Plenty of truths pretend to be mysteries or facts. Dedicated researchers whittle away at puzzles, sometimes making great new finds without solving the whole shebang.

However, real progress means ousting the pretenders—those pesky facts that convince scholars of their authenticity for years when, in reality, they are mere misconceptions. From a dangerous vitamin everyone loves to herbivores eating their friends, the simplest of facts are no longer so simple.

10 The Aging Plateau

A widely accepted concept is late-life mortality deceleration. According to this theory, some people get so old that even their aging slows down. This “aging plateau” means that, statistically, a 105-year-old has no greater chance of dying than a person who is 90. The process is not fully understood or even unanimously explained.^[1]

In 2018, the plateau was challenged. Opposing researchers claimed that the age surveys supporting the “phenomenon” were faulty. There was a good chance that some seniors had their ages recorded incorrectly. A deliberate demonstration showed that just a few incorrect entries could skew the outcome in a big way.

An actual study done on the life span of Italians found evidence of the plateau but also matched a hypothetical outcome if 1 in 500 people had their ages wrongly listed. However, each would need to be grossly misreported and the study worked with a hypothetical scenario, not actual survey mistakes. Either way, somebody is wrong.

9 China’s Ozone Problem

In 2013, China’s smog problem was so bad that skylines vanished from cities. Within four years, the country achieved the remarkable feat of lowering eastern China’s concentrations of PM 2.5 particles by 40 percent. These ultrafine boogers are dangerous to the human respiratory system.

However, the progressive step turned dark. In a move that nobody could predict, ozone levels increased in the cities. High up in the sky, ozone is great. At ground level, it qualifies as air pollution. In fact, ozone is a really bad thing to inhale.

A survey found that China’s megacities, including Beijing and Shanghai, were swamped with this potent pollution. The reason? The well-meaning attempt to remove the PM 2.5 particles also eradicated the very thing that soaked up the chemicals that produce ozone. All this time, the PM 2.5 fog had acted like a giant sponge that kept it under control.^[2]

8 Nun With Blue Teeth

Around AD 1100, a nun died at a monastery in Dalheim, Germany. When researchers recently examined her skull, they found something odd. The woman, who was between 45 and 60, had blue stains on her teeth.

X-ray spectroscopy revealed that the flecks were lapis lazuli, a semiprecious stone that was prized during the Middle Ages. It was the main ingredient in ultramarine, a rare and expensive blue paint. Ultramarine was used solely for the lavish decoration of religious books. Only the most skilled painters were allowed to use it.

The pigment saturated layers of the nun’s dental plaque thanks to years of licking paintbrushes. This technique was known to be used by painters when they faced particularly detailed work. However, it is the first physical proof of the habit.^[3]

Additionally, it proved that nuns also worked on religious manuscripts, a domain thought to belong to monks. Since lapis lazuli only came from mines in Afghanistan 4,800 kilometers (3,000 mi) away, it also revealed that Germany and Asia had extensive trade links almost 1,000 years ago.

7 Extra Denisovan Pulses

Scientists have known for a long time that humans interbred with two ancient hominids. Although the Neanderthals and Denisovans are extinct as individual species, their DNA continues in certain populations today. Our gene map shows two “pulses,” or sudden concentrations of hominid interbreeding. Both happened in Siberia’s Altai region thousands of years ago.

In 2018, a study searched for a third interbreeding event by examining the genetic codes of 5,500 volunteers from Asia, Europe, and Oceania. They found enough foreign hominid DNA to prove that Siberia was not the only place where humans absorbed pulses. In a surprising twist, Denisovan influence occurred twice outside the Altai Mountains.

Barely any fossils of these rare hominids exist. Yet, back in the day, they were plentiful enough to mingle heavily with humans who traveled across South Asia. The groundbreaking study found a Denisovan pulse to the north in living Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese. Another pulse showed up to the south, likely the result of humans meeting Denisovans while migrating to Papua New Guinea.^[4]

6 Paternal Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondria nest inside cells and also provide them with energy. As a rule, people only inherit their mother’s mitochondrial DNA. The father’s is destroyed after conception.

In 2018, a new study challenged this concrete belief. Although maternal inheritance is a given, it would appear that the father’s mitochondrial DNA can do three things—avoid the next generation completely, pass on a tiny amount, or almost entirely eclipse the mother’s. This mercurial behavior challenges everything researchers know about this genetic material.

The Cincinnati study found 17 people who inherited it from both parents, and this finally lends some credence to a 2002 case from Denmark. This man appeared to have inherited 90 percent of his father’s mitochondrial DNA, but everyone thought it was a technical error.^[5]

Interestingly, it could be a family thing. The Cincinnati hospital also found the biparental inheritance in 10 people over three generations from the same family.

5 Meat-Eating Hares

Canada’s snowshoe hares are supposed to be herbivores. A recent study accidentally uncovered the hairy truth. Not only do they eat meat, but the hares are also cannibals.

Researchers rigged a remote trail near the Alaskan border with cameras. They put out hare carcasses as bait and hoped to capture photos of predators scavenging on them.

Over a period of 2.5 years, 20 dead hares were consumed by their living brethren. For the first time, the photographs captured this unexpected, if not shocking scavenging behavior in hares. Researchers also found that winter-hungry hares were not picky about the species. In one case, they even ate their main predator—a dead Canada lynx.^[6]

This meaty turn appears to be a survival strategy rather than preference. During the summer, snowshoe hares nibble exclusively on vegetation. Winter turns the region into one of the coldest on Earth. When foliage becomes scarce in such conditions, any protein is welcome.

Bizarrely, the hares also consumed feathers from dead birds. The reason remains unknown as feathers offer little nutrition.

4 How Tornadoes Really Form

Conventional belief teaches that a tornado forms inside the clouds and then grows a funnel down to the ground. A study released in 2018 told a different story. Tornadoes start on the ground.

For years, climatologists chased the deadly swirls and four spawned by rare supercell storms changed the game. Tornado intensity ranges from EF1 to EF5. A pair was recorded in 2012 in Kansas—both babies at EF1. An EF3 hit Oklahoma in 2011. A monster swept through El Reno in 2013. This EF5 was the widest tornado ever recorded, measuring 4.2 kilometers (2.6 mi).

Researchers had a hilltop view of the giant which allowed them to capture the moment of its birth. The high-tech equipment found signs that the tornado formed 10 meters (32 ft) above the ground. Droves of storm chasers provided photos of the event, which also supported the finding.^[7]

This prompted a closer look at the data. Soon, it became clear that wind rotation began on the ground long before anything churned in the clouds. The other three tornadoes showed similar data.

3 Lizard That Breathes Underwater

A group of lizards called anoles fascinate researchers so much that thousands of studies have been done on them in the past 50 years. Despite being thoroughly studied, one species did something so strange that scientists had no answer. The Costa Rican river anole disappears underwater for up to 15 minutes. The best assumption was that they could hold their breath really well.

In 2018, biologists worked with filmmakers to try to solve the mystery. What they captured was astonishing. For the first time, the footage revealed that the anoles did not stop breathing once they had sunk to the bottom.^[8]

Instead, the female they filmed had a bubble on her head. For 10 minutes, it grew and shrank repeatedly, almost as if she were recycling the air within. This behavior had never been seen in lizards or any species with a spine. As astonishing as it was to find an anole with its very own “diver’s tank,” scientists do not know how the oxygen is stored or exactly how they tap into the bubble.

2 Vitamin D Is Not A Vitamin

Vitamin D is the darling of thousands. For decades, governments and doctors encouraged swallowing more of this wonder vitamin, linking it to a host of benefits and disease prevention. In recent times, scientists focused on a particular benefit—the prevention of bone fractures. As the largest study of its kind, it involved over 500,000 people and 188,000 fractures. No evidence was found that vitamin D stopped breaks from happening.

The truth about this supplement is scary. It is not a true vitamin but an unsafe steroid. The popularity comes from outdated studies in the 1980s and marketing skills of food manufacturers and vitamin companies.^[9]

Apart from taking increasingly stronger dosages, people get extra vitamin D through exposure to sunshine and food. For this reason, clinics see a rise in overdose cases. At the lower end of the problem, nobody really knows what qualifies as a vitamin D deficiency. Ironically, several studies have shown that dosages above 800 IU actually increased the chance of a fracture.

1 Mona Lisa‘s Gaze

So many people have claimed that Leonardo da Vinci’s painting has stared at them that the phenomenon became known as the “Mona Lisa effect.” Her gaze is said to follow observers no matter where they are in the room.

When researchers recently worked on artificial intelligence programs, they wanted the avatars to really look at people. Due to her famous “effect,” the Mona Lisa was included in the study. At one point, the team realized that she was not gazing soulfully at any of them.

To confirm this, they asked volunteers to view the painting on a computer. A ruler in front of the screen carried numbers, and participants picked the one which intersected with her stare. The ruler was then moved to a second point, and the exercise was repeated.^[10]

The two sets of answers gave researchers an angle. Mona Lisa does not stare at anyone. Her gaze is 15.4 degrees to the right of observers. The real mystery is why people continue to believe otherwise.

Throughout history, many individuals have stood firm and said, “No.” They’ve rejected the dominant dogma of the time and decided to carve their own path as they traversed and trudged through the world, forging new ideas into the zeitgeist of the era. Anarchists and other rebels serve important purposes in our societies, one of the most important being the drivers of change in the world. If the dominant ideology is never challenged, the collective progression of human thought and innovation would stagnate. And throughout the long, rich history of rebellion, many of the anarchists who have stood tall in the face of oppression were women.

When many of us hear the word “anarchist,” we instantly think of crusty punk rockers huddled in abandoned buildings, but anarchism has many faces and names that are far different from these generic, media-influenced images our brains seem to naturally conjure up. In short, the common theme under the umbrella of people who could be described as anarchists is the idea that an individual person should be in control of themselves and should not live under the dictation of others and that we as people are capable of leading our own lives, without the hindrance of overbearing rule, force, or coercion. Here are ten of history’s most badass anarchist women who challenged the system.

10 Emma Goldman

When it comes to history’s badass women, while the story may not begin with Emma Goldman, she definitely left her mark as one of the most vocal, rebellious, and militant women of all time. Born in Russia in 1869, Goldman would move to the United States and grow up to dedicate her life to forwarding the cause of the radical freedom of the individual, becoming especially militant after the hanging of several anarchist labor demonstrators in Chicago in 1886.

That year, a group of protesters took to the streets to protest for an eight-hour workday and against police brutality; the gathering was largely peaceful, until police showed up and attempted to disband the protest. At some point, a bomb went off. This debacle would become known as the Haymarket Affair. Four demonstrators were tried and executed despite a conspicuous lack of evidence, and this served as a vastly influential moment in Goldman’s life.

From here, she would fight for the right to birth control and women’s rights in general. She would be arrested and imprisoned during World War I because she protested compulsory military service for men. Goldman spent two years behind bars but remained unshaken. After her release, was deported for her protests. Yes, she was so vocal and radical for the time that she was deported for protesting.

From this point forward, Goldman lived in political exile, never really finding a “home” country to live in.^[1] She traveled to Russia and experienced the Russian Revolution but became quickly angered by the authoritarianism she saw there, too—and, of course, she was vocal about it, protesting the newly formed Soviet state. In 1989, a document was uncovered in which she questioned Vladimir Lenin ruthlessly for his oppression of anarchists within the Soviet Union. Goldman left the USSR and actually registered as an anarchist, an oppressed class within the nation at the time, and was now at political war with both the USSR and the US.

She spent the rest of her years in exile, roaming and fighting for the rights of free people, and wrote in detail about her convictions. Very few people have stood up against the might of both the United States and the Soviet Union, which earned Goldman her place in history as one of the world’s most badass anarchist women. Goldman can be quoted saying, “I want freedom, the right to self-expression, everybody’s right to beautiful, radiant things.”

9 Margaret Sanger

Born in New York in 1879, Margaret Sanger would become a lifelong activist and would come into contact with Emma Goldman during her life of vocal outspokenness. Sanger, too, faced the wrath of oppression for challenging the social order of the time. In 1910, she moved to Greenwich Village in New York City, which was a hotbed of political activism. There, she and Goldman crossed paths, and Sanger began protesting for various causes, such as labor rights and birth control. Sanger was actually the first person to coin the term “birth control,” which was an illegal idea at the time, and she began publishing literature in support of it. A warrant was issued for her arrest for obscenity due to the publication of her works, including sexual education literature, and she ran from the law, leaving the United States until 1915.

The charges against Sanger were dropped in 1916, and she opened a birth control clinic in Brooklyn. This time, she was charged with being a public nuisance and would serve 30 days in jail for the crime.^[2] From here, she raised a lot of public support for the birth control movement, and female reproductive rights in general, and subsequently went on to not only write but to establish several organizations dedicated to the cause, as well as help influence several major court cases which lead to the legality of birth control. In one of her early publications, Sanger also coined the phrase, “No Gods. No Masters.”

8 Louise Michel

Louise Michel was a French anarchist revolutionary born in 1830. She was a teacher who also fought in combat on the front lines with the National Guard in defense of the Paris Commune. Instead of the slow and steady legal reform of political liberalism, she believed in and advocated the use of violence to prove political points. The Germans laid siege to Paris in 1870, and Michel worked as a medic with the ambulance services and aided in the repelling of the invading Prussian forces.

France was a place of political turmoil at the time, and the French government tried to disarm the Parisians who had established the Paris Commune, but Michel took up arms and fought back.^[3] She would be brought up on charges, and her mother was arrested and held hostage until Louise surrendered and was sent to prison. She refused legal counsel, defending herself in court, and was sentenced to deportation and exile. Michel would then be imprisoned again on more charges, even while awaiting deportation. She ended up spending many of her future days in exile, studying and writing anarchist literature.

Eventually, the members of the Paris Commune were granted amnesty, and Michel returned to France. However, she continued to protest and fight for the rights of the individual and would yet again be arrested in 1883, and after another unsuccessful attempt at representing herself in court, she was sentenced to six years in prison. Michel continued her life in France in and out of prison, ever vocal about her opinions. She even faced an assassination attempt; she was shot by someone who didn’t like her political ideas. Michel survived and remained a revolutionary until her death in 1905.

7 Marie-Louise Berneri

Marie-Louise Berneri was born in Italy in 1918, a time of political upheaval and radical social change, to a father who was politically controversial. This definitely rubbed off on her, as her family was forced into exile in 1926 for their steadfast resistance of the rise of Italian fascism under Mussolini. The die had been cast, and they settled in Sorbonne in France.

In the 1930s, she began the publication of anarchist papers, writing in French and editing a publication in her native Italian. War soon broke out in Spain, and her father went to fight on the front lines while she continued publication, branching out to England. Berneri was soon publishing in Spanish, English, French, and Italian; she was a literary powerhouse.

After the Spanish Civil War, she was a vital figure in caring for the children orphaned by the war. As the editor of a paper called War Commentary, she was arrested with three other editors and tried for incitement, but she was released on a technicality while the other three stood trial. But even after the threat of imprisonment, her principles and drive remained, and she continued the publication. Berneri would continue to publish anarchist work until her sudden death in 1949 from a viral infection. She was only 31.^[4]

6 Madalyn Murray O’Hair

This outspoken anarchist and atheist deservedly earned the title she was given, “The Most Hated Woman in America,” for her works on atheism and her rejection of institutionalized religion as a form of oppression. She was a charismatic figure, loud, extravagant, and often intentionally obscene.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair, born in 1919, was never afraid to be expressive to make a point. She sued in court to have “In God We Trust” removed from the American currency and prayer removed from schools. In 1963, the Supreme Court of the United States sided with Murray O’Hair in a case which officially ended the reading of the Bible in public schools in the US. She would initiate tens of court cases in defense of religious freedom and would go on to proclaim herself a militant atheist and feminist, being featured in Playboy magazine speaking openly about sex from a woman’s perspective. Above all, however, Murray O’Hair was an anarchist who rejected the top-down social orders, which she felt were oppressive. She founded the American Atheists organization and continued her life of challenging the system, until a bizarre turn of events changed everything.

In 1995, Murray O’Hair, her son, and her granddaughter suddenly disappeared with an ambiguous note left on the door of the building of American Atheists. Phone calls were made by the three to the organization. They sounded distressed but insisted they weren’t in any trouble.^[5] An investigation ensued and focused on the office manager for American Atheists, a man named David Roland Waters, who had a long history of violent and property crimes and actually pleaded guilty to stealing $54,000 from American Atheists. His girlfriend would testify that Waters was enraged by Murray O’Hair’s writings and had admitted to fantasizing about cutting off her fingers and toes. The O’Hairs’ credit cards were maxed out, but authorities had no bodies.

The FBI concluded that Waters worked with two accomplices, two men by the name of Danny Fry and Gary Karr, to kill the O’Hairs and steal their money, credit cards, and so on. A few days after the disappearance of the O’Hairs, Waters and Karr turned on Fry and killed him also. Karr was arrested and implicated Waters in the murders, and Waters was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 80 years in prison. He later led police to the bodies of the O’Hair family, which had been buried in Texas.

5 Lucy Parsons

Lucy Parsons was born in Texas in 1853 and went down in history as the first nonwhite female activist in the United States. She joined many political movements and was outspoken at a time when the United States was going through the racially charged Civil War and subsequent Jim Crow era. And when it comes to radical ideas of the time, Lucy’s were definitely the most extreme, as she adamantly believed that the government needed to be entirely dismantled and capitalism destroyed . . . at all costs.^[6]

Lucy continued to write and protest what she felt were racial, economic, and sexist injustices and would eventually marry a man named Albert Parsons. Lucy and Albert Parsons went on to organize a protest in Chicago in 1886, none other than the aforementioned Haymarket Affair which inspired Emma Goldman. Albert Parsons was one of the people executed for his part in the protest. Lucy Parsons would go on to fight for freedom and publish works on anarchism, becoming a figure notable for striving for racial equality in the United States.

4 Ursula Le Guin

Unlike the others on this list, Ursula Le Guin’s method of preaching anarchism and her dreams of a better world were a bit more subtle: She did it through captivating novels. Largely writing science fiction and fantasy, Le Guin took her readers outside of the world of reality to analyze and criticize society through the wider lens of the unbounded possibilities of fiction.

While her works spanned a gamut of subjects, they always had the common theme of questioning the powers that be. Take, for example, 1974’s The Dispossessed, in which two societies live side by side, one the run-of-the-mill capitalist culture with the governments we live under today and the other anarchic. The Dispossessed is the tale of the members of the two societies struggling to find freedom and meaning in these different worlds they find themselves in.

LeGuin’s works thematically suggested new worlds which were possible, suggestions for the future and rejections of the current social norms. Le Guin strongly criticized blind, passive consumerism and suggested a more anarchistic way of life that wasn’t based on material obsession.^[7] She passed away in January 2018 at the age of 88.

3 Alexandra David-Neel

Alexandra David-Neel was a French anarchist, a Buddhist, and also an explorer. Born in 1868, she would complete over 30 works and travel the world in search of spiritual answers, rejecting the status quo and social norms of the French society she grew up in. Not only did she travel into Tibet, which was forbidden to any foreigners at the time, in search of spiritual teachings from Tibetan monks, but she lived in a cave for two years, from 1914 to 1916.

The British Empire controlled the territories around Tibet and learned that she had entered Tibet illegally. They deported her, but World War I prevented her return to Europe, and she subsequently traveled to Japan.^[8] There, she met a Japanese monk who became her travel partner, and they made a 3,200-kilometer (2,000 mi) journey, some of it on foot, back to Tibet. The two disguised themselves as monks and completed their voyage into the sacred Tibetan city of Lhasa in 1924. There, she translated many of the sacred Tibetan works into French. David-Neel lived to the ripe old age of 100 and would continue to write alternative spiritual philosophy until her death.

2 Voltairine De Cleyre

Voltairine de Cleyre was born in 1866 and was a writer who would be one of the first American anarchists to put pen to paper. She, too, was inspired to anarchism due to the Haymarket Affair and would become extremely critical of the social order of the time, the government, capitalism, and more. She was anti-marriage, anti-state, anti-government, and was against social ideals of the time which held that men and religions had the right to control women’s sexuality.^[9]

On December 19, 1902, a former male pupil of hers named Herman Helcher made an attempt on her life. She survived, though she would live with pain and health issues for the rest of her days. Helcher had actually been stricken with fever and gone insane, and de Cleyre spoke in his defense, saying that his insanity was not his fault and that it was disease rather than malice which caused the attack. She spoke out against standing armies, saying they made wars more likely, and also fought against forced beauty standards on women at the time. She was an anti-state individualist through and through and staunchly fought for the rights of the individual for nearly the entirety of her life.

1 Helen Keller

Most of us know Helen Keller for her inspiration as a writer and educator who became ill at 19 months old, rendering her both blind and deaf. But these limitations didn’t stop Keller from becoming a total badass, and an outspoken anarchist. Keller became good friends with plenty of notable anarchists of the time, including Emma Goldman, and she greatly influenced anarchist thought concerning the disabled with her own political works, which have been overshadowed by her own personal triumphs over her physical limitations.

Keller believed strongly in equality and respect for individuals and held a disdain for a society that claimed that there were poor classes who were destined to be so. Here was a woman who had been born into the most difficult situation imaginable, who had come from difficult beginnings, and who felt that her own dark world of deafness and blindness were nothing compared to what she felt were the dark injustices of the world outside. Keller would write, “My darkness had been filled with the light of intelligence, and behold the outer day-lit world was stumbling and groping in social blindness.”

She criticized the world of capitalism and commerce as producing individual misery to a degree she felt unfathomable. She criticized slavery and the political process, noting that the voice of money was louder than the voice of the people. Keller was a badass in every sense of the word, and both her writings and personal accomplishments prove that.^[10]

I like to write about dark stuff and history.