The US has a long and gruesome history of slavery that has affected almost every part of its culture. Children in school learn the harsh circumstances that slaves were forced to live with and the incredible cruelty white slave owners showed them. American history teachers know how important it is to teach the horrors of slavery—not only so the mistakes of the past aren’t repeated but because the long-term oppression and cruelty toward black people extends even to modern times in important cultural issues such as police brutality and a cycle of poverty that is directly linked to racism caused by slavery.

What isn’t often taught is that there were many black people who not only participated in the slave trade but who often profited greatly from it. They owned slaves as property in order to enhance their own economical well-being by having free labor for their plantations. Many were biracial children of former white masters and were either freed or were left some property in a will. The American South is infamous for using slaves on their large plantations, and many of the black slave owners on this list are from South Carolina and Louisiana. Some were considered slave magnates (for owning more than 50 slaves), but others earned their place simply for their unique stories.

10 Dilsey Pope

Dilsey Pope was born a free woman, and when she was older, she bought the man she loved in order to marry him. Many state laws at the time would not allow slaves to be emancipated, so it was common for family or spouses to technically own their family. Dilsy owned her own house and land, and she also hired her husband out as labor.

What makes this particular situation so unique is that when Dilsey and her husband had a fight, Dilsey sold him to her white neighbor out of spite. While many modern women might wish to get rid of their husbands, Dilsey truly takes the cake when it comes to method. Also like many other spouses, she later felt bad about the argument and tried to reconcile. The only problem was that when she went buy her husband back and apologize, her neighbor refused to sell him.^[1]

9 Jacob Gasken

Jacob Gasken was born free only because his mother was a free woman. His father was still a slave at the time of his birth. This was rather common at the time, and the mother eventually wanted to buy Jacob’s father so that he would no longer have to work as a slave on a plantation. When Jacob grew older, his mother helped him to buy his father. The family was happy with this arrangement, although the father was technically still their slave until he attempted to do what all parents do: reprimand his son. This is when this story becomes notable.

One day, Jacob’s father scolded him after Jacob had misbehaved (as any good father would do). Jacob, a petulant, entitled boy, became so angry with his father that he sold him to a New Orleans trader and then later bragged to his friends and colleagues about sending his own father to be a slave on a plantation in Louisiana to “learn him some manners.”^[2]

8 Nat Butler

Nat Butler makes this list for the special type of manipulative cruelty that he showed toward his fellow humans. Butler was one of the worst kinds of slave owners. Not only did he participate in the trade, but he actively tricked slaves into running away so that he could sell them back to their masters.

Butler would convince a slave to hide out on his property. Butler would then speak to the slave’s owner to find out what the reward was for returning him. If the reward was high, he would simply return the slave for the money. If the price was low, Butler would buy the slave then resell him to slave dealers down south for a profit.^[3] He gained a bad reputation in his county for his scheming actions, and many attempted to hurt and even murder him for revenge.

7 Justus Angel And Mistress L. Horry

Justus Angel and Mistress L. Horry were wealthy black masters who each owned 84 slaves, or 168 together.^[4] They were located in Colleton District (now Charleston County) in South Carolina in 1830. Because most slave owners only had a handful of slaves, Angel and Horry were considered economic elite and were called slave magnates.

Slaves were simply labor to Angel and Horry, and they considered them property, hunting down runaway slaves and punishing misbehaving ones. While there is no evidence that they treated their slaves more harshly than other slave owners, they were known to own them strictly for business purposes. They bought, sold, and traded them like property, and misbehaving slaves were punished harshly for interfering with profits.

6 Widow C. Richards And Son P.C. Richards

In 1860, slave owners, white or black, owned around one to five slaves on average. About 28 percent of the free black population in New Orleans at the time owned slaves, with at least six owning 65 or more.

C. Richards and her son P.C. go above and beyond these other six slave owners by owning over twice as many. The widow and her son operated a large sugar plantation together and owned more slaves than all other black slave owners in Louisiana in 1860, topping off at 152.^[5]

5 The Pendarvis Family

During the 1730s, the Pendarvis family was one of the most prominent in the South, owning the biggest rice plantations in the Palmetto region and over 123 slaves. They dominated Colleton County (now the Charleston area) and became one of the wealthiest slaveholding families in South Carolina.

What is ironic is that this family of wealthy black slave owners was given their wealth accidentally when a will was created that gave the estate of Joseph Pendarvis to his illegitimate children with his slave, Parthena.^[6] Despite the family’s own origins, all Pendarvis estates continued to use slave labor as they took over the Palmetto State.

4 Marie Therese Metoyer

Marie was living in the Kingdom of Kongo when she met her future husband, who fell deeply in love with her. In a time where interracial marriage was considered wrong and immoral, Marie married a white Frenchman named Claude Metoyer and moved to Louisiana with him and their children. Because their marriage was not approved of by society, Marie technically remained a slave to her husband. Years later and after six children, Marie was finally freed, and she and her husband divorced. Claude left to France, where he married a French woman. Marie wasn’t left with nothing, however, and started a plantation that initially dealt in tobacco.

Under Marie’s leadership, the Metoyer family prospered, and the plantation grew. Eventually, they owned more slaves than any other family in their county, with the number being reported at 287 by 1830. There isn’t much evidence of harsh treatment to their own slaves, but the Metoyers were notorious for buying extra slaves to do the hardest tasks on the plantation and then returning them after the work was finished. This prevented them from having their own slaves do the dirty work.^[7]

3 Antoine Dubuclet

Antoine Dubuclet was born a free man to free parents and inherited a large sugar plantation called Cedar Grove from his father. Under his father, the plantation was small and contained only a few slaves. Under Antoine’s leadership, it grew, and by 1860, he owned over 100 slaves and had one of the largest sugar plantations in Louisiana. He was extremely wealthy, even more so than any of his white neighbors. His plantation was worth $264,000, while the average income of his neighbors in the South was only around $3,978.

After marrying a wealthy black woman, his lands expanded, and after her death, Dubuclet was considered the wealthiest black slave owner in Louisiana.^[8] He was elected and served as state treasurer during the Reconstruction Era, one of the only black men to hold the office for more than one term.

2 William (April) Ellison

In 1862, William Ellison was one of the largest slave owners in South Carolina as well as one of the wealthiest. He was born a slave and was given the name April, after the month in which he was born. He was luckier than most and was bought by a white slave owner named William Ellison, who took the time to educate him. When he was 26 years old, he was freed by his master and began building his expansive cotton plantation. As a free man, he had his name changed to William Ellison, that of his former owner.

What makes Ellison so despicable and earns him the number-two spot on this list is how he collected his wealth. Ellison was known to have made a large proportion of his money as a “slave breeder.” Breeding slaves was illegal in many Southern states, but Ellison secretly sold almost all females born, keeping a select few for future breeding. He kept many of the young males, as they were considered useful on his plantation. Ellison was known to be a harsh master, and his slaves were almost starved and extremely poorly clothed. He kept a windowless building on his property for the specific purpose of chaining his misbehaving slaves.^[9]

1 Anthony Johnson

Nobody on this list has affected the history of slavery quite as much as Anthony Johnson. He is rumored to have been the first black man to arrive in Virginia as well as the first black indentured servant in America. He was also the first black man to gain his freedom and the first to own land. As a true pioneer of firsts, Johnson couldn’t stop there. Ironically, he became the first black slave owner, and it was his court case that solidified slavery in America.

In 1635, Johnson was freed and given a 250-acre plantation where he was master over both black and white servants. In 1654, Johnson sued his neighbor in a case that would change America’s history forever. Johnson’s servant, John Casor, claimed he was an indentured servant who had worked several years past the terms of his indenture for Johnson and was now working for Johnson’s neighbor, Parker. Johnson sued Parker, stated that Casor was his servant “in perpetuity,” and the courts ruled in his favor. Casor had to return to Johnson, and the case established the principle in America that one person is able to own another person for the rest of their life.^[10]

Aubrey Henderson is a recent graduate from Francis Marion University and has a BA in English

The plague outbreak of the mid-1300s, known widely as the Black Death because of the black, festering sores it produced on the bodies of its victims, was a terrible pandemic. It wasn’t the first outbreak of the plague, but it was far and away the deadliest. Though history tends to focus on its devastation of Europe, the Black Death killed millions in a swath spanning three continents, from the British Isles to Egypt and all the way to China. Estimates of the death toll across the whole of Eurasia range from 75 to 200 million. It reduced the population of Europe by 30 to 60 percent and the population of the world as a whole from an estimated 450 million down to approximately 300–350 million between the 1340s and the mid-1350s.

The impact of the Black Death was so tremendous and destructive that it led Christians to believe they were being punished for their sins. It wiped out entire villages, towns, and cities. It was a depopulation event unlike anything seen before or since. Listed here are ten contributing factors to the lethality of the Black Death.

10 Easily Carried by Fleas

For most of its evolutionary history, Yersinia pestis, the bacterium responsible for the plague, was no more mobile than Ebola or tuberculosis, so outbreaks seldom occurred, were confined to small areas, and claimed lower numbers of victims. That was back when human-to-human transfer was required for the disease to spread. At some point in recent millennia, a change in the genetic landscape of Y. pestis occurred that gave it some serious wheels: It developed a resistance to toxins in the gut of the flea.^[1]

This gave it the ability to spread with and thrive within fleas as they traveled the globe on the backs of rats, cats, and otherwise. With this newfound vector, the Black Death was able to spread far beyond where it had beforehand. The rest is history.

9 Filthy Living Conditions

Imagine a world with no sewers, no running water, and rats. Lots of rats. Where rats are found, fleas tend to follow. In the middle years of the 14th century, the odds were good that many of those fleas carried our good friend Y. pestis. If you were living anywhere in Europe, Asia, or North Africa at the time, the odds were also quite good that you lived in squalor and had little (if any) means of avoiding contact with the plague or anyone infected with it.

In Europe, in particular, people lived in close quarters with one another and often shared their living spaces with all sorts of vermin. They seldom washed, and they lived close to their own filth. Gone were the baths, sewers, and aqueducts of Roman times. Returning to prehistoric levels of filth left the people ripe for infection.^[2]

8 The Silk Road

Named for the luxuriant threads spun by the Asian silkworm that merchants carried along its 6,400-kilometer (4,000 mi) span, the Silk Road was founded during China’s Han dynasty. Though the route was a marvel of commerce and diplomacy and allowed for the exchange of goods, languages, ideas, and customs between just about every society from the Atlantic to the Pacific, it also served as a superhighway for infectious diseases.

Historians and epidemiologists alike agree that the plague started somewhere in present-day China or Mongolia and then followed the Silk Road and had reached Crimea by 1346. Though outbreaks of bubonic plague had occurred before in recorded history, most notably in the Plague of Justinian in the sixth century, they hadn’t occurred in a world half so connected as that of the mid-1300s. With the blessings of trade and cultural exchange came the curse of microbial exchange.^[3]

7 The Siege of Kaffa

Whereas the Silk Road was a peaceful means by which the Black Death made its way to Europe and Africa, the Mongol conquests of the High Middle Ages were a far more cataclysmic vector. Beginning with the rise of Genghis Khan in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, the Mongol conquests took Eurasia by storm. Within the lifetime of Genghis, the Mongols, masters of the horse and composite bow, had laid waste to an unspeakably large swath of land stretching from the Korean peninsula to Hungary. After Genghis Khan died, the empire fragmented into different factions, called khanates, held by his numerous sons.

One of these divisions, the Golden Horde, stretched from Siberia into Eastern Europe. It covered the Crimean Peninsula, in which lay the city of Kaffa. A group of Italian merchants was granted special privileges for the control of Kaffa, which proved beneficial for the Mongols in that it gave them access to European markets. After relations between the Italian merchants and the natives began to deteriorate, the Mongols laid siege to Kaffa.

During the siege, the Black Death began to make its way through the Mongol ranks. Rather than letting the disease get the best of them, they made it work for them. True to form as masters of murderous ingenuity, the Mongols loaded the plague-ridden corpses of their soldiers onto their catapults and launched them over the city walls in an early instance of germ warfare. This, of course, brought the plague into the city, just as the merchants were fleeing back to Sicily.^[4] It is generally agreed that the siege of Kaffa was a watershed moment for the expansion of the Black Death into Europe.

6 Climate Change

Many experts argue that climate change, not fleas and vermin, was the preeminent culprit for the deadliness of the Black Death. Whether or not it was the foremost factor, it certainly had a part to play. The onset of the pandemic coincided with the end of the Medieval Warm Period, an era of warmer summers and milder winters lasting from about 900 to 1300. The period allowed for more bountiful harvests and made people less susceptible to illness.

Researchers have determined that this stretch of mild weather was caused by an alteration of global heat distribution through changes in pressure systems. The normalization of said systems pushed much of the Northern Hemisphere back into a cooler, rainier period, which led to lower crop yields and cold, wet conditions that left people far and wide ripe for the plague.^[5]

5 Famine

When the Black Death came around, it had the proverbial red carpet rolled out for it to come in and wreak havoc, and famine had a huge part to play in that. In the early years of the 14th century, a period of hunger aptly dubbed “the Great Famine” struck the entirety of the European continent, ranging from Italy to Russia. The famine, which started in 1315, was triggered by an unusually cold winter, which gave way to an unusually cool and rainy spring and a subsequent summer, which followed suit. This, of course, decimated crop yields across the continent, and people were left starving. An estimated 10 to 25 percent of Europe’s population perished in the two years that followed.

Though the severity of the famine had abated a bit by 1317, the cooler, wetter conditions lingered through the decades leading up to the Black Death, and people were left malnourished, with weakened immune systems that could do little to stave off the ravages of Y. pestis.^[6]

4 People Were Already Weak From Other Diseases

As previously mentioned, the citizens of mid-14th-century Eurasia were already weak and hungry by the time the plague rolled around. Therefore, it would stand to reason that they were often sick in the years leading up to the big show, which, of course, they were. Diseases like typhus, smallpox, and tuberculosis thrived in the confines of their immunodeficient hosts, leaving them weak, weary, and ill-equipped to resist the plague when it came around.

From studying the corpses of plague victims, researchers have determined that many of those who died from it were concurrently ill with the aforementioned diseases and more. They were killed by a terrible cocktail of contagions.^[7]

3 Medieval Medicine Was Lacking

One of the foremost accounts of the Black Death was issued to King Philip VI of France by the medical council of Paris. It claimed that the Black Death was caused by an unfortunate alignment of three planets in the heavens, which caused the spreading of a “great pestilence” in the air.^[8] People genuinely thought that the black, festering sores and internal bleeding wrought by the plague were brought on by bad air. One can imagine how such a society might have fared in treating a profoundly infectious disease to which it had never been exposed.

Between the iron grip of the Catholic Church on the scientific community, the loss of medical advancements made by prior civilizations such as the Romans and Greeks, and a general inclination toward superstition, medieval medicine was no match for the Black Death.

2 It Had Three Different Forms

As deadly diseases went, the Black Death was something of a Swiss Army knife. It didn’t just go after the blood or the lungs or the lymphatic system—it went after all three, in various forms and stages. Scientists have identified the plague as having three different types: bubonic, the most common and best-known, which caused lymph nodes all over the body to turn into bulbous, black pustules; septicemic, which infected the blood; and pneumonic, which ran the lungs afoul.^[9]

All three forms were accompanied by acute fever, and victims often vomited blood. It’s no surprise that a virulence so versatile had such a prodigious kill rate.

1 No Natural Immunity

Ever catch a case of the plague? Smallpox? Tuberculosis? The answer for just about everyone reading is almost certainly no. You probably don’t know anyone who’s been infected, either. You can thank immunization and, in some cases, eradication for that. However, circa 1350, there was no plague vaccine, and the disease was so novel that most people had essentially no natural resistance to it. If people had been exposed to it intermittently over thousands of years, as was the case with afflictions like smallpox, their immune systems might have been better prepared, and the lives of millions could have been spared.

As it stood, no such luxury was afforded, and all but those who avoided infection altogether and a lucky few who bore beneficial mutations that gave them a greater degree of resilience to Y. pestis were doomed to perish. The genetic legacy of the Black Death is evident today, as researchers have discovered that roughly ten percent of Europeans are immune to HIV, a benefit that they believe to be a genetic relic of the mutation that saved their ancestors from one of the closest things to an extinction event that modern man has ever seen.^[10]

Trevor Graydon is just your run-of-the-mill grad school dropout trying to make sense of the post-academic world.

The Communist Party of China (CCP) is becoming increasingly paranoid of its own citizens. As China has advanced towards a more prosperous future, workers have come to expect better salaries and individual ownership. But the CCP remains hostile to any philosophy that undermines its Marxist roots. All threats, from the separatist musings of Uyghur Muslims to the external pressures of Western capitalism, are immediately expunged from the public consciousness.

President Xi Jinping, now the “president for life,” is harnessing the country’s technological superiority to keep his people in line. The repressive regime has introduced a social credit score that punishes dissident behavior. Each score is calculated using a wealth of “big data,” including a person’s internet search history, criminal records, and shopping habits. A number of socially undesirable behaviors can cause a score to plummet. These include insincere apologies in court, traffic violations, posting fake news online, protesting against the CCP, or failing to visit elderly relatives.^[1] Penalties for falling afoul of these expectations include throttled internet connections, travel bans, loan rejections, and restricted access to public transport.

China is now a tech-driven police state, crushing all forms of religion, freedom of expression, and political opposition. This level of control is partially achieved through China’s “Skynet Project” – a sprawling network of surveillance cameras that track the movements of each and every citizen. The system is overseen by major tech companies, most of which are forced to report back to their CCP puppet masters. Overall life in communist China is now the stuff of dystopia, even surpassing the inhumanity of Charlie Brooker’s sci-fi show Black Mirror.

Top 10 Creepy Things Happening Inside China

10 Facial Recognition for Toilet Paper

China is currently going through a “Toilet Revolution.” The initiative, spearheaded by President Xi Jinping in 2015, was designed to improve the bathroom facilities across tourist hotspots. Travelers have frequently complained about China’s unhygienic restrooms, which often house squalid pit toilets. In response, the Chinese Communist Party has pumped billions of dollars into building luxury restrooms.^[2] Some facilities even offer Wi-Fi, vending machines, televisions, and charging stations for electric scooters and cars.

But some local authorities have gone a step further. In many public bathrooms, Citizens must stand on a designated marker and wait for a facial recognition machine to scan their faces. A camera takes a snapshot of the user’s face and dispenses a 28-inch strip of toilet paper (around 6-7 sheets). Each visitor must wait a further 9 minutes to obtain more toilet paper. Some “smart” bathrooms even include alarms that tell the restroom’s operators when a user has spent too long on the toilet. The alarm is set to go off after 15 minutes, at which point a supervisor is sent to check on the person.^[3]

9 Public Humiliation for Jay Walking

Each year, around 260,000 people are killed in road traffic accidents throughout mainland China. Pedestrians and bikers make up a staggering 60 percent of this death toll.^[4] Mounting evidence suggests that some drivers are deliberately killing pedestrians, initially knocked over during simple traffic accidents, to avoid paying large medical costs. This phenomenon is known locally as the “hit-to-kill” rule.^[5] A victim’s ongoing medical bills, it is said, are far costlier than a one-time payment of compensation to the victim’s family.

To stop these accidents from happening in the first place, the government has put in place a range of technologies to stop its citizens from jaywalking. One such measure involves capturing the faces of jaywalkers and posting them on electronic billboards and online websites. The move is designed to shame Chinese citizens into following the rules.

The government, with the aid of its face recognition database, identifies the offender and slaps them with a small fine. The money is automatically pulled using the person’s social networking accounts, usually Weibo or WeChat. Repeat offenders are blacklisted on China’s social credit system, meaning they no longer have access to certain public services.

In 2018, city officials in Ningbo were left red-faced after accusing an advertisement of jaywalking.^[6] The anti-jaywalking tech captured a female face on the side of a moving bus. It then mistook the ad for a jaywalker and uploaded it to the city’s electronic wall of shame. It turned out the face belonged to Dong Mingzhu, a respected business woman who appeared in an advertisement for her own air conditioning company.

8 Fitting Workforces with Brain-Reading Headsets

In 2018, it was revealed that many major companies were using sophisticated head gear to monitor the brainwave activities of workers. From factory floors to state-operated trains, many sectors have deployed brain-monitoring devices to improve worker efficiency. A government-owned power company in Hangzhou credits the tech with improving its workflow and profit margins. Changhai Hospital uses the headbands, along with pressure sensors and cameras, to preempt violent outbursts from patients. And state schools are starting to use the tool to analyze the concentration levels of pupils.

The headset uses electrodes to detect a variety of problematic brainwave signals. Overly emotional workers, it seems, do not make for productive workers. Employers may then reassign workers who are struggling with anxiety or depression. “When the system issues a warning, the manager asks the worker to take a day off or move to a less critical post,” explained neuroscience professor Jin Jia. “Some jobs require high concentration. There is no room for a mistake.”^[7]

7 Robo-Dove Spy Drones

Dozens of Chinese agencies use robotic birds to spy on unsuspecting citizens. The surveillance drones – which feature a suite of GPS antennas, sensors, and cameras – are part of a project called “Dove.” Weighing just 200 grams, the drone uses a set of semi-deformable wings to generate both lift and thrust. The engineering team claims its invention has even confused real birds. Flocks are often seen following the robo-dove’s natural movements and flight patterns, helping it to blend in with the crowd.

The authorities believe the near-silent machine represents a perfect tool for conducting covert surveillance operations. The birds have already seen action in five provinces, including the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang. In recent decades, the government has expressed concern over the rise of Turkic separatists in the north. President Jinping has sought to combat this movement using widespread surveillance, DNA tracking, and “re-education camps.”

Clocking in at a speed of 25 miles per hour, the low-flying drone remains undetectable to all but the most sensitive of radar systems. China’s military has evaluated the robo-doves and is looking at further applications. Project leader Song Bifeng says the drones have already taken to the skies for the purposes of “environmental protection, land planning… and border patrol.”^[8]

6 Artificial News Anchors

At the World Internet Conference in 2018, Xinhua News Agency announced the world’s first artificial news readers.^[9] Developed by search engine behemoth Sogou, the virtual presenters display lifelike hand and facial animations. The English-speaking presenter is modeled on one of Xinhua’s own newsreaders, Zhang Zhao. During his official debut, the self-proclaimed “AI news anchor” discussed how Panama represents a lynchpin in China’s efforts to access Latin American markets. “That’s all for today’s English news program,” he signs off. “As an AI news anchor under development, I know there is a lot to improve.”^[10]

Nearly two years on, newer additions to the AI news team have emerged, including the country’s first digital female presenter. The wizards behind the technology have also used machine learning to improve the presenters’ mannerisms, facial animations, and speech patterns. The hosts, lauded for their “tireless” work, have presented thousands of reports on Xinhua’s news website and apps.

Xinhua is an organ of the CCP, producing state-sanctioned newspapers, magazines, and broadcasts. The news agency’s journalists contribute to China’s “internal media,” producing uncensored news reports that are only available to CCP officials. Meanwhile, one of Sogou’s parent companies, the software giant Tencent, continues to aid and abet the regime’s mass surveillance efforts.

Top 10 Ways You Are Already Being Ruled By Communist China

5 Faking Exercise to Avoid Salary Deductions

With the widespread use of fitness tracking apps, businesses in China are starting to take a keen interest in the health of their workforces. In 2015, Tencent added a fitness tracker to its popular social media and payment app, WeChat. The tracker monitors the number of steps a user takes and allows people to “like [their] friends’ steps.”^[11]

In 2018, a real estate agency in southeast China began using WeChat’s fitness app to monitor its employees. Workers were told they would incur a financial penalty if they failed to reach a target of 180,000 steps per month.^[12] One Chinese yuan (14 cents) is deducted from an employee’s salary for every 100 steps missed. A staffer in human resources reportedly lost $14 for missing her target by 10,000 steps. Several major insurance companies also request step counts from their customers, giving away discounts to frequent exercisers.

In response, many in China are simply cheating the system. WeChat’s fitness tracker uses a mobile phone’s internal sensors to estimate the number of steps a person walks. Swinging the device in a cradle, therefore, tricks the phone’s accelerometer into thinking the user is walking. Some Chinese restaurants have added the bizarre contraptions to their establishments in a bid to keep patrons drinking and eating.^[13]

4 Study the Great Nation App

China’s Publicity Department has developed an app that teaches citizens about their country. The app, dubbed “Study the Great Nation,” waxes lyrical about the achievements of President Jinping and the Party. But the app is not just a tool for propaganda. It also grants the CCP “super-user privileges,” meaning the CCP can potentially track a phone user’s daily activities.^[14]

Study the Great Nation focuses heavily on news about President Xi Jinping, even going so far as to promote a television series called “Xi Time.”^[15] The app also takes citizens on a tour of China’s history, culture, and socialist underpinnings. Users are then expected to complete a series of tests to ensure they have truly absorbed the Party’s wisdoms. Test results are posted on leaderboards to stir up competition between members of the public.

The CCP has promoted the app far and wide. School children are routinely shamed for having low test scores. Employers force workers to provide proof of their test scores. And journalists use the app to take a course on President Jinping. Only then will they receive their press cards.

With over 100 million users, Study the Great Nation has proven a runaway success. Admittedly, much of the app’s popularity was due to the government’s attempts to coerce citizens into using it. The first reviews were largely unfavorable, averaging just 2.7 stars on the Apple app store. “Everybody is installing this app voluntarily,” stated one rather sarcastic user. “Nobody is forcing us.”^[16] The reviews were soon deleted.

3 Catching Wanted Criminals with Smart Glasses

Police forces across China are quickly adapting to the technological revolution, harnessing the power of facial recognition techniques to apprehend criminals. In 2015, tech company LLVision released its own version of Google Glass. Forces across China use the technology, called GLXSS, to quickly pick out criminals from a crowd. The tech showed promise after it was tested on busy railway platforms in Zhengzhou. During the Lunar New Year in 2018, the railway police used the smart glasses to detain human traffickers, hit-and-run suspects, and people traveling with fake IDs.^[17]

Meanwhile, cops in the Chinese province of Sichuan wear the tech to monitor traffic across a number of highway checkpoints. LLVision’s smart glasses are used to capture a passing vehicle’s license plate. A simple database check provides information about the vehicle and its registered owner. The occupants of the car are then scanned against the facial recognition database to identify any potential fugitives.

GLXSS uses an 8-megapixel camera to capture HD footage. The data is then beamed to a tablet, which compares the imagery to a database of wanted criminals. Responding to concerns over potential human rights violations, LLVision boss Wu Fei said the CCP was using the technology for “noble” purposes. “We trust the government,” Fei added.^[18]

2 Taser-Wielding Police Robots

China has quickly become a world leader in military and police robotics, exporting many of its technologies to emerging markets in the Middle East and Africa. The techno-nationalist country has built up an impressive array of unmanned drones, including attack helicopters, stealth jets, mini submarines, tank destroyers, and gun-mounted rovers. Special coronavirus patrol bots measure body temperatures and instruct citizens to wear masks. And police robots wander around China’s city centers, hospitals, airports, and construction sites.

In 2016, the National Defense University unveiled AnBot – a self-directed security and police patrol robot. Reminiscent of Doctor Who’s genocidal Daleks, the 78kg robot is designed to “patrol autonomously and protect against violence or unrest.”^[19] To that end, it comes with a host of surveillance cameras and an extendable electroshock arm. AnBot reacts to cries for help, rolling towards danger at speeds of 11 miles per hour. It currently patrols the terminals of Shenzhen Airport.

A similar robot made its debut at a railway station in Henan province. The E-Patrol Robot Sheriff looks out for unlawful activity and cross references commuters with China’s criminal databases. It can also detect abnormal changes in humidity and temperature. On its very first day, the bot discovered a fire. “Thankfully, the robot’s air monitoring and humidity monitoring functions helped us, if not we’d have a huge mess on our hands,” explained one on-duty cop.^[20]

1 Execution Vans that Harvest Organs

The CCP has long maintained that capital punishment is necessary for maintaining social order. For decades, the Chinese government has used firing squads to execute convicted criminals. But, since 2010, the authorities have started to phase out the practice in favor of lethal injection. However, many rural municipalities balk at the cost of transporting prisoners to specialized execution centers.^[21] This problem has led to the rise of an unorthodox solution: mobile execution vans and buses.

In small towns and villages, criminals who are sentenced to death are cuffed to stretchers and loaded into the back of specialized execution vehicles. A cocktail of drugs is then administered, causing the crook to lose consciousness and go into cardiac arrest. A technician must carry out the death in the presence of a third-party witness, and a video feed of the event ensures the executioner complies with the state’s rules. The deceased’s organs are then harvested and packed into ice boxes.

With thousands of citizens facing the death penalty each year, human rights groups have accused the government of using execution vans for financial gain. A number of low-level crimes are still punishable by death, including tax fraud and general corruption. Unsurprisingly, the organ trade has now ballooned into a multi-billion dollar industry.

In 2019, a criminal tribunal in London found China guilty of harvesting organs from political prisoners. The CCP allegedly launched a persecution campaign against the Falun Gong, a meditative and spiritual group. Chinese surgeons are said to have extracted eyes, hearts, kidneys, livers, lungs, and skin tissue from detainees.^[22] Some of the victims were still alive during the procedures.

10 Ways Life Will Change If China Becomes The World’s Superpower

A black hole is a mysterious and hungry creature. But they do more than just consume anything that comes too close. Black holes are behind the biggest explosion in space, shoot boomerangs, and create their own planets.

They also harbor strange mysteries. When black holes die, what happens to everything they ate? Why did a black hole flash in 2019 when science argues that they cannot flash? New discoveries could have spectacular answers.

10 Mind-Blowing Things Black Holes Do (Other Than Suck)

10 A Star Turned Into Space-Pasta

A star perished in 2019. One half blew into space. A black hole shredded the other half into long tendrils and munched them. This coined the foody phrase of “death by spaghettification.” As peculiar as that was, the event was also unique for reasons other than deserving a dollop of pasta sauce.

When a star dies, it releases a flash of energy known as a tidal disruption event. In this case, it was both the closest tidal event near Earth (215 million light-years away) and the clearest. Once astronomers detected it, they watched for months—in incredible detail—how the black hole tore the star in half.

The devastation revealed a clue about where tidal flashes come from. While the whole story is still a bit hazy, they are definitely connected to the debris leaking from a failing star.^[1]

9 This Black Hole Shoots Boomerangs

Around 17,000 light-years from Earth, a black hole is nibbling on a star. The pair is simply known as XTE J1550-564. At first, there was nothing surprising about them. Black holes snack on starlight. Old news. But in 2020, researchers looked at old X-ray images of XTE J1550-564 and something did not add up.

In an attempt to get to the bottom of the strange data, the information was fed into a computer simulation. It revealed how some of the light made a dash for freedom. This, in itself, was not unusual. When light is trapped in the accretion disk (the dust swirl around a black hole), then it can still get away. But the light that escaped from XTE J1550-564 did something strange.

Normally, when light makes a successful escape, it bounces against the disk and then shoots into space in a straight line. But these beams first curled back towards the black hole. When the light eventually reflected off the disk, they looked like boomerangs. The phenomenon had not been seen before or since.^[2]

8 Black Holes Hide In Plain Sight

Some black holes are shrouded in dark dust. These so-called cocooned black holes are tough to spot but by any estimate, there should be crowds of them out there.

In 2020, scientists combed through the Chandra Deep Field-South (CDF-S) image to find more cocoons. This X-ray picture covers a section of the southern sky in great detail. Many things in CDF-S had already been identified, including 28 points that were listed as galaxies or black holes without cocoons.

But the 28 were imposters.

Not for long, though. When the chart was compared to optical and infrared observations of the same area, their bright signals were undeniably those of black holes with cocoons. The X-ray could not pierce the dimming effect of the dust which explained why they resembled other stellar objects. The discovery also suggests that plenty of records, similar to CDF-S, are probably littered with these black holes that masquerade as something else.^[3]

7 A Unique Trio

Back in 1983, astronomers considered NGC 6240 something of an odd pickle. The galaxy had a strange shape and an unusual infrared glow. The wisdom of the day concluded that NGC 6240 was actually two galaxies. The peculiar shape and brightness showed that they were colliding.

Each galaxy brought their own supermassive black hole along. By the time they were spotted, the black holes hovered closely together at the centre of NGC 6240.

2019 swung by and astronomers looked at the galaxies with better equipment. They were surprised to find a third black hole at the centre. Their peers from the 80s probably missed it because the black hole was dormant (the other two consumes matter). But whatever the reason, its presence suggested that the merger involved three galaxies.

A triple galactic smash is chicken-tooth rare but not unheard of. What makes this situation so unique is the closeness of the three black holes. They orbit each other inside a small area of 3,260 light-years and the active pair is barely 645 light-years apart.^[4]

6 A Clue That Explains The Oldest Black Holes

A mystery surrounds the earliest black holes. Thought to be the remnants of the first stars that had died, nothing could explain why some of these black holes grew into huge objects. Indeed, when one was discovered in 2020, it weighed 1 billion times the mass of our Sun. But being born soon after the Big Bang was not what made this guy special. It provided a strong clue about its own growth and size.

The black hole is holding six galaxies hostage. The setup resembles a spider’s web with filaments running between the black hole and the galaxies. Wherever the filaments cross, the galaxies prosper. Whatever feeds them (probably gas) is being funnelled by the threads. In the same way, the web can inflate black holes to enormous proportions by nurturing them inside a gas-rich environment.^[5]

Top 10 Bizarre New Finds About Black Holes

5 The Biggest (And Weirdest) Space Explosion

In 2019, something from space rattled the Earth. Two observatories detected the gravitational waves and homed in on the source. What they found was something bizarre, record-breaking, and impossible.

The signal, labelled GW190521, was produced when two black holes collided 7 billion years ago. The explosion created a single, bigger black hole. Curiously, one of the original two was most likely also the result of a merger between other black holes. But this cosmic pile-up was not the only strange thing.

The explosion was the most powerful blast ever recorded in space. The force equalled a million billion A-bombs detonating every second for 13.8 billion years. The final black hole was 142 times bigger than the Sun, making it an intermediate-sized black hole. This was significant because black holes of this size had previously only been possible in theory. But one of the original pair was plainly impossible.

Calculated at roughly 85 solar masses, it broke a scientific law stating that no black hole could exist in that range. In order to form, it would need a star between 60 and 130 times larger than the Sun. But therein lies the problem. When these stars die, they go out as supernovas and not as black holes.^[6]

4 Something Destroyed A Black Hole’s Corona

Things went normal for a while. A galaxy named 1ES 1927+654 swirled around a black hole, as most galaxies do. The black hole was visible due to its corona (a ring of hot particles that orbit most supermassive black holes). There was nothing special about it.

1ES 1927+654 did not like being ignored. In 2018, it gave astronomers a mystery that remains unsolved to this day. For some reason, the black hole’s corona flared forty times its normal brightness. Then, just as suddenly, the flash was gone.

The galaxy got its wish. Telescopes from all over the world turned to 1ES 1927+654, hoping to see more. They were not disappointed. In less than a year, the corona dimmed at a rate that should have taken millennia. While the experts were unprepared for such a speedy version, they had a feeling that this was not a quicker-than-normal life cycle. Something else was destroying the corona.

According to one theory, a star collided with the black hole. The star cracked open like an egg, which caused the initial flash. The smash disrupted the black hole’s magnetic field, the very thing holding the corona together. Robbed of its stability, the corona then rapidly fell apart and caused the black hole to darken.^[7]

3 The Flash Mystery

Remember GW190521, the biggest and weirdest space explosion of all time? Something else happened about a month later in the same region and researchers are not sure whether the two events are connected. The black holes that collided had no fiery coronas, so nothing about the crash should have been visible.

But there was a massive flash.

To solve the riddle, researchers added a quasar to the story. Quasars are supermassive black holes that release blasts of energy. But the flash was too spectacular, even for one of these giants.

Instead, the theory goes that the two smaller black holes became trapped in the gas ring that surrounds their supermassive cousin. At one point, the pair merged and created the GW190521 signal. The force of the merger kicked the new black hole through the ring and disturbed the gas enough to trigger a delayed reaction (the flare).

This explains why the flash happened 34 days after the GW190521 signal but nothing is certain. There is an equal chance that the two events have nothing to do with each other.^[8]

2 They Have Blanets

Planets are born from the wheel of dust that swirls around a star. Blanets, on the other hand, are worlds that form inside the dust ring that orbits a black hole. Some blanets are rocky and Earth-like but nearly 10 times bigger. Others are gas giants like Neptune.

Blanets have never been found.

But a study in 2020 showed that the strange worlds must exist. A requirement for planet-building is ice. Acting like a glue, ice makes dust particles stick together. Once a clump develops enough gravity, it pulls more dust and other clumps together. Eventually, the object grows into a planet.

Some black holes have a “snow line.” Beyond this region, things are cold enough for ice and blanets to form. In the Milky Way, the conditions are so perfect that thousands of blanets are probably orbiting the black hole at the centre of our galaxy.^[9]

1 Black Holes Release Their Victims As Curves

When Stephen Hawking announced that black holes die, other physicists were excited to learn everything they could about the phenomenon’s life cycle. Then the leading expert on black holes, Hawking claimed that black holes evaporate. But this led to a seemingly unanswerable question.

When a black hole nears the end of its life and disintegrates, what happens to all the stuff it had consumed?

Mathematicians uncapped their whiteboard markers and did a few calculations. They concluded that the stolen “information” simply disappears—which violated about a gazillion sacred laws in physics. Another theory suggested that the information leaked back into space as curves. But nobody could prove things either way.

Recently, physicists turned to advanced computers and mathematical tools to solve the standoff. They created realistic black holes, sped up their evolution and watched their deaths closely. This was only a simulation but incredibly, it matched one of the theories. When the black holes neared their doom, the information seeped from them in curves.^[10]

10 Eerie Theories On What Happens Inside A Black Hole

Schools in the United States have set aside the month of February to teach history as it relates specifically to African Americans, their impact on sociopolitical events, and their contributions to society as a whole. Every kid who grew up in America knows of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but there were thousands of amazing people who fought for civil rights and did wondrous things for humanity.

The real unsung heroes in American history aren’t just African Americans; they are African American women who often took a backseat to the accomplishments of men. Here are ten amazing women you likely never learned about during Black History Month, presented in no particular order.

10 Diane Nash

Diane Nash was born in 1938 in Chicago, Illinois, where she was raised far from the disturbing segregation that was rampant in the South at the time. She planned on becoming a nun in honor of her Catholic upbringing, but that all changed when she attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. There, she saw and experienced racial segregation for the first time under the banner of Jim Crow laws when she was forced to use a “Colored Women” restroom for the first time in her life. That event changed her, and she abandoned her plans and became a full-time activist for civil rights.^[1]

She threw herself into the Civil Rights Movement and was instrumental in integrating lunch counters via sit-ins. She also participated in the Freedom Riders and helped to desegregate interstate travel, co-founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and worked on the Selma Voting Rights Movement, which further helped to push the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Her efforts helped make it possible for millions of African Americans to vote in the United States.

9 Ella Baker

Ella Baker was a civil rights activist born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1903. She spent the better part of 50 years of her life working behind the scenes alongside some of the biggest names in the movement. Baker spent years organizing events for the likes of Thurgood Marshall, Martin Lither King Jr., and many more, but her influence extended to those she mentored. Baker had numerous mentees under her belt over the years, including the aforementioned Diane Nash, Bob Moses, and Rosa Parks.

Baker was the primary advisor and strategist of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and has been called one of the most important African American leaders of the 20th century. In her own words, she described why she wasn’t as well-known as her peers: “You didn’t see me on television; you didn’t see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders.”^[2]

8 Katherine Johnson

When people think back to the early days of NASA and the Apollo missions, they tend to focus on the men who set foot on the Moon. There’s nothing wrong with that—they achieved amazing feats of daring exploration, but they never would have made it there had it not been for the work of Katherine Johnson. Johnson worked for NASA as a mathematician who calculated complicated orbital mechanics. Her manual calculations of complex equations made it possible for the astronauts and engineers to point a rocket to the sky, land men on the Moon, and bring them home safely.^[3]

Her work began before NASA even existed and helped the Mercury program with calculations of trajectories and launch windows. She was instrumental in launching the Space Shuttle program and has contributed a great deal of information and expertise for NASA’s various missions to Mars. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015 by President Obama and was a lead character in the 2016 movie Hidden Figures, which focused on the female mathematicians who made space travel possible.

7 Septima Poinsette Clark

Septima Poinsette Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1898. She grew up to become a prominent civil rights activist who focused her work on the teaching of literacy and the education of children. Her belief was that the Civil Rights Movement followed the path that “knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn’t.” Her focus on education brought her to the attention of other civil rights activists, including Dr. King, who called her “The Mother of the Movement.”

Though she was a prominent figure who played a pivotal role in the movement, her work was somewhat unappreciated by some prominent leaders. This was the result of the gender inequality that was not only going on throughout American society at the time but within the Civil Rights Movement itself. Her impact on the movement centered on the creation of “Citizenship Schools,” which taught adults in the Deep South how to read. Spreading literacy throughout the American South helped to fuel the movement and impacted thousands of people.^[4]

6 Esther Jones

At the height of her fame, most people in Harlem knew who Esther Jones, otherwise known as “Baby Esther,” was. Jones was a regular performer in the Cotton Club, where she entertained the masses by singing in her signature “baby talk” style. She recorded Helen Kane’s “I Wanna Be Loved By You” with multiple uses of the words “boo-boo-boo” and “boop-boop-a-doop.” Those may sound familiar if you’ve ever seen or heard the famous cartoon character from the 1930s called Betty Boop. Though she is drawn to look like a white woman, she was directly inspired by Jones.

Jones’s story is a common one in African American history, as her likeness and singing style were appropriated without her consent. Kane brought a lawsuit against Fleischer Studios claiming the character was a deliberate caricature of her work, but the trial determined that Baby Esther was responsible for the “baby” style of singing, which proved to be the original inspiration for Boop. Jones never received the money or fame she deserved while she was alive and has since gone on to be known as Betty Boop’s “black grandmother.”^[5]

5 Mary Kenner

Mary Kenner was born and raised in Monroe, North Carolina, where she grew up to become an inventor. She found an early love of discovery from her father, which helped to push her to become the inventor of the sanitary belt. Her device inspired modern-day menstrual pads, but thanks to racial prejudices, it languished without a patent for 30 years.^[6] The company she originally pitched it to scoffed at selling it once it was revealed that Kenner was an African American woman. Today, versions of her invention are sold across the planet to hundreds of millions of women regardless of their race or Kenner’s.

Throughout her life, Kenner invented numerous devices still found commonly throughout the world today. All told, she was issued five patents for household and personal use items, including a bathroom tissue holder that kept the next tissue in the roll outside the box and readily available, a carrier attachment for an invalid walker, and a back washer mounted on a shower wall and bathtub. She never made a lot of money from her inventions and instead hoped to make life easier for people.

4 Marian Anderson

Marian Anderson was a prominent singer born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, back in 1897. While there were many talented African American performers throughout the early 20th century, Anderson holds the distinction of being the first black person to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1955. Her rise to fame came out of the turmoil of racial persecution and segregation. In 1939, she was forbidden from performing at Constitution Hall in Washington, DC, by the Daughters of the American Revolution due to the fact that the audience was integrated.

The incident brought her talents to the attention of the international community as well as to some prominent Americans. Eleanor Roosevelt recognized her abilities and helped to bring Anderson to Washington to perform an open-air concert on Easter Sunday 1939 on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.^[7] More than 75,000 people made up the integrated audience, with millions more tuning in to listen on their radios. Her accomplishments earned her numerous awards over the course of her life and helped pave the way for other talented African American musicians performing in a divided nation.

3 Claudette Colvin

While most people in the United States and around the world know the name Rosa Parks, far fewer are aware of another pioneer in the Civil Rights Movement named Claudette Colvin. Nine months before Parks refused to give up her seat, Colvin did the same at the age of 15 in Montgomery, Alabama. She was arrested and became one of five plaintiffs challenging Montgomery’s segregated bus laws the following year. Browder v. Gayle went all the way to the Supreme Court in 1956. Colvin was the last to testify in the case, which ultimately determined the Alabama laws unconstitutional.^[8]

She wasn’t recognized by many of the black leaders in the movement at the time due to being so young. She was also unmarried and pregnant and had no civil rights training, but she wasn’t bitter about not being recognized in the same way as Parks: “I’m not disappointed. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation.”

2 Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells was born into a life of slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862. She was freed via the Emancipation Proclamation during the Civil War and became the provider for her family at the age of 16 when both her parents succumbed to yellow fever. Eventually, she became a teacher in Memphis, Tennessee, where she co-owned a newspaper called the Memphis Free Speech and Headlight—the first of many important publications she would put her name upon. She rose to prominence as an investigative journalist following her work covering numerous lynchings in the United States.^[9]

This brought the ire of whites who sought to intimidate her by destroying her newspaper office and printing press, but that only pushed her to further action. She moved to Chicago, Illinois, and became one of the most outspoken African American activists in the burgeoning women’s suffrage movement. She helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909 by joining others in the “founding forty” and helped spark the flame that would ultimately become the Civil Rights Movement in America.

1 Dr. Mae Jemison

Mae Carol Jemison was born in Decatur, Alabama, in 1956 but moved with her family at the age of three to Chicago, where she could take advantage of a better education. That education served her well, as she is best known for being the first African American woman to travel into space. She was a part of the crew of the Space Shuttle Endeavor on September 12, 1992. All told, she spent 190 hours, 30 minutes, and 23 seconds in space, but that was hardly the only amazing achievement in her life. Prior to joining NASA’s astronaut corps, she served in the Peace Corps for two years, during which she used her training as a physician in Liberia and Sierra Leone.^[10]

She remained with NASA until 1993, when she left to found a company that researched the application of technology in daily life. Her work with NASA earned her an appearance on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, in which she played Lieutenant Palmer. She holds nine honorary doctorates (in addition to her Ph.D.) in engineering, science, letters, and the humanities.

Today, some of the most bankable stars in Hollywood are African-American actors, such as Will Smith, Denzel Washington, or “the voice” Morgan Freeman, whose talent might have in all likelihood been denied in classic Hollywood. Hattie McDaniel was the first African-American actress to win a competitive Oscar. But sadly for her and many of her contemporaries, the best roles available were those that depicted black servants or slaves.

Nonetheless, the notion that African-Americans were denied roles as empowered characters of complexity and intellect during this period was occasionally challenged. Consider this cross-section of performances from 1929 until the 1960s by a talented sampling of African-American actors, of whom many are sadly forgotten.

Related: 10 Golden Hollywood Scandals That Were Covered Up

10 Everett Brown

Texas native Everett Brown (1902–1953) was cast in forty movies in a career that spanned from the silent era until the early 1950s. He was largely typecast in minor stereotypical roles, and often his screen appearances went uncredited. In the classic 1939 film Gone with the Wind, his performance as “Big Sam,” though memorable, was primarily that of a caricatured black servant, except for one scene.

In a suspenseful moment in which the film’s protagonist Scarlett O’Hara drives a buggy alone through a “shantytown,” she is stopped and attacked by a vagrant and his black partner. Hearing Scarlett scream, Big Sam runs to her rescue and knocks out her assailant. This scene probably goes unnoticed by most contemporary audiences.

However, just over two decades removed from the heavyweight championship reign of black fighter Jack Johnson, it was significant. For cameramen at that time were told not to film the titlist knocking a white contender out. Along with including the expletive “damn” in the film’s finale, this was perhaps another example of producer David O. Selznick circumventing censors and the Motion Picture Production Code.^[1]

9 Emmett Smith

Perhaps the least remembered of the black actors on this list, Emmett Smith never achieved the status of a star. However, if you look closely, you’ll find him portraying a bartender in the John Wayne action-adventure Hatari! (1962). Smith also played small parts in classic motion pictures ranging from Sunset Blvd. (1950) to Stanley and Livingstone (1939) and To Have and Have Not (1944).

But his most memorable screen moment was arguably a brief one in the 1945 holiday favorite Christmas in Connecticut. Playing what appears to be a stereotypical waiter named Sam in a Hungarian restaurant, Smith is consulted by his frazzled boss for the translation of an English word he doesn’t understand: “catastrophe.” In a rare moment depicting a black man of intellect and sophistication, Sam defines the word while breaking down its meaning and Greek origin. Perhaps, once again, this is a moment that flies over the heads of modern viewers. But clearly, director Peter Godfrey chose to include this scene to convey a subtle but clear point regarding stereotypes.^[2]

8 Esther Brown

Talk about making a lasting impact on the silver screen in spite of appearing in only one scene in only one movie with a mere 17 seconds of dialogue, but UCLA student Esther Brown did just that. Her fifteen minutes of fame came when Cecil B. De Mille cast her as the Ethiopian Princess Tharbis in his epic production of The Ten Commandments in 1956. Her memorable scene in which she placed a precious emerald in the hands of Charlton Heston’s Moses elicited a jealous response from Anne Baxter’s Princess Nefretiri, who refers to Brown’s character as “such a beautiful enemy.”

The implied romance between Moses and Princess Tharbis is perhaps in some ways more shocking than Heston’s interracial kiss he shared with African-American co-star Rosalind Cash in the 1971 film The Omega Man. The Ten Commandments was produced fifteen years earlier and over a decade before the Supreme Court struck down anti-miscegenation laws in the U.S. Sadly, this would be Brown’s only film role despite the beauty and charisma she is remembered for in a movie that is still broadcast on network television annually during the Easter and Passover seasons.^[3]

7 James Edwards

In many respects, Indiana native and Northwestern University alum James Edwards (1918–1970) was the precursor to Sidney Poitier, being one of the first black actors to earn critical acclaim. Edwards was commissioned as a first lieutenant in the United States Army during World War II. His combat experience served him well in an acting career in which he was typecast in numerous soldier roles. Notably, he played a blinded veteran in support of Arthur Kennedy in the latter’s Academy Award-nominated performance in Bright Victory (1951). Later, Edwards starred in Battle Hymn (1957) and Patton (1970), in which he portrayed the colorful general’s longtime personal valet.

But arguably, his best-known performance was in the 1949 production of Home of the Brave. Portraying a paralyzed war veteran battling emotional wounds from combat and a lifetime of racial prejudice, Edwards made a memorable impression on post-World War II audiences. The adapted screenplay by Carl Foreman would later receive the Writers Guild’s Robert Meltzer Award for the “Screenplay Dealing Most Ably with Problems of the American Scene.”^[4]

6 Fredi Washington

Stage actress and dancer Fredi Washington (1903–1994) was chosen by director John M. Stahl to play the conflicted Peola Johnson, the light-skinned daughter of a black mother who chooses to pass as white, in the 1934 original film version of Imitation of Life. In a movie that pushed many boundaries in the depiction of race and the societal role of women, Time magazine listed it as one of “The 25 Most Important Films on Race” in 2007.

The movie’s depiction of Washington’s character rejecting her loving African-American mother appalled many, particularly black audiences. Still, the authenticity of Washington’s performance resonated with many facing similar challenges in a country in which segregation was still legal and miscegenation banned. Although Washington was of African descent and self-identified as a black woman, the Douglas Sirk remake of Imitation of Life (1959) would later cast white actress Susan Kohner in the same role with a different name, Sarah Jane. Kohner’s performance would win her the 1959 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress.^[5]

5 Canada Lee

One of the earliest African-American actors to secure leading roles in film and on stage, Canada Lee (1907–1952) was also a professional boxer and civil rights activist. His first big break occurred when Orson Welles cast Lee as Banquo in his 1936 production of Macbeth, which featured an all African-American cast. A box office sensation, it opened doors for Lee both on stage and in Hollywood.

Ultimately, he landed the role of ship’s steward Joe Spencer in the classic Alfred Hitchcock film Lifeboat (1944). Although contemporary critics criticized the part for being stereotypical and “tokenistic,” Lee’s character was notable for exhibiting heroism and compassion. When Nazi sailor Walter Slezak is rescued from drowning in the North Atlantic, only Lee’s character Joe is unwilling to join the mob in killing him. Later, it is Joe alone who disarms the villain. Lee would also give strong performances in the film noir boxing classic Body and Soul (1947) and the anti-apartheid drama Cry, the Beloved Country (1951), despite being blacklisted for alleged communist affiliations. One year after the latter film’s release, Lee died of a heart attack at the age of 45.^[6]

4 Nina Mae McKinney

Nina Mae McKinney (1912–1967) was not only one of the first African-American film stars in Hollywood, but she was also one of the first black international celebrities, later achieving fame appearing on early television programs in the UK. But what ignited McKinney’s career was her scene-stealing turn as the temptress Chick in King Vidor’s 1929 landmark musical Hallelujah! Not only was the movie groundbreaking as one of the first sound films shot almost entirely on location in Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee, but also because of Vidor’s decision to shoot the first musical with an all-black cast.

McKinney’s striking beauty led the international press to nickname her “The Black Garbo.” Certainly, her performance in Hallelujah! was a departure from the typical typecasting of black actresses. So provocative was McKinney’s character that movie critic Donald Bogle credited her as the silver screen’s “first black love goddess.” At the very least, she set the standard for later femme fatales. In retrospect, maybe Jean Harlow was “The White Nina Mae McKinney.”^[7]

3 Woody Strode

If there was ever a classic Hollywood actor of African descent who projected the strong, silent “tough guy” persona, it was Woody Strode (1914–1994). Long before emerging as a Western sidekick to John Wayne in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and as the king of Ethiopia in The Ten Commandments (1956), Strode was a world-class decathlete and one of the first African Americans to play in the NFL.

With his imposing, muscular physique and striking screen presence, John Ford would cast him as the title character in his 1960 film Sergeant Rutledge (1960). But perhaps no Strode performance is more memorable than his portrayal of the gladiator Draba later that year opposite Kirk Douglas in Spartacus (1960). In a pivotal scene, Strode’s character defeats Douglas in a battle to the death. But rather than kill his opponent, Strode hurls his trident at the patrician military commander Crassus, played by Sir Laurence Olivier, who pays for the fight. When his defiant act results in his death, the other white gladiators are inspired to revolt against Rome. Despite limited dialogue, Strode was unforgettable in the film. And 35 years later, Sheriff Woody in Toy Story was named in his honor.^[8]

2 Juano Hernández

African-Latino and Puerto Rican native Juano Hernández’s (1896–1970) prolific acting career began during the silent era and lasted until 1970 when he was cast with another groundbreaking black actor, Sidney Poitier, in They Call Me Mr. Tibbs! Hernández starred in many supporting roles in A-list films, such as Sergeant Rutledge (1960), portraying a buffalo soldier cavalryman. A decade earlier, he portrayed the “father figure” to an aspiring trumpeter played by Kirk Douglas in Young Man with a Horn (1950). Without question, the depiction of a black man mentoring a white boy was a barrier-breaking moment for a classic Hollywood film.

But even more startling was Hernández’s performance as Lucas Beauchamp, a poor Mississippi farmer unjustly accused of the murder of a white man, in Clarence Brown’s Intruder in the Dust (1949) based on the William Faulkner novel. In a pivotal flashback scene, Hernandez proudly walks into a general store and fearlessly refuses to be intimidated by a white man who attempts to provoke him. Film historian Donald Bogle has written that Hernández’s “performance and extraordinary presence” in the film still ranks “above that of almost any other black actor to appear in an American movie.”^[9]

1 Sidney Poitier

Arguably the most accomplished black actor in the history of cinema, the American-born Bahamian actor Sidney Poitier (1927–2022) won the Academy Award for Best Actor in the acclaimed 1963 film Lilies of the Field. In a film career that has spanned over six decades, Poitier has been nominated for three Academy Awards and ten Golden Globes in a filmography that includes a string of classic movies, including The Defiant Ones (1958) and In the Heat of the Night (1967).

But this cinematic legend’s career would have never taken off had it not been for his breakout role as Dr. Luther Brooks in Joseph Mankiewicz’s 1950 film No Way Out. Boasting an Oscar-nominated screenplay, Poitier plays a young idealistic doctor forced to treat a wounded criminal who later dies under his care. His brother, played by a villainous Richard Widmark, blames the young doctor for the death. So controversial was it that in 1962, NBC deemed it “too risky” for broadcast on its weekly Sunday Night at the Movies. Nonetheless, for Poitier, it launched one of the great film careers for an actor who defined the black leading man in Hollywood.^[10]

Outer space is home to all manner of weird and wonderful objects—neutron stars, nebulae, galaxy clusters. Among the most fascinating are black holes. Since German astronomer Karl Schwarzschild first predicted their existence in 1916, researchers have amassed a wealth of knowledge about the elusive giants.

As astronomy becomes more and more advanced, scientists begin to learn more about the nature of black holes. Magnetic swirls, jets of radio waves, wormhole theories, record-breaking explosions. Over the last few years, stargazers have seen it all and have begun answering some of the questions others have posed.

Related: 10 Comets That Have Gone Missing

10 Unprecedented Glimpse of Light behind a Black Hole

Black holes are cosmic goliaths that guzzle up anything and everything that crosses their path. Their gravitational attraction is so immense that nothing, not even light, can escape their pull. So you would expect that it would be impossible to detect light from behind a black hole. Surely any emissions would have been sucked in, right?

Albert Einstein disagreed. In 1915, the German scientist proposed that extremely heavy objects like black holes should distort the fabric of time and space, allowing light to travel around them. This was a key part of his theory of general relativity, an idea which revolutionized modern physics. Scientists have spotted this effect—known as gravitational lensing—before, but nobody had ever managed to detect light from behind a black hole until recently.

Then, in July 2021, astronomers at Stanford University cracked it. The team had been examining a supermassive black hole at the heart of a distant galaxy called Zwicky when they noticed strange X-ray emissions that they couldn’t quite put their fingers on. They were used to detecting signals from in front of the black hole, but these new ones were different. These flashes showed up later, and the light was less bright, like echoes arriving after the main burst. After much analysis, the researchers confirmed that these mysterious detections were, in fact, pulses of light that had arced round the edge of Zwicky’s black hole, once again validating Einstein’s ground-breaking theory of relativity.^[1]

9 Astronomers Capture Magnetic Swirls around the Rim of a Black Hole

In 2019, astronomers made history when they released the first image of the outskirts of a black hole. Black holes themselves are impossible to photograph. The trailblazing snap captured the shadow of M87*, a supermassive black hole 55 million light-years away. Scientists compiled the photograph using data from a global network of detectors known as the Event Horizon Telescope.

Two years later, in another never-before-seen feat of science, the team unveiled a new photograph, providing yet more crucial insight into the mysterious behavior of the celestial behemoths. Finally, in March 2021, researchers revealed another image of M87*, only this time showing magnetic field lines spiraling around its shadow.

Black holes like M87* are surrounded by a glowing ring of hot cosmic matter. Scientists analyzed the light from this region and the direction of the vibrations. Black holes are known to spit out vast jets of matter, but no one is sure why. Scientists hope that the magnetic swirls could help explain this peculiar phenomenon.^[2]

8 Observatories Detect Record-Breaking Explosion

In 2016, NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory began picking up unusual readings from the depths of outer space. The Ophiuchus galaxy cluster, some 390 million light-years away, appeared to contain a strange curve. At first, scientists dismissed the idea of it being caused by a black hole because the sheer amount of energy involved seemed to be too immense to be true.

But as more data came in, the evidence began to stack up. Eventually, NASA realized that they had discovered, in their words, the “biggest explosion seen in the universe.”

Galaxy clusters are some of the largest known structures in the universe. They are made up of thousands of galaxies, dark matter, and hot gas. Toward the middle of the Ophiuchus cluster lies a large galaxy that contains a supermassive black hole. Scientists reckon the colossal blast could have stemmed from that gigantic space guzzler. The energy released in the explosion is said to be five times more powerful than the previous record-holder, a vast eruption in the MS 0735+74 galaxy cluster.

Simona Giacintucci, the lead author of the study, compared the blast to the 1980 eruption that tore the top off Mount Saint Helens. “A key difference is that you could fit fifteen Milky Way galaxies in a row into the crater this eruption punched into the cluster’s hot gas.”^[3]

7 Shape-Shifting Objects Lurking near the Milky Way’s Black Hole

In recent years, astronomers have noticed several strange shape-shifting objects skulking away in the Milky Way. Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, discovered them circling the black hole at the heart of our galaxy. The ones furthest from the black hole seem to be the most compact. But they begin to stretch as they approach the event horizon.

These bizarre globules of gas have been dubbed G objects. Scientists reckon they form when two stars are merged together by the black hole’s immense gravitational pull.

Scientists have spotted six mutating G objects in the Milky Way, although there may be more elsewhere in the universe. Nobel Prize winner Andrea Ghez came across the first G object back in 2005. But it was seven years before researchers in Germany discovered the second.^[4]

6 Supermassive Black Holes Could Be Wormholes in Disguise

Wormholes are cosmic tunnels that weave across space, transporting travelers to anywhere in this universe and possibly into others. Over a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein explained that wormholes could exist, but nobody knows for sure if they actually do.

For years, astronomers have searched the skies for evidence to confirm or reject the existence of wormholes. But in November 2020, researchers published a paper suggesting that they may have stumbled upon them without even realizing it. Mikhail Piotrovich proposed the idea that certain black holes could, in fact, be openings to wormholes.

Black holes and wormholes have more in common than you might imagine. They’re both extraordinarily dense, and both have immense gravitational pulls. The major difference is that nothing can exit a black hole after entering, whereas any object going into a wormhole could, in theory, travel back out. Piotrovich and his team hope that studying gamma-ray emissions could help confirm their fascinating theory.^[5]

5 Black Holes Merge Causes Light of a Trillion Stars

Black holes are known for lurking in the inky blackness of space, crashing into each other and merging. However, until recently, scientists assumed that this process was invisible, playing out under the shroud of darkness.

But now, researchers believe that when black holes collide, a blinding surge of light is released a trillion times brighter than the sun. Ligo, the gravitational wave observatory, detected a dazzling flare back in 2019, which scientists think was caused by two black holes merging in the presence of a third black hole. The surrounding gas and dust act like floodlights for the collision, lighting up the cataclysmic event.

“This supermassive black hole was burbling along for years before this more abrupt flare,” explained Matthew Graham, the lead author of the study. “We conclude that the flare is likely the result of a black hole merger.”^[6]

4 Scientists Photograph Jet of Radio Waves

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) is an incredible feat of engineering. It consists of eight radio observatories dotted around the world. Collating their data creates one giant, high-precision telescope the size of the Earth.

In July 2021, the EHT project released a series of images of a black hole blasting out jets of radio waves. The black hole at the center of the Centaurus A galaxy is known for emitting large amounts of energy, much more than the one in the Milky Way. But this marks the first time scientists have captured a black hole with such clarity as it spurts material into the skies. The EHT allows scientists to photograph the gigantic jets with ten times higher accuracy and sixteen times better resolution than was possible before.^[7]

3 Researchers Detect a Black Hole Gobbling up a Neutron Star

Black holes and neutron stars are among the densest, most exotic objects in the universe. When they crash into each other, all hell breaks loose. A collision is a cataclysmic event. The two behemoths merge with such intensity that it creates large waves that echo across space and time.

Over the last few years, scientists have seen two black holes colliding and two neutron stars colliding. But until recently, capturing a black hole crashing into a neutron star was a much more difficult challenge.

Then after much waiting, like buses, two came along at once. In January 2020, astronomers received signals from two black hole-neutron star mergers within ten days of each other. Scientists believe that both events took place around a billion years ago. Because space is so vast, the cosmic echoes only made it to Earth last year. In both cases, the black hole was so huge that it devoured the neutron star.^[8]

2 Astronomers Puzzled by Black Hole with “Impossible” Mass

In 2020, scientists were left scratching their heads after detecting a black hole collision that, according to theory, should have been impossible. At least one of the goliaths had a mass 85 times that of the sun, which scientists used to believe was too large to be involved in that kind of collision.

After the two crashed into each other and fused, they produced a black hole almost 150 times heavier than the sun. That is heavier than any black hole previously detected.

The distant merger is thought to have taken place when the universe was only half of its current age. Theoretical astrophysicist Ilya Mandel described the discovery as “wonderfully unexpected.”^[9]

1 Are Black Holes a Source of Near-Infinite Energy?

British physicist Sir Roger Penrose is a pivotal figure in astronomy. In 1969, he put forward the idea that black holes could be used by future civilizations to generate energy. In theory, an object placed close to but not inside a black hole should acquire negative energy. Penrose suggested that the object should then split in half, with one half being sucked in by the black hole and the other half recoiling away. The half that recoiled should now have gained energy from the black hole. This energy, if harnessed, could be used to power an entire planet.

As things stand, such a feat is well beyond the limits of current technology. But was Penrose correct? In 1971, physicist Yakov Zel’dovich devised an experiment that could take place here on Earth to test Penrose’s far-flung theory. Unfortunately, due to technological constraints, Zel’dovich’s experiment was also impossible.

Fast forward to June 2020 when, over half a century since Penrose first dreamt up the idea, researchers at the University of Glasgow were finally able to demonstrate his theory. The team built a ring of speakers to recreate the rotational effects of a black hole. They then listened as beams of sound waves became twisted and warped just like the object would have been in Penrose’s original theory.

“We’re thrilled to have been able to experimentally verify some extremely odd physics a half-century after the theory was first proposed.” Professor Daniele Faccio told reporters. “It’s strange to think that we’ve been able to confirm a half-century-old theory with cosmic origins here in our lab in the west of Scotland, but we think it will open up a lot of new avenues of scientific exploration.“^[10]

To most people a black market is an illicit way of selling or trading something that may or may not be legal, is scarce or hard to come by. During prohibition there was a massive black market for alcohol, for instance. Any place in which they criminalize drugs is going to have a black market trade in narcotics. And then there are those things that inexplicably develop a black market even though, at first glance, it makes no sense.

10. Spam

The Hormel company introduced Spam back in 1937. It made use of pork shoulder, a cut of meat that no one really liked, and has proven to be an enduring and oddly popular product ever since. These days, they sell 141 million cans of spam every year. You’d figure with such wide availability that there would be no illicit trade. But you’d be wrong.

It’s been common knowledge for some time that Spam is especially popular in Hawaii. They take down more cans than any other state, a tradition that dates back to the Second World War when Hormel used to supply the United States military with the canned meat. Because it doesn’t require refrigeration and has a long shelf-life, it was ideal for shipping to GIs no matter where they were stationed.

Because they inundated the islands with Spam, it became something of a local delicacy. In 2017, the demand for Spam in Hawaii got so intense that stores had to endure a rash of thefts, and a black market for the meat sprang up.

Thieves we’re taking it by the caseload from stores, so shopkeepers started locking it in plastic display cases the same way they do with things like cell phones are razors.  Apparently it was being resold and of the backs of cars how to turn a quick profit.

9. Breast Milk

There are several laws and regulations in place that govern the sale of food and drink. However, there are no actual regulations relating to the sale of human breast milk, which kind of falls outside the realm of what is considered food in a commercial sense. Because of that, it’s not really illegal to sell breast milk, and for that reason there actually is a market for it.

If it sounds weird at first, consider that there could be a genuine need for this kind of market. Any mothers who cannot produce their own breast milk but still want their baby to be fed naturally might be interested.

It’s for that reason that the underground breastmilk market exists, including several websites that are dedicated to selling only breast milk. Women who have extra milk to sell will advertise it the way you might advertise anything. Here, they’ll boast if it’s organic, vegan, gluten and dairy free, and so on. On the site Onlythebreast.com there are several thousand classifieds up at any given time from buyers and sellers.

Lest you think the entire marketplace is wholesome and interested in making sure babies are receiving essential nutrients, there is a slightly more sinister side to the whole thing. There’s always the possibility that the people interested in buying breast milk are just doing it to fulfill a fetish of some kind. And apparently bodybuilders also buy it, claiming that it’s a superior supplement to the store-bought kinds for helping to build muscle. 

8. Russian Cheese

You could make a good case that cheese is one of the best foods mankind has ever created. It goes with just about everything, and there are literally thousands of different kinds. Some people take their love of cheese a bit too far though, and that is abundantly clear in Russia where there is a massive black market for the dairy products.

Thanks to Covid-19 and the restrictions it put on traveling around Europe, a Finnish cheese called Oltermanni is the number one illegally traded item in the country. The cheese cost five Euros per kilo in Finland, but in Russia it’s going to cost you four times as much. 

Customs officials in Finland have been trying to monitor trucks from Russia that have been smuggling the cheese across the border. Some supermarkets have tried to crack down by limiting cheese sales to a perfectly reasonable 11 kilograms. That’s over 20 pounds of cheese, incidentally.

Why exactly the Russians have chosen this particular cheese is open to speculation. Russia is not known for producing noteworthy cheese, and the country doesn’t even make their own cheddar.

7. Razors 

If you’ve ever gone to a store like Walmart to buy razors for shaving, you may have wondered why they keep them under lock and key all the time. Razors are relatively small and expensive for their size, which makes them a prime target for theft. So stores typically keep them secure to prevent loss. 

Cities around the country have had issues with thieves making offers large quantities of razors which are very easy to hide and walk out of a store with. Over $1,000 worth of razors can easily be stashed in a fairly small bag.

Reselling razors is remarkably easy because they are always an in-demand product. They’re not something that you can trace, and people could sell them easily on websites like Craigslist or even eBay.

Research suggests that the razor market will be worth about $22.5 billion by the year 2030, which gives you all the explanation you need for why a black market exists.

6. Disney Guides

More often than not when a black market exists it’s for a physical product. But there are rare occasions when a black market exists not for a product but a service. Black market Disney guides are one such example.

If you have never been to Disney World, you may not be aware that the lines to access attractions can be atrociously long. It’s not unheard of for people to wait hours to get access to a popular ride. But not everyone in the park has to wait that long all the time. If you have a disability, there is a second line available to help you gain access to an attraction sooner. It’s a courtesy that Disney offers customers who are differently abled and may not be able to handle waiting for such a long time in the line.

Now the thing about these lines that allow a disabled person to jump to the front is that people who are accompanying them are allowed to skip the line as well. And that is the source of the black market service. Those who can afford it, and rates around $130 an hour, will hire disabled guides for their Disney World visits so that their families can skip lines. 

After word of this scam broke, Disney released a statement saying that they were going to take action, so it’s very possible that this particular black market has been squashed.

5. High School Cafeteria Salt

School cafeterias have had a bad reputation for about as long to school so had cafeterias. While some school districts really put in some effort to ensure that kids receive food that is  supposed nutritious and delicious, other school boards are still back in the days of salisbury steak and mystery meat. You might think that the first option would be the more popular one, but that’s not always the case.

In 2010 Barack Obama introduced the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, regulating how public schools served food to students. Part of these regulations included limits on certain unhealthy ingredients, like sodium.

Kids at one school in Indiana really liked their salt and did not take kindly to Obama’s nutrition regulations. After they put sodium limitations in place, students began selling salt for $1 a shake in their school cafeteria.

The black market salt shakes were short-lived, and the school’s principal shut it down as soon as she figured out what was going on. Although budding entrepreneurs may not have made too much cash, at least they brought to light the fact that they was little scientific evidence supporting the government’s sodium restrictions, and also the fact that with the salt restrictions in place, no one was eating the school lunches because they tasted bland which was arguably even worse than eating nutritionally suspect lunches.

4. Butt Lifts

Some things make more sense being part of a black market than others. The black market for alcohol and drugs is something that, even if you don’t agree with it, you can at least understand. The black market for illegal butt lifts, however, is another matter altogether.

If you’re not familiar, a butt lift is a plastic surgery procedure that involves removing excess skin and fat from around the buttocks and then repositioning what’s left over to make your butt look more toned. That’s if it’s done properly by a real, licensed plastic surgeon.

Black market butt lifts are done by unlicensed people — sometimes people who have no medical knowledge or experience. Victims who have experienced them are typically referred to the pseudo-doctor by a friend and, upon meeting them at their home, have had unknown substances injected into their buttocks. No prep work, no forms to fill out, just an unlabeled injection.

The substance being injected into people is generally not medical-grade silicone, but silicone jelly like you’d get from hardware stores. In real plastic surgery procedures, silicone is in a sealed implant. The illegal ones inject it directly into tissue where it can harden, travel around, or even leak right back out again. More than one person has died as a result of these procedures, and many others have endured serious pain and disfigurement as a result.

3. Krispy Kreme

You may not have noticed, but Krispy Kreme doesn’t actually advertise anywhere. The company’s reputation is pretty much entirely word of mouth and unsolicited media. Anytime you see a Krispy Kreme donut in a movie or a TV show, they didn’t pay to put it there; the producers wanted to use it. They’re really popular donuts.

Any time a new Krispy Kreme location opens you can count on there being people literally camped out outside the store waiting to be the first to experience a brand new donut. And anytime you see the light on the store declaring the donuts are being made, you can pop in and get a free one.

If you don’t have a Krispy Kreme location near you, you may just lament that you don’t get to experience what all the fuss is about. But at least one family in Juarez, Mexico, decided that they could bring Krispy Kreme to the masses with a black market supply.

The Garcia family traveled from Juarez to El Paso every single day back in 2017 to pick up dozens of donuts and then sell them to locals for a 60% markup. What they’re doing isn’t illegal by any means; they’re not smuggling the donuts or stealing them, they’re just reselling for an impressive profit and proving that people will pay just about anything to get their hands on a Krispy Kreme donut.

2. Plagiarized Dissertations

Cheating in the academic world is certainly not unheard of. If you’ve been a student in the past 20 years, you know that most schools require you to submit any written essays to a service which will scan it for plagiarism. About 60% of high school students admit to plagiarism, and about one-third of college students have copped to it. Russia has taken plagiarism to a new level that goes well beyond school kids being stupid. 

Plagiarized dissertations have become commonplace throughout Russia. These aren’t high school essays; these are the documents on which someone gets a doctoral degree. Vladimir Putin’s Chief of Staff was discovered to have bought a plagiarized dissertation back in 2016.

They sell these dissertations on the black market, written by ghostwriters who clearly don’t have a lot of integrity when it comes to original writing. They plagiarize portions of dissertations, repackage them, and then sell them to someone else who is looking to take the easy road to get a degree.

Obviously the motivation for using a plagiarized dissertation is that you can parlay that into getting a doctorate, which increases your reputation, and likely the salary at your future job. And in Russia, the motivation to do things honestly often isn’t really there. For instance, that Chief of Staff didn’t actually suffer any kind of repercussions when it was discovered he had simply bought his way into a degree. He made a semi-apologetic statement on his own behalf, and then business continued as usual.

Over 1,000 high-profile Russian officials were accused of the same kind of plagiarism. They range from politicians to judges to heads of universities and lawyers. A website called Dissernet, which is run by volunteers looking to expose fraud, found 5,600 cases. 

Because there seem to be no actual consequences for their actions, the plagiarists barely even try to hide their dishonesty. At least one case discovered by Dissernet was a plagiarized dissertation on the Russian chocolate industry. The highjacked version was about the beef industry, and they literally just copy and pasted the word beef over chocolate in the original.

1. Disease Survivor Blood

There’s nothing like a pandemic to make people come up with novel ways to preserve their own health and well-being. We’ve already seen people resorting to trying to drink household cleaners to prevent Coronavirus, but a new industry has been cramping up as well.

Possibly inspired by the Ebola outbreak of 2014 when those afraid of the virus were purchasing plasma from survivors of the disease, a black market for Coronavirus survivor plasma has sprung up in the Middle East.

Plasma has been successful in helping treat the disease so those who have a ready supply in their own blood have been selling it for as much as $1,500 to $2,000 per liter.