Prehistory squeezed out an inexhaustible list of captivating creatures. Everyone already knows about the raptors, mammoths, saber-tooth tigers, and similarly legendary beasts, but that’s barely scratching the surface of nature’s creativity.

From sea lion–like whales that popped above water to give birth to the VW Beetle–sized armadillo that gave up its shell for the benefit of humanity to a terrible armored frog that snatched up cute little baby dinosaurs, the prehistoric world was teeming with fascinating but little-known life-forms.

10 Primitive Whales That Gave Birth On Land

Protocetids, the primitive whales of 50 million years ago, looked mind-blowingly goofy. They were relatively small, only about 2–5 meters (7–16 ft) long. And they had four ridiculous limbs that ended in hoofed flippers.

These weird appendages allowed creatures like Maiacetus inuus to flop about on land like a sea lion as the lineage of early whales split from their goatlike and cowlike ancestors and took to the waves.^[1]

Protocetids fed in the water but emerged onto land for other daily activities, including sleeping, mating, and giving birth.

One delectably rare fossil of a pregnant mother and her unborn calf supports the land-birth theory. The 48-million-year-old calf is positioned headfirst in the womb like land mammals whereas aquatic creatures are positioned tailfirst to avoid drowning before the end of labor.

9 Bus-Sized Crocodiles That Ruled The Seas

Machimosaurus rex was discovered within 120-million-year-old rocks on the edge of the Sahara in Tunisia in an area that was once an ocean-facing lagoon.^[2]

Like the modern crocs on Nat Geo and Science, Machimosaurus made its living as an ambush predator. It snapped up sea creatures as well as land creatures that ventured too close to the shore. And with its short, rounded teeth, it could have easily ground prehistory’s large turtles into dust.

It’s the largest sea-dwelling crocodile ever—three tons and 9 meters (30 ft) of fury—with a skull that surpasses 1.5 meters (5 ft) in length.

8 Bitey Otters That Grew As Large As Wolves

Around six million years ago, the wetlands and swampy forests of southwest China housed wolf-sized otters that could mess you up spectacularly. The 50-kilogram (110 lb) Siamogale melilutra wasn’t just big, it was a top predator with a surprisingly strong bite.

Typically, jaw sturdiness decreases as otter size increases. But S. melilutra was an evolutionary outlier with jaws that killed and crunched much larger, tougher prey than any existing otter.

Unlike modern otters that feast on plants and small animals, including rodents and crabs, S. melilutra chomped through the thicker shells of large mollusks and turtles and even through bird bones for additional nutriment.^[3]

7 A Dinosaur Equipped With Sails

Amargasaurus was a sauropod (think brontosaurus but smaller) about 9 meters (30 ft) in length and relatively light at just three tons. It lived during the Cretaceous period 130 million years ago and munched on plants.

But unlike other sauropods, it had two rows of spines that ran down its neck and back. The spines are of uncertain purpose, but maybe they were covered in bone and used for self-defense.^[4]

Alternatively (and the cooler option), the spines may be scaffolding for two parallel sails.

These impressive skin flaps could have helped to dissipate heat. Or the sail may have been used for mating displays and then was evolutionarily selected because lady Amargasauruses preferred prominent spines and sails—and you know they all did.

6 Ankylosaurs Survived Thanks To Nasal Air Conditioning Systems

Massive dinosaurs like the heavily horned and armored ankylosaurs countered their higher risk of overheating with convoluted nasal passages that worked as a natural AC.

In addition to smelling things, noses also heat and humidify inhaled air. In birds and mammals like us, a furl of bones and cartilage improves heat exchange by increasing surface area. But for ankylosaurs like the hippo-sized Panoplosaurus and the rhino-sized Euoplocephalus, evolution followed a different route.

CT scanning and fluid dynamics revealed “insanely long nasal passages coiled up in their snouts” which researchers liken to crazy straws. And they helped a lot. Just by playing with nasal passage geometry, evolution found a way to increase the gigantic dinosaurs’ heat-transfer rates by 50 percent.^[5]

5 Pterosaurs May Have Been Feathered

Around 230 million to 66 million years ago, the fearsome flying reptiles known as pterosaurs ruled the skies and terrorized the dinosaurs. And it goes that pterosaurs were covered in fur-like pycnofibers.

But recent research contends that they sported a full spectrum of feathers, according to 160-million-year-old remains uncovered at the Daohugou Formation in Mongolia. The remains are so finely maintained by nature’s serendipity that they apparently preserved detail all the way down to the individual feather.

They also suggest that pterosaurs had four different types of feathers about 80 million years before such things appeared on dinosaurs and birds.^[6]

4 Glyptodon Shells Provided Prehistoric Shelters

The Glyptodon was an ancient armadillo. Like other prehistoric beasts, evolution scaled it up to “holy crap” proportions. This giant antediluvian ‘dillo grew to 3 meters (10 ft) in length and weighed a ton, matching a Volkswagen Beetle.

Like the modern armadillo, it carried dome-like armor made of bony plates. But other than its appearance, it wasn’t too threatening to others because it ate plants in its native South American swamplands. It didn’t even have a weaponized club-tail like its fellow glyptodonts.

The Glyptodon showed up on the evolutionary scene two million years ago and disappeared around 10,000 years ago—probably with a lot of help from human hunters, who sometimes used its discarded shell for temporary shelter.^[7]

3 The Frog That Ate Baby Dinosaurs

Meet Beelzebufo ampinga, the armored devil frog which definitely merited its name.

The pugnacious Beelzebufo lived around 70 million years ago in Madagascar, the land of oddities. And it was disgustingly big. It weighed in at 5 kilograms (10 lb) and measured 41 centimeters (16 in) in length like a bumpy, slimy beach ball.

It had a cranial shield to protect its noggin and insane bite strength which helped it to ambush its prey, as per modern horned frogs. According to researchers, it could have crunched baby dinosaurs with a bite that imparted 2,200 newtons, as much force as a wolf or even a tiger.^[8]

2 Beaked, Turkey-Sized Ornithopods That Swarmed Prehistoric Plains

Some of the most successful dinosaurs of all time—such as the ornithopods—weren’t at all fierce. The ornithopods were bipedal plant grazers that became one of the most successful groups during the Cretaceous period 146 million to 66 million years ago.

Based on scant remains, including a complement of tail bones and a bit of foot found in Australia, researchers pieced together the ornithopods’ Diluvicursor pickeringi. This beaked, turkey-sized animal straddled the edge of the Antarctic Circle 113 million years ago when Antarctica and Australia were still connected.

This dino was built for agile running with a short, muscular tail and stout, powerful legs. But it only terrorized plant life, feasting on mosses, ferns, seeds, lichens, and possibly flowers.^[9]

1 Unicorns Did Exist

Unicorns did exist. But they were horrifying and awesome and probably gored an early human or two with a horn that measured more than 1 meter (3 ft) in length.

It was known as Elasmotherium sibiricum, and records show it split off from modern rhinos about 40 million years ago. At 3.5 tons, it was tanklike and twice the size of extant rhinos, although its anatomy was built running.

Researchers thought that the “Siberian unicorn” died out about 100,000–200,000 years ago. But now they say it didn’t disappear until much more recently—39,000 years ago.

Luckily for us, as climate change delivered Earth from an ice age, it also destroyed the Siberian unicorn’s primary food source of tough, dry grasses and dumped it into the evolutionary reject pile.^[10]

Ivan writes about neat things for the Internet. You can contact him at [email protected].

Of the crazy and speculative theories out there (and there are many as we all know), those that revolve around the notion that human beings are not indigenous to the Earth are perhaps the craziest. The idea is that we, or rather our ancestors, were brought here from another world, most likely as prisoners condemned to a life on a planet far from the rest of our ancestral law-obeying society somewhere in the reaches of space. (It is perhaps worth noting that some theories suggest our original “cosmic ancestors” bred with Neanderthals and so produced humans.)

One of the loudest voices in these outlandish claims is Dr. Ellis Silver, who contends that there are just too many differences between humans and every other life-form on the planet for us to be a truly indigenous species. While most, as you might expect, reject his claims as nonsense, they are intriguing nonetheless, and certainly worth looking at in a little more detail. Ellis calls his idea the “prison planet theory.”

10 So, What Is The Prison Planet Theory?

Like the name suggests, the prison planet theory and others like it speculate that human beings are not the product of evolution alone.^[1] It’s important here, right away, to clarify that these theories are not suggesting that evolution doesn’t exist, or is wrong, but that, at some point in our collective past, we were subject to some kind of outside manipulation. In fact, more than that, the prison planet theory suggests that we are, in fact, the descendants of prisoners from an alien world who were brought here in antiquity, eventually spreading, multiplying, and, as our history attests, setting out to dominate the planet, most likely shortly after arrival.

While most dismiss this idea, as speculative as it is, without any further investigation, an intriguing argument can be made as to its relevance. After all, human beings, for all their obvious flaws and faults, are far, far, more advanced than other living things on the planet. For example, why do other animals not invent, philosophize, organize politically, or aim to build machines to explore the world and, indeed, the stars? Incidentally, it would seem that only humans have such a fascination with the stars and what might lie beyond in the reaches of space. Perhaps this is an indicator of a subconscious calling?

9 Humans Have Persistent Chronic Illness

The prison planet theory suggests that most human beings, even those of us who are extremely healthy, suffer from chronic “illnesses,” albeit ones that are trivial when isolated.^[2] Think about it—when was the last time you felt truly “good?” No little niggles or twitches. No headache, or hay fever, or any manner of small annoyances that are barely significant enough to mention but seemingly plague each one of us.

Perhaps we should also look at humans’ reaction to the Sun, one of the main keys to our existence. Many other animals can sit out in the sunlight all day long with no effect to their health (generally speaking). However, humans will be sunburned within hours, while long-term exposure can sometimes result in a variety of skin cancers. We also squint our eyes in reaction to the Sun, unlike other animals. Even the fact that we have only a tiny auditory frequency range and can only see a very tiny sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum could be indicators of a home planet other than Earth.

8 Constant Back Pain

Perhaps the “niggle” which affects the greatest number of people is back pain.^[3] Most of us will have suffered a “bad back” at some point in our lives. And for many of us, that pain is a constant on-off, “good days/bad days” battle of fending off increasing aches, spasms, and, at worst, a complete locking up of this region of the body that’s so critically important for our functioning.

So why is this? Well, according to those who believe the prison planet theory, it’s due to a lower level of gravity on our “real” home planet. This higher-than-we-were-designed-for gravity on Earth is (taking into account the relative tallness of humans) what causes so many people’s backs so much strain. Such researchers as Ellis Silver, as trivial as this point is, believe this to be one of the main indicators that Earth is not our natural home. He argues, for example, that our flat feet should suggest a much shorter being (relatively speaking) than the average human. Needless to say, his suggestions are not entertained by most.

7 Humans Are Actually Better-Suited To A 25-Hour Day

As is corroborated by the research of sleep experts, the human body clock is much more in sync with a 25-hour day as opposed to the 24-hour one that our bodies have to work with. Quite a few sleep problems are blamed on this.^[4] There could be many reasons for the disparity, including that the Earth’s natural rotation speed has decreased a very tiny bit over the course of humanity’s collective time on the planet.

However, some researchers suggest that our “real” home planet very much had a rotational period of 25 hours, and the fact that our own natural body clock is still set at this would suggest that we came from somewhere else in the solar system, or even the universe. We will look at possible destinations of our potential cosmic ancestors in our last entry on our list. Our next entry, however, will look at the function most crucial to life—any life, wherever it is—reproduction, as well as why, for humans, this natural and required function is perhaps one of the hardest things their bodies are ever asked to do.

6 The Many Complications Of Human Childbirth

One of the main focuses of Ellis Silver in particular (but other researchers as well) is the truly traumatic experience that childbirth is for women.^[5] He claims that this is not replicated anywhere else in the animal kingdom, where births tend to be routine, uncomplicated, and, for want of a better phrase, easy (as much as that might be a little bit of a simplistic take on the issue).

While childbirth, at least for women in developed parts of the world with modern hospitals and medicine, is rarely a life-threatening experience, even today, there are still a plethora of complications that can arise, and unfortunate women still lose their lives. When we think back to the times before modern medicine, death in childbirth was much more commonplace. Like many of the examples on this list, this appears to be something completely unique to human beings. And, as we will look at next, it isn’t just childbirth but the first several years of human development that would appear to unique, albeit for the wrong reasons.

5 Slower Development Of Human Offspring

Childbirth isn’t the only thing of interest in terms of the prison planet theory. Even the development, or lack thereof, of human offspring is strange to some.^[6] For example, many young of the animal kingdom can walk within days, if not less. Human babies, on the other hand, are entirely helpless and remain that way for years.

It is suggested by some researchers sympathetic to the work of people like Silver that the human gestation period should be much longer. It is an interesting theory, although one hard to prove to any level beyond speculation. And even then, such speculation is pushing the limits of common sense, at least to some.

However, some people, particularly those who subscribe to the ancient astronaut theory, will tell you that this “abnormality” in the human gestation period is down to some kind of “interference” with the human genome long ago in the distant past that has resulted in this “premature” birthing of human young. And human genes are the subject of our next entry.

4 Extra DNA In Human Beings

A study published in Nature concluded that humans have an extra 223 genes, acquired during our evolution from bacteria. What if they’re not from bacteria? Might those genes be the reason for the absolute advancement of human beings by comparison to all other living creatures? And what about non-coding DNA, colloquially referred to as “junk DNA?” Might it be leftover DNA from an alien world and alien ancestors? It’s a wild thought, for sure.

It should be noted that other researchers did not fully accept the finding of 223 extra genes and publicly challenged it.^[7] Whether their challenge is legitimate or whether it is another case of mainstream academia looking to silence any voices that go against accepted thinking is perhaps open to debate.

3 General Anxiety

Although it is hard to see how completely “accurate” records of such a claim are kept and analyzed, another apparent consequence of our purported cosmic provenance is a constant feeling of anxiety throughout humanity.^[8] While you could make a pretty solid argument that our fellow humans—particularly those in power—give us all plenty to be anxious about without having to bring alien ancestry into the equation, it is certainly an interesting speculation.

There are also increasing rates of depression and suicide (itself an act almost unique to humans) taking over many parts of the world. Again, there are many grim and legitimate reasons for this, such as increasing poverty and pressures at work (and their implicit threat of poverty), as well as more indirect factors, such as political and social division, that make many people feel utterly helpless, in a hopeless situation over which they have no control. This, in some people, leads to feelings of detachment and “not belonging.”

Might it be down to a subconscious longing for a “home” many light years away and an existence just as far away, at least figuratively? Unlikely as it might be, it is an interesting notion.

2 How Likely Is It? Just Look At Our Own Examples!

So, taking away the logistics of such an operation for a moment,^[9] how likely is it that an alien mission to banish undesirables to Earth would go ahead? Well, if we assume a spacefaring extraterrestrial race has the ability to visit other planets, either in their own solar system or elsewhere, then why wouldn’t they transplant the unsavory elements of their society to a world far away?

After all, look at the many examples through history where we ourselves have banished prisoners to secluded locales, sometimes literally on the other side of the world (think Australia), or to gulags in the most dismal and uninhabitable terrain, as happened regularly in the Soviet Union. And while it is a little different in it’s only a small island in the San Francisco Bay, Alcatraz was, for all intents and purposes, a prison island.

1 The Asteroid Belt Connection

An offshoot of the prison planet theory revolves around all the points raised above; the only difference is that our theoretical ancestors were not prisoners but cosmic refugees escaping a destroyed planet. While many argue that this planet was Mars (and point to the theory that life could have existed there long ago), others suggest it to be a planet that once resided where the asteroid belt is today.^[10]

Might our potential cosmic ancestors have escaped a dying planet or one that was struck by a huge cosmic body? Might some of the population have managed to escape and settled on another world nearby? (Namely Earth.) Might this even offer a partial explanation for the plethora of ancient texts that speak about “beings who came from the stars?” Might these be accounts of our origins that have, over time, become twisted and misinterpreted into the equally ambiguous and suggestive writings we have today?

Perhaps this would also explain the 25-hour default setting in our internal body clocks? Might this planet—if we accept for the sake of this argument that it was a planet—have had such a rotational period? Might it also have had a lower level of gravity which would better suit us, even today?

Whether the suggestion is that we’re descended from prisoners from another world or survivors of an extraterrestrial race seeking sanctuary from their ruined planet, the idea that we, as a species, may share those cosmic roots is certainly food for thought.

All claims of UFOs and alien encounters are, by their very nature, a little bizarre and outlandish. Some of them, however, are just a little too outrageous for even the most enthusiastic and dedicated UFO researcher to believe, at least not in their entirety.

And while the following ten stories are most likely not genuine, there remains a tiny sliver of doubt; they might not be complete fabrications, either. So, with a huge pinch of salt with extra helpings, here are ten UFO and alien encounter claims that are just a little too unbelievable.

10 George Adamski—An Authentic Initial Sighting That Descended Into Lies?

The first person on our list is also one of the most well-known. And at one point, George Adamski was very much considered the “real deal” in terms of contact with an extraterrestrial race.^[1] Even today, there is disagreement among UFO circles as to whether his initial purported encounters were actually genuine, though plenty of believers in those are still sure that Adamski went on to fabricate and outright manufacture more stories, whether for money, attention, or both.

True or not, beginning in November 1952, after several months of “channeled directions,” he would reportedly witness and capture a picture of a “flying saucer” (shown above) from his California home. By the time Adamski was making claims of trips to the Moon, Venus, and various other locations in outer space, even his most ardent supporters were beginning to distance themselves. If there was any truth in the initial claims of George Adamski, it is a real shame that what appears to be obvious fabrication and outright manufacturing of events will overshadow it.

9 Elizabeth Klarer Conceives An Alien Child On Another Planet

At around the same time that Adamski was making his claims in the late 1950s, in South Africa, Elizabeth Klarer would state not only that she made contact with an alien life-form but that she had gone to his home world and conceived a child with him.^[2] In fact, many skeptics would point out how many details of her claims were almost identical to those of Adamski.

According to Klarer, she successfully “called down” the alien she called “Akon,” who would arrive in his scout ship. From there, they would transfer to the main mother ship and then travel to Meton, Akon’s home planet, which, according to Klarer, was in the Alpha Centauri system.

However, the son they conceived would remain with Akon on Meton. As you might imagine, this did little for Klarer’s credibility. She would nevertheless stick to her story, despite the fact that she was almost universally not believed.

8 Ludwig Pallmann Develops Friendship With Race Of Aliens

In the mid-1960s, German businessman Ludwig Pallman would claim to have discovered an alien base in Brazil and, furthermore, to have established contact with its occupants.^[3]

He had first made contact with one of these mysterious visitors on a Bombay (now called Mumbai) train around 1964. He began speaking with him and noticed how strange his voice was and how perfectly white his hair glowed. He would meet the same figure again later, learning that his name was, according to Pallmann, Satu Ra. When he was on business in South America several years later, he would meet up with the apparent alien being once more, as well as members of his family.

Among the many claims made by Pallmann is that the alien visitors were running various programs and experiments with the “terrestrial fruit,” which they were hybridizing at their secret bases on the planet. Furthermore, he was given a crystal ring that would glow and heat up slightly when the aliens were nearby.

Perhaps one of the most outlandish of Pallman’s stories, if only because of its humanlike quality, is of hearing of a disaster that had befallen an alien ship on another planet. One of the aliens he had been introduced to previously (named Xiti) was apparently killed. Shortly after this event, coincidentally or not, came several sightings of a large silver disc where Pallmann claimed the aliens had their base.

Needless to say, while many in the UFO community are aware of Pallman’s alleged encounter, most distance themselves from such claims.

7 Walter Rizzi Develops Telepathic Abilities After Chance Meeting With Aliens

Although the details of the encounter are not particularly outlandish, there is still a persistent feeling among many in UFO circles that a pinch of salt should perhaps be at the ready when it comes to the claims of Walter Rizzi from Bolzano, Italy, which he would make ten years after a supposed incident in 1978.^[4]

After pulling his car to the side of the road near an underpass to get some sleep, Rizzi would awaken to see a disc-shaped craft hovering near his vehicle. Even more concerning was the humanoid entity making his way toward him. The being would communicate with Rizzi using telepathy. It is perhaps interesting to note that, similar to Pallmann’s story, the alien Rizzi met described how they were looking for vegetation, fruit, and minerals that are rich on planet Earth and of great value to them.

In a similar manner to many sightings of the time (although we should remember that Rizzi waited a decade before speaking of the encounter), the witness would state that he was warned of an impending disaster that would affect around 80 percent of the planet.

6 Carroll Watts Learns That Aliens Are Watching Humans As They Near The Cosmos

Perhaps, by comparison to many others on this list, the claims of Carroll Watts are relatively pedestrian. However, there are many who remain suspicious, with some noting Watts’s desire for financial return regarding the sightings, all of which took place over a period of six months during 1967 in Wellington, Texas.^[5]

He would claim to first witness a cigar-shaped craft while driving between fields and buildings on the family farm. He approached the object, which hovered low to the ground, and was asked by a voice that was “neither masculine or feminine” if he was “willing to submit to a rigorous physical examination.” If he passed, he would be allowed to travel with the occupants into space.

Although he would initially decline this invitation, in subsequent meetings, he agreed and ultimately went into space with the aliens. According to the “conversation” that took place during this cosmic journey, he was informed that these alien visitors would regularly “come and go as they pleased” from the Earth. Perhaps more worryingly, he was informed that many alien races in space were concerned with humanity’s apparent impending arrival in the cosmos and of humans becoming a spacefaring race.

5 Howard Menger Meets His Former Lover From A Past Life On Venus

According to alleged contactee Howard Menger, he was invited aboard a UFO in the summer of 1956.^[6] He not only was taken into outer space and to the Moon, but he claimed to have witnessed alien civilizations and huge structures on its surface.

An already bizarre set of encounters would turn even weirder, though, when a strange woman would attend a lecture Menger was giving on the subject of contact with “space brothers and sisters.” The woman’s name was Connie Weber. It was Menger’s belief that he and Weber had once been a couple during a past life they had shared on Venus. Rather than leaving such a notion at that, Menger promptly divorced his wife and began a relationship with Weber.

Perhaps even stranger was a television interview he would give in 1960, in which he stated that he the entire story was false. However, rather than admit that he had simply made the account up for notoriety or even money, he stated that he was part of a top secret military experiment to test public reaction to alien contact, a claim which, like his original one, would divide opinion.

4 Luciano Galli Takes A Trip Into Space During His Lunch Hour

In July 1957, Italian businessman Luciano Galli was returning back to work in Rome following his lunch break when a black car suddenly pulled up alongside him.^[7] The window wound down, and a gentleman with “piercing black eyes” leaned out. He asked Galli if he remembered him.

Galli was about to respond that he didn’t when a sudden wave of memories washed through his mind, making him realize that he did, indeed, remember the strange man. He had seen him previously on the streets of Rome. The man asked Galli if he would like to go with them, and he ultimately got into the back of the vehicle. They would drive to the outskirts of the city, where a “saucer-shaped UFO” was waiting for them. After they boarded it, the craft shot off into the sky.

The spaceship would take them to a huge mother ship, which Galli was then given a tour of. He was ultimately returned to the spot from where he was taken. While many would struggle to believe his account (he would claim that he “didn’t care what people thought”), there were several similar reports around the world in 1957 that perhaps lend him a bit of credibility.

3 Hubert Lewis Meets Aliens From Venus Living Among Us

According to newsagent Hubert Lewis, in 1957, he witnessed a disc-shaped object and its occupants while cycling through the town of Church Stretton in Shropshire in order to pick up newspapers.^[8] When a tall figure appeared in the road in front of him, Lewis demanded to know who this stranger was, almost without thinking. The occupant replied that the newsagent need not fear him.

The two would speak for around half an hour, the metallic disc hovering in the background all the while. As their conversation progressed, the wind, which had previously been relatively brisk, seemed to drop (although, strangely, Lewis could still hear it).

Following the meeting, Lewis claimed to have developed certain psychic abilities. Furthermore, he claimed to receive visits from “high-ranking police officers” who would advise him to “forget certain matters,” advice to which he initially agreed. However, several months later, he would encounter the alien beings and their craft again, this time in a field. He was informed, he would claim, that the aliens were from the planet Venus and were living in disguise among the population on Earth.

2 Sir Peter Horsley Talks With An Alien In A London Sitting Room

Sir Peter Horsley had a remarkable career in the Royal Air Force (RAF). Indeed, at his height, he was the deputy commander-in-chief of RAF Strike Command.^[9] However, in 1997, after he’d retired, he released the book Sounds From Another Room, in which he recounted speaking with an extraterrestrial being in a dark room in a London house. As a result, he was almost universally cut adrift by his military colleagues.

Horsley stated how he was invited in 1954 to meet a “Mr. Janus,” who would speak to the military man from a shadowy corner of the room. Horsley wrote about how he had the distinct feeling that Janus was able to read his mind. Furthermore, he would keep firm control of the conversation at all times. The conversation revolved around Britain’s future nuclear capabilities, and Janus demonstrated an intricate knowledge of the British military, as if to convince Horsley of his authenticity.

It was following this meeting that Horsley began to rise rapidly up the ranks of the RAF. Whether that rise is connected to the meeting with Janus is open to debate. However, despite the bizarre nature of Horsley’s claims, it would be strange for such a decorated individual to choose to draw attention to himself for no good reason.

1 Gosta Carlsson Develops Pharmaceutical Companies Following Meeting With Aliens

Whatever the authenticity of the claims of Swedish ice hockey player Gosta Carlsson, a location in the town of Angelholm now boasts a concrete memorial to the affair.^[10]

Carlsson claimed that while he was walking in the country in May 1946, he witnessed a strange saucer-shaped craft landing in a nearby field. Furthermore, the occupants of the craft ventured outside and communicated with him, even passing on natural remedy recipes.

So valuable was this meeting that Carlsson would go on to found two pharmaceutical companies. He was ultimately very successful and went on to become the owner of the first professional ice hockey team in Sweden. All of this success, according to Carlsson, was down to the chance meeting with extraterrestrials that afternoon in Angelholm.

Needless to say, many people, even in the UFO community, struggle to believe his story, at least in full. Whether his account is true or not, the monument is one of only two pertaining to UFO incidents in all of Europe, the other one being in Poland to mark the Emilicin encounter.

Without getting too deep in the weeds in explaining the Theory of Evolution, it is an established scientific theory that explains the evolution of species. It’s one of those things people who understand it fully support, those who kind of get it don’t consider, and the people who see it as a rejection of their faith obsessively oppose.

Over the years since Darwin and Wallace established an understanding of Natural Selection, which is the basis for the theory, many strange and bizarre claims have emerged trying to dispute it. Some are well known while others are only found in the deepest, darkest recesses of the Internet. Here are the ten most bizarre claims made by people trying to prove Evolution is “Just a theory.”

See Also: 10 Ways Evolution Made Humans Worse

10 Evolution Is Just A Theory

As any scientist will tell you, a theory in science is not the same thing as that idea you get when you’re trying to figure out who stole your pudding out of the shared office fridge. In science, a theory is a collection of observable and testable facts compiled over a usually extended period of time by a wide number of people. Consider the Theory of Gravity or the Theory of Planetary Motion. These aren’t guesses people like Copernicus, Newton, and Kepler made while sitting in the tub one evening… They collected data over years of study and compiled them into a theory that has since been tested, proven, disproven, added to, and changed.

The beauty of a scientific theory is that it is not set in stone. Nothing is absolute, as any new observation can change it. The current Theory of Evolution contains observations made that were impossible in Darwin and Wallace’s day. With new technologies and advancements allowing for the study of individual cells, DNA, and other aspects of life, the theory has changed significantly since it was first forwarded in the 19th century. The claim that “Evolution is just a theory” serves only to prove the person saying it doesn’t understand what a theory is—it doesn’t prove Evolution isn’t true.^[1]

9 The Fossil Record Is Incomplete

Of course, the fossil record is incomplete. When an organism is fossilized, it has essentially won the prize few animals or plants ever achieve. Fossilization is a truly rare event, which only occurs when the perfect situation allows for it. An organism has to be in the right place at the right time for their body to be fossilized, and that doesn’t guarantee the fossil will survive for millions of years to be found by humans. Because of this, the tiniest fraction of living organisms are ever fossilized and found. Granted, we have found millions of fossils, but if you consider the number of living organisms that have existed on the planet since life first arose, the number is infinitesimally small.

Because fossils are so rare, we are constantly finding new organisms that fit into the record to help explain the changes seen over time that lead to new species arising. Whenever this occurs, it provides new answers, but also creates new questions. Those who don’t believe in evolution point to these so-called “gaps” as the reason Evolution is false. The animated series Futurama once did a great bit on how each time a new species was found to fill a gap, a new gap was created. There will always be “missing links” in the fossil record, but none that disproves the theory.^[2]

8 It Relies Too Heavily On Chance Making It Mathematically Impossible

Back in 1973, an article was published in an issue of Acts & Facts, which outlined the Creationist stance of “The Mathematical Impossibility of Evolution.” The article fails in a number of respects, but like most arguments against evolution in favor of the Biblical story of Creation, it shows that the author, Henry M. Morris, Ph.D. didn’t fully understand the theory he was attempting to disprove. Despite this, people have raised the mathematical impossibility of evolution ever since.

The postulation argues that because mutations occur randomly, and only the so-called “good” mutations are retained, the time needed for single-cell organisms to evolve into mankind is impossible. Dr. Morris threw some numbers out, which suggests that an organism with 200 successive mutations would require a chance of on in 1060 ((10 to the 60th power)). It seems his position relies on the total misunderstanding of how natural selection works, but this hasn’t stopped people from raising this issue whenever they argue against the Theory of Evolution.^[3]

7 Evolution Has Never Been Observed

The argument that evolution has never been observed, is not testable, and isn’t falsifiable is patently false. Regardless, this claim comes up a lot on the Internet, and it generally stems from the incorrect assumption that an animal of one species has offspring of a completely different species. This isn’t how evolution… or any aspect of biology works. These claims are often brought up with another misconception related to microevolution and macroevolution. The former looks at changes within species over time, while the latter involves changes that may result in speciation.

Macroevolution can be observed in the fossil record, and through DNA analysis, though it does take a considerable amount of time, but microevolution can be observed. Because microevolution revolves around the study of changes in gene frequency within a population, it can be observed in much shorter periods of time. Insects work well in this area due to their short life cycle. One example that’s easy to explain shows how populations of insects pass on a gene responsible for pesticide resistance to subsequent generations. This reduces the efficacy of pesticides and shows how the DNA changes from one generation to the next, ultimately rendering that pesticide ‘mostly harmless’ to the population.^[4]

6It Defies The Second Law Of Thermodynamics

The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that “the state of entropy of the entire universe, as an isolated system, will always increase over time. The 2nd Law also states that the changes in the entropy in the universe can never be negative.” When the 2nd Law is brought up by people attempting to disprove evolution, all they manage to do is prove they don’t understand the 2nd Law. The argument suggests that living cells could never have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and similarly, multicellular life couldn’t have evolved from protozoa due to an increase in complexity.

The misunderstanding would also apply to something like a snowflake, which is a complex structure that forms from disorderly parts, but as we all know, snowflakes exist. Essentially, the misunderstanding of a closed system is the reason this argument is often cited. The planet Earth is not a closed system, as energy from the sun can increase complexity. Similarly, multicellular life can increase in complexity by consuming—absorbing lower forms of life, which effectively balances out the purported decrease in entropy across the universe.^[5]

5Not All Scientists Support It So It Must Be False

This argument always comes about when someone attempts to poke holes in the Theory of Evolution by saying it isn’t supported 100% by scientists. That may be true, but if only four out of five dentists can get behind a product, which amounts to 80% support, does that mean the product is absolutely worthless? Conversely, in terms of biologists who understand and accept the Theory of Evolution, it’s more like 98%. Frankly, it’s not possible to work in biology without a proper understanding of Evolution, but that’s not necessarily true of scientists who work in other fields, which may account for the 2%.

The numbers of people who don’t work in a scientific field are far different. Roughly three-quarters of Americans believe that there is a scientific consensus regarding the evolution of life. When people who don’t support the Theory of Evolution were polled in a Pew Research Study, 46% believed there was a scientific consensus, while 52% believed that most biological scientists believe humans (and other forms of life) have always existed in their present form. The difference is staggering, but it’s easy to see why this argument is often raised in an attempt to disprove evolution. Of course, to be intellectually honest we do need to say that while a lack of consensus doesn’t disprove a theory, a total consensus doesn’t prove a theory either. Science is not a popularity contest.^[6]

4 Evolution Cannot Explain How Life First Appeared On Earth

Evolution is the study of how life changes over time, it has absolutely nothing to do with the origin of life, but most people who don’t understand what evolutionary theory is, bring this argument up often. Evolution certainly has a lot to do with what happened to life after it first appeared, but it doesn’t deal with how life got there in the first place. The area of study that revolves around the origin of life is called abiogenesis, and it deals with the prevailing scientific hypothesis that a single event caused non-living materials to transition into living ones, though that event has yet to be identified.

That’s when evolution would step into the equation, not before, and it doesn’t attempt to explain how life started. Even if the scientific community accepts the theory that life began through some extraterrestrial or supernatural means, the evolution of organisms over the following 3.5+ billion years is observable and quantifiable. That being said, biochemists have discovered a means by which primitive nucleic acids and amino acids may have formed and organized into self-replicating units, which could have been the event by which inanimate ingredients formed into the foundational elements of cellular biochemistry, but that’s not the Theory of Evolution.^[7]

3 If Humans Evolved From Monkeys Then Why Are There Still Monkeys?

For some reason, this question is one that is often repeated by people attempting to disprove evolution, but the answer is simple. Humans didn’t evolve from monkeys. That should settle the argument, but sadly, it rarely works in quieting the question. Humans are hominids, which is a family of animals known as the great apes. These include humans, chimpanzees, orangutan, gorillas, and bonobo. Humans remain the only surviving species of the genus homo, which once included Neanderthals, Homo erectus, and many more.

Monkeys, on the other hand, are simians who do share a common ancestor with humans and other members of the primate order. Humans are most closely related to chimpanzees, who share a common ancestor dating back some six to seven million years. Monkeys and humans’ common ancestry extends much further in the fossil record. The common ancestor between monkeys and humans lived about 25 million years ago. This argument has no basis in fact and instead relies on a misunderstanding of how speciation works in transitioning one species to another.^[8]

2 The Banana Argument

Ray Comfort is a New Zealand creationist and televangelist, who once used a banana as an example of the so-called theory of Intelligent Design. Comfort attempted to explain that “the banana and the hand are perfectly made, one for the other.” He believed that the human hand was designed to hold a banana, which was shaped perfectly for our enjoyment. He further declared the peel was nature’s way of keeping bananas safe and edible for people, it has a tab at the top for easy opening, and it, therefore, disproved evolution and proved God’s existence. Here’s the problem with his claim; modern bananas are the product of years of human-imposed genetic manipulation through cross-pollination, and if it proves anything, it’s that species can change over time, as bananas are an example of human-manipulation of evolutionary mechanisms.

Wild bananas are small, filled with seeds, and they taste terrible. Eventually, Comfort admitted his mistake/misunderstanding of how modern bananas came to be, saying he “was not aware that the common banana had been so modified through hybridization.” Intelligent Design was created as an attempt at bringing Creationism into the classroom by claiming it was another theory that could explain the origin of life. It didn’t take long for lawsuits and common sense to win in the end, but Creationists still try to push Intelligent Design as a viable theory, which should be taught in biology classrooms.^[9]

1 The Crocoduck

Unfortunately, Ray Comfort’s use of the banana to explain his beliefs against evolution didn’t stop with the fruit. Comfort paired up with Kirk Cameron of Growing Pains fame to refute the existence of transitional fossils, which are organisms found in the fossil record showing traits of a parent and descendant species. They are useful in showing how one species transitioned over a long period of time into another, but Cameron and Comfort completely misunderstood what transitional fossils were when they pulled out a picture of what they called a “crocoduck,” claiming that evolution was false because nobody had ever found one. Cameron appeared as an expert on Fox News, where he made his claim, and the Internet had a field day.

Amusingly, Cameron and Comfort’s creation came back to bite them in the rear when an organism was discovered, showing traits of both ducks and crocodiles. In 2003, a new species of ancient crocodile was found and later identified, which had a large, flat snout reminiscent of a duck’s bill. The new species was named Anatosuchus, which translates into “duck crocodile,” or, in Cameron’s words, “A crocoduck!” Technically, it’s not a duck’s bill, as it includes rows of teeth and is entirely crocodilian, but you can’t say paleontologists didn’t have a chuckle when the crocoduck entered the lexicon.^[10]

There’s something to be said for being humble and keeping your accomplishments and blessings to yourself. If you’re living well and doing good things, you don’t technically need to tell anyone in the world about it. But sometimes it’s hard to resist the urge to show off. Throughout history there have been people who said or did things that were so remarkable they couldn’t help but be seen as boasts, and some were more believable than others. Not to say that all of these people are lying. But we’re not saying all of them were telling the truth, either.

10. David Ingram Claimed to Have Walked from Florida to Canada in 1568

Feats of strength and endurance are always impressive. We have the Olympic games every two years, alternating between winter and summer games, just so the best athletes around the world can compete with one another and see who really is the best in that moment. But those games are very structured and also limited in scale. For a truly epic achievement of human endurance, we can head back to the year 1568 and take a look at David Ingram.

Ingram was a British sailor who landed in the Gulf of Mexico with a crew of 100 after losing a battle to the Spanish. By Ingram’s account, most of the men began to head south while Ingram and a few others headed north. They stayed within 30 miles of the coast and walked. And walked. And then walked some more.

It took the men close to a year to cover a 2,000 mile trek before they were rescued. By then only Ingram and two others were left alive. They set out in Florida and ended up in Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada. Pretty incredible, right?

Ingram shared details of his journey after he was rescued, and history has frowned on some of them. For instance, when he recounted seeing herds of elephants in the wilderness. It’s worth noting that Ingram was illiterate so his tale was in the form of questions answered and they were asked 20 years after the fact. So the details may have been fuzzy, exaggerated, or totally made up. We’ll likely never know for sure.

9. Wilt Chamberlain Claimed to Have Slept with 20,000 Women 

It’s really hard to overstate just how remarkable Wilt Chamberlain was. The man broke dozens of records in professional basketball including scoring 100 points by himself in a single game. On the court, he was amazing in ways few players can even hope to match and many of his records are considered unbeatable.

Off the court, Chamberlain was somehow even more larger than life, so to speak. His most notable claim to fame outside of the game was that he slept with 20,000 women. 

Chamberlain made the claim in a book in 1991. He was born in 1936 so, at that time, he was 55 years old. No one knows for sure when Chamberlain may have become sexually active in life, but let’s say he started as a teen (most people do the hypothetical math with him at 15 to make the numbers easier to deal with), and then say he had about 40 years to achieve that 20,000 boast. That means he needed to sleep with 500 women a year for 40 straight years. That’s about 1.4 women every day of his adult life, plus a few teen days. 

Many people have questioned this claim over the years and argued it to be entirely unrealistic. What is known is that his friends and teammates knew he was a fan of having threesomes so he often slept with two women at the same time. It’s also been stated by teammates that they saw him with at least 23 women over a 10 day road trip at one point. 

Is the number truly fake? Only Chamberlain knew for sure, and he died in 1999.

8. Alan Shepherd Claimed He’d Hit a Golf Ball For Miles Across the Moon

Alan Shepherd was the first American into space and also the 5th man on the moon. His contributions to space exploration are immense and he will go down in history as a true inspiration. As remarkable as his life and career were, even Shepherd was not above fudging the odd detail of his accomplishments, or at least it seems that way.

One of the most memorable parts about Shepherd’s trip to the moon was when he claimed he hit a golf ball on the moon and it traveled for “miles and miles and miles.” Now, as you may know, gravity on the moon is just a fraction of what it is on Earth and a human astronaut can jump on the moon and soar across the lunar surface like they have wings. But how far can a golf ball really go?

Turns out, not miles and miles and miles. And let’s be fair to Shepherd here, that quote was made as a bit of a joke. He later downgraded his skills to 600 feet with an assist from the moon’s ? gravity. That sounds more reasonable. But it’s still way off. 

Thanks to photographic evidence, it’s been determined that the distance between Shepherd’s footprints and the location of the ball was just 120 feet. Not bad if he was using a sand wedge. 

7. A Texas Veterinarian Claimed to Have Collected Bigfoot’s DNA

Mankind loves a mystery, especially one that teases at discovery something that could be both terrifying and wonderful. That’s a lot of the appeal behind UFOs and aliens. But there are some homegrown mysteries of the same sort, too. Bigfoot, for instance. The legendary monster said to roam almost all over the world under one name or another. This not-quite-human man-beast has fascinated people for ages. But so far, no one has ever found a real one. Doesn’t mean no one has tried, though.

Aside from photos and videos that are more or less convincing depending on your predispositions, some have used science to try to prove Bigfoot’s existence, and no one tried harder than Dr. Melba Ketchum (no relation to Ash) who claimed to have sampled Bigfoot’s DNA and analyzed it in 2012 thus proving the creature was not only real but part human.

Ketchum’s press release stated that Bigfoot was from a species that separated from mankind about 15,000 years in the past when another species mated with human females. You may be surprised to learn that none of this was peer reviewed and no one else had seen the evidence of these claims.

6. Nokia Boasted 400,000 Sales of Their N Gage Game System

Handheld gaming has had its ups and downs over the years. The Gameboy was a revolution in modern gaming, but then the Atari Lynx was something of a failure. Among the sea of entries into the field was the Nokia N Gage system which debuted in 2003 to great numbers. Nokia claimed they sold 400,000 units in just two weeks. That would have made it a smashing success. 

If you’re struggling to remember what a Nokia N Gage even looked like and how it could have been such a hit, don’t worry. It was not a hit. Nokia later admitted that their boastful claims were less than truthful. They had shipped 400,000 units to stores, but that didn’t mean consumers bought them. In fact, they managed to sell just 5,000 units in the first week.

5. Hulda Clark Made Millions Claiming She Could Cure Cancer

Hulda Clark was a fraud and her lies took advantage of some of the most vulnerable people in the world. Clark claimed she could cure cancer. And when people are desperate enough, when they know they’re going to die or that their loved one is going to die, they will believe almost anything. They will also pay almost anything, and that is what Clark took advantage of.

Clark claimed she had created a low-voltage electrical device that wouldn’t just cure cancer, but AIDS and numerous other fatal conditions. She wrote books and sold supplements and her devices to people who were dying. She convinced them that intestinal parasites were the root of all these ailments and, with her machine and diet adjustments, all could be fixed.

Needless to say, Clark was a fraud from top to bottom and, ironically, she ended up dying of cancer herself.

4. 700 People Claimed to be Related to Prince After He Died

Have you ever heard about a person winning the lottery and suddenly discovering all these distant relatives they never knew? It happens, and in different ways. For instance, after the musician Prince died without leaving a will, suddenly 700 whole people showed up claiming to be his relatives. 

Prince’s estate was estimated to be worth nearly $1 billion, so anyone hoping to prove he was their long lost brother was going to need scientific evidence, but that didn’t stop people from trying with stories as weak as “we lived in the same neighborhood.”

3. Terrence Howard Claims to Have Invented New Math

Many people have claimed to invent remarkable things over the years, including cold fusion or an engine that runs on water. Actor Terrence Howard claimed to have invented a new kind of math.

In Howard’s system, 1 x 1 = 2. This was a big, foundational principle of his belief system and also the reason why people widely mocked him online. His explanation is hard to understand because, well, obviously. But it has to do with his belief that if the square root of four is two, then the square root of two should be one, otherwise two doesn’t mean anything and therefore one times one equals two. Did you get that? Not many other people did, either. At its best, it seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of what exactly “times” means in a multiplication equation.

Despite the silliness, Howard is firmly and sincerely on board with what he calls Terryology, and believes that geniuses like Tesla, Einstein and Pythagoras would be blown away but what he’s done.

2. Matt Hoffman Says He’s Had 100 Concussions

BMX racer Matt Hoffman was one of the bigger names of the X-Games crowd around the time that Tony Hawk rose to fame. He also can lay claim to another noteworthy thing, though this is less enviable. Hoffman says he has suffered over 100 concussions in his life. 

Like football players, BMX racers take hard falls and hit their heads a lot. It’s been suspected that Dave Mirra, another star of the circuit, took his own life after personality changes brought on by too many concussions. 

As for Hoffman, he once forgot his wife was pregnant after taking a blow to the head. It wasn’t a memory that seemed to come back, either. He just had to relearn that he was about to be a dad. He also claimed that he had total amnesia for eight months at one point, and spent seven years unable to taste food. 

While his claims sound outlandish, it’s worth noting that head trauma of this kind has been linked to serious and also violent personality changes. Suicides and homicides have been linked many times to athletes who had endured too many concussions, so this is a serious matter with life-changing consequences.

1. Novelist Barbara Cartland Claimed 49 Marriage Proposals

In the world of romance there are a handful of things a person is apt to boast about. We already saw Wilt Chamberlain’s claims about sexual partners, but what about a more wholesome boast? Author Barbara Cartland, once called the Queen of Romance, claimed that 49 men had proposed marriage to her before she ultimately got married. That’s a lot of courting.

The story she told was that she had made up a rule that she would never kiss a man until such time as he had formally proposed marriage. That does offer a little bit more insight into why so many, though it’s still a lot of effort for a man to go through just for a kiss, especially if a ring was involved. Needless to say, Cartland must have been a remarkably charming woman.

Becoming the President of the United States isn’t easy. Some people devote years to the pursuit and never make the grade like Lyndon LaRouche, who ran for President 8 times and never succeeded. Others show up once and inexplicably win the day. And while being President is impressive all on its own, a number of Presidents also had other remarkable claims to fame they could make that have followed them throughout history. 

10. Lincoln is the Only President Who Holds a Patent

Around 25% of people in surveys will identify Benjamin Franklin as a past president, despite the fact he never was. But Franklin was a prominent inventor. When you take him out of the presidential pool, the number of actual inventors who have been President shrinks considerably. In fact, only one president has ever had a patent granted in their name, and that was Abraham Lincoln.

Lincoln was elected in 1861, but some years earlier, in 1849, he was granted a patent for a device that could be used to buoy vessels over shoals. Patent No. 6,469 was Lincoln’s only patent and came about thanks to a stint working as a ferryman who had to deal with the hassle of getting a vessel over shoals. He ended up stranded twice when his boats ran aground. 

The invention was essentially airbags for a boat. The inflatable devices could be lowered on the sides of a boat, inflated, and used to get the boat over the shoals and back in the water again. Apparently, it was never actually built and there is some doubt about whether it would even work.

9. Teddy Roosevelt is the Only President Confirmed to Have a Tattoo (Sort Of)

Word is that 30% of Americans have tattoos as of 2019. That means, statistically, about 13 Presidents should have had tattoos. Of course, no one was likely to have tattoos back in Washington’s day, but surely at least one President had a tattoo, right? Well, yes. Just one. At least after a fashion.

Though rumors about that both Roosevelts were inked along with Polk, Eisenhower, and even Andrew Jackson, there is only one confirmed presidential tattoo and that belonged to the most hardcore man to ever hold the office: Teddy Roosevelt. 

You can Google it right now and discover no end of articles that claim Roosevelt had his family crest tattooed on his chest. Turns out, that’s not true. It started as a joke in an old humor magazine from 1912. They included doctored photos of a fully tatted-up Roosevelt to sell the joke. 

In fact, Roosevelt did have a kind of tattoo on his chest, but it wasn’t intentional. Ever the man’s man, apparently the President had run afoul of some gunpowder when he was 13 and given himself a gunpowder tattoo across his chest. That’s what you call it when you fire a weapon and hot gunpowder blows back across your flesh, burning its way into you, leaving a permanent reminder. 

8. Martin Van Buren Was the Only President Who Spoke English as a Second Language

Most American Presidents only speak English. That said, there have been a handful of bilingual Presidents over the years as well. A number of early Presidents like John Adams and James Monroe were fluent in French. Both Roosevelts could speak German to some degree, as could Bill Clinton. A few even spoke Latin. But Martin Van Buren was not just the only one who spoke Dutch, he was the only one for whom English was his second language.  

Van Buren’s family was Dutch and though he was born in Kinderhook, New York, he grew up speaking his family’s native tongue and learned English later. His father owned a tavern which, at the time, was essentially the hub of political activity in any given community. People would get together, have a drink, and talk politics, so he would have been exposed from an early age. 

7. Woodrow Wilson Was the Only President With a PhD

When you wade into the waters of “who was the smartest President” you’re going to find a lot of answers and probably a lot of insults. Intelligence, of course, is not as easy to measure as some might think. But we can, at least, compare how educated and accomplished the Presidents were to see how they stack up to one another. And while many had diverse careers and educations and practiced law and other such things, only one President has ever attained a PhD.

Woodrow Wilson, who served from 1913 to 1921, had earned a PhD from Johns Hopkins University. His area of speciality was Political Science, which seems fitting.

A number of Presidents had degrees, but they didn’t stick around for advanced one. Washington earned a surveyor’s license from college but didn’t do a Bachelor’s. Lincoln, Van Buren, Jackson, Fillmore, Taylor, and Cleveland never attended college at all. Truman, McKinley, Monroe and Harrison attended colleges but never finished out their degrees. 

6. James Buchanan Was the Only Bachelor President

We take it for granted these days that a President has a First Lady. When a woman gets elected, if she’s married, it’s likely her husband will be called the First Gentleman. James Buchanan is the only President so far who has thrown this tradition for a bit of a loop as he was the only President ever elected as a bachelor.

He had been engaged years before taking office, but he broke off that engagement shortly before the wedding. During his time in office, he had a “sort of” First Lady in the form of his niece, Harriet Lane. It’s said that she performed many of the same functions as other First Ladies and she became fairly well-liked as a result. 

5. President Tyler is the Only President to Not Be Buried Under an American Flag

When a President dies, the funeral is typically a big deal. A state funeral is held and people will come from all across the country to pay their respects. When George H. W. Bush died in 2018, world leaders attended and a day of mourning was held. President Bush’s casket, draped with the American flag, was on display during the proceedings. It was similar to every presidential funeral before it with the notable exception of one. 

When John Tyler died, he was the only President in history to be laid to rest under a flag that did not belong to the country he represented. Instead, he was buried under the Confederate flag. There’s a reason Tyler is generally considered one of the worst Presidents in history. 

Tyler is buried at the Hollywood Cemetery, which, despite the name, is located in Richmond, Virginia. His was the only funeral not to be officially recognized in Washington DC. Confederate President Jefferson Davis made the funeral a spectacle and included the Confederate flag across the President’s casket. 

4. Rutherford Hayes is the Only President Revered in Paraguay

You can’t shake a stick without hitting something that was named in honor of Presidents Washington, Lincoln, Roosevelt and so on. Schools, bridges, parks, roads, you name it. There’s no end to the things named for some of those most iconic Presidents all across the country. But what about beyond the US borders?

One president stands head and shoulders above the others when it comes to appreciation on foreign soil.Rutherford B. Hayes is a legend unto himself in the country of Paraguay. Unlike in America, where just short of nothing is named after Hayes. Paraguay offers up a river, a province, a town and even a soccer team all named in honor of the one-term president.

The reason for the Paraguayan love of Hayes dates back to 1877. After Paraguay had gone to war with Brazil and Argentina, the country had lost huge amounts of land to the other nations. When Argentina tried to claim a chunk of wilderness space, the two countries agreed to forgo an actual war in favor of neutral, third party arbitration. This was before the UN existed, so the countries asked the USA to determine who got the land. President Hayes decided in favor of Paraguay, making him a local hero for years to come. 

3. James Madison was a Tiny Man

You may think of a President as a larger than life character. It helps that some Presidents really were incredibly large. Abe Lincoln was 6-foot-4. Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump were both about 6-foot-3. But if Lincoln is the tallest (he was), then one of those 46 men has to be the shortest. The smallest President in history was James Madison and appreciating just how slight a man he was takes a bit of time. He was short statured and also alleged to be incredibly light as well.

Official records indicate Madison was 5-foot-4. His weight seemed to hover somewhere around 100 pounds. That would generally be considered underweight for someone of that height. It was also said he was so soft spoken it was hard to hear him when he made speeches. 

2. Ronald Reagan Was the Only President to Wear a Nazi Uniform (in a movie)

In contemporary history, you’d be hard pressed to find a more deservedly hated group than the Nazis. They were terrible in pretty much every conceivable way. Since the end of the war, and even before actually, they’ve also been firmly enshrined in pop culture. They’re almost perfect villains and can be thwarted by any hero without risk of offending people by using them as foils in a story because they’re so terrible no one doesn’t want to see them destroyed. That’s why Captain America has been punching out Nazis since the early 1940s and literally hundreds of films have been made showing other heroes doing the same.

The task of playing a Nazi on film has to be at least a little daunting for actors who don’t want people associating them with hatred but, if we all understand it’s fiction, what’s the harm, right? And maybe that’s why the only President in American history to ever wear a Nazi uniform, at least that we know of, was the one who was acting in a movie. Ronald Reagan once dressed as a Nazi for the movie Desperate Journey back in 1942. 

1. Grover Cleveland is the Only President Who Worked As An Executioner

No one’s first job is ever President. You have to do a lot to get to that point. In fact, you can’t even be President unless you’re 35. So that means every President likely had a handful of jobs before they got to where they were. Some were senators or congressmen, some were lawyers or business people. And Grover Cleveland? He was an executioner.

Before he took office, Cleveland was a lawman in New York. He worked as the sheriff of Erie County and that job also involved doing double duty as the county executioner. The chosen method at the time, and this was in the mid-1800s, was hanging.

During his tenure as sheriff/hangman, Cleveland was responsible for putting two men to death. Both were murderers and both were hung by Cleveland publicly. 

Cleveland was not the only president to take another’s life – many were soldiers before they took office and fought in battles that saw large losses of life. Some, like Andrew Jackson, fought duels. Cleveland was just the only one to do so presumably with a black sack over his head in an official capacity.

They say everyone has one thing they’re good at. The same can be said for countries, too. There’s a country out there that has the most of something, the least of something, the biggest, the smallest, you name it. Now, no one said the things these countries are famous for have to be good or desirable, but that’s irrelevant. Sometimes your claim to fame is just really weird or unexpected.

10. The US Has the Most Extreme Weather

The United States is famous for a lot of things and there’s no doubt that people from all over the world want to go there. Before Covid, the United States was welcoming over 160 million tourists per year. More than one million immigrants arrive every year as well. So we can all agree America has a lot of appeal to people abroad.

It’s somewhat surprising then that America can also lay claim to the worst weather in the world. That’s not in the sense that it rains too much, that’s in the sense that it has the most devastatingly terrible weather. The US gets more tornadoes than anywhere else on Earth. Over 1,000 per year touch down in America. And that’s just for the start. 

Factor in the floods, the droughts, the hurricanes, heat waves and blizzards and nowhere else can offer up such extreme weather diversity. It’s been called “high impact weather” and the US just has an abundance of it. 

9. Suriname is the Greenest Country

Green is a real buzzword in the modern world, not as a color but a concept. Green energy, going green, green spaces, they’re all desirable things. After chopping down an incalculable number of trees, people started believing they were worth keeping around and supporting and the struggle between those who want to keep things green and those who don’t really care so much continues.

In terms of just open, beautiful green space, there are a lot of countries that can certainly boast of their forests and jungles. But of all the countries in all the world, no place is quite as green as Suriname, the small South American country that is 94% rainforest. 

Because of all the forests and the relatively small population of just over 600,000, the country is considered carbon negative with its trees offsetting any dangerous emissions from pollution. It was the first of two countries in the world to hit this status in 2021 and one of only 10 in the world that can make that claim. 

8. Sweden Has the Most Islands 

There are many famous islands in the world from Bali to Ibiza to Hawaii but, for all the islands dotting the oceans of the world, not many of us stop to consider where you can find more of them than anywhere else. 

People love to vacation in the Caribbean and it can lay claim to over 700 tropical destinations. Greece is known for its islands and there are over 6,000 of them. Indonesia has around 18,000 islands. But if you really want to go island hopping, you need to look a little further north. Sweden takes the crown for the most islands in the world with 267,750 of them. 

The whole Nordic region is so saturated with islands it’s amazing anyone ever got out to sea past them all. Norway has 239,057 and Finland has 178,947. In fact, if you want to visit the most island-rich nation that isn’t in Northern Europe you have to go to Canada which can claim 52,455. 

It’s worth noting that figures don’t always add up the same. Ten different websites might give you ten different answers about how many islands Sweden has precisely, but even when a site drops Sweden’s total down to around 220,000, they’re still head and shoulders above every other nation. 

7. Iceland Has No Mosquitoes

Iceland is the Land of Fire and Ice thanks to its glaciers and volcanoes. It’s known for its Viking history and Skyr yogurt. One lesser known claim to fame but one that no other populated country in the world shares and that’s mosquitoes. Iceland has no mosquitoes. The only other place on Earth where you won’t find mosquitos is Antarctica, and at least it has the excuse of being a secluded, frozen desert at the bottom of the world. Iceland has other countries all around it, all of which do, in fact, have mosquitos.

Mosquitos are actually the deadliest creature in the world, responsible for over 800,000 deaths per year. But Iceland is such a unique country that the little bloodsuckers haven’t managed to gain a foothold. In other northern climates, mosquitos can still thrive. You can find them in Norway, Scotland, Russia, Canada and even Greenland. In the winter, the pupa hibernate beneath the ice and are revived when the land thaws. But Iceland’s climate bounces around so the winter may experience sudden thaws and then freezes again and again. This causes mosquitoes to emerge and then quickly die. It’s also speculated that the chemical composition of Icelandic soil is inhospitable to mosquito life. 

6. Papua New Guinea Has the Most Languages

Language can be very fluid. Some languages die out completely when the people who spoke it all vanish from the world and fewer may have a chance at resurrection one day. Some languages are only spoken by a handful of people and others are made up to add some flavor to a work of fiction and end up being a whole, speakable language with people learning it all around the world. Currently, there are over 7,000 spoken languages on Earth.

It’d be impossible for someone to learn all of those languages and very difficult to even experience all of them firsthand. But your best bet if you ever wanted to try would be to start in Papua New Guinea which is the most linguistically diverse country on Earth. 

Though most people speak English and a handful of other languages, there are speakers of Native languages throughout the nation and those total somewhere around 850. Indonesia comes in second with just over 700 spoken languages. The United States is 5th with 328 spoken languages.

There is fear that many of those languages will soon be lost as younger generations stick to just the “main” languages but, for now at least, Papua New Guinea remains the most diverse of all lands

5. Ireland Consumes More Calories Per Day Than Any Other Nation

It’s no big secret that a lot of people in the world are maybe not as healthy as they should be. People in America are notorious for not getting enough exercise. Nearly a quarter of Americans eat out more than once a week. Based on research from 2018, the average American is consuming 3,782 calories per day 

But despite America being the focus of so many statistics and articles about unhealthy living, it’s not the country that takes the title for consuming the most calories per capita per day. That honor goes to Ireland. The per capita intake of calories in the Emerald Isle is 3,885. It may only be the difference of eating two celery stalks, but it counts. 

4. Iceland is the Only Country With Near Total Internet

It’s time to head back to Iceland which has more than just a lack of mosquitoes going for it. Turns out, if you like to live your life online, then Iceland is the place to be.

Data on this issue is complicated at the best of times and seems to vary from source to source. It can also mean different things. How many people use the internet compared to what percentage of people use the internet compared to what percentage of people could use the internet. And based on that last one, a question of access, Iceland is the most connected nation in the world. According to statistics, the entire population of Iceland has access to the internet. 

The widespread internet in Iceland was thanks to the government’s plan to introduce high-speed fiber internet to everywhere in the country, rural and otherwise, by 2020 in the hopes of ensuring 99.9% of homes were connected. By 2019 they were working on plans to connect the final 1,500 houses in the country that were without it. 

3. Bhutan Converts More CO2 Than it Produces

We saw earlier that Suriname is the greenest nation, and it’s also carbon negative but there is one country in the world that beat Suriname to the punch when it comes to being carbon negative and converting more CO2 than it produces and that is Bhutan.

Not only is Bhutan carbon negative, compared to other nations it’s incredibly efficient and clean. In fact, the country is able to remove three times as much CO2 from the atmosphere as it produces. 

Of course, Bhutan’s secret is less about having amazing technology or a remarkable approach to pollution management than it is about circumstance. The country has a lot of green space with about 70% of it covered in forest and plants. The population is very low at around 750,000 and, arguably the biggest piece of the puzzle, it’s very underdeveloped compared to other nations. Most of the population works in agriculture, there aren’t tons of cars driving around and huge cities burning oil.

All of these factors together ensured that, for years, Bhutan was the world’s only carbon negative country. 

2. The Czech Republic is the Most Non-Religious 

In 2012, there were around 1.1 billion people in the world who considered themselves unaffiliated with any religion. That’s about 16% of the population. That wasn’t to say they had no spiritual beliefs at all, they just didn’t claim to be connected to any established religion. Around the world, only six countries had a majority of religiously unaffiliated citizens. Most of those countries were found in Asia and included China, Hong Kong, Japan and North Korea. Europe rounded out the six with Estonia and then the most irreligious country on Earth – the Czech Republic. According to research for Pew, 76% of the population in the Czech Republic are not affiliated with a religion. 

What is meant by being irreligious is, of course, a little hard to figure out. Based on the numbers five years later, it was down to 72% but only 25% of those claimed to be totally atheist. A total of 46% of those who answered gave the vague answer of their religion being “nothing in particular.”

1. The US is the Biggest Oil Producer in the World

The world has run on oil for a very long time and the only thing bigger than the oil industry itself is the money tied up in it. Wars are fought over it and, without fuel, the economy would grind to a halt. Until we master and fully implement better alternatives across the board, it’s an integral part of how the world works. And for all the turmoil caused by oil in the Middle East and natural gas in Russia and even oil sands up in Canada, it’s the United States that actually ranks as the world’s biggest oil producer.

While Saudi Arabia is able to churn out 11 million barrels of oil per day, the United States was producing 16.6 million per day in 2021 according to BP. Alternate data from the US Energy Information Administration actually boosts those numbers to 18.98 million barrels per day. That means the United States produces 20% of all the oil in the entire world.  On the flip side, the US consumes 21% of the world’s oil.