Brazil’s got the eyes of the world on it at the moment. It’s due to host the soccer world cup in 2014, with the Olympics to follow in Rio two years later. Yet repeat blackouts, unfinished stadiums, and massive protests against corruption have left many people concerned. On the other hand, the Brazilians know how to throw a party, and their pubic hair is impeccable. With this South American giant predicted by some to be one of the world’s next super powers, now’s a good time to get yourself acquainted.

10The Knitting Prisoners

Arisvaldo de Campos Pires is a maximum security prison, 160 kilometers (100 mi) from Rio de Janeiro. It’s the sort of prison where guards wear balaclavas and carry shotguns, but also home to much more homely scenes. The Lotus Flower Project was the brainchild of a Brazilian fashion designer, Raquel Guimaraes, who was suffering a shortage of knitters. She’d had a run of success and needed to increase production, and decided some of the country’s toughest criminals would be just the fit.

Prisoners get paid 75 percent of Brazil’s minimum wage, with a quarter of their earnings kept aside until they get out. They also get a day knocked off their sentence for every three days spent crafting high fashion out of wool. Learning a skill, getting used to working, and having some cash on release offer clear advantages for taking people out of the situation where they may offend again.

9Nazis In Brazil

While we can all agree the Nazis had their faults, they were nothing if not ambitious. Their desire for world domination didn’t stop with Europe and Russia, they had their sights further afield. In 1935, a Nazi expedition scouted the Amazon rain forest in Brazil, close to its border with French Guyana, to investigate setting up an outpost. One of the members of the team died during the mission, and a 2.8 meter (9 ft) cross stands in the rain forest, with the inscription “Joseph Greiner died here on 2.1.1936, a death from fever in the service of German Research Work.”

The party was led by an SS Officer, Dr. Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel. He thought settling in Brazil held much promise, and told Himmler “for the more advanced white race it offers outstanding possibilities for exploitation.” The project was scrapped when Himmler lost interest, yet that was far from the end of Brazil’s links with the Nazis. Brazil was very fascist friendly, and many Nazis fled there when the war was over. In 1997, a safe of a deceased German immigrant, Albert Blume, was found in Sao Paolo, containing $4 million worth of war treasure stolen from Jewish families.

The Nazi “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele, is the most infamous person to have set up home in Brazil after the war. His presence spawned an urban legend about the town of Candido Godoi. The remote Brazilian settlement has an unusually high incidence of twins, and people have suggested experiments by Mengele are to blame. This has turned out to be a myth—the locals were having a lot of twins before he got there, and continued doing so after Mengele’s death—and the twins from the village get understandably annoyed about the suggestion they’re the result of a Nazi experiment.

8Favela Tourism

Rio de Janeiro is famous for its shanty towns. The favelas are home to a fifth of the city’s population, meaning 1.4 million people call them home. A large collection of people amassed in poverty tends to not be a breeding ground for opportunity. Brazil’s favela residents were often forced to a life of crime, making the favelas notoriously dangerous.

The Brazilian government has made an effort to clean up the towns in recent years. This “pacification” program involves moving in police to tackle the drug gangs, and improving the infrastructure with new buildings and safe pathways. A decent concrete staircase can make a big difference in your life, when you’re living on the side of a 1,000 meter (3,300 ft) mountain. The program has worked, and in doing so it’s created a brand new industry—favela tourism.

The first favela to be pacified was Santa Marta. Today, some residents of the area work as tour guides, showing people around for a fee. The homes, many built from cinder blocks and wood, retain their shabby appearance from the outside. Inside, they have flat screen TVs and fitted kitchens. Celebrities, including Madonna and Beyonce, had paid a visit to have a look around the reformed slums.

7Favela For Dogs

It’s not only people that get to live in sprawling, ramshackle towns on a hillside. The city of Caxias do Sul has a favela with hundreds of buildings, which is home to nothing but dogs. It was created by an animal welfare charity called So Ama—Portuguese for “Just Love”—that lacked funds to build a proper shelter. They house 1,600 animals, each one chained to a shack. The animals get through 13 tons of food each month.

Unfortunately, most people are only interested in adopting purebred puppies. The older mongrels have no such luck. The charity is struggling, as it needs to spend more to care for the animals than it receives in donations or government help. The founder says she sometimes feels ashamed about the inability to provide a proper animal shelter, but the other option would be to turn dogs away to live (or die) on the streets.

6Fishing With Dolphins

The Brazilian city of Laguna is home to one of the planet’s most impressive alliances between humans and other animals. The local fishermen begin their day by wading into the sea, nets in hand, and waiting for their assistants—dolphins—to arrive. It’s too murky for people to see below the surface, but dolphins know where the fish are. When the fishermen use the dolphins’ instruction to cast their nets, the catches are large. If the dolphins aren’t around, the locals say it’s not worth bothering.

No one knows exactly how the tradition started, or exactly what’s in it for the dolphins. It’s been suggested that the presence of nets confuses the fish, and the dolphins are able to catch larger (and usually faster) specimens. Whatever the reasons, the dolphins seem keen, as the same ones return regularly to take part. The fishermen can even identify individuals by name. Ultimately, it seems to be a winning situation for everybody—except, of course, the tasty, tasty fish.

5Bumba-meu-boi

If you wanted to arrange a carnival and could pick any country to be on the organizing committee, you’d probably go for Brazil. It’s famous for its bright parades in Rio, but the iconic Carnaval do Brasil isn’t the only awesome street party. Another awesome parade is Bumba-meu-boi. It’s particularly popular in the north of the country, and the parade is based around an unusual folktale.

While there are differing versions, the basic premise is the same. A wealthy farmer hires a young farmhand to look after his ox, which is the grandest beast in the land. The farmhand’s pregnant wife develops a craving for ox tongue, so the farmhand slaughters the beast he’s looking after, in order to satisfy his wife. The farmer gets angry (fair enough) and decides to kill the farmhand. With the help of villagers and an intervention from St. John, the peasant brings the ox back to life using drums. The farmer then forgives him (because it’s never wise to mess with people showing godly powers, even if you’re their employer).

In Sao Luis, 200 different teams put together ox costumes and battle it out to create the most impressive reenactment of the event. The crowd is encouraged to heckle the bad guy in all this—not the magical ox murderer, but the farmer. The moral of the story is, presumably, that it’s okay to kill the thing you’re being paid to look after, so long as you can use a funky beat to resurrect it afterwards.

4Casa de Pedra

It’s not just the government that can brighten up a favela. One man, Estevao Conceicao, spent two decades converting a nondescript slum building into an eclectic cave of treasures. Stone archways are lined with plates, dolls, mobile phones, typewriters, motorcycle helmets, shoes, and pretty much everything else. As well as becoming a celebrity in Paraisopolis, the Sao Paulo shanty town where he built it, it also got him a trip to Spain.

Conceiacao’s Casa de Pedra (or “House of Stone”) caught the eye of a visiting architecture student. It reminded him of the work of a famous Spanish-Catalan architect, named Antoni Gaudi. The Center For Gaudinist Studies agreed, and flew Conceicao to see the architect’s work. Conceiacao agrees that they’ve got a similar style, but he had never heard of Gaudi when he began. He shaped his house around a tree that was growing in the middle of it, and added to it organically over the years.

3Sambaqui

It’s been pretty much settled that the Egyptian pyramids couldn’t have been built by humans. As the many people reading this via the assistance of satellite will no doubt attest, mankind is incapable of getting heavy objects very high up. Yet, while it’s obvious the Egyptians must have had help from werewolves on broomsticks to move stone about, the native population of Brazil had a pyramid building strategy that even the History Channel is unlikely to blame on aliens or fairies.

Sambaquis are mounds of shells, dirt, and bones that were built as far back as 8,000 years ago. For a long time, academics thought they were simply rubbish heaps that got out of hand, to the point that the tallest reached a height of 50 meters (165 ft). More recent research suggests they were actually built on purpose, making them the world’s oldest pyramids. Only 10 percent of them are left, as many were stripped for road building material. Of their many possible functions, there’s good evidence they were used during funerals and to bury the dead (much like their Egyptian counterparts). Altogether, they suggest a more sophisticated ancient culture than we previously knew.

2Indigenous Firefighters

Everyone is aware of the threat of human deforestation against the rain forest, yet there’s a bigger threat from nature itself. Each year, much more forest is destroyed by naturally occurring fires than by man. The problem with fighting fires in the Amazon is that it’s very big—in Brazil alone, the rain forest covers an area six times the size of Texas. That means one fire crew of five men can be tasked with covering an area the size of England by themselves.

There’s only one way to tackle flames in the undergrowth: beat them with a stick until they go out. The oppressively humid forest hovers around 27 degrees Celsius (80 degrees F) without raging fire. On top of that, firefighters might need to machete their way through the trees for a couple of hours, before they even get to the blaze. All those things mean rural Brazilian firefighters need to be in spectacular physical condition.

Because the firefighters lack the ability to be everywhere at once, they need help. They have turned to warriors from indigenous tribes that live deep in the forest. The locals are more than happy to swap their usual dress of nothing-but-a-loincloth for full-body overalls and a gas mask, and get right into the action.

The firefighters provide training as well as equipment to the natives, so that if a fire crops up near their village, they can put it out before it becomes a problem. The cattle industry, traditionally a cause of deforestation, has tried to make amends by providing private funding to similar projects. The United States Forest Service have also offered their assistance and expertise in visits to the forest.

1Japanese Brazilians

Back in the early 20th century, Japan was fearing a population crisis. Increasing industrialization and people moving to the cities led to fears of sparse resources, so the government chose to promote emigration as a policy. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese left, and the majority of them went to Brazil to seek their fortunes on coffee plantations. While Japan expected most to return when they were richer, only 7 percent went back. As a result, Brazil is home to 62 percent of Japanese people living outside of Japan (including descendants of Japanese emigrants).

The Japanese have integrated quite dramatically into wider Brazilian society. Forty percent of the descendants of Japanese immigrants are mixed-race. Sao Paulo has a Japanese district, on the streets of which you will find plenty of manga fans in cosplay.

Yet there’s a twist to the story. During the 1980s, Japan sought foreign workers for its car industry, which was taking off in a big way. Where better to find them than Brazil, which was full of people that already spoke the language and knew the culture? Various incentives led hundreds of thousands to head back to Japan. This has put it straight back in the situation it was in a century ago: Japan has population problems, and now is trying to pay people to go back to Brazil. Despite the Japanese government offering to cover the costs of plane tickets, many don’t wish to return to South America. Japan’s public services are better, and Brazil has been troubled by corruption and unemployment. The whole situation has left a lot of families divided, geographically and culturally, between two very different places.

Alan is a full-time writer who you can pester on Twitter, email or read his blog (which he promises to update more often) at skepticalnumber.com.

Sabine Hossenfelder is not a household name, but a recent article of hers has stirred up a host of debate among some scientific specialists. In her piece, published by the magazine New Scientist, the journalist and theoretical physicist argues against investing an enormous sum of money in a new particle collider. Research organization CERN has announced plans to build a €21 billion supercollider, a proposal that Hossenfelder says does not justify its hefty price tag.^[1]

Her article has split opinion among theoretical and particle physicists. Many agree with Hossenfelder’s well-reasoned conclusion. Others argue that investment is needed for the evolution of cutting-edge technology; without fresh areas of work, the research will simply dry up.

Whether or not the high-cost supercollider will be built remains to be seen. However, in the midst of this forward-thinking debate, we must not lose perspective on the here and now. The Large Hadron Collider, CERN’s main boast, opened only a decade ago. In that time, we have witnessed the discovery of gravitational waves, the Higgs boson, and various quantum mechanical phenomena.

These bold leaps forward have only been possible due to a wealth of state-of-the-art technology. The following are all incredible feats of engineering that have helped to revolutionize our understanding of the world around us.

10 Dark Energy Camera

What is dark energy? The brief answer is that nobody is really sure. In a sense, dark energy is the antithesis of gravity, exerting a negative, repulsive pressure that is believed to accelerate the expansion of the universe. The elusive energy form is said to account for around two thirds of the total mass-energy of the universe, the rest being mostly dark matter.

That said, the mystery of dark energy may not be a mystery for much longer. A group of researchers at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory is exploring dark energy in an attempt to understand the universe at a fundamental level. Situated high in the Chilean Andes, their Dark Energy Camera (DECam) captures high-definition images of the cosmos. It is one of the most sophisticated digital cameras on the planet.

It took scientists from six different countries over a decade of designing and testing to come up with DECam. The project has mapped out roughly an eighth of the sky in exceptional clarity, while also cataloguing 300 million galaxies. Experts are currently in the process of analyzing the images.^[2]

9 Einstein Tower

As extravagant to look at as it is scientifically vital, the Einstein Tower in Potsdam, Germany, has spent nearly a century studying the Sun. The observatory was opened in the 1920s with the aim of validating Einstein’s then-recently published theory of relativity. Housed in the tower is an unconventional style of telescope, immovable and bolt upright, that measures spectral shifts in solar rays.

Even more bizarre than the theory it was commissioned to verify is the building itself. The Einstein Tower is a renowned example of expressionist architecture that brought its creator, Erich Mendelsohn, to fame. Observatories are generally fronted by bland, purely functional exteriors, but Mendelsohn’s vision was far more avant-garde.

The outcome of this outlandish approach to architecture is a curvaceous, science fiction-esque structure that juts up out of the German landscape. The building’s namesake, Albert Einstein, is said to have disapproved of the futuristic design.^[3]

8 Stonehenge

By modern standards, it may be a prehistoric artifact, but when the rocks were first erected on Salisbury Plain some 5,000 years ago, Stonehenge was state-of-the-art technology. Historians have found strong evidence to suggest that the stone circle was a primitive sort of observatory used to monitor the sky.

In fact, some claim that the builders of Stonehenge must have used Pythagoras’s theorem, two millennia before the Greek philosopher was born. The original henge is said to have been surrounded by 56 wooden posts. Ancient astronomers would have used these to map out solar and lunar eclipse cycles.^[4]

7 Pierre Auger Observatory

Cosmology is brimming with mysteries. How did our universe come into being? What is it made of? How do you explain its unusual expansion?

One such mystery is cosmic rays. Our planet is being bombarded by a continuous stream of high-energy particles, hurtling toward Earth at close to light speed. This barrage of subatomic particles is a phenomenon known as cosmic rays. The lower-energy rays are known to be born out of stars dying in our Milky Way galaxy. Far less is known about the higher-energy rays. Thought to originate from far-off galaxies, their exact source has eluded scientists for decades.

Cosmic rays are also extremely rare. On average, a square kilometer (0.39 mi²) will be hit by just one high-energy particle per century. To combat this issue, researchers have constructed an enormous detector that spans for miles across Argentina. The Pierre Auger Observatory covers a detection area of around 3,000 square kilometers (1,200 mi²)—roughly 30 times the size of Paris. Completed in 2008, the observatory picks up the cosmic rays after they have struck the atmosphere and showered down to Earth in a cascade of various secondary particles.^[5]

6 Lovell Telescope

In a rural village in the heart of England, a renowned radio telescope has spent the last 60 years examining the cosmos. Found at Jodrell Bank, an observatory run by the University of Manchester, the Lovell Telescope is one of the most powerful radio telescopes ever built.

Its standout feature is the fully steerable white bowl, 76 meters (250 ft) in diameter, that adorns two motor-powered towers. This enormous bowl acts like a giant satellite dish, collecting and focusing radio waves from sources in the sky to be transformed into electrical signals.

Still the third largest of its kind over half a century since it was first assembled, Lovell has played a pivotal role in furthering our understanding of astronomy. The theories now being explored by Lovell were virtually unimaginable when it was first opened.^[6]

5 Super-Kamiokande

Neutrinos have been at the heart of a number of fascinating scientific discoveries in recent years. The minuscule subatomic particles are thought to be among the most abundant in the universe and also one of the most difficult to detect. In 2015, Takaaki Kajita and Arthur B. McDonald were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics after demonstrating that neutrinos change their intrinsic properties as they travel.

This fluctuation requires the particles to have some mass, contrary to the long-held belief that neutrinos are massless. Particle physicists now have to reassess their understanding of the nature of matter. It will likely lead to an expansion of numerous scientific theories.^[7]

Kajita’s groundbreaking discovery was only possible due to Super-Kamiokande (model pictured above), an enormous underground detector tank filled with 50,000 tons of water. As neutrinos sprint through the tank, the vast majority of them leave no trace, but a few emit dazzling bursts of Cherenkov light (the optical equivalent of a sonic boom). By analyzing the bursts, researchers are able to examine the properties of the neutrinos themselves.

4 Hubble Telescope

Orbiting 547 kilometers (340 mi) above our heads, the Hubble Space Telescope has been described by NASA as the most important step forward in astronomy since Galileo introduced his telescope in 1610. In April 1990, when Hubble was first launched and deployed; having a permanent telescope outside of the Earth’s atmosphere was seen as revolutionary. Almost three decades later, the technology remains right at the cutting edge of modern science.

Unlike traditional ground-based telescopes, Hubble surveys the depths of space unimpeded by Earth’s dense, distorting atmosphere. The telescope’s sophisticated cameras can view astronomical occurrences with better clarity and consistency than any observatory on the planet.

The steady stream of observations being fed back from Hubble has entirely altered our understanding of the universe around us. On average, around 150 scientific papers per day will cite research that in some way incorporates Hubble data. The telescope has enabled astronomers to explore all manner of topics in great depth, from supermassive black holes to dark energy. It’s a mammoth achievement, especially for a satellite that is only the size of a large bus.^[8]

3 Large Hadron Collider

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is, for the moment, at least, the most powerful particle accelerator ever built—although, as addressed at the start of the article, developers are currently debating whether to build another almost four times larger.

Inside the 27-kilometer (17 mi) magnetic ring, two beams of particles are thrust together at close to light speed. Researchers in Geneva have been smashing subatomic particles into one another since 2009. In 2012, after the LHC had been in operation for a only a few years, they made global headlines by confirming the existence of the Higgs boson.

It was initially hoped that the LHC might also be able to shed light on string theory and dark matter. As time passes on, with no evidence found, this is looking increasingly unlikely.

In order for the ring to maintain its magnetism, coils of superconducting cable need to be chilled with liquid nitrogen, which keeps them at a frosty minus 271.3 degrees Celsius (–456.3 °F). At these extremely low temperatures, the cable has an incredible ability to conduct electricity perfectly without losing any energy.^[9]

2 LIGO

Gravitational waves are distortions in the fabric of space and time that radiate from high-energy interstellar bodies. They emanate from accelerating objects and spread through the cosmos like ripples across a pond. The largest waves stem from massive, turbulent events like a supernova explosion or two black holes colliding. There is even believed to be some gravitational radiation still lingering from the birth of the universe.

Albert Einstein first imagined these celestial ripples in 1916 as part of his general theory of relativity. However, their existence was not proven until 1974. For the first gravitational wave to actually be detected, researchers at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) in Louisiana had to construct a style of high-precision instrument known as an interferometer. Interferometers are able to take minuscule measurements by comparing two near-identical beams of light. They are often used to determine small changes in position.

While interferometer technology has existed since the late 19th century, LIGO’s are the most sensitive ever built. The twin detectors are made from two 4-kilometer (2.5 mi) steel vacuum tubes and measure fluctuations thousands of times smaller than a proton.^[10]

The first gravitational waves to be sensed by LIGO came from two black holes crashing into each other almost 1.3 billion years ago. This momentous achievement earned three of LIGO’s researchers the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics, along with mass acclaim from the media and their peers.

1 International Space Station

Around the same size as a football field, the International Space Station (ISS) is the largest artificial structure that we have ever put into space. Since November 2000, the station has been continuously inhabited, hosting over 200 individuals from 18 different countries. In a day, the distance traveled by the ISS is the equivalent of flying to the Moon and back.

Onboard the ISS, research projects are conducted into a wide array of various topics. On one mission, the crew was tasked with burning small, spherical droplets of fuel as part of a study into flames in microgravity. Another grew large crystals of protein in the name of medical research.

What’s more, the ISS is mounted with an exceptionally sensitive particle detector known as the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS). Unlike the Pierre Auger Observatory, this instrument is able to measure cosmic rays before they fragment in the atmosphere. Data from the AMS may help enlighten cosmologists as to the source of cosmic radiation, while also supporting some theories on the composition of dark matter.^[11]

Writer from Britain.

Warfare has been around for a very long time. As ancient mass graves have shown us, interactions between various groups of human beings haven’t always been peachy—if anything, they’ve often been nothing shy of horrific. And sometimes, horrific is actually the point of some forms of warfare, tactics intended to intimidate and scare the other side. Such is the nature of psychological warfare, and it, too, has been around since humanity’s inception, beginning way back in prehistoric times when the first group of Paleolithic men decided to scream before charging an enemy in an attempt to startle and cause a deep, primal fear within their opponents before they struck.

Psychological warfare is a blend of propaganda and actual tactics that can create a firestorm of terror in the mind of the enemy, long before the first arrow is shot or the first bomb is dropped. Carl von Clausewitz remarked in his work On War that the goal of warfare is to disarm the enemy and make them submit to the will of those conducting the war.^[1] Sometimes, through the use of psychological warfare, this can happen easily, without a fight. Long before the use of newspapers and digital media, cultures had to conduct psychological warfare using more organic and rudimentary tools, the only things that they had at their disposal at the time. Here are ten brutal methods of psychological warfare from the ancient world.

10 Occupation

Alexander the Great employed psychological warfare in ways that were quite novel at the time, and the results were outstanding, as the massive empire he forged shows us. What most people think about when they think of psychological warfare is purely intimidation, but as von Clausewitz said, all warfare is political.

Alexander used a new tactic that he invented to expand his empire, one the Romans would later use as they became a powerful military force, and that tactic contained a beautiful mixture of friendly alliances and intimidation. See, before Alexander, military leaders would march through a city, plunder the goods, often execute the men and keep the women, and then burn it to the ground. Alexander changed this by leaving a certain amount of his troops and forces behind, leaving the cities standing, and making friends with the social elites of each conquered culture so that those defeated foes could then adopt Greek culture and become assimilated into the empire.^[2]

The tactic relied on political genius, mutual friendliness, and, of course, the implied threat of having a very powerful group of soldiers occupying your hometown that could smother any dissent that came about. Alexander’s brutal method was occupation, and while it was sometimes friendly on the surface, imagine the soldiers of a foreign nation standing on your street corners, in your homes, forcing you to adopt their ways at the threat of killing you. This tactic wasn’t all nice—it was more deeply psychologically disturbing.

9 Timing

Cyrus the Great was a military leader and conqueror who would rise to become the leader of the Achaemenian (or Achaemenid) Empire, also known today as the Persian Empire. Initially, Cyrus conquered many local cities in the area of modern-day Iran, and then he set his sights on a bigger prize—the city of Babylon—and he successfully took it by employing psychological warfare. Cyrus showed through psychological warfare that if you show up at just the right time, you can win a war and claim a city with a minimal fight.

Cyrus waited until things were ripe in Babylon, an ancient city with very powerful and respected priests, who the nation’s leader, Nabonidus, had seriously pissed off right before Cyrus showed up.^[3] The Babylonians had come to believe that their leader had disowned their major god, Marduk. The priests of the Babylonian religion saw this as a major transgression, and to top all of this off, Nabonidus had been on a military conquest for 11 years, hoping to control and dominate trade routes in the area. It seems he’d been gone for so long that his own people began to dislike him, though he’d left his son in his place to hold down the fort. Cyrus not only capitalized on this but had instigated it all along, sending representatives into the city to slowly spread propaganda until the people were totally fed up with their king. This process took years.

When the timing was right, Cyrus showed up and won over the already angry, elite class of the priests of Babylon and turned them against their leader. He was also able to make nearby armies who had sworn alliances to Babylon defect and join the fight against Nabonidus. Together, these smaller towns helped Cyrus in his campaign as his Persian army rolled through the ancient city.

8 Political Clout

When it comes to a shining, lovable, political image put forth by a political and/or military leader, very few, if any, people in history come close to the political savvy displayed by Julius Caesar. From the First Triumvirate to the treatment of the Gallic tribes north of Rome at the time, Caesar was a master manipulator in the name of furthering his political and military aspirations.^[4]

The Celtic warriors of Gaul had conquered the city of Rome after laying siege to it in 390 BC. Now, in 58 BC, Caesar wanted payback after centuries of skirmishes between the loose-knit band of ethnically and culturally similar tribes that composed the unofficial nation of Gaul, and he got it by starting with a smile. Initially, Caesar was trying to attack a nearby resource-rich nation and not actually Gaul, though Gaul was always on the back burner. At first, Caesar took it upon himself to go make friends with the Gallic tribes in the area. He became well-liked among the local tribes and was welcome in the area. But little did the Gauls know that Caesar was planning on totally dominating the unofficial nation at a later point.

By 52 BC, the Gauls had grown weary of Caesar, and a lot of the tribes turned against Rome, eventually culminating in an attack by the Belgian Gauls from the north, who would consolidate Gallic military might and lead a charge against the expanding Rome. But Caesar had already been perfecting his strategy for years—his plan was laid out, and his Roman legions crushed the Gauls and pushed them far back into the territories of Northern and Western Europe.

7 Impalement

It’s quite obvious how a mass of impaled human bodies might intimidate and dissuade an invading army, making it reconsider its effort in your territory. Even if it did not, it would serve to strike fear into the hearts of the combatants who sought to conquer your land and take your riches. Thousands of years before Vlad the Impaler came on the scene, there was Assyria. Assyria was unanimously agreed upon as a violent culture, something that’s even mentioned in the Holy Bible.

Ancient depictions show us that the Assyrians not only used to impale people like Vlad did, but they took it a step further by stabbing the stake through the victim’s abdomen.^[5] All this would leave a grisly and horrifying sight for any passersby who might have considered taking on the ancient Assyrians. This no doubt terrified both criminals and foreign armies alike.

6 Gifts Of Flesh

When it comes to psychological warfare in the form of sheer brutality, impalement wasn’t the only thing the ancient Assyrians turned to—they had other methods of scaring the life out of their neighbors. Ashurbanipal was the king of Assyria from 668 to 627 BC, and he was apparently quite gifted intellectually. Ashurbanipal would use his intellect sometimes for torturous ploys which would turn out to be genius military strategies.

See, Ashurbanipal seemed to take tremendous joy in removing the flesh of his victims and rivals, but he did this for a calculated reason—to terrify others. He is quoted as saying, “I will hack up the flesh and then carry it with me, to show off in other countries.”^[6] Can you imagine the looks on the faces of today’s leaders if one nation’s highest chief met with another toting a bag of well-preserved flesh which had been systematically carved off his enemies? Needless to say, the message was loud and clear.

5 Flaying And Staking

Another notable tactic of highly intimidating psychological warfare from ancient Assyria, the real ancient kings of brutality, was called flaying and staking. Flaying and staking is mentioned in the Holy Bible, and other surviving works depict this gruesome process, which was a horrific style of execution in the name of intimidation. It began with flaying the offender, usually a provincial governor of a conquered territory who refused to bow to the mighty Assyrian rule. The Assyrians would skin the person alive but not quite until death, just enough to make them suffer and to gather enough skin to place around the walls of wherever they were in order to scare off any rival armies.

Staking was similar to impalement, but the executioner would slowly shove the stake up through the anus of the condemned, taking great care to only move the vital organs aside so as to not kill the offender.^[7] Then, in traditional impalement-like fashion, they would sometimes hoist the stake up by burying the butt end of it into the ground to put on display before their cities. The reason for the tedious process was to keep the person alive as long as possible, and sometimes, these poor condemned persons would live for several days on end.

4 Crucifixion

Crucifixion could almost be likened to cultures erecting skyscrapers of their enemies, both living and dead, to stand tall and tower, terrifying their enemies and potential adversaries—such a sight of a group of crucified, helpless victims would be enough to make anyone reconsider a challenge to the people doing the crucifying. Crucifixion was actually pretty widespread throughout the ancient world. The Persians, the Carthaginians, and other cultures practiced it as both a military and criminal deterrent.

There were many different methods of crucifixion to terrify an enemy with, and some cultures used various versions of the practice over time. In Rome, for instance, nails weren’t always driven through the intended victim, so as to prolong the suffering in the air rather than risk the offender bleeding to death.^[8] In these cases, the victim would be simply tied to the cross or T-shaped wooden crucifix. Then the bones would be bent and misshaped and often broken to increase suffering, and the victim would be erected into the air for all to see. Many people died slowly as birds ate their flesh over a series of days.

Nails were also employed in various ways. Sometimes, the victim would have their legs bent around the sides of the wooden log, and then the nail would be driven through the side to fasten the legs in a much more uncomfortable position than the one we’re most familiar with. When nails were used on the upper body and driven through the arms, the weight of the body would cause the shoulders and other bones to break or dislocate, further adding to the pain of the condemned. This definitely scared away many of far-off armies who may have sent a traveler abroad and also made occupied cultures think twice about an insurrection.

3 Siege

Siege warfare relied on extremely powerful psychological tactics to force the enemy into submission. Siege warfare still remains a potent tool in the military commander’s toolbox that is often dug out even today. A war of attrition is where the forces of one military attempt to wear down the forces and supplies of another army and has long been a very powerful weapon, trading a quick conquest for the slow and certain collapse of decay. The side with the greatest access to resources over time intentionally prolongs the war to wear down the other side’s supplies.

Laying siege to a city often meant surrounding it in the form of a blockade, to cut off all supplies inbound and outbound, and then simply waiting . . . slowly waiting . . . for the enemy within the city limits to burn through all of their available resources, such as food and fresh water.^[9] As people began to slowly starve and resemble skeletons, they more often than not became much more willing to negotiate a peaceful solution, and if they wanted to fight, their weakened, starved armies didn’t pose a very serious threat. In the most extreme of cases, cities under siege often turned to cannibalism as a last resort if their leaders refused to concede to the army surrounding them. The psychological effects of such tactics are as obvious as they are terrifying.

From beginning to end, the Romans were the masters of siege warfare in ancient times, starting with the Siege of Veii, a city which belonged to their culturally similar yet long-rivaled neighbors to the north, the Etruscans. After being beaten in many fights, the infant Roman nation fortified their army and moved to lay siege to Veii in 405 BC. They successfully implemented a long siege but were pushed back in 402 BC by reinforcements and continued their stronghold nearby. It should be noted here that siege warfare back then took a long time—a very long time. In 396 BC, after years of siege, the Romans devised a plan to take the weakened city and dug under the walls that surrounded it and took it from within. This was the beginning of many Roman sieges laid upon the ancient world, with devastating results for anyone and everyone on the receiving end.

2 The Helepolis

And then there came the Helepolis—the taker of cities. This ancient marvel was a terrifying sight to behold, a massive, mobile tower that could effectively take any city by giving the persons on board a higher vantage point from which to fight downward while they climbed over the walls of the enemies they fought. This mobile skyscraper would be rolled into battle on its eight wheels by hand, pushed slowly and intently toward the enemy.

Imagine that it’s the fourth century BC, and suddenly, approaching upon the horizon, you see the largest chariot you’ve ever seen, the size of a modern-day high-rise building, slowly creeping toward you as you hold out at your fortification. The terrifying sight must have been an absolute nightmare to behold, as those on the receiving end of the slow-moving Helepolis knew their city walls that they’d relied on their entire lives were absolutely useless.

The Greeks made more than one siege tower over the years, but the Helepolis was the grandest of all, with an iron exterior that couldn’t be set on fire like other siege towers, but it ultimately proved a failure in the Siege of Rhodes in 305 BC.^[10] At 40 meters (130 ft) tall and 20 meters (65 ft) wide, the Helepolis was a behemoth, but as it approached Rhodes, the people inside the city had a genius idea. Using the cover of night, they built a large pool of mud and sewage near where they thought the Helepolis was likely to make its assault—and they were exactly right. The massive machine ended up becoming stuck and was eventually abandoned.

1 The Brazen Bull

The brazen bull was a torture device used in ancient Greece. (Note that some historians believe its existence was a tall tale; others say there is sufficient evidence that it was real.) The ancient Greeks didn’t often venture into the outside world to conquer aside from Alexander the Great, a period of unification, as the various city-states were typically fighting among themselves. The brazen bull was developed in the sixth century BC for the ruler Phalaris as a method for executing criminals, all while sending a clear and tyrannical signal to any would-be rivals.

Perillos of Athens was the man who invented it, creating a brass bull that had a striking resemblance to the real thing.^[11] This brass bull was hollow on the inside, with an opening in the side of it that could be shut and locked from the outside. The carved out nostrils and mouth were the only ventilation from the inside of the bull. After someone was convicted and condemned, they would be placed inside the bull, and a fire would be set beneath it. Because metal transmits heat quite well, the brass would heat up and cook the person inside alive. The screams and cries of the condemned surely sent a clear message—don’t mess with Phalaris.

In a stunning betrayal, when Perillos of Athens presented the brazen bull to Phalaris, the king decided that Perillos would be the very first man that the bull would be tested on. Perillos was placed inside the bull but was taken out before he died. This wasn’t a reprieve, though; Phalaris is said to have then thrown Perillos off a hill. In the end, however, the people of Athens, who had long been subjected to Phalaris’s cruelty, became tired of the tyrannical ruler and turned against him, killing him with nothing other than the brazen bull.

I like to write about the dark, the deranged, the twisted, history, true crime, and macabre stuff.

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.