Scientists have had a busy year, with 2015 a particularly productive year for medicine. We’ve had exciting discoveries, breakthroughs in technology, and new applications for existing products. Here are 10 medical headlines from 2015 that are sure to make a significant impact on the world in the years to come.

10 Discovery Of Teixobactin

In 2014, the World Health Organization warned that the world was entering a “post-antibiotic era,” and they were right. We haven’t found a new antibiotic that was actually used as medicine since 1987, almost 30 years ago. Drug-resistant infections are becoming an increasingly prevalent problem. But in 2015, scientists made a discovery that has been described as a “game changer.”

Scientists discovered a new class of antibiotics with 25 new antimicrobials, including a potent one named teixobactin. This new antibiotic kills microbes by blocking their ability to build cell walls, so the microbes cannot develop a resistance to the drug. So far, teixobactin has proven efficient in killing MRSA and several bugs that cause tuberculosis.

Perhaps even more importantly, the team behind the discovery used a new method of growing antibiotics to get these results. They created a “subterranean hotel” where each pod (or “room”) is separated from the rest and contains a single bacterium.

That “hotel” is then placed in soil, allowing many antibiotics to be grown in laboratories that were previously unable to do so. As far as teixobactin is concerned, promising tests on mice are leading to human testing, which should begin in 2017.

9 Doctors Grow Vocal Cords From Scratch

One of the most exciting, futuristic fields of medicine is tissue regeneration. In 2015, the list of regenerated organs added a new entry when doctors at the University of Wisconsin grew human vocal cords from scratch.

Headed by Dr. Nathan Welham, the team bioengineered tissue that mimics the vocal cord mucosa, which represents the flaps that vibrate in the larynx to create human speech. The donated cells came from five human patients and were grown in the lab for two weeks. Then they were attached to larynges using fake windpipes.

The scientists described the sound created by the cords as an “eeee-like sound” like a robotic kazoo. However, this matches the sound that would normally be generated by real human vocal cords in isolation. With the help of additional structures such as a throat or mouth, scientists are confident that the laboratory vocal cords can match the sounds made by real cords.

In the last stage of the experiment, scientists tested if mice engineered with human immune systems would reject the tissue. Fortunately, they did not, and Welham now thinks that vocal cord tissue is immunoprivileged, which means that it doesn’t trigger a reaction from the immune system.

8 Cancer Drug Might Help Parkinson’s Sufferers

Tasigna (aka nilotinib) is an FDA-approved drug that is regularly used to treat people with leukemia. However, a new trial conducted at the Georgetown University Medical Center suggests that Tasigna could be extremely potent in managing the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease by improving cognition, motor skills, and nonmotor functions.

Fernando Pagan, one of the doctors in charge of the study, thinks that nilotinib therapy might be the first of its kind to reverse cognitive and motor decline in patients with a neurodegenerative disease like Parkinson’s.

The study lasted six months and involved 12 patients who took increasing doses of nilotinib. All 11 test subjects who finished the trial had some benefit from the therapy, with 10 of them reporting significant clinical improvements.

The primary goal of this study was safety—to make sure that the human body could tolerate nilotinib without side effects. The doses used were much smaller than those normally given to leukemia patients.

Although the drug has proven successful, the study was conducted on a small group of people without control or placebo groups. More research is necessary before Tasigna becomes a viable treatment for Parkinson’s disease.

7 World’s First 3-D-Printed Rib Cage

In recent years, 3-D printing had been making headlines by producing exciting innovations in many fields, including medicine. In 2015, doctors at the Salamanca University Hospital in Spain performed the world’s first rib cage transplant using a 3-D-printed chest prosthetic.

The patient was suffering from chest wall sarcoma. To reach the tumors and prevent them from spreading, doctors had to remove sections of his rib cage. A titanium implant to replace those missing pieces already existed.

However, an implant for a large section of the skeleton is made out of multiple components that can come loose over time and create new medical complications. Besides, each person’s skeletal structure is unique, making it complicated to fit the implant perfectly.

Doctors realized that a 3-D printer could be used to make a highly customized titanium structure that would better fit this particular patient. After obtaining high-resolution 3-D CT scans, scientists used the $1.3 million Arcam printer to successfully create an implant with parts of the sternum and rib cage. The surgery to fix the implant inside the body went well, and the patient made a full recovery.

6 Skin Cells Turned Into Brain Cells

The scientists at Salk Institute in La Jolla, California, have had a busy year studying the human brain. They developed a method of turning skin cells into brain cells and have already found several useful applications for this new technique.

For starters, scientists found a way to turn skin samples into old brain cells. This makes it easier for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s specialists to study brain tissue that has suffered the effects of aging. Historically, animal brains were used for research, but there are limits to what we can learn from other species.

More recently, stem cells were turned into brain cells for research. However, these experienced a process of rejuvenation during their conversion and didn’t accurately mimic the brain of an older person.

Once researchers developed the technique for artificially creating brain cells, they specialized in making neurons that produce serotonin. Even though these make up a small fraction of the human brain, they have been linked to major disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and depression.

Until now, neurons developed under laboratory conditions produced a different brain chemical known as glutamate. This new technique should be a real boon for researchers studying mental illness.

5 Male Birth Control Pill

In Japan, scientists at the Osaka University Research Institute for Microbial Diseases have released new research that might lead to a male birth control pill in the near future. They were working with drugs called tacrolimus and cyclosporine A.

Normally, these drugs are administered to organ transplant patients to suppress their immune systems and reduce the chances of their bodies rejecting new organs. This is done by inhibiting the production of an enzyme called calcineurin, which contains PPP3R2 and PPP3CC, two proteins also found in sperm.

The researchers studied mice and discovered that the ones unable to reproduce had low amounts of PPP3CC, suggesting that the absence of this protein could cause infertility. Upon closer study, the scientists concluded that the protein was responsible for giving the sperm cell enough flexibility and force to penetrate the membrane of the female egg.

A test performed on normal, healthy mice confirmed their findings. It only took tacrolimus and cyclosporine A four and five days, respectively, to make the mice infertile. Their fertility returned to normal one week after taking the drugs. More importantly, calcineurin is not a hormone, so targeting it should not affect a person’s sex drive.

Despite promising results, a male birth control pill is still years away, if it comes at all. Around 80 percent of studies on mice are not applicable to humans. However, researchers remain hopeful because the effect on human fertility has already been reported. Also, similar drugs have already undergone clinical trials and are used on humans.

4 DNA Printing

The technology of 3-D printing has created a unique, new industry—one that prints and sells DNA. Although the term “printing” is widely used because it has commercial appeal, it doesn’t accurately describe what is happening.

As the CEO at Cambrian Genomics explains, the process is more akin to a high-tech version of “spell-checking” than printing. Millions of pieces of DNA on tiny metal beads are scanned by a computer that selects the ones necessary to make the desired DNA sequence. Afterward, a laser fires at the right beads and places the DNA in a tray to form the strand requested by the client.

Companies like Cambrian see a near future where people will be able to use computer software to assemble new organisms just for fun. Understandably, this has some people worried about the ethical and practical implications of such power in the hands of your average Joe, let alone someone intent on using it maliciously.

For now, DNA printing is considered a boon for the medical field. Drug manufacturers and research companies are the primary clients of organizations such as Cambrian.

Scientists at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden went one step further and constructed DNA strands in the shape of a bunny. DNA origami, as they call it, might seem like just a cool party trick, but it could also have medical applications as a new, more effective drug delivery method. The process could be used to make more resistant structures that won’t break down in the human body.

3 Nanobots Work In Living Creature

In early 2015, the field of robotics scored a big victory when a team of researchers from the University of California in San Diego announced that they had conducted the first successful tests in which nanobots were used to perform a task inside a living creature.

The creatures in question were lab mice. After being implanted inside the animals, the micromachines traveled to the stomachs of the mice and delivered their payloads—small flakes of gold. At the end of the procedure, the mice had no damage in their stomach linings, showing that it is safe for animals to ingest these microscopic nanobots.

Subsequent investigations revealed that more gold flakes stayed in the stomach by using this method than by simply ingesting them. This suggests that nanobots could become a more effective drug delivery method in the future.

The motors on the machines are made of zinc. When they come into contact with acids in the body, a chemical reaction occurs that generates hydrogen bubbles and propels the nanobots. After a while, the motors simply dissolve in the stomach acid.

Although this procedure was a decade in the making, it wasn’t until 2015 that it was carried out successfully on animals instead of cell cultures in petri dishes. In the future, nanorobots could be used to detect and even treat a wide array of diseases by attacking individual cells.

2 Injectable Brain Nano Implant

A team at Harvard developed a brain implant that promises to treat a host of maladies ranging from neurodegenerative diseases to paralysis. The implant consists of an electronic device made of scaffolds which can be connected to various machines after being inserted into the brain. It could then be used to monitor neural activity, stimulate tissue, and promote neuron regeneration.

The electronic mesh is made of conductive polymer threads that have either transistors or nanoscale electrodes attached at their intersections. Flexible and soft to mimic brain tissue, the mesh consists mostly of empty space to allow cells to arrange themselves easily around it.

As of early 2016, the Harvard team is still conducting tests to see how safe the procedure is. So far, two mice have had devices made from 16 electrical components implanted in their brains. These devices have successfully monitored and stimulated individual neurons.

1 THC-Producing Yeast

For years, marijuana has been used to treat symptoms brought on by HIV or chemotherapy. Alternatively, there are pills that use the synthetic version of marijuana’s main psychoactive compound, tetrahydrocannabinol (aka THC).

Now biochemists at the Technical University of Dortmund in Germany have announced that they engineered a new strain of yeast capable of producing THC. Furthermore, they also have unpublished data on a yeast strain that produces cannabidiol, another active compound of marijuana.

Marijuana has several molecular compounds of interest to researchers. Therefore, an efficient, reliable method of generating the desired molecule in large quantities would be a huge boon for the medical world. However, at the moment, growing the plant is still the most effective method. Up to 30 percent of the dry weight of a modern marijuana strain can be THC.

Even so, Dortmund researchers are hopeful that this might change in the future. At the moment, the yeast is based on precursor molecules instead of the preferred alternative of simple sugars. This leads to small amounts of THC created with every batch.

However, further research might refine the process to the point where biochemists can maximize THC production and scale it up for industrial purposes. This would please medical researchers and European regulators, who are looking for a new way of manufacturing THC without cultivating marijuana.

Radu is into science and weird history. Share the knowledge on Twitter, or check out his website.

Sex sells, so it comes as no surprise that sex scandals are a hot topic across the country. From high-profile politicians, celebrities, and even presidents, no one is safe from a sex scandal-hungry media outlet. Here are the top ten biggest sex scandals in recent history.

10 Jeffree Star and Kanye West

In 2021, the American people combined two of our very favorite things—conspiracy and sex scandals. Eager fans on social media began circulating rumors that the then alleged divorce between Kanye West and Kim Kardashian resulted from a torrid love affair between the rapper and beauty mogul Jeffree Star. With both men living in Wyoming— and in the same community in California at one point—it didn’t take much for online communities to start pulling theories out of thin air. This conspiracy even led to a direct response from the star himself, in which he debunks the theory. “Let me just say this one time… I like very tall men.” For the record, Kanye is only 5’8″.

9 Kim Kardashian’s Sex Tape

If you thought one sex scandal would be enough for any family, you haven’t heard of the Kardashians. In early 2007, Kim Kardashian was a blip on Hollywood’s social radar—until March of that year, when a now-infamous sex tape was leaked onto the Internet. From there, Ms. Kardashian launched herself into the reality tv stratosphere.

With her mother’s help managing the family’s brands and careers, the Kardashian’s are now one of the country’s most famous families. While some believe that it was none other than Kris Jenner—Kim’s mother—who released the tape to further her daughter’s career, there is no doubt that whoever it was, ushered the Kardashian’s into Hollywood royalty.

8 Pee Wee’s Big Cinematic Adventure

In July of 1991, Paul Ruebens, AKA Pee-Wee Herman, was arrested in an adult movie theater on the charge of indecent exposure. The arrest was scandalous, as Ruebens was best known for hosting a well-loved children’s television program. This scandal proved different than most. Instead of exile and ostracization, people held rallies in support of the actor. Ruebens refuted the charge that he engaged in any illicit activity in the theater but readily acknowledged his presence there that night.

At that time, the court sentenced him to a fine and community service. It wasn’t until 2004 when the actor was again sentenced on additional sex charges, this time for inappropriate content of minors. Claiming the photographs in question were part of a collection of historical, artistic images, Ruebens settled for a $1,000 fine, three years’ probation, and registration on the sex offender list. 

7 Arnold’s Secret Son

Although former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had been married to Maria Shriver for just over a decade, it made little difference to him. During his marriage and time in office, Mr. Terminator carried on with his family housekeeper, who would go on to have a son. This was kept quiet, even from his wife, for the duration of his tenure in office. It wasn’t long after leaving office that the LA Times dropped a scathing front-page article detailing the former Governors many indiscretions.

Schwarzenegger was apparently unaware of the paternity of the child. Upon discovering that he was the father, he began supporting the child financially. Both the article and the affair were the direct causes of Arnold’s divorce from Shriver. However, despite the scandal, public opinion of the bodybuilder and actor has changed little.

6 Eliot Spitzer and the Emperor’s Club

Following our theme of the press outing illicit Gubernatorial activity, the downfall of former New York Governor Elliot Spitzer came at the hands of the New York Times. In 2008 the New York Times published an article detailing Spitzer’s outings with an expensive call girl from a prostitution ring called the “Emperor’s VIP Club.” At $1,000 an hour, these forays did not come cheap, both financially and professionally.

He spent a total of $15,000 over six months at this so-called club, according to the information procured by a wiretap placed by the federal government. To avoid impeachment, Spitzer resigned from his position as New York State Governor on March 17, 2008. The fallout from the “bust” of the Emperor’s Club was international. A member of the British Ministry of Defense, who was also connected to the ring, resigned.

5 John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe

Perhaps the most memorable sex scandal in American history is between former President John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe. The American public had a rabid appetite for gossip about the young, handsome president and the Hollywood bombshell. The rumors really began to fly after a televised birthday celebration for JFK. Marilyn came out on stage in a white fur coat, which she hastily removed to reveal a bedazzled gown. At the time, this gown was scandalously revealing.

After she all but undressed on stage, she sang a slow, sultry version of “Happy Birthday” directed at Mr. Kennedy (“Happy birthday, Mr. President…”). From there, the American public was hooked. This gave what many consider to be concrete evidence of the alleged affair and the only known photograph of the two together. Others say an affair between the two was impossible. They were rarely documented to be in the same location. Others refute claims that the affair was fiction. Some say that Monroe contacted Kennedy’s wife, Jackie, to discuss the affair.

While we know that Jackie was aware of other affairs JFK had, the rumors of the one between her husband and Monroe was the one that really upset her. Because of her celebrity, the relationship had the potential to ruin her family if proven true. 

4 Jerry Springer and His Bounced Check

While best known for his trash TV persona, Jerry Springer also had a political career—peppered with some questionable hobbies. In 1974, while on the Cincinnati City Council, Jerry frequented sex workers. *cue boos from the crowd* After a VICE investigation and a press release that alluded to an anonymous “Cincinnati politico,” Jerry shockingly resigned from his position. He essentially outed himself to the world. 

Jerry volunteered to testify in a Kentucky court, claiming that he was guilty of interacting with two women at two separate times, whose services he paid for with personal checks. Rumors have since flown that one of those checks bounced, adding insult to injury. Jerry denies these claims. I mean, come on, a bounced check? Please, stick with the sex workers. Jerry dealt with the aftermath quietly out of the political realm, but in a shocking move, ran to reclaim his seat on the council.

Jerry didn’t stop there. After regaining his seat on the city council in 1975, he ran for mayor and won that seat as well. In 1982, he won the race for Governor of Ohio. Perhaps it was this balance between his scandal and his ability to move and groove in the political scene in the aftermath that made him such an ideal talk-show host. Jerry went on to host the highly successful “The Jerry Springer Show” from 1991 to 2018.

3 Tiger Woods and Many, Many Women

Pro Golf golden boy Tiger Woods seemingly had it all. Wildly talented with an astoundingly successful career, large endorsements and brand partnerships, a loving family… But it just wasn’t enough for the young star. On November 27, 2009, his fortune came crashing down around him. You don’t know what you got, am I right?

It was this day that Woods crashed his Escalade just outside of his home shortly after taking pain medication. This crash brought out the press sniffing around for a scandal. Seek, and ye shall find, soon enough, an alleged mistress was releasing text messages and voicemails sent by the professional athlete. She wasn’t the only one coming forward with accusations of an affair, however. The women who revealed themselves were waitresses and nightclub staff, to models and adult film actresses. 

The once-revered golfer attempted to deal with the scandal behind closed doors but eventually released several statements in which he publicly acknowledged his indiscretions and apologized for his actions. Woods lost sponsorships and brand deals and ultimately stepped away from his career and public scrutiny to focus on therapy and repairing his marriage. While that worked for some time, the pro and his wife announced a divorce in 2010. That same year Woods returned to golf, but due to the resulting injuries of the car crash, he never again regained the height as in his early career.

2 NXIVM Cult or Self-Help Club?

NXIVM was originally founded in 1998 under the premise of being a self-help and fulfillment group for young, wealthy professionals. Touting secretive classes called “Executive Success Programs,” high-profile entrepreneurs, business people, and even children of political figures began flocking to the community. Using non-disclosure agreements, NXIVM was able to operate with utmost secrecy in terms of the content of its seminars and teachings.

It wasn’t until 2017 that allegations of an internal secret subsect called “Dominus Obsequious Sororium” surfaced. This internal group was comprised entirely of women. They were physically branded in a secret ceremony and operated under the premise that they were part of a mentorship program. The fake mentorship program’s premise was that senior women would take younger, dedicated female members under their wing. This was, in fact, a lie. The symbol branded onto these women’s skin was not simply a sign that they had been initiated, but rather the founder’s initials. This was unknown to the women involved at the time of their branding.

The women in the group were required to be on standby for founder Keith Raniere’s whims and desires. Some accusations against the group include weight requirements, sexual abuse, and waiting nude for the founder. They were made to film sexually explicit videos, and then the group held these videos against them as blackmail. Once exposed, Keith Raniere was arrested on charges of sex trafficking and sex trafficking conspiracy. They also snagged him for conspiracy to commit forced labor. He was sentenced to 120 years in prison for his crimes against women. NXIVM has since gone down in the books as one of America’s most notorious cults.

1 Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky

What would a list about sex scandals be if we left out the most famous sex scandal in American history? This scandal stands out against the political landscape because this is the first scandal where the Internet played a big role. Compared to today, the news was slower to circulate, and public opinion was relatively muted. But the Internet completely changed that.

Monica Lewinsky was a young intern serving in the Clinton administration. During this time, it became apparent that she was spending a great deal of time with the former president. As a result, she was transferred to work in the Pentagon. However, when Lewinsky began discussing her torrid affair with a coworker, that coworker began recording the conversations secretly (what a terrible confidante). They turned over the tapes to an investigator who was already working on a harassment case against the president. These tapes fueled media frenzy.

Once news broke, Clinton denied any affair with Lewinsky, famously stating, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” It wasn’t until he faced impeachment and was under oath that he readily admitted his wrongdoings. In the following years, Monica faced intense backlash and scrutiny from the public. She has since turned become an advocate against cyberbullying and harassment.

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 Covid-19 pandemic is turning out to be an unprecedented event in human history. While we’ve gone through our share of ancient plagues, this is the first time it’s happening to such a large human population. Humans are in vastly more abundance now than we’ve ever been, making it easier for the virus to mutate and evolve as it now has access to more subjects than any other virus in history. 

Worryingly, it’s a virus that knows what it’s doing, too. While we won’t even bother with the numbers – as they keep updating by the hour at this point – we can tell that it has brought the world to a standstill. Some of the world’s biggest countries are struggling to contain the disaster, and it’s anyone’s best guess how we’d get things back to normal once all this is over.

What we can say for sure, though, is that the Covid-19 pandemic could end up permanently changing the world in many ways, much like most of other major pandemics in history. 

7. No Traffic Anymore

Many aspects of our everyday lives have been completely transformed since the pandemic took its worst form, though the most drastic change has been in how we move around. People around the world are changing their traffic habits for the first time since the automobile revolution, and in more complicated ways than you’d guess.

The surprising part is that not all of it is due to lockdown restrictions. Traffic has gone down in nearly every major city in the world, regardless of the scale of the pandemic among its residents. In many American cities with relatively fewer restrictions, rush hours are now the best and most pleasant to drive around. 

While most of it could be chalked up to people not having anything to do, and hence nowhere to go in the pandemic, some of it also has to do with the larger realization among the masses that cars really aren’t as necessary and awesome as auto companies always make them out to be. If a global pandemic can force us to change our driving patterns and lower traffic pollution in some of the most congested cities in the world to an absolute minimum, maybe we should continue doing that after it’s over, too. 

6. It’s Speeding Up The Adoption Of Driverless Technology

Driverless technology is a definite part of any future we imagine. It’s impossible to dream of conquering the stars if we still have to manually drive our cars to go to work. It’s a foregone conclusion that at some point in the future, automated cars will rule the roads. 

There are, however, still many genuine concerns surrounding the technology. The primary one is that we still don’t know if fully automated vehicles are safe. There have been quite a few injuries – as well as one death – caused by automated vehicles, proving that the tech is still in its infancy. That’s the reason many countries around the world have checks and regulations against the manufacturing of truly autonomous driverless vehicles.

Unfortunately – or fortunately for the people owning those companies – the Covid-19 pandemic is forcing governments and regulatory agencies to consider relaxing some of those regulations, as there seems to be no other way to restart the supply chains without putting real people at risk. Many companies in China have already started using completely automated vehicles for deliveries, and it’s expected that countries like the USA could soon follow suit. While it would definitely speed up the adoption of a technology that would end up helping a lot of people, it’s still in its nascent stages at this point, full of loopholes and inaccuracies that may prove to be dangerous if left unchecked. 

5. The End Of Globalization

The second half of the 20th century was nothing short of a golden age of human cooperation, as the world got more connected than ever before. For the first time in our history, trade and diplomacy have been much more profitable for rulers than looting and plunder. Almost every country is now a connected part (with some differences here and there) of a flourishing global market. Or at least it was, until the pandemic hit and undid almost all of that.

Where the second half of the 20th century would be known for its massive globalization drive, the post Covid-19 world could prove be its complete reversal. It’s not in the future, either. We’re already seeing the slow decimation of the global oil industry (as we’d discuss in detail in a bit), which is one of the biggest pillars of this global, interconnected market together. Another one is the airlines industry, which has been going through stock market crashes and divestment from major investors since the beginning of the pandemic. 

Moreover, the lockdowns and general panic due to the virus have forced us to subconsciously think of the world in small, protected spaces, instead of the global playground that we grew up to see it as. Even if everything else goes back to normal, that would be hard to change. 

4. Wild Animals Are Having The Time Of Their Lives

With almost the entire world on a lockdown – self-imposed or otherwise – there has been a fundamental change in our daily lifestyle. For the first time in history, almost the entire human population is spending its time indoors.

It’s a change that hasn’t gone unnoticed by the animal world, as wild animals are showing up in a variety of places now devoid of human activity. Take the wild Kashmiri goats that were found nonchalantly roaming around on the empty roads in Wales, or the coyotes in San Francisco, or the sounds of birds singing in cities that are otherwise loud and densely populated. Animals that usually keep their distance from human settlements are now emboldened by our sudden departure from public places, which may just end up solving the problem of dwindling natural habitats worldwide. 

3. Reduced Hospital Visits For Other Diseases

The Covid-19 pandemic has proven to be a challenge for some of the best healthcare systems in the world. Most of the countries adversely affected by it are developed, technologically-advanced nations, proving once and for all that modern healthcare still can’t solve global pandemics that our immune systems have never seen before. 

Among all this, something else is happening. While hospitals and healthcare workers are stretched thin tending to coronavirus cases, visits for other emergencies have drastically dropped, to the extent that it couldn’t be explained by people just avoiding getting checked up. It’s almost as if most of the other diseases – including the influenza virus, which is usually a major problem in many countries – have disappeared as soon as the novel coronavirus struck. Of course, you’d be wary of visiting a hospital for a minor cough in the middle of a global pandemic, but visits are down for almost all diseases and illnesses across the board, including major ones, and we’re not sure why. 

2. No More Oil

The price of oil has been on a consistent slide ever since the pandemic started. The countries most affected by it also happen to be some of the most industrialized and developed nations in the world that usually require a lot of oil to sustain their massive economies. Without any economic activity, the demand for oil is only set to decrease even further. If it hasn’t already, that is, as oil prices have already touched negative levels in the past few weeks (though they’ve rebounded a bit recently). Yes, that means that oil producers were paying other people to take oil off their hands due to limited storage. 

In such an unprecedented turn of events, it’s safe to say that this could be the end of oil-based economies. The pandemic comes on the heels of massive climate change movements around the world, with many countries already looking at ways to reduce their reliance on oil. It would only end up catalyzing the movement against the oil industry, something no climate change activist has been able to achieve.

However, that doesn’t mean that it would be good for every one of us. The oil industry still employs millions of hardworking, honest employees who probably wouldn’t have enough time to adapt to the new order of things. Regardless, for good or ill, the Covid-19 pandemic just might be the end of oil as we know it. 

1. The Biggest Financial Crisis In History

Every major pandemic in history has been followed by a long period of economic distress immediately after it, especially in the affected regions. Whether it’s the Black Plague or the Spanish Flu, viruses have been particularly bad for business throughout our history.

The novel coronavirus is no different. While this pandemic is turning out to be as economically devastating as any previous one, the scale of the damage this time is much higher. According to some experts, the oncoming economic recession could be bigger than any financial crisis ever, and that includes the Great Depression of the ’30s. While it may sound like counting money when people are dying, that inaccurately assumes that economic problems don’t kill people. 

Just take the last financial crisis in 2008 which, according to one study, caused around 5,000 men in North America and Europe to commit suicide. And that’s just the First World. The most acute effects of modern financial crashes are concentrated in the poorer parts of the world, where economic prosperity is directly tied to political and social stability. The 2008 crash could be seen as the starting point of a slew of uprisings and general unrest in many Third World countries, especially in the Middle East, some of which have now turned into global conflicts. 

In many ways Britain and America are so close that they seem very familiar.

However, although they may share a common language (almost) there are some key differences between the 2 nations that travelers may not be aware of.

Movies and TV have done much to make us think that we know what life is like in other countries, but TV can only show you so much.

Here are some cultural differences you may not be aware of.

See Also: 20 Differences That Confuse Us All

10Good Morning America (And Britain)

Americans typically begin their day with a cup of coffee, either a plain ‘cup of joe’ or something fancier with frothy milk and syrups, and they consume 400 million cups a day. Britons, on the other hand, begin their day with tea. Unlike the few American tea-drinkers, 98% of British tea drinkers add milk to their tea.^[1]

While Americans may debate the relative merits of lattes and cappuccinos, Britons argue about whether to put the milk in first or last, and whether the tea should be made in a pot or a mug. Some Britons get upset if the milk is added in the wrong order. While Britain may not have elaborate tea-drinking ceremonies, such as they have in Japan, they do have Afternoon Tea, which is tea (served in a pot, with the milk in a jug, so you can please yourself). It is also accompanied by tiny cucumber sandwiches, and a Cream Tea, which is not tea at all, but a scone filled with jam and cream.^[2]

And then there is the question of whether you put the jam at the bottom, or the cream.

Which is also very important.

Apparently.

9Leave Leave Leave

Although workplaces are often very similar on both sides of the Atlantic, working practices can be very different. Americans tend to work longer hours and have fewer breaks than their counterparts in Britain. The British working day typically begins at 9.00 and finishes at 5.00, and in that time, workers will have a minimum of 30 mins for lunch, and very often an hour, as well as 2 short breaks, (tea breaks). Americans often eat their lunch while they work, whilst Britons either go out for lunch or eat away from their desks.

American workers have no automatic right to paid holidays, although around 10 days paid holidays is often offered. British workers get at least 20 days, and usually have bank holidays too, giving them 28 days a year minimum. Many employers also have incentive schemes boosting paid holidays up to 35 days or more a year.

British workers also have paid leave for sickness. Maternity leave is 39 weeks at 90% of their normal wage (and which can be divided between mother and father if they wish), with paid other leave often offered for compassionate or child-care reasons.

American employers are much better at providing benefits to their employees, especially bonuses, life insurance and retirement benefits. British employers do pay into pension funds but at a much lower rate. A few also offer private medical insurance, although that is not considered a necessity in Britain because they have access to free medical care.^[3]

8Food Glorious Food (And Drink)

At the end of a long day at work, what can be better than a night out? While it should be a pleasurable social activity, transatlantic visitors may soon find themselves confused about dining etiquette. Americans tend to tip generously, Britons tend to tip only in high-class restaurants, and then only sparingly. They never tip waitresses in diners (cafes) or bars (pubs).

If they can’t finish their meal, Americans often take home a doggy bag to eat the following day. This is accepted, and even encouraged (why waste good food, right?). Britons do not ask for doggy bags. If you find yourself in a British restaurant and you ask for one, the staff will spend 10 minutes trying to find something to put it in, and will assume that you are too poor to buy another meal.^[4]

American bars tend to have table service, whilst British pubs expect you to go to the bar. You will have to pay for each drink as you buy it, and not at the end of the night, and pubs rarely have waitresses, unless they also serve food. To attract the attention of the bar staff you are expected to stand at the bar, holding up your money and looking hopeful. If you shout your order, wave or snap your fingers, they will ignore you. Finally, if you are in a pub and someone buys you a drink, it is not a gift, it is a round, and you are expected to buy the next round.

Sliding out of buying your round is a huge social faux pas.^[5]

7Money (Ssshhhh!)

Americans may think that they are reluctant to talk about money, but compared to the British, they are just great big blabbermouths. British people never discuss how much they earn, even with close friends and family. Surveys have shown that not only would they be embarrassed to borrow money from a friend, they would also feel embarrassed about lending it, and about asking for it back if it wasn’t returned.^[6]

People who have lots of money generally behave as if they have none, and those with none, as if they have lots, though no one is willing to specify the dollar amount that they have in the bank.

Surveys have shown that over 80% of Americans think it’s perfectly fine for people to make as much money as they can. British people, however, rarely admit to being ‘rich’, usually only describing themselves as ‘comfortable’ or ‘not starving’. It’s OK to make money, as long as you never talk about it, and never spend it. If you do spend it, it must not be in an ostentatious manner. People
who do, are called ‘nouveau riche’.^[7]

Which is not a good thing.

6On the Road

Everyone knows that drivers in Britain (or America) drive on ‘wrong’ side of the road, but that is not the only difference. British cars tend to be much smaller, perhaps because gas (petrol) is so much more expensive. Over 75% of British cars are stick-shift (manual) cars, compared with 2% in America.^[8]

When you go to buy your expensive gas, you will fill your tank first and then pay for your gas, because they are very trusting. British roads are rarely straight, and towns and cities are not laid out in a grid. Rather they meander round bends, where you can’t see what’s coming.

In America, intersections are usually managed with traffic lights, whilst in Britain they have roundabouts, where the driver on each road gives-way to the driver on their right. Sometimes everyone waits until someone moves, and then the other drivers sound their horn in annoyance.^[9]

5Making Polite Conversation

Whilst it is fair to say that neither America nor Britain has a monopoly on politeness, they do have slightly different ways of showing it. Researchers have discovered that Americans favor making people feel welcome, and making them feel good, while the British go for something rather more formal.

So, they say please and thank you, a lot, but are not likely to tell you to have a good day. They may ask how you are, but only on the understanding that you don’t tell them. It is a pleasantry only, and not a serious inquiry.

Americans also seem to be more comfortable with saying what they actually mean than the British, who are famously evasive. For example, research shows that if a Briton says something is ‘quite good,’ they hate it, and, ‘it’s probably my fault’ actually means ‘it’s your fault’.^[10]

Navigating this can be tricky, particularly as, if challenged, the Briton is likely to double-down on the pretense and insist it really is his fault.

Finally, if someone says, ‘you must come round for dinner’, it does not mean, ‘come round for dinner on Friday’ or even ‘come round for dinner soon’. It just means ‘goodbye.’^[11]

4Home Sweet Home

An Englishman’s home is his castle, they say. Which is remarkably similar to the 4th Amendment articles which uphold the sanctity of a private home. What kind of home that is, however, is rather different. The overwhelming majority of British households live in brick-built houses, whereas American houses tend to be built from timber-frames. This may be because of the high degree of wet weather.

While brick-built homes are more expensive, Britons expect their homes to stand for a minimum of 100 years, and modest private houses over 200 years old are common.^[12]

Whilst rural Americans may live in houses, many city-dwellers live in apartments. Britain has a surprisingly small number of apartments, (usually called flats), even in inner cities. Britons prefer not to share amenities with their neighbors and dislike communal living spaces. Where they are forced to share a garden, for instance, it is common to find them dividing it into tiny private gardens and building a big fence.^[13]

3The Doctor Will See You Now

The differences in access to medical care is one of the major differences between life in the US and Britain. While Britons have free access to doctors and hospitals, and receive free or heavily subsidized prescriptions, they do sometimes have to wait for treatment, whereas America has a system based on insurance payments which gives fast access to health care, as long as you have paid into the system.^[14]

British people also have the option of paying into a private system in order to beat the queues, but few bother, preferring to join the waiting list for the NHS.

Even relatively wealthy people choose to wait for free healthcare rather than ‘go private’, and paying for private healthcare is often seen as ‘jumping the queue’, and therefore bad manners.^[15]

2School’s Out

America has an education system, where pupils are tested regularly and know what targets they need to hit in order to be able to progress. The British system is rather more, well, complicated. Their schools are divided into public, private, grammar and state schools. Private schools are fee paying schools, which are usually boarding schools, but may also take day students. Contrary to what you may think, public schools are also private schools, but they form are the most elite schools, and are almost always for boarder only. Grammar schools and state schools (also called comprehensives) are free schools run by the government, but grammar schools select their pupils on the basis of ability, whilst the state schools don’t.

School tends to start earlier in Britain, with children beginning part time school at the age of 3 or 4 and full time at 5, with shorter summer holidays – 6 weeks as opposed to around 10 – 12 weeks in America. Almost all British schools insist that students wear a uniform, with a tie, whilst American students usually wear whatever they like.

Pupils take exams at 16 and 18 (if they stay that long), but do not have to take standardized tests at any other time. The overall educational attainment of students is roughly equivalent, however, students in American schools have a much larger number of extra-curricular activities. British schools tend to have a soccer team, a netball team (girls’ basketball) and maybe a chess club, while American schools offer a huge range of outside activities for kids to try.^[16]

1Three Houses and a Senate

One of the biggest differences is the system of government. Whilst both countries have 2 legislative bodies (The House of Representatives and the Senate vs The House of Commons and The House of Lords), the leaders of the country are elected differently. America has a separate presidential election, while Britain’s Prime Minister is simply the leader of the party with the greatest number of seats.

While America elects representatives to both houses, Britain’s House of Lords is not an elected chamber. It is made up of hereditary peers, bishops from the Church of England, and people who have been appointed as a life peer by the Queen.^[17]

Each session of parliament begins with The Queens Speech. Before she delivers her speech, one MP from the Commons is kidnapped and held prisoner at Buckingham Palace, in case they try to attack her. She delivers the speech from the House of Lords because she is not allowed in the Commons, and she sends someone in fancy dress, called Black Rod, to summon the MPs to her.

The door is always slammed in his face.^[18]

Which, OK, seems a bit odd, but then the American senate does have a broken gavel that they carry into each session but never use, so it evens out in the end.

About The Author: Ward Hazell is a freelance writer and travel writer, and is currently also studying for a PhD in English Literature

Big-wave surfing isn’t for everyone. In fact, it is not attractive for many keen surfers, who prefer waves no more than double-overhead in height. Mainly because after that, the fear far outweighs the fun.

After wiping out on a giant wave, many surfers feel like they are going to die, but remarkably few people die from surfing big waves. Buzzy Trent, a famous and uber-macho big wave surfer from the 1960s, was once quoted as saying, “Big waves are measured not in feet, but in increments of fear.”

So let’s get scared and take a look at the ten biggest surfed waves of all time, at least those that were documented.

Related: Top 10 Rarest Feats In Sports

10 Greg Noll: Makaha, Oahu, Hawaii, USA, 1969

No list of big-wave surfing exploits would be complete without the big-wave king of the 1960s, the legendary Greg Noll. Noll, who died in 2021, was a surfing icon, as much for his trademark black and white jailhouse-striped trunks and big personality as his massive appetite for big waves.

On the morning of December 4, 1969, during the famous “Swell of ’69,” Noll and a few others surfed the famous waves of Makaha Point on the west side of Oahu. Noll caught a wave that observers called the “Biggest Wave Ever” at some 12 meters (40 feet) plus.

Noll caught the wave, made it to the bottom, and wiped out, losing his board and barely making it to the beach alive. He quit surfing big waves on the spot, retiring to northern California to become a commercial fisherman and surfboard craftsman.^[1]

9 Alec Cooke: Outside Pipeline, Oahu, Hawaii USA, 1985

In the 1970s and ’80s, the traditional pursuit of big-wave surfing was somewhat overshadowed by the newly formed professional tour, which was pulling in most of the money and attention in the surfing world.

One of the people who wanted to bring the spotlight back to big waves was local Alec “Ace Cool” Cooke, a dedicated big-wave rider and descendant of a wealthy and historic missionary family in Hawaii.

Cooke came up with a plan in 1985 to surf the biggest wave ever by being dropped from a helicopter with his board and an emergency oxygen tank into giant surf on the north shore of Oahu. He would be filmed and photographed for verification by a media crew in the helicopter, with the photos and film clips distributed worldwide.

The plan went reasonably well. Cooke caught a giant wave and was filmed riding it before he was caught by an even bigger wave, lost his board, and had to swim to the beach. Photos were published, resulting in a great deal of media coverage for Cooke. However, many surfers scoffed at the “Biggest Wave Ever” claim, saying the angle of the helicopter images had made the wave look bigger.

Cooke continued to ride big waves on the North Shore, paddling out at Waimea Bay on the evening of October 27, 2015, when he disappeared and was never seen again. Despite an extensive aerial search by the United States Coast Guard, no body was ever recovered.^[1]

8 Brock Little: Waimea Bay, Oahu, Hawaii USA, 1990

A major factor in the revival of interest in big-wave surfing was the Quiksilver in Memory of Eddie Aikau event, held on the north shore of Oahu in Hawaii. Known as “The Eddie,” the contest was the centerpiece of a successful marketing campaign based on the life and legend of Hawaiian big-wave rider Eddie Aikau.

As “Eddie Would Go” only when the contest director determined the swell would be big enough for long enough to stage the entire eight-hour event, it was not held every year. By 1990, the marketing machine was in high gear, and when “The Eddie” was given the green light on January 21, expectations were as high as the waves.

Brock Little, a young and apparently fearless surfer from Hawaii, caught an enormous wave during the event—at 15 meters (50 feet)—which was photographed from multiple angles. Although he hit a bump and fell and did not complete the ride, it was widely acknowledged that Little had caught, stood up, and ridden the largest wave ever at the time.^[3]

7 Ken Bradshaw: Outside Log Cabins, Hawaii USA, 1998

On January 28, 1998, the north shore of Oahu and the other islands in Hawaii were declared by local authorities to be under a “Code Red” event, when the surf is forecast to be so big that all state harbors and beaches are closed.

Just before the Code Red was declared and the harbors shut, a number of two-person teams on personal watercraft exited Haleiwa Harbor on the north shore of Oahu. The teams consisted of one surfer and one driver, with one person driving the PWC and towing the surfer at speed on a water ski rope to catch a giant wave. Tow-surfing is the preferred technique to catch and ride waves this big, as human arms and paddling are usually not fast enough.

One of the teams reached an outer reef spot called Outer Log Cabins, a wave in deep water that only breaks on the biggest of winter swells. This morning, the waves were estimated at 15 to 18 meters (50 to 60 feet). As crowds watched from the beach with binoculars and telephoto lenses, surfer Ken Bradshaw was towed into a monster wave by driver Dan Moore and successfully rode what was photographed as an 18-meter (60-foot) wave, the biggest ever ridden at the time.^[4]

6 Mike Parsons: Cortes Bank, California, USA, 2008

It was in the late 1980s that legendary Surfing Magazine photo editor Larry “Flame” Moore started to look into the location and bathymetry of Cortes Bank, about 160 kilometers (100 miles) off the coast of southern California. Moore had seen a newspaper article about the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier hitting a submerged seamount. If a reef out there was shallow enough to damage a ship, then could there be waves breaking on the right swell and conditions?

By 1990 the answer was “probably,” so Moore chartered a plane and, on a big swell with light winds, flew out to Cortes Bank and photographed one of the wonders of the surfing world. For the first time, he captured images of giant, perfectly rideable waves as they broke over the bank in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

By 2001, several expeditions had been made to Cortes Bank by boat, and giant waves had been ridden and documented. In 2008, a massive winter swell was generated in the north Pacific ocean, with a corresponding light local wind forecast at Cortes Bank.

Mike Parsons, a California professional surfer, made the trip by boat with a group of fellow big-wave surfers and caught the biggest wave ever ridden at the time, estimated at 23 meters plus (75 feet), riding it into the safety of the deeper water next to the seamount.^[5]

5 Garrett McNamara: Nazaré, Portugal, 2011

In 2005, a local surfer from Portugal had invited Hawaii big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara to Nazaré, as he said there were giant waves breaking in front of the lighthouse in winter with no one surfing.

McNamara was from Hawaii and had the attitude that Hawaii has the biggest and best waves in the world, so he brushed off the suggestion that there were bigger waves breaking in the Atlantic ocean, not the Pacific.

It took Garrett five years and a pile of photo evidence to get around to going to Nazaré in winter to try to surf these giant waves, but when he finally did in 2010, he was impressed. The following winter season in 2011, McNamara earned a certified Guinness World Record for the biggest wave ever surfed at 23.7 meters (78 feet), the biggest wave ever ridden at the time.

McNamara now lives in Portugal and his big wave quest is featured in the documentary television series “100 Foot Wave.”^[6]

4 Ramón Navarro: Cloudbreak, Fiji, 2012

Chilean surfer Ramón Navarro received an “Adventurer of the Year” award from National Geographic in 2013 for his enormous wave caught in Fiji in June the year before, a huge blue tube breaking over a coral reef miles out to sea in the south Pacific Ocean.

Navarro had flown from Chile to Fiji on the news of a rare forecast in which several powerful low-pressure systems had improbably lined up below Australia in the raging Southern Ocean. These weather systems would combine to produce a colossal groundswell that would travel to the northeast, through the Tasman Sea, and straight toward the coral reefs of Fiji, thousands of miles away.

While the reef at Cloudbreak in Fiji has been surfed consistently since the 1970s, no one had seen waves this big in living memory. Navarro was towed into the wave by his partner Kohl Christensen on a PWC and successfully rode the massive 18-meter (60-foot) blue cylinder into the deep water of the channel next to the coral reef.^[7]

3 Jamie Mitchell: Belharra, France, 2014

The Bay of Biscay lies below the United Kingdom in the North Atlantic and has a deserved reputation as one of the world’s stormiest seas, especially in winter. The large bay is also open to the North Atlantic, receiving large groundswells from storms originating near Greenland in the winter months.

In January 2014, there was an exceptionally large and ferocious North Atlantic winter storm named Hercules. Storm Hercules would generate an improbably large groundswell, with the absorbed energy of wind on water pointed directly at a reef off the southern coast of France in the Bay of Biscay called Belharra.

The deep water reef at Belharra only breaks on the biggest swells, perhaps two or three times in a winter season. A small group of big-wave surfers was there to meet the swell from Hercules on January 7. Among them was Jamie Mitchell, an outstanding ocean athlete and surfer from Australia who paddled into and caught a 20-meter (65-foot) wave. Mitchell wiped out but survived and earned his “Wipeout of the Year” nomination for 2014 for one of the biggest waves ever surfed.^[8]

2 Mark Healy: Puerto Escondido, Mexico, 2015

The Mexican Pipeline at Zicatela Beach in Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca state in the steamy tropical regions of southern Mexico has been well-known among surfers for large, powerful waves for decades.

Zicatela Beach faces directly southwest, where it can receive powerful groundswell from winter storms in the south Pacific Ocean from April to October. In May 2015, an exceptionally large swell was forecast for mainland Mexico, and big-wave rider Mark Healy was in position to take advantage of the swell to try and ride some very large waves.

Healy paddled out on a 3-meter (10-foot) board from the protected harbor and then down the coast to Zicatela Beach. There, where massive waves were breaking, much further out than usual, including some of the biggest waves veteran surfers had ever seen at this beach. The surge from the swells flooded streets in town with salt water, and several homes and businesses were swamped.

Healy chose his wave carefully and paddled hard. With no PWC to tow him into the wave, he had to generate enough speed with just his arms to catch the swell as it began to break. He caught the wave and stood up, and as the wave moved closer to shore, felt the sand bottom and began to break—it exceeded 15 meters (50 feet) in height.

Healy kept riding until the wave closed on him, getting washed into the beach still alive from the flotation aid of his inflatable vest. Healy had easily ridden the biggest wave ever paddled into at Playa Zicatela and perhaps the largest wave ever caught anywhere without a PWC tow-in assist.^[9]

1 Sebastian Steudtner: Nazaré, Portugal, 2020

The unique bathymetry at Nazaré is what makes the enormous waves possible: the combination of powerful, long-period groundswells and a deep-water offshore canyon producing refractions that amplifies the incoming swell energy into massive peaks.

At Nazaré, the constructive interference is so extreme that the stated deep-water swell height in a forecast can be doubled or even tripled by the canyon refraction effect, producing enormous peaks in front of the lighthouse at the now-famous Praia do Norte, or North Beach.

On a large winter swell 0n October 29, 2020, Austrian surfer Sebastian Steudtner, a windsurfing convert to big-wave surfing, was towed by his PWC driver into one of these majestic peaks and went screaming down the face of the wave, eventually reaching safety on the shoulder.

He did not know it at the time, but the wave was later scientifically calibrated at 26 meters (86 feet), thus earning Steudtner a new certified Guinness World Record for his efforts, a record that took experts 18 months to confirm as the largest wave ever surfed.^[10]

There is perhaps no man shrouded in more mystery and mythology than Grigori Rasputin.

Born in an obscure Siberian peasant village in 1869, a religious conversion and career as a traveling holy man and healer led Rasputin to the court of the Russian royal family, where he became their closest confidant, chief advisor, and one of the most powerful men in the empire.

But as mysterious a man as Rasputin was, there was something about him that fascinated and repulsed, even during his lifetime. As a result, media both home and abroad used him as a handy weapon to push their own agendas, leading to him becoming the most hated man in Russia and his assassination in 1916. The stories spun, ranging from exaggerations of the truth to the outright fictitious, have become so commonplace that they are still believed over a century later.

Related: 10 Dark Secrets of the Russian Empire

10 He Was the Empress’s Lover

The famous Boney M song goes like this: “Ra Ra Rasputin, Lover of the Russian Queen.” It is an accusation started by the anti-monarchy media in Russia, who regularly drew cartoons of Empress Alexandra and Rasputin canoodling. These were designed, of course, to discredit the pair, who were both hated by the public by 1916. Indeed, even films and plays were written suggesting the pair enjoyed an illicit affair as if it was an unquestionable fact.

But there is no evidence to suggest Rasputin and Alexandra’s relationship was anything but platonic. Rasputin gave Alexandra spiritual companionship during a challenging time. World War I raged, and her husband, Emperor Nicholas II, was commanding the forces near the front lines, and letters between husband and wife show a passionate romance that never fizzled. For all the criticisms aimed at Alexandra, she was without question a deeply religious and loyal woman, madly in love with her husband. Rasputin, for his part, knew which side his bread was buttered on and was smart enough to know such an act would be the end of him.^[1]

9 He Was a Sexual Deviant

Okay, so he certainly did sleep around a bit—we aren’t denying that. His wife, ever patient and understanding, said of this that his affairs were “his crutch to bear.” Most of Rasputin’s followers were female; he spent a lot of time in the company of women and was known (from official police reports tracking his movements) to visit brothels.

However, this sort of behavior is far from that of a sex-crazed maniac who, on more than one occasion, is said to have exposed himself in public when drunk. The reality of the situation was that Rasputin found himself led into temptations: plenty of well-off, bored women became some of his most devoted followers, and some threw themselves at him. Of course, he was as much to blame as they, but like much in his life, the actual reality was grossly exaggerated by the media as part of their campaign against him. The idea of a mystical Russian peasant arriving in well-to-do Russia, exposing himself in public, and sleeping with the wive’s of the upper classes was a too powerful weapon. However, it was certainly only based partly on truth.^[2]

8 He Had a 13-Inch Penis

Going hand in hand with tales of his sexual prowess was the tale that his tail was 13 inches long and, when he made love, he caused women to faint. Adding to this myth, his penis was supposedly severed after his corpse was found in the Little Nevka River in December 1916 and displayed in a museum for years. It has disappeared and reappeared frequently—not what you’re thinking—in history, with the most talked-about being one that appeared in 1994, but after it was tested, it turned out to be a dehydrated sea cucumber.

Still, for some reason, people like the idea of Rasputin’s penis being monstrous in size—a manifestation of his supposed sexual appetite—and the myth that it was removed from his body at some point is a commonly believed one. Even today, the Russian Museum of Erotica holds an exhibition that claims to display the real penis of Rasputin.^[3]

7 He Was a Spy for the Germans

As Nicholas II rushed off to take control of his army, Alexandra (a German by birth) was left behind to govern. Although Nicholas still wrote home, Rasputin stepped in regularly to give advice and recommendations, often suggesting who should be appointed for various governmental positions. Even before Nicholas left for the front, Rasputin regularly gave political advice in the guise of visions and dreams coming directly from God, which often influenced the deeply religious royals.

But one commonly spread story (again, started by the Russian media of the time) was that Russia’s failures on the battlefield were because of Rasputin. And not by accident—he was intentionally misadvising the Emperor and Empress to help the Germans win. Some even claimed Alexandra was on the German payroll as well. Considering he was followed constantly for the last few years of his life, including by British intelligence, there is no evidence of him working for the Germans or anyone for that matter. While the information on spies is usually kept under a tight lid, there is nothing linking him to the German Kaiser. There is no suggestion from the various intelligence networks watching him that anyone ever seriously believed this.^[4]

6 He Was a Spiritual Healer Who Kept the Heir Alive

Now, this is technically true, but the myth surrounding how he did it, which is still not known for sure today, is often wrapped in hocus pocus and mysticism.

Nicholas and Alexandra’s only son was Alexei, a weak boy who inherited hemophilia from his mother’s side and wasn’t expected to live long into adulthood. The disease stops blood from clotting, meaning a simple tumble (as young boys are wont to do) could result in almost fatal internal hemorrhaging. More than once, the priest was called in to read Alexei his last rights.

Yet Rasputin would always come to the rescue, sometimes in person, sometimes with just a letter. Known throughout Russia as a faith healer, even before he first met the royal family, Rasputin became indispensable to Nicholas and Alexandra: their heir could seemingly only be kept alive by the mystic and no one else. But this was certainly not spiritual healing. Some say it was simply a matter of Rasputin sending the doctors from his side and ordering them to leave Alexei alone. This makes sense considering the common treatment for hemophilia at the time was aspirin, which today we know thins the blood, about the worst thing to give a hemophiliac. By insisting the doctors leave Alexei alone, he probably saved the boy’s life—not spiritual healing.^[5]

5 He Was a Monk

The moniker of “mad monk” sure is catchy, but Rasputin was not mad and certainly wasn’t a monk.

His religious career began after a pilgrimage to a monastery when he was 27 years old. He returned a changed man, a man of God, but he was never ordained by the Russian Orthodox Church. Walking the Siberian wilderness from village to village as a “strannik” (basically a holy wanderer), his popularity soared. It brought him to the attention of local church leaders and eventually Saint Petersburg.

In the capital, he was seen as something of a curiosity, personifying the sentimental idea of the God-fearing peasant. The often bored and spiritually hungry aristocracy were entranced by this crude peasant, who stood amongst them confidently wearing the robes of a monk. Rasputin had no desire to ever enter the church formally, but yet again, that troublesome Russian media said otherwise.^[6]

4 He Came Back from the Dead

We do not know for sure what happened that fateful night in late December 1916 when Rasputin was murdered. All we have is the unreliable account by the murderer himself: Prince Felix Yusupov, whose memoirs recount a story of evil, dark forces, and a noble and selfless act to rid the world of Rasputin.

Yusupov claims Rasputin was brought to his house and fed cakes and wine laced with cyanide. When Rasputin was unaffected, the Prince grabbed a gun and shot him in the heart. Then, thinking the job done and, in some stories, checking for a pulse and finding none, he went upstairs to tell his co-conspirators. When he returned, Rasputin supposedly leaped up back to life, throttled Yusupov, and tried to escape before being gunned down for good in the courtyard.

Although we will likely never know exactly how it happened, suggesting Rasputin came back from the dead can quite obviously be discredited, even more so when we consider the source. Indeed, the autopsy discredits Yusupov’s story immediately, detailing multiple gunshots, one to the head, and various bruises around the body, suggesting he was beaten. Yet even in death, the myth of the devil incarnate within Rasputin was too appealing to pass up.^[7]

3 He Actually Died of Drowning

Another common misconception of his death, although a little lesser-known, is that Rasputin was still not dead when his body was disposed of.

Yusupov and his co-conspirators drove to the Little Nevka River, weighed his body down, and tossed him over the railing into a hole in the ice. When his body was found just a little way downstream, however, false rumors quickly spread that water was found in his lungs, proving that he must have still been breathing when he was tossed in the water, making his cause of death drowning.

Again, this was simply another feather in the bow of the Rasputin myth, a further way of highlighting that the mystic man was a force of evil with supernatural powers of almost invincibility. In reality, the autopsy report said nothing of the sort. He died of a gunshot wound at point-blank range to the forehead. No one is surviving that.^[8]

2 The British Were Involved in His Assassination

This one we can’t discredit entirely, but there are parts of it that we certainly can.

The British were eager to prevent the crumbling Russian Empire from pulling out of the war and leaving them high and dry. They saw Rasputin as a threat due to his calls for belief in him, his influence over the royals, and the ill-feeling he distilled in the Russian population, which then transferred to the Emperor by proxy.

Rumor has it the British intelligence agency advised on, and even participated in, the murder of Rasputin, recognizing he wouldn’t be missed. And with Rasputin out of the picture, any doubt about the war would be gone from Nicholas’s mind, and his rule (and therefore Russia’s stability in the war) would be strengthened. One thing we can’t disprove is them advising on it and possibly encouraging it. Still, considering the amateurish, botched assassination itself, there is no way the British intelligence agency played an active part in it.^[9]

1 He Was Pure Evil

Probably the most commonly accepted “fact” about Rasputin, even to those who know nothing about him, is that he was an evil man. Popular culture has played a big part in this, especially in the West, with Rasputin always playing the bad guy with evil powers and bad intentions.

But while indeed a flawed man, and certainly no saint, at heart Rasputin’s intentions were at best quite noble, and at worst self-serving (often for reasons of protecting himself). While visiting prostitutes and sleeping with the wives of the elite, he did so with the genuine belief that sin was a necessary step to bring one closer to God (an idea shared by the celebrated authors Tolstoy and Dostoevsky). He loved his fellow man (particularly the peasants) and wasn’t afraid to show it, which led to rumors of his indecency and affairs. He loved Nicholas’s and Alexandra’s children dearly, and they loved him. And while the nation spiraled toward inevitable war, he begged Nicholas to relent, grieving at the idea of generations of Russian men being slaughtered and children becoming fatherless.

He was certainly a complicated man, but to call him evil is to believe the propaganda from 100-year-old anti-monarchist Russian newspapers. This propaganda is the basis of all the modern-day Rasputin mythology, from a media who saw him as nothing more than a tool to bring down the establishment.^[10]

Most bank failures don’t make prime time news, though when they do, it’s usually bad news for everyone else. Some of the largest financial crashes in history were triggered by the collapse of major banks and other financial institutions, caused by factors like risky lending practices, bad assets, and lack of government regulation. 

10. Bank Of Credit And Commerce International

The Bank of Credit and Commerce International – or BCCI – was a Luxembourg-based institution, founded in 1972 by a Pakistani financier called Agha Hasan Abedi. BCCI gained a reputation for its innovative and flexible financial solutions – especially in the developing world – as it quickly grew to be the seventh largest private bank in the world. By the 1980s, BCCI operated in 78 countries, with assets totaling over $20 billion.

By the late 1980s, however, reports of financial irregularities at the bank started to make global headlines, as investigations by regulators in several countries uncovered evidence of money laundering, bribery, and fraud. In 1991, BCCI was shut down by regulators in the UK and the US, with all of its assets frozen. During the proceedings, it was revealed that the bank was directly or indirectly involved in a range of criminal activities, including support for terrorist organizations, dictators, and drug traffickers. The collapse of BCCI resulted in billions of dollars in losses for investors and creditors around the world, along with a general loss in confidence in the global banking system. 

9. Bank Of New England

The Bank of New England was a large regional bank based in Boston, as well as one of the oldest financial institutions in the United States. Prior to its collapse in 1991, the bank had been profitable and successful in the region, with assets totaling over $22 billion at the time of its failure. As it was later found out, the bank’s success was largely built on a foundation of risky loans and questionable lending practices, eventually leading to its downfall.

In the late 1980s, the real estate market in New England had already begun to decline, as many of the bank’s loans to local developers and real estate investors went into default. As losses mounted, the bank and its subsidiaries were unable to raise sufficient capital to cover the liabilities, and were ultimately forced to declare bankruptcy in 1991.

The collapse of the Bank of New England was one of the largest bank failures in U.S. history, as it affected small businesses and job opportunities across northeast USA.

8. Colonial Bank

Colonial Bank was a regional bank headquartered in Montgomery, Alabama, with branches throughout the southeastern United States. It was founded in 1981 and grew rapidly after a series of acquisitions and mergers. By 2009, the bank had more than 340 branches and $25 billion in assets.

Like many other financial institutions at the time, Colonial Bank had significant exposure to the stressed subprime mortgage market, with a number of loans to borrowers with poor credit histories on its sheets. Many of these loans were bundled together into complex securities that were sold to investors around the world, ultimately causing the financial crash of 2008. As the housing market began to collapse, most of these loans defaulted and left Colonial Bank with major losses.

In August 2009, Colonial Bank was seized by regulators, and all of its assets – totaling about $22 billion – were sold to BB&T Corp. 

7. MCorp

MCorp was a bank holding company based in Texas. Intended to be a strong regional bank competing with larger national institutions, it quickly grew to become one of the largest banks in Texas, with over $18 billion in assets at the time of its failure. 

The primary cause of MCorp’s collapse was its over-reliance on the oil and gas industry, as the company had invested heavily in the energy sector during the 1980s. When the oil market crashed in the mid-1980s, MCorp was left with high losses on its balance sheet, combined with excessive debt to finance its earlier expansion. The bank increasingly found itself unable to service its debt obligations, and was eventually shut down in March, 1989. The collapse of MCorp had many repercussions for the Texan economy, along with a heavy bill for the FDIC to repay their insurers and depositors.

6. Herstatt Bank

Herstatt Bank was established in 1956 as a small, privately-owned bank in Cologne, Germany. It was initially focused on foreign exchange trading and quickly became known around the world for its expertise in the field. In the 1970s, though, the bank started to diversify its activities, including lending to other banks and trading in speculative investments.

The collapse of Herstatt Bank happened in June 1974, when it was unable to meet its liabilities due to being exposed to significant foreign exchange risk. It was eventually declared insolvent, and the German banking authorities stepped in to liquidate all of the institution’s assets.

The collapse of Herstatt Bank led to a few repercussions for the financial world, as many of its counterparties were left with substantial losses. There was also a widespread loss of confidence in the stability of the system, directly leading to the formation of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.

5. Hokkaido Takushoku

Hokkaido Takushoku Bank was a Japanese bank founded in 1900 for the development of the  Hokkaido region. It would play a major role in the economic development of the island, funding many of its earliest infrastructure and agriculture projects. 

In the late 1980s, though, HTB began to expand aggressively, as it heavily invested in Japan’s real estate and speculative finance sector. At the time, the country was going through an economic bubble and most banks were eager to finance large-scale construction projects. The bubble burst by the early 1990s, though, plunging Japan’s markets into a financial crisis. The value of HTB’s assets plummeted overnight, combined with allegations of fraud, mismanagement, and embezzlement by top officials at the bank. 

The Japanese government intervened in November, 1997, when it placed HTB directly under state control and bailed out its depositors. The bank’s total assets were valued at around $80 billion at the time of its collapse, along with about $7.5 billion in bad loans. 

4. Continental Illinois

Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company was founded in 1910 in Chicago, Illinois as a small bank serving the local community. By the 1980s, it grew through mergers and acquisitions to become the seventh-largest commercial bank in the United States, right before its collapse in 1984. 

The bank’s troubles began in the late 1970s, when it started to focus on commercial real estate lending to boost the overall profitability of its portfolio. The bank’s management excessively invested in risky real estate projects, resulting in huge losses during the 1980s real estate crash and global oil crisis. 

The collapse of Continental Illinois was one of the largest bank failures in US history, as it had assets worth $40 billion at the time of its fall. It was also a significant blow to the US banking system, as the crash threatened to destabilize the entire financial sector. The government had to eventually step in to prevent a wider crisis, bailing out the bank with a $4.5 billion loan and taking over its ownership.

3. IndyMac

IndyMac Bank was founded in 1985 by Angelo Mozilo and David Loeb, who also founded one of America’s largest mortgage lenders, Countrywide Financial Corp. The bank became known for its aggressive lending practices, like offering low-cost mortgages to borrowers with poor credit histories. These high-risk loans, combined with the larger financial crisis of 2008, led to its closure by the Office of Thrift Supervision on July 11, 2008.

IndyMac was easily the largest mortgage lender to collapse during the housing crisis, triggering the failure of multiple other institutions in the wider savings and loans market. After the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, took control of it in July 2008, all of its assets – valued at about $32 billion at the time of the collapse – were subsequently sold to OneWest Bank.

2. Credit-Anstalt

Credit-Anstalt was an Austrian bank founded by the Rothschild family in 1855, though it was nationalized after the Second World War. It played a major role in the development of Austria’s industrial and financial sectors, and by the early 21th century, it had become one of the largest banks in Europe. 

That would last until about the late 1920s, thanks to a combination of factors like the global economic downturn, the Austrian government’s economic policies, and the bank’s own risky lending practices. Credit-Anstalt had heavily invested in Austrian infrastructure during the early-1920s boom, though it had been unable to pay back its debts during the Great Depression. 

The bank collapsed in May 1931, triggering a bank run by its depositors across Austria. Many historians consider it to be the beginning of the Great Depression, as the failure had a domino effect on the European banking system and led to a wave of bank failures and financial crises in Austria and other European countries. 

1. Washington Mutual

By the end of 2007, Washington Mutual was easily one of the largest financial institutions in the United States, with over 2,200 branches across the country and about $183 billion in customer deposits. Throughout the early and mid-2000s, Washington Mutual aggressively issued high-risk mortgage loans to borrowers with poor credit history, which was essentially the underlying cause of the entire 2008 crisis. By the end of 2008, Washington Mutual had gone bankrupt after closing down in what we now know as the largest bank closure in history.

The federal government seized control of the bank in September, 2008, selling its assets to JP Morgan Chase for $1.9 billion. The collapse would have a huge impact on investor confidence in the larger market at that time, as the bank held assets worth $307 billion at the time of its collapse. The failure of Washington Mutual and other major institutions during the 2008 crisis led to the passing of the Dodd-Frank Act in 2010.

While shark attacks, sinkholes, plane crashes, and other “Act of God” insurance nightmares get all the glory of media coverage, there are plenty of other events that account for at least as much—if not more—a share of injuries and deaths. They may not be glamorous or worthy of silver screen treatment, but as causes of hospitalization (and sometimes mortality), the numbers these health threats put up annually certainly qualify them for at least a second thought. So read on and learn about the top ways people wind up in the ER or the morgue, that somehow never get their moment in the spotlight.

10. Biting

Sadly, zombie enthusiasts watching the news for advanced signs of an impending apocalypse are mistaken if they think human-on-human biting attacks are prime suspects. Even without the involvement of undead hordes, American hospitals record more than 40,000 ER admissions for victims of human bites every year.

A UK study of the phenomenon estimated that one person goes to the emergency department every three days to treat bite wounds inflicted by another person; other studies estimate that a person bites another person once every twelve minutes.

While it may be easy to write off this statistic as a subset of assault victims requiring hospitalization, keep in mind that most—but far from all—bites result from a fight. The rest (of those that are actually reported and recorded) occur from other such zesty activities as athletics or intercourse. Not all such incidents get reported, but when the bounty of bacteria and general nastiness of the human mouth results in infection, it is harder to hide the fact that someone got a little too toothy during any activity.

9. Cute Animals

Some strange combination of Saturday morning cartoons and Beanie Babies has given people a false sense of security when dealing with seemingly cute animals. Man’s Best Friend alone manages to send up to 13,000 puppy-lovers to the hospital annually.

Of course, humans have a tragically long track record of mistaking “adorable” with “harmless” when it comes to the animal kingdom. Hippos, bison, and other such lovable lugs are so darned endearing, that thousands of human idiots manage to push them to the point of violence every year, with hippos killing more people than sharks, spiders, snakes, wolves, and jellyfish combined.

National Parks like Yellowstone are particularly prone to incidents involving visitors who think all they need to know about wild animals is the difference between herbivores and carnivores, and then proceed to get maimed while trying to take selfies with the resident bison. And it wouldn’t be a true American Thanksgiving without a parade of Elmer Fudd wannabes becoming prey to wild turkeys.

Fact is, people are no better at living with other species than they are at getting along with other humans.

8. Vacuums

People have come up with a variety of novel uses for vacuums, with the natural result that they’ve found a host of ways to hurt or kill themselves using the appliance. There is, of course, the regrettable trend of curious young men who, absent any prominent social messaging warning them of the perils of amorous relations with cleaning appliances, “were driven to new lengths by the novelty of the experience and came to grief”, to quote a foundational study on the subject.

But the travails of vacuums are not limited to or even dominated by hapless males; in both traditional deliveries and C-sections, vacuums have replaced forceps as the tool of choice in assisting in the delivery of infants, which has been shown to frequently cause serious damage to the newborn’s intracranial tissue. That officially makes vacuums a bigger threat than zombies where brains are concerned.

Making it out of the maternity ward still doesn’t provide safe harbor, as children are prone to friction burns and related injury resulting from close encounters with their household vacuums.

7. Toilets

Human bodies were designed to squat during defecation, yet the pretense of dumping out in a “civilized” manner led to the development of toilets requiring an upright posture. This increased dignity is accompanied by straining, increased rates of fissures, incomplete evacuation (resulting in buildup of residual waste and bacteria), elevated risks of chronic inflammation and internal bleeding, and possibly even colon cancer.

Take that, third-world residents who have no alternative to squatting!

Nations of the world who invested in a more regal platform for bowel movements got a lot more than a porcelain throne as a result: hemorrhoids afflict fully half of all Americans by the time they hit 50, and the added time and labor involved in forcing the dookie out when your posture is holding it in increases the amount of pressure and time required (hence the popularity of reading on the toilet), further compounding the health hazards all over again.

It is common knowledge that sitting at a desk all day is bad for your health. But while the hazards of prolonged sitting have attracted all manner of attention and helpful tips, people somehow remain much more receptive to doing office calisthenics and investing in standing desks than in renovating their bathrooms to incorporate squat toilets.

6. Work

It isn’t just our desks that are wrecking our bodies. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), unintentional overexertion, otherwise known as working too damn hard, is the third leading cause of injury in the United States. Among those aged 24-65, i.e., the standard working age, it is the second most common cause for non-fatal hospitalization.

Far from being a problem associated with highly physical jobs like construction or Jimmy John’s delivery, traumatic overexertion can be brought on by repetitive motions common to desk jobs, as well as the odd incident of trying to lift too much, or simply failing to drink enough water.

And before we applaud ourselves for simply being martyred workaholics, bear in mind that hobbyists like gardeners and marathon runners are also incapable of recognizing their own limits. So while hospitals overflow with patients who don’t get enough exercise, the sedentary can plan on sharing a room with fitness freaks who just don’t know when to quit. That ought to be a fun stay for everyone.

5. The Million-Dollar Fart

People routinely turn up at the hospital convinced that an alien is about to burst from their chests, only to discover that the foreign body they are hosting is actually just a cloud of hydrogen tinged with sulfur making its way down and out.

Abdominal pain (the detested tummy ache) accounts for eight million ER admissions per year—the leading cause of hospitalization in America. That is due in part to the huge variety of things that can go wrong in the human abdomen, but it also includes less-than-deadly complaints like gas. Of the eight million admissions, only about 17% turn out to be serious—a conclusion only reached after ordering anything from an ultrasound or CT scan to exploratory surgery, all elements of the standard regimen that could quickly turn one person’s *poot* into a seriously expensive punchline, not to mention how all the diagnostic imaging typically increases cumulative exposure to radiation, potentially leading to further health issues down the line.

But that isn’t the only way people have found to emit million-dollar farts.

Pyroflatulence, better known as the elusive-but-spectacular “blue dart”, has delighted and destroyed in equal measure. While it is impossible to burn inside-out from igniting one’s own gaseous emissions, doing so in proximity to other flammable substances is, predictably, explosive, and can compound the cost (financial and personal) of a single fart by orders of magnitude.

4. July

This documented phenomenon is known as the July Effect: when all the baby-docs get to swap their med school scrubs for white coats and stethoscopes, hospitals are temporarily at higher risk of the sort of silly slip-ups and hijinks that made Scrubs such a beloved sitcom—as well as making hospitals the third leading killer of Americans each year.

The coincidence of med school graduations in the month has been directly linked to a 10% spike in hospital errors, involving everything from mixing up medications to not knowing how to work a defibrillator. Experts agree that if at all possible, it is best to avoid hospitals throughout the summer and try to aim for a time when the ER is more likely to be staffed with more experienced doctors.

Of course, if you are planning on celebrating Independence Day at all, you stand a pretty high chance of failing to follow that advice…

3. Holidays

Major holidays are a bit of a triple threat for hospitals. Firstly, surveys have shown that nearly 1 in 5 holiday travelers hit the road to avoid family, rather than to visit them; meanwhile, impatient travelers will exaggerate or even fabricate symptoms in order to get select (elderly) family members hospitalized for non-critical conditions, if only to ensure travel and other holiday plans have one less obstacle to going smoothly.

On the other hand, lonely seniors without company during the most wonderful time of the year will check themselves into hospitals just to have company.

And finally, of course, there are the perils of drinking. Responsible revelers who drink at home, thoughtfully staying off the roads, often end up trading a traffic accident for a domestic one. So while DUIs are to Christmas what candy is to Halloween, celebratory day-drinking still manages to net more than 15,000 holiday decorators, along with over a thousand burn victims, and 1,500 cases of back strain (or lifting injuries)—all without so much as a car leaving the driveway. Even on July 4th, America’s pyrotechnics are no match for its thirst for alcohol as a root cause of ER admissions and injury.

2. Removing Hair… Down There

Ladies and gentlemen, it is time to stop grooming your naughty bits.

From lasers to razors, eliminating all the hair of the swimsuit places has gone from being a fad to fully in the mainstream. The shave-and-wax trend over the period from 2002 – 2010 produced just over 11,000 ER visits, but by the end of 2010 the annual rate had climbed over 2,500. Disturbingly, the overwhelming cause of serious injury involves the use of razors, but other hair removal techniques including waxing have also been implicated.

And while injuries during the baldening process are alarming, experts point out that removing pubic hair also eliminates an important biological defense to disease and infection, leaving bare nether-regions prone to staph infections, STIs, and even run of the mill blunt force trauma. Though this trend is exponentially on the rise, it is only one of the ways we truly suffer for beauty…

1. Fashion

It is time to admit that our clothes are killing us. From high-heeled shoes to too-tight… well, everything, modern wardrobes are little more than glorified murder chambers we carry with and on us. The desperate squeezing-in ritual that accompanies so many daily clothing routines the world over has been responsible for blood clots, chronic pain, nerve damage, and disfigurement.

And that laundry list of physical health problems doesn’t even consider the countless psychological side-effects of having a culture that celebrates sartorial masochism, making it effectively impossible for anyone to meet the standards of beauty and shape without compromising health and comfort. So even those who forego “fitting in” through skin-tight apparel often adorn an underlying depression with looser, more forgiving outfits.

The compounding effect of the one size fits none standardization as the most horrible fixture of contemporary fashion is hard to track, but experts attribute much of the staggering rate of suicides and cases of self-harm requiring hospitalization, in part, to a void of self-esteem. And while many high-performing ancient cultures (and pragmatic modern ones) manage to embrace functional, practical, gender-neutral garb, the pinnacles of high fashion insist on preserving monstrous mutations of gendered apparel. Almost daily accusations of misogyny, hyper-sexualization, perpetuation of rape culture, and a generally regressive view of identity all point back to the fashion and beauty industry.

Directly and indirectly, health and beauty have become opposing forces.

Inspirational quotes about making mistakes are so ubiquitous that they fill entire books, not to mention all those stories of how inventions or other discoveries came about by accident. Well, time to look at the other side of the coin: mistakes where the brunt of the cost was borne by thousands, maybe millions of people with little to no say in the decision-making process, and who very often had to pay with their very lives. In some instances, all of humanity could have been affected by it, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.  

10. The Handcart Expedition

In 1856, the followers of Mormonism had brought 1,100 from the United Kingdom and Scandinavia to Missouri, and it was intended for them to press on to what Brigham Young declared would be Zion in Utah to escape the persecution they were experiencing in states that had been admitted into the Union at the time. As the converts were too poor to buy covered wagons or oxen to haul them, the expedition turned to hand carts. It was reasoned that not only would the alternative be cheaper, the light loads could be moved fast enough to get the new arrivals to Zion in two months. 

Young and the other organizers’ calculations were wrong in just about every way they could be. For one, they overestimated the sturdiness of the greenwood material that went into the carts, meaning that they soon had dozens of wrecks. For another, the groups were allowed to head out in August instead of the recommended May departure. En route, supplies such as blankets – which could be lifesavers – weren’t just abandoned, but actively burned to destroy the temptation to turn back for them later in the journey. No resupply areas were set up for the converts, and word was not sent forward to any existing settlements. Salt Lake City, the main population from which any sort of rescue mission could be launched, didn’t even know they were coming. 

The end result was that 210 people died from cold, starvation, and other causes on the way to Zion. Effectively, Young had inflicted five Donner Party disasters’ worth of losses on the Mormon flock. Rather than own up to it, the leaders of the church made the handcarts into a significant religious symbol and a tribute to the faith and stalwartness of their adherents, including using handcarts in reenactments for generations after.  

9. The Overruled Yamamoto War Game 

The 1942 Battle of Midway, which resulted in the destruction of four Japanese aircraft carriers, is widely marked to be the turning point in the war in the Pacific that made Japanese defeat inevitable. What certainly wasn’t inevitable was that on the afternoon of June 4, the Japanese carriers off the Aleutian Islands of Alaska would be having their planes refueled and rearmed (switching from dive bombs to torpedos, the preferred weapon against combat ships at the time) just in time for American aircraft to attack. In fact, the Japanese command had an ominous warning that this could happen. 

On May 1, the Japanese naval command for the battle convened for a war game to test contingencies for their plan to attack the Aleutian Islands. When the eventuality of the carriers being attacked without air cover was tested (the main difference between the initial test conditions and reality on June 4 being that, in reality, the planes were still on the carriers, while in the game it was postulated they would be away on their bombing mission), there was a roll of the dice to determine the damage American bombers could inflict. When the results were a grievous loss of one carrier and damaging of another, Admiral Matome Ugaki overruled the findings, not believing American bombers could do nearly that damage even if they caught the carriers with their defenses down, and no one questioned the theorizing or reevaluated the strategy. This downplaying of the crisis impacted Japanese decision-making in a way that left them sitting ducks at the crucial moment. 

8. Cuban LGBT Persecution

Even before the Cuban Revolution, homosexuality was taboo on the island nation. In the 1960s this state of affairs exacerbated, with homosexuals being arrested, losing jobs, or worst of all being sent to labor camps known as “Military Production Aid Camps” en masse. It wasn’t until 1979 that the Cuban government decriminalized homosexuality as long as it was not “publicly manifested.” 

Unusually for a man in his position, in 2010 Fidel Castro admitted it was a mistake that such horrible acts had been committed against the LGBT community of Cuba. Furthermore, he admitted that it was his fault. Some have argued that this was only part of a public relations campaign headed by his niece Mariela Castro. Nevertheless, it was an unusual effort for a former head of state in a communist country.  

7. The Traitor Secretary of War

When discussing blunders of the American Civil War, usually the focus is one single doomed attack, such as Pickett’s Charge or Marye’s Heights at the Battle of Fredericksburg. However, the thousands of deaths that those attacks caused pale in comparison to the blunder that made the war possible. That was when President James Buchanan appointed former governor of Virginia John Floyd to serve as Secretary of War in 1857. 

As Secretary of War, Floyd would send huge portions of federal arsenals to isolated locations where they could be seized without a shot being fired by newly emergent Confederate militias, allowing the seceding states to field thousands of artillery pieces even though there was hardly a cannon factory in the entire South. He went so far as to sell 10,000 rifles to a pro-Confederate militia in South Carolina in secret. If there was any doubt of where his sympathies truly lay, when the Civil War started he joined the Confederacy as a general (though considering his disastrous performance at Fort Donelson, future president Ulysses S. Grant said that joining the Confederacy was the best service he could render the Union). In short, Floyd was the one man most responsible for ensuring that 600,000 men died during the Civil War, instead of the near zero that died from the 1833 abortive secession of South Carolina.    

6. The August 24 Bombing of London

After the conquest of France, Hitler’s plans for Britain were surprisingly lenient. He intended to negotiate peace before launching his invasion of the Soviet Union (more on this later). To that end, a significant aspect of Fuhrer Directive 17 was that terror bombings would “reserve for (himself) the right to decide on terror attacks as measures of reprisal” in the interest in concentrating offensive power on the Royal Air Force and preventing the strengthening of the British support for the war. 

Instead, on August 24, Luftwaffe air crews ended up dropping bombs on London by accident, and in reprisal on August 25 RAF bombs were dropped on Berlin. As a result, necessary Luftwaffe material was wasted trying to kill civilians instead of weakening the RAF, and the resolve to end the war went away. That anonymous bomber crew accidentally provided the Allied war effort the greatest propaganda service of the war.  

5. The Potato Blight

As of 2016, the population of Ireland still hadn’t recovered from the Great Famine of 1845-1849. A million people were forced to flee the island and another million starved to death, reducing the population by a full 25%. Considering that the potato blight disease that caused this disaster was brought through mold on ships from North America, it might be the worst American export in history.  

British laws and policies were almost intentionally unhelpful. For one thing, for years there was little official intervention allowed, and exports of Irish grain to England continued. For another, an 1838 Poor Law sent those bankrupted and evicted to workhouses, naturally massively discouraging the desperate from seeking aid and leaving many communities short on workers needed for fields. Absentee landowners in England were generally reluctant to contribute to aid programs, and many primarily expanded their landholdings, feeding the suspicion that the famine was, if not deliberate on England’s part, at least not something they were too motivated to fix. 

4. The Orissa Famine 

Speaking of British policies providing ineffective countermeasures for famines, this historical catastrophe is so obscure that even the TopTenz list on famines did not include it. And yet, it cost humanity a million lives in 1866. To a significant degree, it was due to the East India Company devastating the textile industry in India’s Orissa region, leaving economies much more vulnerable to the whims of the weather and thus allowing a severe monsoon season to exact a heavier toll. 

Official imperial response was to not intervene, and especially not to regulate the prices of grain which would leave the stocks more accessible to the general population. The human toll of this decision cost many communities as much as a third of their people. The British Empire would pay a high price in time for this laissez-faire approach, as the famine was a galvanizing event in the development of Indian nationalism. 

3. Stalin’s Kiev Order

In terms of immediate loss of personnel, no single military campaign decision was as devastating for a military as Stalin’s orders regarding the defense of Kiev that began on September 7, 1941. By September 9, 1941, Field Marshal Budenny could see that the situation was hopeless and ordered an “orderly phased withdrawal” of all Soviet forces around Kiev. Joseph Stalin expressly forbade that, and in amazingly candid language ordered, “Stay and hold, and if necessary, die!” 

An estimated 600,000 Soviet soldiers would follow the second half of that order either in combat or later in prison/death camps. Of the forces arrayed, only roughly 15,000 would escape the encirclement. Later historians have claimed that the battle still arguably saved the Soviet Union because Hitler had directed tens of thousands of soldiers that otherwise would have taken Moscow to circle back to Ukraine. But there’s little reason to believe they wouldn’t have also been able to function as a holding force if they were not encircled.  

2. The Cultural Revolution

The Cultural Revolution was a movement in China during the last 10 years of Chairman Mao Zedong’s life, wherein intellectualism and the alleged emergence of new bourgeoisie was purged from China. This largely took the form of forming paramilitary groups called Red Guards by closing down schools and having the students harass elderly adherents to traditionalist values and purely intellectual pursuits. Zedong would resort to having to send Chinese troops after Red Guard groups that he himself had made possible, and the civil war would continue until 1977 when Deng Xiaopang (who himself had been purged from power early in the revolution) took power and held office for the next 20 years. By the end of the revolution it had cost an estimated 1.5 million lives. 

Like Castro with Military Production Aid Camps, the Chinese Communist Party was willing to admit to this lethal blunder. In May 2016, Tuesday People’s Daily, the official paper of the Chinese Communist Party, announced that it would “never allow a mistake like the Cultural Revolution to happen again.” The validity of this observation was muddled by the fact that even as the statement was being published an official celebration of the revolution was held in Beijing, and many Chinese intellectuals claim the economic reforms of the purge put China in a position to become the economic powerhouse it has become today.   

1. Ethyl

TopTenz has talked about the harm that Thomas Midgley inflicted on the workers for Tetraethyl production, but that was only scratching the surface of the harm the lead supplement for gasoline, introduced in 1923, caused for the world in general. It’s hard to say just how many premature deaths, miscarriages, and ruined nervous systems it caused after it forced its very inventor to spend months recuperating. However, a 2011 California State University report distributed by the United Nations found that an estimated 1.2 million premature deaths were prevented every year by the phasing out of leaded gasoline, and roughly 125,000 miscarriages.  

Additionally, $2.4 trillion in damages were prevented, including acid rain. So perhaps it could be said that the effort to phase out leaded gasoline, spearheaded by widely blacklisted scientist Clair Patterson, was one of the most undersung efforts in human history. 

Despite the phase out as a global effort beginning in 1971, several countries remained holdouts well into the 21st Century. This was largely due to infrastructure difficulties in refitting their petroleum industries to remove lead from the chemical process. The holdout nations included Yemen, Iraq, and Afghanistan. Officially, the last nation completed its phase out in 2021. Leaded gasoline is still causing death and nervous damage directly and legally through use in small aircraft, so Thomas Midgley will likely be harming humanity for decades to come.  

Is Dustin Koski’s fantasy novel A Tale of Magic Gone Wrong the exact opposite of one of humanity’s greatest mistakes? You’ll have to read it to find out!