Everyone loves movies, but many of the movies they love have flaws they either put up with, or often just didn’t even realize that they have. Many classic movies have managed to pull the wool over our eyes, by giving us extremely entertaining side plots or other larger plot-lines, that really don’t make much sense when you hold them up to proper examination. If a director or writer knows how to keep their audience distracted by the right things, they can keep them from noticing, but many of these plots made no sense at all, and some were entirely unnecessary.

See Also: 10 Things You Never Knew About Famous Movie Plot Twists

10 The Entire Subplot In The Last Jedi With Rose And Finn Did More Harm Than Good

In The Last Jedi, the main plot-line was that the heroes were being tracked through hyperspace with some new technology so they could not escape at all. Two main characters, Rose and Fin, forge a plan to sneak aboard the enemy ship, and use the help of a skilled codebreaker to reroute the enemy tracking technology and confuse it long enough for them to escape.

They spent a huge portion of the movie on this, and in the end were betrayed by the codebreaker they ended up hiring. He betrayed them so much, that the enemy was able to find ships the rebels had been hiding, and kill countless more rebels than if Finn and Rose had simply done nothing at all and stayed on the ship. Their entire adventure not only didn’t save anyone, it actually cost lives, and they did it without consulting leadership, right after Rose made a big deal about how everyone needed to be a good soldier and follow rules.

9 Captain America: Civil War Makes Tony Stark Look Small, Petty, Mean And Stupid

In Captain America Civil War, we have a contrived plot where some heroes agree to stop using their powers without proper world permission, and some refuse. The plot goes further south when Bucky, Caps longtime friend is suspected of killing Tony Stark’s parents and Black Panthers father as well. They want to immediately punish him, but Bucky maintains his innocence and runs away with the help of Captain America in the hopes of proving his innocence. Despite supposedly not being supposed to use superpowers anymore, Tony Stark and several others suit up for a very anticlimactic duel between two sides of superheros at an airport, in what is a very weak battle after all the buildup, and all the sacrifices they made when it came to a decent plot.

After the fight, Captain America does manage to prove that Bucky was truly hypnotized beyond his will when he killed Stark’s parents, but this does not sate Tony’s anger at all. Instead, he turns into a crazy rage monster, and tries to straight up murder both Bucky and Captain America, and continues being a complete jerk even after he is defeated utterly, showing he still hasn’t learned anything at all. After several movies building up his character, it is disappointing to see a plot that is so interested in making a fight between superheroes, that is is willing to throw all of his development away.

8The Rage Zombies In The 28 Franchise Make Even Less Sense Than Regular Zombies

28 Days is a well known zombie franchise, and was quite popular during the height of the zombie craze, but by trying to be too realistic it sometimes backed itself into a corner leaving you with questions, where most zombie movies don’t bother so hard with a “logical” explanation. Trying to get more scientific, they say their zombies are infected by the “rage” virus, which just makes people super angry and they attack, bite up and infect others. Eventually, these zombies start to starve to death. Despite being incredibly fast zombies with a lot of energy, they cannot seem to hunt down animals, and when they find other humans, they turn them instead of eating them, despite starving and being filled with rage. Their behavior is supposed to be berserk, but they are almost too logical — working perfectly within the plot to create more and more, while still leaving a way for heroes to beat them.

Now, the fact they don’t eat each other could make sense, as they perhaps smell some sort of disease on those with the rage virus that turns them off. However, it beggars belief that what is basically a berserk animal, would only carefully bite up, and not eat or mutilate a fresh human, when they are half mad and starving to death with hunger.

7The Movie Signs Is Blisteringly Idiotic And Horribly Explained When You Examine It

The movie Signs starts out with some children finding crop circles and acting weird, then they hear noises, and see strange intruders. Before long, the crop circles are popping up all over the world, and people are sure they are seeing strange beings everywhere — many people start preparing for an alien invasion. And, sure enough, at the climax of the movie, the aliens come and attack the family and almost kill one of the children. However, it turns out the reason we were able to beat them, was because they were weak to water and baseball bats. The aliens brings no weapons, no armor or advanced technology despite being able to cross interstellar distances, and gets taken out by a baseball bat.

Worse yet, the water weakness just makes no sense at all. The movie has a character say that “they came for us, to harvest us”, but they never explain for what reason. The most abundant thing in humans you could harvest from us is water, but certainly they aren’t interested in what to them is literally poison. And of all the planets they could have chosen, they chose one that is mostly toxic to them, and don’t bring any protection from the elements at all. The only thing that really makes sense is if no aliens actually invaded and the entire thing was just global mass hysteria.

6The Plot Of Sixth Sense Only Works If All Authority Figures Are Incredibly Stupid

The movie Sixth Sense was almost an instant classic, and people will never forget the haunting line “I see dead people”, however, the movie really didn’t age as well as it could have, and when you hold it up to scrutiny, the whole movie falls apart. The movie follows a psychologist named Bruce Willis, who rarely talks to his wife anymore, is troubled about failing an old patient, and soon ends up working as a therapist for a kid played by Haley Joel Osment. He talks to the kid a lot, spends time in the family’s house, and even sits across from the kids mother at length for different times and never says anything to her.

As the movie progresses, the kid reveals that he can see dead people and talk to them, and the psychologist, while skeptical at first, starts to believe there could actually be something going on. At the end of the movie, we discover that not only can the kid talk to ghosts, but that Bruce Willis was a ghost the entire time and didn’t realize it. Now, the part where all this breaks down is the idea that Bruce Willis could have simply not realized he was dead without an incredible amount of delusion.

He has somehow never had a conversation with the mom of the child he is giving therapy too, does this not strike him as odd? He never interacts with anyone, he couldn’t possibly need to go to the bathroom, and trying to eat would just send it right through him — does he think he has a weird disease where he somehow doesn’t need to eat anymore? It seems Bruce Willis should have very obviously realized what was going on early in the movie, but then it would have been over very quickly and there wouldn’t have been much of a story to tell.

5 Killmonger’s Amazing Plan In Black Panther Is Not So Amazing At All

In the hit movie Black Panther, Eric Killmonger is an African American, originally from the secret country of Wakanda, who returns to challenge the current king for the throne. He has fought since a young age to create a new world where black people will not be oppressed, and has setup revolutionaries around the globe. His goal is to get Wakandan technology in their hands, and then they will lead a violent revolution that will takeover the whole world — he will then rule the world from Wakanda as king, and make sure black people are properly respected.

However, there are two major problems with this: For one, his enemies are living in a world with the Avengers, so they are used to dealing with all sorts of crazy tech and powers already — the moment they captured anyone, they would take the Wakandan technology, reverse engineer it against them, and use their own vibranium against them. And you are still talking about trying to take over the entire world. Which leads us to the second and bigger problem: This is the same world with the avengers and all of the X-Men, does he expect them to simply allow the world order to change to the point of one dictator bent on taking over with violence? Plus there were like a handful of ships leaving Wakanda with equipment, so this was hardly a world ending amount of weaponry.

4 Peter Quill’s Father Could Have Had All He Wanted, And He Completely Blew It

Peter Quill AKA Star Lord is a main character of the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise, and has been ably played by Chris Pratt, who helped uplift the Guardians franchise into something that would be taken as seriously as the rest of the Marvel universe. For those not entirely familiar with the plot, Peter Quill loses his mother at a young age and ends up going on space adventures with an alien named Yondu, who takes on the role of father figure.

However, his real father was a being in the Marvel Universe known as a celestial, who had incredible powers, and wanted someone else to share his powers with so they could basically seed himself all over and make the universe all extensions of him. He could not do this alone, so he went to many planets impregnating women and trying to find an heir who could contain his powers, and killing any mothers or children who did not live up to what he wanted. Peter Quill, despite having his mother killed, did not know understand that his father had killed her, and had borderline escaped his father’s purge.

When they meet at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2., Ego, Peter Quill’s father (who also happens to be a planet), could have had a chance at getting Star Lord to join him while he had him under hypnosis, and have everything he ever wanted. However, while explaining his crazy plan, he happened to casually admit to Star Lord that he had killed his mother and so many other countless mothers and children around the universe. This infuriated Peter, who decided he would not stand for his father or anything he stood for. All he had to do was not reveal such details, knowing they likely would upset a human being, but he chose to share them anyway and lost everything.

3 The Heroes In Super 8 May End Up In Prison For A Very Long Time

Super 8 was a really popular movie the summer it came out, and really hit a sweet spot in the nostalgia for many people. It was reminiscent of movies like ET, or the Goonies, and starred a group of kids living in the 70s who made super 8 films and had a very strange alien event happen in their town. They were filming by a train station, and ended up barely escaping a huge train wreck. Before long, strange things started happening in their town, and it turned out that the huge train was transporting something that belonged to an alien being.

Eventually the town is evacuated as things get crazier. In the meantime, the main characters father, the town sheriff, decides that he has had enough of not getting answers of what is going on in his town, and takes matters into his own hands. He marches up to the officer in charge of the makeshift military base/Evacuation Shelter and demands answers, only to be put in a holding cell. Instead of taking matters like a man of the law normally would, he decides to force an escape by tricking and beating up a guard, and even leaving with his uniform, and later impersonating an officer to others on duty. In the end he is seen happily hugging his son, but once the military found out what he did, he would probably have a lot of answering to do and may spend many, many years in prison.

2The Timeline In Empire Strikes Back Is A Gigantic Mess If You Stop To Think About It

In Empire Strikes Back, right after the escape from Hoth, Luke Skywalker heads to Dagobah, a supposedly distant planet, and Han Solo and the others try to run away in the Falcon, the hyperdrive fails, and they end up flying through an asteroid field to escape Darth Vader. They eventually make it to Cloud City on the nearby planet of Bespin, where Han’s old friend Lando betrays him, they get captured by Vader, and Luke gets a vision of their plight and cuts short his training to come rescue them.

Now, here is where the timeline starts to get confusing. We are given the impression that Luke Skywalker spent a significant amount of time on Dagobah, but Han and Leia seem to spend very little time in the asteroid field before making it to the next planet — Bespin is supposed to be really close, and with the hyperdrive out is was unlikely they had a lot of fuel to go far. So somehow Luke manages to pack in an incredible amount of jedi training in just a couple days, and still make it halfway across the galaxy to Bespin before lunch.

The only way this really works is if hyperspace travel is nearly instantaneous even when it comes to insanely long reaches of space, which we are usually led to believe is not the case, or something doesn’t make much sense. There is also the unanswered question of how Luke could expect to have gotten any kind of jedi training in such a short amount of time. Either Han and Leia spent way longer in that asteroid field than we realize, or Luke did the most efficient training montage in the history of movies.

1 The Dinosaur Military Subplot In Jurassic World Is Stomped On By Its Own Scenes

Jurassic World was a hugely successful movie that saw quite a successful sequel, despite so many people complaining about it.. People simply love dinosaur movies, and seeing the dino’s duking it out on the big screen will always hold a certain charm with the population. However, if you ask those who did complain, some will admit that overall it fit the same general plotline of most successful Jurassic movies, but it had a subplot that really didn’t work out too well and that was the main source of their ire.

In the movie, the company InGen, which had their hands in making dinosaurs back in the earlier movies, is heavily involved in investments for this new dino theme park. Their man at the park, a guy called Hoskins who is in charge of security for some reason, thinks that the key to huge money payouts and overall military domination are using trained dinosaurs they way we now use drones. The whole thing is invalidated by its own setup, as right before Hoskins gives his dino military pitch to Chris Pratt’s character, Chris Pratt is almost eaten alive by his own trained from birth dinosaurs and barely gets out with his life. It already should have been painfully obvious at that point that the whole thing was not going anywhere.

Weaponry has been with mankind ever since the first human ancestor picked up a rock. Throughout history, it remained one of the most actively developed technologies, flavored by different cultures and times. The study of devices, injuries, and battlefields regularly return missing or unknown pieces to the human story that is archaeology. Ancient weapons can show how people adapted, correct misconceptions, and explain long-standing mysteries.

10The Glass Spearhead

Over a century ago, male Aboriginal prisoners were sent to Australia‘s Rottnest Island.^[1] Recently, the island was visited by University staff and students from Western Australia’s School of Indigenous Studies. While learning about the area’s history, one student found a beautiful artifact—a spearhead knapped from green glass. The rare point was about 100 years old and joined previous finds of other glass and ceramic spearheads. What makes this one unique is the deep, sparkling emerald shade. Every other glass point collected over the years was of the usual clear kind.

The weapons are believed to have been used by the Aboriginal inmates to forge bonds, a form of currency during the trading of goods, and to hunt quokkas. It appears the men chose a hilltop overlooking the mainland and went there to craft the spears from any glass they could salvage. The discovery shows the remarkable adaptability of the prisoners despite being incarcerated.

9Tooth Tools

The Gilbert Islanders from the Pacific Ocean once made weapons from two vanished species.^[2] The habit of using shark teeth to create vicious and inventive fighting tools was first noted by European arrivals in the 1700s. The Islanders drilled holes into each serrated snapper and tied them into position with human hair and coconut fibers. Researchers studied a scary collection at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, to see which sharks were hunted for this art form that stopped 130 years ago. The idea was to see if any unknown species roamed the reefs before the age of census taking.

Thanks to the preserved weapons, they identified the silky shark, tiger, hammerhead, oceanic whitetip, and blue shark. The most heavily used was the silvertip shark. However, the true damage of over-fishing came to light when the team found the teeth of spotfin and dusky sharks. While they still exist elsewhere, neither have ever been recorded near the Gilbert Islands. What sealed their fate in this region was likely the shark-finning business that decimated populations for decades since 1900.

8Ancient .44 Magnum

At its peak, Rome walked over several countries, but Scotland was not one of them.^[3] Described as “Rome’s Afghanistan,” the locals’ geographical knowledge proved to be a formidable advantage against the invaders. Evidence of how Roman soldiers went all out to subdue one group of Scots came to light at a 1,900-year-old fortified hill called Burnswark.

Using metal detectors, researchers found over 400 lead balls fired by slingshots. Experiments in Germany proved that a trained Roman slinger could have released the 50-gram bullets at a speed similar to a .44 magnum cartridge. Targets within 130 yards and some lengths beyond were not safe from expert throwers.

When archaeologists looked at the original positions of the bullets, two locations held them in abundance. The whole 500-yard-long rampart of the fort was peppered with the balls, fitting with the pattern of a long siege. A smaller concentration to the north could be where the Scots tried, but failed, to escape, since researchers believe there were no survivors and that many were felled by Roman slingshots.

7Kaakutja’s Wounds

Kaakutja is a skeleton allowing an extremely rare look at Aboriginal conflict before the arrival of the Europeans.^[4] The 800-year-old man was found a few years ago in Toorale National Park, buried in the fetal position. Kaakutja’s life was short and violent. When he died, he was 25-35 years old and had already survived two head injuries. Another wound, this time unhealed, revealed a rarely seen demise—death by boomerang attack.

A six inch (15cm) long slice marred the right side of his face. The cut matched a metal blade’s damage, but this was six centuries before Europeans introduced metal weapons to Australia. Researchers concluded that Kaakutja succumbed in an attack where a less familiar kind of boomerang was used. Not the sort that returns to the thrower, it was larger and sabre-like with a deadly inner edge. This hand-held boomerang could cause the same serious damage as a sword, and in Kaakutja’s case, it happened so fast he could not defend himself, as no defensive injuries were found on the skeleton.

6Fighter Pharaohs

All records concerning weapons carried by Pharaohs state they were purely ritualistic.^[5] However, new studies have found that not every item was just for show. Some of the ornate swords and axes might have been wielded by the Pharaohs and other elite Egyptians in battle.

Scientists chose 125 artifacts from Egypt’s Bronze Age, 5,000-3,000 years ago. Despite being called ritualistic, nearly all the weapons were forged as the real deal and very capable of fighting. Around half showed signs of active duty, although it is hard to say what they were used for. Apart from the battlefield, experts suspect some were used by the elite to execute prisoners or perform animal sacrifices.

One dagger that was definitely not a prop is thought to have belonged to Kamose, son of the murdered Pharaoh Seqenenre Tao II. It is unknown whether the vicious ax blows that felled the king happened on the battlefield or elsewhere during an assassination. Afterward, Kamose continued to fight the Hyksos, his father’s enemy and killers. The dagger’s blade bore traces of extensive use. Given the violent times and what happened to his father, researchers speculate it could have been used in combat.

5Easter Island’s Mata’a

A curious weapon hails from Easter Island, which is famous for its moai statues.^[6] Called mata’a, it is a three-sided stabbing tool made from obsidian.

Just over 100 Rapanui natives remained by 1877 when they started sharing their past with Europeans. The tale told is of a devastated environment, scarce resources, and continuous fighting that destroyed their society. The story became fact, including that the mata’a was the weapon that brought bloodshed to the isolated population.

However, recent skeletal studies proved that scarcely any deaths resulted from mata’a assaults. More died after being pummeled with rocks. There is no evidence to support the stories of massacres either. There is a chance they never occurred, and that the mata’a was deliberately designed not to be too dangerous. For people who engineered the moai, the Islanders were capable of inventing worse weapons if they truly wanted war. This new look at the obsidian tools could reveal the true story of how the Rapanui instead decided to curb their volatile relationships before it killed everyone on the tiny island.

4Genghis Khan’s Secret Weapon

Eight centuries ago, an obscure tribe rose to conquer an unprecedented amount of territory.^[7] How the Mongol hordes, a squabbling and divided people, came together to defeat most of Asia is a mystery. Tree-ring scientists are now suggesting that their secret weapon was as simple as unusual weather. After studying Siberian pines in central Mongolia, the trees showed something contrary to the traditional view that the Mongols spread because they wanted to escape their arid homeland.

Growth rings from 1211-1225, when Genghis Khan rose, showed that for 15 straight years, rains came to the usually frigid and dry steppes. The resulting lush fields increased the Mongols’ herds. The boom in livestock helped lessen internal conflict over resources, and the charismatic Khan grabbed the opportunity to unite the tribes into one power focused on conquest. Their war horses also increased, which was the driving force behind their strong armies. The change in climate strongly suggests that history could have been very different if the 15-year rain spell never occurred.

3The Iraqi Neanderthal

Iraq’s Zagros Mountains delivered the remains of nine Neanderthals between 1953-1960.^[8] One middle-aged man’s remains bore a serious injury, rare evidence of inter-species aggression. Weeks before his death, he suffered a stabbing event that deeply cleft his left ninth rib. Theories included a fall, hunting accident, even a brawl with a fellow Neanderthal. However, weapon studies and experiments suggested that it was not another of his kind that took issue with him, but a human.

The age of Shanidar 3, as the victim was named, roughly matched with when modern humans returned to the area, around 50,000 years ago. By then, humans possessed throwing spears while Neanderthals had jabbing sticks. Both groups also owned stone knives. Neanderthals were eliminated as suspects when it was discovered that their thrusting spears would have caused more damage, and that a downward stab with a knife held the right trajectory but not the right speed to match the rib scar. The closest match was a thrown spear, traveling at a low momentum and hitting the standing Shanidar 3 at a 45 degrees downward angle.

2Trigger Factory

In the 1970s, the tomb of Emperor Qin Shi Huang was opened.^[9] Best known for its terra-cotta army of life-size human figures, researchers puzzled over the statues’ weapons. Apart from stone armor, the soldiers also had swords, lances, and crossbows. Their construction remained a riddle, especially the crossbows. Their frames of wood and bamboo already decomposed, leaving behind metal parts such as tips and triggers. Each trigger had five interlocking pieces, and many experts felt an assembly line process was involved, but scrutiny dismissed this. The parts were near identical, meaning molds were used.

The structure of the workforce probably mirrored the way the Emperor reformed ancient China’s entire society. The population was broken into small groups collectively responsible for the obedience and productivity of its members. Similarly, the triggers were produced by groups of craftsmen assigned a particular task such as smelting or assembling. Since this was probably how weaponry destined for real conflict was also produced, such worker cells could have moved with armies to keep the soldiers’ weapons in working shape.

1Fake Viking Swords

Back in the day, every self-respecting Viking fought with a designer sword.^[10] The most sought-after were forged by Ulfberht, whose name was embossed near the hilt. Vikings produced superb swords but, much like today, inferior products fooled many buyers.

Experts never knew about this interesting piece of Viking history until a private collector brought an Ulfberht to the Wallace Collection, a museum in London. Comparing it to Ulfberht’s from its own and other collections, tests quickly exposed the difference. While both groups carried the famous name, were razor sharp, and appeared identical, the weaker fakes showed their nature at the worst moment. They broke easily, and several were found shattered on battlefields. Their iron came from northern Europe unlike the genuine swords, made of crucible steel from the Middle East with a carbon content three times higher. The fakes probably escaped detection because they were manufactured with expertise, but hardening the hot, inferior iron by plunging it into water made the blade brittle. Many well-known Ulfberhts in modern collections have now been revealed to be ancient impostors.

On Christmas Eve, 1945, a fire ripped through the Sodder family home in the middle of the night. The house was completely destroyed and only four of the nine Sodder children managed to escape—Maurice, 14; Martha, 12; Louis, 9; Jennie, 8; and Betty, 5—were never seen again.

Their parents George and Jennie, alongside their surviving siblings—John, 23; Joe (who was away with the U.S military), 21; Marion, 17; George Jr., 16; and Sylvia, 2—were plagued for the rest of their lives with the mystery of what really happened that night. Did the children die in the fire? Were they murdered or kidnapped?

More than 75 years later, there are still many facts about the disappearance that don’t add up.

10 Mysterious Disappearances of Multiple People

10 Strange Occurrences In The Night

 

The Sodder family home is located in a small Appalachian town, two miles north of Fayetteville, West Virginia. The wooden framed, 7-bedroom house was perfect for businessman George Sodder and his wife, Jennie, to raise their nine children.

On Christmas Eve, five of the Sodder children—Maurice, Martha, Louis, Jennie, and Betty—asked if they could stay up late. Their mother agreed and made the children promise they would lock the door before coming upstairs to bed.

At 12.30 am, Jennie was woken by the sound of the phone ringing. When she answered, an unfamiliar female voice asked for a name she did not know. Jennie heard loud laughter in the background before she told the caller, “You have the wrong number” and hung up. Then as Jennie made her way back to bed, she noticed the door was unlocked and assumed the children had forgotten before they went to bed. She locked the door and went back upstairs. As Jennie began to fall asleep, she heard a loud bang and rolling noise on the roof but thought nothing more of it.^[1]

9 Who Tampered With The Ladders and The Trucks?

 

Not long after Jennie had fallen back asleep, the house was filled with smoke. In a panic, George and Jennie fled from the house whilst shouting for the other children to run for safety too.

Once outside, the horrified parents saw the house was now fully up in flames. They were still frantically trying to save their five children who were trapped inside. The room where the children slept was in the attic so George ran to get the ladders and hopefully make an escape route for them via the bedroom window.

However, when George ran to the garage for the ladders he noticed these were missing despite using them only the day before. Later, an investigation found the ladders had been thrown in a ditch.

Forgetting the ladders, George decided to start one of his trucks, drive to the side of the house and use this to climb up to the window. He tried both of his trucks and neither would start—again, they had both worked fine the previous day. George’s arm was also badly cut from smashing the windows in an attempt to save his children, although there was now no hope for their survival.^[2]

8 No Help From The Fire Department

 

George and Jennie tried to call the fire department but the phone lines were not working. They ran to the neighboring houses for help but within 45 minutes the entire Sodder family home had collapsed.

One neighbor decided to drive and find the fire chief and although the fire department was only 2.5 miles from the Sodder family house, the fire trucks did not respond to the emergency until 8 am—seven hours after the fire had begun. By then, all that remained of the house was ash and debris.

Following a brief search amongst the rubble, the Sodder family had expected to find whole skeletons but only a few bone fragments were recovered. The fire department then postponed the investigation as it was now Christmas Day. It was another heartbreaking moment for George and Jennie who were desperately searching for their children’s remains.

Eerily, when a maintenance worker arrived to the house after the fire, it was discovered the phone lines had been cut rather than burned out in the fire as they originally assumed.^[3]

7 The Creepy Predictions Before The Fire

 

In October, just a couple of months before the fire, a life insurance salesman threatened George that his house “(would go) up in smoke and (his) children (would be) destroyed.” George thought the salesman was angry as he couldn’t make a sale but with the events that followed, it seems this would turn out to be eerily accurate.

Then an electrician visited and warned that the faulty fuse boxes could cause a severe fire. George called the electric company who had just rewired the property and installed a new gas stove to complain. The company reassured George that the house was perfectly safe and the electrician who mentioned the fault was likely looking to charge for extra work. The matter was just brushed off.

Following an inquest from the fire department, it was discovered that the fire had started in one of the basement rooms as a result of faulty wiring from Christmas lights. Strangely, the insurance salesman who threatened George was also one of the jurors during the inquest. The children’s deaths were then declared “accidental”.^[4]

6 The Fire Was Not Consistent Enough To Destroy Bones

Jennie was devastated by the loss of her children and she decided to investigate their disappearance independently. She visited a local crematorium to find out if the fire could have destroyed human bone.

Most recently, Dr. Ramzi Amri, a researcher at Harvard Medical School, revealed: “Bones do not exactly melt, it’s more falling apart as they are very solid.” For an entire skeleton to be destroyed in a fire, the temperature is required to burn at more than 850 degrees Fahrenheit (454 degrees Celsius) consistently for 2 hours. The Sodder family home was on fire for 45 minutes as the wooden framed structure and wind speed that night meant the property did not stand a chance.

Considering how long it took for the house to collapse, there should, in theory, still be the skeletons of the five children amongst the debris. Yet, these were never recovered from the site.

10 Harrowing Christmas Accounts That Were Far From Festive

5 The Kidnapping Plot

 

Jennie was then led to believe that her children had been kidnapped. Speaking to The Raleigh Register more than 30 years after the fire, she said, “You can’t tell me five children could burn up in a little old house like that and something wouldn’t be left? No, I’ll never believe it.”

This then led to even more questions. How could five children possibly be kidnapped from their family home in the middle of the night without waking either the parents or the other siblings? Also, surely by now, wouldn’t someone recognize the missing children and alert the authorities?

Even Jennie herself was considered suspicious at one time. “For a while, a rumor was going around that somebody had $75,000 worth of insurance on the children but we didn’t have any insurance,” she revealed.^[5]

4 Sighting Of The Children In A Hotel

 

George and Jennie paid for a giant billboard that read: “What Was The Fate Of Our Children. Kidnapped, Murdered, or Burned?” They offered a reward of $5,000 (approx. $217,000 today) for any helpful information.

The police received many reports following the disappearance of the children and one witness claimed she served them breakfast the morning after the fire. The woman was working at a hotel in Charleston, 50 miles west from the Sodder Home.

She reported:

“The children were accompanied by two women and two men, all of Italian extraction. They registered about midnight. I tried to talk to the children in a friendly manner, but the men appeared hostile and refused to allow me to talk to these children. One of the men looked at me in a hostile manner; he turned around and began talking rapidly in Italian. Immediately, the whole party stopped talking to me. I sensed that I was being frozen out and so I said nothing more. They left early the next morning.”

The sighting either did not prove helpful for the investigation or they were unable to locate the group the witness had described.^[6]

3 George Sodder’s Political Conflicts

 

There are many online sleuths who believe George’s political beliefs fueled the fateful events that happened on Christmas Eve, 1945.

Born in 1895, in Sardinia, he was born Georgio Soddu before immigrating to America at the age of 13. Nobody close to George ever discussed the reason behind his immigration as it was a topic he would avoid. George eventually worked his way up to the top in business and owned his own coal-trucking company. He then met Jennie Cipriani, who was also an Italian immigrant.

The Sodder family was well-respected and middle-class but George had strong anti-Mussolini views and was against the Fascist government in his Italian homeland. In Fayetteville, many of the families were also Italian immigrants who disagreed strongly with George’s views.

Also, the coal-trucking business was under constant pressure from the Sicilian Mafia and George was aware of this. A few weeks before the fire, the Sodder children had complained that a strange car was following them as they returned home from school. Many strongly believe the disappearance of the children was connected to the Mafia.^[7]

2 The Photo of Louis Sodder

 

Louis Sodder was just 9-years-old when he was last seen alive. Then 22 years after his disappearance, his mother Jennie received a letter from Central City, Kentucky, with no return address. The letter also came with a picture that is believed to be Louis.

A message on the back of the photo read:
Louis Sodder
I love brother Frankie
Ilil boys
A90132 or 35

George and Jennie hired a private detective to look into the photo and try to locate the sender. Unfortunately, the detective was at another dead end. George told the Charleston Gazette-Mail it was “like hitting a rock wall – we can’t go any further.” Despite never being able to confirm if the photo really was Louis, the parents still had this framed and placed above the fireplace.^[8]

1 FBI Investigation Derailed

 

The disappearance of the Sodder children has remained unsolved for decades. Yet despite this becoming such a high profile case, the FBI has never been involved. In 1947, George and Jennie made an appeal directly to J. Edgar Hoover hoping he would help.

They received the following personal letter from Hoover, who wrote, “Although I would like to be of service, the matter related appears to be of local character and does not come within the investigative jurisdiction of this bureau.” Other FBI agents said they were willing to help the family once they were granted permission from local authorities, but for some reason, both the Fayetteville police and fire department refused to give the go-ahead.

It was another devastating blow for the Sodder family. The home that perished in the fire was never rebuilt, instead, they turned the plot into a memorial garden and tended to the flowers every day.

George died in 1969 and Jennie died in 1989. The only surviving member of the family was Sylvia, the youngest of the Sodder children, who was only 2-years-old on the night of the fire.^[9]

Top 10 Extremely Unsettling Disappearances

Most nations use the Gregorian calendar as their official calendar. Several centuries ago, however, the Julian calendar was in charge. However, it was so imperfect that we were lagging behind by a number of days. This error prompted the creation of the Gregorian calendar.

The switch between the calendars caused several ridiculous events, like countries skipping ten days at a time. Imagine going to bed on July 4 and waking up to find that it’s now July 15. Places like Sweden tried to avoid this by making smaller changes. However, they failed and ended up with bizarre dates like February 30.

The Gregorian and Julian calendars are not the only calendars that caused such bizarre problems. The Roman, French Revolutionary, and Soviet calendars each brought their own headaches.

10 Most Of Europe Lost Ten Days After Adopting The Gregorian Calendar In 1582

The Julian calendar was the dominant calendar in Europe before 1582. It was proposed by Julius Caesar in 46 BC and enacted at the start of the next year to correct terrible errors in the Roman calendar (more on this shortly). However, the Julian calendar had its own problems.

The average Julian calendar year is 365.25 days long, due to the occasional leap year. However, a solar year is actually 365.24219 days. This means the calendar was off by 11 minutes and 14 seconds per year. This seems small, but it does add up. The calendar was about ten days off 16 centuries later.

This caused problems when planning Christian holidays like Easter, which falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox. However, the Julian calendar had fallen out of sync with the Sun, and Easter came earlier than it should.

In the 1500s, Pope Gregory XIII contracted astronomer Christopher Clavius to work on a new calendar based on an earlier suggestion by physician Luigi Lilio. The result was the Gregorian calendar. In 1582, the pope suggested that the whole of Europe skip ten days to be in sync with the new calendar. Several religious European kingdoms obeyed and jumped from October 4 to October 15.^[1]

9 Sweden Had A February 30 In 1712

Sweden’s first attempt to adopt the Gregorian calendar ended in disaster—and the only recorded February 30 ever.

In the late 1600s, the Swedish Empire decided to switch from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian calendar. Instead of skipping 11 days in one fell swoop, it decided to skip every leap year from 1700 until 1740. So there would be no February 29 until 1740.

For some reason, the empire had only skipped one leap year by 1708, taking it out of sync with the Julian and Gregorian calendars. Sweden had two choices at this point: It could either add an extra day to its year to rejoin the Julian calendar or skip ten days to join the Gregorian calendar. They chose the former.

In 1712, Sweden added an extra day to February. Considering that 1712 was already a leap year, the extra day extended February into a full 30-day month.^[2] Sweden later switched to the Gregorian calendar in 1753. It skipped 11 days and went from February 17 to March 1.

8 Britain Lost 11 Days In 1752

While most of Europe adopted the Gregorian calendar in October 1582, Britain stuck to its guns and continued using the Julian calendar until September 1752. The switch was ordered two years earlier, when Parliament passed the Calendar (New Style) Act of 1750.

The first switch happened in 1751, when Britain had a 282-day year. The year started on March 25 (the new year in the Julian calendar) and ended on December 31 of the Gregorian calendar. However, Britain was still out of sync with the rest of Europe by 11 days. It made up for this by jumping from September 2, 1752, to September 14, 1752.

The change was controversial. Some accounts claim that people protested, screaming, “Give us our eleven days.” Other accounts mention a man called William Willett, who bet that he would dance for 12 days and 12 nights. He started dancing during the night on September 2 and stopped the next morning, which was September 14. He won the bet.

However, there were real concerns that the switch shortened everyone’s life by 11 days. There were also concerns that the new calendar was a ploy to make the empire pro-Catholic. Nevertheless, the government moved the beginning of its tax year from March 25 to April 5 so that it would not lose 11 days of tax income.^[3]

7 Saudi Arabia’s Government Workers Lost Pay Due To A Calendar Switch

The Islamic Hijri calendar typically has a 354-day year divided into 12 months of 29 or 30 days. This means it is 11 days shorter than the Gregorian calendar’s year. This has caused headaches for the government of Saudi Arabia, since most of the countries it does business with use the Gregorian calendar.

In 2016, the state decided to cut costs by switching to the Gregorian calendar on October 1, 2016, at least when it came to paying public servants. Government workers lost 11 days of work and wages. Private sector workers lost nothing, since they already followed the Gregorian calendar.^[4]

6 Russia Had Valentine’s Day Right After January 31

In November 1917, the Bolsheviks launched a revolution to overthrow the Russian government. The revolution soon turned into a war, which the Bolsheviks won. This marked the beginning of the Soviet Union and the ascension of revolution leader Vladimir Lenin as its first leader.

While still fighting in 1918, the Bolsheviks introduced several reforms, including a switch from the Julian calendar to the more modern and popular Gregorian calendar. The Julian calendar was off by 13 days by this point in history.

The Bolsheviks initially suggested the removal of a day from every year for the next 13 years before settling on skipping the 13 days at once. So they went from January 31, 1918, to February 14, 1918.^[5] The switch in calendars is the reason the November 1917 revolution is called the October Revolution. It was late October according to the Julian calendar.

5 Ancient Rome Had A 445–Day Year

Before the Julian calendar was the Roman calendar. The Roman calendar was created and used in ancient Rome until January 1, 45 BC, when it was replaced by the Julian calendar at the orders of Julius Caesar.

The Roman calendar was a lunar calendar based on the direct observation of the Moon by ancient Roman priests. The calendar initially had a 304-day, ten-month year that started in March and ended in December. January and February were later added when the year was increased to between 354 and 355 days.

The priests’ observations of the lunar cycles were not accurate. They also deliberately avoided leap years over superstitions. Things got worse when they started receiving bribes to declare a year longer or shorter than necessary. Some years were so long that an extra month called Intercalaris or Mercedonius was added.

Julius Caesar created the Julian calendar to correct the flaws of the Roman calendar. However, he could not switch until the missing dates of the Roman calendar were recovered. So he extended 46 BC to a 15-month year of 445 days. The two extra months were added between November and December. The year is remembered today as the “the last year of confusion.”^[6]

4 France Destroyed The Entire Calendar In 1793

In the late 1700s, French peasants rose against the powerful French monarchy. This was the infamous French Revolution. The angry peasants executed King Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette, at the guillotine. However, they did not achieve their aims before Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799.

On November 24, 1793, the revolutionaries introduced the French Revolutionary calendar (also called the Republican calendar) in an attempt to separate state from church. The calendar had the regular 12 months with 365 or 366 days. However, every month was 30 days long. The remaining five or six days were month-less and added to the end of the year.

There were no weeks. A month was split into three decades of 10 days. Citizens worked for nine days and rested on the tenth. The first problems arose over the insufficient number of rest days; workers rested for just three days a month.

More problems arose over the day on which the year began. The revolutionaries decreed a year on the Revolutionary calendar to begin on the first day of the autumnal equinox. However, the autumnal equinox does not have a fixed date and can fall between September 22 and 24.

This meant that the revolutionaries would always decide the new year. In fact, they declared September 22, 1792, as the start of year 1 of the Revolutionary calendar, even though the calendar was introduced in November 1793. So there was no year 1. They just went from 1793 on the Gregorian calendar to year 2 on the Revolutionary calendar.

The revolutionaries also had problems with the leap years. They had their leap years on odd-numbered years 3, 7, and 11, even though they declared every fourth year would be a leap year. France reverted to the Gregorian calendar on January 1, 1806. The Revolutionary calendar was briefly introduced again in 1871.^[7]

3 The Soviet Union Also Destroyed The Calendar In 1929

France isn’t the only nation guilty of tinkering with the calendar to its own detriment. The Soviet Union did the same thing. In 1929, the Stalin-led Soviet Union introduced the nepreryvka (“uninterrupted”) week in an attempt to keep factories running every day and to separate state from religion.

The uninterrupted week calendar was based on the Gregorian calendar. A week was shortened to five days—without Saturdays and Sundays. Each day was denoted with a Roman numeral or color, and citizens were issued Roman numerals or colors to indicate their day off. This meant that workers worked for four days and rested on the fifth.

However, closely related people had different days off. Wives worked when their husbands were home, children were home when their parents worked, and so on. This separated friends and broke up families. The government tried solving this by allowing families get the same day off. It did not work.

So the government introduced the six-day chestidnevki week calendar on November 23, 1931. Everyone worked for five days and had the sixth day off. This destroyed productivity because people were not getting enough rest. The machines also broke down because they were being overworked. The Soviet Union reverted to the regular Gregorian calendar in June 1940.^[8]

2 We’ll Need To Remove An Extra Day From The Gregorian Calendar In 4909

The Gregorian calendar is not perfect. While it corrected several flaws of the Julian calendar, it also has its own flaws. The Gregorian calendar averages 365.2425 days a year, but as mentioned previously, a solar year is actually 365.24219 days long.

We’ve already made up for this with leap years, but the Gregorian calendar is still 26 seconds off. That will mean being off by a whole day by 4909. So in the distant future—if humans are still a thing—we’ll need to remove that extra day from the year 4909. Maybe they could declare a reverse leap year and make February 4909 run for only 27 days.^[9]

1 The Revised Julian Calendar Will Have No Leap Year In 2800

We already mentioned that the Julian calendar is out of use. However, it survives because the Eastern Orthodox Church uses it to determine its festivals. Many of its flaws have been corrected by Serbian scientist Milutin Milankovic with the Revised Julian calendar, which he proposed in 1923.

The Revised Julian calendar is in sync (in terms of what day it is) with the Gregorian calendar and the solar year. Reports even indicate that it is more perfect than the Gregorian calendar. It has an error of just two seconds per year, unlike the 26-second error in the Gregorian calendar. However, calendars can never be perfect.

The Revised Julian calendar will fall out of sync with the Gregorian calendar in 2800. That year will be a regular year without a February 29 in the Revised Julian calendar, even though it will be a leap year in the Gregorian calendar.^[10]

The origins of fresco painting generally remain vague. It is believed that they originated about 1500 BC during the Minoan civilization in Greece. The rest of Europe only caught up on fresco painting around the 15th century, when it was perfected by great Renaissance art masters like Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo Da Vinci (who were painters before they became the names of teenage mutant ninja turtles).

Fresco paintings were usually done on walls by applying paint pigment on fresh limestone plaster, which, when dry, becomes permanent. Fresco secco (dry fresco) is the process of soaking dry walls with limewater and painting while wet, which is useful for retouching frescoes. These two types of painting require great skill and meticulous planning.

Here are some of the most famous and beautiful frescoes found around the world to put under “must see” on your travel bucket list—even if you aren’t an art enthusiast. Some are available to see either on or near their original sites, while others are being conserved in museums worldwide.

10 Behold, 2017 by Ali Cavanaugh

True frescoes are no longer done today on the same scale as in the Renaissance era, but the modern era has produced quite a few talented fresco painters, such as Russian-born iLia Anossov, trained Italian art conservator Elisabetta Covizzi Perfetti, and biblical fresco painter Ben Long, a student of Pietro Annigoni.

Catching the eye nowadays, though, are the dreamlike watercolor paintings by American Ali Cavanaugh, which are described as “modern frescoes.” She paints on wet kaolin clay panels using translucent watercolor pigment with synthetic brushes on white surfaces, giving her paintings a sense of being backlit. Her work is displayed in exhibitions and accessible through prints and books.

Wherever your world travels take you, you are sure to find frescoes from more modern artists.^[1]

9 The Paintings of Sigiriya

Be sure to add the Sigiriya paintings in central Sri Lanka to your list. King Kasyapa established his lavish kingdom (477-495 AD) in Sigiriya. Initially, he had a 200-meter-tall (656-foot) rock painted white in an attempt to create an image of the Buddhist mythological city Alakamanda.

Not liking the look, he ordered his architects to decorate the western face with non-religious paintings, hence the beautifully detailed fresco pictures depicting 500 half-naked women in vibrant colors.

The process of painting this fresco lustro (adding a mild binding agent to pigments) ensemble was complicated, with bamboo scaffolding covering the rock, leaving stonemasons and painters to get materials up the wall by hand. Only 20 of the paintings are left today but are in excellent condition—even after being exposed to the elements for over 1,600 years.^[2]

8 The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci

Living and working in the same era as Michelangelo, Da Vinci was considered one of the Renaissance’s greatest fresco painters. The 6-meter (15-foot) high and almost 8.8-meter (29-foot) wide fresco, The Last Supper, was painted on a wall in the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan, Italy, in 1498. Today, it is still being preserved and exhibited. The fresco depicts the biblical event of Jesus’ last night having a meal with his disciples, during which he revealed his betrayer, who later gave him over to the authorities to be crucified in Jerusalem.

The Last Supper, influenced by paintings of his time, is not contextually correct. According to various biblical accounts, the disciples would have been younger than portrayed, and they would have reclined for their meal and not sitting upright facing the onlooker. That being said, it might just have been a technique deployed by Da Vinci to make all the participants visible to the viewer—just as modern film and television camera footage displays today.

This fresco is not as well preserved as other murals from the same period due to da Vinci painting it on a stone surface and sealing it with tempura, which causes moisture to collect on the surface, triggering many restoration attempts to preserve it.^[3]

7 Rare 12th-Century Fresco Surviving the Crusades

When visiting the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, make sure not to miss an extremely rare find of fresco painting. A 9-meter (29.5-foot) long, 12th-century Gethsemane fresco was found in 1999 during excavations near the Garden of Gethsemane. Buildings, which were part of the Abbey of St. Mary of the Valley of Jehoshaphat, were uncovered—one of the few churches that hadn’t been destroyed by Saladin or the Crusaders.

The painting was the largest to come from archaeological excavations in Israel at the time, and its restoration process was among the most complicated ever done. The preserved parts of the fresco apparently show a scene where Mary and John the Baptist beg Jesus for forgiveness on behalf of all humanity. Unfortunately, only the bottom parts of the figures are visible in the main picture, with Jesus sitting in the center, Mary to his right, and John the Baptist to his left.

Added with colorful floral tendrils on either side is a Latin saying by Saint Augustine: “Who injures the name of an absent friend, may not at this table as guest attend.” This was apparently meant for guests who visited the monastery to dine.^[4]

6 The Last Judgement by Giorgio Vasari

The massive arched fresco, The Last Judgement, another Italian Renaissance painting, was started by Giorgio Vasari in 1572. Sadly, Vasari died in 1574, before its completion. The project was finished by Federico Zuccaro five years later. The style is reminiscent of Michelangelo, of whom Vasari was a great admirer.

It was designed to instill both reverence and fear among the attending congregation with a depiction of the twenty-four elders looking down onto choirs of angels and groups of saints, personifying the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the virtues, and the beatitudes on the lower terraces. On the lowest tier, and closest to see from underneath is the gloomy depiction of hell overflowing with tormented unbelievers.

Visit the Cathedral Of Santa Maria Del Fiore in Florence, Italy, to see this fantastic artwork in person.^[5]

5 The Frescoes of Akrotiri

Early frescoes in Greece were limited to simple monochrome walls painted in red and black—like the pictures of some athletic silhouettes often associated with Olympic Games literature. The Minoans, living in Knossos, Crete, were one of the earliest cultures to paint natural landscapes in the form of frescoes without any humans present in the scenes. With improvements in the quality of plaster and pigments—and possible influences from Egypt and the Near East—walls with beautifully colored decorations of nature and everyday life illustrations were found in excavations after volcanic eruptions buried them temporarily.

During mining activities for the volcanic deposits of tephra on the island of Santorini—to be used to construct the Suez Canal in the mid-19th century—many of the antiquities found are now displayed in the National Archaeological Museum’s Thera Gallery in Athens. Some of the excavated frescoes found in the settlement of Akrotiri in Thera (Santorini) include beautiful nature scenes and the famous Akrotiri boxers. This exhibition is a must-see when visiting Athens.^[6]

4 The Investiture of Zimri-Lim

One of the oldest and most highly valued frescoes in the world is The Investiture of Zimri-Lim, which adorned a wall in the royal palace in Mari, Syria, believed to be from 18 BC. The painting depicts the ceremony in which Zimri-Lim was anointed as king in a ritual involving the worship of the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, also known as the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna.

The fresco, whose painter is unknown, was discovered by archaeologists in 1936 while digging through the ruins of the once-great city-state. Due to fire damage, the painting is poorly preserved, and restoration work to it is done regularly by the Louvre in Paris, where it now resides.^[7]

3 Go Rock Art Safari-ing in Africa

Rock Art, also called Bushman Art or Boesmantekeninge (in Afrikaans), are paintings and etchings done by the San People on rocks in the open air and on cave walls in various parts of Southern Africa. Some of these paintings are well over 3,000 years old, with prehistoric art in the Blombos Cave in the Western Cape apparently dating back over 70,000 years. South Africa has some of the best-preserved, most beautiful, and advanced examples of rock art to see.

Rock art primarily displays pictures of people and animals. Although researchers aren’t sure why these pictures were painted, one can speculate that it was driven by the human urge for self-expression, the necessity to leave messages, or even serving as a way of record-keeping. Whatever the reason—they are amazing examples of early fresco-like art.

Apart from the Western Cape, rock art can be found in the Limpopo and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. The Ukhahlamba-Drakensberg National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage site housing almost 520 rock shelters with about 30,000 images painted 4,000 years ago using plant sap, animal blood, and natural ochre.^[8]

2 The Almost-Perfectly Preserved Frescoes of Pompeii

At around noon on August 24, AD 79, the cities of Herculaneum, Stabiae, Oplontis, and Boscoreale, along with Pompeii (population between 10,000 and 20,000), were buried under 6 to 7 meters (19 to 23) of volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted. Situated near Naples in Italy, Pompeii is the best known of the communities hit by the tragedy when all life perished on that fateful day.

After about seventeen centuries, these cities were discovered when diggings for a tunnel started in the early 1700s. Initial recoveries of mosaics, sculptures, and parts of frescoes were moved to the Archaeological Museum in Naples. But between 1760 and 1804, excavations were better coordinated, and onsite restorations began.

Frescoes portraying historical and mythological pictures, domestic and allegorical scenes, portraits, landscapes, and still lifes were found throughout the city—almost perfectly preserved. One of the best-known Pompeiian frescoes is a round medallion called Woman with Wax Tablets and Stylus (Sappho)—typical of the style of the era of portraying women holding tablets and styluses to prove their proficiency at housekeeping.

However, some of the frescoes recovered depict a seedier and more erotic side of Pompeii life. The walls of brothels were painted, depicting people engaged in various sexual acts, which is how a “customer” could choose what he wanted. But these paintings were not limited to only brothels. A fresco uncovered by archaeologists in 2018 in what appeared to be the bedroom of a home showcased the Greek myth of Leda and the swan. The explicit painting shows a semi-naked Leda sensually draped over a chair with the swan sitting in her lap while nuzzling her neck.

Although these frescoes were done by local painters, it is said that Renoir, when visiting Pompeii in 1881, was amazed by their skillful work.^[9]

1 The Creation of Adam by Michelangelo

Probably the best-known fresco of all must be Michelangelo’s The Creation of Adam (circa 1512), displayed on the Sistine Chapel ceiling in Vatican City. The 280 cm × 570 cm (9 ft 2 in × 18 ft 8 in) fresco is a portrayal of the creation of man from the book of Genesis in the Bible. It forms part of an ensemble of biblical events decorating the ceiling of the chapel. It resembles Michelangelo’s characteristic sculpture-like paintings, differing from typical creation paintings from that era and before.

The fresco depicts two main characters—God, as an old and grey but masculine man, clothed simply, and Adam, laying back in relaxation, at ease in his Creator’s presence. Other role-players in the scene are apparently wingless angels supporting the God-figure and a woman underneath his left shoulder with a young child next to her.

Scholars are still divided on the precise translation of various parts of the painting, with some arguing that the woman must be Eve, the first woman, waiting to be created from Adam’s rib. Others argue it to be Mary, the mother of Jesus, with the young child figure to be her future son. The meaning of the touching of hands is God giving life to Adam—as the name of the painting depicts and as it was commissioned. However, modern interpreters are looking for other meanings, most of which raise more questions than answers. The Creation of Adam remains one of the most beautiful art pieces ever created, and digital and printed images are often used in anything from quote backgrounds to ad campaigns.^[10]

Two-hundred years ago the average human life was short, brutal, and lasted for just 37 years. In developed countries the standard of living has improved dramatically, and that figure has risen to a much healthier 79 years.

It’s estimated that almost half a million people in the world are now aged 100 or more, and scientists are still divided as to what the theoretical upper limit on a human lifespan might be. Some researchers have even, perhaps rather optimistically, suggested there might not necessarily be an upper limit at all.

The likelihood is that immortality isn’t going to be a practical option, but there are a number of unexpected ways you could potentially add years to your life.

10. Red Hot Chili Peppers

It’s no great secret that there’s a link between diet and lifespan. Unfortunately, the healthier foods that we should be eating tend not to be the most exciting. There is at least one very notable exception to this rule in the form of the red hot chili pepper. With thousands of varieties available, ranging from the relatively pedestrian jalapeno through to the mind-melting heat of the infamous Carolina Reaper, even the most ardent chili-hater couldn’t claim they were a boring vegetable.

While they might not be to everyone’s taste, for those who do like a bit of spice in their life there’s some excellent news. A study of almost half-a-million people in China found that people who consumed spicy food six or seven times a week reduced their overall risk of death by as much as 14%. These findings have recently been almost exactly replicated in a smaller-scale study conducted in the United States.

It seems that red hot chili peppers might be the most super of all superfoods. Quite why this might be isn’t entirely clear, but scientists believe it’s most likely linked to a compound known as capsaicin.

The hotter the chili the greater the concentration of capsaicin, but it’s wise to exercise a certain amount of caution when it comes to the fieriest varieties of all. Peppers at the blisteringly hot end of the Scoville scale can cause retching, hyperventilating, and in extreme cases even death.

9. Fasting

Eating the right food is an important ingredient for a long life, but how often we eat might be just as important. A recent Harvard study suggests that intermittent fasting can slow down the aging process.

When the body lacks food it enters into survival mode. The liver, the kidney, and the immune system all shrink, as they aren’t the body’s immediate priority at that time. The theory is that when the fast ends the body makes its repairs. As it does so it replaces older cells with newer, more efficient versions. There’s even some suggestions that fasting, when combined with chemotherapy, is effective at eradicating cancerous cells in mice, although there’s still some way to go to establish whether the same is true for humans.  

While studies suggest there may be significant benefits, fasting is difficult, and for some people it can even be dangerous. A less extreme alternative, which seems to do more-or-less the same job, is a diet with heavily reduced calorie intake on certain days.

8. An Injection of Young Blood

The miracle of modern medicine has played a major role in allowing people to live longer than ever before. Unfortunately, these advances have often been made by experimenting on animals.

One particularly gruesome example is parabiosis, whereby two animals are anatomically joined in such a way that they share a circulatory system. By this means researchers have discovered that the blood of a healthy young mouse has an astonishing rejuvenating effect on an older animal. Brain function improves, tissues repair themselves more quickly, and organs throughout the body become more efficient.

In mice the ravages of old age are largely swept away, and some scientists believe blood transfusions might be capable of producing similar results in humans. The idea is controversial, and the science is still very much inconclusive, but the treatment is already beginning to be made available.

In 2017 a California-based company named Ambrosia offered people the opportunity to be injected with young blood, at least so long as they had $8,000 to spare. It remains to be established whether this will genuinely combat the aging process, or if blood will prove to be 21st century snake oil.  

Whatever the results might be, this one is very much filed under the category of don’t try this at home.

7. Precisely the Right Amount of Sleep

The average person spends around one-third of their life sleeping, but exactly why they need to do so is still something of a mystery. While the mechanisms are still not fully understood, we do know that sleep is vital to maintaining mental and physical health. Curiously enough it has to be almost exactly the right amount of sleep; it turns out that too much might be even more harmful than too little.

Children and adolescents need more, and pensioners can get by on less, but for everyone else seven hours of sleep each night seems to be the sweet spot. For anyone hitting that target, the health benefits are extraordinary. Professor Matthew Walker of the University of California goes so far as to claim that sleep is even more important to maintaining good health than diet or exercise.

The figures are certainly rather striking. Research indicates that people who sleep for six hours or less are at a 12% increased mortality risk. Perhaps more surprising is that this risk rises to a huge 30% for those who slumber for nine hours or more per day.

6. Flossing and Brushing

Dentists recommend that we should spend two minutes brushing our teeth in the morning and the same again in the evening. This doesn’t represent a huge investment of time, but around one-in-three Americans don’t meet this minimum requirement. When it comes to flossing the figures are even worse, with a mere 16 percent reporting that they floss every day.

The fraction of people who do strive to maintain excellent oral health are at substantially lower risk of cavities and gum disease, but there are a host of rather more surprising health benefits too.

Studies have linked regular brushing and flossing with a reduced risk of dementia, diabetes, lung disease, and in particular heart disease.

It might seem somewhat fantastical that dental hygiene might have such an impact on general health, but there are good reasons for believing it might be true. When plaque is allowed to build-up around the teeth, it becomes a feeding ground for millions of bacteria. If these bacteria find their way into the bloodstream, they are free to hitch a lift around the body.

5. Living at Altitude

With an average life expectancy of just 53 years, the Central African nation of Chad has amongst the worst mortality rates in the world. It’s not surprising that an impoverished nation would lag well behind the far wealthier and more developed West. What is shocking is that there is such a wide variation in life expectancy even within the richest nation in the world.

A comprehensive study, which spanned more than three decades, ranked every US state for life expectancy. While residents of parts of South Dakota averaged just 66.8 years, Colorado came in at top of the pile, with some regions exceeding South Dakota by almost twenty years.

Colorado is relatively wealthy, which certainly helps, but it’s by no means the wealthiest state, so it seems that some other factor may be at play.

At 6,800 feet above sea level, Colorado is the highest state in the United States of America, and several studies have indicated that high altitudes are the healthiest place to be. The reduced oxygen levels are believed to hinder the growth of certain types of cancer, and encourage the heart to produce more blood vessels, thereby lowering the risk of heart disease.

Obviously there are limits, and extreme heights can lead to the unpleasant symptoms of altitude sickness, such as dizziness, nausea, and even death.  

4. Learning a Second Language

The human brain is the most complex thing in the universe, at least so far as we know. It’s sometimes said that if it were simple enough to understand, we would be far too simple to understand it.

We do know that it hits peak efficiency at around 22 years of age, and that it declines, and for most people even physically shrinks, as we enter old age. Fortunately, there do seem to be several ways this decline can be delayed, and the act of learning a second language seems to be one of the most effective preventative measures possible.

Studies have shown that bilinguals enjoy a far greater degree of resilience to Alzheimer’s and dementia than people who speak just one language. While the benefits are greatest for those who have been multilingual since childhood, they remain present for anybody willing to take up the challenge of learning a new language at any age.

3. Regular Cups of Coffee

Coffee is the most popular beverage in the world. The global market is worth more than $20 billion a year, around 2.25 billion cups are consumed every day, and there’s even evidence to suggest it could add months to your life.

The results of a study conducted by the International Agency for Research on Cancer suggested that regular coffee drinkers enjoy extra resistance to heart disease and diseases of the gut. Three cups of coffee a day seems to be just about the optimum number, adding about nine minutes to your life each day.

Exactly what it is about coffee that bestows these health benefits is not at all clear, but it certainly doesn’t appear to be caffeine. Research suggests that it makes little-to-no difference whether the coffee is caffeinated, ground, instant, or filtered.

This is all very good news for coffee drinkers, particularly as the drink was previously linked with potential health problems.

2. A Good Social Life

Any research into human longevity is fraught with difficulties. Human beings live complicated lives. How long these lives last is influenced by so many factors, both genetic and lifestyle related, that it’s hugely difficult to separate correlation from causation.

Having said that, there is one variable that has been identified again and again as perhaps the single most important factor in a long, healthy life. Humans are social animals, and the evidence suggests that people who maintain regular contact with friends and relatives are far more likely to live well into old age than more solitary individuals.

It’s well known that social interaction is important for mental health. Solitary confinement is so harmful for humans that some experts have called for it to be classified as torture. A busy social life has been linked to real physical benefits such as lower blood pressure and a boost to the immune system. The impact is so great that a 2008 study claimed that strong social ties can be as beneficial as giving up a 15 cigarettes-per-day smoking habit.

1. Owning a Pet

Jean Paul Sartre once wrote that Hell is other people. For those of a similar bent of mind to the French philosopher, but who would still appreciate the extra years of life associated with regular social interaction, there is an alternative. A growing body of evidence suggests that pet owners tend to live longer, healthier lives than the rest of us.

In certain respects this is not terribly surprising, responsible dog owners who takes their pet for regular walks will reap the rewards of regular exercise. However, the benefits seem to go much further than this and aren’t confined to canines alone. Cat owners are less likely to suffer from high blood pressure, and according to a study conducted by the Minnesota Stroke Institute their risk of suffering a heart attack is cut by almost a third.

Even pets that couldn’t easily be described as cute and cuddly can still be beneficial; there’s evidence to suggest that simply watching fish swimming around a tank can lower blood pressure and heart rate.