Cinema has long held a mirror to society, reflecting not just our hopes and dreams but also guiding us toward introspection and, at times, action. It’s a medium that transcends entertainment, embedding powerful messages within its narratives that can shape personal identities, ethics, and career aspirations. The influence of film on personal career choices is profound and wide-reaching, with certain movies becoming catalysts for individuals to reassess their life paths, embrace new challenges, or pursue long-held passions.

This list celebrates films that have not just entertained millions but also inspired them to take bold steps toward fulfilling careers, pushing the boundaries of what they believed was possible for themselves. As we dive in, we invite readers to reflect on their own sources of inspiration and the moments that have shaped their professional journeys.

Through the lens of cinema, we can explore the diverse ways art influences life, encouraging us to dream bigger, work harder, and pursue our passions with relentless determination. These stories of change and transformation remind us that, sometimes, all it takes is a single film to set us on a path toward a new and unexpected future.

Related: 10 Real Historical Events That Inspired ‘Game of Thrones’

10 Erin Brockovich

Erin Brockovich, a film that chronicles the true story of an unconventional heroine, has left an indelible mark on its audience, propelling many to reconsider their career paths and venture into the realm of environmental law and activism. The movie showcases Erin, portrayed by Julia Roberts, as a determined and tenacious single mother who plays a pivotal role in a landmark case against a polluting power company despite lacking a formal legal education. Her relentless pursuit of justice and her unyielding spirit in the face of adversity have not only won hearts but also inspired a wave of individuals to take up the mantle of environmental advocacy, demonstrating that passion and perseverance can indeed effect change.

The ripple effect of Erin Brockovich extends beyond the legal sphere, encouraging viewers to believe in the power of the individual to make a difference. It challenges the conventional narrative of what it means to be a “qualified” professional and underscores the value of grit, intelligence, and moral courage. This film has become a touchstone for those feeling constrained by their circumstances, inspiring them to break free from societal expectations and pursue careers that align with their values and passions.^[1]

9 The Devil Wears Prada

The Devil Wears Prada peeled back the curtain on the high-stakes world of fashion publishing, serving as a beacon for many to either brave the cutthroat industry or rethink their career aspirations within competitive environments. Through the transformation of Andy Sachs (Anne Hathaway) from a naive graduate to a sophisticated assistant, the film offers a gritty insight into the personal sacrifices and relentless drive required to succeed in fashion. This portrayal has not only demystified the glamour associated with the industry but also highlighted the importance of resilience, adaptability, and integrity in the workplace.

Beyond its cautionary tales, the movie celebrates the idea of personal growth through professional challenges, encouraging viewers to embrace opportunities for self-discovery and pursue their passions with determination. For many, The Devil Wears Prada is more than just a film about fashion; it’s a lesson in navigating life’s transitions and the value of hard work, making it a source of inspiration for those standing at the crossroads of their career paths.^[2]

8 October Sky

October Sky, based on the true story of Homer Hickam and his journey from a coal miner’s son to a NASA engineer, ignited the imaginations of countless viewers, steering them toward the stars and the fields of science and engineering. The film captures the essence of determination and the relentless pursuit of one’s dreams, set against the backdrop of a 1950s coal mining town. Hickam’s fascination with rocketry, spurred by the launch of Sputnik 1, becomes a metaphor for the aspiration to rise above one’s given circumstances through education and persistence.

This cinematic gem does more than just recount a tale of ambition and scientific curiosity; it serves as a powerful reminder that the path to achieving one’s dreams is often fraught with obstacles that require courage and resilience to overcome. For many, October Sky is a beacon of hope, a demonstration that passion, coupled with dedication, can lead to a fulfilling and groundbreaking career in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

The film has thus become a catalyst for change, inspiring a new generation to explore the vast possibilities beyond the confines of their immediate environments and to reach for the skies in their professional endeavors.^[3]

7 The Pursuit of Happyness

The Pursuit of Happyness, featuring Will Smith in the compelling role of Chris Gardner, serves as a beacon of hope and a guide for navigating the treacherous waters from despair to success. This film intricately portrays the journey of a father and his son as they face the relentless challenges of homelessness, battling against all odds to achieve a life of financial stability and happiness. Gardner’s story, rooted in real-life struggles, resonates deeply with viewers, illustrating that resilience and hard work can indeed lead to monumental change in one’s life and career.

Beyond its heart-wrenching depiction of hardship, the movie beautifully captures the essence of the American Dream, where perseverance and dedication are rewarded with success and personal fulfillment. It highlights the universal quest for happiness and the inherent belief that everyone can rise above their circumstances despite how insurmountable they seem.

For countless viewers, The Pursuit of Happyness is more than a story of financial success; it inspires and encourages them to pursue their dreams with unyielding determination. It reminds us that the path to success is fraught with challenges, but pursuing one’s goals, powered by hope and hard work, can lead to truly transformative outcomes.

In a world where obstacles abound, the film is a testament to the human spirit’s capacity to overcome adversity. It motivates individuals to not only chase after their professional aspirations but also to seek happiness and fulfillment in their personal lives. The Pursuit of Happyness has empowered many to take control of their destiny, making it a cinematic cornerstone for those looking to change their careers and lives for the better.^[4]

6 Legally Blonde

Legally Blonde revolutionized the way audiences perceive intelligence and ambition, particularly in the context of gender stereotypes. This film narrates the journey of Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) as she transforms from a sorority girl to a Harvard Law graduate, challenging the preconceived notions of who can be successful in the rigorous world of law. Elle’s journey is not just about personal triumph; it’s a broader commentary on breaking stereotypes and redefining what it means to be a strong, intelligent woman in a male-dominated field.

The impact of Legally Blonde extends far beyond its comedic surface. It has inspired countless viewers to pursue their ambitions, regardless of how others see their capabilities. The film’s underlying message—that determination, intelligence, and kindness are not mutually exclusive traits—resonates with many who see parts of their own struggles in Elle’s story.

Moreover, Legally Blonde encourages reevaluating one’s self-worth and potential, advocating that true success comes from believing in oneself and pushing through barriers. For many, Elle Woods has become a symbol of empowerment, encouraging individuals to challenge societal norms and pursue their dreams with unwavering confidence and grace. The film is a reminder that with the right mix of perseverance and self-belief, any goal is attainable.^[5]

5 Catch Me If You Can

Catch Me If You Can, starring Leonardo DiCaprio as the notorious Frank Abagnale Jr., presents an unconventional journey from deception to redemption, inspiring viewers to consider careers in law enforcement and security. The film explores Abagnale’s escapades as a con artist and his eventual transformation into an FBI consultant, offering a nuanced perspective on crime and redemption. Its portrayal of Abagnale’s cunning and creativity in evading the law, coupled with his deep understanding of forgery and deception, underscores the complex nature of security work and the importance of innovative thinking within it.

This cinematic masterpiece does more than entertain; it educates its audience about the intricacies of financial fraud, drawing attention to the critical role of security professionals in safeguarding society. Through its captivating narrative, Catch Me If You Can has demystified the FBI’s work and highlighted the potential for change and growth within individuals often dismissed as irredeemable.

For many, the film provided a catalyst for pursuing careers that contribute to the greater good, showcasing that the path to making a meaningful impact is not always linear. Frank Abagnale Jr.’s story encourages reevaluating personal choices and pursuing a career that leverages one’s unique skills and experiences for societal benefit. It’s a testament that redemption and purpose can be found in the most unexpected places.^[6]

4 Forrest Gump

Forrest Gump, with Tom Hanks delivering a performance for the ages, captures the unpredictable journey of life through the eyes of its titular character, who stumbles from one remarkable adventure to another. The film, sprawling across pivotal moments in American history, not only entertains but also inspires with its underlying message: that life is a box of chocolates, full of surprises, and it’s our openness to experience that defines our journey.

The film’s portrayal of Forrest’s unwavering optimism and his accidental successes in various careers—from a shrimp boat captain to a running enthusiast—speaks to the heart’s capability to lead us through life’s myriad paths. Forrest Gump has moved audiences to embrace the unexpected twists and turns of their own lives and encouraged a generation to stay open to the possibilities that come their way, no matter how unplanned they might seem.

Moreover, Forrest’s simplicity, kindness, and integrity, despite the complexities around him, are a powerful reminder of the impact of personal values on success and fulfillment. This narrative has inspired viewers to evaluate their own careers and life choices, encouraging them to find joy in the journey and make the most of life’s opportunities, regardless of the challenges. Forrest Gump’s story is a testament to the idea that sometimes, the most rewarding paths are those taken unintentionally.^[7]

3 Billy Elliot

Billy Elliot, set against the backdrop of a 1984 miners’ strike in England, tells the uplifting story of a young boy’s journey from the boxing ring to the ballet class, challenging societal norms and family expectations along the way. This film captures the struggle of pursuing one’s passion against all odds and is a poignant reminder of the transformative power of art and expression. Despite facing ridicule and opposition, Billy’s defiance and dedication to ballet inspire viewers to follow their own dreams, no matter how unconventional.

The movie’s message resonates deeply with those feeling trapped by their circumstances or pressured to conform to traditional career paths. It encourages an exploration of one’s true interests and talents, emphasizing that fulfillment comes from authenticity and self-expression. Billy Elliot’s narrative is a call to break free from societal constraints and to courageously pursue what truly brings joy and meaning to one’s life.

Furthermore, the film highlights the importance of family and community support and understanding in achieving one’s dreams. It showcases how perseverance and encouragement from unexpected places can lead to achieving the seemingly impossible. For many, Billy Elliot has been a source of inspiration to embrace their passions fully and to make the leap toward a career that resonates with their deepest aspirations.^[8]

2 The Big Short

The Big Short, with its riveting dissection of the 2008 financial crisis, offers a stark revelation of the complexities and vulnerabilities within the financial sector. Through its engaging narrative and innovative storytelling techniques, the film demystifies the events that led to one of the most significant economic downturns in recent history. This eye-opening portrayal has sparked a newfound interest in economics and finance, motivating viewers to pursue careers that strive for transparency, ethical practices, and innovation within the industry.

The film’s unique approach to explaining financial instruments and market mechanisms has made the intricate world of finance accessible to a broader audience, encouraging critical thinking and active engagement with economic issues. By highlighting the consequences of negligence and greed, The Big Short becomes a cautionary tale, urging future finance professionals to advocate for reforms and contribute to a more stable and equitable financial system.

Moreover, the film has inspired a generation to seek deeper understanding and challenge the status quo, emphasizing the importance of integrity in financial dealings. It has paved the way for individuals passionate about making a difference to explore careers in finance, economics, and related fields to prevent future crises and foster a more responsible economic environment.^[9]

1 To Kill a Mockingbird

To Kill a Mockingbird, an adaptation of Harper Lee’s seminal novel, has left an indelible mark on viewers by portraying the profound impact of integrity, empathy, and justice through the eyes of Atticus Finch. Set against the backdrop of racial injustice in the American South, the film transcends its period setting to deliver timeless lessons on morality and human rights. Finch’s unwavering commitment to justice and equality has inspired countless individuals to pursue careers in law with a focus on civil rights and advocacy.

The film’s exploration of themes such as moral righteousness, the fight against prejudice, and the power of compassion is a clarion call to those aspiring to make a difference through the legal profession. It underscores the significance of standing up for what is right, even in the face of societal opposition. It highlights the role of lawyers in championing the cause of the marginalized and voiceless.

Finch’s character has become a symbol of moral fortitude and ethical leadership, encouraging a new generation of legal professionals to strive not only for career success but for the betterment of society as a whole. To Kill a Mockingbird continues to inspire us, reminding us of the enduring power of empathy and justice in driving societal change.^[10]

The Black Death was a pandemic that swept through not just Europe, but also parts of Asia and Africa, leaving an absolutely devastating death toll in its wake. Tens of millions of people died at the very least, and the populations hit were so decimated that they didn’t recover to previous levels for centuries.

During the time period of the Black Death, written records weren’t kept nearly as well as they are now (if they were at all), and the huge and constant loss of life meant that much knowledge of exactly how things happened is lost. This means that many rumors have spread about how it occurred, and many popular accounts are greatly exaggerated. Many of the common claims about the Black Death are either false or not entirely true.

10 The Catholic Church Has Been Blamed For The Black Death

The Catholic Church has been one of the most powerful organizations in the world for quite some time, so it is perhaps not too surprising that there are a lot of conspiracy theories about it, and it has become a popular scapegoat for many situations. In terms of the Black Death, no one is suggesting that the church tried specifically to cause it, but they do suggest that the church’s alleged backward thinking and practices helped it spread more effectively and cause more deaths overall. The claims say that the disease came mostly to humans from fleas and that these fleas came from rats. At this point, the popular theory does seem to unravel a bit, as fleas could travel along with many other animals besides rats.

Regardless, some like to claim that due to Catholic superstitions, cats were originally blamed for the Black Death. This led to a mass culling of cats, which caused the rats to spread and populate far quicker than they normally would have. According to popular mythology, this massive destruction of felines directly helped the Black Death get off the ground as a major pandemic, and it was all the church’s fault.

The problem with this theory—apart from many historians not believing that rats had as big a role as people claim—is that there is really no evidence of this mass cat culling due to Catholic superstition. It’s an oft-repeated story by cat lovers on the Internet to promote the virtues of their beloved choice of pet, but none of it appears to be sourced on anything solid.

9 Terrible Hygiene And Sanitation Practices Were A Huge Factor

Some people don’t like to picture it because it’s not a very romantic part of medieval history, but many researchers believe that one of the biggest reasons the plague spread so easily and with such deadly purpose was not just lack of advanced medical knowledge and preponderance of rats, but the fact that the hygiene habits of the time period were absolutely vile.

Now, we don’t mean that people didn’t bathe or try to stay clean, but rather that the infrastructure was lacking to a point that would be horrifying to most modern people today. Modern sewers and other sanitation didn’t exist, modern trash pickup was not a thing, and refrigeration along with proper knowledge of food safety was also something that people of the time seriously lacked.

Take, for example, the conditions in Bristol, the second-biggest city in Britain when plague hit Europe. It is said that the city was overpopulated and that there were open ditches with people’s waste and other filth running through them, without anything covering them at all. The outhouses were absolutely disgusting, and meat and fish were left out in the open, with flies all over them. And not only was the well water contaminated, but the booze also wasn’t safe to drink much of the time, either. According to historians, these were normal conditions that even the rich had to endure during this time period. With these conditions, it’s not too surprising that an pandemic was able to quickly spread.

8 The Role Of Rats Is Greatly Exaggerated

For many people, the cause of the Black Death is a combination of medieval people being disgusting and way too many rats around. However, researchers who have been studying the evidence for a long time smelled a rat, and after a lot of sniffing around, they came up with a completely different conclusion. Yersinia pestis, the bacterium usually considered responsible for the outbreak of the plague, isn’t usually native to Europe but actually comes from Asia.

After the first outbreak of the plague that killed millions across the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the plague was still taking mass victims. It would pop up occasionally across Europe and do damage again before disappearing for a bit. Many people attributed this to rises and falls in the rodent population increasing the incidence of plague.

However, researchers have discovered that the real culprit was likely climate shifts in Asia. As their climate fluctuated throughout the years, it created conditions more likely for carriers, especially fleas, to breed like crazy and to potentially find their way to Europe again. While this doesn’t mean that rats hold no responsibility at all, they are not nearly as dangerous a carrier as the flea itself, which can bother humans directly if its normal sources of sustenance are somehow interrupted, or if there are too many fleas for them to all eat from nearby smaller animals.

7 Some May Have Ended Up With HIV Resistance Genes

The plague swept through Europe and killed millions of people. Afterward, there were multiple repeated outbreaks over the years that continued to occasionally cause devastation until we finally figured out a way to keep the deadly disease under control. During that time, people from some regions of Europe had to either get extremely lucky or hope for an evolutionary genetic mutation to help their progeny survive the constant onslaught of deadly disease. While some people likely did simply get lucky by practicing extremely good hygiene and staying away from sick people, it seems that some people may have evolved in order to fight against it.

Researches have long been trying to find ways to beat HIV, and recently, they found out that some people seem to be entirely or almost completely immune. They have a rare mutation that stops the bad cells from ever entering their white blood cells. Scientists have been unsure how or why they have this mutation, but it certainly does seem to be advantageous in that situation. One researcher studying the issue has looked at the history and believes that the mutation likely came about due to struggles against the plague epidemics in Europe.

While understanding the mechanism behind this rare mutation could certainly help treat or prevent HIV in the future, it is hard to say for certain if there is actually a link to the plague. While there is interesting reason to believe it’s possible, the mutation only seems to occur in some Europeans. Despite Africa and Asia also having been hit incredibly hard by the Black Death, they do not seem to have the mutation in any quantifiable numbers.

6 ‘Ring Around The Rosie’ Has Nothing To Do With The Black Death

Just about everyone has heard the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” at least a few times in their life. It’s a nearly ubiquitous little song that has always been a kid favorite. After singing, they get to all fall down and be silly at the end. While it may just be an innocent song to the kids who enjoy it, some adults are convinced that it is much more serious. A great number of people are certain that “Ring Around the Rosie” is actually a song talking about the Black Death in Europe.

The claims usually suggest that the posies are either to honor the dead or to somehow cover up the bad smell. The ashes are a fairly self-explanatory reference to dead people, and “we all fall down” is supposed to be a reference to the fact that such an insane amount of people died. However, there is no evidence at all that the poem had anything to do with the plague.

There are multiple variations of it, the earliest of which showed up in the 1800s. That’s hundreds of years after we pretty much had the plague under control, so it’s quite unlikely that the two ever had anything to do with each other. There is no evidence of what the real meaning for the song was, but we know that it was written much more recently, so it couldn’t be about the plague and was probably just supposed to be fun.

5 It Completely Changed the Economy Of Europe And Hastened The Renaissance

While the Black Death was an incredible tragedy in human history, when millions of people who could have gone on to do great things were lost, no tragedy usually vanishes without some good coming out of it. At the time, as we mentioned earlier, some parts of Europe were extremely overpopulated. This not only made it easier for the plague to proliferate, but it also ensured that labor was not really worth all that much in terms of value, because there were far more laborers than were really needed.

After the plague killed millions, things suddenly changed. With so few workers compared to before, regular farmers and other peasants were now earning much more money. Merchants were also able to make a better living, and any craftsmen of skill became quite important, as there was now a shortage of living skilled and unskilled laborers.

While this can’t be said to be the only factor that led to the Renaissance, it can easily be said that it at least greatly hastened it. With regular citizens having way more economic power and being more on the level of those of noble birth, the old societal system quickly started to give way to something entirely new. While it may have been very bad for Europe and the world in a lot of ways, humanity showed its ability to flourish instead of flounder when hit by a serious crisis.

4 The Plague Still Kills A Handful Of People Every Year

Some people think of the Black Death as something long gone like smallpox, but unfortunately, as many people have learned with the absurd anti-vaxxer, movement, it can be very hard to permanently eliminate a disease, and it may decide to come raging back to cause trouble again when you least expect it. Yersinia pestis was never considered a truly extinct disease, but it still crops up every now and then even in North America, a continent not traditionally known for the plague.

Some trace the existence of Yersinia pestis in North America to the port of San Francisco many years ago. Supposedly, in order to make as much money as possible, the city was allowing people through without properly checking them. This allowed the plague into the city, and since then, it has made its way to the US Southwest, where it has been occasionally causing trouble ever since.

It may still be surprising that some people die of the plague, or even contract it, in this day and age, but it is an extremely deadly disease. It can easily kill in a few days if not properly treated, and because it’s such an old disease that most people are unfamiliar with, they may wait too long to get the medicine and help they need.

The plague may be mostly vanquished, but it still exists, and it still kills every year. If we are not prepared, it could still attempt to strike back and cause yet another massive pandemic of deadly disease.

3 The Miasma Theory And Scientific Ignorance Greatly Helped Its Spread

For those who haven’t heard of it, miasma is an old scientific theory in regards to how people get sick and or ill. As of today, germ theory is pretty well-accepted, and people generally know how to avoid catching something from someone else. However, back in the day, science wasn’t as well-understood, and many experts of the time believed that disease and illness spread through “bad air” that was allowed to accumulate and slowly led to people’s deaths. Considering all of the decomposing filth surrounding them at all time, it’s not too surprising that they considered the foul-smelling air itself to be a vector for disease.

This miasma theory led the people of the time, in desperation, to turn to the best contagion measures they could muster to fight off the disease. They believed that by removing filth from the streets, they could avoid bad air and greatly help to prevent disease. They also emphasized burials far from the city, so that the bodies couldn’t contribute to making the miasma even worse. In a way, these were actually good measures, and it shows that they were starting to understand how to fight off disease, but their knowledge was incomplete, which caused them not to address other, more important issues. Luckily, many humans lived through it with hard-earned knowledge on how to better stave off pandemics.

2 The Origin Of ‘Quarantine’ Is Rooted In The Plague Years

The idea of quarantine didn’t come with the Black Death; the practice of sequestering sick people from healthy people has existed for a long time. Many cultures throughout the world realized long ago that putting healthy people with sick people often led to more sick people. In fact, even the Bible suggests keeping those with leprosy away from healthy people so that they do not get leprosy as well.

However, the actual term “quarantine” is much newer and actually does indirectly have to do with the plague. During the repeated outbreaks of the Black Death throughout Europe, some leaders either sent those who were sick out to live in a field until they were better, sent them to a small area for sick people, or just made them stay at home and stay inside. At first, the period for which people were kept isolated was usually about 30 days. This may seem rather excessive, but with how little they knew about germs at the time, it may have actually been a good idea.

Eventually, for unknown reasons, the amount of time for sequestering a sick person became 40 days, and this is where the name comes from. The original name had actually been trentino, for 30, but became quarantino for 40 once the amount of time changed. Over the years, this evolved into the word “quarantine,” which we now use for any situation where a sick individual is sequestered from healthy people until they are better.

1 Some Researchers Argue That The Culprit Was Not Yersinia Pestis

Most people are certain that the Black Death was caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, which infects people with the bubonic plague. It is so named because of the awful buboes that grow on you and the swollen lymph nodes that appear before you quickly die and succumb to the deadly disease. However, some researchers have suggested that it may not actually be the culprit behind the major pandemic that swept three continents so many centuries ago.

Plenty of scientists are still convinced that it was Yersinia pestis, but others who have looked closer are not so sure. Some have spent years exhuming those who died of the plague and researching it minutely, and they feel that the plague moved far too fast to fit with the modern strains of the plague that exist today.

Some scientists are convinced that it was an entirely different disease, perhaps even one that we are familiar with today, that actually caused so many people to die so very quickly. They have suggested that it behaved more like a virus and that it was perhaps something more similar to Ebola than the modern version of Yersinia pestis. Scientists have also recently discovered the existence of two unknown strains of Yersinia pestis that had been present in those who had died of the plague. This has led to the compromise theory between the two that perhaps it was Yersinia pestis, but not a strain that we are currently familiar with.

Climate change is a contentious issue in the world today with many arguments about its cause and how we should deal with it. It wasn’t just recently, though, that climate change was important. Much of our history was influenced by it.

10It Shaped Our Evolution

Numerous findings indicate that great leaps and bounds in human evolution coincided with radical changes in the climate. For instance, three million years ago, the first modern Homo species emerged around the time that Africa began to dry out, changing from a wooded landscape to the grasslands we know today. As the flora of Africa changed, we had to adjust ourselves from primarily climbing trees to walking across vast areas.

Another consequence of Africa drying out is a change in our diet. Before, we didn’t have to go very far to find our next meal. But droughts required more cunning on our part to find food, and we had to adjust our palates to whatever we could gather, causing considerable changes to our ancestors over time.

9It Accelerated Stone Age Innovations

There are two different schools of thought when it comes to the effects of climate change on our Stone Age ancestors. One theory, which became widely popular after being announced in 2013, is that climate change would have made such drastic changes to our ancestors’ lives that they were forced to innovate so they could fight against nature. The other theory, only recently put forth, states that it wasn’t the drastic changes in environment that spurred innovations but rather experimentation during good times.

The evidence for the first theory is found in Africa where 30,000–280,000 years ago, Homo sapiens started to develop symbolic expression, tools, and jewelry during times of wildly varying climates. However, findings in 2016 suggest that while the period when many of these innovations took place was a chaotic time for the climate, our ancestors may have just been developing independently. Climate change certainly played some part in Stone Age innovations. What we don’t know is to what degree.

8Climate Change Led To Man’s Early Migrations

Early humans originated in Sub-Saharan Africa, and for much of the time after they first emerged, there was no possible way for them to leave. 70,000 years ago, northeast Africa was a wasteland that would have prevented anyone from crossing the area into the Middle East, Asia, and Europe. However, the time when our ancestors are first known to have left Africa coincides with a drastic change in the climate that would have allowed for far more vegetation and food, which would have permitted them to migrate to other areas.

In some places, glaciers would have prohibited migrations, but after a change in the climate, many began to melt, opening up passages like the land bridge that once existed in what is now the Bering Sea connecting Siberia and North America.

7The Rise And Fall Of Mesopotamia

12,000 years ago, Mesopotamia became the cradle of civilization because the vast majority of our earliest cultures emerged from there. After our ancestors migrated to the area, they found it was fertile due to favorable climate circumstances. While much of the area is now arid, it would then have been perfect for our ancestors to lay down their roots.

However, around 6,000 years ago, several civilizations in the Fertile Crescent were abruptly abandoned, most likely due to sudden droughts in the region. During the first half of the Holocene epoch, which continues today, Mesopotamia was the center of civilization, but conditions abruptly changed again, causing the cradle of civilization to lose importance as North Africa and Europe rose.

6Climate Change Destroyed The Southwestern Native Americans

The Anasazi tribe was the most advanced Native American culture we’ve discovered. They inhabited southwestern America, which today is an arid death trap for humans. During the time of the Anasazi, though, it was an oasis because 3,000 years ago, the region was cooler.

The Anasazi thrived for centuries, but a drastic change around AD 300 forced them to abandon their empire. The same can be said of the Pueblo Indians who are most famous today for their cliff dwellings. Around AD 700, the Southwest became inhabitable again, bringing on the rise of the Pueblo, but 650–450 years ago, the climate shifted again, bringing the Pueblos down. After the fall of the Pueblos, the region was never inhabited by another tribe.

5Droughts Brought Down Several Empires

Due to climate changes, several powerful empires have fallen apart. Egypt, mostly desert today but for around the Nile River, was quite fertile in the past, allowing Egypt to become one history’s greatest empires. From 1250–1100 BC, though, severe droughts caused the empire’s collapse, and while conditions did improve over time, they never recovered.

The same can be said of Ancient Greece, which lost its power due to a 300-year drought from 1200–850 BC. Starting in AD 250, droughts throughout the Roman Empire brought it to its knees.

4Climate Change And Genghis Khan

After Rome’s decline, the infamous Genghis Khan took his place to strike fear in the hearts of vulnerable countries. However, if it weren’t for a favorable climate, Khan may have never been able to create his vast empire.

In the late 1100s, intense drought devastated Mongolia just before Genghis Khan’s reign, but from 1211–1225, unusually heavy rainfall and a favorable climate caused Mongol lands to become fertile, allowing the thousands of horses the Mongols possessed to become well fed and able to carry on the military campaigns against Asia and Europe. Conversely, while the fertile lands of Mongolia stimulated their rapid expansion, it kept Khan out of China during his lifetime because the Chinese during the Southern Song Dynasty also flourished from the warm climates and had enough resources to keep Khan at bay. While a favorable climate change enabled Khan to become powerful, he himself left a mark on the climate because he took enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to offset a year’s worth of gasoline today.

3The Spread Of The Black Plague

The Black Plague ravaged the populations of Asia and Europe, killing off 25 million people from 1347–1353. Its spread is blamed on rats, but research now suggests black rats were not found in some areas hit by the plague.

During the time of the plagues, the world underwent a climate change known as the Medieval Warming Period, and rodent populations decrease during warmer times, so the plague bacteria would have to find another host. They turned to humans. Such fluctuations are still present in Asia today, supporting this theory.

2Climate Change Let The Spanish Empire Subjugate The Americas

Unbeknownst to the Spanish conquistadors who first began their conquests in Western Hemisphere, the climate of the Americas allowed them to take over without much resistance. They arrived at the perfect time because native civilizations were deteriorating due to severe droughts.

The Mayans reached their apex from AD 440–660 when wet conditions allowed them to flourish, but from 660–1000, the Mayans underwent extensive severe droughts that ravaged their empire. By the time the conquistadors arrived, the Mayans were unable to defend themselves. The Aztecs too underwent a decline due to a mega-drought that struck them in the 16th century. When they were conquered in 1519, there were 25 million people living in modern-day Mexico. A century later, there was just 1.2 million.

1Climate Change And Islam

The early history of Islam during the seventh century coincides with much of the Middle East languishing from climatic stress. The various nomadic tribes who inhabited Arabia were hit hard by the droughts, and the only way to survive was to be member of a tribe; to be exiled meant certain death.

In AD 615, when Muhammed was spreading Islam in Mecca, many of his followers were kicked out of their tribes, forcing them into the harsh climates that would have killed them had Muhammed and his acolytes not formed their own tribe in AD 622. Many social constructs at the time were built around the climatic stress experienced in the Middle East, which were eventually adopted by the followers of Islam. As conditions worsened, Islamists spread north, creating a massive empire. The need to keep ahead of the dire conditions around them created the foundations for the Islam we know today.

+Further Reading

Throughout the history of the planet, the global climate has changed dramatically (and sometimes incredibly rapidly), bringing with it fascinating changes. Here are some other lists about this ongoing process:

10 Animals That Surprisingly Benefit From Climate Change
10 Archaeological Sites Suffering From Climate Change
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Gordon Gora is a struggling author desperately trying to make it. He is working on several projects, but until he finishes one, he will write for for his bread and butter. You can write him at [email protected].

History teaches us about ourselves. It tells us what man has done, how his follies have hurt him, and how his virtues and risen him up, and it shows us the path to follow.

Usually, anyway. We can’t really learn anything from history if we don’t get the stories right. Some of the most famous historical stories have little details that are usually left out. Sometimes, these little details change the whole story—and ruin the whole point.

10 The Titanic Had More Lifeboats Than Required

The sinking of the Titanic is a classic fable of the hubris of man. Confident that they’d built an unsinkable ship, the developers only included 20 lifeboats. Their bravado sent hundreds to their deaths.

The thing is, by 1911 standards, the Titanic didn’t skimp on the lifeboats at all. Legally, they were only required to have 16. Those extra four were actually the company being abnormally cautious. Lifeboats were only meant to ferry people to another ship, so they weren’t expected to have enough for everyone.

Obviously, there was a problem with that standard, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t any logic behind it. After the Titanic sank, the law was changed, and ships were so overloaded with lifeboats and safety gear that they could barely move. One, the Eastland, was so weighed down that it capsized, killing 844 people.

9 Johnny Appleseed’s Apples Were Inedible

Every American child learns the story of Johnny Appleseed, the US hero who journeyed through the western frontier, planting apple trees so that children could enjoy the sweet flavor of a delicious Granny Smith. Johnny Appleseed was a real person—but he wasn’t planting apples for kids. In fact, the apples he planted were almost entirely inedible.

The real Johnny Appleseed planted sour apples that could only be used for hard, alcoholic apple cider. Early settlers were hard drinkers. Johnny was just trying to help those people get drunk. He didn’t do it for free, either. Johnny ran ahead of settlers planting apple orchards on the land in order to sell the land for profit.

The US government wasn’t as fond of him as its people were. Johnny was promoting cheap and easy alcoholism. When prohibition came into effect, the FBI went out and chopped down every tree Johnny Appleseed planted.

8 Solomon Northup Was Sold Back Into Slavery

Since 12 Years A Slave hit theaters, Solomon Northup has been a household name. His story of being forced into slavery and his long, hard fight for his freedom are known around the world. More happened after the credits rolled, though. A couple of years after being reunited with his family, Northup went to Boston to deliver a few speeches—and never came back.

No one knows for sure what happened to him, but the popular belief is that a mob of people who didn’t care for the idea of a freed black man giving lectures gathered. They lured him into a trap, grabbed him, and sent right back into slavery. “It is said that Solomon Northup,” the newspapers of the time reported, “has been again decoyed South, and is again a slave.”

7 The Battle of the Alamo Was A Huge Mistake

The brave US soldiers who fought and fell to an onslaught of Mexican soldiers is a major moment in US history. It’s a story of heroism, of patriotism, and of men who bravely stood up against a larger army for a greater cause.

Except that it was pretty much pointless. The Alamo wasn’t a key strategic location. US Army commander Sam Houston tried everything he could to convince the people to focus on more important places, telling them that they didn’t have the munitions to win there, but they didn’t listen.

The Alamo helped as a piece of propaganda. Houston spread the words “Remember the Alamo!” as a battle cry that rallied the people to avenge the fallen who’d heroically died behind its walls—but if they’d just listened to Houston in the first place, they never would have died.

6 John Nash Went Off His Meds

A Beautiful Mind told the heart-wrenching tale of mathematical genius John Nash’s struggle to overcome the symptoms of schizophrenia. In the end, he credits his recovery to two things: the love of his wife and newer medications.

The real John Nash wasn’t happy about that “newer medications” line. He’d handled his schizophrenia in the exact opposite way—by ceasing to take meds entirely. Antipsychotic medication, he felt, blunted his mind. He threw them out in 1970 and never went back on them again.

Nash isn’t the first schizophrenic to convince himself he’d do better off his meds. He’s just a rare case where it actually worked, which is exactly why the screenwriter of A Beautiful Mind fudged that little detail. He didn’t want anyone in the audience following Nash’s bad example and trying to go without their meds.

5 Stephen Hawking May Have Been Beaten By His Wife

It used to be that people would think about Stephen Hawking without thinking about his sex life—until The Theory of Everything changed all that. That story, though, left out what happened after Hawking’s marriage with Jane Wilde ended—which is a bit less touching.

Hawking married a woman named Elaine Mason in 1995. After five years of matrimony wore their toll, reports started to come out that Hawking was covered in “mysterious injuries,” which he refused to explain. Then he was found with a broken arm and a split lip. He even missed his 60th birthday, which he explained by claiming that he’d “crashed into a wall.”

Eventually, people became worried enough that the police tried to investigate Mason for spousal abuse. Hawking, however, wouldn’t let them do it and refused to press any charges against her, so they never got the chance to find out for sure.

4 Darwin Tried To Ride The Galapagos Tortoises

Darwin’s trip to the Galapagos Islands changed the way we see the world. Because of his work there, he’s become a symbol of the scientific method—a fastidious, dedicated man who tested his theories through rigorous and systematic scrutiny. It helps that we usually leave out the part where Darwin tried to ride a tortoise.

When Darwin saw the massive Galapagos tortoises, some weighing as much as 270 kilograms (600 lb) and stretching 1.4 meters (4.5 ft) across, he knew what he had to do: see if he could ride them. The father of evolution hopped onto a tortoise’s back and tried to make it giddyup, rapping on the back of the shell to make it go.

The tortoise kept throwing him off, though, so Darwin just ate them instead, until they were an endangered species. Thus, the father of evolution provided a great example of his own principle: If the Galapagos tortoises had just let him ride them like ponies, they wouldn’t be on the brink of extinction today.

3 The French Revolutionaries Slaughtered Thousands Of Peasants

When the French revolutionaries rose up against the aristocracy in the name of liberty, fraternity, and equality, it got bloody. The mass slaughter of royalty under the blade of the guillotine is pretty well-known, but we usually envision the revolutionaries picking on the ruling class. As it turns out, they actually killed more peasants than aristocrats.

A huge chuck of those deaths came from Vendee, where the people weren’t particularly thrilled about the revolution. They revolted against the new French government—and were beaten back by the French army. Before marching on Vendee, a French general asked the government to “pronounce in advance on the fate of the women and children” and was told to slaughter every one. The response read, “Exterminate the brigands to the last man.”

They did just that. Afterward, another general boasted that he “trampled children under horses’ feet and massacred women.” He told Paris, “I have no prisoners to worry about. I have exterminated everything.”

2 The Pyramid Builders Were Treated Pretty Well

Every film we see about Egypt shows slaves building the pyramids, struggling through whippings and pain, moving the great blocks of the tombs of selfish kings into place. These images are reminders of how the Jews suffered in slavery and symbols of how one powerful man can put his vanity above the lives of countless others.

Except it turns out that the pyramids weren’t built by Jewish slaves. They weren’t built by slaves at all; they were built by paid laborers working in three-month shifts, who even had health care plans. Archaeologists have even found Egyptian construction workers buried inside the pyramids with jars of beer and bread, so they can still get drunk and chow down on carbs in the afterlife.

1 The Catholic Church Strongly Supported Astronomy

The Catholic Church gets a bad rap. We usually picture them as people who insisted the world was flat and fought against all scientific progress. They are, after all, the people who locked Galileo up in house arrest. According to Berkeley University, though, from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment, the Roman Catholic Church actually gave more financial aid to astronomy than any other institution.

Their cathedrals were often built to work as solar observatories and were the best at the time. With that little painful exception of Galileo, most of the important figures in science were Catholic. Isaac Newton was devout, and Nicholas Copernicus, who first placed the Sun at the center of the universe, was a cleric.

It doesn’t stop there. Gregor Mendel, the founder of genetics, was an abbot. Georges Lemaitre, who proposed the expansion of the Universe, was an ordained priest. The list goes on.

Belgians are crazy about beer. Young Belgians are weaned on beer with soda, and old Belgians drink it with breakfast. Even the monks in Belgium make beer. The country has been in the brewing tradition since the 1100s—before it even was a country—and time has only served to open the doors for more and better ways to make the inebriating honey of the gods.

SEE ALSO: 10 Legendary Beer Facts To Get You Drunk Off Knowledge

We visited a few places in Belgium where beer is nigh religion and tasted for ourselves the holy fervor that has stood to make this country a bastion of alcoholic enlightenment. In the process, we’ve come to an inescapable conclusion: These guys are crazy about beer, and we love it.

10Beers Per Capita

Belgium has more individual styles of beer per capita than any other country in the world. With a population barely scraping past 11 million, they produced a whopping 1,132 distinct types of beer in 2011. Fast-forward to 2013 and that number is a mind-blowing 3,043 beers that were brewed among all 10 provinces of Belgium. The Flemish Brabant, a province in the north of Belgium, makes 457 beers on its own.

The region’s interest in beer began when the Catholic Church sanctioned the use of abbeys to brew and distribute beer to raise money for upkeep near the end of the 10th century. Over the years, the nuns in the abbeys began pioneering new ways to brew, strengthening the diversity that was available to the locals in brewing villages. At the turn of the 20th century, there were over 3,000 breweries in Belgium, but the two World Wars had a devastating effect on the Belgian economy that reached deep into the brewing industry. Now, there are only about 180 breweries in Belgium.

9Spontaneous Fermentation

Known in Belgium as lambic, spontaneously fermented beers have been brewed since the 14th century. The process isn’t at all unique to Belgium, but they’re certainly pioneering the modern form of spontaneous fermentation. Normal beer is made with three ingredients—malt, hops, and yeast. The malt makes it sweet, the hops add the bitter taste, and the yeast ferments the whole thing into alcohol.

Typically, the yeast is added from a package or a live culture. Saccharomyces cerevisiae is a common brewing yeast, although there are others. But in spontaneous fermentation, the malt and hops are left to cool in the open air. This introduces wild yeast into the mixture, giving the brew a quality that is unique to the region where it was brewed, since it depends on the natural yeasts in the air to start the fermentation. Lambic is made exclusively in Belgium’s Zenne valley, where the wild yeasts Brettanomyces bruxellensis and Brettanomyces lambicus thrive.

Lambic by itself is acidic and flat, but if there’s one thing you can say about Belgian brewers, it’s that they never give up on a beer. To fix it, they brew a batch of lambic and then age it for six months. Then, they brew a fresh batch and mix the two together. Finally, while it’s still fermenting, they bottle it, trapping the carbon dioxide and keeping it nice and bubbly. When you throw all those steps together, the result is an even more unique beer type known as Geuze (pronounced like a heavily accented “goose”). Now that’s dedication.

8Beer Cocktails

Jurgen Bollion and his brother Steven are the joint owners of the Taste M, a little bar bolted to the front of a small art museum in Leuven. Jurgen, a jovial man with a linebacker build and perpetually flushed cheeks, visits each table in person with a tray full of “fixings” for his signature drinks: beer cocktails.

The only way to describe a beer cocktail is “whatever Jurgen wants to put in it.” But you’re in good hands. As he works, he explains what each ingredient does for the drink: Sweetwood (part of the licorice family) for a tart flavor, tonic for a bitter middle taste, several shots of gin for strength, a bottle of Caulier 28 tripel for the beer, and ice to give the flavor more variety. He explains that, as the ice melts and the sweetwood seeps into the drink, the flavor changes, making each sip a little different. Then he makes a round of the table to tip more gin into each glass with a gruff “drink more.”

And that’s just one cocktail. Jurgen has created hundreds of recipes for unique beer cocktails, each one meant to emphasize a different taste profile. One of his goals is to get past the perception that beer is a “man’s” drink. In his words, everybody likes beer, you just have to find the right one—“They say to me, ‘I don’t like beer.’ And I say, ‘No, you don’t like the beers that you have tried up to this point.’ ” He wants to find everybody’s perfect beer. That’s a man with an admirable mission.

7“The Longest Bar In The World”

This is a local colloquialism for a square officially known as the Oude Market, located in Leuven. The market is basically a long, open courtyard with a line of businesses running along one side. So why is it called the longest bar in Europe? Well, over 40 of those businesses just happen to be bars. Since each bar has an outdoor patio, the experience is one of an unbroken outdoor terrace that runs for nearly half a kilometer (0.3 mi).

Of course, despite its name, it’s not actually the longest bar in the world, or even Europe. There are several contenders to the title, most of them named by generations of locals who grew up with the phrase and simply want to keep it alive in their home town. Nevertheless, the Oude Market is a unique place to visit, and one of the bars, Domus, is even supplied by a direct pipeline to its nearby brewery.

And the other side of the square? That’s a university. In many parts of Belgium, especially Leuven, college students get beers for €1 as a thanks from the brewers to their best customers.

6The Bruges Beer Pipeline

When the De Halve Maan brewery opened up a new bottling plant at the outskirts of Bruges, they hit a snag: As the last brewery in downtown Bruges, their facility has become something of a cultural icon. Bruges was once the proud home of dozens of breweries both large and small, but one by one they each closed their doors for the last time. De Halve Maan has been standing since the 16th century, and over 100,000 tourists flock to Bruges to view their brewery and beer museum every year.

So moving the brewery closer to the bottling plant is definitely not an option, but as it stands now, a fleet of 500 trucks is required to transport the beer from barrel to bottle, a fleet that accounts for 85 percent of Bruges’s current commercial traffic. The streets are literally clogged with beer.

That’s all going to change with an underground beer pipeline. It won’t be the first in the world—Germany has a beer pipeline running under the Veltins-Arena football stadium, and the Great Lakes brewery in Cleveland has a small underground system. But while Great Lakes only pipes their beer across the street, De Halve Maan is building a monstrosity that runs 3 kilometers (1.8 mi) under the city. It’ll pump 100 liters (26 gal) of freshly brewed beer every minute.

5The Farm Brewery

In the fields outside the tiny town of Tildonk, father and son team Andre and Dries Janssens operate one of the most unique breweries in the world: Hof ten Dormaal. What started as a simple barley farm slowly evolved into an international brewing venture. Looking for ways to make their farm more efficient, the Janssens decided to set up a small brew operation to get rid of the extra barley. Then, they decided to grow their own hops instead of buying them.

From that point, they settled on a unique concept: Everything in their beer would be made or grown on their farm. Soon, they were also bottling the finished creations right beside the haystacks. A state-of-the-art bottling line lets them cap 2,000 bottles of their farm brews per hour.

Even after they began shipping 90 percent of their output to willing buyers in the US, the Janssens weren’t content—they decided to try aging some of their beers in old liquor barrels, and so they took off on a trek across Europe to find wooden barrels that had spent years soaking up the flavors of cognac, armagnac, port, sherry, and whiskey.

4Trappist Beer

In the silent halls of a 17th-century Trappist monastery, something dark is brewing. The Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance, commonly referred to as the Trappists, is a monastic order that focuses on the work of one’s own hands as the true path to salvation. Although they don’t take an official vow of silence, Trappist monks avoid speaking unless absolutely necessary, and any speech that mocks or puts down someone else is a sin. All in all, they’re not bad fellows.

But regardless of any religious affiliation, Trappist monks brew some of the meanest beers in the world. There are only 10 authentic Trappist breweries in the world, and six of those are in Belgium. Westvleteren XII, a Trappist beer brewed not far from the city of Ypres, is often called the best beer in the world. Everything the Trappists make from their beer goes back into their abbeys in accordance with their vow of poverty.

3World’s Largest Beer Menu

The current holder of the Guinness World Record for most available beers on the menu is Delirium Cafe, located in Belgium’s capital city of Brussels. They have 3,162 beers available on their shelves. You’d have to drink 8.5 beers every day for a year just to taste them all.

We didn’t have a chance to visit Delirium Cafe, but we did stop in for a brew at Belgium’s valiant underdog: The Capital, located in Leuven. With the distinction of second largest beer menu in the world, this unassuming little place looks just the same as any other bar on Brusselsestraat—on the outside. Even the inside, at first glance, looks like your typical bar. But then you realize that the frosted tiles on the floor aren’t tiles—they’re windows. And through the windows is a vision of Valhalla: an entire lower level with row after row of beer-filled shelves standing dark sentinel like Belgium’s answer to Qin Shi Huang’s terra-cotta army.

It works like this: A customer orders a beer. The waitress passes the order to The Capital’s underbelly, where a “beer finder” locates the brew. He places it on a vertical conveyor belt that runs up behind the bar, and it’s served. It may take longer than a traditional bar, but what are a few minutes compared to the option to drink thousands of beers you’ve never heard of?

2Unholy Consumption

As a country, Belgium has been drunk for over a millennium, but to say that Belgians drink a lot of beer is like saying the ocean has a lot of water—we need some specifics. Country by country, Belgium currently stands at No. 18 on the global list of beer consumption by country per capita. On average, each Belgian drinks 74 liters (19.5 gal) of beer every year.

But that’s a symptom of modern times. In 1900, Belgians were guzzling an unholy 200 liters (53 gal) of the fizzy brown stuff each year. One of the reasons for the drop in beer sales is the rise of soft drinks, and even the beer capitals of the world are getting hit by the shift. Many breweries have even begun to reduce the bitter qualities of their beer in an effort to keep up with a customer base that’s gravitating toward sweeter drinks.

1A Glass For Every Beer

The above photo is just a fraction of the absolute insanity of everyday drinking in Belgium. Every beer comes with a specially designed glass from which to drink it. This isn’t a suggestion—it’s a cardinal rule. When you order a new beer, your old glass will be removed so that a new goblet will have a place to rest its crystal stem. The glass styles are split about evenly between the typical beer-style mugs, pints, steins, and plenty of wine-style flutes. One beer even comes in a bowl.

The idea of using a specific glass for every beer is so prevalent in the region that many breweries start a new recipe by first designing the glass. And believe it or not, this long-standing tradition has been backed up by a handful of studies that conclude that the shape of a glass definitely affects the flavor and aroma of the beer inside.

So what’s in a glass? Quite a lot, apparently. We’re just happy as long as one of those things is beer.

We’d like to thank Marie Venhellemont at Leuven Leisure for the instructive beer tour on our first day. We’re sorry we were so jet lagged. And of course, thanks to Marcos Stupenengo at VisitFlanders for making the whole trip possible. Hope to see you again soon, Belgium!

In his writing, Charles Dickens was a voice for what was right. He spoke against greed and cruelty and for the rights of the disenfranchised and the poor. He wrote stories that inspired millions, and he has become an eternal part of the canon of English literature.

In his private life, though, Charles Dickens was a bit different. He held troubling relationships with women and science alike, and his life was even stranger than the stories he wrote.

10 He Believed He Could Heal People Through Hypnosis

In 1837, Charles went to see Dr. John Elliotson perform experiments upon the stage. Dr. Elliotson was a mesmerist, a man who believed that all human beings are filled with a magnetic fluid that can be controlled through hypnosis.

Dickens watched Dr. Elliotson’s shows again and again and was trying hypnosis himself before long. He mesmerized his friends and family every chance he got. In particular, his wife, Catherine, was regularly subjected to his experiments. By the time he was done, Dickens claimed he could “magnetize a frying pan.”

Ten years after his experiments began, Dickens’s friend and illustrator, John Leech, suffered a concussion. He visited Leech in the hospital and tried to mesmerize him. When Leech got better, Dickens declared that it had everything to do with his healing powers—and nothing to do with the doctors.

9 He Performed Magic As ‘The Unparalleled Necromancer’

In 1849, an ad was spread around the city. It advertised a magic show, performed by “The Unparalleled Necromancer Rhia Rhama Rhoos, educated cabalistically in the Orange Groves of Salamanca and the Ocean Caves of Alum Bay.” To the surprise of the people who came out, the Unparalleled Necromancer was none other than Charles Dickens himself. There, before an amazed crowd, Britain’s best-selling author performed feats of magic and wonder.

He set a deck of cards on fire and reproduced from the ashes the card an audience member had drawn. He cut open a loaf of bread and revealed an audience member’s watch. And, into an ordinary gentleman’s hat, he poured a grocery list of raw ingredients and pulled out a finished plum pudding.

Apparently, he was quite good. Jayne Carlyle wrote that Dickens was “the best conjuror [she] ever saw” and that magic “would enable him to make a handsome subsistence lest the book-seller trade go as it please.”

8 He Visited The Last Men To Be Executed For Sodomy

The last men in England ever executed for sodomy were James Pratt and John Smith. While they were in prison awaiting the gallows, they met Charles Dickens.

Dickens had popped by looking for inspiration. He had a column called Sketches by Boz, in which described everyday scenes in life, and he thought the sadness of condemned men would make a great topic.

Dickens wasn’t particularly forgiving of the gay couple who was about to be executed for making love. Calling them “wretched men,” he wrote that Pratt and Smith “had nothing to expect from the mercy of the crown; their doom was sealed; no plea could be urged in extenuation of their crime, and they well knew that for them there was no hope in this world.”

7 He Publicly Argued That Spontaneous Combustion Was Real

In 1852, Charles Dickens released a section of his novel Bleak House, in which a man died by spontaneous combustion. The scene sparked a nationwide debate over whether a person really could spontaneously combust. George Lewes, a strong advocate for science, publicly called Dickens out, saying that he was giving “credence to a scientific impossibility” and “currency to a vulgar error.”

Dickens responded through the next part of the novel. He worked in a paragraph that mocked people who don’t think spontaneous combustion is possible.

He didn’t let it drop there. Dickens and Lewes wrote each other private letters, continuing to argue whether it was possible. The two went on writing furious letters to each other for ten months before they finally got bored and agreed to disagree.

6 He Pretended He Was Going To Murder A Woman As A Joke

Dickens was a strange man. His favorite way to amuse himself was to run over to a group of complete strangers and tell them long, confusing jokes that they wouldn’t understand. Or he’d pretend to be in love, putting on a whole Pepe Le Pew routine in front an increasingly uncomfortable woman.

Sometimes, he took it too far.

Once, right in front of his wife, he grabbed a woman he didn’t know, pretending to be overpowered by love. He dragged her down to the beach and into the water and declared that they would stay there until the water swept them away to drown together.

The woman had no idea he was kidding. She freaked out, convinced she was about to die. Dickens’s wife, understandably, was unimpressed. She yelled at him to let the woman go. Dickens, though, was never one to give up on a good joke, so he clung onto the woman and watched the waves come crashing in.

The woman survived, but her dress was ruined, and she had the odd experience of being psychologically scarred by a legendary author.

5 He Called For The Genocide Of All Indians

In 1857, India rose up against their British occupiers, starting their first war for independence. Newspapers painted the Indians as ungrateful savages, focusing on a story about a single English child who died in the conflict.

Dickens was strongly affected. He wrote a letter to a friend, Angella Burdett-Coutts, with whom he had opened a charitable home for young women. The letter, though, was anything but charitable. “I wish that I were Commander-in-Chief in India,” Dickens wrote. “I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race.”

4 He Was Accused Of Having An Affair With His Sister-In-Law

Dickens’s relationship with his wife’s family made people somewhat uncomfortable. He was unusually devoted to them. When his sister-in-law, Mary, died at age 17, he wrote to a friend that he wished he could be buried with her.

However, it was her other sister, Georgina, who really caused a scandal. Georgina had made Dickens the center of her life. She lived in his home as his housekeeper and adviser. She had turned down two marriage proposals from other men, allegedly to spend more time with her sister’s husband.

When rumors came out that there was a rift between Dickens and his wife, the public was sure Georgina was behind it. Dickens, they believed, had been sleeping with his sister-in-law, a relationship that Victorians saw as a type of incest. The stories ballooned until the people had convinced themselves that Georgina was secretly the mother of three of Dickens’s children.

She wasn’t. Dickens proved his innocence—and went way overboard doing so. He made Georgina get her virginity tested and shared the results.

3 He Did Have An Affair With An 18-Year-Old

The rumors were right about one thing: Dickens’s marriage really was falling apart. It started in 1857, when he put on a production of a play. There, he met a young actress named Ellen Ternan, who was 27 years younger than him.

Dickens became obsessed with her. He wrote little stories fantasizing that he was a knight saving Ternan from ogres that had tied her up by her hair. He was in love—and he was willing to sacrifice his whole family for it.

The two began an affair. However, this was the Victorian era, and an affair would have been a huge scandal. Dickens made Ternan spend most of her time in hiding, living in homes where people wouldn’t spot him. He would sneak out to her and spend nights with her, but he hid her from the public eye. The affair lasted for 13 years, ending with his death.

2 He Took His Children Away From Their Mother

After the birth of her second child, Catherine fell into a slump that people today think might have postpartum depression. Charles, not being a very good husband, wasn’t particularly sympathetic. He wrote to friends criticizing his wife, once saying that she “is as near being a donkey” as a woman can be.

When he started his affair with Ellen Ternan, enough leaked out that it became a public scandal. Dickens was furious, and he wrote to friends justifying himself, saying Catherine was an “incompetent mother” and “mentally disordered.”

For a while, he had their bedroom divided in two so he didn’t have to see her. Soon, he kicked her out of the house altogether, and he kept the kids. Eight of their nine children stayed with Dickens, at his insistence. Only his eldest, Charley, was old enough to choose for himself, and he chose to live with his mother.

1 He Saved Lives In A Train Accident And Had To Hide It

In 1865, Dickens had a rare moment of heroism. He was riding in the first-class carriage of a train when it plunged off a bridge. Seven of the eight carriages plummeted down below, with only Dickens’s staying on the track.

Dickens climbed out of the carriage and went looking for the conductor. He took the key from him and opened the carriage door, freeing the people inside. He then rushed over the edge and freed a person trapped in a wrecked car. He saved lives. He tended to the wounded with water and brandy and helped others find their loved ones.

And he could never tell a soul.

Dickens was with Ellen Ternan, and he couldn’t risk having the public learn of his affair. He skipped the police on the crash and hid the story of his heroism from the public.

Some call them conspiracy theories. Loony or not, many hypotheses about history contain more than just a glimmer of truth. From secret societies to unrecorded interactions, the possibilities of alternative history are many. These 10 are just some of the more fascinating examples.

10The Knights Templar And The Mandaeans

The Mandaeans are an enthno-religious people native to southern Iraq and southwestwern Iran. Their religion, Mandaeanism, closely resembles the Gnostic faith of Manichaeism. According to some scholars, the Mandaeans first appeared either before or during the arrival of Christianity.

During the time of the Crusades, the Mandaeans were known as skilled goldsmiths. This trade may have brought them into close contact with the Knights Templar, the legendary warrior-monks who frequently relied on local trade to survive. The Mandaeans worship John the Baptist as the world’s true savior. In the Gospels, St. John the Baptist is decapitated and is presented to the vicious Salome, the step-daughter of Herod Antipas. Interestingly, after they were rounded up by the French King Philip IV, the Templars were accused of worshiping a severed and embalmed head.

Could this be a relic of St. John the Baptist? Did the Templars adopt some Gnostic traditions after their long residence in the Middle East?

9The Ismailis And The ‘Islamic Golden Age’

Unlike the largest sect of Islam, Sunni Islam, the Ismailis belong to the Shia branch. However, unlike orthodox Shias, Ismailis are not “Twelvers,” so they do not subscribe to the belief in the Twelve Imams as the true spiritual successors of Muhammad. Furthermore, the Ismaili community openly accepts certain non-Muslim traditions, including Christian ethics and Greek philosophy. Because of this, the Ismailis are frequently persecuted in many fundamentalist countries.

During the Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171), Ismaili caliphs ruled the empire while Ismaili da’is (scholars) produced a wealth of Ismaili texts that incorporated Western and Eastern esotericism, Gnosticism, and classical learning. Because of this, it has been suggested that open-minded Ismailism brought about Islam’s Golden Age and facilitated the Arabic and Persian translations of Jewish, Greek, and Roman texts. Unfortunately, thanks to the Abbasid Caliphate and the entrenched power of Sunni Islam, the Ismailis were suppressed and forced to go underground for many centuries.

8The Bear Cult Hypothesis

Historians have theorized that the ancient Indo-Europeans had two primary cults that all tribes shared. These two cults recognized wolves and bears as sacred animals. Whereas the wolf symbolized masculinity, virility, and the power of the tribe, the bear represented motherhood and fertility. By the time of Sanskrit “Rigveda,” the power of the bear cult had noticeably declined.

However, in looking through other ancient texts, echoes of the bear cult remain. The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf is similar to the Icelandic saga of Bodvar Bjarki, whose name translates to “Battle Bear.” The Nordic “berserker” warriors also highlight this ancient European appreciation of the bear.

7The Original Koreans Of Japan

Currently, almost a million “Zainichi Koreans” live in Japan. Many are the descendants of workers who moved to Japan following World War II, while others came earlier after the Japanese conquest of Korea in 1910. Most speak Japanese as their first language. According to a genetic survey produced by the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan, modern Japanese people may in fact be the descendants of Koreans themselves.

Specifically, researchers believe that the Japanese language and culture developed after the native settlers of the archipelago (the Jomon people) intermarried with the Yayoi people who crossed the strait from what is today Korea. Obviously, given the sometimes contentious relations between Japan and South Korea, this theory is not accepted by everyone in Japan.

6The Baltic Origins Of The Ancient Greeks

The notion that the ancient Greeks may have had some deep connections to the Baltic is mostly supported by certain readings of The Iliad and The Odyssey. According to believers, Homer’s epic poems recount faded memories of Greece’s Baltic ancestors coming down through the Danube and other rivers to settle in Greece. Furthermore, these scholars claim the geography of The Odyssey only makes sense in the Baltic or North Sea, not the Mediterranean.

Because this theory reminds many of “Nordicism,” or the theory that the ancient Greeks were racially “Nordic,” it is not generally popular or widely accepted. The main proponent of this theory, Italian engineer and amateur historian Felice Vinci, has presented some evidence to back up this theory.

5The Masonic Conspiracies Of France

The Freemasons have always been the targets of numerous conspiracy theorists throughout the ages. Because of their secrecy, their slightly disturbing rituals, and their popularity among the wealthy and powerful, the Freemasons are easy targets. In France during the 19th century, right-wing nationalists and Catholic conservatives latched onto certain Freemason conspiracies to explain France’s martial and political decline following the Franco-Prussian War. One of the more outlandish theories was put forth by Leo Taxil, a known hoaxer and a convert to Catholicism who wrote a book that claimed that Freemasons worship the devil.

Interestingly, all of this attention on the Freemasons revealed serious connections between Masonic rituals and Gnostic Christianity. Therefore, French and other writers have openly wondered whether the Freemasons are somehow connected to the same esoteric lineage as the Knights Templar or the Ismailis.

4The Lost Jews And Muslims Of The New World

Beginning in the 1980s, word spread that many longtime residents of New Mexico believed they were descendants of Spanish Conversos. During the Spanish Inquisition, many Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism or face severe persecution. Many of these Conversos continued to practice their ancient Jewish faith in secret, however. Therefore, many believe that these Conversos continued to practice Judaism in the Spanish colony of New Mexico. DNA tests released in the early 2000s confirmed that many modern Latinos have Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

Jews were not the only religious group who may have landed in the New World. Spanish Muslims, known as “moriscos,” also likely intermarried with native tribes and Spanish Catholics, Thus, many Latinos may also have DNA that links them to Morocco and Algeria.

3Are Modern Lebanese The True Descendants Of Phoenicia?

In 2016, a team representing the University of Otago and the Lebanese American University found for the first time ever a complete mitochondrial genome of a Phoenician individual. This 2,500-year-old man known as the “Young Man of Byrsa” was found in the hillsides of Carthage, Tunisia. According to the two primary scientists, the Phoenicians, who were native to what is now coastal Lebanon, contained the European U5b2cl haplogroup, so Phoenicians may have been both the descendants of European hunter-gatherers and the first people to introduce European DNA to North Africa.

This interesting find unleashed another question—how much Phoenician DNA is left among the Lebanese? According to certain researchers, today’s Christian and Muslim populations of Lebanon still have traces of Phoenician DNA. In the political realm, this finding has underscored the fairly common belief among Lebanese people that they are not Arabic and do not share a cultural affinity with the Arab world.

2William Shakespeare, Spy

The idea that famous playwright William Shakespeare worked for Her Majesty is part of the wider theory that Shakespeare was not the true author of his plays. One theory, which claims that William Stanley, the sixth Earl of Derby, wrote the Bard’s plays, bases itself on the pen of a Jesuit spy named George Fenner. In a letter dated from 1599, Fenner claims bluntly that Stanley was the true author.

This connection to espionage is interesting, for many believe that Shakespeare was himself a spy. One camp believes he was a secret Catholic who spied on English Protestants, while others believe that he worked directly for London as a “gentleman agent.” Most of the evidence for these suppositions are based on some of Shakespeare’s letters, which read like intelligence reports about the wealthy gentry in the English countryside.

1Aleister Crowley, Spy And Occult Interrogator

The “Wickedest Man in the World” is generally considered one of the Western world’s foremost occultists. “The Great Beast” was a great proponent of sex magick, which, to modern eyes, looks like perversion dressed up in mumbo-jumbo. Some historians have claimed that this was part of Crowley’s cover, for the chubby man from Warwickshire was a secret agent for the British Empire. Richard B. Spence’s “Secret Agent 666” points out that Crowley’s ability to always travel well without a clear source of income, plus his connections to the pro-German element in America during World War I, are clear indications that he was a spy.

One of the more popular beliefs is that during World War II, Crowley was tapped by Naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming (the author of James Bond) to interrogate Rudolf Hess in Scotland. Hess, Hitler’s deputy and a known occultist, was supposedly grilled by Crowley for hours and subjected to Crowley’s extremely spicy curry. Years later, Crowley would appear in the first James Bond novel as the villain Le Chiffre.

In the past few years, climate change has gone from a threat of the future to a disaster unfolding right in front of our eyes. Its effects are now being felt around the world, from shifting patterns of food production to natural disasters that are now more frequent and intense than any other time in recorded history. While there’s no doubt that it’s a global phenomenon that transcends national borders, some countries are right on the front line of this rapidly-developing crisis.

10. South Sudan

South Sudan is located in northeastern Africa, bordered by nations like Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, and others. The country has proven particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the past few years, made worse by a recently-concluded civil war that continues to break out in armed skirmishes in many parts of the country. 

Currently, South Sudan is at a high risk of flooding and drought, with over 2 million people already displaced by climate-related factors. Water remains a scarce commodity throughout the country, with only 55% of the population having access to safe drinking water. Rainfall has also decreased in the region by 10-20% since the mid-1970s, which is a huge problem for many rural families that rely on rain for farming and animals. According to some estimates, about 95% of South Sudan depends on nature for survival. 

9. Madagascar

The Republic of Madagascar is one of the largest island nations in the world, lying about 250 miles off the southeastern coast of Africa. It’s also one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change, thanks to the high frequency of disasters like floods, tropical storms, cyclones, and droughts. The country’s annual cyclone season, from November to March, usually comes with intense cyclones and storms, causing heavy rains, flooding, and rising sea levels in the past few years.

Additionally, Madagascar is also facing its most severe drought in the last four decades, particularly in the southern part of the country. The disaster has so far affected over a million and a half people across the region, largely due to its heavy reliance on subsistence agriculture and rain-fed crops. The rising price of water and extreme food scarcity, combined with the country’s economically-impoverished status, have intensified the consequences of these climate-related problems. Over the years, natural disasters like droughts, cyclones, floods, and extreme temperatures have caused a total damage of over $1 billion. 

8. Afghanistan

Despite its minimal contribution to global emissions, Afghanistan stands as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change due to conflict and climate-related factors. Currently, the entire region is facing intensifying, extreme weather events like droughts, storms, floods, landslides, avalanches, and earthquakes. 

According to some reports, 80% of Afghans rely on agriculture for survival, making even slight climate shifts highly impactful on food production and availability, a problem that’s only made worse by outdated agricultural techniques and violence due to conflicts. Droughts are on the rise in almost all parts of the country, with about 64% of households and 50% of the population affected in 2022. There’s also acute water scarcity driven by rising temperatures and lower glacial melting rates, as sources of water like rivers and lakes dry up at a faster rate every year. 

7. Haiti

Haiti is a small island nation in the Caribbean region. Its location has made it more prone to disasters like floods, droughts, and hurricanes than other countries in the area, resulting in it being one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change around the world.

One problem specific to Haiti is its lack of trees, leading to soil erosion during heavy rains causing floods and landslides. The socioeconomic conditions within the country are further fueling the ongoing crisis, as a large part of the population relies on subsistence agriculture and depends on changing weather patterns to grow their food. Access to clean water is also growing scarcer by the year, adversely affecting public health and making all the above challenges even worse.

6. The Philippines

The Philippines is a western-Pacific island nation made up of more than 7,000 islands. Its unique topography makes it an ideal destination for tourists and explorers from around the world, though it also makes it particularly-prone to the oncoming effects of climate change. Every year, the country is hit by an average of 20 typhoons, and their frequency has only increased in the past few years. Five of the deadliest typhoons in the history of the Philippines have happened since 2006, each one more intense and damaging than the last.

Perhaps the most destructive of them was super typhoon Haiyan, or Yolanda, that claimed the lives of about 6,300 people. Rising sea levels further threaten the growing climate situation across the country; according to a report by Climate Central, southeast Asia is home to about 70% of 150 million people living in regions expected to submerge around the world by 2050.

5. Democratic Republic Of The Congo

Earlier known as Zaire, the Democratic Republic of Congo is easily one of the largest countries in Africa. According to reports from the last few years, the DRC has been identified as one of the most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change, particularly for its young population. According to assessment reports by UNICEF, Congolese children are the ninth-most-vulnerable to climate and environmental shocks worldwide.

By 2050, temperatures across the DRC could surge by 1–2.5 Celsius, accompanied by intensified heavy rainfall and prolonged droughts. In contrast, the southern region may experience decreased dry season rainfall. One can also expect a rise in sea levels in the coastal areas by 60-70 centimeters by 2080, adding to the overall risk of coastal erosion and water scarcity throughout the country. 

About 95% of the population in the DRC relies on farming crops like cassava and maize, both of which are severely threatened by climate-driven crop diseases. Additionally, the hydropower sector faces disruption due to reduced precipitation patterns, further threatening the energy and food security of the Congolese population.

4. Pakistan

As per the Global Climate Risk Index of 2021, the south-Asian country of Pakistan is the eighth-most-vulnerable nation to climate change in the long term. Over the last two decades, Pakistan has also been consistently ranked among the top 10 countries most susceptible to climate risks, thanks to thousands of climate-related fatalities and financial losses exceeding $4 billion due to climate-related factors. Furthermore, these effects compound the risk of conflict across the region, particularly over dwindling resources like water and food.

The recent heatwave has amplified Pakistan’s food insecurity crisis, with scorching temperatures damaging crop production and rendering arable land unusable for small farmers. Pakistan has also been increasingly vulnerable to recurring extreme weather events, like the devastating floods of 2010 and 2022. 

3. Ethiopia

Located in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is one of the largest and most-populous countries on the continent. It’s highly vulnerable to climate change due to its exposure to extreme weather events like droughts, floods, volcanoes, and earthquakes, made worse by poverty and the country’s dependence on sectors like agriculture, water, tourism, and forestry.

Among all the factors, drought is perhaps the most damaging, as droughts in Ethiopia have increased in magnitude, frequency, and impact since the 1970s. A major drought in 2011 left millions in need of food aid, which was later found to be linked to livestock deaths due to pasture and water shortages. Due to climate change and other human factors, areas affected by drought and desertification are expanding across the country, combined with increasing flash floods and seasonal river floods. Projections show a potential 20% rise in extreme high rainfall events by the end of the century.

2. Somalia

Somalia is another African country facing some of the worst climate-based challenges around the world, with around 70% of its population dependent on agriculture and pastoralism. Increasingly severe floods and droughts in recent years also threaten farmers and pastoralists, combined with environmental degradation caused by industrial activities like charcoal production.

Moreover, Somalia is facing its most severe drought in close to four decades. The absence of national land use and disaster risk management policies at the state level have worsened the situation, with a high impact on local settlements. Women in rural areas are particularly vulnerable to the worst effects of climate change, largely due to their lack of decision-making powers and unequal access to resources within their communities. According to reports, Somalia ranks as the world’s second most climate-vulnerable country, despite its minimal greenhouse gas emissions contribution.

1. Syria

While many people know that Syria has been going through a brutal civil war for more than a decade now, not many are aware of its particularly-high vulnerability to climate change. The country has been hit hard by extreme weather events throughout this time, like its record-low rain season in 2021, leading to decreased water flow into rivers like the Euphrates. 

These climate disasters have had a high impact on agricultural communities and pastoralists across the country, as they heavily rely on water and vegetation for livelihood. The effects are made worse by the ongoing civil conflict, with damaged infrastructure and displacement of people in vast parts of the country exacerbating the problem. Because of the situation, many Syrian families have been pushed deeper into poverty in the last few years, as even basic commodities like food, water, and shelter have become scarce across the region.

While relatively recent occurrences have brought the term into the US lexicon, regime change is as American as apple pie. For nearly all of the country’s history—but especially since the 20th century began—the United States has deemed it necessary to meddle in the fortunes of other countries, often under the guise of “protecting national security,” though you’ll soon see that there are often ulterior motives. Without further ado, here are the ten worst occurrences of regime change by the United States.

10 The Syrian Coup D’etat

The extent of US involvement in the bloodless coup which overthrew the secular democracy that had sprung up in Syria after World War II has been disputed ever since. The popular opinion is that in 1949, the CIA decided their best bet to further US interests in the area would be to “encourage” a coup d’etat in the country.^[1] A proposed construction project, the Trans-Arabian Pipeline, was in danger of not being built under the rule of Shukri-al-Quwatli, and if there’s one thing that gets America’s goat, it’s being denied oil.

Therefore, a shyster named Husni al-Za’im (pictured above), convicted less than a decade earlier for graft, was propped up by the CIA, and he led an overthrow of Syria’s democratically elected president. Almost immediately, the pipeline plans were approved, as were a number of pro-American initiatives, such as peaceful negotiations with Israel. (The First Arab-Israeli War had just ended the year before.) However, just four months after he assumed power, al-Za’im himself was deposed, shot by a strongman who managed to rule for about five years before he was deposed as well. Nearly two decades of coup after coup ensured, until Hafez al-Assad took power and reigned for 30 years before his death.

9 Operation PBSUCCESS

Like a number of others, the US-orchestrated regime change which took place in Guatemala in 1954 happened because Communism was supposedly gaining a foothold in the country. The second democratically elected president of the country, Jacobo Arbenz, instituted a number of land reforms, populist actions meant to improve the lives of the poorest Guatemalans. The CIA didn’t feel the same way and almost immediately put a target on his back. “Target” can be interpreted both figuratively and literally; assassination was an option up until Arbenz resigned. In addition, United Fruit, a US company which held quite a bit of land in Guatemala, suffered under the reforms, mostly due to the ending of their exploitative labor practices, and they lobbied the US government to intervene.

Operation PBSUCCESS, a plan for “psychological warfare and political action,” was authorized by President Eisenhower in 1953.^[2] In addition, the CIA trained and funded a paramilitary group led by Castillo Armas, which attempted to violently overthrow Arbenz, though they met with a number of setbacks. The threat of US intervention, thanks to the propaganda which was part of Operation PBSUCCESS, was enough to force Arbenz’s resignation. Ten days later, Armas took power, instituting four decades of authoritarian rule which decimated Guatemala’s Maya population, thanks to near-continuous and bloody civil war. The coup was widely reviled by the international community, with some comparing the Americans to “colonialists” or “Hitler speaking about Austria.”

8 Operation Urgent Fury

Grenada is a small island in the Caribbean, only 640 kilometers (400 mi) south of Puerto Rico, and as the locals say: It’s “just south of paradise, just north of frustration.”^[3] For President Reagan, it was a constant frustration, with Marxists having controlled the country since the onset of his presidency. In 1983, fed up with what they deemed insufficiently radicalized behavior, members of the ruling party executed their leader, replacing him with Hudson Austin, a general in the People’s Revolutionary Army. This was the straw that broke the camel’s back for the Americans, and plans were quickly drawn up to invade the island.

Troubles started immediately, creating problems which would last for much of Operation Urgent Fury, as the various branches of the military couldn’t agree on what to do. In the end, over 7,000 troops were landed in Grenada, with a number of different goals to achieve, chief among them being the removal of the current regime. (The rescue of American students in the country was used as an excuse for the invasion.) Faced against the might of the US military, Austin’s government quickly folded and was replaced by pro-US leadership. When asked about the nearly unanimous international outrage concerning the invasion, Reagan simply replied, “It didn’t upset my breakfast at all.”

7 The Iraq War

The invasion which introduced the world to the idea of “regime change,” the Iraq War began in 2003 under the auspices of removing Saddam Hussein from power, as he was alleged to possess a number of weapons of mass destruction.^[4] In reality, he had none and was increasingly cooperating with UN inspectors. However, President Bush argued against those claims, eventually giving Hussein an ultimatum: Leave the country or face an invasion.

Despite fervent international protests, the United States and the rest of the coalition forces began hostilities when the deadline came and went. Although the conventional warfare was quickly over, as the Iraqis were no match for their foes, insurgents continued to be a thorn in the side of an increasingly isolated American presence for many years afterward. Though the eventual outcome of the US intervention has yet to be determined, deeming the action a success is seemingly impossible, given the nearly 200,000 civilian deaths that resulted from the conflict.

6 The First Caco War

By 1915, after four years of constant political turmoil, the US government saw the island nation of Haiti as a problem which could only be solved by force. Vilbrun Guillaume Sam, a ruthless dictator best known for his political executions, was ousted that year by the same forces which had been behind the last six coups: Haitian peasant militias known as cacos. Faced with an increasingly smaller chance of recovering the debts owed to them, France, England, Germany, and the US sent troops to the area.^[5]

However, it was the American forces who landed first, initially meeting with little resistance. A populist notion had helped instigate the latest coup, and the cacos were reluctant to give up as they had in the past. A brief guerilla war, the First Caco War, began and lasted for a few months, until US Marines stormed Fort Riviere, the final stronghold of the cacos. A pro-America politician named Philippe Sudre Dartiguenave assumed control of the country and remained in power until 1922. US forces remained in Haiti until 1934, when President Roosevelt transferred authority to the Garde d’Haiti.

5 Operation Just Cause

In 1989, Manuel Noriega, the infamous dictator of Panama, had been ruling for about six years, trafficking cocaine and helping the CIA with their various covert military operations throughout Latin America. By 1986, he had outlived his usefulness, and there were reports that he was a double agent. A US court convicted him on drug charges a few years later.^[6] (Much of his involvement with the CIA came out as a result of various scandals, including the Iran-Contra Affair.)

The 1989 elections resulted in a win by Guillermo Endara, the head of the anti-Noriega Democratic Alliance of Civic Opposition. Angered by the fact that his handpicked winner was defeated, Noriega declared the elections void, asserting himself as the de facto ruler of the country. Public pressure mounted on the US government in the form of various claims of softness on drug crime and the apparent escalation of threats against Americans living in the country. So, on December 20, US troops landed in a number of different spots with the intent of taking several strategically important sites. Noriega was eventually captured at the Vatican mission in Panama City, after he surrendered due to a combination diplomatic pressure from the Vatican and constant rock music (which Noriega hated). Endara was later sworn into office.

4 The Huerta Toppling

The year was 1913. Three years of bloody conflict had resulted in a number of overthrown Mexican presidents, and after a particularly violent series of days known as the Ten Tragic Days, General Victoriano Huerta was installed as president. However, the US, under President Wilson, was initially reluctant to recognize the newly minted dictator, instead hoping for democratic elections.^[7]

A year later, nine American sailors were arrested for allegedly entering a prohibited area in Mexican territory, setting off what would be known as the Tampico Affair. They were then paraded around the city, enraging the regional US naval commander. Ultimatums were issued, and when Mexico refused, President Wilson sent Marines to the port city of Veracruz. A relatively short battle ensued. The US forces took control of the city, only relinquishing it when Huerta resigned from office.

Later, Huerta was contacted by German intelligence, who planned to use him to get the US bogged down in a war with Mexico. As he was heading back to Mexico from his then-home of New York, he was captured by US forces, who promptly charged him with sedition. He later died while in custody.

3 The Puerto Rican Campaign

During the Spanish-American War, a number of Spanish holdings in the Western Hemisphere were the site of conflict between the two countries, including the small Caribbean island of Puerto Rico. Less than a month after the onset of the war, US naval forces attacked San Juan, establishing a blockade. Eventually, land forces were deployed, and after only seven deaths, the US secured the island.^[8] The war ended soon after, and Spain ceded a number of territories, including Cuba, the Philippines, Guam, and Puerto Rico.

Though US control of Cuba was temporary from the onset, the other three territories were initially going to be permanent. Almost immediately, Puerto Rico came under the “leadership” of various military officers, who set about to Americanize the population, mostly through the use of schools and mandatory lessons in English. It would be another 54 years until the citizens of Puerto Rico were allowed to democratically elect their own leader, though they remain a territory of the United States.

2 The TPAJAX Project

In the early 1950s, Mohammad Mossaddegh was the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, and in an effort to gain more national control over their oil fields, he began to audit the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British business. American fears were, as with many other similar examples, that the country would fall under the sway of the Soviet Union. Desperate to keep Communism from taking hold in Iran, the CIA began planning to overthrow Mossaddegh, hoping to reaffirm Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s power as monarch and install General Fazlollah Zahedi as the new leader of the country.^[9]

A joint task force of British and American intelligence began funneling money to various groups within Iran, who undertook terror plots designed to undermine public confidence in Mossaddegh’s government. (The AIOC itself contributed money for bribing officials as well.) A 1953 coup was successful, with as many as 300 people dying during the conflict and many more imprisoned or killed as a result of the shah’s military court tribunals. Pahlavi reigned for another 26 years, before anti-American sentiment, fueled in no small part by constant US involvement in Middle Eastern politics, resulted in the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

1 The Deposing Of Queen Liliuokalani

The first, last, and only reigning Hawaiian queen, Liliuokalani assumed the throne in 1891, after her brother’s death. Faced with declining royal authority, she sought to reaffirm the monarchy’s role in Hawaiian politics. In addition, she sought to lower the influence of foreign-born businessmen and landowners, many of whom were American. When they got wind of her plans, the wealthy elite conspired with the US military to depose her, and she was arrested in 1893.

Led by Sanford Dole (yes, of the Dole Food Company), the Missionary Party assumed control of the country, establishing a provincial government with the stated goal of getting the islands annexed by the US.^[10] Though the efforts were initially resisted by President Cleveland, who even unsuccessfully ordered Liliuokalani restored to the throne, Hawaii was eventually annexed in 1898. Liliuokalani went on to compose “Aloha Oe,” a song beloved ever since.

The Pilgrims who boarded the Mayflower and sailed across the ocean to America, we’re told, were trying to set up a new colony free of religious persecution—but there was a bit more to the story than that. The Pilgrims weren’t just a group of religious Puritans. The real story of the colony that one day grew into the most powerful nation in the world isn’t exactly pure.

10The Pilgrims Were Actually Escaping The Religious Tolerance Of The Dutch

The Pilgrims didn’t flee religious persecution in England by going to America—they went to the Netherlands.

Long before the Pilgrims stepped aboard the Mayflower, they settled in a Dutch city called Leiden, where they were welcomed with open arms. The Dutch let them hold Puritan services in their churches, promising that they let all honest people live freely in their nation.

And they did. The Dutch lived up to their promise—but the Puritans realized maybe religious freedom wasn’t what they wanted after all. They complained about the “extravagant and dangerous” lifestyle of the Dutch, who, they complained, were depraved enough to spend part of the Sabbath not resting. The Puritans were worried that their children might be swept away by the depraved and wild lifestyle of doing work on the Sabbath. The young Puritans, William Bradford wrote, were being “drawn away by evil examples” by “the great licentiousness of youth in that country.”^[1]

And so they boarded the Mayflower—not to escape religious persecution, which they’d already escaped by going to the Netherlands, but to escape the religious tolerance of the Dutch.

9French Pilgrims Went To America First

The Pilgrims on the Mayflower weren’t the first people to have the idea—some French settlers had already gone off to America in search of religious freedom 55 years before them. They didn’t find it. Instead, they found the Spanish, and what happened next makes it a bit easier to understand why the Puritans didn’t want to stay in Europe.

The French set up a settlement called Fort Caroline and began living lives as Lutheran Protestants, away from all the religious wars of Europe—until Europe found them. A Spanish army led by Pedro Menendez de Aviles tracked them down and killed them all, for no other reason, as he proudly explained, than “for being Lutherans.”^[2]

The Spanish climbed over the French walls with ladders, snuck into their bedrooms, and attacked. The French Pilgrim’s piousness was no match for the Spanish conquistador’s guns and their willingness to sneak into someone’s bedroom and murder him in his sleep.

132 Pilgrims died—nearly every single person there. And the Spanish conquistadors renamed the fort “Mantazas,” meaning “massacre,” to commemorate their favorite pastime.

8A Man Put His Kids On The Mayflower To Spite His Wife

The strangest names on the passenger list of the Mayflower were the More children: four unaccompanied minors, all under nine years old, sailing off to America without their parents.

The Mores were the children of Samuel and Katherine More—or, at least, that’s what Katherine told Samuel. As the kids grew older, though, Samuel started noticing that they didn’t look very much like him. Instead, looked an awful lot like Jacob Blakeway, the guy his wife kept insisting was just a friend.

Samuel More divorced his wife, but under English law, he still had legal authority over his kids. He also absolutely hated his wife, so, purely out of spite, he handed her kids off to the Puritans and bought them a one-way ticket on the Mayflower.

All but one of the kids died during the first winter. The sole survivor was Richard More, who ended up settling in Salem. Apparently, he still had his biological father’s genes—years later, he was convicted for “gross unchastity with another man’s wife.”^[3]

7Less Than Half Of The People On The Mayflower Were Puritans

Despite how we imagine it, the Mayflower wasn’t a boat full of Puritans. In fact, out of the 102 people on the boat, more than 60 were Anglicans—followers of the very religion the Puritans were trying to escape.

The Puritans let the Anglicans come with them because they needed their money. Sailing two boats to the New World and setting up a colony was expensive, and they needed investors. They made it clear, though, they weren’t part of the group. They called these Anglicans “Strangers” and called themselves “Saints.” Those two boats, though, didn’t pan out anyway. The other, the Speedwell, started leaking before they even got off the docks, and so all 102 people had to cram into the Mayflower.^[4]

By the time they’d made it to Plymouth, there were only 32 Puritans left alive. Worried that they were going to fall into “the devil’s hands,” the Puritans signed the Mayflower Compact with the Strangers, letting them elect their own governors—and then made sure a Puritan was elected every time.

6They Landed At Plymouth Because They Were Running Out Of Beer

The Puritans were against a lot of things, but beer wasn’t one of them. They drank incredibly heavily. In fact, they brought more beer with them than water. Pretty much all the Pilgrims drank was beer. Water, they explained, “spoiled quickly,” which sounds like an alcoholic father’s justification for brushing his teeth with Pabst Blue Ribbon.

By Christmas day, after months of sailing in cramped quarters, starving, and being ridden by disease, a true tragedy struck: they were running out of beer. They had to start rationing their supply, and, to the Pilgrims, this was a nightmare. “We have, divers times now and then, some beer,” William Bradford wrote in his journal, but they’d resorted to the unthinkable: “We began to drink water aboard.”^[5]

People started complaining—so they kicked them off. The first settlers were dropped off at Plymouth and forced to drink water, because the people who stayed on the boat wanted to make sure there was enough beer for themselves. They didn’t suffer long, though. They refused to. One of the very things the Pilgrims built was a brew house.

5The Pilgrims Robbed Native American Graves

When the Pilgrims landed, they expected to see a thriving Indian population all around them—but nobody was there. Other than the distant light for a few campfires at night, there wasn’t any sign of life anywhere around them. Then they started to wander out, and they found empty towns full of corn, beans—and the bones of dead men.^[6]

The natives had been wiped out by a plague, spread by the first Europeans to the area. It had wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the people in southern New England, leaving behind nothing but empty towns full of supplies just waiting for the settlers to use them. The settlers, instead of being worried about the fact that an entire country had just been wiped out took this as a sign of god’s favor. John Winthrop called it a miracle, writing, “God hath cleared our title to this place!”

They took their corn, but more than that, they literally robbed their graves. One settler wrote in his diary that he dug up a dead man’s grave and fished out all the possessions he’d been buried with. “We took several of the prettiest things to carry away with us,” he wrote, “and covered the corpse up again.”

4The First Native American They Met Asked For Beer

Not every Native American was dead. While the settlers were still setting up their camp, they made first contact with a Native American—who, out of nowhere, wandered into their camp and said, in English: “Welcome, Englishmen!”

The man’s name was Samoset. He’d met Englishmen before, and he’d picked up enough phrases to get by. He knew, at least, how to welcome an Englishman, and, more important, how to ask them for beer.

After he’d asked them enough times, the Plymouth colonists gave him “strong water,” which was enough to make him happy. Apparently, Samoset had a bit of a personality. After a while, they started politely hinting he should go home now, but they couldn’t figure out how to get rid of him.

They ended up letting him sleep off the strong water in their camp, which paid off. Samoset would ultimately save their lives several times and help them make peace treaties with the Wampanoag tribe. He also sold some of the first land in America to the Plymouth settlers—which probably wasn’t his to sell, but certainly gave the settlers a signature they could use to call the land their own.^[7]

3Squanto Had Been Sold Into Slavery Several Times

Samoset told the settlers about Squanto, a man in his tribe who could speak English even better than he could. He wasn’t lying. Squanto spoke English nearly as well as the Englishmen themselves.

There was a reason. Six years before, Squanto had met another famous settler: Thomas Hunt, John Smith’s successor at the Jamestown Colony. Hunt had kidnapped him and 23 other natives and sold them into slavery in Spain. From there, Squanto was sold again to an Englishman, who taught him to English and brought him to Newfoundland to work as his interpreter. While in Newfoundland, he was sold again, this time to Thomas Dermer, who took him to Massachusetts. By a miracle of chance, Squanto made it back to his home. By the time he’d arrived, though, everyone he’d known was dead, wiped out by the plague.

Squanto ended up with the Wampanoag when Dermer was taken hostage. He won his freedom, and, in an act of mercy, convinced them to let Dermer go alive. And that was how he ended up the tribe’s interpreter to the Plymouth Colony—a colony that was built, as he realized when he met them, directly on top of his family’s grave.^[8]

2Squanto Went Mad With Power

Squanto never extracted revenge on the settlers. Instead, he helped them so much that, without his help, some believe, the settlers wouldn’t have survived. He taught them to grow maize, to catch eels, and helped them negotiate with the nearby tribes.

In time, though, he got a little carried away. He was the tribe’s connection the European settlers—and that made him their connection to guns and technology. He started making people give him gifts in exchange for a few good words with the English, and at least once threatened that, if they didn’t do what he said, he would make the Englishmen release the plague again.^[9]

One of his tricks went too far. He got mad at Massosit, the chief of the Wampanoag tribe, and decided this time he was going to show them he was bluffing. He’d really get the Englishmen to kill him. So, he tricked the Englishmen into believed that Massosit was planning on killing them all, trying to convince them to strike him first.

When they realized it was all made up, Massosit demanded Squanto’s head. The Englishmen were going to do it, too—but when they realized how doomed they were without his help, they had to side with Squanto, who, it turns out, really was as important as he thought he was.

1They Hung A Dead Man’s Head Over Their Fort

Peace didn’t last long. Even with all the empty villages around them and the help of people like Squanto and Samoset, the settlers were starving. It was a just a matter of time before the harshness of life broke out into war—and when it did, it was brutal.

Things were particularly bad in the nearby Wessagusset Settlement. They were starving so badly that, when one of their Pilgrims stole corn from the Pecksuot Tribe, they agreed to hang him for it. They needed the help of their native neighbors so badly that they were willing to kill their own people.

The Pecksuot Tribe, though, wasn’t totally satisfied, and a rumor that they were plotting to destroy the white presence in America reached the Plymouth Colony. It was the same sort of rumor they’d ignored before, when Squanto spread it, but they’d been in America for a few years now, and they were harder, more cynical people. So, a group from the Plymouth Colony, led by Myles Standish, took care of it.

They invited the best warriors from the Pecksuot tribe over for dinner. Then they locked the door, stabbed them to death, chopped off the chief’s brother’s head, and placed it on the roof the blockhouse, next to flag made from a cloth soaked in his blood.^[10]