Beatlemania and go-go boots were the ‘in-thing’ in the 60s. Not to mention miniskirts and lava lamps. The 70s were all about bell bottoms, David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs, Space Invaders, and tubes socks. When the 80s rolled around, everyone was rocking to The Clash on their Walkmans while carrying around trapper keepers and sporting slogan t-shirts. By the time Walkmans were ‘so eighties’ with an eyeroll, teens were bragging with their Sony Discman into which they stuffed CDs featuring Alanis Morrissette or Pearl Jam. Younger (and older) teens tried to skip classes to feed their Tamagotchis while weekends were all about finding the perfect Doc Martens, Play Station and trying to convince parents that an iMac G3 was an absolute necessity of living in the 90s.

Hardcore music fans think of these four decades as the ‘golden age’ of music. It marked the rise of influential bands and artists such as The Beatles, Queen, Michael Jackson, Van Halen, Prince, Whitney Houston, John Denver, Percy Sledge, Blondie, Lionel Ritchie, Nirvana, and so many more.

A study has even shown that music from the 60s through to the 90s are far more memorable than modern songs, even among millennials. Scientists tested a group of millennials on their ability to name hit songs from different decades and the 643 participants consistently remembered songs that came out between 1960 and 1999. Songs that became popular between 2000-2015 faded from their minds much quicker. Those who participated in this study in 2019 were between 18 and 25 years old.

On this list are some interesting facts about just a few of the popular bands that made an indelible mark on the music industry during what is commonly referred to as the ‘golden age’.

10 Beatles Innovations that Changed Music

10 Cetera has no time for Chicago

The Chicago Transit Authority, established in 1967, changed their name to Chicago in 1969. The band has sold more than 40 million albums in the U.S. alone and have had five consecutive No 1 albums among a myriad other successes. In 1974 Chicago’s entire catalog of seven albums (at that time) was circulating on the Billboard 200.

Peter Cetera was co-founder and frontman of the band until 1984, after the release of their highly successful Chicago 17 album. Cetera went on to enjoy a famed solo career. He was thrust into the spotlight in 2016 after refusing to perform with Chicago at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. He said during an interview that one of the reasons he refused to perform with the band was because they wouldn’t lower the key of the song “25 or 6 to 4” and that “nothing about the event sounded like fun.”^[1]

Co-founder Robert Lamm responded to the controversy by saying that Cetera could have at least stood with them, even if he didn’t want to perform.

9 The amp, the amp, the amp is on fire

You probably won’t be able to picture the band AC/DC without hearing Brian Johnson in your head, screaming out the lines of “Thunderstruck” or “Highway to Hell.”

The band was named after Malcolm and Angus Young’s sister saw the initials AC/DC on a sewing machine. Their sister was also instrumental in coming up with Angus’ school uniform after he tried a Superman, Spider-Man and even a gorilla costume.^[2]

In 1977, the guitar amplifier used by Angus caught fire during a studio recording of “Let There Be Rock”. Malcolm urged his brother to keep playing regardless, and Angus complied. It happened again during “Rock or Bust” and Angus once again just kept playing, thinking the glow was from a cigarette. This has long been considered a myth but was confirmed by Angus during an interview in 2014.

8 Led Zeppelin and Aleister Crowley

It’s impossible to imagine Thor: Ragnarok without the fight scenes set to the inimitable Immigrant Song by Led Zeppelin. (There is a YouTube video in which the last battle scene plays out to Britney Spears’ Toxic, but that is a story for another list.) Immigrant Song is perfect for Ragnarok however, as it references Valhalla which ties in with Thor’s Norse background.

Led Zeppelin’s music has long been fodder for conspiracy theorists who claim that founder and guitarist, Jimmy Page, sold his soul to the devil for long lasting fame and fortune. This conspiracy gained traction after Page bought occultist Aleister Crowley’s former Scotland home in 1971. Page was a Crowley fan and had Crowley’s “Do what thou wilt” and “So mote it be” inscribed in the run-off groove of the Led Zeppelin III vinyl records.^[3] It is believed that Jimmy Page asked his bandmates to join him in a ‘magick’ ritual inspired by Crowley’s writings. All participated except for bassist and keyboardist, John Paul Jones.

In 1972, Page signed up to do the soundtrack for the movie, Lucifer Rising. Page and the filmmaker, Kenneth Anger, allegedly had a very ‘intense’ relationship but the two parted ways in 1975. Rumors abounded that Anger, who was a ‘magick practitioner’, put a curse on Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page. This curse was blamed, in part, for the trouble that befell the band’s members soon after. This included a car accident involving Robert Plant, illness, rioting fans, and several fights.

7 Heart & Van Halen

Heart was formed in 1970. Sisters Ann and Nancy Wilson were the vocalists, alongside musicians Steve Fossen, Roger Fisher, David Belzer and Jeff Johnson. The group has had a rocky road to success and had to launch a comeback in 1985. Heart disbanded in 1998 but resumed performances in 2002. The band is still performing today, with concerts planned into 2021 depending on what happens with the current Covid-19 pandemic.

The Wilson sisters released a biography in 2012 titled Kicking & Dreaming: A Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll. In the book they relate encounters with other bands, including the time they played Stairway to Heaven in a small club and the members of Led Zeppelin walked in during the performance. The night ended with Jimmy Page passed out cold.

The sisters also recount meeting Eddie and Alex Van Halen and being propositioned by them in 1979. Ann and Nancy declined and the conversation between the foursome turned to music. Nancy learned that Eddie didn’t own an acoustic guitar and she gifted him her own. Overcome with emotion and gratitude, Eddie took the guitar and then called her room at 7am the next morning to serenade her over the phone with a song he had written in her honor.^[4]

6 Airplay thanks to student

Roxette was formed in 1986 and enjoyed massive successes including 19 UK Top 40 hits, a host of US Hot 100 hits and four number one songs. Marie Fredriksson and Per Gessle were both established artists when they recorded “Neverending Love” under the name Roxette. The song was a hit in Sweden and the rest, as they say, is history. Roxette has sold over 75 million records worldwide and have become Sweden’s second best-selling music act, right behind ABBA.

The duo’s first global hit song, The Look, was only played on the air after an American exchange student by the name of Dean Cushman heard it and gave it to his local radio station. It soon became a massive hit and reached number one on the US charts.^[5]

One of Roxette’s most popular songs, “It Must Have Been Love”, was not written for the movie Pretty Woman, contrary to popular belief. When Touchstone Pictures approached Roxette about contributing a song to the movie’s soundtrack, they didn’t have enough time to write something new. Instead they chose a song they had written two years prior.

Top 10 True Rock Music Stories

5 The band who outsold The Beatles

The Monkees’ original band members consisted of Micky Dolenz, Michael Nesmith, Peter Tork and Davy Jones. The group was a made-for-TV band and formed specifically for the sitcom, The Monkees, which saw airplay between 1966 and 1968. After the sitcom was cancelled, The Monkees recorded music until 1971 at which time they disbanded. Some of their most well-known hits include “I’m a Believer”, “Daydream Believer”, and “Last Train to Clarksville.”

What some fans may not know is that the band has been banned from the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame after co-founder Jann Wenner insisted that they cannot be included since the band members were first hired as actors and not musicians. This is despite the fact that they have had incredible success as a band and even outsold The Beatles and The Rolling Stones in 1967. Their album sales topped both of these popular British bands’ sales combined that year.^[6]

4 The Animals’ influence

The Animals were known for their distinctive sound as showcased in their only number one hit in 1964: “The House of the Rising Sun.” The Animals consisted of vocalist Eric Burdon, keyboardist Alan Price, bassist Chas Chandler, guitarist Hilton Valentine and drummer John Steel. The band’s sound even inspired Bob Dylan’s decision to work with musicians playing electric instruments.

Bruce Springsteen gave a shoutout to the band in 2012 when he performed at the South by Southwest Festival. He said that he had never related to another band as much as he had to The Animals and that a lot of their work was reflected in his music. After The Animals disbanded, Chas Chandler discovered Jimi Hendrix and helped him form The Jimi Hendrix Experience. He financed their first single and gave Hendrix the idea to set his guitar on fire.^[7]

3 A band of trouble

Oasis was formed from a previous group called the Rain and originally consisted of 5 members including brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher. The band has sold more than 75 million records and holds the distinction of being one of the best-sellling bands of all time.

The feud between the Gallagher brothers became almost more prominent than the band’s music when Noel quit in 1994 after Liam threw a tambourine at him. In 1995, Noel hit Liam over the head with a cricket bat. The bad blood continued in 1996 when Liam pulled out of an MTV Unplugged show and instead heckled the band from the crowd.

On top of all the sibling troubles that lasted several more years, Oasis were also sued for ripping off a member of a Beatles parody band as well as ripping off a Coca-Cola jingle. Soon the band engaged in a full on ‘war’ with English alternative rock band, Blur, and things got so heated that Noel told a reporter that he hoped Damon Albarn and Alex James would “catch AIDS and die.”^[8]

2 First choice for Friends’ opening song

R.E.M will arguably forever be known as the band whose song “Shiny Happy People” was almost the opening song for Friends. And, of course, for the song “Everybody Hurts”, which has been rated as one of the 1001 best songs ever, with its music video directed by Ridley Scott’s son, Jake. “Shiny Happy People” became one of their biggest hits but vocalist, Michael Stipe, eventually started hating the song because of the peppy lyrics. He stated that “It’s a fruity pop song written for children.” He also said that if ever there was one song sent into outer space to represent R.E.M. for eternity, he would definitely not want it to be “Shiny Happy People.”

R.E.M.’s song “Monty Got a Raw Deal” was inspired by actor Montgomery Clift, even though most fans assumed it was about Monty Hall who was the host of the game show Let’s Make a Deal. Stipe wrote the song about Clift after R.E.M. was visited in studio by a photographer who had worked on one of Clift’s last films, The Misfits, and looked at photos from the movie set.^[9]

1 Cobain and Vedder slow dancing

Eddie Vedder was the last member to join the band first known as Mookie Blaylock and now known as Pearl Jam. The band was formed in 1990 and had sold more than 85 million albums worldwide by 2018. They are considered one of the most influential bands of the 90s.

Pearl Jam have cited many bands as influences for their music, including Led Zeppelin, The Ramones and The Who. The band were labelled ‘sell-outs’ by Nirvana after their album ‘Ten’ became a hit and soon there were rumors of a feud between Nirvana and Pearl Jam, including some trash-talk in public.
Eddie Vedder and Kurt Cobain confronted one another backstage at the 1992 VMA’s, but then the unexpected happened. As Eric Clapton played ‘Tears of Heaven’ on the stage above them, Vedder and Cobain shared a slow dance, setting aside their differences.^[10]

Top 10 Musicians Who Were Ahead Of Their Time

In the past several decades, we have seen various groups of people try to create their own spiritual philosophies or medical phenomena. Most of them also claimed to be drawing from ancient traditions—usually a patchwork of pagan beliefs or a misunderstood application of Eastern philosophy and Eastern traditional medicine. Despite the bizarre and often misleading history behind them, these practices have become full-blown fads in many parts of the world.

10 Meditation Is About Focus Rather Than Clearing Your Mind

Meditation has become incredibly popular throughout the world. In the US, it enjoys a kind of fad status. Many people who romanticize Japanese culture say that meditation is great or that they practice it on a daily basis.

But many of them are confused about the point of meditation. They think that it’s supposed to “clear your mind,” which only shows how much they misunderstand the process.

Although meditation does confer benefits like helping you to breathe better, it was never meant to completely empty your mind. The point was to better focus your mind on what you needed to think about.

In general, meditation is about mindfulness. Religious people meditate to reflect on a specific religious doctrine. But you can choose to focus on anything. Of course, some who are practiced in meditation feel that this explanation is too simplistic.

While focusing your mind, the mind is also trained to wander and keep track of many different things in your surroundings. A true master of meditation can concentrate on something of primary importance to him while keeping a much lower level of focus on his surroundings.

9 Acupuncture May Be Unproven But Is State-Sanctioned In China

Acupuncture is a form of alternative medicine that the average person thinks of as pure quackery. Even if it did work, you would be hard-pressed to persuade the average American to allow a doctor to stick them full of needles to “make them feel better.”

In the US, many clinical trials have been done to prove or disprove claims about acupuncture by those people in Asian countries who swear by it. So far, none of these trials have produced conclusive results. Some studies suggest that acupuncture does help people to cope with pain, but there is no solid evidence that this is more than a placebo effect.

For these reasons, many people might expect that this form of medicine has gone the way of the four humors. Although it never caught on in the Western world, it has remained a popular and serious form of medicine in China, especially for pain relief.

In fact, some studies from China have claimed that acupuncture has been successfully used in lieu of traditional anesthesia in patients undergoing open-heart surgery. If true, this would certainly make acupuncture useful.

8 Yoga Can Be Extremely Dangerous

Many yoga practitioners believe that they are following an ancient tradition when they bend themselves into pretzels on a rented gym floor. However, yoga’s actual age isn’t clear-cut.

Although the philosophies of yoga, such as spiritual wellness, were recorded thousands of years ago and have been evolving ever since, the records of actual yoga poses and physical moves only began about 200 years ago. In fact, the vast majority of yoga poses were dreamed up recently by modern yoga instructors.

Some yoga instructors have pointed out that it is important to have a good understanding of anatomy if you’re going to teach yoga. That’s because the poses from older days were designed before we knew as much about health and the human body as we do today.

Although there isn’t anything inherently wrong with yoga, it can easily cause serious and lasting health problems if certain moves are done incorrectly, too quickly, or simply at all. Even experts and teachers often fall victim to these mishaps.

In the US, there are no regulations for certifying yoga instructors. So anyone can attempt to stand you on your neck and twist you into a pretzel.

7 Wicca Is Not An Ancient Religion

Many people think of Wicca as an ancient pagan religion. Young people are especially excited about the ancient revival tradition that they are following. However, like L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology, Wicca is a made-up religion. The idea that it is a revival of old pagan religions is complete bunk.

Modern Wicca—as well as witchcraft in general—was created and popularized by a man named Gerald Gardner. Born in 1884, Gardner came up with just about everything associated with modern Wicca. Almost none of it came from ancient texts.

When devising his order, Gardner took inspiration from the writings of Aleister Crowley, the Golden Dawn, and other odd groups. But Gardner didn’t take much from actual traditions. He created his calendar of pagan holidays by taking important events from various pagan religions and trying to knit them together into one faith.

Gardner was also known for saying bizarre things and encouraging people who joined Wicca to say sensational things about themselves to get attention. He likely felt that the best way to spread his religion was to get people talking about it in the first place.

Although this may seem like an absurd strategy, it appears to have worked out nicely. Wicca has become quite popular, and most people, including those involved in Wicca, are blissfully unaware that this new religion is far removed from actual pagan traditions.

6 The Founder Of Chiropractic Had Insane Ideas

Many people around the world have gone to or regularly go to a chiropractor to “be adjusted.” However, there is an ongoing debate about whether chiropractic is junk medicine or a legitimate practice.

Its defenders argue that chiropractic can help to manage the symptoms of certain conditions, especially those with chronic pain. Although there may be some benefits to the practice, there are also legitimate reasons for people to be skeptical of chiropractic and look at it as sheer quackery.

The founder of chiropractic was a man named D.D. Palmer. He believed that 95 percent of the problems with the human body could be fixed with a chiropractic adjustment. Of course, this is ridiculous. Imagine thinking that cancer, allergies, or heart disease could be fixed by adjusting your spine.

However, Palmer believed wholeheartedly in his approach and did his best to pass it on to as many people as possible. Since he’s long dead, people might think that his beliefs have been repudiated by now. But that is simply not the case.

A large number of licensed chiropractors still believe in the insane theories of D.D. Palmer. Many of them also use chiropractic treatments on children, even if the child isn’t complaining about issues with his spine or posture. In the UK, modern chiropractors have treated many children for problems as simple as colds.

5 People Are Fully Aware Under Hypnosis

When most people think of hypnosis, they recall movies where someone swings a shiny object in front of another person’s face while repeating a mantra. Before long, the hypnotized person is in a semiconscious or mostly unconscious state in which they are willing do the bidding of the person hypnotizing them.

Of course, the hypnotized person remembers none of this when they are awakened. Scores of television and movie plots have depicted hypnosis like this, but it doesn’t really work that way.

Although hypnotism does put you into a strangely relaxed state of suggestion, it is more self-suggestion than anything else. Even with another person assisting you, hypnosis will never cause you to do something that you wouldn’t normally do. It would simply break the suggestion.

Depending on the given suggestions, some people do willingly forget after hypnosis. However, there is no reason that this would normally happen because people are fully aware during hypnosis. They are not in a comatose state.

There is still much to learn about hypnosis in general. Although the roots of the word may come from ancient Greece, the original theory of hypnosis began in the mid- to late 1700s. It didn’t become a full-fledged practice until closer to the days of Sigmund Freud.

4 Reiki Is Fantastic Nonsense That Does More Harm Than Good

Reiki is also known as therapeutic touch or energy healing. Those who believe in Reiki think that placing their hands in the air over someone’s body and holding those positions for several minutes can direct “life energy” to the person who needs to be healed.

Some of these mystics believe that those who are truly skilled at Reiki can heal someone from a long distance, which sounds like something out of a fantasy novel.

Reiki is largely based on the idea of chi (aka ki), which is present in both Japanese and Chinese mysticism. But like many new age practices, the true depth of the system is exaggerated. Most people believe that Reiki is based on ancient Japanese healing methods. But it was actually developed by a Japanese spiritualist in the 1920s.

In recent years, scientists have scrutinized Reiki and its practitioners have not come out looking good. In one test, actual and fake Reiki “healers” were instructed to make cancer patients feel better. By the end of the test, both types of Reiki practitioners had made the cancer patients feel marginally better.

Some people took this as proof that Reiki was real. Of course, most people came to the opposite conclusion. If the sham version of Reiki achieves the same results as regular Reiki, then any type of Reiki is clearly just a placebo.

3 Divining Rods Were Used For Bizarre Purposes

A divining rod (aka a dowsing rod) is a forked stick or sticklike object that is used by a person wishing to perform divination. As the person holds the stick in front of him and walks around, the divining rod is supposed to vibrate when the person has found what he is looking for.

Traditionally, a divining rod was believed to be a magical device that could find water, precious metals, and other ores underground. However, as its popularity increased, the divining rod was used for even crazier purposes.

In France in the 1600s, the divining rod was used to identify people who were heretics or lawbreakers. This quickly led to abusive practices and false convictions. Of course, personal bias likely decided most cases. Before long, the Catholic Church banned the divining rod’s use for such purposes.

2 Modern Astrology Is Incomplete And Misleading

Although astrology is widely known, its practice is almost completely and laughably dismissed by most people. On the other hand, you will always meet those people who have to tell you their sign, want to know yours, and then nod sagely like they knew it all along.

Of course, astrology was not always as much of a joke as it is now. Astrology evolved hand in hand with astronomy. Although ancient people may have believed that the stars determined their fates, they had incredibly complex calculations and systems to govern it all. It was also quite personal.

However, the biggest mistake of modern astrology isn’t its lack of complexity or understanding of the ancient systems. The biggest problem is that modern astrologists probably have the signs completely wrong.

Modern research has shown that ancient practitioners of astrology based their predictions on the current constellation and star positions at that time. Since then, the constellations have shifted their relative positions in the sky.

The old astrological chart no longer makes any sense. Many people would need to move over an entire month to properly fit with the current constellations. Also, a new star sign called Ophiuchus has entered the zodiac due to the shifting skyscape.

1 Feng Shui Has Become Fraudulent Big Business In China

Most people know of feng shui as the spiritual practice of rearranging objects around the house to achieve the best energy flow. This energy flow is supposed to help your physical comfort and strength as well as your luck and prosperity.

In China, feng shui is far more than interior decorating. It is big business in which “experts” are often consulted before buildings, roads, or other structures are built. Any major changes to the environment or landscape usually require consultation with a feng shui expert.

Many people who believe in feng shui as part of their spiritual heritage have become frustrated and upset by this perversion of feng shui. A lot of people, including con artists, have entered the profession as feng shui “masters” because there is little to no certification process.

As a result, many Chinese have become distrustful of a group that was once honored. Even more bizarrely, Chinese law dictates that villagers must be compensated by the government if any major construction or changes to infrastructure disrupt the village’s feng shui. Some of these claims have been challenged due to suspected fraud, but it is surprising that the law still exists.

The Bronze Age covers a massive swath of human history. Spanning from about 5500 BC to 650 BC, there was a lot going on around the world.  Human society was really laying the groundwork for what was to come, and a lot of remarkably important inventions and concepts were being created. Even though by today’s standards this time period seems all but prehistoric, there were a lot of amazing things going on worth knowing about.

10. The Earliest Writing Was Developed

Communication is one of the clear and distinct ways that humankind has been able to separate itself from the animal kingdom. As much as some people think their dogs can say hello or otherwise speak, nothing has come close to language as developed by humans. And a big part of the evolution of language has been the written word.

The earliest form of writing dates back to the 34th century BC. Cuneiform script was developed in Sumeria, somewhere around present-day Iraq. This early form of writing gave rise to the writing used by numerous later civilizations including the Akkadians, the Hittites, the Elamites, and many others. It was the basis for some early alphabets that were used in that part of the world as well.

Though the language faded away about 2,000 years ago, it remained in active use for about 3,000 years making it one of the longest used languages in history.

9. Civilization Began

You could make a strong case that civilization itself was born during the Bronze Age. The Sumerians were the first people to show up in Mesopotamia where they built cities and created many of the technological advancements that would go on to allow humankind to thrive and grow beyond whatever kind of simple people we may have been before. The Sumerians didn’t just create writing, they mastered agriculture, learned how to control the flow of water, and created the foundations of religion.

Had the Sumerians not settled in what we would refer to today as the Fertile Crescent, our society likely never would have risen to the heights that it did and many of the advancements they made would have been pushed back much later in history.

8. Beaker People Brought Beer to Britain

If you’re a fan of beer then you have to give some respect to the Bronze Age. Beer, and its precursor mead which is just a fermented honey and water brew that’ll get you plenty tipsy, date back to the Bronze Age when the Bell Beaker people brought it to Western Europe. The Beaker people got their name from the shape of the cups that they drank from. That ought to tell you how important drinking was to these people since they were named after the way they did it.

Archaeologists have uncovered some of their beaker drinking vessels and found traces of bee pollen and honey wines inside of them. There’s also evidence that they were growing barley to make beer as well. As for what happened to the Beaker people, it’s speculated that perhaps they are the ancestors of the Celts.

7. Law Began

Unless you consider yourself an outlaw you’re probably thankful that we live in a society that has at least some laws in place to help keep us safe. Arguably society can’t work without laws and no matter how civilization was formed we would have come up with a code of conduct eventually, but the basics of law were constructed during the Bronze Age.

Known as the Code of Hammurabi, this Babylonian text dates back to the year 1754 BC. The Babylonian King Hammurabi created the code which is made up of 282 laws including punishments for violating them. They even had a punishment scale for how the same crime could be dealt with based on the social status of the person who committed it. That means a high society merchant might end up getting off with much more leniency than a slave even if both of them committed the same act. No one said the laws were perfect back then, but they were a first attempt.

Many of the laws enacted by King Hammurabi related to contracts between individuals. This included things like how wages were to be paid for certain services as well as how liability could be meted out if you performed a task for someone and it proved to be substandard.

6. China’s Female General

Historically speaking, war has been the purview of men. The Pentagon had a ban on women in active combat roles that wasn’t lifted until the year 2013. Although other countries around the world have been more liberal about allowing women to serve, when you go back through history you’ll still see women in combat as the exception to the rule, not the standard practice by any means. Despite that, the Bronze Age did offer up at least one significant female warrior to go toe-to-toe with her male counterparts.

Fu Hao lived during the Shang Dynasty in ancient China which spanned from 1600 BC until 1046 BC.  During that time she became the only female head of the army. At the time she was married to the king which likely allowed her to serve as a military leader without a lot of pushback from others.

 Little is known about her time as a military leader since she existed before the invention of paper so they weren’t writing down much of her conquests. What is known based on inscriptions made in bone artifacts that were interred with her is that she led several military campaigns successfully and even conquered a rival clan with which they had been at war for many generations. Word is that she commanded 13,000 soldiers

5. World’s Oldest Board Game

The video game industry in the year 2020 was worth about $60 billion in the US. Video games, of course, evolved out of board games which can be traced all the way back to the Bronze Age.

The oldest board game ever discovered dates back about five thousand years and was discovered in a tomb in Turkey. Many pieces were found in a set, carved to look like pyramids, pigs, dogs, and other shapes. It’s believed these were game board pieces like the thimble and the race car from Monopoly.

Archaeologists had previously found similar stones and other burial sites but they had been lone examples and had been dismissed as perhaps counting stones or something similar. The burial site in Turkey was the first time a complete set was ever found together. In total, 49 pieces were discovered and they were grouped in fours.

4. The Nebra Sky Disc

Back in 1999, some amateur treasure hunters with nothing more than a metal detector stumbled upon something just outside of the town of Nebra, Germany. About the size of a large dinner plate, the Nebra Sky Disc is covered in gold leaf symbols that make up a sky scene including the sun, a crescent moon, and some stars.

The disc dates back to around the year 1600 BC and it’s made of bronze. Although the disc has sustained some damage, those who have studied it have concluded that it’s probably a representation of the sky that may have been part of the system for understanding planting and harvest times, or some kind of astronomical clock part. The stars on the disc are arranged in the form of the Pleiades constellation. The constellation would have been visible to people in Mesopotamia in the autumn, which would have been a harvest time. 

The exact nature of the disc is still the subject of some debate since it was discovered under unusual circumstances. But for the most part is believed to be a legitimate example of a Bronze Age artifact and the earliest known depiction of the heavens that demonstrates a clear knowledge and understanding of astrological knowledge.

3. Soap Was Invented

Humans have existed for about 200,000 years, or at least as anything that we would understand is human by today’s standards. And while we have come a long way since back then, it was not without a lot of struggle. Take for instance the fact that soap wasn’t invented until about the year 2800 BC.

 Another invention from ancient Mesopotamia that really set the groundwork for so much of what we take for granted today, the history of the substance is a bit murky. It’s not clear who exactly invented soap, whether it was Babylonians or Sumerians, but at least somebody took the time to figure out how to get clean after so many thousands of years of dirty humans. 

The nearest we can figure, ancient soap likely wasn’t used to improve the hygiene of the masses. Sumerian priests would have used soap to purify themselves before certain rituals. Beyond that, ancient forms of soap made from animal fat and wood ash were likely used to clean wool.

There are Mesopotamian recipes for making soap that were written on cuneiform tablets but still exist. the ancient Egyptians also had soap recipes that involved mixing salt and oil. Other recipes include using sesame oil and Cypress extract. So the scented soap Market of today has some strong historical roots.

2. The Mysterious Sea Peoples

The Bronze Era arguably collapsed for several reasons but one of the things considered a major factor in the end of this period was the Sea Peoples. Between the years 1276 and 1178 BC, the Sea Peoples were raiding cities across the Mediterranean region. Most of the historical records of the Sea Peoples come from Egypt as the Egyptians were a favorite target of these mysterious raiders so they kept some records of their activities.

Even though they are considered a cause of the downfall of an entire era, almost nothing is known about the Sea Peoples. For instance, we have no idea where they came from. Egyptian records detail them only in terms of the battles that were fought against them. They were people who came with warships in great numbers and with great strength. The Egyptian forces were unable to stand against them when they were raided by them.

Historians have tried to pin down where the Sea Peoples may have come from and many theories have been thrown out. The idea that they were Italian, Mycenaean, Minoan, Philistine, and Trojans have all been considered. But the fact remains the people of the Bronze Age had no idea where they came from, and people today have no idea either. 

1. The Wheel Was Invented

Solid cases could be made that inventions such as the printing press or the computer are the greatest in history. But just as important, if not more so, was the humble wheel. Invented sometime in the 4th millennium BC, it’s arguable that civilization could never really have gotten going without the use of the wheel.

Aside from being used in travel with wagons, wheels have also been integral to agriculture as well. Millling in particular would not have gotten very far without the wheel.

The most curious fact about the wheel is the fact that even though we know about when it was invented, we don’t know exactly where or by whom because it seems to have been an instance of parallel thinking. It looks like the Sumerians invented the wheel around the same time as it was created by the Maykop culture in the northern Caucasus and somewhere in Central Europe as well.

Brute forcing used to be easier and there were once a lot more backdoors. However, while the hacking game may have become harder for the hacker, that doesn’t mean they haven’t continued to evolve and find ingenious new ways to gain access. In both the cases of malicious hacking, and just hacking to get control of our own property, the world of cyber security is a many headed hydra that grows two heads for every one you cut off. 

10. Phone Phreaking May Mostly Be Over, But There Are Still A Number Of Tricks 

Back in the day of pay phones and analog landlines, there were quite a number of incredible tricks people could do using the phone system. These were basically the original hackers and they were often known as phone phreakers. Among their many tricks, they could use certain frequencies to get themselves free long distance calls from any pay phone, and could hack into elevator phones to troll people in real time. While these sorts of tricks have been phased out of existence, there are still some useful little tricks you can do with phone codes. 

There are quite a number of useful star codes, although many of them no longer require the star based on what type of mobile phone program you are using. If you use the 67 code you can hide your identity, and with the 69 code you can call back any number that just called you, although this doesn’t always work if their number is hidden. However, one of the most useful tricks that many people don’t know about is that you can often bypass the phone’s transfer system and dial an extension directly. On Android, you need to select the three dots when dialing the number and then add a 2 second pause before the extension. On Ios, you should be able to create this pause by holding the star key. 

9. Hackers Are Looking For Unsecured Wifi Enabled Baby Monitors For Some Devilish Fun

Baby monitors today are often wifi connected and some even have cameras. They also often boast smartphone apps and other remote ways of viewing your baby from literally anywhere. This convenience is great, but it presents some risks. Unfortunately, there are malicious people out there who don’t consider even babies to be sacred from nasty trolling. These trolls are hacking into baby monitors and using voice changers to creep out the babies they manage to find vulnerable. Now, some may assume this is because people are not changing their passwords, but this is not always the case.

According to Chuck Beardsley from the cyber security company Rapid7, who did a study on baby monitors in 2015, they are woefully unprotected. Possibly because manufacturers just didn’t imagine people being so evil, they lack many of the common security features you see in modern computers. This means that even updating your firmware and changing your password may not always be enough. His recommendation is to go old school and get a baby monitor that is not connected to the internet. 

8. Many Farmers Are Becoming Amateur Hackers So They Can Repair Their Own Equipment 

When you think of hackers, you probably think of young people dressed up in crazy getups hiding in a dark room somewhere clacking away at a keyboard while muttering about how they just “got in”. What you usually don’t think of, is the average American farmer, out somewhere miles from any city. Unfortunately, due to a trend in the tech and automotive industry, farmers are now turning to hacking in order to repair and maintain their own equipment that they bought with their own money. 

Companies like John Deer are notorious especially for locking down their firmware and having contracts that only allow repair and maintenance at specified dealerships.  Farmers find this unacceptable because many of the dealerships are quite a distance from their farm, and the mechanics who are needed sometimes take too long to reach the dealership. This can cause serious crop losses, which John Deer will not compensate the farmers for, and according to the contracts they sign they can’t sue over it either. John Deer argues these rules are necessary to make sure John Deer products are kept safe and well maintained. However, the problem with this argument is that they are the ones who designed them to be this way in the first place, so this may not be the best line of defense for them to take. 

7. A Computer With An Allegedly Unhackable Prototype Chip Has Held Up Well So Far In Testing 

Many of us have been told that there basically is no such thing as an unhackable computer system. Common wisdom holds that given enough time, especially without constant counter defense, anything could be broken into. For the longest time this was true, but researchers at the University of Michigan have been working to end that by creating what they hope is a truly unhackable computer chip. 

Dubbed “Morpheus” by its creators, the chip was attacked last year over a three month event by a team of 500 white hat hackers. No one was able to break through, and thus far the chip still remains unhacked. Now, this does not mean it will remain unhackable forever, as the creators have certainly thrown down the gauntlet to every hacker in the world who wants to make a name for themselves, but it is holding up remarkably well so far. The lead researcher, Todd Austin, explains that in less complicated terms, the reason it is so hard to hack is constantly altering. The metaphor he uses is that trying to hack Morpheus is like trying to solve a rubix cube that completely rearranges itself every time you blink. 

6. Tesla Owners Have Also Found Themselves Hacking To Avoid Ridiculous Maintenance Fees

Tesla has become a very popular company lately as their electric cars are very high quality, and they have put together a very slick campaign over the years headed by their charismatic founder. The problem is that as cars become more and more computerized, especially electric cars on the cutting edge, they become more complex to fix and easier for companies to lock down. Tesla is very strict about locking down their systems to make it hard for amateurs or third party mechanics to repair them, but due to the incredibly high cost of some repairs at official sites, many are hacking the system and repairing their own Tesla anyways, or taking it to shops that will. 

One man had his battery ruined by road debris and Tesla quoted him a bill of $16,000. A mechanic named Richard Benoit who fixes Teslas outside the system did it for $700. In another case, the same mechanic fixed a Tesla for $5,000 when Tesla had quoted the customer over $20,000 for the repair. When fans of Tesla and other groups asked Tesla for confirmation of these prices for repair, they refused  to confirm or deny. 

5. Some Scammers Now Call You First And Get You To Let Them In 

As security for computers becomes increasingly harder to get into, many  hackers are now looking for other ways to get in. A lot of hackers have decided that the easiest way to get into your computer is to just straight up ask you to let them in, and then do whatever they want once they are inside. Imagine a burglar who decides that instead of breaking into your home in the dead of night, he is going to convince you that he is a man coming to test your water supply, and then steal the electronics in your living room while you go to get him a glass of water from the kitchen. 

This is basically the mindset behind one of the most popular new scams among hackers and thieves looking to get their hands on your information. They will call you up and claim you have a virus, or some special offer, or that they owe you money. In order to get rid of the virus or get the special offer, you need to connect with them using a program called teamViewer, which is sometimes used legitimately to remote connect and fix computer problems. The scam has become so prevalent that TeamViewer has official warnings about it on their website, and official police forces have handed out warnings to their citizens. 

4. Password Reuse Is A Serious Security Vulnerability Many Don’t Think Of

Between streaming services, social media accounts, email, food apps, and every other service we encounter on the internet that wants us to sign up,  it has become exhausting to keep making passwords for all of them. Many people these days do make complex passwords, but the problem is that a lot of people, out of sheer memory fatigue, often reuse their passwords across multiple accounts. 

This is understandably tempting, but it can make you vulnerable to attack. Recently the cyber security firm TrustWatt found a cache located in the Netherlands of more than two million usernames and passwords across various sites, along with all sorts of other data they shouldn’t have on those people’s accounts. Unfortunately, 30% of these people were reusing passwords, which can make them very vulnerable to hackers who will just attempt your password and email across multiple sites you might use and see what happens. It might seem like an almost insurmountable problem to keep up a different and complex password for every single site, but there is a way. There are now multiple companies that make password managers that require you only to keep track of one master password, and they take care of the rest. 

3. Ransomware Has Become A Serious Threat, And Cryptocurrency Helps Them Hide 

Ransomware is a term used for a situation where hackers will lock you out of your own system, usually when your system is extremely critical. They will then demand a huge amount of payment as ransom in order to get control back. While these attacks have always existed, they used to be more focused on small fry. However, in recent years, it seems large hacker groups have decided that with mostly untraceable currencies like bitcoin, they might have a chance at going for the really big fish. 

In particular, 2021 was a banner year for ransomware attacks on infrastructure though, and experts are hoping the companies will greatly increase their security due to the threat. In 2021 the Colonial oil pipeline that supplies half the gas to the East Coast was disrupted by a ransomware attack. A little further down geographically in Brazil in the same year, a ransomware attack disrupted service at two of the country’s largest power plants. And in Norway, an attack on water infrastructure caused a temporary disruption that affected 85% of the country’s water supply. Unfortunately, these were just the highlights from a very bad year for ransomware attacks on critical infrastructure. 

2. Social Engineering Has Become Huge, So Keeping Your Social Media Private Is Important

Big social media companies, government websites, banks, and other juicy targets are becoming harder and harder to brute force or find a backdoor way through. Unfortunately, hackers have ingeniously found one easy way around this particular impediment. With more locked down systems, locked out users still need a way in, and that is where those security questions come in — and the hackers along with them. 

The security questions give you a way to prove that you are you by answering questions only you could answer, especially if you get locked out of the email and can’t remember your password as well. Hackers, realizing this means with security questions they can trick their way into almost anything, have designed cute little Facebook quizzes and instagram memes to get people to divulge this information willingly. The Better Business Bureau has a warning not to answer these quizzes as people can use the information against you. As for further steps, if you are worried about attackers figuring it out through cleverly looking at your old posts, security expert Adam K. Levin suggests you could lie on your security questions — he just cautions keeping the lie consistent as forgetting your fake security question answer could cause a lot of problems.    

1. The Right To Repair Movement Wants To Be Able To Hack And Fix Their Own Property 

Easily the biggest evolution in hacking is that more and more these days, hacking has become a game to fix or modify items that we legally own. Out of this mess, the Right to Repair movement was born: a group of lawyers, enthusiasts, and lobbyists who are trying to get people proper rights to fix their own stuff. 

Some people are confused about the need because in most cases we really do have the right to repair anywhere we want, and those warranty void stickers likely wouldn’t hold up under any real legal scrutiny. However, having the right to legally repair doesn’t necessarily give you the full right to repair. Many of these companies like John Deere have locked up their systems making it hard for an amateur to get in. And it affects more than farmers or Tesla owners — after so many people unlock their phones, telecoms started encrypting the bootloader to make it all but impossible to properly install custom roms.

Right to Repair is quite simple; it’s the idea that companies should not be legally allowed to make it unduly difficult for an amateur or third party mechanic with the right tools to fix or modify an item that you already own. President Biden recently signed an executive order telling the FTC to work on making it easier to fix electronics using a third party, but it is just a start.

It appears you are never too young to start killing. While most kids choose sports, art, or music as hobbies, some decided to exercise with murder. Here are ten killers and the age they started down a dark path.

10 Harvey Miguel Robinson, 17 Years Old

Harvey Miguel Robinson is from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and is one of the youngest serial killers on death row. He was 17 when he first committed murder in August 1992. Police caught Robinson on July 31st, 1993, after he raped but failed to kill Denise Cali on June 28th, 1993. Robinson returned to Cali’s house, where police were waiting. Since Cali bit Robinson’s arm during the initial attack before fleeing, police could match the bite mark to Robinson and convict him. Allentown police also connected Robinson to the rape and murder of the following three women:

• Joan Burghardt: 29-year-old nurse’s aide (August 1992)
• Charlotte Schmoyer: 15-year-old newspaper carrier for The Morning Call (June 1993)
• Jessica Jean Fortney: 47-year-old grandmother (July 1993)

The courts convicted Robinson of raping and killing Schmoyer, Burghardt, and Fortney on November 10th, 1994, and sentenced him to death for all three cases. In April 1995, the courts also convicted him of raping a 5-year-old girl and sentenced him to an additional 57 years in prison. In April 2006, Robinson got a resentence to life imprisonment for the Joan Burghardt murder because he was only 17 at the time. He also exchanged his appeal rights for a life sentence in the Schmoyer case on December 14th, 2012. As of 2020, he still has the death penalty for the Fortney murder.

9 Craig Price, 13 Years Old

Craig Chandler Price is from Warwick, Rhode Island, and currently imprisoned at the Florida State Prison in Raiford. Craig was 13 years old when he killed 27-year-old Rebecca Spencer, a neighbor who lived two doors down from his house. Price stabbed Spencer 58 times. He wasn’t a suspect for Spencer’s murder but confessed to the crime when police caught him two years later for killing three additional neighbors while high on drugs in 1989. The victims were 39-year-old Joan Heaton and her daughters Jennifer and Melissa, who were 10 and 8. He stabbed them over 30 times with wounds so deep the handles broke off the knives. He also crushed Melissa’s skull. Price did not show signs of remorse for killing the Heatons, even imitating the sounds of their death cries. 

Due to his age, Price couldn’t face trial and was committed to a juvenile correctional institution called the Rhode Island Training School. However, in 2004, Price transferred from Rhode Island to Florida because of his violent tendencies. He was also denied parole in March 2009. Although the courts set his release date for May 2020, they sentenced him to an additional 25 years on January 18th, 2019, for stabbing an inmate Joshua Davis on April 4th, 2017. 

8 Jasmine Richardson, 12 Years Old

Jasmine Richardson and her Romeo, Jeremy Steinke, flipped the classic story of forbidden love. Instead of committing suicide, they murdered anyone that got in their way. At 12 years old, Richardson started dating 27-year-old Steinke after meeting at a punk rock show in 2006. However, her parents aggressively disapproved of their relationship due to the age gap. On April 23rd, 2006, the couple decided to go on a murder spree by killing Richardson’s parents, Marc and Debra, and her 8-year-old brother Jacob. A 6-year-old neighbor found the bodies in the Richardson’s home at Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. 

Steinke admitted to police that Richardson wanted her parents dead so she could be free from them. He even told her father, “It’s what your daughter wanted,” as Marc died from stab wounds. Jasmine Richardson was the one to stab her brother in the neck. On July 9th, 2007, the court convicted Richardson and Steinke each with three counts of first-degree murder. Richardson was one of the youngest people to be convicted of multiple first-degree murders in Canada. However, convicts under fourteen in Canada cannot receive more than a ten-year sentence. In contrast, Steinke received three life sentences on December 15th, 2008. 

Richardson started attending classes at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, for the final years of her sentence and was released into a psychiatric hospital in 2011. With evidence of rehabilitation, Richardson completed her sentence in May 2016. 

7 Mary Bell, 10 Years Old

With an impoverished life and a mother who tried to kill her multiple times, Mary Bell decided to take a dark path before her 11th birthday. On May 25th, 1968, Bell took 4-year-old Martin Brown to a deserted house in Newcastle, England, and strangled him to death. Although she later left notes confessing to the murder, the police didn’t take her seriously. Two months later, she killed again. Bell left the body of 3-year-old Bryan Howe in the same area she left Brown’s. This time, the police arrested her.

In December 1968, the courts convicted her of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. The court-appointed psychiatrist described her as having classic symptoms of psychopathy. Police reports indicated she had carved an “M” into Howe’s body and mutilated him, including using scissors to cut off his genitals. Bell spent 12 years in prison. She was released in 1980 when she was 23. She now lives with her daughter with a new identity. 

6 Joseph Mcvay, 10 Years Old

On January 2nd, 2011, at their home in Holmes County, Ohio, Joseph McVay, age 10, shot his mother, Deborah McVay, age 46. According to his sister, Shawna McVay, Joseph was tired of fighting with his mom and used a 22 caliber rifle to shoot her. He then went to his neighbor’s house, called 911, and told the dispatcher, “I shot my mom. I shot her with a gun.” Joseph pleaded guilty to one count of murder the same day of the incident. The court found him incompetent for trial until early 2013, when they sentenced him in juvenile court at 13. 

The official motive was Joseph was arguing with his mom over chores. To avoid bringing in firewood from outside, he fired a shot into his mother’s head instead. However, there is the question as to how long the intent to kill may have been brewing. Interviews with family members and school administrators indicated his mother physically, emotionally, and verbally abused him. Joseph also showed signs of anger and aggression before the murder, like in September 2007, when he swatted a school administrator with a dustpan. 

5 Cayetano Santos Godino, 9 Years Old

Cayetano Santos Godino, also known as El Petiso Orejudo or Macrotous Runt, was a serial killer and arsonist from Buenos Aires, Argentina that started down his killing path young. He beat a 2-year-old, left him in a ditch when he was 7, and beat another kid with a stone when he was 8. Due to his young age, the police released him from jail time. But, these beatings were just the beginning. A year later, in 1906, Godino killed 3-year-old Maria Rosa Face and got away with it.

It wasn’t until he confessed to police years later that he strangled her and buried her alive in a ditch did anyone connect him to the crime. In 1912, before he turned 16 in October, Godino started a spree of destruction. His attacks include:

• Arturo Laurona: 13-year-old, killed and left in an abandoned house (January 26th)
• Reyna Vainicoff: 5-year-old killed by setting fire to her dress (March 7th)
• Roberto Russo: 8-year-old choked but survived (November 8th)
• Carolina Neolener: 2-year-old kidnapped but rescued (November 20th)

On December 4th, 1912, police finally arrested and jailed Godino after he killed Jesualdo Giordano. Godino took Giordano to a country house, tried to choke him, beat him, and eventually killed him by hammering a nail into the side of his skull.

Following this incident, Godino entered a youth detention center on January 4th, 1913. Medical reports declared him insane after he tried to kill some inmates. The judge ended the case and ordered him to stay in the center. An appeal approved him to move back to jail on November 20th, 1915. Godino later transferred to Ushuaia Penitentiary on March 28th, 1923, where he died in 1944. 

4 Christian Romero, 8 Years Old

On November 5th, 2008, Christian Romero from St. Johns, Arizona, committed a double murder at eight years old. He was accused of killing his father, Vincent Romero, with a 22-caliber rifle before shooting a family friend who rented a room at their house, Tim Romans.

Romero pleaded guilty to one count of negligent homicide in 2009 for killing Romans, but the court never charged him with his father’s death, despite the suspicion that it was premeditated. Prosecution attorney Michael Whiting explained that his father’s killing was dropped because it was in Romero’s best interest the court didn’t force him to acknowledge the killing. 

Romero lived under the supervision of the Apache County Superior Court in a secure, supervised group home. His probation terms included receiving treatment and mental health evaluations instead of punishment. In 2015, 15-year-old Romero was recommended by an Apache County probation officer, Julie Nicholson, to attend public school. 

3 Carroll Cole, 8 Years Old

Born on May 9th, 1938, in Sioux City, Iowa, Carroll Cole was a serial killer who started killing at the young age of 8. After his family moved to Richmond, California, Cole was emotionally abused by his younger sister at home and often teased at school. In 1947, he retaliated against a classmate, 8-year-old Duane, by drowning him in a lake. Although at the time, authorities ruled it as an accident, Cole confessed years later in an autobiography that it was intentional.

As a teenager, Cole committed several petty crimes, was discharged from the Army for bad conduct, and in 1960 attacked two couples in parked cars on lover’s lane. He attempted to strangle numerous women in the years following, including an 11-year-old girl in Missouri. This crime led him to a five-year prison sentence. 

Since his first murder at 8, Cole didn’t successfully kill again until May 7th, 1971, when he strangled Essie L. Buck to death. However, it wasn’t until November 1980 that police arrested Cole for fatally strangling three women in Texas. The courts convicted Cole of the three murders on April 9th, 1981, and he was executed by lethal injection on December 6th, 1985. Before his death, Cole claimed he had gotten away with the murders of at least fourteen other women in the nine years prior to 1980.

2 Amarjeet Sada, 7 Years Old

Amardeep Sada, also known as Amarjeet, not only started killing young but had some of the youngest victims. His three murders in Bihar, India, were all babies under one year old. When he was 7, he killed his 8-month-old sister and 6-month-old cousin but got away because his parents helped cover up the crime. Some villagers also knew of the killings but did not report it because they considered it a family matter. A year later, in January 2007, he killed Kushboo, a neighbor’s 6-month-old daughter. Police finally caught him. Sada happily confessed to taking Kushboo from daycare, strangling her, and hitting her on the head with a stone. He became known as India’s youngest serial killer. 

The Bhagwanpur police in the Musahari village said Sada smiled a lot and spoke very little when being questioned about his crimes. Psychoanalyst, Shamshad Hussain, said Sada was a sadist who derives pleasure from inflicting injuries. However, a former psychology professor of Patna University said he did not have a sense of right or wrong. Superintendent Amit Lodha declared the case a psychiatric one, and Sada needed to be evaluated by professionals. Finding he had a chemical imbalance and needed help, Sada ended up staying in a children’s home until he turned 18. 

1 Carl Newton Mahan, 6 Years Old

While there could be younger murderers that got away with their crimes, Carl Newton Mahan has claimed the title of the youngest known killer in American history. He became Kentucky’s youngest murder defendant after using a 12-gauge shotgun to kill a friend on May 18th, 1929. Mahan fought with 8-year-old Cecil Van Hoose in their impoverished coal-mine town over who could sell a scrap of iron. Hoose ended up slapping Mahan in the face with the iron scrap.

Mahan ran home to retrieve his father’s shotgun before declaring to Hoose, “I’m going to shoot you!” and pulled the trigger. Less than a week later, Mahan was on trial for the murder, where he often lay on the defense counsel’s table or slept. A jury convicted Mahan of manslaughter, and the judge sentenced him to 15 years of reform school. 

There was contradicting public opinion on whether manslaughter was too harsh or not enough as a conviction. A Circuit Court judge overturned the conviction, saying a county judge should decide juvenile cases. Finally, Kentucky’s attorney general became responsible for making the final decision and announced he would take no action against Mahan. Mahan was allowed to remain with his parents.

While there’s no official definition of the term ‘Bronze Age’, it generally refers to the period between the Stone and Iron ages. It was a pivotal era in human history, as most early advances crucial for civilization – like writing and the wheel – were made during this time, thanks to prominent civilizations and cultures like the Sumerians, Assyrians, Akkadians, and many others. It wasn’t all happy times, either, as the Bronze Age also gave birth to powerful armies backed by newfound metal weapons and military tactics. 

10. Nuragic Civilization

The Nuragic civilization on the Mediterranean island of Sardinia originated from prehistoric Neolithic settlements around 7000-1600 BC. It was an indigenous, autonomous culture that we know little about due to their lack of written language, though we know that the island had a history of human settlement thousands of years before that.

A characteristic feature of the Nuragic civilization was their construction of nuraghi towers – circular stone structures that could reach heights of over 90 feet. We don’t exactly know what they were used for, though going by their shape and structure, they could have been homes, fortresses, or even observatories. 

Their eventual decline has been attributed to various possible factors, including foreign invasions, changing ecosystems, and technological advances in nearby regions that rendered Nuragic technology obsolete. 

9. Akkadian Empire

Also referred to as one of the first empires in history, the Akkadian Empire was an ancient Mesopotamian civilization founded around 2350 BC by an emperor called Sargon. It was a historical shift for the region, unifying the indigenous Akkadian-speaking Semites and Sumerian speakers under a single rule for the first time. At its peak, the Akkadian Empire controlled vast territories across ancient Mesopotamia, parts of Iran, and the Levant. 

Throughout this time, trade routes flourished across the region, connecting emerging markets with resources from places like Anatolia’s silver mines and Afghanistan’s lapis lazuli mines. All of this was supported by an interconnected network of agricultural farms in northern Mesopotamia, protected by a network of fortresses.

Ultimately, the empire fell to the Gutian invasion of 2150 BC, leading to a period of regional decline, famine, and drought across Mesopotamia. 

8. Canaan

Canaan refers to the historical region in the Levant region centered in modern-day Palestine, along with the territories of present-day Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Israel. The origin of its name is still debated, with theories suggesting connections to the biblical grandson of Noah, the purple dye trade flourishing in the region at the time, or even philosophical concepts of order and chaos. Regardless of its name, however, there’s little doubt that it was a distinct civilization with its own culture. 

Archaeological evidence traces human settlement in the area all the way back to the Paleolithic Age, particularly around Jericho – one of the world’s oldest urban centers. Cities of Canaan began to flourish during the early Bronze Age, as Canaanites established trade routes with civilizations across the region, especially Egypt. Canaan was also one of the most-affected civilizations during the mysterious Bronze Age Collapse, directly leading to the rise of the Hebrews and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

7. Shang Dynasty

Modern historians recognize the Shang dynasty as the earliest confirmed Chinese dynasty based on documentary and archaeological evidence. It existed in the north-Chinese plains from around 1600 BC to 1046 BC, though its exact founding and ending dates vary among sources. The Dynasty is still remembered for its contributions to Bronze-Age Chinese civilization, especially in bronze craftsmanship that gave them a distinct strategic advantage in warfare.

The Shang’s origins could be traced back to the overthrow of the mythical Xia dynasty. Archaeological excavations at Anyang in present-day Henan Province have revealed numerous bones and bronze artifacts from the era. Thanks to that, we now know that the Shang society had a functioning, well-defined social hierarchy, with kings serving sacred, often-ritualistic roles while a council of advisers managed the kingdom’s day-to-day affairs.

6. New Kingdom Of Egypt

The New Kingdom of Egypt flourished from around 1550 to 1070 BC. It was a pivotal era in ancient-Egyptian history, marked by imperial expansion, memorable pharaoh kings, and cultural achievements that had an influence on many future civilizations around the world. This period is also sometimes called ‘Imperial Egypt’ due to its similarity to the empires of the future. 

The New Kingdom era gave birth to some of the most well-known Egyptian pharaohs today, including Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, Tutankhamun, and Ramesses II. It was also the first time the term ‘pharaoh’ was used to refer to Egyptian kings. It’s the most well-documented period of Egyptian history, thanks to literacy, foreign diplomacy, and trade relations that proliferated during this time. As Egypt interacted with other nations, written contracts, treaties, and letters between rulers became essential, resulting in the extensive written records from the period we can still access today. 

5. Oxus Civilization

The Oxus civilization – or the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex, based on early terminology surrounding the research site in the former Soviet Union and Afghanistan – existed from around 2300 to 1700 BC. It was spread across a vast region spanning modern-day north Afghanistan, east Turkmenistan, south Uzbekistan, and west Tajikistan, predominantly along the upper Amu Darya or Oxus River. 

While we don’t know much about this civilization, we know that at its peak, the BMAC featured sprawling urban centers, fortified structures, advanced pottery, and sophisticated craftsmanship in tools and jewelry. It was primarily a desert society existing in the harsh climate of the Karakum Desert, as they relied on ancient oasis agriculture for sustenance. Despite these challenges, however, they developed extensive irrigation systems for wheat and barley cultivation and raised livestock on a large scale.

4. Minoan Civilization

Also sometimes referred to as one of the earliest Western European civilizations, the Minoan Civilization was a Middle Bronze Age culture founded sometime around 2000 BC on the Greek island of Crete. The Minoans were known for their unique art, architecture, and cultural influence across the Aegean, forming the basis for ancient Greece, Rome, and many more western civilizations to follow. 

The Minoan civilization featured elaborate palace complexes, vibrant, giant frescoes, intricate gold jewelry, and pottery made with advanced techniques for the time. The term ‘Minoan’ was coined by Sir Arthur Evans – an archaeologist that made groundbreaking discoveries at Knossos between 1900 and 1905, proving the existence of an advanced Cretan culture we didn’t know about until that time. Interestingly, the ruins showed no signs of military fortifications, suggesting a culture of relative peace among its communities. 

3. Gojoseon

While we don’t know exactly when it was founded, the Gojoseon dynasty had turned into an important early-Korean kingdom by the fourth century BC. According to some instances in Korean mythology, it was established in 2333 BCE by Dangun Wanggeom – a mythical king born from a god and a bear-turned-woman. While we’re not sure about the legitimacy of this claim, Dangun’s birthdate is still celebrated as National Foundation Day in South Korea.

Gojoseon is believed to have formed through alliances of small fortified towns in the Daedong and Liao River basins, likely beginning in the seventh century BC and solidifying around the fourth century BC. It marked an advanced cultural period in the early history of the Korean Peninsula, setting the stage for more centralized states in later periods. Still, many aspects of this society remain a mystery due to lack of records, like its precise status as a state, the location of its capital, and the true extent of its territorial power.

2. Assyrian Empire

Assyria was a major Semitic kingdom in the ancient Near East that existed as an independent state from about 2500 BC to 604 BC. Situated in the northern Mesopotamian region covering modern-day northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, and southeastern Turkey, it reached its peak during the Neo-Assyrian period from 911 BC to 612 BC, covering a vast territory from the Mediterranean to Persia, and from the Caucasus Mountains to Egypt. 

Assyria was an important Bronze Age civilization known for its technological advancements across the known world, including the use of bronze – and later iron – for weaponry and the development of an extensive road network. The Assyrian society was heavily militarized, with mandatory military service for free male citizens.

1. Sumer

Another strong contender for the earliest civilization in history, Sumer was founded between 4500 and 4000 BC in the southernmost region of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. It began with the arrival of the Ubaid people, bringing their knowledge of agriculture, trade, and craftsmanship – including metalwork, pottery, and weaving – with them. These advancements would give rise to one of the greatest and most-influential early civilizations – by 3300 BCE, the Sumerians had established themselves as the dominant culture in the region.

Sumer thrived as a collection of monarchist city states, including Uruk, Ur, and Nippur, with each city worshiping its own deity. The Sumerians were known for their contributions to language, notably the invention of cuneiform writing that allowed extensive record-keeping and the creation of the earliest known laws. Their art and architecture was also advanced for the time, with grand religious structures, ziggurats, and intricate sculptures found across the major cities of the civilization.

We’ve all heard about the Ice Age which happened about 2.5 million years ago, but did you know there was also a Little Ice Age, which took place just a few centuries ago? This phenomenal change in climate saw temperatures plummeting across the globe. Rivers and seas froze, people starved to death and glaciers destroyed entire towns as they expanded at a crazy rate. This list explores some of the most incredible facts about this unusual period in time.

10 Cool Facts About The Ice Age

10 It wasn’t that little at all

The Little Ice Age lasted for over 500 years between approximately 1300 and 1850 AD. During this time, there were two especially cold periods, one lasting from 1300 to the late-1400s and the next from 1645 to the mid-1800s. During these periods, the average winter temperature in Europe and North America dropped to as low as 2°C, significantly colder than the average temperatures of these continents today.

In fact, it was so cold that the Baltic Sea froze over entirely and pack ice from the Arctic expanded so far south into the Atlantic that shipping to Iceland was made impossible. For 310 years, no ships could travel to Greenland. Many major rivers in Europe and North America froze too with heavy snowfalls lasting well into the spring months.

9 No one can agree on how or why it began

There are many differing theories as to how the Little Ice Age was triggered. Some point to the low level of sunspot observations made during this period. They claim that the lack of sunspots would have led to reduced solar radiation and, therefore, a cooler surface temperature of the earth.

Others claim that a series of massive tropical volcanic eruptions were the cause of the icy period. They suggest that these eruptions caused tiny particles called aerosols to enter the air. These aerosols reflected solar radiation from the sun back out of the Earth’s atmosphere, meaning that the sun did not have its normal warming effect on the globe.

Another theory suggests that the Little Ice Age may have actually been man-made. The arrival of European colonists in the Americas in the late-fifteenth century caused a mass spread of disease amongst native inhabitants. It is estimated that up to 56 million people died from diseases brought over by colonists. This meant that thousands of hectares of cultivated land was abandoned and reclaimed by nature. The mass reforestation led to a growth in CO2, which had a cooling effect on the Earth.

These are just some of the main theories for the occurrence of the Little Ice Age – many more exist, and scientists and historians continue to argue over which one is correct.

8 Expanding glaciers literally crushed entire towns

As the climate cooled, one of the most significant effects was the advancement of glaciers. This starkly contrasts today’s warming climate which has led to a retreat in glaciers across the globe. Glacial advancement was so strong during the Little Ice Age that glaciers also started to grow in typically warm Mediterranean regions including Albania, Spain, Greece, Turkey and even Morocco.

There is evidence that in the Alps and Scandinavia advancing glaciers caused by the Little Ice Age actually destroyed entire towns. The ice literally steamrolled over anything in its path leaving thousands homeless. The glaciers would also destroy dams, leading to floods that would wreak more havoc on communities, killing livestock and hundreds of people. Scandinavian tax records from the time indicate that many farmers had to abandon their farms as it became clear that the glacial ice slowly creeping towards their land was not going to stop.

7 Summers were not summery

“At this time there was such a great cold that we almost froze to death in our quarters,” a soldier wrote in his diary whilst traveling through Germany in 1640. “And,” he went on, “on the road, three people did freeze to death: a cavalry-man, a woman, and a boy.” What is shocking about this entry is that it was written in August!

During the Little Ice Age, summers were often cool and wet. In Scotland, people reported that the that the Cairngorm Mountains were never without snow above 1200m. During this period, oranges which were typically grown during the summer months in China’s Jiangxi Province, could no longer be harvested.

6 It caused mass starvation

The increased periods of rain and unusually cold summers meant that crops died and entire harvests failed at an alarming rate. Wine became extremely difficult to grow and even fishing was affected, as cod migrated further south to the warmer waters around Africa. More northerly regions were especially badly hit. In Iceland, very few harvests survived, leading to the deaths of over half of the island’s population due to starvation.

A particularly dreadful period of the Little Ice Age was the Great Famine of 1315-22, where torrential periods of rain waterlogged agricultural areas and made planting crops impossible. Starvation and malnutrition quickly swept across Europe and it is estimated that the continent lost between 5 and 10 percent of its population to the famine.

One crop that did well out of the Little Ice Age was the potato, which grew successfully even in particularly cold conditions. In fact, its increased use by Europeans at that time is one of the main reasons it is such a popular staple of our diets today.

5 People blamed witches and others for their troubles

As starvation and freezing temperatures continued, people began looking for a scapegoat for their troubles. They focussed on witches as they believed the weather could only be manipulated by a supernatural force. Between 1560 and 1630, it’s estimated that over 45,000 people were tried and executed for witchcraft, the vast majority of whom were women. In many cases, the primary accusation against the victim was that they had tampered with the weather in order to cause the harvests to fail. The majority of executions involved burning the accused person at the stake as this was considered the most reliable way to destroy a witch.

Other scapegoats of the time included the Jewish population and other marginalized groups who were also the victims of much discrimination and acts of cruelty during this period.

4 It had a role in some of the biggest events in European history of the time

Some of the most well-known historical events in Europe can be linked to the effects of the Little Ice Age.

For instance, it is believed that the high levels of malnutrition and starvation which were caused by the Little Ice Age weakened people’s immune systems, allowing diseases such as the Black Death to become far more prevalent than they might have been. In 1588, the Spanish Armada was almost entirely wiped out by an Arctic hurricane which was formed due to the harsh conditions of the Little Ice Age and in 1666, the Great Fire of London, which claimed over 4/5ths of the city, was worsened by the extremely dry conditions that preceded the previously bitter winter.

But the Little Ice Age didn’t only have negative effects on history. Scientists suggest it may be responsible for creating the famed Stradivarius violins, produced by Antonio Stradivari in the seventeenth century. They claim that the freezing winters and cool summers caused a slowdown in the growth of trees which created denser wood. This denser wood was used by Stradivari to make his unique violins that have superior sound qualities and which people pay tens of thousands for today.

The Little Ice Age truly left its fingerprint on European history.

3 It was so cold that ‘frost fairs’ were held on the River Thames

The River Thames in London was known to regularly freeze over during the winter months in the period of the Little Ice Age. This led to a new phenomenon called ‘frost fairs’. These fairs saw sellers set up their market stalls directly on the ice and sell to passers-by. Drinks were sold from hastily set-up pubs and children would take the opportunity to skate on the river, something that would be inconceivable in modern day London.

There was a total of seven major fairs held between 1607 and 1814 with many smaller fairs being held at other times too. Of course, holding huge fairs on ice did not come without its fair share of incidents. In 1739, a huge chunk of ice broke, swallowing many market stalls, tent’s and people. During another instance in 1789, a ship, which had been anchored to a house on the side of the Thames, was carried away by melting chunks of ice, causing it to pull the foundations from underneath the house. The building crumbled and resulted in the deaths of five people who were sleeping at the time.

2 It sparked a wave of new fashion trends

With extreme changes in the weather, people were forced to adapt their clothing. The sixteenth century saw a growth in the popularity of floor length coats and people tended to wear far more undergarments than before. Spanish dresses, which have survived until now, provide some evidence of the climate of the era. They are made up of several layers of fabric and the materials which are used are thick and heavy.

Of course, it should not be forgotten that keeping up with fashionable trends was a luxurious pastime that only the elite members of society could afford to do. Whilst they looked for new ways in which to remain warm whilst staying on-trend, peasants, which made up the majority of the population, were starving and fighting just to survive.

1 It may have caused the “Enlightenment”

There are theories that the Little Ice Age had such a significant impact on European society that it actually caused economic, social and intellectual changes that resulted in the period we now know as the Enlightenment.

German historian, Philipp Blom, argues that the freezing weather destroyed harvests and caused mass migration into cities. The quick growth in these cities led to the emergence of early capitalism. With this monumental change came a wave of new attitudes to religion, scientific thinking, society, art and culture. In order for communities to tackle the crisis together, the sharing of knowledge between different thinkers and regions became more widespread along with the trading of goods in order to survive. Blom even suggests that the sudden changes in weather and the way in which humans had to adapt is similar to the climate crisis the world is currently facing today and the adaptations people will have to make as it gets worse.

Top 10 Reasons Life Was Better In The ’90s

About The Author: My name is Aidan and I am interested in history, writing, reading and climbing. I have a BA in History and American Studies and an MA in Global History. I really enjoy researching stuff and coming up with new lists so  is a great place to submit to.

It’s not unusual for actors to play characters that differ in age from themselves. The pattern of older men playing across from much younger women appears to have been a popular choice since the Golden Age of Hollywood and hasn’t stopped since then. Although sometimes an age difference is necessary for the plot of a film, in a lot of cases, there’s no logical reason for such a large age difference between leading actors. And some of these age gaps make up feel uncomfortable watching the film as if we are supposed to simply ignore it.

Whether necessary or not, here are 10 of the largest real-life age gaps between on-screen partners

Related: 10 Shocking Weight Transformations By Actors For Films

10 Gerard Butler & Emmy Rossum: Phantom of the Opera

The 2004 film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s stage show saw then-17-year-old Emmy Rossum earn a Golden Globe nomination for her role opposite 33-year-old Gerard Butler. A 16-year age gap isn’t crazy, but since the leading lady was yet to turn 18, it makes the film a bit weird to watch.

The age difference of the leading couple could have been even greater if the original choice of lead, Hugh Jackman (35 at the time), wasn’t already committed to Van Helsing. Katie Holmes was an option for the role of Christine, as was Anne Hathaway. Both would’ve still left a notable age gap (Holmes was 25 at the time while Hathaway was 21) but not as significant as the final casting.^[1]

9 Gene Kelly & Debbie Reynolds: Singin’ in the Rain

Singin’ in the Rain was Debbie Reynolds’s first starring role—at only the age of 19—and would later be known as her highest-profile film. Alongside seasoned actors Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor, it is now often considered the greatest musical film ever made.

Gene Kelly, who also directed and choreographed the film, was 40 when he played alongside teenage Reynolds. Despite being a grueling process, Reynolds later stated, “Singin’ in the Rain and childbirth were the two hardest things I ever had to do in my life.” She always had respect for her experienced scene partner and director, who she said “made me a star…[and] taught me how to dance and how to work hard and be dedicated.”^[2]

8 Bing Crosby & Rosemary Clooney: White Christmas

White Christmas was the most successful film of 1954 and the highest-grossing musical at that time. The legendary cast saw Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye play opposite on-screen sisters Rosemary Clooney and Vera-Ellen.

The success of the song “White Christmas,” originally from Holiday Inn back in 1942, led to the creation of White Christmas, with Crosby as the leading man once again. Clooney, only 26 at the time of filming, was only a year older than Marjorie Reynolds when she played Crosby’s leading lady in Holiday Inn 12 years before. Crosby, in comparison, was 51 in 1954, giving a 25-year age gap between him and Clooney. Interestingly, although Clooney played the elder of the two sisters, she was actually seven years younger than Vera-Ellen.^[3]

7 Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall: To Have and Have Not

Lauren Bacall was a model prior to the film To Have and Have Not when the wife of the director Howard Hawks saw her on the cover of Harper’s Bazaar. After a screen test, the unknown actress had a contract. In the 19-year-old’s film debut, Bacall’s originally small role was revised into the leading lady of To Have and Have Not. The new star played opposite established actor Humphrey Bogart, who was 45 at the time.

Although the film was often compared to Casablanca in unfavorable terms, the film launched the career of Bacall, which would see her at minimum be nominated for an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Grammy, Emmy, and Tony. Bogart and Bacall went on to make three more movies together, including Key Largo in 1948. The 26-year age gap seemed to be no problem for the couple, who married in May 1945, seven months after the film’s release. It was Bogart’s third marriage. The pair had two children together and remained married until Bogart’s death in 1957.^[4]

6 Michael Douglas & Gwyneth Paltrow: A Perfect Murder

A remake of the 1958 Hitchcock classic Dial M for Murder, the 1998 film saw 53-year-old Michael Douglas opposite Gwyneth Paltrow, aged 25 at the time. The 28-year age gap is deliberate, a suggestive reason behind Paltrow’s character Emily’s affair with painter David. It’s hard to believe there are less than 30 years between the leading couple, with one critic stating, “Douglas looks every one of his 54 years and then some. Gwyneth Paltrow is 25 and could pass for much younger.”

Hitchcock’s original film also saw an age difference, although not so large. With a 22-year age gap, Ray Milland played retired tennis player Tony across from Grace Kelly’s socialite Margot. A Perfect Murder didn’t quite live up to its predecessor, with one critic noting the film “has inexplicably managed to eliminate almost everything worthwhile about Dial M for Murder, leaving behind the nearly-unwatchable wreckage of a would-be ’90s thriller.” Another acknowledged the age difference, stating that Douglas should “hang up his spurs when it comes to playing a romantic lead with women in their twenties.”^[5]

5 Fred Astaire & Audrey Hepburn: Funny Face

Another classic from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Funny Face saw the union of legends Fred Astaire and Audrey Hepburn. Although not a financial success at the time, it has since been regarded as a masterpiece. Despite being three decades younger than Astaire, 27-year-old Hepburn insisted on him as her leading man.

Astaire had previously announced his retirement in 1946 but returned to the cinema in 1948 in Easter Parade. However, it wasn’t until 1981, 24 years after Funny Face, that Astaire was in his final film, Ghost Story.^[6]

4 Sean Penn & Emma Stone: Gangster Squad

Looking at Stone’s filmography, it appears that she is a popular choice for directors to play opposite older men. This includes Magic in the Moonlight, playing opposite Colin Firth (53), Irrational Man with Joaquin Phoenix (40), and Birdman alongside Edward Norton (45). But it’s in Gangster Squad that we see Stone’s oldest on-screen partner.

Penn played gangster boss Mickey Cohen in the 2013 action thriller. At age 54, he was nearly 30 years older than 25-year-old Stone at the time of the film’s shooting. But it is perhaps that Penn appears older than he is that makes the on-screen couple so shocking to see. What hits harder is that Stone is only three years older than Penn’s own daughter, Dylan.^[7]

3 Liam Neeson & Olivia Wilde: Third Person

Unlike many films on this list, Third Person is a relatively unknown film, having had a limited release in 2014. Nevertheless, the cast list is fairly star-studded, including Mila Kunis, Adrien Brody, Kim Basinger, Olivia Wilde, and Liam Neeson.

It’s the latter two of these stars we see in an on-off romantic relationship. Here, 61-year-old Neeson plays Michael, who recently separated from his wife and remains involved with his lover, played by 29-year-old Wilde. Although a noticeable age gap is necessary for the plot, with 32 years between the on-screen couple, the desired effect could have still been achieved with a much smaller age difference. While the pair provide what is needed from them, unfortunately, the film was given negative reviews from critics and has a score of only 25% on Rotten Tomatoes.^[8]

2 Sean Connery & Catherine Zeta-Jones: Entrapment

As a former James Bond, Sean Connery was no strange to younger, beautiful on-screen romantic partners. But at the age of 68, Connery played opposite then-30-year-old Catherine Zeta-Jones in the 1999 heist film.

The nearly 40-year age gap between the two is never noted in the film, seemingly unimportant to the plot. Only seven years later, in 2006, Connery announced his retirement from acting, while Zeta-Jones has taken several breaks from the screen since the late 2000s. Obviously, this age gap didn’t bother Zeta-Jones as she married Michael Douglas, who is 25 years her senior.^[9]

1 James Mason & Sue Lyon: Lolita

Based on Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel of the same name, the age difference in Lolita is the most disturbing—but also crucial to the plot of the film. With an age gap of 39 years, 53-year-old James Mason plays across Sue Lyon, who was only 14 at the start of filming.

In the unsettling plot involving hebephilia with Mason’s character Humbert and his stepdaughter, the film actually increased the age from the novel where the titular character is only 12. With the filming grossing $9.25 million (on a budget of $2 million) and Lyon winning a Golden Globe for her role, Lolita was undoubtedly a commercial success. There’s something about actually seeing the disturbing relationship on screen that makes the story all the more unsettling than simply reading it on the page of Nabokov’s novel. However, due to Lyon’s age, an of-age body double was used for the more explicit scenes—I would hope so!^[10]

The golden age of flying is now—if you have $30,000 you can have your own personal suite for eight hours of slumber as you waft peacefully above the clouds, interrupted only by gourmet meals crafted by Michelin-starred chefs. But let’s be real, the actual golden age of flying was the early jet age when flying was a thrill, when the jet set were people to be looked up to, and when an airline ticket clutched tightly in your hand meant you were glamorous. But, was it really all it was cut out to be? Read on dear readers . . .

Top 10 Surprising Secrets Of Modern Airliners

10 Everyone Smoked

The only smoke-free-zone was the front rows of first class. Second class had non-smoking zones at the front, but they got second hand smoke from the smokers in first class. If you look at an aircraft, it has a port at the back where the air from inside the cabin, which is 75% port air and 25% fresh air gets recycled back to the interior. This plane’s rear end used to be brown with nicotine, because everyone smoked, and, as a consequence, the air was thick with the stuff.

Aircraft take an air bleed from one of the engines, which is air-conditioned and fed into the front of the plane. So the front part of first class (a separate cabin in those days) was clean air. Behind that was the smoking section of first class, so everyone behind got second hand smoke. Behind that was non-smoking second class, and then smoking second class. By the time you got to to the back of the fuselage, the air was so thick you couldn’t see through it.^[1]

9 It Was Really Noisy

High bypass jet engines, which are a lot quieter, are a relatively recent invention. The jets that powered the VC-10, the Comet 4B, and the Boeing 707 (video above) were really noisy. A Rolls Royce engineer described the engine that powered the Comet 4B as being a device that turned expensive jet fuel into noise. Much of this was transmitted into the passenger cabin. The VC10, a very over-powered airliner, designed for short runs from hot and high runways, used to take off like a rocket, and was correspondingly noisy at the back, where all four jets were.

Modern jets are high-bypass, which means the core gas at hypersonic speeds is surrounded by a sheath of cooler, slower air, reducing the noise enormously. Hush kits reduce the noise further. The noise from one 707 take-off is equivalent in terms of noise impact to ten take-offs of a modern jet.

What didn’t help is that aircraft had to fly from relatively short runways, designed for propeller aircraft, and therefore needed enormous amounts of thrust. The 747 meant that runways got lengthened, reducing the need for overpowered (and thus noisy) planes. Planes are also tailored now towards the routes they will fly, so hot and high airports as found in much of Africa and South America, fly different aircraft. In the early days, every aircraft was expected to fly from a short, hot and high airport.

They’re called ‘hot and high’ because the air is thinner at higher altitudes, and it’s thinner still when the air is hot. So a plane taking off from Lusaka, Zambia needs nearly twice as much power as one at sea-level in temperate latitudes, like London Heathrow. Planes were designed for every condition.^[2]

8 It Was Expensive . . . And It Was Chic

A first class cabin on an Emirates A380 will set you back about 30,000 USD, but flying wasn’t much cheaper in the golden age. A second class seat from Paris to London would set you back £50 when an annual wage was around £2,000. No wonder flying was for the rich and glamorous. To be a member of the Jet Set meant that you had made your place in the world. Mass tourism only really came in with the Jumbo Jet, the 747, which democratized flying.

As you boarded the plane, a photographer would offer you the opportunity of having your photo taken against a background of the tail of the aircraft, displaying the company’s logo, to show that you were really a jet-setter.^[3]

7 Unaccompanied Minors

All airlines used to fly kiddies to and from their parents and boarding schools, they were called unaccompanied minors. They had special badges, and a hostess would see them through transit from one plane to another. Few airlines now offer this service, meaning that kids effectively have to be always accompanied by an adult.

Kids usually got a trip to the cockpit, free gifts like badges and decks of cards (with, of course, the airline logo on the back), and had their Junior Jet Club albums signed by the pilot. Airlines knew that their young customers helped breed brand loyalty. This category of passenger is barely tolerated these days, as they occupy a seat but pay a lower price, and as flying is commoditized they aren’t a market target any more.^[4]

6 It Wasn’t That Safe

The classic aircraft of the early jet era was the Boeing 707, which outsold most other comparable jetliners combined. It has an inbuilt tendency to ‘Dutch roll’, basically wagging its tail in the air, which could develop into a dangerous instability if uncorrected. Consequently it was challenging to fly.

The first jet airliner, the Comet, suffered metal fatigue issues leading to fatal crashes. Early jet engines weren’t that reliable, either, which is why most planes had four, so the flight could still go on if a couple of them failed.

Without sophisticated avionics, such as weather radar, flights weren’t able to predict accurately what they’d be flying through. Rudimentary radar on the ground meant that mid-air collisions happened (they’re virtually unheard of now) several times.

Then there was always the risk of getting hijacked. With the cockpit always open so kids could come and have their view of it, and privileged adult passengers too, anyone could walk into the cabin and demand to be taken to Cuba.^[5]

Top 10 Epic Flight Crew Mishaps And Meltdowns

5 No In-Flight Entertainment

Movies? In-seat entertainment? No. The technology wasn’t up to it. Your entertainment was conversation with your fellow jet-setters, flirting with the hostesses (as flight attendants were called in those days) smoking, drinking and eating. And playing patience with a set of mini-sized BOAC playing cards, designed to fit onto the fold-down tray.

Hostesses were the in-flight entertainment. Most passengers were male, in a male-dominated era. They were not primarily considered, as they are now, as safety specialists concerned about getting people off the aircraft quickly in the event of an accident. They were expected to be female, under 32, unmarried, and sexy. Singapore Airlines still projects this image of the ‘Singapore Girl’ as being a suitable subject of lust.^[6]

4 No Special Treatment In Customs

There were no air bridges in those days. After being cosseted in jet-set luxury, you’d need an umbrella at Heathrow or a fur coat at Sheremetievo because you walked out onto the tarmac and walked, sometimes a considerable distance, to the air terminal. When you got there, there was no air-conditioning or at best rudimentary heating while you went through customs and immigration. Without a Schengen Zone (passport-free European states), there was no relief from the indignities of having your baggage opened and searched, filling in immigration forms, and showing your passport. Not to mention the restrictions on the amount of money you could take abroad, and currency restrictions on how much of it you could change into foreign currency. But there were compensations.^[7]

3 Seat-Side Service

The wide aisle of the 707 meant that first-class passengers enjoyed seat-side service from the rotisserie. Pan Am early realized that they couldn’t compete with the chic airlines like Air France, so they teamed up with Maxims’s of Paris to handle their transatlantic catering. By modern standards, the food wasn’t that exotic (Tournedos Rossini turns up a lot) but the wine list is to die for. No-one seemed too concerned about people getting off the aircraft sozzled, because a typical menu for a transatlantic flight was an aperitif, two wines, and a scotch or brandy after. As many top ups as you’d care for. Of course, jet-setters wouldn’t have to worry about drinking and driving after a flight. They’d have a chauffeur for that.^[8]

2 In-Flight Bars

747s and A380s have in-flight bars, for over 300 passengers, and usually restricted to first class ones. Super Constellations (one of the first luxury transatlantic airliners, though they weren’t jets) had an in-flight bar for about 48 passengers. Some 707s had in-flight bars too. So you could stay sozzled from when the ‘fasten seat belts, no smoking’ signs were turned off until they were turned back on for landing. You could even enjoy a fine cigar: the restriction of ‘cigarettes only, no pipes or cigars’ only came in when the air got too thick.^[9]

1 You Were Special

This is something 2020 airlines have finally caught up with – making people feel special. From 2001 flying became a chore, to be endured as a hassled way of getting to your destination. In the golden age of flying, it was an experience – something to boast about, and show souvenirs of.

First class flying these days means that everything you might want or need is catered for from before you check in until your chauffeured limo takes you to your hotel. But how can that compare with rubbing shoulders (literally) with Marilyn Monroe or Frank Sinatra?^[10]

Top 10 Terrifying Facts About Airplanes

Few things furthered the steady march of history as substantially and exponentially as the Age of Discovery. From the early 1400s through the late 17th Century, Europeans powers took to the seas in search of new land, new riches and new ways to get to far-flung destinations. From the Caribbean to the Americas to Africa and beyond, the world would be radically reshaped for both better and worse.

Here are ten momentous occasions from that adventurous age, in chronological order.

Top 10 Triumphs Of Western Civilization

10 1419: Prince Henry the Navigator and the Science of Seafaring

The man typically credited with kickstarting the Age of Discovery is Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal, Duke of Viseu, better known as Henry the Navigator. Born in 1394, Henry was the fourth child of Portuguese King John I, who reigned until 1433. Fascinated with exploration and blessed with the ample resources of a major European power, Henry played a pivotal role in the development of Portuguese maritime endeavors, including charting new territory and forging new trade routes and partners.

Unsurprisingly given Portugal’s proximity to the “Dark Continent,” Henry was particularly intrigued by Western Africa and, among other excursions, in 1415 he encouraged his father to conquer the Muslim port of Ceuta^[1] in modern-day Morocco, directly across the Strait of Gibraltar from Portugal. In the late 16th Century, Ceuta passed to Spanish hands where it remained until 1995, when Spain granted it autonomy.

But Henry’s most impactful contribution was made not in foreign lands but right at home. In modern-day Sagres on Portugal’s southwestern coast, in 1418, Henry founded a navigation school^[2] where he gathered the era’s most prominent mapmakers, instrument makers, shipbuilders, scientists and sea captains. The cross-discipline meeting of the minds helped attendees perfect their various trades, helping each stand on the others’ shoulders. The school’s site still exists today as a museum in Portugal’s popular Algarve region.

9 1497: Vasco da Gama Connects Europe and India

While Henry the Navigator’s encouraged exploration of Africa certainly intrigued European powers, Africa was also seen as a continent-sized obstacle to a more enviable prize: a convenient seafaring trade route to India’s ports.

Around 1488, Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias^[3] became the first to reach the Cape of Good Hope, Africa’s southern tip. Less than a decade later his countryman, Vasco da Gama,^[4] sought to capitalize on this newfound knowledge by sailing around the cape and on to India – however far that may be.

The voyage was quite an ordeal. Leaving Lisbon on July 8, 1497 with a four-ship fleet, da Gama reached the Cape Verde Islands by month’s end, then took a circuitous route around the Gulf of Guinea’s worrisome currents. The fleet didn’t reach modern-day South Africa until early November, and didn’t round the cape until later that month. By January, stalled near modern-day Mozambique, many of da Gama’s crew were sick with scurvy.

In wasn’t until mid-April, by now in Kenya, that da Gama encountered a pilot who knew the route to Calicut, on India’s southwest coast. From there, a comparably trouble-free 23-day sprint across the Indian Ocean made instant heroes of the long-sputtering Portuguese seamen. Now that the route was known, subsequent voyages could be completed far more expeditiously.

Notably, on his second expedition to India, da Gama is rumored to have stalked and attacked an Arab ship near Calicut, looted its cargo and set it afire, killing up to 400 passengers including women and children. So much for diplomacy.

8 1498: Columbus (Finally) Makes It to the Mainland

Everybody knows that Christopher Columbus bravely sailed west across the ocean and set foot in America. The year was 149-… 8?

Yes, 1498. Because Columbus didn’t set foot on mainland America – South America to be precise – until his third^[5] of four intrepid voyages. In May 1498, Columbus left Spain with six ships, three filled with provisions for the fledgling colony tenuously established on Hispaniola (modern-day Haiti and Dominican Republic), and three hellbent on finding land south of previously charted islands.

He found it. This time, he made landfall on Trinidad, planting the Spanish flag on August 1. His next stop was the Paria Peninsula in modern-day Venezuela, where Columbus’ crew became the first Europeans to reach the American mainland^[6] on August 5, 1498.

In terms of furthering the Age of Discovery, however, Columbus’ fourth and final voyage may have been his most significant. Exploring the Central American coasts of present-day Honduras, Costa Rica and Panama, in 1503 Columbus established a short-lived garrison near Panama’s Belén River, a fortification whose remnants can still be toured today.

Columbus went to such trouble because he’d heard rumors of a waterway leading to another ocean: the so-called Northwest Passage. Though it didn’t exist, the isthmus was narrow enough that, just a decade later…

7 1513: Balboa Discovers the Pacific Ocean

Following his final foray into the New World, Columbus returned to Europe with much to report, including rumors of a potential passage to open ocean via Panama. Soon, a party led by Vasco Núñez de Balboa^[7] of Spain established the first stable settlement on the South American continent at Darién, Panama. And though Balboa’s primary goal was gold, he found something nearly as valuable.

Balboa had been in the New World for years, including an unsuccessful stint as a planter and pig farmer in Hispaniola. Through grit and guile – to escape debtors in Hispaniola, he stowed away in a barrel with his dog – Balboa eventually found himself leading expeditions to find gold for the Spanish crown.

Balboa first heard of the present-day Pacific Ocean in 1513, as an aside to a heated discussion about (what else) gold. A native, angered by the Spaniards’ single-minded greed, disgustedly exclaimed: “If you are so hungry for gold that you leave your lands to cause strife in those of others, I shall show where you can quell this hunger.” He told Balboa of a place where people drank from goblets of gold, but warned a thousand men would be required to conquer tribes living inland and along the coast of “the other sea.”

Despite a manpower shortage, Balboa departed on September 1, 1513. On September 25, he reached a summit from which he saw the vast ocean. Balboa triumphantly waded into the water, raised his sword and claimed the new sea^[8] and all adjoining lands for Spain. A bit presumptuous, no?

6 1513: Ponce de Leon Becomes Europe’s First #FloridaMan

It’s odd that children in the United States are taught that Christopher Columbus discovered America, when Columbus never set foot anywhere near the present-day United States. The distinction of first European on US soil goes to Juan Ponce de Leon, who claimed modern-day Florida for Spain in 1513.

de Leon had already been in the New World quite some time before landing in Florida. He started as a military official in Hispaniola and, in 1509, was appointed governor of Puerto Rico; Ponce, a major city on Puerto Rico’s southern coast, still bears his name.

Of all people, it was a dispute with Christopher Columbus’ son,^[9] Diego, that led to de Leon packing his bags for sunny Florida. On April 2, 1513, de Leon came ashore near St. Augustine, dubbing the peninsula “La Florida” due to the approaching Easter-season celebration, called Pascua Florida (“feast of flowers”) in Spanish. A preview of the utter nonsense^[10] Florida would host half a millennia later, the explorer was searching for the fabled “Fountain of Youth,” a water source said to bring eternal youth.

He didn’t find it. But he did pave the way for a successful Spanish settlement starting in 1565, though this was more than 40 years after de Leon’s death in 1521. Today, St. Augustine is considered the oldest continuous settlement in the United States.^[11] Notably, intermarriage with Native American tribes (and even African slaves) was prevalent early in St. Augustine’s history, an uncommon intermingling during the early Age of Discovery.

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5 1519: The New World’s Most Impactful Import

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés slaughtered thousands of Aztecs, toppled the empire’s capital city of Tenochtitlán, renamed it Mexico City – today the most populous city in the Western Hemisphere – and enriched his country’s coffers with thousands of pounds of gold, silver and jewels…^[12]

… none of which was his most meaningful contribution to history.

Wars happen. Empires rise and fall, and precious metals change hands in bloodshed. But very rarely in human history is something introduced that radically transforms societies across two continents.

That something was the horse.^[13] When Cortes landed in present-day Veracruz, Mexico with 16 steeds, he introduced horses to the New World’s mainland (Columbus had brought them to the Caribbean islands). Subsequent explorers brought ever-growing numbers of horses, which were instrumental in subjugating both the Aztec and Incan Empires.

Soon, the horse would radically change Native American culture.^[14] Vast distances were suddenly traversable, bringing once-segregated tribes into contact for intermarriage, trade, and war. Animals once nearly impossible to hunt on foot – most notably, the thunderous herds of buffalo roaming the North American plains – became easy pickings. The newfound mobility made Native American societies less insular, more multicultural and, per master cavalrymen like the Comanches, certainly more bellicose.^[15]

4 1522: Magellan Comes Full Circle

Well, almost. While an expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan did indeed become the first to circumnavigate the globe, its fearless leader died before the journey’s completion. But not before he named an ocean and proved a point or two.

In 1519, Ferdinand Magellan^[16] set sail from Spain with five ships, with the goal of finding a faster commerce route to the East Indies. No such convenient pathway existed, of course, but what Magellan did discover – after sailing hundreds of miles south down the east coast of modern-day South America – was a narrow waterway near the continent’s southern tip that connected two oceans.

While Balboa had been the first to see (and presumptuously claim) the body of water, Magellan gave what Balboa dubbed the South Sea a better, longer-lasting moniker. Emerging from what is now known as the Strait of Magellan, the explorer marveled at the ocean’s comparable calmness, giving the Pacific – or “peaceful” – Ocean its name.

Magellan never made it all the way back to Spain; in April of 1521 he was killed in a fight with natives in the Philippines. In fact, only one of the original five vessels made it back to Spain the following year. However, the expedition proved two things. First, Earth’s already widely-suspected roundness^[17] was confirmed. Second, and just as importantly, the world was BIG. Like, really big – too big to sail west to get to far-flung established trading posts like the East Indies… at least via modern-day Central and South America.

3 1526: A Dark Year in an Enlightened Era

While brightened by a steady succession of progress – new territory charted and mapped, new cultures encountered, new trade routes developed – the Age of Discovery has a decidedly dark side. The greed-driven bloody conquests of Native American empires such as the Aztecs, Incans and Mayans are strong examples.

But perhaps the greatest injustice inaugurated by the Age of Discovery was the African slave trade – the wholesale kidnapping and carting of human cargo doomed to toil until death in foreign lands.

The first transatlantic voyage delivering African slaves to the New World was completed in 1526, when Portugal carried a boatload of chained chattel to Brazil. They would become the first of an estimated 4.9 million Africans transported to Brazil over the ensuing three-plus centuries, more than any other country in the world (by comparison, “only” about 400,000^[18] were shipped directly to North America).

Often overlooked is that the role of New World slaves went well past agricultural. If they survived the squalid below-deck conditions during the months-long crossing, kidnapped Africans were put to work in wide-ranging ways; in addition to planting and harvesting coffee, tobacco, cocoa, sugar, and cotton, forced labor was used to mine precious metals, cut timber for ships, construct infrastructure (including the wall that gave New York City’s Wall Street its name), and domestic servants.

2 1608: Vive la (New) France: Samuel de Champlain Founds Quebec City

A year before our next explorer, Henry Hudson, claimed New Amsterdam for his Dutch financiers – a short-lived distinction, as the British would siege, seize and promptly rename the colony in 1664 – Samuel de Champlain was up north making sure that French, unlike Dutch, would be widely spoken in the New World for centuries to come.

de Champlain’s seafaring life was impressive well before his marquee moment. From 1604-07, he took part in the exploration and settlement of Port-Royal in present-day Nova Scotia – only the second permanent European settlement in North America (Florida was first). The locale became part of the French colony of Acadia. Notably, when British forces expelled huge swaths of Acadians from the area in the 1750s,^[19] many fled to the fledgling city of New Orleans in French-owned Louisiana. Their modern ancestors are – you guessed it – Cajuns.

But then de Champlain outdid himself: sailing up the St. Lawrence River, he staked out and claimed the location soon to become Quebec City, which to this day remains one of the most charmingly Europeanesque cities in North America, capped with the castle-on-a-hilltop Chateau Frontenac.^[20] The French’s influence over Quebec would steadily grow, and in 1642 a missionary colony was founded that grew up to become the province’s most populous city, Montreal.

1 1609: Henry Hudson’s Happy Accident

Throughout the 1500s and early 1600s, the search for an elusive seafaring shortcut through the New World and on to Asia went on. Sailing for his native England in 1607 and 1608, explorer Henry Hudson took two cracks at finding a northeasterly route through the Arctic Circle. All ice, no dice.

In 1609 Hudson, this time funded by the Dutch East India Company, took a slightly more southerly route, sailing down from present-day Nova Scotia to the Chesapeake Bay. With no east-west waterway in sight, he decided to check out New York,^[21] whose harbor Italian navigator Giovanni da Verrazzano – namesake of the recently spell-checked bridge^[22] connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island – had deemed especially inviting back in 1524.

There he found a wide river that bent inland. Could it be the Northwest Passage? Hudson’s ship, the Half Moon, pushed on. He anchored near the West 40s in Midtown, Manhattan. He stopped in the Bronx, then Westchester, and kept going until he reached modern-day Albany.

He hadn’t, of course, found the Northwest Passage. But what he’d found was, per Hudson, “as beautiful a land as one can hope to tread upon”.^[23] He claimed the region, including the colony soon dubbed New Amsterdam, for the Dutch. Today the valley, the river and an adjacent perpetually congested highway proudly bear Hudson’s name.

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