ireland did indeed have the most visible manifestation of the “blight.”

But it was definitely not the only country to suffer. The blight actually struck most of northern and central Europe, including Scotland, where it was known as the “Highland Blight” or “Highland Famine.” The blight also affected Belgium and was devastating to the German economies, leading to near total societal collapse as starving workers died in the streets of Europe.

The tragedy was made worse by the fact that in many regions, such as in Ireland, there was more than enough food produced, but governments and merchants alike favored the profits made by selling grain and food overseas.

6 The Thirty Years’ War

Arguably the most famous of the “religious” wars of Europe, the Thirty Years’ War was a series of conflicts pitting one nation against another in an attempt to resolve several matters, including the primacy of Catholicism or Protestantism. Nearly every country in Europe participated in the wars, but the most devastating battles took place in the Holy Roman Empire of Central Europe.

The very nature of the war, which combined political greed with religious obsession, meant that no side was willing to be merciful to the other. The result devastated Germanic cities and states, leaving many municipalities as ghost towns and harvests of staple grains reduced by up to 75 percent.

5 World War II

The last great world conflagration is etched indelibly in history. Every corner of the globe, with the possible exception of the Antarctic, saw combat between the Allied and Axis forces. The result was an utterly devastated Europe and Asia.

During the war, 80 million people died in combat, through pogroms (including the Holocaust), and by starvation. By the end of the war, starvation and deprivation were commonplace as people tried to eke out a living amid the destroyed ruins of once-great cities. No running water, no electricity, no food, and barely any government in Europe, China, and Japan left innocent civilians perched upon the knife’s edge of chaos or death.

To illustrate how devastated the world economy and society was, the United States was producing one of every two products made from 1945 to 1946. The destruction was so complete that the normally isolationist United States Congress was motivated to embark upon an ambitious pair of spending projects to jump-start the world economy and prevent a return to the Great Depression. The Marshall Plan and a similar plan launched in Japan and China spent tens of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid.

4 Smallpox In The Western Hemisphere

Contact with Europeans, even if it had been completely peaceful, would not have been benign for people living in the Americas or the islands of the Pacific. Unknown to the Europeans, a nearly invisible hitchhiker had come along on their 15th- and 16th-century voyages of exploration: smallpox.

Along with other diseases that Europeans had built up a resistance to over the centuries, smallpox devastated native populations in North America, the Caribbean, South America, and Oceania. Over the centuries, conservative estimates of the death toll from the disease put the number at 60–70 percent of native populations. Powerless to stop the disease and seeking refuge from the high fevers and horrible pain, natives prayed to their gods or committed suicide to ease their suffering.

3 The Fall Of Western Rome

Often lamented in medieval literature and bemoaned in Enlightenment writings, the contraction and eventual collapse of the Western half of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD must have seemed like the end of everything. Lasting nearly 1,000 years, Rome had a profound impact upon Mediterranean and European cultures.

Many successor states tried to emulate the pattern of Rome with varying success. However, unlike some of the other apocalypses on this list, the collapse of Western Rome was a drawn-out affair rife with invasions, governmental collapse, and starvation.

Roman Britain, for example, was left to its own devices as the legions withdrew and the Germanic Jutes, Angles, and Saxons invaded, reshaping Britain through conquest. Similarly, Germanic tribes filled the void in Iberia, Gaul, and even the Italian peninsula. Goths, Visigoths, and the infamous Vandals—their names and reputations for brutality persist to this day.

These tribes warred with the people who remained, with each other, and with the Eastern Roman Empire which sought (and failed) to recapture the lost Western Empire. It wasn’t until the eighth century that things began to settle down (sort of) in Western Europe.

2 The Fall Of The Qing Dynasty

China is—and always has been—the most populous place on Earth. Its governments are in charge of the lion’s share of the Earth’s people. Thus, it is no surprise that when one of their governments collapse, it is devastating to the world’s population.

No collapse—and attendant famine—was more pronounced than the end of the Qing dynasty. By the mid-19th century, the Qing dynasty’s fortunes had waned dramatically. Inflation had put even basic foodstuffs out of the reach of ordinary people, greedy bureaucrats and the rich had forced people off their land, and there was a massive influx of the addictive drug opium.

By the mid-18th century, the Chinese had ballooned to nearly 500 million people. So when the economy did collapse in 1876, millions of people starved to death every single year. Add to that the devastation of the First and Second Opium Wars, and the Qing dynasty’s eventual collapse was all but assured. The chaos which ensued led to tens of millions more deaths due to rioting, starvation, war, and disease.

1 Megiddo

The city of Megiddo (aka Tel Megiddo) was an important hub of trade, culture, and power in the ancient world. It was prized by the two major powers of the time—the Assyrians and the Egyptians—so much so that the town was conquered dozens of times in the ancient period.

What’s remarkable about the town is not its conquest but that the memory of those massive, bloody conflicts have worked their way into popular consciousness, mythology, and the three major Abrahamic religions. The battles which raged between Assyria and Egypt, particularly under Thutmose III, were so horrifying and devastating that the later Greek word for the city became synonymous with the end of the world: Armageddon.

It is believed by many devout followers of Abrahamic religions, such as Christianity, that the last battle of all time between the forces of good and evil will occur there. Interestingly, since that cataclysmic battle in the 15th century BC, there have been dozens of battles, big and small, fought in or near Tel Megiddo, including a major battle in World War I between the British and the Ottoman forces.

Michael is a lecturer at two Midwestern universities and loves to work in the creepy, odd, cool, and strange tidbits into his lectures to illustrate just how cool history is.

10 Rumored Locations Of The Lost Amber Room

2025-02-20T08:05:40Z

The story of the Amber Room has all of the elements of an Indiana Jones film: the bounty of kings, the spoils of war, theft by dastardly Nazis, a tireless search by the Soviet Union, mysterious deaths, and a priceless treasure waiting to be found.

Construction of the opulent “Eighth Wonder of the World” began at the command of the king of Prussia in 1701. Although estimates of its size vary, the Amber Room was believed to span about 55 square meters (592 ft²) after 18th-century renovations. It contained over six tons of amber backed by glittering gold and set with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds.

As a peace symbol between allies, the Amber Room was moved from its place in Charlottenburg Palace twice—once to Winter House in St. Petersburg and then to Catherine Palace in Pushkin. As an act of war, the room was moved once more before being lost forever.

In 1941, invading Nazi soldiers tore down the room, packed its panels into 27 crates, and shipped it to Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad), Germany. When the city was destroyed by Allied bombing in 1943, the room went missing.

In subsequent years, governments, historians, archaeologists, bounty hunters, and treasure seekers alike have sought it out, interviewing thousands of witnesses, poring over records, digging up locations all over Europe, and spending fortunes along the way. As of this writing, the room has never been found.

10 Unmoved From Kaliningrad, Germany

Although the prominent theory holds that the Amber Room must have been destroyed by the bombs which rained down upon the city then called Konigsberg, some evidence contradicts this. In over 1,000 pages of reports compiled by the decade-long Soviet investigation, no witnesses attest to any unusual odors as the city burned. Officers involved in this investigation believed that it would be impossible to miss the equivalent of 6 tons of incense burning at once.

In 1997, a German raid in Bremen lent credence to the idea that the room had survived the bombing.^[1] One of its Florentine mosaic panels turned up for auction. After its seizure, the panel was authenticated but the seller claimed ignorance as to its origin. His father, a deceased Wehrmacht soldier, never shared the secret of the panel, not even with his own flesh and blood.

9 Hidden In A Silver Mine On The Czech Border

Helmut Gaensel was a bounty hunter. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the bounty he hunted was the bejeweled panels of the Amber Room. Former SS officers living in Brazil had tipped him off to a location. According to them, the panels were deposited in the 800-year-old Nicolai Stollen mine near the border between Germany and the Czech Republic.

Gaensel was not the only man to hear the tale. While he and a team of engineers, mining experts, and historians attempted to dig into the mine from the German side, a rival group led by Peter Haustein, then mayor of the town of Deutschneudorf, tried burrowing in from the Czech side. Though the competition led to international headlines and legal headaches, neither team proved successful.^[2]

8 Covered In A Murky Lagoon

The mayor of the Lithuanian town of Neringa believed that the Amber Room was hidden beneath the dirty waters of a nearby lagoon. According to Stasys Mikelis, SS soldiers were seen attempting to hide wooden crates in the shoreline near the end of the war. They did not count on rising sea levels to submerge their loot.^[3]

Not only did Mikelis believe it, he assembled a research team in 1998 to find it, hoping to put his town on the map. His dream was not realized.

7 Lost In A Bavarian Woodland

Georg Stein was a strawberry farmer and an avid treasure hunter. His heart was set on finding the Amber Room, but he got too close according to some sources.

Stein claimed to have discovered a secret radio frequency and to have listened to the last-known communication about the transfer of the Amber Room. This message was reportedly sent from the Castle Lauenstein on the border of Thuringia on a direct shortwave to Switzerland.

Stein then arranged to meet a “search competitor” in Bavaria. The meeting was not to be. In 1987, Stein was found dead in the woodland.^[4] His body was stripped, his stomach slashed open with a scalpel. The death was ruled a suicide.

6 Beneath Wuppertal, Western Germany

Pensioner Karl-Heinz Kleine believes that he knows the location of the Amber Room and who hid it there. According to Kleine, the Nazi’s chief administrator in East Prussia, Erich Koch, secreted the treasure in his hometown of Wuppertal in the industrial Ruhr area.^[5]

It would not be a far stretch to imagine it of Koch. Even the Nazis were appalled by his brazen thefts and use of concentration camp inmates for personal gain. Koch was tried for corruption before a Nazi court in 1944 and sentenced to death. Later reprieved, he returned to favor and continued amassing his personal fortune until the end of the war.

Once captured in Poland, he was sentenced to death for the murder of 72,000 Poles and for sending another 200,000 to labor camps. But he escaped his sentence yet again. Koch’s ill health prevented Poland from carrying out his death sentence, and he lived in prison for 27 years, unrepentant to the last.

5 Shipwrecked In The Baltic Sea

The sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff on the night of January 30, 1945, was the worst disaster in maritime history. Under the press of the Red Army and rumored defeat, a great evacuation of German civilians began on the Baltic Sea. Every seaworthy vessel was placed into service.

So it was that the Wilhelm Gustloff, a luxury liner designed for fewer than 2,000 people, carried 10,582 shivering evacuees on that fateful night. It was flanked by only one military escort, which stood no chance when a Soviet submarine fired three torpedoes at the Gustloff. Each torpedo hit its target. An estimated 9,343 people died that night, half of them children.

The exact location of the Gustloff has long been known and searched. But some still claim that it may contain the hidden remains of the Amber Room. As the wreckage of the Gustloff is recognized as a war grave, diving to it, penetrating it, or both is illegal. But a lack of resources has left Polish authorities unable to protect it.^[6]

4 Aboard A Ghost Train, Walbrzych, Southwest Poland

It has long been said that a Nazi train loaded with treasure was lost in secret tunnels under a mountain in Walbrzych. Nobody knows the name of the train, its mission, or from where its precious cargo came.

Some speculate that the lack of written evidence of the train strengthens their hypothesis. Secrecy, the theory goes, was more important than paperwork, even to the Germans. Some theorize that the train may have carried the stolen wedding bands and other personal jewels of interned Jews, while others insist that the train bore the crated panels of the Amber Room.^[7]

In 2015, two men, a German and a Pole, claimed to have found the train. The local government of Walbrzych refused to comment on the matter except to warn that the train may be booby-trapped by mines if it exists.

3 In a Bunker In Mamerki, Northeastern Poland

In 2016, officials of the Mamerki Museum reported to have found a hidden room inside a World War II–era bunker using geo-radar. Bartlomiej Plebanczyk of the museum believed it possible that the panels of the Amber Room were hidden inside.

His theory was based upon the testimony of a turncoat Nazi soldier. In the 1950s, the former Nazi told Polish soldiers that he had witnessed heavily guarded cargo trucks delivering their load to the bunker in winter 1944.^[8]

2 Buried In Tunnels Under The Ore Mountains In Eastern Germany

In 2017, treasure hunters Leonhard Blume, Peter Lohr, and Gunter Eckhardt claimed to have deduced the location of the room via archival and radar sleuthing. Both the East German and Russian secret police held years-long searches for the Amber Room. It is from their records that these men reportedly found a clue as to the room’s whereabouts.

Eyewitnesses claimed that a shipment of crates had been hidden inside the tunnels. The entrance to the tunnels, they said, was then blown up. Blume, Lohr, and Eckhardt eagerly surveyed the “Prince’s Cave” near the Czech border, and the results were astounding.

Mr. Blume said, “We discovered a very big, deep, and long tunnel system and we detected something that we think could be a booby trap.” Their search continues.^[9]

1 A Secret Russian Location Known By Stalin

The impending raid of Winter Palace was known to the officials and curators of Catherine Palace. According to the official record, they attempted to disassemble and hide the Amber Room. When the brittle panels began to crumble, they chose to wallpaper over them instead. But they could not outwit the Nazis, who discovered the trick almost at once.

This conspiracy theory holds that Joseph Stalin fooled the soldiers after all. The panels they stole were replicas, while the real Amber Room had already been shipped off and hidden elsewhere. If true, the Amber Room may have been cleverly saved, only to be lost forever.^[10]

Olene Quinn is the historical fiction author of The Gates of Nottingham and Prince Dead. A self-described armchair historian, she resides in Northern California.

10 Times Actors Actually Lost Money Filming Hit Movies

2025-02-20T07:53:17Z

It may seem like there’s a ton of money to be made in the film industry, but that’s actually not the case. Not always, at least. In many instances, actors stick their necks out to do a movie they are very passionate about or are very inspired to produce, and they come away broke! Forget the multi-million dollar salaries, the huge box office totals, and the massive marketing budgets. Some movies just suck money out of the room. Even for the stars who sign on to do them, hoping it’ll propel their A-list profiles to even higher heights!

In this list, we’ll take a closer look at ten Hollywood movie stars who actually lost money producing hit movies seen by millions of people. From marketing costs stretching the budget thin to paltry low salaries after agreeing to get on set, these ten stories prove that the movie biz isn’t all sunshine and rainbows!

Related: Top 10 Tremendous Wastes Of Money

10 Dwayne Johnson

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson was incredibly hopeful that moviegoers would love to see Black Adam (2022). The brains behind the DC Comics Extended Universe were hopeful that audiences would connect with the character, too. After all, the franchise was sputtering at the time, and they desperately needed to turn over a new leaf. So they signed Johnson on in large part because all of his movies have always been massive hits. Well, until this one! The superhero story about an Egyptian slave from 2600 BC who was granted great power by the ancient Gods simply failed to connect with audiences in the biggest and worst way.

For one, the film’s production was marred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Then, when it came time to release it, Johnson himself put his money where his mouth was and stepped up as both a producer and a promotional mouthpiece. Sadly, it didn’t work. Despite all of Johnson’s other films raking in dough, this one lost tons and tons of money for both him and Warner Brothers. According to reports, the film’s funders lost as much as $100 million after fans failed to show interest in the story and its off-shoot title character. Oops!^[1]

9 George Clooney

George Clooney believed so much in his 2008 sports comedy film Leatherheads (2008) that he invested a lot of his own money to make it work. But while the production got off without a hitch, and the film did live long enough to see theaters and be sold to moviegoers, the public mostly panned the flick. Sure, George may have written the film, starred in it, directed it, and even produced it by taking in the bigger picture with marketing and funding. However, he forgot the most important part: to make a movie the public wanted to see.

Ultimately, the film came to life on a budget of $58 million, which was put up by George’s own production company, Smokehouse Productions. Unfortunately for the ER alum and his Smokehouse brethren, they didn’t come anywhere close to making back their money. According to film industry watchdog reports, the film only brought in just a shade over $41 million in box office receipts. So it left George about $17 million in the hole. Ouch!^[2]

8 Kevin Costner

Kevin Costner isn’t afraid of investing his own money into his films. There’s just one problem with that strategy, though: When he misses, he misses REALLY big. Take The Postman (1997) as the perfect example of this. Costner himself helped fund the flick, but unfortunately, audiences didn’t go see it nearly enough to earn the star his money back. The film’s budget topped $80 million, according to reports, but it only turned around and brought in $17.6 million in ticket receipts. Worse yet, it didn’t even get an international release, preventing Costner from scoring big on foreign money after its disappointing American run.

But is Costner upset with losing so much money on the movie? Nope! Speaking to HuffPost about it after the film bombed, Kevin called The Postman a “really good movie.” Defending his decision to fund and produce it, he added: “If you revisit the movie, that’s a good thing to do. You can go back and revisit some movies that made well over $100 million and you might not care anything about them. And you can go back and maybe review a movie like that—you know, it was a pretty big, epic movie.” Hey, as long as he’s proud of it and okay with it losing so much money, who are we to criticize?^[3]

7 Brad Pitt

Brad Pitt felt so strongly about his 2007 movie The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford that he put up his own money to get it off the ground and out in theaters. The issue came when he found out how fans didn’t feel nearly as passionately about the movie. Pitt and his production team spent more than $30 million on the film—much of which came out of the A-list star’s own deep pockets. But the movie only returned about half of that total in gate receipts, making it a complete failure on every financial level.

Don’t count on Pitt regretting the process, though. “The way producers get us actors on is if it’s something we love and have to do, we do it for a price and get the movie made,” Pitt explained to Variety five years after the movie came out, in 2012. “It actually cost me money in the end. I paid to work on that one, and I think the film still lost money, but it was one of my favorites and one of the most rewarding to me.” Of course, there isn’t a price to be put on emotional satisfaction. Still, the thought of losing tens of millions of dollars is a tough pill to swallow!^[4]

6 John Travolta

John Travolta took a big risk when he decided to take Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s book Battlefield Earth: A Saga of the Year 3000 to the big screen. He had trouble nearly from the very beginning, too. Most notably, Travolta couldn’t find funding for the 2000 movie! So he had to fund it himself if he wanted to see it get made—and that’s exactly what he did.

The A-lister put in millions of his own dollars to fund the film and even agreed to forfeit the majority of his normal paycheck to make it. In turn, he hoped to see a major return on his investment with a popular showing at the box office. But he didn’t! Not even close. The film’s budget ended up soaring higher than $73 million in the end. And as for how much it brought in? Well, it didn’t even clear $30 million in returns. Ouch!

Still, even though he took a $43 million haircut, Travolta has no regrets about it. Speaking to the Daily Beast about losing so much money on Hubbard’s book-turned-film, Travolta argued: “Why would I ever regret that? I had the power to do whatever I wanted, and I chose to do a book that I thought was worthy of making into a movie. It’s a beautiful film. It’s a good movie.”^[5]

5 Sharon Stone

Sharon Stone had one of the most iconic film roles of all time with her work in Basic Instinct (1992). But it might surprise you to learn that she didn’t make any money on the film! Her co-star, Michael Douglas, may have commanded millions of dollars with his role in the flick, and he came away as a clear financial winner. But Sharon didn’t make that kind of money for her role, which catapulted her into true superstardom. Then, to make matters worse, she had to do the awards show run because the film was so successful—and so she lost money spending big on dresses, makeup, and stylists!

Between promoting the movie as it hit theaters and then doing the Oscars dance after it started to gain traction, Stone ended up bottoming out in the red. After looking back on her Basic Instinct experience in a chat years later with the CBC, Stone reminisced. “I didn’t get paid [well] to do Basic Instinct. I made a little bit of money. Michael made $14 million and has points. I made not enough money to buy my dress to go to the Oscars the next year. I was in this weird limbo where I was suddenly famous, but didn’t have any money.”^[6]

4 Jack Black

Jack Black thought so highly of Tenacious D that he used up all his willpower and goodwill with producers and Hollywood movers and shakers to bring it to the big screen in 2006. The result was the funny and bizarre movie Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny. While he may have loved that the film was even greenlit and produced at all, his adoration for his band didn’t translate into a financial windfall. In fact, it went completely in the other direction! Things got so bad that Black even had to forgo his usual $12 million per movie salary that he had been accustomed to drawing in other productions.

In the end, the movie was made on a $20 million budget. That’s not huge compared to the costs of some films nowadays. However, the issue was that Jack’s passion project only made back $13.9 million in theaters. So that’s quite a significant loss compared to what he and Tenacious D co-creator Kyle Gass had been hoping to get. Oh, yeah, and that’s the other thing: being partners on the musical side of things, Gass and Black had agreed to split their movie money evenly in the end. So each one ended up netting about $500,000 on a movie that cost $20 million of their own money and privately raised investor funds to make. Yikes!^[7]

3 Will Smith

Will Smith and his production company Overbrook Entertainment took a big chance in 2013 when they took the sci-fi flick After Earth to theaters. The film wasn’t cheap at all to make. In fact, they spent $150 million to produce the film—and then another $100 million to market it. Those numbers are massive in any context! And they are even more massive when you consider how much the film didn’t make! In the end, After Earth only brought back $234 million during its theatrical release. A big number out of context, obviously, but when you spend north of $250 million to get it out there, falling $17 million short doesn’t feel good. Smith himself later called it “the most painful failure in my career.”

“What I learned from that failure is how you win,” Smith told Esquire after the movie bombed so badly, and he took some time to reflect on its losses. “I got reinvigorated after the failure of ‘After Earth.’ I stopped working for a year and a half. I had to dive into why it was so important for me to have number-one movies. And I never would have looked at myself in that way.”

And he continued: “That Monday started the new phase of my life, a new concept: Only love is going to fill that hole. You can’t win enough, you can’t have enough money, you can’t succeed enough. There is not enough. The only thing that will ever satiate that existential thirst is love. And I just remember that day I made the shift from wanting to be a winner to wanting to have the most powerful, deep, and beautiful relationships I could possibly have.”^[8]

2 Patricia Arquette

Patricia Arquette was paid so little to be in Boyhood that the movie nearly wasn’t worth it to do. Financially, she came away with just a few thousand dollars for her trouble. Which, when you factor in time spent on set, time preparing and learning lines and blocking, and the costs of having assistants and helpers keep up her home and pets when she was gone to film, it just wasn’t worth it! Well, that is until she won the Oscar for Best Supporting Acctress for her role in it.

“It’s important to me as an actor to be able to make a living, but I’m going to tell you something,” Arquette revealed after the movie hit theaters and turned into a massive critical and award-show success. “I paid more money to my babysitter and my dog walker than I made on ‘Boyhood,’ and to be in Boyhood.” That seems kind of backward to us, considering popular movies make bank. But again, she won an Oscar for her role, so we have a feeling that she’s not too upset by the outcome.^[9]

1 Rebel Wilson

Rebel Wilson revealed in her memoir that the early career-defining role she had in Bridesmaids netted her just $3,500 in salary. That’s a remarkably small salary for a movie that turned out to be so popular and well-known. Not only that, but Rebel actually had to wait more than a year before the check cleared and was sent to her! We hope she wasn’t counting on paying rent or anything with the proceeds. She did use the money to join the Screen Actors Guild, at least, so that’s a nice move to make. But she ended up in the red on it overall because she had to dish out dollars for dresses and beauty bills when it came time to premiere and promote the film!

“I basically made no money,” Rebel wrote about the financial reality behind Bridesmaids in her memoir. “I lost money because I had to pay to go to the premiere, like to buy my dress and everything. That was a really skint year where I was living on $60 a week in L.A. once I’d paid my rent and my car hire. I wasn’t partying or living this [movie star] life. It was basically having that focus, trying to write for myself, like going to auditions.”^[10]

10 Offbeat Stories You Might Have Missed This Week (1/12/19)

2025-02-19T08:14:32Z

On Listverse, another Saturday means another list which looks at some of the strangest news stories to make the rounds over the last few days. There is also the Friday list which explores the crucial topics of the week.

We start off the new year with multiple science stories covering a variety of fields. We have some machine-on-machine violence and controversy surrounding the latest, high-tech female sex toy. Crows dazzle us with their intelligence, while crickets are apparently responsible for a Cuban “sonic attack.” We explore the science behind double-dipping and marvel at mysterious signals coming from outer space.

10 A Doping Scandal

A 90-year-old cyclist was stripped of his world record after failing a drug test.

Back in July 2018, Carl Grove from Bristol, Indiana, took part in the US Masters Track National Championships. He won in the 90–94 age group, but this was not surprising as he was the only competitor. He also set a new world record. However, the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) stripped him of his record after the cyclist received two doping violations.

Grove submitted a sample the day of the competition on July 11, and it tested positive for epitrenbolone. He was also using a supplement found to be contaminated with clomiphene. However, another sample that Grove submitted the day prior had no traces of prohibited substances.

It seems that the USADA is inclined to believe the cyclist’s excuse that the drugs “more likely than not” came from tainted cow liver he ate the night before the race. Grove has only been issued a public warning but will have to race again if he wants his record back.^[1]

9 An Expensive Fish

A massive bluefin tuna sold for a record 333.6 million yen ($3.1 million) at a New Year’s auction in Tokyo.

The fish weighed in at 278 kilograms (612 lbs) and was bought by Kiyoshi Kimura, the self-proclaimed “Tuna King” who owns a chain of sushi restaurants. The sale took place at a special auction commemorating the closing of the renowned Tsukiji fish market, which was among the largest seafood markets in the world. It closed last year to make room for parking for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and moved to the new Toyosu facility.

Kimura expressed some buyer’s remorse after the auction. He expected the fish to go for 30–60 million yen, but he ended up paying over five times that. The Tuna King’s purchase doubled the previous record of 155 million yen which was set at the 2013 New Year’s auction.

There was also a lot of pride involved in the sale. Kimura had paid the top price for a fish at six consecutive New Year’s auctions until last year when another businessman outbid him. This year, Kimura made sure that he took back the title.^[2]

8 An Unexpected Comeback

Axl Rose has released his first new song in over a decade, and he did it in a Looney Tunes cartoon.

Back in the ’90s, Guns N’ Roses was among the most popular music groups in the world. However, tensions between band members caused a long recording hiatus following the release of their 1993 album, The Spaghetti Incident? It took another 15 years for Guns N’ Roses to release their next album, Chinese Democracy, to a lukewarm reception.

This caused front man Axl Rose to go on another long hiatus. During that period, he still toured, regrouped with the band’s classic lineup, and even performed as AC/DC’s new lead singer. But he didn’t record any new material.

That changed recently when he released “Rock the Rock.”^[3] The music video features Axl in animated form alongside Bugs Bunny and other Looney Tunes characters rocking out in an effort to stop an asteroid. The video itself is a snippet from an upcoming New Looney Tunes episode.

7 A Daft Mistake

Scholars from the British Museum admitted to being “daft” after realizing that an artifact they had been displaying as an ancient vase was actually the head of a mace turned upside down.

Until the end of the month, the British Museum is showcasing an exhibition titled No Man’s Land. It presents objects which tell the story of the first border conflict on record between the Sumerian cities of Lagash and Umma during the third millennium BC.

However, while researching the exhibit, curators discovered that one of their artifacts was not what they thought at all. One of their “vases” actually turned out to be a weapon placed upside down.

Scholars realized their blunder after comparing their object with a similar one at Yale University. The artifact was actually the head of a mace or club which was made for King Gishakidu of Umma. Now that it’s right-side up, the decoration on it makes a bit more sense. It is a depiction of a net which was used to immobilize people for execution.^[4]

6 A Fallen Robot

A unique motoring accident took place on the streets of Las Vegas. Camera footage shows a “self-driving” car committing a hit-and-run on a robot.

The sheer bizarreness of the event plus the fact that the city is currently hosting CES 2019, the largest electronics trade show in the world, has people skeptical of the video’s authenticity. In fact, most have labeled it a publicity stunt. They are probably correct, although nothing is official just yet.^[5]

The robot is named Promobot and is the creation of a Russian company also called Promobot. It was run down by a Tesla Model S. The Russian organization wasted no time in milking the “accident” for maximum exposure. Spokespeople for Promobot have given interviews and a press release mourning their fallen comrade. As of this writing, neither Promobot nor Tesla has commented on the alleged hoax.

5 A Sonic Conundrum

Over the last few years, multiple US diplomats and their family members residing at the US embassy in Cuba have complained of strange noises. These brought on a number of symptoms such as vertigo, dizziness, and ringing in the ears. US officials feared they were being targeted by a “sonic attack,” but new research suggests that the bizarre noises were just crickets.

The problem started in 2016. In late 2017, an audio sample of the sound was first released to the public. It has been described as “piercing squeals” and “grinding metal.” However, people were unable to identify the source of the noise. As expected, Cuban officials have vehemently denied orchestrating any kind of “sonic attack” on their American counterparts.

Two scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Lincoln in England claim that the sound is caused by the Indies short-tailed cricket. They have analyzed the audio sample, and multiple characteristics such as oscillations per pulse, repetition rate, power spectrum, and duration match the insect’s chirps.

There are some inconsistencies between the two which the researchers blame on the fact that the recording was made indoors while the crickets were outside.

The study has not been peer-reviewed yet, so it is far from a closed case. Moreover, the two scientists are stating that just the noises were made by crickets. They aren’t discounting the possibility that embassy personnel were also the victims of an attack or that their symptoms were psychosomatic.^[6]

4 A Contentious Sex Toy

There is more controversy from the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). The organizers have been accused of gender bias after banning a female sex toy even though sex technology aimed at men has been showcased in the past.

The Ose personal massager is a hands-free device which uses micro-robotic technology to mimic the sensations of a human tongue and fingers. It was developed by Oregon start-up Lora DiCarlo. More than just being presented at CES, the gadget was initially selected as the CES 2019 Innovation Awards honoree in the Robotics and Drone category.

The company’s celebration was short-lived. Organizers contacted Lora DiCarlo with bad news: Not only were they not receiving an award anymore, but they would not even be allowed to exhibit the Ose massager at CES 2019.

They organizers claimed that the device is not eligible for an award because it doesn’t fit into any existing product categories. It also cannot be showcased because it was deemed by the Consumer Technology Association to be “immoral, obscene, indecent, profane or not in keeping with CTA’s image.”^[7]

Lora DiCarlo founder Lora Haddock pointed out that Ose was developed in partnership with the robotics lab of Oregon State University and has eight pending patents encompassing robotics, biomimicry, and engineering. Therefore, it clearly fits in the Robotics and Drone category.

As far as the device being obscene, Haddock also observed that VR porn is a staple of CES and that a sex robot named Solana debuted at last year’s trade show with no objections.

3 A Smart Bird

We all know that crows are really intelligent animals. But the birds have recently been observed exhibiting an ability previously only ascribed to humans—they can infer the weight of an object by how it moves in the wind.

If there are several items on a table and a breeze blows some of them away, we understand that those are lighter than the items which stood still. According to a study conducted at the University of Cambridge, apparently, so do New Caledonian crows.^[8]

During the experiment, researchers trained 12 birds to discriminate between light and heavy objects. Half of them were rewarded when they dropped light items into a food dispenser, while the other half had to drop heavy objects.

After this initial phase, the crows were then presented with new items they had never seen before. These were suspended from strings and placed in front of an electric fan so that the birds could see how they swayed in the wind. Finally, the crows were allowed to make a choice between the two objects.

The birds selected the object that would earn them a reward in 73 percent of cases. With the fan turned off, they did no better than chance.

While this seems to indicate that crows can infer weight, this experiment has never been performed with other animals. So we don’t know how widespread the ability is. Study lead author Sarah Jelbert would like to see it run again with primates.

2 A Double-Dipped Chip

Most people have probably double-dipped at some point. That’s when you dip a chip, take a bite, and then dip again. But have they been exposing the individuals around them to large amounts of bacteria? A new experiment says “yes.”

Food scientists Paul Dawson and Brian Sheldon have recently published a book titled Did You Just Eat That? It looks at the most common ideas about food safety to see if there is any science to back them up.

Double-dipping is a concept that has been around for a while, but it was popularized in an episode of Seinfeld. According to one character, double-dipping is “like putting your whole mouth right in the dip.”

For their experiment, researchers dipped and double-dipped chips in chocolate sauce, cheese dip, and salsa. Then they checked the amount of bacteria transfer. Professor Dawson admitted that he didn’t expect to see much difference due to the small surface size of the chip.^[9]

However, there were actually around 1,000 more bacteria per milliliter of dip in the case of double-dipping. Dawson called this a “significant amount” which was more similar to person-to-person transfers of contagious diseases than regular foodborne maladies.

The researchers also tested the five-second rule. It says that if you drop food on the floor, it is still safe to eat if you pick it up within five seconds. Dawson called this a game of “Russian roulette” as it is the type of surface that truly matters, not the duration. Carpet turned out to be better than tiles or a wooden floor as carpet actually soaked up the salmonella used in the experiment.

1 A Mysterious Signal

Astronomers from Canada have detected puzzling space signals coming from a distant galaxy.

These kinds of signals are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), and they only last a few milliseconds on average. In this case, the repeating radio waves picked up by the CHIME telescope in British Columbia emanated from the same source located about 1.5 billion light-years away.

Astronomers made the discovery last year and now have published their findings in Nature. Although dozens of single FRBs have been detected, this is only the second time that we have spotted a repeating FRB.

While we don’t know the exact origin of the radio signals, scientists do have a few ideas. They think it could be two neutron stars colliding with each other or just one neutron star rapidly spinning in a region with a high magnetic field. There are also several hypotheses implicating black holes. They are either collapsing, devouring a neutron star, or being hit by dark matter.^[10]

Of course, there has also been talk that it could be aliens. Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb believes that FRBs could come from energy beams used to propel spacecraft.

Even skeptics like Duncan Lorimer, the scientist who discovered the first FRB in 2007, can’t rule out the possibility. However, he thinks a magnetized neutron star is more plausible.

10 Microorganisms You Can Find in Drinking Water

2025-02-19T08:12:57Z

Warning: This list is not for the faint of heart. There are invisible monsters living in your tap water, creatures that swim and multiply by the billions inside every drop of brisk, refreshing water you slurp down your gullet, tiny demons that…well, okay, they’re actually not all that bad. All water has bacteria and protozoans to some extent, most of them completely harmless. But once you see what they look like up close and personal, you might never get the image out of your head. Here are 10 microorganisms that could be living in your drinking water right now.

When cities pump water out to their residents, they put the water through a series of filtration and disinfection steps first. This is obviously beneficial because when you pull water from lakes and rivers it’s most likely going to be filled with bacteria. Filter it, and you can get most of that bacteria out. The important word there is “most,” because even the most advanced filtration techniques are not infallible. And for many people, that means drinking tiny doses of cryptosporidium every day.

Cryptosporisium is what’s known as a protozoan—a single-celled organism—and is most famous for giving people bouts of crippling diarrhea, a condition affectionately referred to as cryptosporidiosis. The protozoa works like a parasite, latching onto the intestines and laying eggs in a person’s fecal matter—and that’s how it spreads: when drinking water becomes contaminated with infected fecal matter, crypto moves on to new hosts. We have safeguards in place to stop it from happening, but on a good day it only stops 99 percent of the cryptosporidium. In 1998 a crypto bloom broke out in Sydney, Australia. Officials noticed the rise, but didn’t act for a few days because the levels were still “within acceptable health limits.” That means that there are acceptable levels for a diarrhea-inducing parasite that comes from poop in your water.

This pleasant looking slinky is Anabaena circinalis, a cyanobacteria that lives in freshwater reservoirs around the world, notably Australia, Europe, Asia, New Zealand, and North America. Cyanobacteria like this are believed to be some of the first multicellular organisms on earth, and as such have evolved to do some very curious things. In the case of Anabaena spp., those things are the production of neurotoxins. The discovery of Anatoxin-a was one of the first cases of a neurotoxin being produced by cyanobacteria, and we found out in a big way: An outbreak in the 1950’s got into the drinking water supply and was responsible for a series of mass die-offs at cattle farms across the U.S.

In Australia, freshwater Anabaena bacteria have been found producing saxitoxins, a type of neurotoxin that causes respiratory arrest, followed by death. The military has even gone so far as to classify saxitoxins as Schedule 1 substances with “no practical use outside of weapons manufacture.” Fortunately, cyanobacteria are one of the easier microorganisms to filter out of drinking water. For now.

Rotifers are a relatively common microorganism that can be found pretty much everywhere in the world. And they’re also one of the most common drinking water contaminants, despite growing as large as 1mm at times (which is hardly microscopic—you can see that with your naked eye). Some of them swim, others crawl around with an inchworm motion, but none of them are known to be harmful to humans. And that’s good, because they show up in tap water fairly often.

What’s not good is that the presence of rotifers in a municipal water supply usually means that there is a problem with the filtration system—organisms that large should not be able to make it through. And rotifers are also known to act as hosts to protozoans (like cryptosporidium) and bacteria. That leads to a mirrored benefit, of sorts: rotifers can be used as a warning system to let officials know that there’s something wrong with their systems, but by the time they’re seen, there could be other things that got through as well.

The link in the previous entry pointed to a Connecticut public health bulletin meant to advise residents who might find tiny bugs swimming around in their tap water. It addresses two types of near-microscopic invertebrates: rotifers, and copepods. Of the two, copepods are larger, and possibly even more common. They can grow up to 2mm (double the size of rotifers), and they’re actually a type of crustacean, sort of like miniature shrimp. And they’re everywhere.

In the Connecticut incident, which happened in 2009, residents began finding thousands of them in small samples of water. One resident compared them to “tiny polliwogs,” and stated, “It was completely disgusting. We were drinking them, washing out clothes in them, and it was just completely nasty.” But if anything, copepods are beneficial because they often feed on toxins. Again though, the fact that they can make it through the filtration system means plenty of smaller bacteria can too.

We all know about E. coli, or Escherichia coli, a bacteria that lives in, on, and around fecal matter. It’s been publicized more times than you can shake a stick at, until by now it’s practically a legend of the bacteria world. From food to water to even more food, it’s hard to get away from. Which is why it’s sort of disconcerting to find out that all drinking water invariably has E. coli in it; it’s just kept down to levels that are considered “safe.”

Here’s the data sheet on drinking water contaminants from the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, of the United States. According to that sheet, E. coli is acceptable as long as it doesn’t appear in more than 5 percent of the water samples collected in a given month. So if the municipality tests their water 100 times in a month, 5 of those samples can be infected with E. coli, but the water will still be permitted to go out to the city’s residents. And once you get down to decimal places of hundredths or thousandths of a percent, you are pretty much always guaranteed to find some E. coli swimming and playing in your water.

In the world at large, the more colorful something is, the more fun you can probably have with it. And based on that logic, these mycotoxic mold spores are just a big barrel of laughs. Until they start showing up in drinking water; then you have problems. Rhizopus stolonifer is more commonly known as black bread mold; leave a piece of bread out in the open, and this will be just one of the molds that take over it.

Widely considered the most common fungus in the world, it’s not surprising that this mold shows up in tap water as well. Fungi reproduce with spores which, much like flower pollen, float through the air until they find a suitable place to land and grow. In 2006, a study looked at the concentrations of mold spores in tap water, and found that Rhizopus stolonifer appeared 2.9 percent of the time, which, arguably, is fairly low in the realm of contaminants (remember, E. coli can legally show up nearly twice as often). It’s believed to release toxins that are harmful to humans, although they’re only dangerous in higher concentrations.

This organism doesn’t look as terrifying as some of the other creatures on this list—really it just looks like a few mold splotches. It’s actually an amoeba, though, and it eats brains. To be scientific about it, the amoeba attacks a person’s nervous system by entering through their nasal cavities, killing 98 percent of its victims.

N. fowleri infections are rare, mostly because it isn’t effective if it’s consumed orally. But in 2011, two Louisiana residents died from meningoencephalitis (the disease caused by Naegleria) after making a nasal flush out of salt and tap water. When the deaths were investigated, the brain eating amoeba was found on the bathtub, shower heads, and sink faucets—the house was literally covered in it. Despite this case, most infections aren’t caused by tap water infected with N. fowleri. No, usually people get it by swimming in lakes and rivers. Have you ever accidentally sucked water up your nose while swimming?

With a name like Legionella, this bacteria already sounds dangerous. And since it was named after an American Legion convention in 1976 where it was responsible for 34 deaths and a total of 221 infections, that might be a fair assumption. The condition caused by L. pneumophila is now called Legionnaires’ disease, and it sends 18,000 people to the hospital every year. And it comes from, you guessed it, contaminated water. Symptoms of Legionnaires’ disease include confusion, fevers of up to 107 F (41.5 C), loss of coordination, vomiting, diarrhea, and muscle aches. It shows up sporadically; in 2001, more than 700 people in Spain were infected in one centralized area.

As if L. pneumophila wasn’t already dangerous enough, the U.S. military decided to take a crack at weaponizing it, leading to a genetically modified version with a 100 percent kill rate. But even if you’re not on a government hit list, you would do well to stay away from water in general.

Here’s another type of mold, and one that looks slightly more terrifying than the psychedelic funhouse in number five. Like black bread mold, Chaetomium species are fairly common in everyday life, usually floating through the air in moist locations, which can encompass everything from a swamp to your bathroom ceilings. This appears in tap water fairly rarely, but when it is there it usually makes the water taste and smell slightly “off”—normal signs to stop drinking a glass of water in any case.

Chaetomium sp. spores aren’t particularly dangerous, although in some cases they can cause an infection known as phaeohyphomycosis, which is something you definitely do not want to Google. They can also present a hazard to people who are allergic to the spores, and even that typically only happens with chronic exposure.

One of the first things we learn as children is that you always cook chicken, and if you handle it raw you better scrub those hands nice and good. The reason, of course, is salmonella, which has such a long history of infection it’s not even possible to link to them all here. Usually salmonella shows up on food such as beef, spinach, and of course, chicken (hedgehogs too, surprisingly). Less commonly, salmonella causes outbreaks through none other than our friendly neighborhood drinking water.

In 2008, Colorado tap water was responsible for 79 cases of salmonella poisoning, which caused fevers and vomiting. People with weak immune systems, like the elderly, are especially susceptible to salmonella. Another study looked at the water supply of Togo, Africa, and found 26 cases of salmonella contamination, suggesting that developing countries are at a greater risk for bacterial infections from drinking water. It’s sort of common sense, but it’s beneficial to have figures to see what exactly is causing illnesses in these areas.

As Benjamin Franklin once said, “In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in water there is bacteria.” We’ll take the wine.

Andrew Handley

Andrew is a freelance writer and the owner of the sexy, sexy HandleyNation Content Service. When he”s not writing he’s usually hiking or rock climbing, or just enjoying the fresh North Carolina air.

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10 Characters Killed Off Because the Actor Died

2025-02-19T07:52:14Z

Actors are among the most protected parts of film sets. Their deliveries bring the characters to life, and the resulting dynamics resonate with audiences worldwide. That appeal can carry a movie or TV series for years. The people onscreen become practically synonymous with the franchise and the joy it provides. That phenomenon makes it awkward when tragedy strikes.

In some cases, actors die while their series are ongoing. Rather than recast, the filmmakers kill the characters. This tactic can often stem from respect, or at least the perception of respect. The actors may define their roles to such an extent that their spark becomes impossible to match. Thus, rather than taint a beloved dynamic, the creators let the characters rest in peace with the performers. This strategy can affect the storytelling, but its success hinges on the skill of the writers. Because of that, an actor’s death can propel a franchise into uncharted waters.

Related: 10 Actors Who Turned Down Movie Roles and Regretted It

10 Marcus Brody

A university dean and all-around scholar, Marcus Brody is a close friend and mentor of Indiana Jones. Not only did he sanction many of the hero’s treasure-hunting journeys, but he even accompanied his buddy on several escapades. Of course, he then became a clumsy fish out of water but, regardless, remained an endearing sidekick, thanks in part to Denholm Elliot’s warmly aristocratic performance. The series would eventually outlive him, though.

By the time Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released twenty-seven years after the original film, Elliot had long since passed away. The story explains that Marcus died between films, and his absence cemented Indy’s feelings of age and obsolescence. On the upside, the university sported a statue in Brody’s honor… which got beheaded in a chase scene. Talk about a mixed blessing.^[1]

9 Paul Hennessy

At first glance, 8 Simple Rules looked like your average family sitcom. Paul Hennessy was a typical father who struggled to raise his teenage children, but that goal became difficult in an increasingly chaotic household. John Ritter was an inspired choice for such a role. Not only was he convincing as a put-upon family man, but his relatable responses provided a funny contrast to the outrageous scenarios without devolving into shallow one-liners. The laughs came to an abrupt end, though, when Ritter unexpectedly died. The show reflected that sudden passing in its storytelling.

Early in the second season, the family received news that Paul collapsed in a grocery store. This loss left his wife to care for their children. Such unfortunate circumstances forced the characters to mature. In addition, new faces came in to fill the void. This new dynamic carried the series for another season. However, Ritter’s absence ultimately dampened the humor for the rest of its run. A comedy from a father’s perspective didn’t really work without the father.^[2]

8 Black Panther

One of the many superheroes introduced in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, T’Challa was the king of Wakanda and holder of the legendary Black Panther mantle. Members of his royal line have enhanced strength and agility due to their nation’s deity. T’Challa learned to use those gifts for the good of his people, putting others before himself and aiding the Avengers in their world-saving exploits. Though the formula was painfully familiar, Chadwick Boseman elevated the material with straight-faced passion. Tragically, the actor’s bright future halted due to his untimely death. Fans wondered how the franchise would continue without him.

They got their answer with Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. Here, T’Challa died of a disease, casting uncertainty on his kingdom. That shaky ground only grew worse with a Vibranium arms race bringing increased threats to Wakanda. It’s ultimately up to the hero’s sister, Shuri, to take up his mantle and protect their home. Sadly, she lacked confidence due to her failure to find a cure for her brother. That setup made the film both a rite of passage for her and a feature-length funeral for Boseman.^[3]

7 Spock

Who knew an impersonal alien could arouse such emotion? The most iconic character in Star Trek was Spock. The Vulcan operated on logic rather than emotion, and he used that gift to serve the USS Enterprise as the chief science officer. That expertise was invaluable in both the original TV series and the movies. During that time, he became a household name thanks to Leonard Nimoy’s quiet charisma. That understated humanity carried him all the way to the 2009 reboot films, which reset the universe and traveled back to the days of the original series. His presence wouldn’t last, though.

Nimoy’s passing informed the reboot’s third entry, Star Trek Beyond. Here, the elderly Spock served as an ambassador in the new timeline before finally dying of old age. His younger self already doubted his place in Starfleet, and his mentor’s death only compounded that feeling. Fortunately, Spock Prime’s final gift—a photograph of the original crew—strengthened the kid’s resolve to remain on the team. The Vulcan died as he lived, aiding his friends and ensuring they were the best of themselves.^[4]

6 Leia Organa

One of the storied heroes of Star Wars, Princess Leia Organa was a pivotal figure in the original trilogy. She aided the Rebel Alliance against the oppressive Galactic Empire, coordinating the most dangerous missions and giving the troops a path to victory. Carrie Fisher was infectiously feisty in portraying Leia, but she couldn’t sustain that energy forever.

After buying the IP, Disney commissioned a new trilogy with the old actors returning in supporting roles. The problem was that Fisher died shortly after shooting the trilogy’s middle entry, Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Rather than explain her death offscreen, the filmmakers used existing footage to splice Leia into the following flick, The Rise of Skywalker. However, this approach only got them so far, so Leia still died halfway through the tale. Specifically, she used the last of her energy to reach her son via the Force. Considering how marginalized she had become, this death was just the nail in the coffin of squandered potential.^[5]

5 Mr. Miyagi

The Karate Kid was a prototypical sports flick and underdog tale. Much of its success stemmed from its iconic mentor figure, Mr. Miyagi. The karate master trained young Daniel LaRusso in the art of combat. Moreover, he imbued the boy with the peaceful outlook garnered from a lifetime of hardship. You believed every word out of his mouth due to Pat Morita’s gravitas, but his popularity didn’t keep the franchise from fizzling out. Morita’s eventual death seemed to cement that end.

Against all odds, though, the Karate Kid returned with Cobra Kai, a TV series centered on Daniel’s rival, Johnny Lawrence. Both characters struggled with carrying on their predecessors’ legacy. That’s difficult for LaRusso due to Miyagi’s passing, but his teachings lived on. Not only did Daniel pass his karate knowledge to the next generation, but his master’s advice helped him grow closer to his family and make peace with his enemies. That’s the best way to honor the old veteran.^[6]

4 John Hammond

There would be no Jurassic Park without John Hammond. The CEO of a massive bioengineering company, he and his scientists found the breakthrough that brought dinosaurs back to life. It wasn’t long before these animals ran rampant, though, leaving Hammond in disgrace at his shattered dream. Richard Attenborough lent heartbreaking pathos to that downfall, letting you forgive the character’s hubris through his childlike innocence. Of course, he was still a young soul in an old body.

As such, both the actor and the character had passed by the time Jurassic World rolled around. New CEO Simon Masrani has resurrected and rebranded the dinosaur theme park, asserting that it was Hammond’s dying wish to continue his legacy. In addition, a holographic sculpture of the revolutionary founder decorated the park’s entrance. Whatever Hammond’s true intentions were, the films still remembered their roots—both the man who started it all and the actor who brought him to life.^[7]

3 Cy Tolliver

Deadwood was full of dregs and cutthroats, but one of the meanest mugs was the owner of a high-end saloon. Cyrus “Cy” Tolliver runs the Bella Union with equal parts cruelty and efficiency. He treated everyone under him with utter disdain, as the only way to get by was to look out for yourself. The only exception was Joannie Stubbs, a prostitute whom he genuinely cared for in the pinnacles of his black heart. Ably capturing that dichotomy was Powers Boothe, but his turn was cut short upon the show’s cancellation.

The town’s tale continued in Deadwood: The Movie, but Boothe died during the intervening years. The movie mirrored that passing by having Cy die during a ten-year time jump. Joannie took over his establishment, which feels natural due to their relationship and her search for purpose. It’s one of the many ways the movie wrapped up the show.^[8]

2 Polly Gray

Polly Gray was an essential member of the eponymous Peaky Blinders. She kept the family together and helped the business run smoothly. Even though her nieces and nephews made the decisions, they always deferred to her unfiltered judgment. Helen McCrory expertly mixed maternal love and underlying danger in playing Polly, but she sadly died just as season six began shooting.

As a result, her death becomes a driving force in the story. The season opened with her and several other characters being assassinated by members of the Irish Republican Army. Their deaths sent Tommy Shelby (and the show) down an ever-darker path as he led the Peaky Blinders. Thankfully, he and the rest of the family caught up with the people responsible, giving viewers some small satisfaction.^[9]

1 Egon Spengler

It’s hard to imagine Ghostbusters without Egon Spengler. The deranged genius helped form the paranormal exterminators in the original film, and he designed most of their specialized equipment. He took an amusing interest in the building blocks of both the living and the dead, particularly the less glamorous aspects like slimes and molds. This figure could have easily devolved into a cartoonish stereotype, but Harold Ramis made him oddly palatable through his hilariously dry delivery. His death would have naturally signaled the end of the old team. However, the spectral subject matter offered a convenient workaround.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife shifted the focus to Egon’s estranged daughter and grandchildren. Inheriting a rundown farm he spontaneously bought, they learned that everyone dismissed him as a loon. However, messages from beyond the grave revealed the depths of his determination. He was right about everything; buying the farm was his way of heading off the next ghostly invasion at its source. As they finish his work, both the old and new casts resolve their relationships with the late hero. Art imitated life in a satisfying sendoff.^[10]

Top 10 Best of Listverse

2025-02-18T23:36:14Z

[This list contains a competition – see the bonus entry for more details.] Today is Listverse’s birthday! Since the site was launched four years ago, we have had over 290 million page views. The site continues to grow every day – largely thanks to our contributors and readers. This list, in celebration of our special day, looks at the ten most popular lists based on the total number of views since the site began.

List: Top 10 Incredible Recordings
List By: Jamie Frater

I am very surprised by the fact that this list is still in the top 10 most popular lists. It was one of my first lists and was the one that drew in our first huge crowd because it hit the front page of Digg. If you haven’t seen the list you should check it out – it has some very eerie recordings that you will never forget. This remains one of my most favorite of all time.

List: 10 Strange Things About The Universe
List By: Jeff Johnson

While it looked initially like this list was a little beyond most non-scientists, it was surprisingly popular and drew in quite a large crowd. It even ended up with over 270 comments. Science lists are often very popular – especially with the outside audience, and this list was no exception.

List: Top 10 Careers Damaged by Photos
List By: Paul Holtum

Paul Holtum (blogball) has been a regular contributor to Listverse since the beginning, and his lists are always very popular. This list was one of the first of his series of lists relating to photographs. Due to the infamy of some of the photos on the list it was very popular – both on and off Listverse – garnering over 900 facebook likes.

List: 10 Biblical Facts Everyone Gets Wrong
List By: Jamie Frater

Religious lists are always controversial around here and this one was no exception. However, as this was more about factual errors people make, it was a little less controversial than many of our other lists. If you think you are a Biblical expert, check this list out – you may be surprised how many errors you hold about the big book.

List: 10 More Unsolved Mysteries of the World
List By: Rhyno and Jamie Frater

I don’t often collaborate with others on lists – in fact, I think I have only done so four or five times. This was one of those times. Mystery lists are always popular here, and with its 4,000 facebook likes, we can see that they are also extremely popular offsite. This list received 376 comments – many of which are extremely entertaining. If you love our mystery lists make sure you haven’t missed this one.

List: 9 Extraordinary Human Abilities
List By: Tempyra

This is another list that was immensely popular across both Facebook and Listverse. Perhaps because it describes many abilities that we would all love to have, and some that we all find difficult to believe possible. Tempyra contributed a number of lists and this is undoubtedly his best.

List: 10 More Mysteries of the Unexplained
List By: Jamie Frater

The inspiration for this list was item 9 – the Hopkinsville Goblins. I stumbled upon the story and was so fascinated that I knew it would have to spawn a whole list. If you want a scare before bed read the account – it is chilling. This remains one of my favorite mystery lists of all time.

List: 10 Events Surrounding September 11
List By: Bryan J

Bryan J is a recent contributor to listverse and his excellent writing skills have been appreciated by all. Given the conspiracies that surround the events of September 11 it is no surprise that this list ended up being so popular. When I published it last year I had no idea it would end up being so popular.

List: Top 10 Codes You Aren’t Meant to Know
List By: Jamie Frater

I don’t even remember what inspired this list, but of all the lists I have written this is probably the one I enjoyed most. It is a list of the various codes that surround us in life that we are either unaware of or not meant to know about. Check it out before your next trip to the mall – you may have a better understanding of some of the things you hear over the loudpseakers.

List: 10 More Terrifying and Mysterious Creatures
List By: Stephen King (not the author)

Many of the comments on this list were relating to the author – I didn’t make it clear that it wasn’t THE Stephen King. It is easy to understand why people would think it was the horror writer given the subject but while the author was not the master of horror – he did write a great list that has ended up knocking all other lists to the floor when it comes to popularity. If you haven’t read this list – do – but be warned, it may stop you sleeping!

Because this is our fourth birthday I am running a competition. Tomorrow, after the publication of the latest list, I will select at random four commenters to win a copy of our new book “I Call Bullshit” which is due out in November this year. The book is made up entirely of myth busting and misconception dispelling. It is a combination of misconception and fact lists from Listverse, as well as independent research. You can read more about the book here. Good luck! Oh – and if you are stuck for a comment why not tell us what your favorite list is and why.

Jamie Frater

Jamie is the founder of Listverse. When he’s not doing research for new lists or collecting historical oddities, he can be found in the comments or on Facebook where he approves all friends requests!

10 Uplifting Stories To Get You Through The Week (1/13/19)

2025-02-18T08:13:56Z

If the happenings of the past week have got you down, perhaps this list can cheer you up a bit. Here we only talk about stories that are positive, amusing, or inspirational. Meanwhile, you can also check the Saturday offbeat list for a glimpse at some of the most bizarre news items that made the headlines.

This week, we look at a few commendable stories regarding children who impressed with their skills or heroics. There are also a few touching reunions. A boy in the hospital is comforted by the arrival of his canine best friend, while a musician reunites with his long-lost guitar after almost 50 years apart.

10 Reunited And It Feels So Good

Canadian rocker Myles Goodwyn was reunited with his beloved Gibson Melody Maker guitar. He thought it had been destroyed 46 years ago.

Back in the early ’70s, Goodwyn was still an unknown musician trying to make it big. His career took a turn when he got his hands on a new Gibson guitar. He customized it and then used it to write and perform most of the songs for April Wine’s first two albums.

The Melody Maker was the only guitar Goodwyn used, but he thought it was lost forever in 1973. While touring in Montreal, the truck that carried all the gear crashed. The guitarist was not able to inspect the wreckage but was told that his beloved Melody Maker had suffered a broken neck.^[1]

Obviously, Goodwyn has played other guitars since then. But he still inquired online about the Gibson every once in a while, hoping that perhaps someone took it from the crash. His persistence paid off. Last year, on the day before Christmas, he received a message saying that the Melody Maker was at an address in Victoria, British Columbia.

After 46 years apart, Goodwyn was reunited with his cherished guitar. The artist is still piecing together the history of the instrument, but it has changed hands multiple times over the last five decades. Fortunately, most owners treated it as a collectible or a showpiece and never actually played it. Therefore, the Melody Maker sounds like it did the day Goodwyn lost it.

9 The World’s Youngest Go Pro

Nine-year-old Japanese girl Sumire Nakamura is set to become the world’s youngest professional Go player.

In recent times, Japan has instituted a program that encourages new generations to start playing Go to compete with Chinese and Korean challengers in international competitions. Sumire will become the youngest person to play Go professionally when she debuts in her first tournament on April 1.

The girl from Osaka started playing the ancient board game when she was three years old. She was inspired by her father, Shinya, who also plays Go professionally and won a national title in 1998. Japanese Go officials are hopeful that Sumire’s involvement will help boost the popularity of the strategic game, mirroring how the success of Sota Fujii brought renewed interest to the game of shogi, popularly known as Japanese chess.^[2]

8 How Friendly Are Canadians?

As far as national stereotypes go, Canadians have it pretty good. They are known for being exceedingly friendly and apologetic. One person from Saskatchewan decided to put this to the test and spent most of 2018 walking from one corner of Canada to the other.

Zayell Johnston is a 27-year-old man from Yorkton, Saskatchewan. For years, he fantasized about trekking through the great outdoors. He wanted to see for himself if Canada was truly “the best country in the world with the friendliest people.”

In February 2018, Zayell set off on his gargantuan quest. He started in Victoria, British Columbia, where he splashed his face with water from the Pacific Ocean. Nine months later, Johnston ended his journey by splashing ocean water from the Atlantic. During that time, he walked 9,000 kilometers (5,590 mi) or, according to his Fitbit, 11.8 million steps.

The people he met along the way did not disappoint. Zayell set out with only $7,000 for food, equipment, and other necessities. And yet he hardly ever found himself in need of a place to sleep or extra supplies.

An elderly couple in Calgary was the first to offer him a place to stay. As Zayell documented his entire journey on social media, more and more people came forward wanting to help. He found it strange that everybody in Newfoundland offered him coffee.^[3]

Weather was Johnston’s biggest foe as several blizzards forced him to hunker down and wait for them to pass. He was stuck for a whole month near the Coquihalla Highway, but a stranger helped him get a job at a ski resort.

7 Netflix And Heat

A young boy from Delaware saved his mom from a fire after staying up late to watch Netflix against her orders.

Thirteen-year-old Damir Border did what all of us did at one point or another during our childhoods. He stayed up past his bedtime. In Damir’s case, it was to watch The Flash on Netflix. At around 1:00 AM, a faulty breaker box outside the Border mobile home caused a spark in an outlet which soon caught fire.

The boy’s mother, Angela, was sleeping while his father, Rich, was at work. If Damir hadn’t still been awake, the home and everybody in it would have gone up in flames. As it happened, Damir spotted the fire, was able to wake up his mom, and then called 911.

The two escaped the inferno in time, and people in the community are already collecting donations to help them replace necessary items lost in the blaze.^[4]

6 Iguanas In The Galapagos Again

For the first time since Charles Darwin visited in 1835, Santiago Island in the Galapagos has iguanas on it again following a mass reintroduction.

Over 1,400 Galapagos land iguanas have been released on the island after being wiped out almost 200 years ago. Once an important member of the island’s ecosystem, the reptile was killed off by predators introduced by humans, particularly the feral pig. The last recorded mention of the iguana was made by Charles Darwin during the iconic voyage of the HMS Beagle.

Since then, those unnatural predators have been eradicated. So the iguana should be able to thrive again and help the environment by dispersing seeds and clearing open spaces of vegetation.^[5]

Furthermore, the initiative should also protect the iguana population on nearby North Seymour Island where the reptiles came from. That island has the opposite problem: There are too many iguanas and not enough food to feed them all.

5 A Boy And His Dog

A man drove 3,700 kilometers (2,300 mi) to reunite a sickly boy he’d never met with the child’s beloved puppy.

The holidays have not been particularly joyous for eight-year-old Perryn Miller or his family. While visiting relatives in Utah, he started suffering from painful headaches. During a visit to the hospital, doctors found that Perryn had a brain tumor and required emergency surgery.^[6]

The operation went well, and various people have tried cheering up the boy during his convalescence. His favorite soccer player, Justen Glad, paid him a visit, and the West Valley Police Department named Perryn an officer for the day. But what the kid really wanted was to play with his best friend, an eight-month-old German shepherd named Frank.

There was just one problem. Frank was at the Miller home, 3,700 kilometers (2,300 mi) away in Wilmington, North Carolina. Fortunately, former trucker Bob Reynolds heard about Perryn’s story and drove 52 hours to bring Frank to him. Reynolds had never met the Millers but decided that this was something that he could and wanted to do. Reynolds has already volunteered to make the trip again to bring the dog back home.

4 The Truth About Female Scribes

The discovery of a rare pigment on a medieval set of female teeth provides evidence that nuns and other women monastics of that time were not only literate but also responsible for writing and illustrating manuscripts.

Monks from a thousand years ago get a lot of credit for writing many texts of that era and also providing masterful illustrations. However, most of them didn’t sign their work so we do not really know who did what.

In recent times, new research has suggested that nuns and other female scribes were also actively involved in book production. Tiny flecks of a blue pigment found on 1,000-year-old dental tartar indicate that we know of at least one woman who worked on medieval manuscripts.

The teeth belonged to a woman who lived in Germany between the 10th and 12th centuries and was buried in an all-female monastery. Monica Tromp, one of the paper’s authors, speculates that the staining happened when the woman licked the end of her brush while painting. Alternatively, she could have inhaled powder while preparing the pigment.^[7]

Also notable is the type of pigment found. The blue ink was called ultramarine. It was made from lapis lazuli found in a single region in Afghanistan. It was a luxury good worth its weight in gold. Only the most talented and prized illustrators would have been allowed to work with it.

3 A Doodle Earns A College Scholarship

A second grader won the 10th annual Doodle 4 Google contest with a drawing of dinosaurs shaped to resemble the company’s logo.

Google is known to create special versions of their logo which are displayed on their home page to commemorate holidays, unique events, and people. Once a year, the organization also hosts a competition open to students from kindergarten to the 12th grade to design one of their unique doodles. The winner is decided by a panel of judges. This year, it included guests such as Jimmy Fallon and Kermit the Frog.

Sarah Gomez-Lane from Falls Church, Virginia, came in first place with her dino doodle. The theme for the competition was “What Inspires Me.” Sarah’s drawing reflected her ambitions of becoming a paleontologist.

Fortunately for her, the prize for the contest is a $30,000 college scholarship. In addition, Sarah spent the day with Google’s Doodle Team to transform her drawing into an animated doodle which was featured on the search engine’s home page.^[8]

2 The Happiest Bus Driver In The World

In just 18 months, Patrick Lawson went from being a homeless drug addict with a criminal record to winning an award for being the happiest bus driver in London.

The beginning of Pat’s story is familiar—childhood abuse led to problems with drugs and violence. These led to jail time and homelessness. He lived like this for almost 50 years before hitting rock bottom and deciding that it was time to make a change.

The important part is that Pat actually followed through on his decision. First, he went to the hospital and got treated for his drug addiction. Then he received job training using London’s Single Homeless Project program.

On Pat’s first day as a bus driver, he greeted every passenger. His instructor didn’t think it was going to last. But here we are 18 months later and Pat is still doing it. He loves interacting with his passengers. He particularly enjoys when he has a reason to use the PA system and talk to the entire bus.

As it turns out, Lawson’s passengers appreciate that their driver goes the extra mile. In his first year on the job, 45 people called up the bus company to compliment Pat. This earned him a spot as a finalist for the Top London Bus Driver prize at the UK Bus Awards last year. More time has passed, more people have called up, and now Lawson has won the Hello London Award for Outstanding Customer Service at Transport.^[9]

1 Congratulations! It’s A Baby Black Hole

Scientists exploring the night sky might have serendipitously detected for the first time ever a black hole or a neutron star being born.

Back in June 2018, astronomers saw a bright glow in the sky. They called the unidentified object AT2018cow, better known simply as “The Cow.” They thought it was a nearby event of medium intensity, most likely a white dwarf. However, analyzing its light spectrum revealed that The Cow was much farther away in a galaxy about 200 million light-years away from us. It was certainly not a white dwarf.

The next sensible idea indicated a supernova, but The Cow kept doing “super weird” things that supernovae just don’t do. It was also 10–100 times brighter than your typical supernova and surprisingly brief.

Study lead author Raffaella Margutti, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University in Illinois, believes their observations indicate that The Cow represents the accretion stage of a black hole or a neutron star. This would be the first time that humans have observed this phase as we typically see these cosmic behemoths millions or even billions of years after they are formed.^[10]

The results were published in The Astrophysical Journal and presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week. Others have shared their own findings relating to The Cow, and not all of them are in agreement. It remains to be seen in the weeks and months to come if we can conclusively find out the identity of The Cow.

10 Greatest Ancient Athletes – Listverse

2025-02-18T08:10:05Z

Like their modern-day counterparts, ancient athletes had a way of capturing the public’s imagination. Through ancient authors such as Pindar, Pausanias and Dio Chrysostom, we can still learn today about the incredible achievements of some of the best-known Olympic victors of ancient times. Although the modern sporting legends of today have no reason to be jealous of the ancient champions, the truth is that there are certain victories and records from the past that would make even the most decorated Olympians of the modern Olympics blush.

Despite the fact that the ancient sports and competitions were quite different from our modern professional sports, the ancient champions—just like those of today—were heroes among their people. Perhaps their greatest accomplishment of all is the fact that what they achieved is still remembered today; their names are still prominent in athletics, even two or three thousand years after their deaths.

Orsippus of Megara was an ancient Greek athlete who won the stadion race of the fifteenth Ancient Olympic Games in 720 B.C. He became the crowd’s favorite, and he was thought to be a great pioneer for being most likely the first ever athlete to run naked. Pausanias, who very often reported on the ancient Olympics like a modern-day sports journalist, states: “My own opinion is that at Olympia he [Orsippus] intentionally let the girdle slip off him, realizing that a naked man can run more easily than one girt.”

Varazdat was an athlete from Armenia who won the Olympic boxing tournament during the 291st Olympic Games. We are aware of Varazdat’s victory from a memorandum kept in the Olympic museum in Olympia. The first historiography about Varazdat was written by Movses Chorenatsy in his Armenian History.

In ancient Armenian royal and aristocratic families, the physical education of youngsters had a disciplined and orderly character. They were taught swimming, boxing, wrestling, weightlifting, and military exercises. Varazdat, with the benefit of this rigorous training, went on to be the winner of various boxing competitions held in Greece. He later achieved his greatest triumph, when he became the Olympic champion at the Olympics of 385.

Although men were originally the only ones allowed to compete in the Olympic Games, this soon changed. Several women took part in the ancient Games, and even won competitions. The most famous of these was Cynisca of Sparta, the first woman to win at the Games. By her success, she paved the way for many other women, and helped usher in a new era in the ancient sporting world.

Cynisca’s and her male team were successful in the four-horse chariot racing, winning in 396 B.C. and again in 392 B.C. Cynisca was the most distinguished female athlete of the ancient world, and many historians use her as a symbol of the social rise of women, and the beginning of the movement to give them equal rights and opportunities.

We don’t know much about the Olympic victor Polydamas of Skotoussa. His background, family life, and even the details of his Olympic triumph remain shrouded in mystery. Aside from the fact that Polydamas’ statue was remarkably tall and strong, we have no other information on his appearance.

Like many athletes of his time, Polydamas was just as well-known for his non-athletic exploits as he was for his prowess in the Olympic games. Ancient authors tend to compare his feats to those of the legendary Greek hero Herakles. Polydamas once killed a lion with his bare hands on Mount Olympus, in a quest to imitate the labors of Herakles, who famously slew the Nemean lion. For similar reasons, Polydamas once managed to single-handedly bring a fast-moving chariot to a halt.

These exploits soon reached the ears of the Persians. Their king, Darius, sent for Polydamas. After he was received by the Persian king, the athlete challenged three Persian “Immortals” to fight him, and managed to defeat them all in a single fight.

In the end, however, Polydamas’ strength could not prevent his demise. One summer, Polydamas and his friends were resting in a cave when the roof began to crumble down upon them. Believing that his immense strength could prevent the cave-in, Polydamas held his hands up to the roof, trying to support it as the rocks crashed down around him. His friends fled the cave and reached safety, but the great wrestler was killed.

Onomastos of Smyrna was the first ever Olympic victor in boxing, at the twenty-third Olympiad in 688 B.C., when this sport was added. According to ancient historians, Onomastos was not only the first Olympic boxing champion, but wrote the rules of Ancient Greek boxing as well.

Onomastos also holds a record which remains remarkable even today. After hundreds of ancient and modern Olympiads, he’s still the boxer with the most Olympic boxing titles, with four victories to his name. Laslzo Papp, the world’s greatest amateur boxer of the twentieth century, came close to Onomastos’ record—but he stopped at three Olympic victories before becoming a professional boxer.

The famously handsome boxer Melankomas was from Caria, a region in modern-day Turkey. In an effort to prove his courage, Melankomas chose to compete in athletics, since this was the most honorable and most strenuous path open to him. Amazingly enough, Melankomas was undefeated throughout his career—yet he never once hit, or was hit by, an opponent.

His boxing style involved defending himself from the blows of the other boxer, and never attempting to strike the other man. Invariably, the opponent would grow frustrated and lose his composure. This unique style won Melankomas much admiration for his strength and endurance. He could apparently last through the whole day—even at the height of summer—and he would refuse to strike his opponents, even though he knew that by doing so he would quickly end the match and secure an easy victory for himself. In this manner he won the Olympic boxing tournament at the 207th Olympic games.

Chionis of Sparta was an athlete who caused much debate regarding his athletic achievements, with the most notable of these being his long-jumping records. Records suggest that in the Olympics of 656 B.C., Chionis jumped a record of seven meters and five centimeters. This feat would have won him the long jump title at the 1896 Olympic Games, and would have placed him among the top eight at a further ten modern Olympics, up to and including the 1952 Games of Helsinki. As well as his amazing achievements in long jump, Chionis was also renowned as a triple jumper—capable of reaching up to 15.85 meters.

But the most remarkable fact about this man is that none of his jumps were enhanced by modern-day drugs or training equipment; his records were truly honest and honorable.

Diagoras of Rhodes might not be the greatest of ancient athletes, but his family is without doubt the greatest sporting family of the Ancient world. Diagoras won the boxing event in the Games of 464 B.C. He was also a four-time winner in the Isthmian Games, and a two-time winner in the games at Nemea.

His sons and grandsons also became boxing and pankration champions. During the eighty-third Olympiad, his sons Damagetos and Akousilaos, after they became champions, lifted their father Diagoras on their shoulders to share their victory with him. Legend says that during Diagoras’ triumphant ovation on the shoulders of his sons, a spectator shouted: “Die, Diagoras, for Olympus you will not ascend”—the meaning being that he had reached the highest honor possible for a man and athlete.

Theagenes was one of the first celebrities of the ancient sporting world. He became famous throughout the world at the tender age of nine.

It seems that the boy was walking home from school one day when he noticed a bronze statue of a god in the marketplace of Thasos, Greece. For some reason, Theagenes tore the statue from its base and took it home. This act outraged the citizens, who perceived it as blasphemy against the gods, and they debated whether or not they should execute the child for his deed. One elder, however, wisely suggested that they should have the boy return the statue to its proper place. Theagenes did this—and his life would never be the same again.

He went on to become one of the greatest athletes of all time. He was a successful boxer, pankratiast, and runner. He won the Olympic boxing tournament in the seventy-fifth Olympiad of 480 B.C., and in the next Olympics he won the title in the Pankration. In addition to his two Olympic victories, Theagenes won numerous honors in other sports and other games. Altogether he was said to have won over 1,400 contests in many different kinds of sport. His incredible achievements made him a living myth—to the extent that many people even believed that Heracles was his father.

If we were to compare Theagenes with a modern boxing hero, such as Harry Greb (the boxer with most official victories (261) in professional boxing’s history) it would seem that Theagenes outnumbers him by nearly 1,250 victories.

Most historians agree that Milo remains to this day the greatest wrestler and fighter (from any combat sport) the world has ever known. Milo of Croton became an Olympic champion several times during his nearly thirty-year career. His size and physique were intimidating, and his strength and technique perfect—and many people accordingly believed that he was the son of Zeus.

He was said to eat more than eight kilograms of meat every day. Some say that he even once carried an adult bull on his shoulders, all the way to the Olympic stadium, where he slaughtered and devoured it. Yet Milo was not merely a hulking wrestler; he was also a musician and a poet, as well as a student of the mathematician and philosopher Pythagoras.

The greatest wrestler of the twentieth century, Alexander Karelin, was often called the modern-day Milo of Croton—but he himself acknowledged that he would not stand a good chance against the real Milo.

Theodoros II is a budding author and a law graduate. He loves History, Sci-Fi culture, European politics, and exploring the worlds of hidden knowledge. His ideal trip in an ideal world would be to the lost city of Atlantis.

Theodoros II

Theodoros II is a bright but extremely unsuccessful lawyer who is willing to write for food and the occasional luxury. He’s a veteran and world record holder for most banned accounts on Yahoo Answers and a keen photographer.