With the celebration of a new year comes one of the most anticipated events these days: the New Year’s Eve fireworks. These fireworks shows are a common tradition around the world. People love the displays of bright colors and the figures that these pyrotechnic devices generate in the sky.

Many others are also excited to hear the thunderous sounds produced by fireworks. But in recent years, there has been a lot of controversy about the use of these little bombs. It has been scientifically proven that fireworks explosions can cause injuries and traumas in both humans and animals.

Since then, some people have started to conceive of other types of visual events for these dates—perhaps less harmful but still spectacular. Of those alternative options, we are going to see 10 of the most extreme as well as analyze if they truly are more beneficial.

10 A Swarm Of Light Drones

It is said that drones are the future of open-air events as successors of fireworks. In several countries from the United States to China, drones are used as a replacement for fireworks in aerial shows. It is difficult to imagine such small machines occupying the place and the attention of a huge explosion in the sky, but we have to think big.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the tech company, Intel decided to launch 2,018 drones into the air on its base in California. This gave Intel the world record for simultaneously flying the largest number of unmanned aerial vehicles. During the eight-minute show, drones equipped with multicolored lights formed giant images in the air—from the company’s logo to an impressive Earth globe—all while moving to the rhythm of the background music.

The drones were controlled by just one pilot. Intel created drones especially for such aerial shows. In fact, the company has already made similar presentations and plans to keep increasing the scale of its shows in the future. While a handful of drones in the air may not be so striking, thousands of drones with lights dancing in front of us would surely make us change our minds.^[1]

9 A Flame-Throwing Show

For many years, an English company called Arcadia has made unique shows for thousands of people. During the annual Glastonbury music festival in England, Arcadia usually presents the next New Year alternative on this list: a flame-throwing giant creature.

A 50-ton, 15-meter-tall (49 ft) mechanical spider is on display as the main attraction of the event. From the middle of the crowd, it can fire lasers and giant fireballs into the air. Arcadia built the giant metal spider with the recycled parts of military vehicles, such as aircraft components. The show with this machine can host up to 50,000 people and can be perfectly seen from any angle. Its main fuel for the pyrotechnic shows is biodiesel.

Although the spider is Arcadia’s most famous creation, it certainly is not the only one. Another machine called the Afterburner is also made from recycled parts and consists of a rocket-like vertical structure with flamethrowers at the top and a DJ booth in the center. Both the Arcadia Spider and the Afterburner have been in a lot of shows around the world, from America to Asia.^[2]

If you do not like the idea of welcoming the New Year with a fire-breathing monster in front of you, there are still other flame-throwing options just as interesting. For example, in some places, drones with flamethrowers are used for tasks ranging from cleaning power lines to roasting turkeys. Whatever the choice, we must admit that a machine throwing flames into the sky on New Year’s Eve would be an eye-catching event.

8 Explosive Hot-Air Balloons

Many ideas have been proposed to try to make fireworks less noisy. Perhaps, a solution to this problem would be launching fireworks into the air without firing them. At least that way you avoid the rockets roaring as they go up in the sky. But the explosive ending remains.

One way to achieve this would be loading a hot-air balloon with fireworks inside its basket. Although it may seem odd or dangerous, some people already do it every year.

Since the 19th century, the inhabitants of Myanmar annually celebrate the Taunggyi Fire Balloon Festival, which is a massive pyrotechnic event. Several teams attach large numbers of fireworks to decorated hot-air balloons and throw them into the air. Once in the sky, the fireworks create a great show of fire, smoke, and vibrant colors.

However, there are some serious problems with this practice. On the one hand, it takes a long time for these hot-air balloons to gain altitude, so they tend to glide dangerously close to the people below before ascending. In fact, they sometimes fail to do so.

During the festival in 2012, a hot-air balloon loaded with fireworks crashed to the ground in the middle of the crowd. Moments later, the entire load exploded, engulfing onlookers in sparkling fireballs.^[3]

In other cases, the explosive cargo of the hot-air balloon can break off in mid-flight and fall. In the 2018 celebration, the already-ignited fireworks separated from the balloon and fell to the ground, again onto a lot of people. The result was nine injured and two hospitalized. Inevitably, it seems that keeping the attractiveness of fireworks will always have its risks.

7 Movie Projections On The Sky

There are some options for dealing with a cloudy sky on New Year’s Eve. If the clouds do not let you see the lights, maybe you could project the lights onto the clouds by using them as screens.

The idea of projecting images in the clouds has been a challenge for many engineers and inventors. In 2015, British artist Dave Lynch launched a project in which he was able to project a scene of a horse galloping over the sky of Nottingham. To achieve this, he used a special laser projector (called zoopraxiscope) mounted on a small plane and flew over the area to use the clouds as a white screen.

But a couple of years before, a group of Japanese experts managed to develop a method to project images onto clouds directly from the ground. The two companies involved, Daikin Industries and teamLab, experimented with custom projectors in a cloudy sky, and the results were successful. They were able to reproduce full-color animations on natural clouds, including a concert of Japan’s virtual idol, Hatsune Miku.

Meanwhile, during a night in January 2014, the residents of London could see what seemed to be the bright outline of an airplane moving through the clouds. The image was actually a laser projection made on the occasion of airline Air France’s 80th anniversary.^[4]

The companies Curb and CMT Events used highly powerful lasers to project the plane in the sky as well as the name of the airline and a hashtag for the celebration. If you can start the new year projecting your name onto the clouds, even Batman will be proud of you.

6 Artificial Auroras

Natural auroras are truly a breathtaking visual spectacle. But this phenomenon usually occurs only at high latitudes near the poles and at specific times of the year according to the solar activity. So, unless everyone travels to countries in the polar circles, auroras are not a viable event to welcome the New Year. Well, they were not until some time ago. But now, we can create auroras on demand.

The HAARP program in Alaska consists of a facility with 180 transmission antennas capable of emitting high-intensity radio waves directly to the ionosphere, an upper layer of the atmosphere. The powerful radio waves accelerate the electrons scattered at that height, and their collisions create the characteristic brightness that forms the auroras.

The HAARP program has created numerous artificial auroras over the years, some of which have lasted up to an hour. Obviously, these auroras have a reduced size due to the capacity of the antennas, although they are clearly visible to the naked eye in a green tone.^[5]

While the best-known artificial auroras are those produced by the HAARP program, the truth is that there are many similar radio transmitters around the world. For example, Russia has a similar program called SURA and the SuperDARN is a program of research antennas across multiple countries.

The cost of running an experiment at the HAARP facility is $5,000 per hour. A radio enthusiast paid $1,200 to run a 15-minute experiment, so what is stopping you from blowing up the sky with green lights on New Year’s Eve?

5 Carbidschieten

If you do not have the necessary resources to build a superexpensive system of radio antennas in your backyard, maybe the next one could be your ideal option. In several provinces of the Netherlands, there is a rural tradition on New Year’s Eve that is far from launching fireworks. The noisy part of the show remains, though. This tradition is at least a century old and is called Carbidschieten (“Carbide Shooting”).

The celebration consists of placing a milk churn in an inclined position with a support frame beneath. In this way, the milk churn takes the form of an improvised cannon. Then a chunk of calcium carbide is placed inside with a little water. The lid is immediately placed on the churn again.

In there, the wet carbide transforms into acetylene gas, which is highly volatile. Finally, the gas that comes out of a small hole at the bottom of the churn is carefully ignited with a flame. The result is a violent explosion that sends the lid flying extremely far away.

On New Year’s Eve, many Carbidschieten competitions are held across the country in which the winner is the one who manages to shoot the churn lid farther. Of course, this option is as noisy and unhealthy as traditional fireworks. But for those who like explosive sounds, it is a perfect alternative.^[6]

4 Millions Of Helium Balloons

At first glance, throwing balloons into the air seems to be a more peaceful and less harmful kind of celebration than launching explosive rockets. For that reason, many celebrations around the world promote this type of practice.

But the problem is that if we all start throwing balloons on New Year’s Eve, there would be millions of balloons roaming the air in a few hours. And that would be truly harmful—to the point that some countries have regulated or banned the mass release of balloons.

The reason? Maybe it is better if we understand it with a real example.

In 1986, the city of Cleveland decided to launch two million helium balloons into the sky to break a world record as well as to raise funds for charity. In the end, due to bad weather, the number was reduced to approximately 1.5 million balloons, deposited under a net the size of a block.

In the early afternoon, the helium balloons were launched among the tall buildings of the area. Soon, a storm that was approaching covered the balloons and the rain made them descend back to the city.^[7]

The still-inflated balloons landed on the surface of Lake Erie next to Cleveland, preventing a search for two missing fishermen who eventually were found dead on the coast. In other regions of the state of Ohio, the balloons scared racehorses, making them suffer serious injuries.

As if that were not enough, an airport in Cleveland had to close one of its runways. So, for a small celebration, helium balloons are an interesting option. For New Year’s Eve? Not so much.

3 Skydivers With Flares

While skydiving certainly is an adrenaline-producing sport, skydiving at night must be an extreme experience. However, this discipline is frequently practiced by many experts. Although it is a spectacular event for them, it can also be that way for people below them.

Sometimes, these skydivers attach handheld magnesium flares to their boots, which leave a bright tail of sparks as the adventurers keep flying. From the ground, these parachuters look like a group of comets crossing the sky with synchronized movements.

Skydivers with flares are especially recurrent in football matches. For example, during the Fourth of July celebration in 2018, some residents of Denver were surprised to see some peculiar lights among the fireworks. These lights moved like shooting stars descending slowly.^[8]

It turns out that the lights were actually a team of four skydivers officially called the Thunderstorm. This group often impresses the crowds every time the Denver Broncos football team plays in its own stadium.

Another group, the US Army Golden Knights, usually visits many cities in the United States. They jump from an airplane while equipped with flares. In November 2018, the Golden Knights jumped over Stanford Stadium in California during the last local game of its university.

Another team of aviation experts, the Red Bull Air Force, made a parachute jump at night. While most of the skydivers carried a wind sock, one of them had a magnesium flare that left a luminous trail behind him.

Skydiving with flares during New Year’s Eve would definitely be an exclusive show for experienced people. It is a little less showy than traditional fireworks, but it is still worth a try.

2 Lightning Rockets

What can you do if New Year’s Eve gets stormy outside? Tempestuous weather can be a letdown for fireworks lovers, but there are other options. However, you may want to enjoy the next alternative from very far away.^[9]

Scientists at the University of Florida created a device called a “lightning machine.” It is a mechanism composed of a small 1.8-meter-tall (6 ft) rocket connected to the ground by a copper wire 701 meters (2,300 ft) long. When the rocket is launched into the sky during a storm, the wire unrolls and then a lightning bolt falls through it just a few seconds later. So, in essence, it is a flying lightning rod.

While a natural lightning strike is unpredictable, scientists are now able to trigger lightning falls any time they want. Undoubtedly, a New Year’s lightning show would be an impressive thing to see. But maybe it would be better to let the experts handle this type of technology, especially since the deadly temperature of a single lightning bolt is almost 30,000 degrees Celsius (54,032 °F).

1 Shooting Stars

“Shooting stars” are just small space debris burning upon entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Such debris can be from alien rocks to our own space junk. Most of these bright lights in the sky go unnoticed due to their unpredictable occurrence. But now, we can deliberately create shooting stars with the specific purpose to entertain us.

For several years, Japanese company ALE has been developing a program called Sky Canvas. This program consists of launching a satellite, which will be loaded with a thousand metallic pellets, to a height of 500 kilometers (311 miles). When the satellite is over a certain region, it releases the pellets so that they fall to Earth and burn in the atmosphere.^[10]

In this way, the satellite can produce numerous shooting stars that last up to 10 seconds at any desired time and location. In turn, the pellets will be made of different elements. When burned in the upper atmosphere, they will generate bright colors perfectly visible from the ground.

Although each meteor would have a high cost of $8,100, ALE is already preparing to perform a shooting star show at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. If you think fireworks create a great view, imagine starting a new year while watching a dozen multicolored meteors falling in the middle of the night sky.

Brian is an economy student who is passionate about graphic design and an avid enthusiast of the art of writing.

Never mind lunatics taking over the asylum; history shows they’ve always been in charge. From human experimenters to genocidal maniacs, here are the 10 craziest psychiatrists, psychologists, and neurologists ever let loose on the world.

10. George Rekers

Southern Baptist minister and UCLA-trained psychologist George Rekers came to public attention in 2000 when the state of Florida paid him to support its ban on gay adoption. He proved such a useful expert witness that Arkansas hired him to support their own ban in 2004, and then Florida hired him again in 2007. As it turned out later, he was more of an “expert” witness than they realized—just not in any credible sense. Despite his avowed anti-gay stance, he was photographed in 2010 coming back from Europe with a rentboy, a male prostitute he hired through Rentboy.com. 

His hypocrisy was unforgivable. As an expert witness for Arkansas and Florida, Rekers claimed (among other things) that there was a higher risk of gay parents molesting their children or giving them AIDS. He also devoted much of his life to convincing heterosexual parents to reject their gay children. And his earlier doctoral studies at UCLA, in which he attempted to cure homosexuality, led directly to one man’s suicide. 

As for the rentboy in 2010, Rekers claimed to have hired him for help with his luggage, adding that once he realized his mistake, he spent the entire 10-day trip to London and Madrid converting the young man to Christianity.

9. Colin Bouwer

As Head of Psychiatry at the University of Otago, New Zealand, Colin Bouwer had all the access he needed to murder his wife using glucose-lowering drugs. Having gotten hold of them by forging prescriptions, he secretly administered them to induce hypoglycemia and simulate a pancreatic tumor—hospitalizing his wife many times. Doctors acting on Bouwer’s information subjected his wife to unnecessary invasive procedures. And it wasn’t until after her death that all the drugs were found in her system. Authorities also uncovered emails from Bouwer questioning experts on hypoglycemia (under an alias). His motive? He was having an affair with a colleague.

Interestingly, given the ongoing debate in psychiatry over whether psychopathy is genetic, Bouwer’s son later killed his own wife in South Africa. Then, with the help of his mum, he tried to make it look like a break-in and violent rape.

8. Aubrey Levin

Stationed at the notorious Ward 22 in Apartheid-era Pretoria, Colonel Aubrey Levin made a name for himself administering electroshock therapy to gay soldiers. That name was “Dr Shock”. Earlier in his career, he’d actually written to a parliamentary committee to urge them not to legalize homosexuality, saying he could zap it out of people instead. As Chief Psychiatrist for the military, his process was simple: he showed patients photos of naked men and encouraged them to fantasize, for which he gave them increasingly powerful electric shocks. He used a similar process on drug users and pacifists. And those who didn’t respond well to treatment (i.e. pretty much all of them) were thrown into a labor camp called Greefswald. 

It’s interesting to note here that Levin was raised Jewish by parents who lived through the Second World War and yet ardently supported South Africa’s openly antisemitic National Party.

After Apartheid, Levin emigrated to Canada to escape retribution. There, he sexually assaulted a number of male patients referred to him from prison for treatment. It wasn’t until one of them taped his advances that authorities believed the complaints and 30 other men came forward. Although he managed to silence the media, Levin was convicted in 2013—along with his wife, who tried to bribe a juror. He was sentenced to five years in prison, of which he served one and a half, and he had to undergo a thorough psychiatric evaluation.

7. Andrei Snezhnevsky

“Sluggish schizophrenia” was a convenient diagnosis made up by Soviet psychiatrists. It gave authorities a pretext to arrest and institutionalize basically whoever they wanted. It was deliberately vague. Said to have a slow onset, but with symptoms that could start at any time, it made it perfectly reasonable to round up people showing no psychotic symptoms whatsoever.

One of the main psychiatrists behind this scheme was Andrei Snezhnevsky. A diagnosis of “sluggish schizophrenia” by the likes of him meant immediate confinement in a maximum security psychiatric facility, along with the loss of civil rights and future employability.

6. Harry Bailey

Australian psychiatrist Harry Bailey was an enthusiastic proponent of “deep sleep therapy”, that is, using barbiturates to induce comas for days or weeks as a treatment for mental health issues. Between 1962 and 1979, he was directly responsible for the deaths of 24 of his unsuspecting patients. Of the other 24 who survived his “therapy”, albeit with permanent brain damage, 19 committed suicide later.

The treatment had always been controversial. It was typically used to bypass resistance when administering ECT. But it was clearly dangerous. 

Authorities took a while to catch up with his head count, but when they did the public was outraged. The Church of Scientology was particularly vocal in its condemnation of Bailey. In the end, the Chelmsford Royal Commission was set up to investigate and it put so much pressure on him that he took his own life with barbiturates. His suicide note said: “Let it be known that the Scientologists and the forces of madness have won.” There followed some long overdue reforms in Australia’s psychiatric care standards. 

5. Werner Villinger

Werner Villinger was a German psychiatrist during the Nazi era. Despite his reluctance to join the Nazi party, he was a eugenicist and a Nazi through and through. At the Bethel Institution, he was involved in some of the most heinous war crimes—like Aktion T4, which involved gassing, asphyxiating, and poisoning disabled people—all of whom he experimented on before killing.

After the war, he was anything but repentant. In fact, he adamantly opposed compensating any of the Holocaust’s victims, because, in his professional opinion, it might give them “neurotic ailments”. Scandalously, Villinger continued to practice psychiatry in West Germany and was never tried for his crimes.

4. Walter Freeman

Neurologist Walter Freeman performed the first-ever lobotomy in America—following its invention by the Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz. and Freeman was so impressed by this “surgery of the soul,” as the New York Times later called it, that he sought to make it quicker and easier. The result was his transorbital lobotomy, a savagely rudimentary procedure of hammering tools like ice picks into the brain through the bones at the back of the eye sockets. He cut costs wherever he could. For example, instead of anesthetizing patients, he electro-shocked them with a portable machine. He also promoted lobotomies (formerly a last resort for otherwise untreatable conditions) as the first-line treatment for just about everything: schizophrenia, depression, OCD, headaches, chronic pain, and indigestion.

His casualties included JFK’s sister Rosemary, who was left incontinent and unable to speak after a lobotomy at the age of 23. She was one of 3,500 patients he lobotomized, 19 of whom were kids as young as four. Arrogantly, wilfully ignoring his critics, Freeman boasted his success rate of 85%; however, given his fatality rate was 15%, “success” in his mind was apparently anything just short of murder. Hence, despite his lesser reputation as the forward-thinking founder of computational neuroscience, he’ll forever be associated with the most backward procedure in psychiatry.

3. Radovan Karadžic

The “flamboyant” Radovan Karadzic trained as a psychiatrist, in Sarajevo, Denmark, and New York, long before he became known as the genocidal “Butcher of Bosnia” for his crimes in the 1990s war.

His plan, as Bosnian Serb leader, was “to permanently remove Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory.” Among the worst implementations of his lunatic plan was the Srebrenica massacre, which killed more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys.

After the war, he evaded capture for more than a decade by disguising himself as a New Age healer, monk, or priest. He grew a long bushy beard, dressed in robes, and wandered from monastery to monastery—protected by the local population. The disguise worked so well that he was, allegedly, able to take part in his mother’s funeral without risking capture. He also wrote a book of poems that completely sold out at the Belgrade International Book Fair. Shockingly, he even reprised his medical career. It was only in 2016 that he was finally convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and sentenced to 40 years in prison.

2. Donald Ewen Cameron

Scottish-American psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron was involved in MKUltra—the CIA’s mind control program. His mystifyingly unethical work in the 1930s brought him to the agency’s attention. One of his early studies, for example, forced epileptics to sit for an hour in a room heated to 40 degrees C. Another limited their water intake to 600 ml a day, ostensibly to test the effects of dehydration on seizures. There weren’t any. In fact, the only difference between the low-water group and the control group was that the low-water group, in desperation, stole food and drink, drank water out of vases, and ate snow from window sills to hydrate. They also lost weight, suffered acidosis (from increased blood urea nitrogen), and, in one case, even died. But it got him on the CIA’s radar. 

Interestingly, similar experiments were carried out at Dachau, the Nazi concentration camp, and Cameron hypocritically denounced them—even going so far as to call the German race inherently cruel (entirely missing the irony). He also distinguished between ‘weak’ (e.g. German) and ‘strong’ (e.g. American) races, saying the weak should be stopped from reproducing. Despite his batshit Nazi views, he was summoned to Nuremberg after the war to evaluate Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess, who even Hitler considered insane but Cameron declared fit to stand trial.

But we digress. One of Cameron’s MK Ultra subprojects was to use drugs and hypnosis to induce ‘clinical coma’ for what he called ‘psychic driving’: forcing people to listen to a recorded statement over and over again for up to 20 hours a day, 15 days in a row. It’s still used for torture today. Another area of his research, secretly funded by the CIA (as the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology), was ‘depatterning’, reducing people’s minds to a blank slate for Cameron to rebuild from scratch. He used this technique on schizophrenics, subjecting them to electroshock “therapy” when their symptoms (inevitably) returned. Disturbingly, even if ethics were a thing back then, and even if someone tried to stop him, Cameron was basically untouchable. He was President of the American Psychiatric Association, the Canadian Psychiatric Association, the American Psychopathological Association, and, from 1961 to 1966, the World Psychiatric Association.

1. Henry Cotton

American psychiatrist Henry Cotton believed “madness” was caused by bacteria. He based this hypothesis solely on some findings from 1913 that the bacteria that causes syphilis also causes psychotic symptoms through brain lesions. Armed with this hypothesis, Cotton set out to prove it—by removing the teeth of 50 of his patients. It didn’t work. So he cut out the tonsils next. Then gallbladders, testicles, ovaries, uteruses, stomachs, and colons. By 1923, he claimed to have cured 85% of his patients’ mental health problems. As for his 30% death rate (or higher among those he took colons from), he excused this by saying they were all psychotics “in whom the infection has been [too] long-standing”.

Horrifyingly, nobody gave their consent. In fact, they made it clear what they thought of Dr Cotton. But he ignored the terrified pleas of his patients and their families, believing only the most ruthless approach would stand a chance of curing insanity. He was proud of it too, touring the world and publishing numerous papers.

In total, he removed more than 11,000 teeth—including, as a preventative measure, the teeth of his wife and children. When he feared he might be losing his own mind, he pulled out some of his own. He died of a heart attack in 1933.

The 11th Olympic Games of the modern era was held in Berlin in 1936. It would go down in history as the “Nazi Games,” a vehicle of unabashed self-promotion for Adolf Hitler and his regime. The Nazis had hoped the Games would provide a clear demonstration of Aryan superiority and a vindication of their doctrine of the master race. Never before had politics intruded so brazenly into sports, making for a very interesting and controversial Olympics.

10The Counter-Olympics

As Berlin prepared to host the 1936 Olympics, many people were already suspicious of Nazi ideology and agenda. Sports insiders were particularly disturbed by reports of persecution of Jewish athletes. Many within the Olympic organization felt that participating in the coming Games was tantamount to showing support of the Nazi regime. Calls for boycott began to be heard. The debate was particularly intense in the United States, which traditionally fielded the largest team in the Olympics.

Other countries also had groups opposed to the Games. The new republic of Spain went beyond plans for a boycott and proposed an anti-Nazi counter-Olympics to be held in Barcelona, the city that lost out to Berlin in the 1931 vote for the host city. Barcelona had been greatly disappointed at the decision, believing that it was well prepared to hold the Games. Barcelona already had new, modern facilities used in the 1929 International Exposition, plus the Hotel Olimpico that could house the athletes.

Spain was determined to take the glory away from Hitler and the Nazi propaganda machine. Invitations to the “People’s Olympics” were sent out and answered by radical and left-wing athletes from around the world, including the US. There were German athletes who joined to protest the regime at home. Communists, socialists, anarchists—Barcelona swarmed with players of every leftist stripe, 6,000 athletes from 22 countries in all. To call out Nazi bigotry and racism, the emblem of the People’s Olympics depicted three muscled athletes: one white, one black, and the last of mixed ethnicity. The warm and fraternal atmosphere in Barcelona was evident.

But then, just 24 hours before the opening ceremony, the fascist General Francisco Franco launched the military revolt against the government. The Spanish Civil War had begun, in which Hitler would support Franco and the Nationalists. The People’s Olympics was canceled. Nevertheless, individual players had spoken out their conscience and shamed the Nazis. Eventually, Spain and the USSR would be the only countries to boycott Berlin. Barcelona got the chance to host an Olympic party—legitimate this time—in 1992.

9The Nazi Origins Of The Torch Relay

No moment better defines the modern Olympics than the torch relay, a moving symbol of international brotherhood and cooperation. From the lighting of the sacred flame in Olympia, Greece, to its spectacular entrance into the stadium, it cannot fail to excite and electrify. That’s what German Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wanted spectators to experience—not for brotherhood but for the glory of the Nazi regime.

Not many people know that the torch relay is a Nazi invention. The ancient Greeks did run relay races that involved flames as part of their worship to the gods. But all the modern Games before Berlin did not have a torch relay. The idea was not actually Goebbels’s. It was proposed by Carl Diem, secretary general of the Games’ organizing committee and inspired by the flame that burned at the Amsterdam Olympiad in 1928. Goebbels decided to squeeze the last drop of propaganda mileage out of the torch relay, which satisfied Nazi thirst for spectacle and ceremony.

At the lighting ceremony in Greece, the flame was dedicated to Hitler as the band played the Nazi anthem Die Fahne Hoch. By depicting the relay as an ancient tradition, the Nazis were proclaiming themselves heirs of civilization’s progress from Greece, to Rome, and finally to Germany. The torch’s 2,500-kilometer (1,500 mi) route to Berlin passed through Czechoslovakia, where it provoked a clash between ethnic Germans and Czechs. On the last stage of the relay, only blond and blue-eyed athletes were allowed to bear the torch.

Just as Goebbels had hoped, the stirring sight of the flame being carried into the stadium by a fine specimen of Aryan manhood impressed spectators into concluding that the Nazis were strong but not brutal. The New York Times reported that Germany showed “goodwill” and “flawless hospitality.” The Associated Press assured its readers that the Games betokened peace in Europe.

The hollowness of Nazi propaganda was revealed by the catastrophic war years. Nevertheless, at the resumption of the Olympics in London in 1948, the torch relay was retained with a brighter message of friendship and peace. It still remains a symbol of goodwill, one legacy of Nazism we decided was worth keeping.

8Pigeons Poop On Der Fuhrer’s Show

The opening ceremony was a dazzling display of German power. Hitler’s motorcade bore down avenues bedecked with swastikas to the Olympic stadium. In the skies above Berlin, the airship Hindenburg majestically swept the clouds. The Fuhrer and the Nazi hierarchy proceeded down the steps into the arena, to the screams of the delirious and worshipful crowd of 100,000. Here were the gods of the new Olympus. It was Hitler’s day, his moment of glorification. But it seemed the birds had other ideas.

Louis Zamperini, a runner in the US Olympic team, recalled the Chaplinesque moment worthy of Hitler’s mustache when thousands pigeons were released. “And then they shot a cannon and (it) scared the poop out of the pigeons. Literally scared the poop out of them. And we had straw hats and you could hear the pitter-patter on our hats. I mean it was a mass of droppings and it was so funny.” With typical American bravado, Zamperini would later steal the swastika flag hanging outside Hitler’s office building, the Reich Chancellery, outrunning the guards and keeping the flag as a souvenir.

There were other comedies of error. The New Zealand team mistook a German standing erect in front and to the left of Hitler’s dais for the Fuhrer himself and removed their hats to this imposing figure. They then put them on again as they passed Hitler. The spectators apparently misread the French team’s Olympic salute (right arm thrust out sideways) as the Nazi salute (arm out front) and cheered their traditional enemy in genuine approbation. Of all the national teams, only the US refused to lower their flags to Hitler, and an official statement explained the controversial failure to dip the flag as a matter of army regulations.

Another embarrassing incident during the first day involved Liechtenstein and Haiti. Like someone at a party discovering another wearing a similar dress, the Liechtenstein team was surprised that the national flag of Haiti was of the same blue and red pattern as Liechtenstein’s. This spelled potential mix-up in the medal ceremonies. Fortunately, Haiti’s only athlete withdrew, and Liechtenstein didn’t win any medals. To prevent future confusion, Liechtenstein added a crown to its flag a year later.

7The First Televised Games

The 1936 Berlin Olympics was the world’s first televised sporting event. The games were broadcast by the German firms Telefunken and Fernseh. Twenty-one cameras, three of which were the 2-meter-long (6 ft) Fernsehkanonen (“television cannon”), provided live transmission over a 72-hour period to special viewing booths called “Public Television Offices” in Berlin and Potsdam. Around Berlin, 150,000 people crowded into the 28 viewing rooms.

The primitive RCA and Farnsworth equipment produced only fuzzy black-and-white images. But in 1936, it was significant progress from following games via radio, which was how sports fans tuned in since 1921, when Pittsburgh’s KDKA began broadcasting boxing, later followed by baseball and football. It was also a German technological coup that it had beaten the US in the TV race. The Germans conveniently ignored that they were using a technology pioneered by Vladimir Zworykin, a Russian Jew, and Philo Farnsworth, a Mormon—two men whose ethnic and religious backgrounds would have earned them the contempt of the Nazis.

The Germans knew they were engineering the future. The program guide Television In Germany concludes: “From these initial stages of television in broadcasting and telephony, there is a growing up a cultural development that promises to be of unsuspected importance to the progress of mankind.”

America did have one consolation. The first broadcast showed Jesse Owens winning the 100-meter final. It was ironic that German technology would show the African-American Owens stomping on the notion of Aryan superiority.

6Jesse Owens And His Nazi Shoes

Jesse Owens won four golds in Berlin, for the 100 meters, 200 meters, long jump, and 4×100 meter relay. He was the acknowledged superstar of the Olympics. What is less known is that he got a little help from a member of the Nazi Party named Adolf “Adi” Dassler, a shoemaker whose company, Gebruder Dassler Schuhfabrik, specialized in track and field footwear. Dassler came to the Olympic Village with the intention of having as many athletes as possible wear his shoes. Dassler did not have the marketing and advertising tools to promote his brand, so everything had to be done by word of mouth.

Dassler approached his friend and the coach of the German track team, Jo Waitzer, who supported his endeavor to design running shoes that would improve the performance of track athletes. Waitzer agreed to persuade the runners even from other national teams to try out the shoes. Having read about Owens’s performances in the Olympic trials, Dassler was particularly interested in getting the shoes on the American’s agile feet. Dassler urged Waitzer to hand out some shoes to Owens. The coach was hesitant, as he knew his life could be put in danger if the authorities ever found out he was in contact with the African-American star.

Nevertheless, Waitzer braved the risk and smuggled two or three pairs to Owens, all personally crafted by Adi himself. They were made of glove leather, reinforced at the heels and toes with six track spikes. It was pretty much state-of-the-art at the time. Owens won the 100 meters in his German shoes, and by the third pair, Owens said he wanted only those shoes or none at all. He became the unwitting first pitchman for the product.

Berlin was soon abuzz that the impressive black American had accomplished his record-setting feats in shoes made in the small German village of Herzogenaurach. Dassler’s sales skyrocketed. It was worldwide prominence after that for the shoe company everyone knows today from Adi Dassler’s name—Adidas.

5The Dirtiest Basketball Final

Berlin showcased the first-ever Olympic basketball competition. Dr. James Naismith, the game’s inventor, received the honor of tossing the ball for the tip-off of the very first game, Estonia vs. France. The USA was the clear favorite, being the sport’s country of origin, and true to expectations, they steamrolled the opposition effortlessly before facing Canada in the finals.

Basketball was meant to be an indoor game, but the German organizers were unfamiliar with basketball (Germany had no basketball team) and failed to provide indoor facilities. Instead, the games were played outdoors on a clay tennis court, where goals with wooden backboards had been installed. The players had to make do with a ball that was bigger and heavier than today’s. There was a slit on one side for the bladder, so the ball wasn’t perfectly round. This made dribbling on the clay difficult, even in dry conditions.

The day before the final, there was a torrential downpour, turning the court into a muddy mess. The Germans wanted to get the game over with and did not call a postponement as the rains continued the next day. Americans squared off with Canadians in the dirt surrounded by 500 spectators. Dribbling was now well-nigh impossible, and the ball was moved up the court chiefly by passing. The slippery court substantially slowed down the game. The German referees, who didn’t speak English, officiated atrociously.

In the midst of these difficult conditions, the score only stood at 14–4 by halftime of the 40-minute regulation period. The US inflicted a crushing 19–8 victory on Canada at the end.

4Hitler’s Football Embarrassment

Adolf Hitler was never a football fan. He believed that building up a physically fit German youth could be better accomplished by sports like boxing and athletics. But the Nazis did support a strong football team that could play a part in the propaganda machine. They organized clubs and encouraged people to play. Football was also the most popular sport and guaranteed to make the Nazis money.

Team manager Otto Nerz made the Germans a powerful football team, and in 1936, it was joint favorite with Great Britain. The first match was a devastating 9–0 triumph over Luxembourg, a spectacle so overwhelming that the officials decided to invite Hitler to the next match against Norway. Hitler had never been to a football game before, but surely he would not want to miss his Aryan superstars dominating the opposition, whom they had defeated in their last eight meetings. This one should be a breeze.

Hitler gave in to his underlings and, with 55,000 other spectators, took his place at the Poststadion, preparing to savor the sweet victory of his Wunderteam. The Germans did not disappoint in the early minutes—the Norwegians hardly made it past the half-line. But then, the Germans began bungling their chances. Norway found an opening and crashed through with the first goal. Hitler was agitated and began to explode in a tantrum. The Germans doubled on the attack, with Nerz ordering the defenders into the action. But another Norwegian shot sailed past the goalie. Hitler had seen enough. He rose up in an uncontrollable rage and left his first and only football game in a huff. The score was 2–0 for Norway at the final whistle.

3Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia

The 1936 Games came to be immortalized on film, using pioneering moviemaking techniques that changed cinema forever. The monumental masterpiece was Olympia, directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Unlike the blatant celebration of Nazi power in her earlier Triumph of the Will, Riefenstahl’s heroes in Olympia were those who genuinely excelled, regardless of nationality or race. Aside from spectacle, Riefenstahl emphasized the beauty of the human form. To accomplish this, she manipulated the camera lens in ways never done before.

Riefenstahl was one of the first to use a moving camera for traveling shots in a documentary, putting her crew on roller skates as they took the footage. She built a track so the camera could move alongside the sprinters. She had a pit dug so she could film the pole vault against the backdrop of the sky. Riefenstahl developed a special 600-mm telephoto lens for close-ups and compact shots and sent aloft a balloon with a small 5-mm camera for aerial views. An underwater camera that changed speed and focus skillfully managed the tempo of the different diving events.

Riefenstahl edited the shots for maximum dramatic impact. The transition shots from one event to the next were wonderfully fluid. Close-ups captured the sweat and strain of marathon runners, their exhaustion and determination to go on. This was interspersed with crowd reaction shots with synchronized background music giving the athletes’ movements the impression of a dance. This was back in the days when to simply attach any sound to film was difficult. But Riefenstahl did it with impressive precision that stunned audiences. Never before had a documentary been produced with editing and sound.

There is controversy over whether Olympia was overt propaganda or not. On one hand, Goebbels clearly was involved in the film. On the other hand, Riefenstahl featured African Americans Jesse Owens and Ralph Metcalf, whose successes Hitler clearly resented. She was also not averse to recording German defeats at the hands of other competitors. Later on, Riefenstahl left overtly Nazi footage on the cutting room floor. Nevertheless, the Nazis used the feel-good and inspirational theme of Olympia to reflect back on the regime.

Olympia won the grand prize at the 1938 International Film Festival in Venice, beating Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Disney himself welcomed Riefenstahl to Hollywood with open arms, the only studio executive to do so in the wake of Kristallnacht. Even today, Olympia‘s brilliant cinematography continues to mesmerize.

2Art As Sport

Once upon a time, the Olympics awarded medals for art. It was founder Pierre de Coubertin’s vision that the Games should highlight aesthetics as well as athletics. Every Olympics between 1912 and 1948 awarded gold, silver, and bronze in five categories: architecture, painting, sculpture, literature, and music. All works had to be sports-themed—paintings, for example, could feature athletes in action, while musical pieces might pay homage to a sport or an individual competitor. The German Art Committee proposed to add a Works for the Screen category for 1936, but de Coubertin apparently smelled a rat and turned it down, sensing that it would be a vehicle for purely propaganda films.

In Berlin, the Germans dominated the art competition jury, taking liberties with home court advantage to remedy the situation that saw Germany haul in just one medal in the last two Olympics. Remedy it did—German artists won five out of the nine medals handed out. German musicians made a clean sweep of the Musical Composition Solo and Chorus categories. The only American to win a medal was Charles Downing Lay, with his Architecture entry “Marine Park in Brooklyn.”

Initially, the public showed no enthusiasm for the art competition. But a flurry of propaganda eventually interested 70,000 people to view the exhibition, making it one of the most successful Olympic art competitions. We can only speculate how much money the Nazis raked in from the sales of the artworks, as transactions were made “without the usual formalities,” according to the official report. To the delight of de Coubertin, however, the award-winning musical compositions were played by the Berlin Philharmonic in a concert at the end of the Games.

The amateurism clause of the Olympics eventually killed the art competition. The quality of the entries never seemed to satisfy the jury of art critics, and it became the practice to withhold medals and proclaim no winner. It was discontinued after the 1948 London Olympics.

1Elizabeth Robinson’s Unbelievable Comeback

Elizabeth Robinson’s gold in 1936 came five years after she was given up for dead, her battered body taken to a mortician for burial.

Betty was a native of the Chicago suburb of Riverdale and attended Thornton Township High School. One day in 1928, her biology teacher spotted her chasing a commuter train and was astonished at her speed as she caught up with it. After timing her later as she ran 50 meters (150 ft) down the school corridor, the teacher encouraged Betty to join the Illinois Women’s Athletic Club. Soon, Betty was clocking near-record times at competitive events. In July, she passed the trials and made it to the 1928 Olympics US team.

At 16, having never been away from home, Betty was on a ship to Europe. This was the first time female athletes were allowed in track and field events, over the objections of Baron de Coubertin and Pope Pius XI. In Amsterdam, Betty became the first woman—and the youngest—to win the gold in the 100 meters, setting a world record of 12.2 seconds. She returned to the US a heroine and continued to break records thereafter.

Then, on a hot June day in 1931, tragedy struck. Betty was with her cousin Wilson Palmer in a biplane 200 meters (600 ft) up when the plane stalled and nosedived. The horrific impact left both unconscious. The man who pulled Betty from the debris saw her mangled body and bloody face and thought he was looking at a corpse. He put her in the trunk of his car to a nursing home and left her with the undertaker there. Fortunately, the undertaker noticed she was still alive, and she was taken to the emergency room.

Betty drifted in and out of consciousness for 11 weeks while she was in the hospital. Doctors repaired her damaged left leg by inserting a rod and pins to stabilize it. Doctors feared Betty would never walk again. The media proclaimed her running days over. Betty’s left leg became half an inch shorter than the right. She was in a wheelchair for four months. It was a crushing blow for Betty, who wanted to defend her 100-meter title at the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.

But with grim determination, Betty struggled to walk then run again. By 1934, she was back in training. She missed LA, but was ready for Berlin as a member of the 4×100 relay team. Since Betty’s shortened leg made her unable to start in the crouch position, she was allowed to start standing up. Betty ran the third leg, handing over her baton as the favored German team fumbled and dropped theirs. The Americans surged forward, giving Betty Robinson her improbable second Olympic gold. The International Olympic Committee called her comeback “one of the most remarkable in the annals of the Games.”

Betty retired from competition soon after and married Richard Schwartz in 1939. She continued as a coach and gave talks to athletic associations across the US. Elizabeth Robinson Schwartz died in 1999, an almost forgotten Olympic heroine.

+The Muslim Women Who Snubbed Hitler

Halet Cambel personified the new Turkish woman in the 1930s. She exemplified the transformation of Muslim Turkey into a modern secular state led by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, where women received the same rights and opportunities as men.

Cambel was born in Berlin to a family with close connections to Kemal. She was a sickly child, falling prey to typhoid and then to hepatitis. Cambel got herself into shape with exercise. She was fascinated by stories of knights, which led her to take up fencing under a Russian coach. She returned to Istanbul in 1924 to study archaeology, but her fencing skills earned her a place in the 1936 Turkish Olympic team with fellow fencer Suat Fetgeri Aseni Tari. They were the first Turkish women to compete in the Games. Cambel was repulsed by Nazi ideology and did not want to go, but the Turkish government prodded her to participate. Her disgust toward Hitler must have been heightened when she saw the Fuhrer’s infuriated reaction to Jesse Owens’s victory.

Cambel and Tari did not win any medals, but they will be remembered as the women who defied Hitler. Cambel recalled the moment: “Our assigned German official asked us to meet Hitler. We actually would not have come to Germany at all if it were down to us, as we did not approve of Hitler’s regime. We said that we would never have come to Berlin if our government had not told us to do so. When the official asked us to go up and introduce ourselves to Hitler, we firmly rejected her offer.”

Halet Cambel settled down to life as an archaeologist after the Olympics.

Larry is a freelance writer whose main interest is history.

There is a striking disconnect between what aliens from outer space are popularly believed to look like, and what is actually reported.

SEE ALSO: 10 Signs That Aliens Are Contributing To Our World

The popular idea, known as “The Grays,” are often short and always skinny, with gray skin, big heads, huge bug-like black eyes, and just a slit of a mouth. Creatures like these appear in movies and on book and magazine covers worldwide as the generally accepted appearance of “real” aliens from outer space.

More generally speaking though, actual reports of alien encounters have displayed a real variety of weird creatures; some are amazing; some are scary; and some are just plain odd!

10 Frog Aliens

Harrison Bailey loved to walk so much that he found a way to profit from it; he had a huge green tire with advertising space on the side of it, and he’d take long walks rolling it with sponsored ads. He was on such a walk from Chicago, Illinois, to Joliet, on September 24, 1951, when he rolled his big tire into a small wooded area along the route near the town of Orland Park.

As he approached the woods, he became aware of a strange prickling in his neck, and saw a sort of silver whirlwind in the sky behind him… but he was on a tight schedule with a long walk ahead, so he ignored it and continued forward into the woods. In front of him was what he took to be a large frog on a log; as he approached it, he became aware of other animals about the same size hidden in the foliage on both sides of the road. Small round… insects? …were all over the road. Bailey walked on, figuring his boots would protect him.

Then the frog on the log stood up and started walking towards him.

Soon Bailey was surrounded by these bipedal frogs, and they were jumping up to touch him on the shoulders, back, hips, and legs; and when they touched him, it felt unpleasant. He started to run, still rolling his wheel ahead of him and over the strange insects that covered the ground, eventually escaping the hoard of frogs.

Further along the road, Bailey ran across a large, rounded object that opened to reveal two five-foot-tall human-like beings wearing helmets that obscured their faces. The next thing Bailey was aware of was lying on a bed of some sort, presumably inside the object, with the two beings examining him and — somehow — communicating to instruct him to tell the world about them; they never actually spoke. After this strange exam, Bailey was allowed to leave with his wheel… but, despite the beings asking him to tell the world about them, he immediately forgot about nearly everything that happened that day. It was only around twenty-five years later, when hypnotic regression was used to try and recover what happened in the hours of that September day, that the strange series of events was first told to the world.^[1]

9 Space Cone

On Sunday, November 1, 1954, Rosa Dainelli was walking along a footpath through fields and thickets on her way from her house to the nearby town of Cennina, Italy, where she planned to place a handful of carnations at the altar of the Madonna Pellegrina [the ‘Pilgrim Madonna’]. It was a path she used almost daily, and an area very familiar to her… until she entered a small clearing and found some sort of vehicle in the middle of it.

The object was only about seven feet tall, and looked like two tall cones connected together at their large ends, like a round diamond shape… it stood on three small legs, and had an opening in the side that revealed two small chairs. As Rosa was just starting to wonder about this object, two tiny men — only three feet tall or so each — walked around from the opposite side of it to approach her in a friendly fashion.

The two looked mostly human; but their size and an odd curve in the center of their lips showed they were not. Both wore one-piece gray overalls that covered them from their necks to their feet, and each wore a short cape. They also had odd helmets that covered their ears. The two short men tried to talk to Dainelli, but she didn’t understand the language they were using. They snatched some carnations from her and dropped them inside the craft. Then one of them reached inside and brought out two white spheres… and Dainelli took the opportunity to run from the scene. When she looked back over her shoulder at them, they had vanished.^[2]

8 Silver Monster

It was a long night on the farm in Kelly, Kentucky. It all started when Billy Ray Taylor saw a strange object fly across the sky with a rainbow trail, and then drop into a deep gully nearby. Taylor headed to the farmhouse of the Sutten family — they were friends — to tell everyone there what he had seen; but the family thought he’d probably seen a ‘falling star’ and was just exaggerating the details.

Half an hour later, something glowing approached the house from the fields. Taylor and Lucky Sutten watched the strange glow from the back door of the house until it became clear it was some sort of bipedal creature, three-and-a-half feet tall, with a huge round head and very long arms ending in talons, that was walking towards them. The odd creature appeared to be made of silver, and it held its arms high above its head as it approached, as if in surrender… and there didn’t seem to be any obvious reason it was glowing.

Taylor and Sutten both grabbed guns; and when the creature came within twenty feet of the house they opened fire, with the odd result that the creature flipped backwards and then ran away. Soon, another such creature was found staring into the house at one of the windows; they shot at it from inside the house and the weird thing flipped backwards and out of sight. Assuming the body would be just outside, Taylor and Sutten headed for the front door. As Taylor walked out, however, one of the creatures was seen to reach down from above and touched his hair with its talons; the family yanked Taylor back inside before he could go further, and Sutten ran out and shot the creature, knocking it off the roof.

Another creature was spotted in a tree nearby, and Taylor joined Sutten as both shot at the creature. It fell from the tree… and floated lightly down to the ground before running off. Then another ran from around the house at the two men. Sutten fired point blank into the creature, and they heard the bullets hit it, but the strange creature was unharmed even though it turned and ran after being shot. It was now obvious to both Taylor and Sutten that their guns were useless, and they retreated back into the house.

Though the strange visitors continued to pester the family until around 5:00 AM, the creatures never did anything aggressive. Instead, they appeared to simply be curious about the family, always looking in at the windows but never entering the house.^[3]

7 Four Legs and Arms

It was a Sunday around 2:00 PM in Casa Blanca, California, and a large group of boys were playing in a yard in front of one of their houses, when they noticed the first strange object in the sky above them. Soon others appear, and disappeared with a musical ‘ping,’ putting on a show the boys thought was fun… but anytime they tried to get one of the adults in the house to look, everything vanished. So it was just for them to see, and they soon accepted this.

One of the objects, multi-colored and bright, landed about half a block away in a field. Then two of the older boys saw a strange thing in front of the house next door; it was about three and a half feet tall, floating above the ground, and transparent enough that they could see the brickwork of the house through the thing’s body. It wore a belt with a round disk that glimmered like a mirror. The creature appeared to have eyes and a mouth, but across the area a nose would be there were four round objects that shined like diamonds. Another boy saw just an arm hanging alone in midair, beckoning him to come closer.

Then another full being emerged from the landed craft, also floating above the ground but much more solid looking than the previous. This one appeared to be wearing a satin-like material… and it had four legs and four hands, each of its arms splitting in two at the elbow. This being somehow ‘talked’ to one of the boys, telling him to climb a nearby tree so he could be picked up in fifteen minutes. Using a hose, the older kids kept the younger ones out of the tree… and fifteen minutes later one of the strange objects flew around the top of the tree before all of the objects disappeared for the last time.^[4]

6 Ginger Aliens

Jose Antonio Da Silva (from Bebedouro, Brazil) just wanted to fish. He got up early that morning to do just that, after having hiked to the lake and set up camp the day before; but around 3:00 PM his plans were changed against his will when a group of 4 foot tall humanoids, completely covered head to toe in strange suits, paralyzed his legs and then dragged him aboard a weird craft.

For hours Da Silva sat with his captors as the strange vehicle moved; there were no windows, so he could only feel the motion of the craft, with no idea where it was going. They had placed a helmet over his head, just like the ones they were wearing themselves. When they reached their destination, he was brought into a large room and placed sitting on a stool. Here he saw these beings without their helmets on (he continued to wear his); among them was one being who was slightly taller, and appeared to be in charge.

They all looked about the same: roughly human with red hair that hung to their waists, and beards that stretched to their stomachs. Their eyebrows were very thick — about two finger widths — and they had no eyelashes on their slightly-larger-than-human green eyes. The biggest difference was their mouths, which were a little wider than a human’s… and had no teeth in them, looking more like a fish’s mouth on the inside.

They communicated to Da Silva by means of gestures and illustrations; he soon understood that they wanted him to go back to Earth to gather information for them, then eventually return to live with them for several years, finally to return to Earth with them as their ambassador and guide. Da Silva refused the offer. With that, he was taken back to the strange craft and, after some time, was dropped off in the middle of the night by a stream. Once he found his way to a road, he was able to learn that he was about 30 KM/18.6 miles away from where he had been fishing… and four and a half days had passed! ^[5]

5 Big Foot

It was 10:30 PM and a foggy night out in Frederic, Wisconsin, and farmer William Bosak was driving home from a Co-Op meeting he had attended in the nearby town of Frederic, when his headlights reflected off something on the left side of the road. Bosak had already been driving at a slower pace, due to the fog, and he slowed down more as he approached the object… and I do mean ‘object,’ for it was no car on the side of the road!

The object was about eight to ten feet tall, and was sitting still. On the side facing Bosak as he drove up there was a curved glass panel that he could see through; and inside there was a human-like being. The being appeared to wearing a tan shirt of some type, but Bosak could also see that it had short hair or fur on its upper body and arms; the arms were raised above the being’s head. There was more short hair sticking out from the sides of the being’s head, though it’s face and chin were hairless. High up on its head, two calf-like ears stuck out about three inches to each side. It also had large protruding eyes. Bosak couldn’t see more of the craft or figure because of the fog; but he’d seen enough. He stepped on the gas pedal and rocketed home.

It was nearly a month before Bosak plucked up the courage to tell anyone else what happened. On further thought, it occurred to Bosak that the strange being looked just as frightened of him as he had been of it… and he kinda wished he could go back and be friendlier.^[6]

4 Block Creatures

19-year-old Lee Parrish had just driven home from his girlfriend’s house in Prospect, Kentucky; along the way, he had seen a bright rectangular object in the sky. When he got home, his eyes hurt terribly… and he discovered the seven minute drive had taken nearly forty-five minutes to complete for some reason. Worried, his mother convinced him to have hypnotic regression in an attempt to remember what happened during the missing time; and the answers he gave were just strange.

Parish’s car had been lifted off the ground by the bright object, and then Parrish himself had somehow been instantly brought to a room that looked too large to be inside the craft. In this room were three strange objects; on his left was a large black slab shaped like a tombstone with an additional bump on top that nearly reached the ceiling, on his right was a red block that was just a little shorter than Parrish, and in front of him was a more complicated looking white block. The white block was Parrish’s height, about six feet, and had a surface that curved away from Parrish on the front, with a distinct rectangular “head.” Parrish didn’t know how he knew, but he sensed these objects were sentient beings; and that the white one was in charge.

The black slab had a single limb that stuck out from one side of its front. It started to use this to slowly touch Parrish on his side and back, a feeling that was unpleasant: cold and burning at the same time, it made Parrish feel like he was vibrating. Next the red block touched him; it too had a single limb coming from its body, and Parrish sensed it was a bit frightened of him. It slowly touched his shoulder, and then the side of his head, above the ear in the hairline. These touches came with the sensation of being pricked with a needle, but didn’t hurt very long.

After touching him, the red block moved to the white one, and either disappeared behind it, or merged with it. The black slab backed away slowly as the white object made a sound like sandpaper being used; then the white one moved to the black slab and, again, either disappeared behind it or merged with it. A moment later, the black slab disappeared, leaving Parrish in the room alone.

Then Parrish was in his car again, looking at a little pond near the roadway he had been driving on. His eyes were completely bloodshot, and he had trouble sleeping for days afterwards simply because of how badly they hurt.^[7]

3 Triangle Eyes

Private security guard Piero Fortunato Zanfretta was driving his rounds in Torriglia, Italy that icy cold night when, just a bit after midnight, his car’s engine, lights, and radio all failed at once, bringing the car to a stop in front of one of his clients’ houses. While this bothered him, Zanfretta quickly noticed four strange lights moving around the client’s house; assuming these were burglars, he grabbed his gun and flashlight, walked through the open gate, and snuck quietly along the wall to surprise them. Then someone touched his back.

Spinning around with his gun and light in front of him, Zanfretta found himself facing a 10 foot tall being with undulating, hairy, green skin. He pointed his flashlight up to see the face, and dropped it in shock. The creature had triangular yellow eyes, and red veins on its forehead. Zanfretta quickly grabbed up the flashlight and ran for his car, but he was soon aware that something very bright was behind him. He turned to look and discovered a huge triangular craft, glowing brightly enough that he had to shield his eyes, was rising from the back yard of the house with a hissing noise. He ran to his car and made a desperate call out on his radio, which cut off before he could give his location.

An hour later, two other patrol cars came through the area and discovered Zanfretta lying on the ground out in front of the now-closed gate to the house. As they approached he jumped up, pointing his gun at them; his eyes were bulging, and he didn’t seem to recognize them. They managed to overpower him, but noticed as they did so that Zanfretta and his clothes were very warm despite the icy temperatures he had presumably been lying in till just a moment before.

Further investigation after daybreak showed two huge horseshoe shaped impressions in the ground behind the house, as if something massive had been sitting there… and fifty-two witnesses from around the city had all seen the bright light in the area at the same time that Zanfretta claimed to have been attacked! ^[8]

2 Tent Creatures

Federico Ibáñez, 54, was driving to his vineyards just outside of Turis, Spain around 11:30 AM that morning, when he came across a strange object in the road ahead of him. It was shaped like half an egg, a large dome on four short legs, and appeared to be made from a shining white metal; it was about 8 feet/2.5 meters tall.

As Ibáñez puzzled over this object, two small figures emerged from near a carob tree about 36 feet/11 meters away, and headed for the craft. He saw the strange beings from the side, one behind the other. They were only about 3 feet/1 meter tall each, and appeared to be wearing white outfits that covered them from head to toe and looked as if they were inflated; the little beings almost appeared to be wearing tiny tents! The feet and hands were small and dark in color. All that Ibáñez could make of their faces was that the had tubes of some sort that projected out from the face by about 3 inches/8 centimeters, like built-in binoculars.

The two figures rushed to the vehicle and entered it, after which the half-egg rose quickly and silently, creating a whirlwind as it took off. Later researchers found four small impressions on the ground where Ibáñez said the vehicle had been, and estimated a weight of about four tons from the depths of the impressions.^[9]

1 In Soviet Russia . . .

It was around 6:30 PM at Levoberezhniy’s park in Voronezh, Russia. Children were playing; a group of adults were waiting at a nearby bus stop; and a large red oval, about 45 feet long by 18 feet high, was flying in circles about forty feet above the ground… which kind of caught everyone’s attention. The oval craft landed lightly in the park, near several of the playing children, and three large beings came out, accompanied by a box-like robot.

The beings were humanoid, but around nine feet tall, with very long arms and a sort of dome instead of head and neck. These domes had three eyes; two whitish ones side by side, and then a red one above them, that was described as swiveling around like a radar. They appeared to be wearing silver jumpsuits with bronze boots, and set about collecting dirt samples; one of the three seemed to be in charge, and sometimes made sounds that were believed to be orders to the other two.

Everyone witnessing the event had been too stunned to really react at first; but it soon proved to be too much for one young man, who started to scream… and the being in charge clearly focused it’s attention on this young man, who was suddenly frozen in place. Everyone else then started to panic, as the strange beings now appeared to be a threat; but before a full panic set in, the beings and the craft simply vanished from view.

Five minutes later the beings and the strange craft suddenly reappeared, in the same place they had been before; but one of the beings now held a short tube which it pointed at a teenager… who disappeared. Now a real panic broke out, as the three large beings returned to their craft, and the oval vehicle lifted up into the air. As it vanished from sight, the teenager suddenly reappeared from nowhere.

Researchers were baffled by the strange events; but all witnesses stuck to their stories, and drawings by both the children and adults presented a consistent — though strange — portrait of the alien beings.^[10]

About The Author: Garth Haslam has been digging into strange topics for over thirty years, and posts his research on varying anomalies, curiosities, mysteries, and legends at his website Anomalies—the Strange & Unexplained and Facebook page.

Theft is as common as the kitchen cockroach. But shoplifters and office supplies stealers have nothing on the world’s weirdest thieves and henchmen. Some people just want their own oddity and walk off with sharks, or act out a gaming fantasy inside of stolen aircraft. Others just want the money. Organized gangs know that bizarre niches are profitable. As a result, they traffic bridges and trees while funding their crimes with avocados.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Famously Bizarre Robberies

10 Apple Company Fan – Secure Client Files

An Australian teenager admired Apple. The 16-year-old had dreams of working for the trillion-dollar company one day. However, his obsession and love of hacking proved to be a disaster for both him and Apple.

For nearly a year, the teen wormed around the company’s mainframe and stole 90 gigabytes of data. The information included customer accounts and other high-security files. In 2018, Apple detected the intruder and instead of offering the kid a job, they handed him over to the FBI. The Bureau passed him on to the Australian police who raided his house. Ironically, the crime had been committed with several Apple laptops.

The teenager, who could not be named due to his age, appeared in a children’s court. He pleaded guilty but the honesty did not impress Apple. The breach was an embarrassment, especially since the hacker floated around their files for months without detection. The company’s only response was a public statement reassuring customers that their information was safe.^[1]

9 Ant – World’s Smallest Diamond Theft

A unique video went viral on YouTube, in 2018. The clip followed a diamond heist. This was not your usual bank robbery, however. The thief in question was an ant. Whoever captured the footage was working with tiny diamonds on a desk blotter. An ant ambled closer, grabbed one of the gems and scurried away.

The daring chase lasted 47 seconds. Alright, the chase was just a camera rolling while the insect pushed and pulled the diamond along. The video ended suddenly. It remains unclear what happened next but the person probably decided it was time to retrieve the diamond. Hopefully, the criminal ant was allowed to live and pursue stardom in other YouTube videos.

When experts looked at the clip, they could not identify the species. Although several are strong enough to carry objects much bigger and heavier than themselves, it was still surprising that the tiny ant managed to grip the smooth diamond so securely in its mandibles. Why the insect wanted the stone is also a mystery. One theory suggested that the diamond was coated with a chemical that smelled edible.^[2]

8 Cosmetic Patient – Surgically-Induced Kleptomania

When a 40-year-old woman was admitted for cosmetic surgery, nobody could predict the consequences. In 2016, the patient underwent a procedure that included a tummy tuck, arm lift, breast augmentation, and liposuction. The Brazilian mother was healthy enough to be released from the hospital a few days later.

Before long, she experienced the first pang of kleptomania. The pressure to perform a five-finger discount became overwhelming and stealing something was the only way she gained any relief. At one point, she stole a cheap item despite having enough to pay for it, got caught and ended up at a police station. By now, doctors knew that something had gone wrong with the surgery. The team explained to the officers that the woman was not a criminal – she had a brain injury.

During the operation, blood flow became restricted and it damaged the neural region responsible for impulse control. Things went better after that. The woman was released and her kleptomania disappeared after a few weeks. Thankfully, the damage to her brain had only been temporary.^[3]

7 Pastry Smuggler – 1,020 Cakes

David Lliviganay stole a lot of cakes. In fact, he smuggled 1,020 pastries from his workplace. At first blush, one might think he had a sweet tooth. However, the thief was entirely focused on fencing the cakes for a massive profit. The edibles in question were gourmet crêpes that cost $90 for a single cake. Lliviganay, who worked as a deliveryman for Lady M Confections, ended up stealing a batch worth $90,000.

Elite goods can trigger a black market following and this was the case with Lady M’s signature crêpes. Martha Steward and Oprah loved them. The New York Times lauded them as among the best in the city. Unsurprisingly, dodgy buyers wanted them and Lliviganay saw the opportunity to make a lot of money.

Lady M only became aware of the cake trafficking in 2019, when it was brought to their attention that the crêpes were being sold at a cheaper price elsewhere. Security cameras showed him pinching the items and Lliviganay pleaded guilty. The company now wants the deliveryman to repay the total worth of the cakes he stole.^[4]

6 Aquarium Enthusiast – A Shark

In 2018, an employee at the San Antonio Aquarium became suspicious. Three visitors were leaving but something did not seem right about their baby stroller. After alerting management, the aquarium’s manager cornered them in the parking lot. She insisted on looking inside their vehicle but the two men and their lady companion refused.

The staff looked at the security tapes and witnessed a horrifying theft. The trio approached an open saltwater pool. This interactive feature allows visitors to touch several shark species. Only this time, the touching went too far. One man grabbed a gray horn shark by the tail and lifted her from the water. The young female, called Miss Helen, was then taken by the other man and wrapped in a blanket. The 0.6 meters (2 feet) long shark was placed in a bucket filled with a bleach solution and hidden inside the baby stroller.

The police found the thieves’ truck and discovered Miss Helen at one of the men’s homes. She was slumming it out inside a pet tank. The shark-nappers were arrested and their victim was returned to the aquarium in a plastic tub.^[5]

5 Metal Thieves – A Bridge

The secret to pulling off a great heist is an honest look and fibbing with flair. This was how one gang made a healthy profit. They decided to steal metal and sell it to an unsuspecting dealer. The thieves were not satisfied with a few cables or stripping somebody’s outdoor plumbing. They focused their attention on a bridge and nearby train tracks. Both profitable features were located in the Czech Republic.

Nobody saw them dismantle the 9-tonne (10-ton) bridge and over 198 meters (650 feet) of tracks. But that was only half the job. The metal needed to be sold. That was where the well-delivered lies came in handy. The men walked into a depot in Slavkov, in the east of the Republic. They told the dealer that the bridge and railway line were removed because nobody used them anymore. For good measure, false paperwork stated they were the official demolition crew. After the gang left with their money, a closer look at their story revealed the truth. Both structures were still part of an active infrastructure and the bridge alone would require millions to replace.^[6]

4 Unidentified Russian – Walnuts Worth $300,000

In 2012, a freight brokerage firm became worried. A shipment of unprocessed walnuts had not arrived at its destination in Miami. In fact, the nuts were two days late. The company called the police and told them the walnuts originally came from California’s Tehama County. Before long, Sheriff’s deputies discovered another load from the Tehama orchards had disappeared. This cargo vanished en route to San Antonio.

Together, the two stolen shipments weighed 37,194 kilograms (82,000 pounds) and were valued at around $300,000. Both heists occurred in October and were the work of the same driver. The suspect was described as a white male speaking with a definite Russian accent. He stood over 1.8 meters (6.2 feet) tall and weighed around 90 kilograms (198 pounds). He drove a semi-truck with the door label “InTech Transportation,” and flashed authentic-looking purchase orders.

When questioned, the trucking company hired to ship the walnuts to San Antonio confirmed that he was not their guy. Nobody knows what happened to the other driver or why the Russian wanted so many walnuts. A plausible scenario saw the nuts heading for the black market where, perhaps, they were pre-ordered by a buyer.^[7]

3 Timber Cartels – Thousand-Year-Old Trees

Canada’s Carmanah Walbran Provincial Park is full of old trees. Its collection of 800-year-old cedars is especially prized. In 2012, a hiker found that one of them had been reduced to a stump. The tree, once measuring 50 meters (164 feet) high, was gone and broken timber equipment was found nearby.

The park did not take the theft lightly. The century-old trees are critical to the ecosystem. They also support a rare bird, once classified as extinct before being rediscovered between the branches. The case went nowhere, despite the involvement of several organizations that included the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The cedar was a tiny fragment of a huge problem. Thousand-year-old specimens are so valuable that they are called the “new ivory.” A single old tree can fetch $20,000. Sometimes, 100 trees are stolen during a single heist. The numbers add up quickly – cartels can remove timber worth up to $100 billion.

Unfortunately, the good guys are understaffed, lack organization and do not have the funds to deal with the problem. The cartels, on the other hand, are highly-organized and deadly. Groups that traffick timber often also trade humans and weapons, a trademark of the most lethal and effective syndicates.^[8]

2 Gamer – Large Commercial Aircraft

In 2018, Richard Russell finished his shift. Employed as a tarmac worker at the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, nobody saw his next move coming. Russel successfully stole a Bombardier Q400 turboprop plane.

Soon after the 76-seat craft was airborne, traffic control realized something was wrong. Luckily for them, Russell was chatty and kept communications open. While being trailed by fighter jets, the thief proceeded to perform dangerous maneuvers including rolls and loops. Alarmed, one of the jet pilots asked him to land so that nobody would get injured. Russell became agitated and replied, “I don’t want to. I was kinda hoping that was going to be it.” This remark, along with several others, later gave authorities the reason to believe that the airport worker was suicidal.

Russell apologized to his family and friends for his behavior but did so via traffic control. He would never get the chance to tell them personally. After an hour in the air, the plane crashed on an island and killed Russell. Investigations found he had no pilot license or any flight experience. Yet, he managed to take off, stay airborne for a long time and perform complicated moves. The only clue Russell provided was when he told traffic control he did not need much assistance with the flying because he “played some video games.”^[9]

1 Avocado Highjackers – 4 Trucks A Day

When criminals consider what to highjack, avocadoes usually fail to make the list. The reality in Michoacán is very different. When farmers transport their crops, the risk of having the truck stolen is high. In fact, as many as four avocado trucks are stolen every day in the Mexican state.

To understand this bizarre choice, one must understand that Michoacán is cartel country. Different organized gangs are battling to take control of the region but thus far, nobody has taken the throne. The ongoing fight is expensive and because of this, the cartels need a good source of income. Enter that wrinkly green fruit you either love or hate.

Around 80 percent of the United States’ avocado imports come from Michoacán. As a result, its avocado sector is a billion-dollar industry. Perfect for mafia claws. With the insatiable public appetite and nearly 20 gangs running after avocado trucks, the violence has spun out of control. Many fear it might end up killing the entire business.^[10]

Welcome back to another week of strange stories, curious chronicles, and aberrant anecdotes. If you missed last week’s list, you can catch it here.

There are two poop stories this week, although they are significantly different. One highlights a pigeon with great comedic timing while the other explores a scientific experiment designed to see if it is possible to make a usable knife out of frozen feces.

We also have a few strange crime stories for you: two Amish men run from the law, a Mummy Marauder is on the loose, and thieves make off with a solid gold toilet.

10 The Three Gorges Water Monster

Videos started surfacing earlier this week showing a long, black figure slithering across China’s Yangtze River. It immediately drew comparisons to the infamous Loch Ness Monster, leading to speculation that China might have its own version of “Nessie” prowling its waters. However, this mystery was put to bed rather quickly and, unfortunately, the truth is far less exciting.

Clips of the Three Gorges Water Monster, as it was nicknamed, first circulated on Chinese social media platforms where they garnered tens of millions of views and, eventually, made their way to the West. After one professor opined that, if real, the creature was likely a large water snake, there was talk of the animal mutating to gigantic size due to the pollution in the river.

A few days later, the “serpent” was discovered to be just a piece of floating debris, although its exact nature is still unclear due to conflicting reports. One Chinese news outlet claimed it was a long piece of rubber tubing which detached itself from a shipyard. Meanwhile, state broadcaster CCTV said it was a mesh sunshade that got dislodged from the nearby ferry terminal and got wrapped up in such a way that it formed a snake-like figure.^[1]

9 Pigeon Poop Problem Provokes Politician

A Chicago lawmaker was doing an interview discussing the pigeon poop problem at an infamous bus station when one of the birds made a bold statement to highlight the issue—the pigeon pooped on him.

The Irving Park Blue Line station has a reputation among Chicago residents as the “pigeon poop station”. Located underneath the Kennedy Expressway, the entrance has an underpass right above the commuter path where the birds sit and defecate at will.

There is, at least, one official who is trying to do something about it. State Representative Jaime Andrade has been trying to secure funds to deal with the problem since last year. Recently, he was doing another interview with a local TV station on the matter. Just as he was bad-mouthing the pigeons, one of them pooped right on his head.^[2] Not one to miss an opportunity, he pointed out that this is exactly what his constituents have to deal with.

Delays in settling the matter seem to be caused by a technicality over who is responsible for the pigeons. Last year, Andrade secured money from the state budget, but those funds went to the Chicago Transit Authority which has purview over the bus station as it is part of the Kennedy Expressway. The underpass, however, is not considered part of the station and falls under the jurisdiction of the Illinois Department of Transportation, while the sidewalk where the birds poop is the responsibility of the City of Chicago.

8 Cattle Semen Lost In Fire

A fire at a genetics lab in Yarram, Victoria, Australia, led to the destruction of 100 cryogenic cylinders of cattle semen.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, the storage facility for Yarram Herd Services caught fire. It took firefighters two hours to contain the blaze but, by then, it was too late: everything inside the building had been destroyed.

The biggest loss was 100 receptacles which stored cattle semen. The company offers herd testing, artificial insemination (AI), and other services to many farmers in the region who often choose to store the genetic material from their own animals at the facility.

The value of the destroyed goods is particularly high right now as we just entered AI season. The cylinders themselves were worth between $500 and $1,000 each while their contents were considerably more valuable. Bull semen is worth anywhere between $5 and $95 per straw.^[3]

This blaze proved to be a unique challenge for firefighters. Initially, they had to remain in a defensive position. The heat caused the fluid inside the cylinders to expand which, in turn, prompted the lids to fly off as high-speed projectiles. Investigators are still looking into the cause of the fire.

7 The Hunt For The Mummy Marauder

While everyone was focussed on newly discovered photos of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in blackface (which he, weirdly, blamed on “white privilege”), they missed this curious tale of a guy in white face!

On Friday the 13th, a criminal robbed the First Convenience Bank in Harris County, Texas, near Houston. He threatened the teller and left with an undisclosed sum of money, speeding away in a black Mitsubishi Montero SUV. To conceal his identity, the man wrapped himself in white gauze. To further obscure his likeness, he also wore sunglasses, a wig, and a baseball cap. However, it really was the linen wrappings that stood out and subsequently earned the criminal the moniker of the “Mummy Marauder”.

According to the FBI, the culprit was a black male in his early 20s, around 1.8 meters (5’11”) tall and medium build. They released images of the suspect in the hope that someone could help identify him. A $5,000 reward for information leading to his arrest was offered by Crime Stoppers of Houston.^[4]

6 Don’t Drink & Jive

Police in Ohio are on the lookout for two Amish men who fled the scene after being stopped by deputies for drinking while driving their horse buggy.

Last Sunday night, an officer from Trumbull County observed an unusual scene as a buggy drove past him. It was fitted with a sound system with giant speakers and there was an open case of ultra-light beer on the roof. Inside were an older Amish man and a teenager who were drinking spiked ice tea while riding in the carriage. A horse & buggy is considered a vehicle which means that the same drinking and driving laws apply so the deputy went to pull the carriage over.

As soon as the vehicle stopped, the men inside made a run for it into the wooded area on the side of the road.^[5] At the same time, the horse sped off pulling the empty buggy. The deputy decided to pursue the horse to make sure that the carriage came to a safe stop.

The Amish men got away and, as of this moment, remain unidentified, but they will have to come forward if they want their horse & buggy back.

5 How Viable Is A Poop Knife?

In a new study published in the anthropological journal Sapiens, a scientist experimented to see if it is possible to make a usable knife out of frozen feces.

Back in the 1990s, popular anthropologist Wade Davis from the University of British Columbia told an anecdote of an elderly Inuit man from the 1940s or 50s who refused to leave his igloo out in the wild and relocate to a modern settlement. Even when his family took away all his tools, he made do with what he had. Specifically, he took his own feces and modeled it into a knife, sharpening it using only his hands and saliva. Then, he left it to freeze and ended up with a solid blade which he used to kill a dog.

Experimental archaeologist Metin Eren from Ohio’s Kent State University was one of the people fascinated by Davis’s story. Back then he was still a teenager, but now he had everything he needed to put the tale to the test.

He ate a high-protein diet rich in salmon, beef, and turkey for eight days. He obtained multiple “raw materials” which he shaped into blades both using his hands and with a mold. He even used a metal file to sharpen some of the knives and give them the best chance of success, but it was no use. None of them could cut through hide, instead simply melting and leaving streaks “like a brown crayon”.^[6]

4 Neutron Star Too Big To Exist, Almost

Astronomers at the Green Bank Observatory (GBO) in West Virginia have found the most massive neutron star ever detected and it might remain that way for the foreseeable future. It is right at the theoretical limit of how big a neutron star could be without collapsing into a black hole.

Neutron stars are the remnants of massive stars that went supernova and might be the second-most dense objects in the Universe after black holes. To put them into perspective, GBO scientists say that one sugar cube of neutron star matter would weigh 100 million tons on Earth.

Researchers from the NANOGrav Physics Frontier Center were using the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to observe a rapidly-rotating pulsar called J0740+6620 located 4,600 light-years away from us. They soon realized that it might be, in fact, the most massive neutron star ever detected. It crammed 2.17 solar masses into a sphere just 30 kilometers (18.6 mi) in diameter.^[7]

Moreover, scientists believe that neutron stars can’t get much bigger than this. Recent research suggests that 2.17 solar masses might be the limit before a neutron star would crush itself into a black hole.

3 A Lint Ball For The Record Books

A Guinness record six months in the making took place on Thursday as Michigan was briefly the home to the world’s largest ball of lint before it was burned to ashes.

The event was half promotional stunt/half public service announcement courtesy of the Farmington Hills Fire Department and Dryer Vent Wizard, a business that offers dryer vent cleaning and repairing services.

Since April, the company has instructed its employees across 95 franchises to keep the lint they collected on the job in order to save up for the record. The giant fiber ball topped up at 313 kilograms (690 lbs).^[8] There was no previous record-holder but, in order to qualify, the ball had to be, at least, 45 kilograms (99lbs) according to Guinness guidelines. After officials certified the record, firefighters set the ball ablaze.

Part of the reason for this move was to show just how flammable lint is and to raise awareness to the importance of regularly cleaning dryer vents. Failure to do so is the leading cause of dryer fires in residential buildings.

2 Storm Area 51, Finally

The date to “storm Area 51” is here. After months of publicity and a successful viral campaign, this weekend will play host to a bizarre event that started out as an online joke to “see them aliens” and turned into a music festival.

This whole thing began back in June when a man named Matty Roberts created a Facebook event to raid the site in search of alien life. Of course, it was all a prank and Roberts has since disavowed it as the U.S. Government warned people against actually trespassing onto the military base.

Even so, over two million people said on Facebook that they will be attending so the even got turned into two music festivals which were supposed to be held in the nearby towns of Rachel and Hiko, Nevada. Roberts has since dropped out completely, but it seems that the concerts will go on without him.

According to Lincoln County Sheriff Kerry Lee, around 1,500 people showed up early Friday morning as music group Wily Savage were getting ready to perform their set.^[9] There is concern that the arrival of a giant crowd would generate chaos for the tiny towns that have a population of less than 200 people combined. Lincoln County emergency manager Eric Holt estimated that local authorities could handle a group of 30,000 people, but anything larger than that would cause problems.

It remains to be seen how many people will attend, although it is fair to say that most of the two million Facebook “attendees” only signed up as a joke.

1 Thieves Make Off With Gold Toilet

A solid gold toilet worth $6 million was stolen from the Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, England, in a burglary reminiscent of a “heist movie”.

The toilet is an “art” installation called America by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan. Made in 2016, the item is part of the permanent collection of the Guggenheim Museum in New York, but was on loan to the stately home of the Duke of Marlborough which is also the birthplace of Winston Churchill. The 18-carat gold toilet is fully functional and, in fact, visitors to the exhibition were encouraged to use it for its intended purpose.

The theft was discovered in the early morning hours of last Saturday. Blenheim Palace had a sophisticated security system which the criminals managed to bypass. Although investigators are not sure yet how the heist went down, they believe the thieves made their getaway in two separate vehicles.

The first arrest in the case came quickly. That same day, a 66-year-old man was held on suspicion of burglary. Subsequently, a 36-year-old man was also brought in under the same circumstances.^[10] Both men have been released, but they are still under investigation. Police are keeping tight-lipped on their progress. They say the main priority is to retrieve the artwork, although they are not discounting the possibility that it could be melted down.

Artist Maurizio Cattelan was “mortified” when he first heard the news, but later tried to look on the brighter side. He enjoyed being part of a real-life “heist movie”.

Since its launch in 2010, the History channel’s hit show Ancient Aliens has entertained viewers with thought-provoking and controversial evidence of “ancient astronaut theory”—the idea that historical texts, stories, and artifacts prove contact between aliens and our ancestors.

Despite a huge audience, the show has been heavily criticized by the scientific community. But are Erich von Daniken, Giorgio Tsoukalos, and the countless other authors, radio hosts, and even religious leaders who appear on Ancient Aliens really so crazy?

10 Mysterious Artifacts That Are Allegedly Alien

In 2012, one study showed that 77 percent of Americans believe that there is proof that aliens have visited Earth. Also, although many claims by Ancient Aliens have been debunked, many prominent scientists believe that extraterrestrial life does exist.

But, in some cases, the theories and evidence shown on Ancient Aliens are just straight-up crazy.

10 Jonah Was Swallowed By An Alien Submarine

Ancient astronaut theorists love to study old religious texts. In particular, the Bible is an infinite well of inspiration. Although many Bible stories may be based on some kernel of truth, the story of Jonah being swallowed by a whale is one of the more bizarre tales. In fact, some people believe this to be a parody of early Greek myths.^[1]

Ancient Aliens and Giorgio Tsoukalos believe that the story of Jonah’s miraculous survival is true. Further, Tsoukalos points out that in some versions Jonah notices that the “ribs” of the whale are gleaming bronze. Tsoukalos concludes, “Jonah was, in fact, not swallowed by a whale . . . but by a U.S.O. An unidentified submersible object.”

That is, if it happened at all.

9 Pakal’s Rocket

K’inich Janaab’ Pakal was the ruler of the Mayan city-state of Palenque in the seventh century A.D. Upon his death, he was placed inside an ornate coffin and sealed in a tomb within the Temple of the Inscriptions.

When archaeologists uncovered his tomb, they remarked on the decorative sarcophagus lid and called it an example of classic Mayan art. The common iconography made it easy for scholars to interpret the symbols and themes of the artwork.^[2]

On the other hand, ancient astronaut theorists consider this one of their best pieces of evidence. Erich von Daniken believes that the artwork is “incredible . . . absolutely proof for extraterrestrials.”

According to the theorists, the artwork on the lid of Pakal’s sarcophagus depicts an astronaut ascending into space on a rocket. Allegedly, his hands are manipulating controls, his feet are on pedals, he is wearing a breathing tube, and exhaust is firing from the bottom of the rocket.

The problem with the ancient alien theory?

Each example was either a well-known Mayan symbol or was just too far of a stretch. Also, would extraterrestrials really use technology as primitive as a rocket?

But above all else, it just doesn’t really look like a rocket.

8 Hybrid Creatures Are The Result Of Genetic Testing

Historically, there has been no shortage of “mythical beasts.” Various stories tell of animals like the griffin (half lion, half eagle) or Medusa, a monster from Greek mythology whose hair was a tangled mess of venomous snakes. Many ancient religious figures were hybrid creatures. In fact, almost all Egyptian gods sported animal heads on top of their human bodies.

Some ancient astronaut theorists think these tales have an explanation—ancient alien genetic experimentation.^[3] After all, humans themselves have begun to dabble in genetic engineering. As the theorists ask, is it so crazy to believe that ancient visitors would have done the same?

Maybe not.

However, the theory rests on the fact that these creatures actually existed. Even today, we tell silly stories of creatures—like “Nessy” or Bigfoot. (Oh wait, they think aliens are behind Bigfoot, too).

It is more likely that these creatures are the result of human imagination and not alien scientific experimentation. For example: Even if aliens were able to give snake hair to Medusa, it was also reported that one look into her eyes was enough to turn anyone into solid stone. We’re not quite sure how they worked that part out.

7 Teotihuacan Is A Computer . . . Or Something

Teotihuacan is an ancient Toltec city near what is now Mexico City. Much of the site is devoted to religiously inspired temples and monuments, including the famous Pyramid of the Sun.

Ancient astronaut theorists believe that it is also a giant computer circuit board—mainly because, well, the layout “resembles one.” Many articles and documentaries from the community reference this fact.^[4]

What about it specifically looks so much like a circuit board?

Actually, not too much. The theory also claims that some of the temples are “processors” but without much reason why. But the theorists go further by pointing out that electricity-conducting mica was incorporated into some of the structures and a few underground rooms were filled entirely with mica.

However, many ancient civilizations were known to use mica. Even though the mica rooms are a little curious, almost nothing about Teotihuacan is even remotely like a circuit.

6 Sword In The Stone

The legend of the “sword in the stone” is one of the most famous tales of King Arthur. However, the Celtic legend of a magical weapon, only movable by one divine figure, is not necessarily unique. It is quite similar to the Norse god Thor’s hammer and countless other folktales. In addition, historians have been hard-pressed to find any evidence that King Arthur actually existed.^[5]

However, according to some proponents of the ancient astronaut theory, not only is the story of King Arthur pulling a magical “unmovable” sword from the stone absolutely true but it also involved aliens.

Tsoukalos points out that this kind of technology could have existed because modern tech has the capability of creating concept firearms with a kind of biometric security. Tsoukalos also believes that Arthur’s other sword, Excalibur, as well as Joan of Arc’s sword were “alien laser weapons.”

5 Dendera Light

Similar to Pakal’s rocket, this theory begins with an image that allegedly depicts modern technology. However, this one actually does look a lot like the modern artifact it is purported to depict: a light bulb.

The problem?

It also looks like something else . . . a depiction of Egyptian mythology using typical Egyptian symbols. Specifically, it resembles an Egyptian version of the “creation” myth. In the Heliopolitan version, Atum (a serpent) emerges from a lotus flower into the universe or, as it was imagined, a bubble of air in a dark infinite ocean.

This mainstream view seems to match up as the base of the bulb is a perfect example of an Egyptian lotus flower. Upon closer viewing, the “filament” quite clearly has a serpent’s mouth and eyes.^[6]

4 The Grim Reaper Was An Alien—And The Aliens Caused The Plague

In the Middle Ages, people might have believed this while the Black Death was still destroying the European population. After all, they blamed demons, witches, and even the Jews. Though modern science attributes the outbreak to fleas carrying the Yersinia pestis bacteria, ancient astronaut theorists, like author William Bramley, blame extraterrestrials.

To explain how the aliens infected us, the theory employs another fringe favorite: chemtrails. Basically, humans were sprayed with toxic fumes in the same way that farmers spray their crops with pesticides. Possibly, this happened for the same reason—or maybe just for the sake of experimentation.

People may also remember that the “Grim Reaper” emerged around this time. Apparently, some delirious victims of the plague hallucinated images of a dark hooded figure. In the hysteria, people also reported hooded figures appearing in the wheat fields right before the plague struck a particular town.^[7]

The Grim Reaper soon became the most iconic personification of death. If it wasn’t chemtrails, then some theorists suggest that the extraterrestrials may have used a more “personal” touch. They simply gassed our food supply from up close while dressed in black cloaks.

3 Nazis Had Help From Extraterrestrials

On the History channel, Ancient Aliens asks us this question: Did Adolf Hitler base his plans for world domination on secret extraterrestrial knowledge? The answer, of course, is no. But apparently, a lot of people are into the whole Nazi UFO thing.

Truth be told, the Nazis did have some advanced technology when it came to rockets. They developed both the V-1 flying bomb and the V-2 rocket during the war and used them with great success against England and France.

According to Ancient Aliens, German rocket scientist Hermann Oberth claimed that this technology was only possible because they had help from “beings from another world.” This suggests that the Nazis had contact with aliens.

The UFO community also talks about the Nazis quite a bit. The term “foo fighter” refers to the numerous stories of strange aerial phenomena observed by Allied pilots over Germany.

Also, the idea that the Germans were trying to build a fleet of saucer-shaped craft called “Haunebu” has been around for a while. According to these theories, the technology for such a craft was acquired when German engineers reverse engineered an alien spacecraft that had crashed in the woods of Bavaria.^[8]

2 Vimanas

In ancient astronaut theory, a recurring theme is the ancient depictions of extraterrestrials and their vehicles as godlike creatures with heavenly chariots. Nowhere is this imagery more present than in ancient Hindu texts, such as the Mahabharata, which reference flying palaces or thrones known as vimanas.

According to Ancient Aliens, these craft, which are allegedly piloted and inhabited by mythical beings, are actually the confused interpretations of ancient people witnessing alien technology.

While some descriptions of vimanas seem curiously similar to metallic flying saucers, the majority of vimana depictions describe a very human chariot pulled by flying horses.^[9]

1 Aliens Killed The Dinosaurs

This one is one of the hardest to understand. In fact, Episode 10 in Season 4 of Ancient Aliens does little to explain why this extermination occurred . . . except perhaps to make way for humans.

In this scenario, benevolent extraterrestrials chose to intervene in the continuous conflict between ancient humans and their formidable dinosaur opponents. The show does depict flying saucers hunting down T. rex herds with laser weapons. But the program also presents an alternative: Dinosaurs were simply genetically modified by extraterrestrials to be smaller and friendlier.

When it comes to evidence, Ancient Aliens does not have much to offer. Instead, they lean on creationist authors to convince viewers that humans and dinosaurs coexisted. To support these claims, they point to the supposed inaccuracy of carbon-dated fossils, rocks containing both dinosaur and human footprints, and ancient artwork depicting their coexistence.

Unfortunately, all the evidence presented has been thoroughly debunked.^[10]

Some people read something in everything. Whether it be a strange cloud formation or a weird sound coming through the pipes of an old house. They attach a sinister meaning to all of it. It is even worse when it comes to celebrities. When their dresses fold a certain way, it could be that they’re faking a pregnancy. When they have a creepy-looking symbol on their album cover, it might just mean that they are in cahoots with Satan.

10 Crazy Conspiracy Theories About Celebrity Deaths

Over the years many conspiracy theories have been formed around the idea that annual award shows are just Illuminati rituals in disguise. Weird celeb behavior and shocking deaths form part of these rituals. On this list are eight examples of such conspiracies. (Spoiler alert: the Illuminati is blamed for a lot of stuff.)

8 Heath Ledger

Even before Heath Ledger died on 22 January 2008 at the age of 28, strange rumors chased him. After he took the role of the Joker in The Dark Knight Rises, it was said that darkness entered his soul and he became insane. Sound melodramatic? That’s not even nearly the craziest thing that’s been theorized about this young actor lost in the prime of his life and career.

Conspiracy theorists latched on to the fact that Ledger died on Oscar nomination day in 2008 with the ceremony following a month later. They claimed that the Illuminati killed the actor to ensure higher viewer ratings for the awards show. They also came up with a bunch of other conspiracies, as they did not believe he died of an accidental drug overdose. They insisted that Ledger had to sacrifice his life to gain short-lived fame. They also said that since he died on the 22nd, his death was ritualistic as the number 22 is in sync with the Joker tarot card. They also pointed out that in his two last movies: The Dark Knight Rises and the Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, there are two scenes in which Ledger’s character is hanged. One scene shows him hanging from his foot, which looks like the Hanged Man tarot card. The other scene shows him being hanged by the neck with the ‘all-seeing eye’ symbol drawn on his forehead. According to theorists, the neck hanging scene depicts the real-life hanging of Roberto Calvi whose death was also rumored to be symbolic and ritualistic.

Some even believe that the Illuminati recruited Mary Kate Olsen to kill Ledger in a way that would resemble a drug overdose.^[1]

7 Prince & Michael Jackson

Prince and Michael Jackson were both huge music stars. And they both died within days of the BET Awards in 2009 and 2016 respectively. After Prince was found dead in 2016, conspiracy theorists were quick to point this out. They compared it to the Grammy’s curse (think Whitney Houston’s death and Rihanna being assaulted by her then-boyfriend Chris Brown), saying that all awards shows were cursed and had to have a ritual death before airing. Hence, according to this bizarre theory, Prince and Michael Jackson were both murdered to fulfil this need.

And if that isn’t weird enough, there have also been rumors of Queen Elizabeth ordering the death of Prince to satisfy her blood lust on her 90th birthday (or out of anger for the singer stealing her thunder on her birthday). Even Aretha Franklin spoke of her suspicion that Prince may have died of the Zika virus fuelling even more conspiracy fires.^[2]

6 Cory Monteith

When Glee first hit the television, it was praised for being unique and celebrating people who don’t just follow the norm. And while the show’s latter seasons were said to be dull and uninspiring, most fans remember what is widely referred to as the ‘Glee curse.’ Not only did main actor, Cory Monteith, die of an overdose on 13 July 2013 (a month before the Teen Choice Awards), but supporting actor Mark Salling was found guilty of possession of child pornography and committed suicide on 30 January 2018.

As with the above-mentioned celebrity deaths, conspiracy theorists quickly jumped on the “celeb must die to hike viewer ratings” bandwagon, accusing the elusive Illuminati of murdering Monteith. At the Teen Choice Awards, Glee won the Choice TV Show for comedy award and Lea Michele the Choice TV Actress award. She made a tearful speech about Monteith, who had been her boyfriend at the time of his death. Some very heartless viewers commented that Michele was in on the Illuminati conspiracy and allowed them to murder Monteith in order to further her career somehow. They also said that the only reason she kept talking about Cory Monteith was to keep the media spotlight on herself, starting with her speech at the award show. Further “proof” was given that Michele was not really devastated about Monteith’s death, when she started dating Matthew Paetz “only a year” after Monteith died.^[3]

5Philip Seymour Hoffman

In 2012 Harvey Weinstein claimed that the movie, The Master, starring Joaquin Phoenix and Philip Seymour Hoffman annoyed some scientologists at the time and that they tried to derail its filming. The Church of Scientology denied these claims after the film’s director confirmed that the movie was based loosely on L Ron Hubbard and tells the story of a cult leader and a World War II veteran drawn into his cult.

Conspiracy theorists however seem to think that the Church’s denial just means that they had something else up their sleeve. And when Philip Seymour Hoffman died, they triumphantly stated that the Church of Scientology murdered him as payback for the movie being released. The theory has it that since Hoffman had been clean of drugs for 23 years, it was very suspicious that he would die of a heroin overdose shortly after the film was completed. Some even compared the scene of Hoffman’s death to that of something a hitman would leave behind, seeing as how 49 bags of heroin were found at the scene as well.

Hoffman died on 2 February 2014 and the Academy Awards for that year took place exactly a month later on 2 March. Some believe this was planned on purpose to rub in the fact that Hoffman would never attend another awards show. Others suggested that the death of Hoffman was a ritualistic murder organized by both the Illuminati (who is said to be behind most celebrity deaths) as well as the Church of Scientology as a comeback for the ‘insult’ to their religion.^[4]

4 XXXtentacion & Billie Eilish

American rapper XXXtentacion was only 20 years old when he was murdered on 18 June 2018. Billie Eilish made strides in her music career in 2019 and had hardly recorded her hit album, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go, when the conspiracies started flying. It was the song, Bury a Friend, that caught conspiracy theorists’ attention.

Not only was she almost immediately accused of having ‘joined the Illuminati’, some even accused her of having had XXXtentacion murdered in order to be the next big thing in the music industry. Theory has it that in order for Eilish to be initiated and accepted as a member of the Illuminati at the 2019 American Music Awards, she would have had to offer a blood sacrifice, which in this case was deemed to be XXXtentacion. Bury a Friend is believed to have been inspired by this sacrifice.

When Eilish performed at the 2019 AMA’s, conspiracy theorists claimed that her initiation had been completed. Some went even further and said they believed Eilish had been possessed by the devil himself after her initiation.^[5]

3Dolores O’Riordan

There are only a few songs that can ignite strong memories of an entire decade. Thriller is one of them and Zombie another. The Cranberries were much-loved in the 90s because of their unique sound and Zombie quickly became a fan favourite. Lead singer Dolores O’Riordan confirmed that the song was inspired by the tragic deaths of 3-year-old Johnathan Ball and 12-year-old Tim Parry when Cheshire was bombed in 1993.

O’Riordan was found dead in a bathtub in a hotel on 15 January 2018. She was dressed in pyjamas. The cause of death was only released in September of that year and officials stated that she had drowned after becoming intoxicated. However, conspiracy theorists were not about to leave things at that. Because Whitney Houston and her daughter Bobbi Kristina Brown both died in bathtubs and Whitney died on the day the Grammy awards were held in 2012, many believed that just as Whitney and Bobbi were ‘murdered by the elite’, O’Riordan too met her fate at the hands of the illuminati. Once again, if conspiracy was to be believed, another celebrity had been murdered just a few weeks before the annual Grammy awards event. It is claimed that she was a Masonic blood sacrifice for the Grammy’s. This theory follows on the back of a very long-standing claim that the Grammy’s is an Illuminati-organized Satanic ritual disguised as an award ceremony and that those who don’t stick to the rules are offed as a sacrifice to the organizers. What O’Riordan might have done to displease the Illuminati overlords remains a mystery.^[6]

2 Whitney Houston & Jennifer Hudson

Whitney Houston arguably has more conspiracy theories surrounding her life and death than any other music star. Not only was it rumored that she had been a fertility sacrifice so that Beyonce’s daughter, Blue Ivy, may live but it was also claimed that Rihanna had predicted the star’s death.

Further conspiracy theories have it that after Houston was found dead just before the Grammy Awards in 2012, the event was turned into a mega-ritual to initiate her replacement, Jennifer Hudson, into the Illuminati. (It was also claimed that Lady Gaga was aware that a death would take place as she was dressed in what resembled a funeral outfit.) Theorists even accused Clive Davis of knowing that Houston would die, as he told Piers Morgan the day before her death that Jennifer Hudson was the ‘new Whitney’. They went on to claim that since Hudson sang “I Will Always Love You” in tribute to Houston while illuminated by a single spotlight with a picture of the late singer above her, her initiation had begun. When Nicky Minaj ended the show with a performance that included levitation and a bright red robe, it was claimed that she was actually referencing the sacrifice that had taken place in the form of Whitney Houston’s death.^[7]

1 Kobe Bryant

From the moment that the news broke of Kobe Bryant’s death on 26 January 2020, controversy reigned. Many people chose to bring up the rape allegation that dogged the famous basketball player years ago, with an educator even saying that karma caught up with a rapist. This did not go down well and Liza Sejkora, principal of Camas High School, was forced to resign after heavy backlash following the comment.

Conspiracy theories exploded. Not only did rumors fly that white supremacists murdered Bryant (as alleged by Dr Uman Johnson), it was also widely debated whether the Illuminati murdered him for elite occult ritual purposes.

It is claimed that Bryant was a Grammy award show sacrifice because he died mere hours before the show started. The show was held at the Staples Center and the helicopter crash happened not far from there. When the news broke during the show, several celebrities paid tribute to Bryant in what some theorists called yet another mega-ritual to usher in his replacement: LeBron James. This theory was fuelled online by those who chose to circulate clips of Bryant’s Black Mamba Nike ad in 2011 which ended with a helicopter crashing onto a basketball court. Another clip making the rounds on social media shows part of an episode of Chamberlain Heights featuring Kobe Bryant dying in a helicopter crash. Furthermore, what was clearly just a mistake on the BBC’s part, when they used footage of LeBron James instead of Kobe Bryant when reporting on Bryant’s death, is now being used as further ‘proof’ of an evil, murderous conspiracy.^[8]

Every Roman emperor has a few crazy stories under his belt, but none of them compare to the tales of Caligula. He’s the one Roman emperor historians are fairly sure was certifiably insane.

Six ancient Romans wrote about Caligula’s life, and every one of them agreed that he was completely off his rocker. They left stories about him that are so ridiculous that some people now insist that these events couldn’t possibly have happened. But that’s not because we have any evidence against them. Caligula’s life was just too crazy to be believed.

10 He Invited His Horse To Drink Wine At His Dinner Table

Caligula probably never made his horse a consul, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t treat the animal like a human being. According to multiple Roman sources, Caligula treated his favorite force, Incitatus, better than most people.

This horse had his own home. It wasn’t just an upgraded stable, either. Caligula gave his horse his own multiple-room house, complete with furniture and a crew of slaves who were ordered to follow the horse’s every command.

At dinnertime, Caligula would invite his horse to dine with him. The horse would be brought to the dinner table, where the emperor and his horse would be served wine in golden goblets and would share a toast to the horse’s good health.^[1]

He even sent his soldiers out to make sure that the animal got some peace and quiet. Reportedly, after Caligula noticed that the crowds cheering at the games were bothering his horse, he sent his soldiers to force everyone in attendance to stay quiet—on pain of death—until the horse got some rest.

9 He Tried To Replace The Head On The Statue Of Zeus With His Own

Caligula wasn’t satisfied to just be an emperor. He wanted to be a god—and he set up his own cult to make sure it happened.

The emperor of Rome had temples constructed where people could worship him. Inside, there were life-size statutes of him made of pure gold that the people of Rome were encouraged to bow before and worship. And he didn’t stop there. Caligula had plans to chop off the head of the statue of Zeus at Olympia—one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World—and replace it with a likeness of his own head.

He even hired his own team of priests with their own extravagant rituals. To show devotion to Caligula, a sacrificed bull wouldn’t be enough. His worshipers were expected to sacrifice flamingos and peacocks in his honor.

His obsession with declaring himself to be a god nearly caused a revolt. At one point, frustrated that the Jews weren’t worshiping him enough, Caligula ordered Petronius, the governor of Syria, to build a massive statue of him inside the Temple in Jerusalem.^[2]

The Jews were ready to riot, and it probably would have turned into a full-on rebellion if Petronius hadn’t talked Caligula out of it. In the end, though, Caligula had Petronius’s head chopped off as punishment for making Caligula change his mind.

8 He Ordered His Army To Attack The English Channel

Legend has it that Caligula once declared war on Neptune, the god of the sea, and ordered his men to stab the English Channel.

There’s some reason to think that the story’s a little exaggerated. But there’s no question that Caligula sent an army to the English Channel, and even the soberest versions of the tale don’t paint Caligula in the best light. He still sent his army into the ocean.

The version accepted by most historians is that Caligula was leading a failing campaign against the Britons and his men were on the verge of revolt because he’d cut their pay. So, to make it up to them, he led his entire army—including the artillery—to the English Channel and told them that they could fill their helmets with as many seashells as they wanted.

In lieu of pay, his men were to take “spoils from the ocean” as their reward for their hard work. Anything they could fit in a hat was theirs for the taking, he promised them.

“Go your way happy!” Caligula told his men as they scooped shells and rocks out of the ocean. “Go your way rich!”^[3]

7 He Ordered A Mass Execution Because He Thought People Were Praying Against Him

When Caligula took the throne, he invited some of the political enemies of Tiberius, the last emperor, to come back to Rome. Caligula even invited one to sit down with him personally and then asked how the man had spent his time in exile.

“I constantly prayed [to] the gods for what has come to pass,” the man told him, “that Tiberius might die and you become emperor.”^[4]

He was trying to flatter Caligula, but it didn’t work out that way. Instead, the man accidentally got a few thousand people killed.

What Caligula got from the conversation was that this man had prayed to the gods for Tiberius’s death, and apparently, his prayers had been answered. That meant there was a pretty good chance that the people exiled by Caligula were praying against him, too.

After talking to the man, Caligula released an order to kill every person he’d ever exiled for trying to turn the gods against him. And he made it a long-term policy. From then on, when Caligula made an enemy, he had the person’s dead body paraded in front of him before he slept easy.

6 He Built Massive Floating Orgy Palaces

Caligula may have been crazy, but he definitely knew how to party. After he came to power, Caligula blew every penny he had on building two massive, floating pleasure palaces so that he could throw orgies inside.

Placed on Lake Nemi, these gigantic barges had prows covered in jewels and floors paved with glass mosaics. The vessels were filled with massive statues and golden cups. Even the sails were made of purple silk, a material so rare at the time that it was exclusively used to make the emperor’s clothes.^[5]

Caligula hosted crazy orgies on the Lake Nemi ships, and his favorite guests were his own sisters. But he didn’t stop at incest.

Caligula ordered his noblemen to bring their wives when they visited. He made them line up in front of him, inspected their bodies, and picked his favorite to bring into his chamber. Then he came back out, sat down with her husband, and made the man sit through a detailed review of how his wife was in bed.

5 He Rode A Horse Across A Gulf Just To Prove a Fortune-Teller Wrong

Caligula’s greatest achievement was building a 5-kilometer-long (3 mi) floating bridge across the Gulf of Baiae. At the time, a bridge like that was completely unheard of—and he did entirely out of spite.

Before he’d become emperor, an astrologer named Thrasyllus had predicted that Caligula had “no more chance of becoming emperor than of riding a horse across the Gulf of Baiae.” Caligula built the bridge just to rub it in that the astrologer had been wrong.^[6]

Caligula got every ship he could find to line up across the gulf. Then he had slaves lay earth on top of the ships to make a huge bridge. Caligula hopped on his horse and rode back and forth across the bridge for two days straight so that everyone knew the fortune-teller had been wrong.

4 He Had An Audience Devoured Alive Because He Was Bored

During intermission at the games of ancient Rome, criminals would be executed for the amusement of the crowd. After they had been lined up, their throats were slit while the audience either rewarded their deaths with light applause or shuffled out to get refreshments.

That wasn’t Caligula’s idea, but he was a big fan. Caligula liked the games so much that he made it illegal to schedule a court case or a funeral while the games were in session, just to make sure nobody missed them.

Once, when there were no criminals to be executed during intermission, he took matters into his own hands. He ordered his guards to throw a random section of the audience into the ring. Then he unleashed the animals so that he could watch these people get devoured alive.^[7]

3 He Wouldn’t Let Anyone Mention Goats Around Him

As a young man, Caligula had an issue with body hair—and he was very sensitive about it. Hair grew everywhere on his body except for the top of his head, where he had a bald spot.

He made sure, though, that no one got away with making fun of him. It’s likely that he stopped artists from drawing his bald spot as it shows up in written descriptions of him but rarely in ancient art. To deal with the hairiness, he made it a crime for anyone to say the word “goat” in his presence.^[8]

As emperor, he had the power to do pretty well anything he wanted as he frequently reminded everyone around him. He didn’t stop at banning people from talking about goats. In fact, he used his powers in ways only dreamed of in socially anxious Internet memes.

When he got fed up with having to talk to people all the time, Caligula made it illegal to greet him twice. Anyone who wanted to shake his hand could do it one time, but that was all you got. After that, you had to leave him alone—or else.

2 He Forced A Man To Drink With Him After Murdering The Man’s Son

Caligula once executed a man for being handsome. He spotted a good-looking man with a nice haircut and a snappy sense of fashion, and he got so jealous that he had the man executed for it.

The man’s father did everything he could to save his son’s life. He begged Caligula to spare his son, but it had the opposite effect. In response, Caligula sped up the son’s execution. But in return, Caligula invited the father to dine and drink with the emperor himself immediately following the son’s death.^[9]

The man was forced to drink a toast to the emperor’s health, eat food at his table, and accept every gift Caligula gave him, all while staring at the person who’d just killed his son. According to the senator Seneca, the father had to sit there and smile throughout, knowing that his other sons would die if he showed the slightest hint of grief.

1 He Threatened To Beat Up A God

It’s easy to think that Caligula might have just had a wicked sense of humor or that he might have been putting on a show. But there’s a lot of reason to think that the emperor was truly mentally ill.

There are reports that Caligula had major delusions throughout his life. Reportedly, he rarely slept for more than three hours at a time because his hallucinations were at their worst at night. For example, he once stayed up all night complaining that the ocean had been talking to him.

There are also reports that he would openly talk to the god Jupiter—but not in a devout, religious way. He’d argue with an imaginary god, carrying on heated conversations with a being that no one else could see.

The philosopher Seneca claimed that he once saw Caligula threaten Jupiter. They’d been watching a ballet when thunder started to crash across the horizon. Furious at the gods for interrupting his show, Caligula stormed outside, started yelling at Jupiter, and threatened to beat the god to death.^[10]

Which just might be the sobering reality behind the madness of Caligula. Some Roman emperors were made to seem mad by their detractors, and some went mad with power. But Caligula may just have been mad inside and out.

We trust the medical fraternity with our lives. Literally. We don’t have a choice, do we? They are the ones who know the names of the fancy drugs that make the pain go away, so there is trust.
Unfortunately, the industry is run and managed by humans, and as we know, humans make mistakes. Sometimes, in the worst-case scenario, those humans don’t even have the best interest of the public at heart. Regardless of whether the slip-up is intentional or because of negligence, a scandal is a scandal.

Here follows a list of 10 of the craziest medical scandals ever.

Related: 10 Social And Biological Experiments With Freaky Results

10 Thalidomide

The drug was first developed in Germany in 1954 and introduced to the market as a sedative and a treatment for morning sickness in pregnant women, cold flu, and nausea. But it was with pregnancies where it wreaked most of its havoc. When tested on animals, researchers found that it was virtually impossible to administer a lethal dose of the drug to animals and, therefore, deemed it safe for human use.

The first affected baby was born in Germany on Christmas Day in 1956, and the disabilities created were shocking. Disabilities of the drug included shortening or absence of limbs, malformed hands and ears, underdeveloped eyes, sensory impairment, and brain damage—the list goes on and on.

For five years, babies were affected by the drug before the connection between pregnant women taking the drug and the impact on their unborn children was made. An estimated 100,000 babies were affected by the drug.^[1]

9 Atherectomy for Peripheral Artery Disease

When the government changed the way doctors are compensated for atherectomies, the game changed, offering incentives to private practitioners for outpatient atherectomies as a means to relieve the pressures on the hospital system.

A low bar had been set for the treatment of arterial blockages, and the patients rolled in. From 2017 to 2021, $1.4 billion in Medicare atherectomy payments—about half of all payments made for the procedure—had gone to some 200 providers who did the procedure in volume.

What followed was a series of amputations caused by the risky artery surgery, which could have been avoided by similarly effective, cheaper treatments. Researchers and doctors uncovered excessive and inappropriate use of the procedure, and the lawsuits followed.^[2]

8 Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

When government agencies experiment, they go all in. When the U.S. Public Health Service was trying to get a grip on syphilis, they were, in their madman opinion, in a prime position to subject their patients to a little experiment to test the disease’s full progression.

The year was 1932, and the location was Tuskegee, Alabama. When almost 600 African American men were recruited under the guise that they would be provided free medical care, they discovered 399 cases of latent syphilis. They told these poor souls that they had “bad blood” and that the other 201 candidates would form the control group.

In order to understand the disease, the men inflicted with syphilis were provided no effective care. One by one, they succumbed to the effects of the illness: going blind, tumbling into insanity, developing various ailments, and ultimately dying. In the end, 128 men died, 40 wives were infected, and 19 children were born with congenital syphilis as a result.^[3]

7 Soothing Syrup

When a patent medicine hit the markets, it promised to soothe small children and aid in cleaning their teeth, freshen their breath, and relieve constipation. Morphine will do that. In the 19th century, Mrs. Winslow was introduced to the market, but unbeknownst to its target market—mothers—each bottle of syrup contained near-fatal amounts of morphine and alcohol. It was, therefore, not surprising that the product did exactly as promised and worked like a charm.

Morphine, as an addictive pain reliever and even in small doses, can cause the death of infants. Some infants who consumed Mrs Winslow went to sleep and simply never woke up, which, as one could expect, caused quite a public uproar. The outcry over poisoning and contaminated foods ultimately led to Congress passing the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. Still, it wasn’t until the 1930s that the product was formally taken off the shelves.^[4]

6 Organ Racket

We have all heard the urban legend—you have a night out with friends, you black out, and wake up the next morning in a bath filled with ice and a note that your kidneys have been removed. It is the stuff of horrors.

In 2008, it came to light that a suspected 400 or 500 kidney transplants were done over almost nine years after the victims were lured with offerings of job opportunities, only to be prepositioned for their organs. The victims were primarily poor laborers from the villages near Delhi. Those who resisted were drugged and their kidneys taken against their will.

After the arrest of five culprits, two from the U.S. and three Greek, at a luxury guesthouse operated by a doctor running a very particular racket in the booming city of Gurgaon, India, the house of cards had begun to collapse.^[5]

5 Asthma Cigarettes

Just like we know the sun can cause sunburn and a bee can sting, we also know that cigarettes cause lung disease and cancer. Strange then to imagine a world where this was not common knowledge. It was early in the 20th century, and the world was still very ignorant about the effects bad habits might have on our bodies. Smoking is a perfect example.

When smoking took off, it wasn’t just cool; it was also prescribed as a treatment for certain respiratory illnesses, such as asthma. Page’s Inhalers were nothing more than medically prescribed cigarettes meant for the temporary relief of paroxysms of asthma, hay fever, and simple nasal irritation.^[6]

4 Defective Silicone

Just like you can’t take the crankshaft of an old Nissan Skyline, melt it down in the workshop, mold it into a bracket of sorts, and use it in hip replacement surgery, you can’t use whatever you find lying around to make silicone breast implants. In a nutshell, that was exactly what the French company Poly Implants Prothése did when they sold industrial-grade silicone to be used in breast enhancement surgery.

The implants were pulled from the market in 2010 after it came to light that the silicone was of low grade, causing a risk for rupture. It was also found that the non-medical grade silicone was contaminated with higher taxes of several cyclic siloxanes, which has led to investigations into possible toxicological consequences.

An estimated 30,000 women in France were fitted with the device. An inquiry after the withdrawal found the former owner, Jean-Claude Mas, guilty of aggravated fraud. He was sentenced to four years in prison and had to pay a €75,000 fine.^[7]

3 Cancer Injections

When Chester Southam proposed a continuation of a cancer study he had been doing for well over a decade, it seemed like a good idea at first. Southam proceeded to tell patients they were getting human cells in growing tubes with the concept of informed consent still far over the horizon.

Only after three of his colleagues refused to partake in the study and resigned from their positions did the scandal come to light. The accusation was that Southam was injecting liver cancer cells into patients at a hospital facility known for treating the elderly and those in need of physical care simply to further his cancer study.

In the end, 22 patients were injected with the cancer cells. Southam was never prosecuted but was placed under probation for one year. Fun Fact: Southam ended up as president of the American Association for Cancer Research just a few years after that.^[8]

2 HIV Blood

When hemophiliacs are injured, even with a relatively minor cut, it could be fatal as loss of blood, in many cases, could turn into a never-ending pour. For that reason, copious amounts of blood might be needed. When a tape leaked of Akihito Matsumura and his colleagues discussing the possibility that they were using non-heat-treated blood products in their patients, the scandal was exposed.

The government, in conjunction with the Red Cross, failed to halt the use of the products, which ultimately led to more than 1,800 hemophiliacs contracting HIV as a result of receiving HIV-contaminated blood during the 1980s, 400 of whom have since died from AIDS.

It wasn’t that the technology of treating the blood did not exist. But there was money to be lost should they have to discard the inventory of the untreated products. Years later, three top executives pleaded guilty and received varying prison sentences of two years, 18 months, and 16 months respectively.^[9]

1 Monster Stuttering Study

The theory was simple—calling attention to a child’s normal hesitations could cause stuttering. In an attempt to induce stuttering, researchers at the University of Iowa threw a bunch of normally fluent orphans (of course, they were orphans) into a test environment.

For six months, the orphans were shouted at, belittled, and threatened to test this theory in the hopes that they might stutter in panic or disillusionment. The study ended, and the conclusions were drawn—asking a child to be more fluent could, in fact, lead to stuttering.

What also became clear was that the children suffered from serious long-term psychological harm and were therefore awarded a settlement sum in order to avoid costly litigation, even though neither the University nor the government admitted to any wrongdoing.^[10]