Humans have always had a close relationship with alcohol, and the United States even has a holiday commemorating the repeal of Prohibition. Alcohol shaped our history, our culture, and our biology—sometimes in pretty surprising ways.

10We Evolved To Drink

In our bodies today, an enzyme called ADH4 processes whatever alcohol we consume. Other primates have the enzyme, but it acts differently in many of them—and many of them can’t process alcohol like we can.

Chemist Steven Benner, recreating enzymes present in our earliest ancestors, noted different types of ADH4 along our evolutionary tree. He traced our version back to a split in the tree 10 million years ago, when the gorilla and the ancestors of the chimpanzee branched off from other primates like lemurs and the orangutan. One branch—that we’re still on—developed the ability to process alcohol. Our group of primates spent more time on the ground eating fallen fruit that had begun to ferment, as opposed to picking fruit fresh from where it grew.

Though there’s still no concrete fossil evidence from our last common ancestor with the gorilla, we know one thing about them: They had the first awesome holiday parties.

9The Face Of World Politics

Every politician makes promises. It’s in their job description. But in the good old days, they offered something more concrete: Candidates handed out alcohol in return for votes.

The practice dates back to ancient Greece and Rome, and it’s been recorded throughout Europe’s history as well. It then stayed around longer than you might think. George Washington’s first attempt at running for office (in the Virginia House of Burgesses) was a failure; on his next attempt, he won, after giving out about half a gallon of alcohol for each vote. A century later, the Republican Party elevated the idea, treating 50,000 of Brooklyn’s citizens to an alcohol-laden picnic.

Some attempts failed, however, leading to important life lessons for 19th-century politicians. Stephen Douglas learned the hard way that if you’re expecting 20,000–30,000 people to show up for your party, make sure you have enough booze to go around. After the food and alcohol ran low at his New York bash, the whole thing turned into a massive pushing and shoving match. Voters went away still hungry and thirsty, and when they went to the polls, they voted instead for some man named Abraham Lincoln.

8The Booming Cork Business

Besides brewing and distilling, the alcohol industry is responsible for another business worth $2 billion—cork production.

High-quality cork is needed to preserve the taste and quality of wine. Cork bark needs to be a certain thickness to be effective, but global warming is changing the trees responsible for the material. Cork is now thinner and of lower quality because trees lack vital proteins.

Wine enthusiasts are up in arms about the need for better-quality corks. They’re starting to look toward metal screw caps or rubber stoppers instead, leaving the fate of the cork industry up in the air.

7American Rum And The Revolution

Schools teach us that the colonists living in America rebelled because of unfair taxation, which is a pretty accurate statement. They also teach that a tax on tea fired the colonists up, culminating in 1773’s Boston Tea Party. In reality, it didn’t all start there. First came a tax on molasses—molasses used for making rum.

Rum was a hugely popular drink in the American colonies, with hundreds of distilleries all manufacturing their syrupy version of the Caribbean drink. As North America’s climate was ill-suited for growing sugar, most of it was imported, to the tune of about six million gallons of molasses in 1770.

Molasses and sugar came from British- and French-ruled areas. To secure trade for themselves, the British used the Molasses Act of 1733 to slap a heavy tax on molasses that didn’t come from their own colonies. A revised act in 1764 imposed the tax on both sugar and molasses, allowing for the seizure of any cargo imported in violation of the law.

Suddenly, tax was having a very real impact on the success of a major colonial business, leading to the beginning of the rebellion against the idea of taxation without representation.

6Pasteurization And Alcohol

When Louis Pasteur invented pasteurization, he wasn’t trying to make safer milk. He was trying to solve the problems of local wineries, distilleries, and breweries.

Pasteur was a chemistry professor and the Dean of the Faculte de Sciencies in France. His work in bacteria and fermentation started when a local man approached him about problems with his beet sugar distillery. Sometimes, his product came out fine. Other times, it produced sour lactic acid.

Examining the processes, Pasteur determined the product was being contaminated by germs in the air. For the first time, he proved that a living thing—bacteria—caused the reaction. He responded by introducing processes for heating, boiling, and creating pure yeast cultures. This not only revolutionized wine and beer but made many other foods safer to eat.

5Christianity And Alcohol

The New Testament is pretty explicit about approving of alcohol. Jesus and the Apostles all drank wine, and according to St. Paul, wine is a gift from God. Paul also said that wine should be enjoyed but not abused, and abstinence is better than alcoholism.

While it seems like that should end all disputes on the matter, some Christians argue that the wine of the New Testament is actually non-alcoholic grape juice. They argue this even though the same Hebrew words describe Christ’s wine and the wine that got Noah drunk and naked.

One of the first things the Puritans did in the New World was build some breweries, but some Baptist and Methodist groups call drinking and alcohol evil. Abstaining from alcohol is a big consideration in the Mormon belief system. Other groups, like the Evangelicals, have recently begun lifting bans on the consumption of alcohol in some of their schools—by instructors, anyway.

4The Ancient Drinking Age Debate

In ancient Egypt, from around 4000 B.C., writings reminded mothers to include a healthy serving of beer when sending children off to school. The idea that we needed to keep alcohol from younger generation started later, with Plato.

In his Laws, written about 360 B.C., Plato described a soul having tasted alcohol as being made of fire and iron. Anyone younger than 18 wasn’t ready for the responsibility that needed to go along with enjoying this most godly of pleasures. He also outlined guidelines for how much you should drink. Once you were 18, you could certainly drink, but it was also important that you didn’t drink too much. By the time you were 40, however, you were free to honor Dionysus above all other gods. Alcohol would help you forget sorrow, renew youth, and soften the hard edges that came with age.

Plato also went a step further in his Republic, saying that young men needed to be coached on how to drink properly. They should be trained at formal dinners about how to behave while drinking and what their limits were.

3The Tavern Guided America’s Political Landscape

When taverns were first built in American colonial cities, people from all walks of life went there to drink and compare notes. As America grew and the class division became more evident, divisions in tavern culture followed suit. In taverns such as Boston’s Green Dragon, plans were hatched to form this entirely new nation. By this time, taverns were a male-dominated world, so a lot of decisions happened without a female voice.

Taverns were also divided ethnically. There were Irish pubs, there were German taverns, and other drinking establishments catered to other particular immigrant groups. That meant taverns and pubs were highly visible targets when someone wanted to make a statement against a particular group. In the 1850s, cities closed taverns on Sundays, effectively eliminating the only public meeting house that the immigrant community had on their one day off. Law enforcement would often use taverns to send messages, shutting down establishments frequented by one group or another.

2The Start Of The Gay Rights Movement

Taverns and bars are meeting places even today. In the late 1960s, though, the drinking culture of America looked pretty different. In New York State, places that served a gay clientele were often denied permits to sell alcohol. Most of these taverns and bars kept operating, though, many striking deals with law enforcement to keep their doors open.

On June 27, 1969, police raided one such tavern, the Stonewall Inn. They arrested 13 people. Over the course of the next six days, protesters took to the streets. Other gay clubs had already been closed, and the attack on the Stonewall was the last straw. Stonewall was more than just a bar: It was a place where young people with no family (usually kicked out by parents in denial over having a gay child) could go to be accepted. The attack on the Stonewall was viewed as an attack on the community.

In time, riot squads were dispatched to deal with the crowds, which numbered in the thousands. On the heels of the Stonewall Inn’s arrests came the formation of the LGBT rights groups, as well as the first gay pride parade—held a year after the bar’s clientele faced off with police.

1No Alcohol? No Utopia.

In 1732, the American colonies contained English land to the north, Spanish-held Florida, and a gap between their borders. Wanting to develop something of a buffer between the two, King George agreed to a rather forward-thinking plan put forward by General James Ogelthorpe.

Oglethorpe asked the king to release many poor English citizens languishing in debtors’ prison. He would take them to the New World, giving them a chance at a new life in his Province of Georgia. Along the way, Oglethorpe was determined to avoid the mistakes he saw the colonies making. In his utopian paradise, there would be no handful of wealthy landowners. Instead, the land would be divided equally among the settlers (50 acres each), and selling it was forbidden. Slavery was forbidden, too. He wanted a state where everyone was equal.

He also banned alcohol. Many in debtors’ prison had gotten there because of alcohol.

The buffer zone succeeded in keeping the Spanish from expanding northward, but that was its only success. The 2,800 people who settled in the area imported slaves from farms to the North. They ignored—or ranted about—the land they had been given. They grew angry that the promises of a flourishing silk industry failed. And they really, really didn’t like the idea of the alcohol ban. Settlers drank openly, and Oglethorpe soon found that there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.

His grand plan for a utopian society of self-sustaining equality collapsed on itself, and England revoked their relative independence in 1752. We like to think that everyone had a drink when they found out.

Sometimes, the best ideas are those we didn’t even know we had. A stroke of luck can lead to the purest and most profound genius. An accidental uncovering of a new food, invention, idea, or product can become a world-changing moment. Even if it’s one we didn’t realize at the time!

So many great things have been invented after painstaking research, development, trial, and error. But so many more great things have been created entirely by mistake! In this list, we’ll take a look at ten tales of the latter. These ten things were produced in error if you can believe it. It was only after the mistake was realized and observed by their creators that they knew they’d stumbled upon something pretty good. May we all have this kind of good serendipitous fortune!

Related: Ten Offbeat “Hit-or-Miss” Inventions

10 Cheeseburgers

We all love cheeseburgers, don’t we? That juicy beef patty, those tasty buns, the deliciously fresh toppings, and, of course, the cheese that melts onto the meat as it sits there, making your mouth water. Well, you can thank the mistake of a lifetime for that cheese! As the story goes, a young man named Lionel Clark Sternberger invented the cheeseburger in Pasadena, California.

Sweet, young Lionel was working at his dad’s restaurant in the California city as a short-order cook one day in 1924. He was flipping burgers for a customer’s order one afternoon when he accidentally left one on the grill too long. The patty became burnt. But Lionel, not wanting to waste an otherwise perfectly good slab of beef, opted to throw a slice of cheese on top to conceal the burn. And it worked!

The customer loved the new concoction so much that he begged Lionel to keep making it. Eventually, the restaurant put it on the menu. They even had a funny name for it, terming the concoction the “Aristocratic Burger: the Original Hamburger with Cheese.” Lionel was just 16 years old at the time, but he was quickly recognized as the inventor of the cheeseburger. Of course, it would become an American staple food in the decades after that. And it all started after a grill error!^[1]

9 Jason’s Hockey Mask

Jason Voorhees’s hockey mask in Friday the 13th is so iconic that it has transcended the movie series. By now, it has become a much larger part of horror movie culture, Halloween culture, and just general Americana. But the whole thing almost never happened! In fact, putting the actor Richard Brooker in a hockey mask in the first place was entirely an off-the-cuff idea that was done simply to save money!

While the production team was filming Friday the 13th Part 3, director Steve Miner needed to do a lighting check on Brooker in a certain spot before filming a scene. The only problem was that nobody on set wanted to do all the work of putting together Brooker’s face prosthesis and grotesque makeup just for a quick two-second lighting check. So, instead, the crew opted to take the easy way out and make Brooker wear a hockey mask for the lighting check.

The film’s 3-D supervisor just so happened to have one and offered it to the production for use. They put it on Brooker, he stood for the lighting check, and Miner absolutely loved how it came across on camera. And thus, totally by accident, the hockey mask horror icon was created! The world would have never seen it had it not been for some lazy film crew members dragging their feet during the production. So it seems that sometimes, laziness really can pay off! You hear that, Mom?^[2]

8 Nachos

It may stun you to learn that nachos were entirely discovered by mistake. After an improvisation came up with this new Mexican food, the whole thing quickly blew up. And now, we have nachos everywhere! And for good reason—they are tasty as hell!

So in the early 20th century, there was a man named Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya. He was the maitre d’ at a restaurant called the Victory Club in the border town of Piedras Negras, Mexico. There, military members at nearby Fort Duncan Army Base often crossed the border with their wives and families to enjoy meals in Mexico. One day, a group of nearly a dozen military wives crossed the border without their husbands. They knew Nacho was a talented and capable manager at the Victory Club, and they wanted to push him a little bit. So they asked him to come up with a new dish that they hadn’t yet tried.

Nacho was stumped for a minute—until he decided to make up a plate of tostadas and cover them with grated cheese. Then, he passed it through a broiling unit to heat the whole thing to a crisp. When that was done, he topped it with jalapenos to give the women a little bit of a spicy kick. And just like that, nachos were born! And yes, they took their name after Anaya’s nickname. That part is only fitting. Gotta give the man some credit for creating one of the tastiest foods out there!^[3]

7 Luca Brasi

While The Godfather was being filmed, director Francis Ford Coppola ran into a bit of a problem. One scene called for a character named Luca Brasi to show up. Brasi was to be a mob enforcer working for the legendary Don Corleone. And Coppola needed a really, really intimidating guy to play Brasi. But what ended up happening wasn’t on anybody’s radar—because the real mob enforcer they got to play Brasi ended up bumbling his lines for a totally unforeseen reason!

To play Luca Brasi on screen, Coppola hired a man named Lenny Montana. Now, Lenny was a real-life mob enforcer. He was as tough as they come and had seen and done some, uh, less than above-board things during his life in the mafia. But when it came time to appear on screen alongside Marlon Brando, Lenny fumbled all his lines. Now, you might assume that he stumbled over his lines because the script called for his character to be intimidated by Brando’s Don Corleone. But that’s not the case!

In reality, Lenny was absolutely starstruck that he was in the same room as a legend like Brando. The real-life, tough-guy mob enforcer was so overcome with the power of Brando’s celebrity that he nearly couldn’t remember any of his lines. He stumbled and faltered as the scene was being filmed simply because he was such a fan of Brando. But when Coppola went back to look at the tape, the stumble worked! The line flubs and mistakes turned out to be the perfect thing at the perfect time for the movie. Now THAT is true serendipity!^[4]

6 Ms. Pac-Man

In 1982, two MIT students decided to create a fun and interactive game called Crazy Otto. But instead of building out the whole thing from scratch, they went the easy route: they hacked into a Pac-Man machine and modified it. Once inside the machine and tinkering around with its inner workings, they began to perfect their Crazy Otto creation. And it was a hit! Well, at least among their close friends, who all enjoyed playing the game on a small level. But the duo didn’t think to commercialize the thing, knowing they’d pilfered Pac-Man’s intellectual property to make Crazy Otto in the first place.

Then, a stroke of luck followed their stroke of genius. It wasn’t long before Midway Games learned that the two students had hacked into Pac-Man and changed the game. And instead of going forth with a lawsuit or asking the pair to knock it off, they bought them out! Midway liked the hacked creation so much that they bought it from the college kids. In turn, they replaced Otto with a female Pac-Man and gave her a bow to wear. And thus, thanks to the unforeseen decision by two young men to hack a Pac-Man machine, Ms. Pac-Man was created. How lucky!^[5]

5 Star Trek’s Transporters

The transporters that popped up in Star Trek are such a cool idea. And one that we hope would one day be possible (far, far) into the future! But they didn’t come around on the television show for any real reason other than, well, they were cheap to film! Initially, producers wanted their characters to take shuttles to various places where they were going. Or alternatively, they could land their ship at whatever location it called for in the script. But that would have meant lots of expensive filming of various scenes in various places. And a ton of hassle in assembling actors and props for very short shots.

So, instead, the transporters came into being! It was an accidental thought the production team was having one day when they decided that a simple transporter making a human disappear in one spot and reappear in another would solve all their problems! Obviously, there would be no budget issues from that move. And they could produce the whole thing on camera with very little need for special effects. Then, when they started doing it, the transporter move became a huge success with fans! That was sort of an unintended consequence, too, but producers were certainly happy about it.^[6]

4 I’m Walking Here!

In the legendary movie Midnight Cowboy, actor Jon Voight plays Joe Buck—a small-town Texas native who goes to New York City. While in the Big Apple, he then gets scammed by Ratso, who was a disabled con man played so memorably by Dustin Hoffman. Much of the movie is about the chaos and uncertainty of life in New York City. But since the filmmakers didn’t have permits to shoot out on the streets of the massive metropolis, they had to improvise. And that’s how they got one of the best lines in movie history—totally by accident!

The line, of course, is “I’m walking here!” Hoffman was the one who yelled it out after a taxi cab nearly ran them over. And since the filmmakers didn’t have permits, and the scene had to be shot on a hidden camera, that was a real taxi cab—not an actor driving a car on a set!

What really happened was that Hoffman was walking across the street just to get a general shot of him moving for a scene. But unexpectedly, a cab crossed his path as he had the walk signal. The car almost ran him over. So, completely off the cuff and without going to the script, Hoffman ad-libbed the line. The producers loved it so much that they kept it in the final cut of the movie. And now it’s legendary!^[7]

3 The Incredible Hulk

The Incredible Hulk was originally supposed to be gray. When he first popped up in a May 1962 comic, the character was intended to be a pretty basic shade of gray. That was on purpose so that his color wouldn’t offend any one particular ethnic group. But the Marvel printers were acting up when it came time to print out that first comic book because the Incredible Hulk turned into a strange and different shade of gray on every single page! Printers hated how he changed color on each page, and the Marvel folks weren’t that thrilled, either. But there was nothing to do!

Until the next issue was released, that is. In the second issue detailing the Hulk’s activities, Marvel designers changed his color from the original gray to a deep, pleasing green. Thankfully, the printer was able to handle the green. And nobody really noticed that the Hulk had been gray in the first issue. They just took the story in stride with his green skin and let it be. Until now, that is as people have looked back to see how the Hulk didn’t originally begin as the green hero we know him as today. But to think the iconic green only ever came around due to a printing error! Could you imagine him now had he stayed gray this whole time?^[8]

2 Corn Flakes

The popular breakfast cereal Corn Flakes was created from a wheat-based dough that had been accidentally left out for an extended period of time. Will Kellogg, who was working on a health resort and lifestyle project (more on that in a minute) at the time, figured out that the fermenting done by the dough had caused it to become somewhat moldy. In a stroke of genius, while trying to salvage whatever food he could from that mishap, he rolled the moldy dough into thin sheets. Then, he baked the sheets. The fermentation and the high baking temperatures combined to create the first-ever batch of thin, crispy Corn Flakes that so many millions of people love to eat today. Crazy, right? What a fortunate mistake!

And yet, that’s only half the story, if you can believe it. As we mentioned, Kellogg was working on an entire lifestyle program as part of a retreat he was running at the time. One of his specific goals with the retreat was that he wanted people to masturbate less. Yes, you read that sentence correctly. Kellogg was a dietitian by trade, but he was very notably an anti-masturbation activist in his life. So he wanted to develop bland foods that would not “excite the passions,” as he was fond of saying. Thus, when the mistake that created Corn Flakes popped up, he made the most of it. And now, whenever you eat Corn Flakes from here on out, you can think of Will Kellogg’s dislike of self-pleasure.^[9]

1 Chocolate Chip Cookies

The chocolate chip cookie was invented by accident nearly 100 years ago. Ruth Wakefield was a New England woman who owned a place called the Tollhouse Inn. She loved baking cookies for weary travelers staying at her cozy little hotel. The only problem was that one day, she found out she was out of baker’s chocolate when it came time to throw a batch into the oven. Undaunted, she decided to substitute sweetened chocolate in its place to see what would happen. She broke the chocolate into small chunks, added it to the cookie dough, and put it all into the oven to bake.

Naturally, she expected the chocolate to melt and create the mainstay chocolate cookies for which she was already so regionally famous. But that’s not what happened! The sweetened chocolate kept its form within the cookies. The surprising result was a huge hit with travelers who came through the inn that day—and for many days after. Eventually, sweet old Mrs. Wakefield sold the accidental recipe (and the Tollhouse brand name, which became Toll House) to Nestle for just $1. Oh, and they also gave her a lifetime supply of chocolate. That’s nice!^[10]

Everything you come in contact with has its own story. Familiarity has drained some items of any interest. However, when looking at even the most mundane things, there is almost always something surreal.

Just because that item is banal doesn’t mean that its history is. The people behind even the most mundane things lived lives that were anything but. Here’s hoping these dark and disturbing backstories can bring some excitement to these commonplace things.

10 A Stagecoach Accident Created Movies And A Murder

In 1860, Eadweard Muybridge was traveling through Texas on a stagecoach. When it crashed, he and the other passengers were thrown out. After hitting his head, Muybridge suffered from double vision, sensory impairments, and confused thinking.

To recuperate, his doctor told him to take up a new hobby to recover. Muybridge decided to get into photography. With bold and deadly stunts, he earned a reputation as one of the most acclaimed photographers of the era.

His injuries grew worse. In 1874, he discovered that his wife, Flora Stone, was having an affair with a mutual friend. Muybridge shot the man at pointblank range, killing him instantly.

Unsure if his wife’s child was his own or that of her lover, Muybridge put his own kid up for adoption. People who knew Muybridge said that his eccentric behavior was caused by the crash. Though he plead insanity on the murder charge, he was acquitted on the grounds that murder was justified.^[1]

Muybridge’s exoneration was great news for Leland Stanford, the man who had raised money for Muybridge’s defense. The men’s relationship was about to change the world.

A prominent horse gambler, Stanford wanted to know if a horse in mid-trot takes all four feet off the ground. From rows of cameras placed along the track, the stills showed every motion of the horse. Replayed in sequence, the images came to life and revealed a momentary hold of all four legs off the ground. This little bet inspired the forerunner of the motion picture.

9 Slinky’s Inventor Abandoned His Wealth And Family To Join A Bolivian Cult

The Slinky’s origin is as whimsical as its iconic childhood status would suggest. In a happy accident, Richard James watched a spring walk down a pair of stairs. His children stood by laughing in delight.

Two years later, James showcased the newly debuted Slinky as the hot new Christmas gift of 1945. Despite its simplistic background, the Slinky has become one of the quintessential toys in American history for over 70 years.

Richard James did not have as amusing a story. The toy circuit was apparently a very scandalous place. Flushed with Slinky money, he became a serial adulterer. Remorseful for his affairs, James wanted to find religion again. He started sending his money to Episcopalian groups. His religious curiosity led him to join stricter and stricter faiths.^[2]

For a man who brought so much joy to children everywhere, James could not bring happiness to his own children. In 1960, James abandoned his six kids, who ranged from two to 18 years old. Richard James’s wife, Betty, had to raise their children on her own while James was busy sending all of Slinky’s profits to a religious cult in Bolivia.

None of James’s kids saw their father in the last 14 years of his life. The only communication was letters urging them to repent and join him in Bolivia. By shepherding the company in her husband’s absence, Betty personally saved the company from bankruptcy and let the toy entertain children to this day.

8 The Mathematician-Turned-Magician Behind The Decimal Point

John Napier was a paradox. Both a man of logic and superstition, he drove humanity forward by looking to the past. Perceived as consulting in the dark arts, Napier was an early mathematician who formulated the logarithm and invented the idea of a decimal point. All his advancements were grounded in his theological beliefs of the impending Apocalypse.

Reading the Book of Revelation, Napier calculated that the Apocalypse was set to occur in 1688 or 1700. Apparently, he allowed a little wiggle room for the end of the world.

Others in the community perceived Napier’s profound faith in Armageddon as evidence that he was a wizard. Convinced that the end times were imminent, Napier experimented with a proto death ray that harnessed and reflected the power of the Sun to burn ships.

His reputation was slandered, but his own eccentricities did not help. Napier would walk around in an all-black gown decorated with skulls. His ensemble was completed with a black pet rooster and black spider crawling on him. Never denying rumors about his ability to communicate with animals, he fostered beliefs that his rooster could read minds or that he (Napier) could control pigeons.

Speculative rumors led to his most daring exploit. Noted treasure hunter and pirate Robert Logan hired Napier to discover the buried treasure of Fast Castle.

Believing that Napier’s sorcery could easily locate the chest, Logan signed a contract to storm the castle. Little came of this exploit, which was good for Napier. Had he gone through with the heist, the notorious outlaw would have likely killed the genius, setting mathematics progress back for years.^[3]

7 The Toy Made By A Nazi Used To Fight Nazis

William Gruber was obsessed with mushrooms. He wanted the rest of the world to join him. In Gruber’s fantasy, people around the world would use his device to educate themselves on detailed depictions of flora and fauna. The world eventually grew to love his invention, but he never got to revel in the success. He was too busy being ostracized as a Nazi spy.

Raised in post–World War I Germany, Gruber was swept up in the Nazi fervor. Even after he moved to Oregon in 1924, he still proudly supported the burgeoning Nazi Party.

While photographing Oregon’s natural beauty, Gruber had a chance encounter with the honeymooning Harold Graves. Fascinated by Gruber’s bizarre technique of taking simultaneous photos with two different cameras to create a 3-D image, Graves thought that Gruber should make a machine to view these images up close. So they formed a partnership.

In 1939, Graves debuted their project at the New York World’s Fair. It was named the View-Master.

The outbreak of war later that year was not enough to shake Gruber’s Nazi allegiance. The FBI was worried about this vocal and prominent Nazi advocate with constant business connections with a German lens manufacturer, so they froze all of Gruber’s assets. Then the government banished him to Idaho.

Ironically, that same government was about to buy more than 10,000 View-Masters. Military servicemen used the reels as a necessary educational tool to quickly familiarize themselves with equipment or locations.

Returning to the product’s educational roots, Gruber’s last association with View-Master was a macabre project known as “A Stereoscopic Atlas of the Human Anatomy.” Instead of stills of beloved Disney characters, the reels were filled with dissected cadavers. However, Gruber had no control as the View-Master became an iconic symbol of baby boomer childhood instead of the educational tool he foresaw.^[4]

6 Milton Cooper Wrote Of Aliens And The Language Of Hip-Hop

Serving as an Army foot soldier in the Vietnam War, Milton William Cooper personally saw the government lie to the American public. And if you believe him, he also saw extraterrestrials. UFOlogists heralded Cooper as a government official turned whistle-blower. Others dismissed him as a plagiarist. No matter his credibility, Cooper was launched as a major figure in conspiracy circles.

In 1991, that culminated with Behold a Pale Horse. His book combines traditional conspiracy theories embedded with a new strain of paranoia. Subjects were as varied as the beliefs that the government created the AIDS virus and John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he was about to reveal the existence of aliens.

Readers have interpreted the meandering manifesto in multiple ways. Seeing the text as a call to violent insurrection, Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. A different type of explosion went off in Harlem. Stoking the already-present distrust of the government, Cooper’s theories help launch the ’90s artistic boom in hip-hop.

As an omnipresent force in Harlem, Behold a Pale Horse was simply called “The Book” by many readers. Influenced by Black Islam’s call to serve as “lyrical assassins,” many of the most consequential rappers of the ’90s got their start by referencing Cooper’s book.

Notable Rappers who sneaked in nods to Cooper include the Wu-Tang Clan, Big Daddy Kane, Busta Rhymes, Tupac Shakur, Nas, Rakim, Gang Starr, Public Enemy, Mobb Deep, and Jay-Z. Modern hip-hop traces its roots through Cooper’s text, even if he would not live long enough to see the results.

As of the 1990s, Cooper’s fears of government persecution were no longer just a theory. In 1998, he was charged with tax evasion. Two years later, a bloody altercation with his neighbor landed Cooper with an aggravated assault charge.

Labeled a “major fugitive,” United States Marshals arrived at Cooper’s house on November 5, 2001. Vowing to never be taken alive, Cooper shot an officer in the head. Prophetic until the end, Cooper was shot in the chest and died.^[5]

5 The Sex Doll By A Sex Addict Became A Childhood Staple

Despite being one of the most wholesome toys of all time, Barbie dolls have always been controversial. Many parents have worried that the doll’s unrealistic body figure is a bad role model for little girls’ body image.

Barbie’s exaggerated dimensions were meant to be sexualized from the beginning. While vacationing in Switzerland, inventor Ruth Handler found a Bild-Lilli doll. These dolls were pocket-size models of a namesake call girl from a German comic strip.

The Bild-Lilli dolls were risque trophies handed to women on dates for the men to make their intentions clear. Handler brought one of these dolls for her new business partner, Jack Ryan.

He was an odd fit for the toy world. Ryan initially set out to be a rocket designer. Using his engineering know-how, he modified the dolls with movable joints or individual fingers.

Unable to pay him an engineering fee, Handler arranged to give Ryan a small royalty for every toy sold. As Barbie took over, his contract made him extremely wealthy. He used that money to fund all types of bizarre purchases including his own fire engine and a castle surrounded by a moat.

Described by others as a “sex addict,” Ryan’s castle featured a sex dungeon covered in black fox fur. His insatiable sexual appetite was part of the reason that he married five times, including once to Zsa Zsa Gabor.^[6]

Sex was far from Ryan’s only vice. He also used copious amounts of alcohol and cocaine. In part due to his antics, Ryan was ousted from Mattel. This exile only exacerbated his already-debilitating cocaine addiction.

The cocaine took a mental and physical toll on his body. His drug use was a factor in a stroke that left him crippled. A few years later, he killed himself at age 64.

4 The Cult In The Kitchen

Considering the rest of his family, John Humphrey Noyes really stands apart. His father served in the US House of Representatives. His cousin was President Rutherford B. Hayes.

Apparently, the late 1800s would let it slide, but it might make the news today if the president’s cousin was running a religious sex cult. In his own small way, Noyes’s accomplishments affected daily life just as much as his cousin’s did.

In 1831, Noyes experienced a religious conversion. Citing a prophecy that the millennium would arrive within a generation of Jesus’s crucifixion, Noyes calculated that the Earth was redeemed in AD 70. All these generations later, Noyes was now free from sin.

His interpretation slowly gathered his own wave of followers. Together, the congregation of 250 formed a burgeoning community to recreate their own Heaven on Earth. Motivated by Jesus’s call to renounce Earthly possessions, the community shared everything.

Economic and physical possessions were divided among all the converts. This included romantic partners. All the men were married to all the women, and vice versa. Group sex was common and encouraged.

No longer comfortable with the unregulated sexual openness, Vermont authorities forced the organization out in 1847. In 1848, the group resettled in Oneida, New York.

Now dubbed the Oneida Perfectionists, the community had to find a way to fund themselves. They tried multiple activities including farming and sawmilling. The most successful was producing steel beaver traps for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

Following the collapse of the fur trade, the Oneida Perfectionists continued blacksmithing with a line of silverware. In 1881, the cult collapsed, but the silverware company survived. Today, Oneida Silverware is a mainstay of china cabinets everywhere.^[7]

3 Frederick Hoelzel Crapped Out A Masterpiece

Diet yogurts, McDonald’s hamburgers, and dairy products are but a fraction of the common foods containing cellulose flour. Food manufacturers add cellulose to cheapen the processing price.

With almost no vitamin value of its own, cellulose flour sates appetites without adding any extra calories. Dietitians may rue the invention now for its lack of healthy properties, but fellow nutritionist Frederick Hoelzel had other priorities on his mind when he discovered the product.

Everybody eats cellulose flour, but nobody should eat like Hoelzel. In the 1920s, he became a minor celebrity in Chicago for his remarkable stomach.

Ingesting inedible things like gravel, glass, feathers, ball bearings, and gold pellets, he recorded the amount of time they took to poop out. To put it mildly, it was a painful process. Self-sacrifice is admirable, but Hoelzel’s research had limited applicability.

Despite no one ever needing to know how long it takes to poop cotton, Hoelzel went ahead and tried. Probably a welcome relief from the gravel, he grew to love the taste of cotton-based surgical gauze. As a new favorite, the cellulose in the cotton got him interested in looking into further uses of the compound, eventually leading to the flour.^[8]

2 Eric Gill’s Fonts Are Good; Everything Else About Him Is Not

If one turns on BBC World News, brushes off an old VHS tape of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Toy Story, rides down the London Underground, shops at a Tommy Hilfiger, grabs a copy of Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff, or reads any Penguin Publishing classic, he would see Gill Sans font.

More celebrated for his sculpting abilities, Eric Gill turned that artistic sensibility into one of the most ubiquitous typefaces in the world. Throughout the 1920s and ’30s, he was repeatedly acclaimed as one the best artists of his generation. Upon his death, Gill’s diaries revealed jarring accounts of his private life that complicate the question of delineating the art and the artist.

Gill’s sexual improprieties were rooted in his Catholicism and deep shame of his sin. If he felt sinful, he never atoned. Instead, he lived a life of increasingly amoral actions.

Gill’s sins started early with lifelong incestuous affairs with his two sisters. The affairs only ended when one of his sisters died. Modeling one of his statues after what his sister looked like while they were having sex, the affair is inseparable from his sculptures. (There is some question about whether he had an incestuous relationship with one or both sisters.)

However, Gill’s incest did not end with his sisters. When two of his three daughters were still children, he raped them. In diary entries, he relished the disgusting deeds by graphically describing his own children’s anatomy.

No diary entry highlights the extent of Gill’s depravity more than the ones mentioning his love of fellating his dogs. With all the incest, rape, pedophilia, and bestiality, maybe Toy Story should choose a different logo.^[9]

1 W.C. Minor’s Life Cannot Be Defined

It is hard to know where W.C. Minor’s name should appear in the dictionary. His heavily bearded face could appear next to words as varied as “genius,” “dedicated,” “murderer,” or “insane.” Whichever word you choose, Minor’s work certainly played his role in history.

A Yale graduate turned Union surgeon in the Civil War, Minor was poised to do great things. Watching the contorted bodies burn in the Battle of the Wilderness changed all of that.

With the forest in flames, Minor burned a deserter himself with a scalding hot “D.” The Irish ancestry of the branded deserter damaged Minor in turn. Haunted with new psychological apparitions of the Irish nationalist group the Fenian Brotherhood, Minor’s mind degraded.

His mental unrest first manifested itself with a more acceptable vice—sex. Living in the red-light district of his town, Minor visited brothels almost daily. Decades later, he could no longer control his urges. Now wanting to have sex with young boys, Minor chopped off his penis. He used the exact knife that was about to cut out definitions in ancient manuscripts.

Instead of seeking treatment, Minor tried to murder his hallucinations. George Merrett was sadly caught in the crosshairs. A bullet that Minor intended for his Irish specters accidentally hit local businessman Merrett. Seven weeks later, Minor was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

Institutionalized in the Broadmoor asylum, he reached out to the widowed Eliza Merrett. Their relationship grew. Each week, the two would exchange their favorite books. Buried inside one of the books was a pamphlet mentioning that the Oxford English Dictionary was looking for volunteers.

Thanks to Merrett’s contributions, Minor had a collection of thousands of books. Scouring the texts, he found the etymological roots for hundreds of words. His contributions to the dictionary were incalculable.

In the preface of the fifth volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, the publisher thanked Minor for enhancing “our illustration of the literary history of individual words, phrases, and constructions . . . so enormous have been Dr. Minor’s contributions during the past 17 or 18 years that we could easily illustrate the last four centuries from his quotations alone.”^[10]

If you liked the article, you can email the author at [email protected]. You can follow the author on Twitter. Feel free to read any of the other articles they have written.

During much of history, maps were designed as much for beauty and display as for accuracy. When maps were hand-drawn, they were difficult and expensive to produce, and ones designed for personal libraries were appropriately lavish to reflect their status as luxury items. Even in modern times, some map makers design their works to make a point. Others designed them for beauty, and sometimes a map designed for entirely practical purposes is also beautiful.

10Planisphaerium Arateum Sive Compages Orbium Mundanorum Ex Hypothesi Aratea In Plano Expressa

The planisphere of Aratus, or the composition of the heavenly orbits following the hypothesis of Aratus expressed in a planar view, was designed by Andreas Cellarius and published in 1660 as part of his Harmonia Macrocosmica (harmony of the macrocosm). It shows a model of the universe according to the Greek astronomer and poet Aratus. It shows the Earth at the center of the universe, with the Sun, Moon, and other planets orbiting around it, and the signs of the zodiac orbiting around those.

The orbits are particularly graceful, and all the details are clear and precise. Every map in the Harmonia is stunningly beautiful, but this one combines some of the virtues of each.

9The Cedid Atlas Tercumesi

Selim III, then Sultan of the Ottoman empire, engaged in many reforms and modernizations during his reign, and this 1803 atlas was the first known complete printed atlas in the Muslim world to use European-style cartography. Only 50 copies were printed, and many of these were burned in a warehouse fire during a Janissary uprising of those opposed to Selim’s reforms, so it is also one of the rarest printed atlases.

The lettering is remarkably well done, even by the high standards of the day. Each page was mounted on cloth, rather than paper, to make it more durable.

8This Fantasy Map Of Sarkamand

This map of a mighty capital in the desert, seat of the Padisha, was created in Photoshop and Illustrator by Robert Altbauer. The lettering style suggests Arabic, and the name references the extraordinarily beautiful city Samarkand, located in today’s Uzbekistan.

The design of overlapping circles almost looks like photographs of cellular structures. Altbauer has designed maps for games, television, and fantasy novels.

7An Ancient Mappe Of Fairyland

This map, created in 1918, depicts an island that shows the locations of dozens of myths, fairy tales, and folklore. The sources are mostly British, but there are also inspirations from Greek and German myths. You can see Oberon’s kingdom from Midsummer Night’s Dream, King Arthur’s tomb, a mountain where rocs build their nests, Red Riding hood’s cottage, Tom Thumb, Monsalvat (the land where the Holy Grail is guarded by the Grail Knights), and Ulysses’s ship.

Sleigh was inspired by many of the artists of the Arts and Crafts movement, especially William Morris, and this shows in not just the subject matter but the delicacy of the colors. 1918 marked the end of World War I, so it’s quite possible that for Sleigh and those who admired the map, this fantasy land in which even the more dangerous creatures, such as dragons, looked peaceful was a welcome escape.

6Duke’s Plan Of New York

1664 was the year the English captured New York from the Dutch. This map shows several of the original spellings from that time, including Hudson’s River, Longe Isleland, and Mannados. The map was presented to James, the Duke of York, with the expectation that he would name the city after himself.

The design, copied from an earlier Dutch map, blends ornate elements, such as the decorative border and legend, with plenty of empty space depicting land and much of the water. The British ships, added to reinforce that the city became British territory, are drawn so delicately that they emphasize the empty space.

5Cheonhado

This map, created in Korea around 1800, is known as a Cheonhado. The term means “complete map of all under Heaven” and shows the mystical Mount Meru in the center. In Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu beliefs, Mount Meru is not just the physical but the spiritual center of the universe.

Other countries, with little regard for their relative sizes or geographical location, orbit China and Mount Meru.

4Yongying County In China

This map was created in China sometime between 1734 and 1779 and shows the river systems of Yongying County in China. Unlike most Western maps, the south is at the top and the north at the bottom.

It was painted on silk, and the labels were pasted on. The gentle curves and muted colors give the map a rather tranquil appearance.

3Leo Belgicus

In 1583, Michael Aitzinger drew a map that depicted the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Belgium in the shape of a lion, inspired by the lions that were so common in the region’s heraldry. He called it the Leo Belgicus, and it started a trend for mapmakers. The most famous version is by Claes Janszoon Visscher, from 1611.

2Geological Investigation Of The Alluvial Valley Of The Lower Mississippi River

In 1944, Harold Norman Fisk, a geology professor, published this as part of a report for the Army Corps of Engineers. These maps of the changes of the Mississippi River over time look a bit like the undulations of muscle tissue, a bit like ribbon candy, and a bit like abstract art.

The research behind these maps is just as impressive as the maps themselves. Fisk and his team used approximately 16,000 soil samples from various locations around the river and compared them to aerial photographs to establish the old flow patterns.

1Book Of Navigation

The Ottoman admiral Piri Reis designed many gorgeous maps, including the collection in his Book of Navigation, published in 1521. The maps show the delicate precision of Ottoman illuminated manuscripts, and the coloring of the land masses (which were far less important to Reis) has an almost playful note.

His first world map, published in 1513, includes both North and South America. Some people believe the section that shows the southern part of South America and the coast of Antarctica are so accurate that it proves humans explored Antarctica long before the historical record indicates. However, the map has enough mistakes (including an annotation that says the region is warm) to make it clear that the points that are accurate are far more likely due to good informed guesses based on Reis’s topography skills.

+A Humorous Diplomatic Atlas Of Europe And Asia

In March, 1904, at the beginning of the Russian-Japanese war, student Kisabur Ohara, published this atlas that showed Russia as an octopus trying to strangle all of Asia and much of Europe. Finland, Poland, Crimea, and the Balkans are already dead and represented by skulls, while Turkey, Persia, and Tibet are caught firmly. Each living country is depicted as a person in the country’s typical costume. One of the octopus’s arms is reaching toward Korea and Port Arthur, ready to throttle those, as well.

Previous maps had shown Russia as an octopus reaching greedily across Asia, but this is the first known one to show Europe at risk as well. Even without the text, the map does a remarkable job of portraying Russia as a bestial menace and other countries at risk.

Ann is a researcher, writer, and currently a job hunter. Learn more or see more of her writing.

Scientists are at it again. This time, they’re creating new viruses and bacteria in their laboratories. Scientists usually prefer altering already-existing or extinct bacteria and viruses to produce new strains that will defeat our immunity, vaccines, and drugs.

Sometimes, they prefer creating new viruses and bacteria from scratch. However, these strains are not always dangerous to humans even though they could be deadly to animals like mice and even to other bacteria.

SEE ALSO: 10 Viruses That Actually Help Humankind

10 Horsepox

Scientists at the University of Alberta have created horsepox, a lethal virus closely related to the equally deadly smallpox. Unlike smallpox, horsepox does not affect humans and is only fatal to horses. The scientists created the virus during a six-month study sponsored by pharmaceutical company Tonix. The researchers purchased DNA pieces via mail order and arranged them to form the virus. The entire project was not expensive. The DNA pieces used to create the virus cost just $100,000.

The study caused a dilemma at the time it was revealed. Other scientists were concerned that governments or even terrorists could use the knowledge to create smallpox virus for biological weapons. A smallpox epidemic could become deadly for us today. We no longer get vaccinated for it because we eradicated the disease in 1980.

The researchers clarified that they created the virus because they wanted to develop improved smallpox vaccines. Tonix later revealed that it had produced a smallpox vaccine with the horsepox virus. Other scientists say that the researchers could have extracted horsepox from wild horse populations instead of creating it from scratch. Tonix said they would have done just that if they had known they had natural access to the virus. However, lead researcher David Evans said they recreated the virus because Tonix would have been unable to commercialize the horsepox virus taken from the wild.^[1]

9 Black Death

Between 1347 and 1351, millions of Europeans were afflicted with a mysterious disease that killed over 50 million people. Today, we know this disease is the Black Death, which is caused by the Yersinia pestis bacteria. Although the Black Death is still around, it is not as potent as it used to be.

A few years ago, researchers from several schools, including the University of Tubingen in Germany and McMaster University in Canada, recreated the deadly bacteria from DNA samples extracted from the teeth of a victim who died during the plague. They got only 30 milligrams of the bacteria from the teeth, but that was enough to recreate it.

As a result, researchers confirmed the original bacteria’s relationship to the Black Death around today. Some scientists had claimed that the bacteria were of different strains, but they are now confirmed to be the same. The one we have around today only became less deadly after it mutated.^[2]

8 Polio

Like their counterparts at the University of Alberta, scientists at the State University of New York have created a deadly artificial virus by buying DNA pieces via mail order. This time, it is polio, and it is as potent as the natural one. Mice exposed to the artificial polio got sick just as they would have if exposed to natural polio.

The laboratory-created polio was controversial among scientists. The researchers who produced it had taken its code from databases available to almost anybody. Other researchers fear that people with ulterior motives could develop their own artificial polio, which is much easier to make than other dangerous viruses like smallpox.

Smallpox’s genetic code is 185,000 letters long while polio’s is just 7,741 letters long. Although we are already at the brink of eradicating polio, scientists fear that we will still need to be vaccinated against the disease because it could be recreated.^[3]

7 Mousepox

A few years ago, researchers at the Australian National University and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) produced a deadly mutated strain of mousepox by mistake. Mousepox is another lethal virus that belongs to the same family as horsepox and smallpox.

The researchers were trying to develop birth control for mice at the time that they mistakenly created the virus. They inserted a gene that promoted the creation of interleukin 4 (IL-4) into mousepox, which they injected into some mice. The mice were vaccinated and were not supposed to be harmed by the mousepox.

Instead of making the mice infertile as researchers had expected, the weakened virus turned lethal and destroyed the immune systems of the mice, killing them in nine days. The new mousepox was so dangerous that it was resistant to vaccination. Half of the other vaccinated mice exposed to the mutated mousepox also died.

The researchers were so scared by their invention that they did not want to publish their findings. They even met with the Australian military to confirm if it was safe to publish.^[4] Scientists fear that human smallpox could also mutate and become deadlier if injected with IL-4. However, they are unsure because no one has tried it yet. We know it’s only a matter of time before some scientist does.

6 SARS 2.0

Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) is a lethal virus. More than 700 people were killed during a SARS epidemic that infected 8,000 people in 29 countries between 2002 and 2003. Now, scientists have made it deadlier.

The new mutant SARS virus was created by a group of researchers led by Dr. Ralph Baric of the University of North Carolina. They call it SARS 2.0. The researchers developed the virus by adding some protein to the naturally occurring SARS. SARS 2.0 is immune to vaccines and treatments used to cure the naturally occurring SARS virus.^[5]

The team said that the research was necessary because the natural SARS virus could mutate and become immune to our vaccines. By creating a deadlier and mutated virus, we could develop stronger vaccines that will save us from a more lethal SARS epidemic. That is, if the natural SARS ever mutates.

However, other scientists are concerned because the SARS 2.0 that is supposed to save us from a deadly SARS epidemic could start that epidemic if it ever escapes from the lab.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Mysterious Viruses

5 MERS-Rabies Virus Hybrid

Scientists have created a MERS-rabies hybrid virus. The idea is to use the virus to develop a vaccine that will protect us from both viruses. Rabies is a deadly disease that can be transmitted to humans through the bites of infected dogs that usually have the virus in their saliva.

Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) is a new virus that appeared in Saudi Arabia a few years ago. It is closely related to SARS and is spread from bats to camels and, finally, to humans. MERS infected 1,800 people at the time of its first epidemic and killed over 630. Its fatality rate is around 35 percent.

As we mentioned in the previous entry, SARS infected over 8,000 people during a 2003 epidemic but killed just over 700. Although SARS caused more deaths in absolute terms, it has a lower fatality rate than MERS. Only about 10 percent of SARS victims died. And for now, we do not have any vaccine for MERS.

To create the MERS-rabies hybrid, researchers took some proteins from the MERS virus and added it to rabies. They used the new virus to develop a new vaccine that made mice resistant to rabies and MERS. They believe that the vaccine can also be used for humans and camels at risk of getting MERS.^[6]

4 Phi-X174

Phi-X174 is another artificial virus we have produced in laboratories. It was created by researchers at the Institute of Biological Energy Alternatives in Rockville, Maryland. The researchers modeled the artificial virus after the natural phiX virus. PhiX is a bacteriophage, a category of viruses that infect and kill bacteria. However, it has no effect on humans.^[7]

The researchers created the artificial virus in 14 days, yet it resembles the natural virus so much that it is impossible to tell them apart. The researchers hope that the new virus is the first step in developing mutant and artificial bacteria that can be used for the benefit of man.

3 Unnamed Virus

Researchers from University College London and the National Physical Laboratory have created an unnamed virus that kills bacteria and behaves like a real virus. Like phi-X174, it is a bacteriophage but deadlier.

The unnamed virus attacks any bacteria around it. Within seconds, it breaks into smaller parts that attach and create holes on the bodies of the bacteria. The holes quickly become larger, forcing the bacteria to leak their contents. The bacteria die soon after.

Despite its scary potency, the unnamed virus is not dangerous to humans and did not attack human cells during tests. However, it could enter human cells just like natural viruses. Researchers hope the results will be used to treat and study bacterial diseases in humans. The virus could also be used to alter the human gene.^[8]

2 Bird Flu

Some Dutch scientists have created a mutant and deadlier version of the already-lethal bird flu. Natural bird flu is not easily transmitted among humans. However, the researchers altered it so that it could be. To test their new virus, the researchers exposed some ferrets to it. Ferrets were chosen because they had similar bird flu symptoms to humans.

Ten generations later, the already-changed virus mutated again and became airborne. Natural bird flu is not an airborne disease. The study was controversial in the science community. It became even more so when the Dutch researchers attempted to publish the process to create the deadly virus.^[9]

Although scientists fear that terrorists could use the study to produce a deadly biological weapon that could kill half the people in the world, the researchers involved say that the study was necessary to allow us prepare for a mutated bird flu epidemic.

1 H1N1 Virus

In 1918, the world witnessed the arrival of a deadly flu epidemic. This was the H1N1 virus. By the time it was over, up to 100 million people were dead. The flu caused blood to seep into the lungs of victims. They released blood from their noses and mouths before drowning in the blood inside their lungs.

The flu returned in 2009. But it was less lethal even though it was mutated and deadlier than it should have been. Scientist Yoshihiro Kawaoka took samples of the mutated strain that caused the 2009 epidemic and used it to create a deadlier strain that was resistant to vaccines. This strain was similar to the one that caused the 1918 epidemic.^[10]

Kawaoka was not planning to produce a more lethal version of the flu at the time. He only wanted to create the original version of the flu so that he could study how it mutated and was able to bypass our immunity. The deadly virus is stored in a lab and could become fatal if ever released.

Artistic masterpieces, whether they are in visual, audio, or written form, often require a lengthy creative process that can take many months or even years to complete. That’s why it is so surprising to hear about a popular book being written in a matter of days, a hit song being composed in minutes, or famous paintings done in hours.

Sometimes the motivation for this accelerated creativity is tied to money, which is to be expected considering so many artists, even those who go on to become hugely successful, struggle financially prior to their breakthrough.

Here are 10 masterpieces that were churned out super fast.

Related: 10 Literary Masterpieces So Bad They’re Actually Pretty Good

10 Visage: Head of a Faun

Some professional painters have been known to create marketable work in just a couple of minutes, like the record-setting Morris Katz, who came up with a process called instant art. Using this quick-fire technique, he is said to have done 225,000 paintings.

Pablo Picasso had a reputation for being prolific as well, “estimated to have completed some 13,500 paintings in his life,” according to Artsy. In 1937 he produced his famous Guernica mural in just three weeks, and according to an oft-repeated anecdote, he once responded to a request for a portrait from a lady who approached him in a café by sketching her likeness on the back of a menu in five minutes. However, one of his most impressive quickie works is “Visage: Head of a Faun,” which he did for the 1955 documentary Le Mystère Picasso by Henri-Georges Clouzot. It was created in five minutes as the camera was rolling. The time constraint is due to Clouzot’s limited supply of film stock.

“Visage: Head of a Faun” was recently featured as part of the Picasso and Paper exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. During the few minutes Picasso spent on the drawing, he repeatedly transformed the piece, “taking it from flower to fish to chicken to face and builds up from a monochrome drawing with bright, saturated colors,” says Open Culture.^[1]

9 A Study in Scarlet

Although the majority of Sherlock Holmes tales are short stories, which were first published in magazines, the series author, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, did write a few full-length novels led by the famous detective. The first of these was A Study in Scarlet, involving the discovery of a corpse at a rundown house.

Originally printed in 1887 in Beeton’s Christmas Annual, it was later published in book format. Not only did this mark Sherlock Holmes’s debut as a character in literature, but it also describes the first meeting of Holmes and Watson. Additionally, it has the distinction of being the first Holmes story to be adapted to film. While the novel is relatively short, it is still impressive that Conan Doyle was able to write it in only three weeks, especially since this was the beginning of such an enormously popular franchise, which is still going strong more than 130 years later.^[2]

8 The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The story of how Robert Louis Stevenson’s iconic 1886 horror novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was created sounds like a kind of horror story in itself, especially to anyone who has ever tried to write a book.

The author, who was suffering from tuberculosis at the time and may have been under the effect of medicinal cocaine, had been toying with the basic concept of a story about dual identity. The Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde idea came to him in a dream one night, which caused his wife Fanny to awaken him when she heard Stevenson screaming. He is thought to have written the original draft in three days. However, Fanny was so critical of the story that she burned it. Stevenson spent another three days rewriting the draft. Or, that’s how the story goes. It likely took him about six weeks, still a feat for such an impactful book.^[3]

7 “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)”

Singer/songwriter/producer Terius Youngdell Nash—better known as The-Dream—may have just been kidding when he announced after arriving at the recording studio one day that he was going to write a song that would be the next big single for Beyoncé. But the results were anything but laughable. A single off Beyoncé’s 2008 I Am…Sasha Fierce album, the catchy, highly danceable, ultimatum-themed song “Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It),” took him 17 minutes to compose and made it all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard Charts.

Insider quoted The-Dream as saying: “Usually those songs that take the small amount of time are usually the bigger ones because you’re not thinking about it.”^[4]

6 Gismonda Poster

Compared to some of his truly speedy fellow painters, the length of time Czech artist Alphonse Mucha spent on his first Sarah Bernhardt poster, almost one week, may not seem that impressive. But in light of the work’s prominence, it is a very short time. Primarily remembered as a very popular decorative and commercial artist who often used mythical and nature themes in his work, Mucha got his big break in December 1894 by being in the right place at the right time.

Bernhardt ordered a new poster design from Parisian lithographers Lemerciers for the play Gismonda. Savvy when it came to marketing, the legendary French actress wanted something different and was in a hurry. Since most of the designers in Paris were on vacation at the time, the workshop manager was in a tight spot. He asked the young, virtually unknown Mucha, who just happened to be there working on something for a friend, if he could design the poster for Bernhardt.

“Within a week, Mucha produced a poster for her that is now considered a cornerstone of the Art Nouveau movement,” according to Marie Vítková of the National Museum in Prague. The poster of Bernhardt dressed as a Byzantine princess, set against a gold background with palm leaf, is still among Mucha’s most famous, along with such designs as Zodiac and the Sarah Bernhardt poster for La Plume.^[5]

5 “Yesterday”

As well-loved as The Beatles’ music has been for more than 50 years, some of their more simplistic bubblegum pop songs might sound as though they were dashed off in just a few minutes. Ironically, it was one of the group’s most poignant songs, “Yesterday,” which was written at lightning speed. In addition to its artistic merit, this 1965 single from the group’s Help album is so popular it holds the record for being the most covered song of all time.

According to NME, the melody for the 1965 song came to Paul McCartney in a dream and took less than a minute to write. “I have no idea how I wrote that. I just woke up one morning, and it was in my head. I didn’t believe it for about two weeks,” explained McCartney.

The lyrics took much longer, a couple of months. The song was credited to McCartney-Lennon; however, John Lennon made it clear, a few years later, that he had not co-written “Yesterday,” giving all the credit to Paul McCartney.^[6]

4 The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

What started out as a class assignment in 1960 became the basis for what is now considered a literary classic. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is about an unconventional school teacher/mentor in 1930s Edinburgh. To some degree, a coming-of-age story told from the perspective of her adoring students, this short novel was written in just one month.

Author Muriel Spark explained: “We were given to write about how we spent our summer holidays, but I wrote about how [my teacher] spent her summer holidays instead. It seemed more fascinating.”

The book was later adapted to film, becoming a very memorable 1969 movie with Maggie Smith winning an Oscar for starring as the title character.^[7]

3 “Your Song”

The timeless and endearingly unpretentious 1970 Elton John classic “Your Song” didn’t take long for John to compose or for his lyricist Bernie Taupin to write. As was their habit, the two collaborators worked on it separately, but this 1970 ballad was quickly created, both musically and lyrically. Still one of the pop star’s best-loved songs, this track became John’s first hit single in America.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Elton John remembered: “It came out in about 20 minutes, and when I was done, I called him in, and we both knew. I was 22, and he was 19, and it gave us so much confidence.”^[8]

2 The Boy in Striped Pyjamas

Even with the knowledge that author John Boyne barely took time out for food or sleep, it is still mind-boggling to imagine him writing the first draft of his highly acclaimed 2006 Holocaust novel The Boy in Striped Pyjamas in just two and a half days. The speediness of this process is an exception to how Boyne previously worked, typically taking a number of months to write a book.

It is astonishing to think that any full-length volume could be written in a couple of days but particularly a weighty and emotionally compelling story such as this. The book tells the story of an innocent nine-year-old Bruno who strikes up a friendship with another young boy Shmuel, an inmate at a concentration camp, where Bruno’s father has recently been put in charge.

The book was turned into the commercially successful but somewhat controversial 2008 film, released as The Boy in Striped Pajamas in North America, starring Asa Butterfield.^[9]

1 Rocky

Sylvester Stallone was one of many artists motivated to work fast due to money being tight. He was so broke just before writing the screenplay for Rocky, he was trying to sell his dog, which he could barely afford to feed. Stallone found inspiration in a fight he had recently seen between super-star heavyweight champ Muhammad Ali and the little-known Chuck Wepner, aka “The Bayonne Bleeder.” During the fight, Wepner actually managed to knock Ali down. Stallone said, “I thought if this isn’t a metaphor for life…” The result was his original Rocky screenplay, which was completed in just three days.

This story about underdog boxer Rocky Balboa taking his shot at the title was not only a massively successful Oscar-winning movie, but the 1976 classic launched a multi-film franchise and made Stallone a major star overnight. Obviously, much more than a sports drama, Rocky is widely considered a cinematic work of art that also turned out to be one of the most inspiring films of all time. It is almost beyond comprehension that a screenplay for a motion picture of this magnitude could be written in just a few days.^[10]

Industrial growth was the driving force in creating the modern world. The economic progress of a country greatly depends on its industrial progress. But this industrial growth, in most cases, comes with a useless byproduct or end-cycle waste. This industrial waste cannot be left casually lying around, so we have to ask: what do they do with it? The answer may surprise you—or maybe not—but it’s apparent that it can become a ticking bomb with severe consequences to the ecology of that area.

That is why handling this industrial junk is a big challenge. After a while, certain types of industrial waste have become endemic to a few areas. These places receive a massive amount of that industrial junk from around the world every year. The situation is such that these places are now known for the type of useless waste dumped there. This list includes ten of the world’s most unique industrial graveyards, now famous for the industrial junk thrown there.

Related: 10 Truly Troubling Facts About The Clothing Industry

10 Tire Graveyard, Sulabiya, Kuwait

The first industrial junk graveyard on our list is so big that it is visible from space. And when seen from space, a black carpet-like mass is visible on the ground. This area in Kuwait holds more than 50 million tires. Anyone arriving at this place for the first time will start scratching their head, trying to understand where they collected this colossal number of tires from? The second question that will come to mind is why?

The answer to the “where” question is that the tires came from Kuwait and the rest of the world. The answer to why is that from 1980 to 2001, Kuwait dealt in the business of importing used tires from the world—especially from the U.S. and Europe. Kuwait provided a space in its desert for other countries to throw their unwanted tire junk.

But in two decades, the size of this rubber junk became so huge that Kuwait had to ban these imports in 2001. Now Kuwait is trying hard to dispose of the 50 million tires. It has started using recycling technology to make money from these tires, but the sheer quantity of tires outweighs any benefit as a resource. Frequent fires are reported in this tire graveyard, causing enormous environmental damage. These tire fires are also difficult to control and require considerable resources.^[1]

9 Car Graveyard, Old Car City, Georgia, USA

Used cars fill the second industrial junk graveyard on our list. The cars here are vintage ones. And with 4,500+ cars and trucks, this is the world’s largest graveyard of vintage automobiles. Old Car City was opened in 1931 in Georgia, USA. The initial plan of this junkyard was to collect scrap metal from cars, and this became a main focus, particularly during WW2.

But in later years, this junk haven became famous for its vintage car models. Most of the car models are from 1972 or earlier. Today, the junkyard also serves as an old car museum, containing more than 4,000 great American classic cars. It is a popular tourist place, with people from all over visiting to see its extensive vintage car collection.^[2]

8 E-Waste Graveyard, Agbogbloshie, Ghana

E-waste forms the majority of industrial junk the 21st century produces. Ours is an age of smartphones, computers, and electronic devices. Modern-day consumerism promotes updating our smartphones and computers every year. This tendency leaves behind an ever-growing stockpile of old, discarded electronic devices, which otherwise were in perfect working order. About 50 million tons of e-waste gets created every year, and this enormous amount of e-waste cannot all be recycled. E-waste is accepted by technology companies if recyclable. But what cannot be recycled becomes a waste of space and liability and needs to be discarded.

As often happens, wasteful developed countries need to find somewhere to dump their waste. And many times, that place is a less-developed country, usually in Africa or South America. In the case of e-waste, the country is Ghana. A wasteland area now, Agbogbloshie in Ghana has become the world’s biggest e-waste dumpsite. About 10,000 local workers work daily in this graveyard. Some e-waste of used goods gets sold in poor African countries at low prices. From other e-waste, the workers extract precious elements using acid, chemicals, and fire. This process badly affects the local population’s health because of the toxins released. Until a strong nation decides to shoulder responsibility, this e-waste graveyard will keep becoming more harmful to the human population.

Despite being the source of thousands of livelihoods (and health problems), the government of Ghana leveled this site and the recycling center and market near it. Now, the work done with the tons of e-waste still coming in has now moved underground—closer to where people live, bringing the health risks home.^[3]

7 Plastic Jungle Graveyard, Malaysia

In this next item on our list, we see the plastic jungle graveyard in Malaysia. Plastic waste is something very few countries like to keep on their land. Malaysia tried to sustain a business based on importing plastic waste from all over the world. Malaysia planned to convert that plastic waste into marketable products. So, very quickly, Malaysia became the plastic graveyard of the world.

But like other countries on this list, the imported plastic waste became too much to handle for Malaysia. The benefits of importing plastic waste were reduced as the mountain of waste grew, the task of treating plastic waste becoming intimidating. As a result, Malaysia has started returning unwanted plastic waste to European countries. Now Malaysia is left with the daunting task of handling plastic waste stockpiles on its soil, but there is no easy solution for it. The more plastic waste remains, the more environmental problems it will cause.^[4]

6 WWII Bombs Graveyard, Beaufort’s Dyke Submarine Trench

World War 2 was the last full-scale war that engulfed the entire world. There is no accurate count of the bombs dropped by both sides in the war. But after the end of WW2, getting rid of all those unexploded bombs became a headache for the allied nations. The United Kingdom government decided to use a natural submarine trench in their ocean waters for this task.

This trench is called Beaufort’s Dyke, and it is a 50-kilometer-long (31-mile) trench in the North Channel’s water. This channel divides Northern Ireland and Scotland, and Beaufort’s Dyke sits right in between this channel. Since WW2, the UK has dumped about 1.15 million tons of conventional and chemical bombs in this trench. This figure makes it the largest bomb graveyard in the world. Unfortunately for the UK, it was discovered that the dumping did not start or end with WWII. It is believed the UK used this area from the 1920s until 1976.

Weapons experts feel that this amount of unexploded artillery in one place is like a ticking time bomb—no pun intended. Because after years of corrosion, the shells of the bombs are more likely to corrode, potentially leading to explosions. Because of Beaufort’s Dyke, plans for a bridge between Ireland and Scotland have always been rejected. Also, sometimes the bombs from this trench wash up on the nearby coasts and cause problems. The world’s largest bomb graveyard can cause an explosion of unimaginable proportions if it ever triggers, so safe disposal of this graveyard is in the best interest of everyone.^[5]

5 Alang Shipyard, Gujarat, India

There is a saying, “A mighty storm is inconsequential when facing a mighty ship.” But every mighty ship at one point has to call it a day. After a ship is decommissioned or no longer of use, it is often sent to various desolate shipyards around the world. In these yards, the past glory of the ship is ripped apart for the price of the metal. Ships get dismantled down to the last possible detail.

Alang Shipyard in Gujarat, India, is one such graveyard for ships. Annually, 400–500 ships arrive at Alang for dismantling. The entire coastline of Alang has views of ships at different stages of dismantling. To a movie buff, these ships might look like Godzilla has half-eaten these ships. The sound of metal banging is the only sound echoing apart from the waves. The toxic waste from these ships is also a big problem in Alang as the toxic waste from the process has destroyed the marine life near the yard. Despite being a 100-billion-dollar industry, a visit to Alang evokes feelings of attending the funeral of a once-mighty ship.^[6]

4 Clothes Dumping Site, Atacama Desert, Chile

The next item on our list is a unique graveyard in the Atacama Desert located in Chile. It is an uninhabited and barren desert situated close to the Chilean port city of Iquique. This graveyard is like the dead-end of the clothing supply chain. It receives about 60,000 thousand tons of unwanted clothing every year, with Chile being the largest importer of used clothing. About 40% of these used clothes are sold again in poor Latin American countries.

However, the clothes that find no buyers—even by weight—will get dumped into the Atacama Desert. This clothing graveyard now has mountains of unused and discarded clothing. And these mountains keep growing as truckloads of clothes get dumped here every year. Some of these clothes are high-end fashion apparel, while others result from the devastating effects of fast fashion. This giant graveyard reflects the mindless consumerism of humans.^[7]

3 Nuclear Waste Graveyard, Hanford Nuclear Site, Washington, USA

The next item on our list is the Hanford Nuclear Site, situated near the Colombia River in Washington State and spread over a 1,517-square-kilometer (586-square-mile) area. Through the Cold War, the Hanford Site produced plutonium for nuclear weapons. Two-thirds of the U.S. nuclear weapons have received plutonium from this facility. Now, this facility serves as a nuclear waste graveyard.

At Hanford, about 56 million gallons of liquid nuclear waste lie in underground storage tanks. The solid waste lies buried underground, but it is still dangerous as it won’t lose its radioactivity for many years. There have been instances of storage tanks leaking radioactive waste. The employees working at the Hanford Site have reported getting deadly diseases like cancer after working here. Hanford is the largest nuclear waste graveyard in the world and could become a Chernobyl-like disaster if any nuclear spill happens.^[8]

2 Spacecraft Graveyard, Point Nemo, Pacific Ocean

A space mission is a noble task and a symbol of human progress. But this noble cause also has problems of its own. Like all things in life, spacecraft have an end-cycle phase. In this phase, it creates spacecraft junk. The junk includes rockets that have ejected satellites or decommissioned and damaged spaceships. Not many people know what happens to defunct spaceships or satellites. One thing is sure: they cannot be left rotating around the earth. It would become a potential danger for future space missions.

Therefore, a dumping site for spacecraft junk was required. For this purpose, scientists chose the most remote location on Earth. This exact location is called Point Nemo and lies in the Pacific Ocean. Point Nemo is the farthest from any landmass on Earth. According to scientists, the remoteness of this point made it the best choice for dumping space junk. A spacecraft reentering the earth’s atmosphere gets superheated, and the chance of its burning debris injuring anyone is least at Point Nemo. Any diver crazy enough to reach the Point Nemo sea bed will find many famous spaceships lying in peace.^[9]

1 Glass Beach, Ussuri Bay, Russia

The last place on our list is a 67-kilometer-long (42-mile) bay area in the Great Gulf. For years this site was a dumping spot for the neighboring glass industry and locals throwing empty alcohol bottles. Truckloads of waste glass bottles were thrown in this bay, making it the glass dumping ground of the world.

The thoughtless human behavior converted this beautiful bay into an unsightly dumping site. But then, like a savior, Mother Nature decided to step in. Now, this human-made mess has been turned into something stunningly beautiful.

Using the tidal waves at the bay, with slow and steady erosion, nature turned these piercing glass pieces into colorful pebbles. This entire bay now looks like a rainbow has landed on it or like you are looking through a kaleidoscope. Ussuri Bay is now a famous tourist spot, where people come to see what miracle nature has done with the garbage thrown at it.^[10]

You’d expect urban settlements to be carefully planned. After all, things like street structures, power grid and, let’s face it, plumbing are all things that require professionals with expertise and knowledge of the big picture.

Or so you’d think. Turns out, there are lots of communities that just spontaneously popped into existence, with no one really supervising their construction. The results, as you can probably imagine, have been mixed, but at least the stories are always interesting. Here are some of our favorite spontaneously created cities. 

10. Slab City

The amazingly named Slab City in Niland, California is a spontaneous “alternative living community” located in Camp Dunlap, an old WWII marine base. The base itself has been bulldozed long ago, but several concrete slabs (which give the site its name) remain. Apart from the “slabs,” the military is also present in the modern day: Slab City is located close to an active bombing range. 

Slab City is an off-the-grid community that employs solar panels for electricity and has its own waste disposal systems. There’s very little in the way of rules, laws or government interference, which results in the occasional shootout or arson. However, the community is largely peaceful, and the residents have teamed up to create sculptures, live music stages, a library, and a golf course. There’s even a communal shower, fueled by a nearby hot spring. 

The community has several full-time residents known as “slabbers,” but it’s largely a seasonal community of mostly elderly people who arrive by the thousand to spend the winter months in the comparatively warm climate of the desert site. It’s also extremely hard to miss, should you decide to see the place for yourself: Visitors to Slab City are greeted by a 50-foot-tall mound called Salvation Mountain, a massive, colorful folk art installation that a Slab City resident named Leonard Knight spent decades creating.  

9. Copenhagen’s Freetown Christiania

In 1971, Denmark’s defense ministry decided to close down a large fortress in Copenhagen and left it to its own devices. Recognizing a cool thing when they saw it, residents of the city soon took down the fences and let their kids play in the area. Eventually, squatters arrived, but they weren’t just happy to live in the place — they outright took it over. They renamed the place Christiania and declared it to be an autonomous “free city,” with its own laws, taxes and whatnot. 

Remarkably, the Danish government didn’t do the obvious thing and forcefully evict everyone involved. Instead, they went along with the idea, and declared it a “social experiment.” Christiania slowly grew into a settlement of roughly 1,000 people who shaped it into an open, anarchist community where both selling and using drugs is legal. However, in some ways Christiania’s success is the very thing that has ultimately turned it into a failure. Though the freetown was successful in its mission to create a “hippie utopia,” it has ultimately fallen victim to the same thing so many other cool places suffer from: Gentrification. Over the years, Christiania has become “normalized” under Danish law and in 2011, the squatters had to resist the government’s attempts to bring the Freetown back to fold by buying the area’s land from the state. This, combined with a huge interest in the area, has dramatically shifted the area’s economy, and rents have risen so much that original citizens can barely afford to live there anymore: One long-term resident had to move away when his rent rapidly rose from $300 to $1,300.

8. Deadwood

Yes, that Deadwood. The infamous gold rush mining town HBO made famous for its utter lawlessness and brutality came into existence thanks to the discovery of vast gold deposits in the Black Hills. By 1876, the miners had torn through Southern Black Hills and moved into the north, where they discovered a river rich in gold — and surrounded by a ravine full of dead trees.  

A small camp of miners almost immediately grew into a large, lawless town that drew all kinds of fortune seekers and shady characters, as depicted in the HBO show with significant historical accuracy. While Deadwood endured several large fires and severe economic troubles, and eventually became a more or less respectable and law-abiding gambling town, its start as a spontaneous, seedy haven to some of the most notorious names in the Old West remains its most enduring legacy.

7. Guryong

Guryong village is a large shantytown located in the most unlikely place of them all: In Gangnam, the extremely wealthy neighborhood in South Korea’s Seoul that PSY made fun of in his smash hit Gangnam Style. Guryong formed spontaneously in 1988, when the officials forced many people to leave their homes when the city hosted the Olympics. They set up shop on a plot of private land in Gangnam as a last resort, and have remained there since.   

Residents of the Guryong village have existed in this limbo for decades, and although the government has plans to relocate them (yet again) and demolish the shoddily built village, the redevelopment plan has been delayed multiple times because politicians can’t agree on how to compensate the villagers.

6. Miami’s Umoja Village

Umoja Village in Miami, Florida was a spontaneous shantytown built in the Liberty City area of the town by a bunch of housing activists who wanted to draw attention to the city’s vast housing problems. The cardboard-and-wood construct started out as “part protest, part street theater,” but soon filled up with the area’s actual homeless, who set up gardens and a communal kitchen. 

The community attracted a lot of media attention and became the symbolic heart of the city’s affordable housing crisis. When Miami hosted Super Bowl XLI, international journalists visited Umoja Village, presumably to the chagrin of city officials. Unfortunately, the village only survived around six months: In 2007, a candle that had been left unattended torched the whole Umoja Village to ground. The activists and residents wished to rebuild their community, but the city considered Umoja a massive PR disaster, fenced away the area and threw enough red tape at the activists to derail the rebuilding attempts. 

5. Trench Town

Jamaica’s Trench Town was born in 1937, but people had lived there much longer. Before it got its new name, it was known as Trench Pen, a farming and cattle area where a great number of poor people started squatting. Eventually, the government decided to build permanent housing to the squatters, and the method they chose was “sub-dividing” the area into several separate plots called tenement yards. Every yard could house roughly 16 tenants, who paid a monthly rent of 12 shillings to the government. 

Though it nominally transformed from an illegal squat into an officially sanctioned urban township, Trench Town was (and remains) very much a slum — a blocky, dilapidated area with bad prospects and high crime rate. However, it’s also a community that greatly affected the history of Jamaica, and the world in general, by giving birth to a little thing called reggae. Bob Marley grew up there. Bunny Wailer, Peter Tosh, Alton Ellis and a whole host of other reggae legends also hail from Trench Town. Unfortunately, the neighborhood’s fame in music history has done little to improve its conditions, and apart from the occasional Bob Marley mural and the ever-present scent of a certain herb, pretty much the only things that reveal the area’s reggae greatness are the Trench Town Museum and the Trench Town Culture Yard, a colorful compound that was created as “an informal meeting place for musicians.”

4. Right 2 Dream Too

Right 2 Dream Too, a.k.a. R2DToo, might not technically qualify as a city due to only being roughly 80-90 people strong, but it has touted the cause of thousands of homeless people in the area, so it’s just fair to give it a pass. Right 2 Dream Too was created as a large homeless encampment on an empty private lot in Portland, Oregon. It came to existence when a man called Ibrahim Mubarak decided to do something about the city’s homeless, and set up a nonprofit organization to do just that. He struck up a deal with a landowner who had “trouble developing and selling the property,” and voila! A homeless camp right across the street from the city’s high-end boutiques. 

As you can probably imagine, property owners and developers started complaining pretty much instantly, and the city started looking into possibilities to relocate the camp to a more suitable location. The encampment eventually relocated to a riverside spot near the Moda Center, and along with other active homeless nonprofits such as Dignity Village and Hazelnut Grove, they seem to have attracted enough awareness to the homeless issue that in 2019, the city of Portland announced a new outreach program to hopefully help the area’s homeless. 

3. Heliopolis

Brazil is known for its giant shantytowns, “favelas,” and few favelas are more famous than Sao Paulo’s massive Heliopolis. The massive improvised neighborhood has an estimated 210,000 residents, is located just six miles from the business district, and keeps sprawling in every direction thanks to “puxadinhos,” spontaneously sprouting additions to existing buildings that Heliopolis residents build whenever a relative returns home, a new child is born or some other event necessitates some extra space. While there is technically an architect who “supervises home-improvement projects in the region,” the results can be highly eccentric. 

Over time, Heliopolis’ buildings have become sturdier and its infrastructure better — longtime resident Sandra Regina dos Santos says that they have access to electricity and water these days, which wasn’t a given back in the day. Apart from new buildings and annexes popping up constantly, the original buildings from the 1970s have been rebuilt and expanded. What used to be a quickly thrown-together wooden shack may have become a sturdy, three-floor, 2,150 square foot brick building over the decades. Some of the buildings can be up to eight floors high. 

2. Cairo’s Garbage City

Cairo’s Garbage City is technically a walled area called Mansheyat Naser, a slum neighborhood that’s home to 262,000 of not only the city’s, but the entire country’s poorest inhabitants. A large number of its residents are Coptic Christians who are known by the derogatory name Zabaleen, which means “Garbage Men.” In the 1940s, the Zabaleen used to be farmers, but poverty and hunger caused them to start migrating from Upper Egypt. By the 1970s, they had settled in an abandoned quarry, and started developing a modest economy by sorting out the giant city’s trash.

Cairo’s waste disposal system is lacking, to put it mildly, so the Zabaleen collect trash from the streets free of charge — and bring it all to Garbage City to manually sort it all out and see what they can use. Metals, plastics, cardboards and fabrics are all separated from each other and sold to the “next layer” of the economy who go on to further process the materials. Even the rotting food found in the trash is put to good use as pig food.  

For many denizens of Garbage City, this way of life is quite humble: Their living conditions are poor, and every flat surface (including the roofs of the buildings) tend to be covered by trash. Still, some have managed to acquire a significant amount of wealth from the recycling business, and it’s not uncommon to see young men in fancy suits. The city of trash also hides amazing beauty: the Garbage City features a majestic and vast cave church called Saint Simon Church, which the locals have carved from rock. The elaborately built and decorated cavern can seat over 15,000 people. 

1. Kowloon Walled City

Kowloon Walled City started its life as a thick-walled military base in Hong Kong, but a series of establishment changes after World War II left the place open to a massive number of immigrants. Soon, both the British administration and the Chinese authorities discovered they had absolutely no way to control the spontaneously created, dense and massively overpopulated network of existing buildings and new, 10-story makeshift one built by the Walled City’s denizens.

Over the years, the area swelled to a point where its population density was around 3,3 million people per square mile — which meant that the Walled City’s 2.7-hectare area was estimated to house around 35,000 people, making it easily the most densely populated area on the planet. Its makeshift high-rise buildings were all interconnected, and the maze-like structure made sure that you could navigate the area over rooftops, corridors and bridges without ever setting your foot on the ground. 

The conditions within the Walled City were abysmal: Sunlight had no place within the complex, which was instead largely lit with neon signs. There was sewage dripping on the surfaces. Law was nonexistent, and the Triads reigned supreme. Despite all this, many residents loved the place and resisted the authorities’ multiple attempts to empty (or at least slightly clean up) the place. Eventually, though, the “decrepit city” was set for demolition, and in 1993 even the most stubborn elements accepted compensation and rehousing. Today, what used to be the imposing, lawless Kowloon Walled City is a public park.

For a long time, the pursuit of bigness consumed a lot of the world. It still does in many ways. Just look at the massive Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai, towering 2717 feet in the air. The world likes big. But the opposite end of the scale holds fascination as well. The smaller we can make something, the more fascinating it becomes. And if the tiny thing still works, at least in theory, that’s even more interesting. Plus, the ramifications for everything from healthcare to electronics and computing can’t really be understated. The smaller we can make things like power sources and data storage units, the more efficient, more powerful and faster computers of the future will be.  Let’s take a look at ten of the smallest and most fascinating things ever created.

10 The Smallest Planes in the World

The Stratolaunch is the largest airplane ever made. Designed to launch rockets, it had a 385-foot wingspan. That’s pretty significant and shows we can keep making planes bigger if we know what we’re doing from an engineering standpoint. So how small does a plane get?

Back in 1952, Ray Stits created what was, for many years, the smallest functional airplane ever made. Known as the Sky Baby, it had a 7-foot-2 wingspan and was 9-feet, 10-inches long. It held the record for the smallest plane until 1984 when Ray’s son Don usurped his father’s title with the Baby Bird. This had a 6-foot-3 wingspan and weighed more than 200 pounds less than his father’s plane. It still holds the world record for the smallest monoplane.

Not to be outdone, Robert Starr helped the senior Stits build the Sky Baby but felt he hadn’t been given enough credit, so he built his own plane called the Bumblebee. It was finished in 1984, just in time for the Baby Bird to break the world record. Starr went back to the drawing board and made the Bumblebee II. 

Because the Bumblebee is a biplane, it holds a separate and distinct record for being the smallest. Its wingspan was just 5-foot-6, and Starr test piloted it himself. 

9. The World’s Smallest Gun

Though it’s not always the case, you can make a general assumption that the larger a gun is, the more powerful it is. There’s obviously wiggle room in there in terms of ammunition, barrel size, and so on. But a snub nosed revolver is not going to pack the same punch as a high caliber hunting rifle. A smaller gun is going to be smaller caliber, use smaller bullets and arguably cause less damage. And at some point, a gun can get so small that it becomes questionable how it could do anything at all. That’s the case with the SwissMiniGun C1ST. 

At just two inches long and weighing under one ounce, the gun is fully capable of firing 2.34 mm caliber rounds. The barrel is under an inch long and the gun is actually banned in the US because it’s obviously so easy to conceal. 

The company makes about 100 per year especially to order as they need to be handmade to exacting standards if they are to both function and do so safely. They cost over $6,000, if you’re interested (though you can pay more to get one in 18-karat gold).

A 9mm bullet will travel at a speed of around 370 meters per second.That’s over 1,200 feet per second. The SwissMiniGun fires a round at around 400 feet per second, so the overall power is much less impressive for obvious reasons. It has less than a foot pound of penetrating force and it’s unlikely, though not impossible, it could even pierce your eye. 

8. The World’s Smallest Hard Drives 

Computing is one of these fields we’re always looking to downsize. More memory, faster speeds, smaller space. That’s what everyone wants. In order to pull that off effectively, we need smaller and smaller hard drives. So far, the smallest we’ve managed to produce is the stamp-sized 2 and 4 GB hard drives from Toshiba that come in at just 0.85 inches.

It’s worth noting that this hard drive is the smallest practical hard drive out there that is usable and installed inside real hardware. But there was a smaller hard drive in the technical sense made by IBM back in 2017. A single bit of data was stored on a magnetic surface that was only 1 atom big. Strictly speaking, that made it the smallest hard drive that will probably ever be created.

7. Mantis-Sized 3D Glasses 

Do you know how it is we see the world in three dimensions? The exact mechanism is not something easy to explain and is even harder to reproduce. How do you make a robot see in three dimensions, for instance? Or create artificial eyes for humans that can master depth perception?

Scientists studying how three-dimensional vision works studied it in praying mantises. To do that, they had to make tiny, mantis-sized 3D glasses.Why mantises? They’re the only invertebrates known to see things in 3D. The way they do it is different from the way it works for us. Mantises only focus on motion, so what they see doesn’t matter nearly as much as the fact that they can see it moving. This has the potential to aid in creating 3D vision in robotics and artificial intelligence.

6. The Nano Bible 

There are several hundred versions of the Bible in the world right now, but one thing they all have in common is that they’re typically large enough to read with your naked eye. This is not the case with the Nano Bible. There are 1.2 million words in the Bible and scientists managed to get them all in a Bible that is 0.04 square millimeters. 

Though it looks like a speck of dust and easily fits on the of a pen, it’s actually a gold-coated silicon chip. Each word was written with a focused ion beam generator that bombarded the golden surface with gallium ions to create the most delicate and tiny calligraphy you’ll ever see. The layer of silicon it is printed on is less than 100 atoms thick. In order to read it, the text would need to be magnified 10,000 times.

5. The World’s Smallest Battery

There aren’t a lot of things that require D batteries these days, but if you remember using them or still have the odd item that takes them, you know how big and clunky they were. Scaling batteries down has made devices much smaller, lighter and more portable. But the process is ongoing and batteries have plenty of room to shrink down even further. For instance, scientists have managed to create a functional battery the size of a grain of sand. 

These ultra tiny batteries could power equally tiny computers. They’d be ideal in wearable technologies and especially implantable medical devices that need to be designed as small as possible.  

Produced by way of something called the Swiss-Roll process that rolls of thin film layers, they are chargeable and could power dust mote sized computers for upwards of 10 hours.  

4. A 20-Micrometer House

Researchers at the Femto-ST Institute in France have taken small to new heights of construction with what qualifies as the smallest house ever created. Despite having a tiled roof, a chimney and seven windows, the house is also a mere 20 microns long. For some perspective, a human hair is generally around 70 microns wide. 

The small house was built inside a vacuum chamber and required nanorobots to assemble it out of silica membranes in a style similar to making origami. The house doesn’t necessarily serve any purpose. There aren’t a lot of things small enough to fit inside, after all. But it was a solid demonstration of the techniques that can be employed to make the tiniest of structures.

3. The World’s Smallest Guitar 

The smaller a musical instrument gets, the higher pitched the sound tends to be. A piccolo tends to hit some higher notes than a flute. A ukelele just doesn’t rock out quite the same as a guitar. And with that in mind, you can imagine what the world’s smallest guitar would sound like if someone were ever capable of playing it.

Made from crystalline silicon, the world’s smallest guitar is just 10 microns long. That’s about one-seventh of a human hair’s width, or equivalent to a red blood cell. It comes with six strings, each just 50 nanometers, or about 100 atoms long. 

Researchers at Cornell University made the nano guitar to demonstrate the technology which could have far-reaching capabilities in things like electronics and fiber optics. The most remarkable part is that it can actually be played. You need to use an atomic force microscope to do it, of course, and the sound produced by the strings would be impossible to hear, but it can still happen.

2. The World’s Smallest Antenna 

If you want to send or receive radio signals, you’re going to need an antenna. Once upon a time, everyone watching TV had an antenna on the roof of their house, a sight that would likely baffle anyone in Gen Z. But over the years antennae, like any other technology, grew smaller if they weren’t replaced altogether. The nanoantenna represents the smallest of the small. It’s made from DNA and is 20,000 times smaller than a human hair. 

Researchers created the five nanometer antenna to monitor proteins rather than radio or TV signals. Its fluorescent structure means it can send and receive light signals, which is how the scientists who created it are using it. When the proteins it is monitoring move or change, it will reflect light back in a different color, signaling researchers that something has occurred. 

As science fiction-y as it sounds, those conducting the study insist part of the reason they used DNA was because it’s so simple to use and program. They’re hoping that in the future, the technology employed in developing the antenna could assist with everything from developing new medications to nanomachines.

1. The World’s Smallest Movie 

Usually we think of movies in terms of length. A 90 minute movie, a three hour movie, etc. When a movie gets big, that usually means it’s an IMAX release and it’s been formatted for a big screen. And on TV, movies sometimes are prefaced with a message that they have been scaled down to better fit the screen. So, in and among those variables, what would qualify a movie to be considered the world’s smallest?

The world’s smallest movie is called A Boy and His Atom. It was created by IBM Research and is a stop motion movie that was made by manipulating atoms. To see it, the film has to be magnified over 100 million times. 

The team used carbon monoxide molecules, consisting of two atoms each, to tell a one minute long, frame-by-frame story of a stick-figure boy and his single molecule pet/toy. The same team behind this created the tiny, 12-atom data storage we mentioned earlier.

You can actually see the difference between the atoms of carbon and the atoms of oxygen in each molecule when you watch it as one appears as a dark sphere and the other as light.

Despite the fact the short film represents amazing research in data storage and manipulation at the atomic level, viewers only gave the movie a 6.8 out of 10 on IMDb. There’s just no pleasing some critics.