We have attempted to domesticate certain animals and failed. This happens for several reasons. Most of the time, it is because some animals are so wary of humans that the creatures will flee at first sight. Others are just too aggressive to be domesticated, which may lead to attacks on and even the death of the breeder.

Another distinct category of animals is classified as tamed but not domesticated. In these cases, the animal has been bred to tolerate and maybe obey humans, but it is not safe enough to be classified as a domestic animal. Tamed animals still have their wild instincts and can quickly turn rogue.

10 Zebras

Colonists encountered transportation problems as they moved deeper into Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries. Their horses were susceptible to different diseases, and bringing new horses from Europe was not always that easy.

To solve this problem, they turned to the zebra, a close relative of horses and donkeys that is plentiful in the African plains. Zebras are also immune to several diseases that affected horses. However, all attempts to domesticate the zebra failed.

The zebra is a very alert and aggressive animal. It is naturally suspicious of other animals, including humans, and will flee at the slightest hint of danger. It is a fast runner, making it extremely difficult to capture. If caught, it will deliver heavy kicks and bites in an attempt to escape.^[1]

Although the colonists managed to get some zebras, they quickly realized that these animals are smaller than horses and uncomfortable to ride. Besides, zebras do not like to be ridden and will become aggressive after a while—even after they have been tamed.

The aggressive nature of the zebra has been traced to its evolution. It shares its habitat with predators like lions, crocodiles, hyenas, leopards, and man. This was a major issue with the colonists, who feared that these predators would be attracted to their domesticated zebras.

9 Great White Sharks

A series of attempts to tame or domesticate the great white shark have failed because captured great whites will usually die within days. The first great white held in captivity died within hours. The longest this animal has been held in captivity is 16 days.

Captured great white sharks are also fond of hitting their heads on the aquarium’s glass walls. One shark held at Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium in Japan continued bashing its head on the glass wall until it died. Another one held at California’s Monterey Bay Aquarium hit her head on the wall continuously and attacked two other sharks until she was freed.

Great white sharks don’t fare well in captivity for several reasons. First, they are great travelers, capable of moving through an entire ocean. They also need lots of water to breathe. So, even large aquariums are too small for them.

Captured sharks are also unbelievably aggressive and will usually refuse to eat. When they do, they require live prey, which is difficult for the aquariums to provide.^[2]

8 Dingoes

Dingoes are doglike animals that live in Australia. Despite their similarities to dogs, they are not considered dogs and are not domesticated. Australian farmers even consider them as pests. Interestingly, it seems like we partly domesticated the dingo thousands of years ago before allowing them to return to the wild.

There is a little difference in the way we domesticated dogs and dingoes. Although dogs are considered companions, early native Australians—who probably domesticated the dingoes—considered them a source of food. Besides, native Australians did not selectively breed the animals for their favorable characteristics.^[3]

7 Moose

A few centuries ago when horse cavalries were still a thing, King Karl XI of Sweden decided that he wanted a more ferocious animal to replace his horses. An animal that would send the horses of the enemies fleeing the battlefield at first sight. He settled on the moose.

Unfortunately for the king, the plan never worked out. As he later found out, the moose was too dangerous to approach. This worsened during mating season when it got uncontrollably aggressive. Besides, the moose is susceptible to disease and has a varied diet that is difficult to provide.

Moose are also smart creatures and will usually avoid the war front. When they did go near the battlefield, they fled the moment another moose was killed. Other attempts to use them as meat were unsuccessful. They would refuse to go to the slaughterhouse when they realized that the moose taken there earlier did not return.

Despite these challenges, there is an ongoing moose domestication project at Kostroma elk farm in Kostroma, Russia. The project started in the 1930s when Joseph Stalin decided to set up a moose cavalry. Like King Karl XI’s plan, Stalin’s project failed. But Nikita Khrushchev revived it when he attempted to domesticate moose for meat. This also failed, and several moose farms shut down.^[4]

However, the Kostroma elk farm remained functional and is still trying to domesticate the moose. Primarily, the facility is used for the production of moose’s milk now.

6 Raccoons

Raccoons are a good candidate for domestication. They are skilled climbers and can enter tight spaces, making them an excellent working animal. If domesticated, they would be useful for senior citizens and the physically challenged. However, they cannot be used as working animals because they have not been domesticated.

Despite their cute looks, raccoons are aggressive and destructive. They are naturally curious, like moving around, and quickly become destructive when confined to an area. They usually need to be constantly monitored and bite when hungry or angry. Bites can turn fatal because they can infect humans with rabies.

As raccoons can use their hands like humans, they will usually attempt to open anything they lay their hands on. They are also experts at escaping. In fact, this is a major reason why domestication attempts have failed. Besides, they like being alone, are not social animals, and are not loyal to humans.^[5]

5 Foxes

We once fully domesticated foxes. However, they died off and modern attempts to domesticate them again have been partly successful.

In a bit of irony, the extinct fox we domesticated was called the Fuegian or Yaghan dog. It was domesticated from wild populations of the culpeo (aka the Andean fox). Curiously, the Fuegian dog was not really popular during its time. This was probably because it was not as useful as a regular dog.

There is also evidence that we tried to domesticate foxes long before the Fuegian dog, but we dumped them for cats. Cats were selected over foxes because we could not determine what to use the foxes for.

Foxes are difficult to domesticate because of their unbelievable stubbornness. Russian geneticist Dmitry K. Belyaev sought to change this in the 1950s when he started a project to domesticate the silver-black foxes. Silver-black foxes are actually red foxes affected with melanism, which is the opposite of albinism and makes affected animals appear black.^[6]

Four generations later, the foxes were displaying doglike behaviors. They developed a fondness for people, wagged their tails, and licked their breeders. Fifty generations later, they are barking, respond to humans, and understand gestures. They also make noises that are distinct from wild foxes.

The project is ongoing and is considered successful. However, the foxes are tamed but not domesticated.

4 Elephants

Asian elephants are not considered domestic animals even though they have been captured and trained for over 3,000 years. Rather, they are classified as tamed or wild animals. Captured and trained Asian elephants are not considered domestic animals because they are not selectively bred.

“Selective breeding” means that humans will select the offspring to breed based on certain favorable traits. To be domesticated, they would need to be selectively bred for up to 12 generations. By the 12th generation, they should be genetically distinct from their wild ancestors and would be considered domestic.

In general, captured Asian elephants are not selectively bred. (Only a few were selectively bred past the second generation.) This makes them wild animals. They only allow humans to ride them because they have been trained. Nevertheless, they are just like any wild animal, which makes them unpredictable.^[7]

3 Bonobos

Bonobos are unique on this list because they are not wild animals. They are domestic animals even though they were not domesticated by humans. Bonobos domesticated themselves.

Scientists are not sure how this happened. But they think it began to occur about two million years ago when the Congo River formed in Africa. This event separated the ancestors of the bonobos and the chimpanzees that lived there. The primates to the north of the river evolved to become bigger and more aggressive because they competed with the bigger gorillas for food.

On the other side of the river were the primates that would become the bonobos. They had more than enough food to eat, and there were no gorillas, either. Their females became picky and decided which males they wanted to mate with. Aggressive males died out because the females preferred gentler males.^[8]

2 Hippopotamuses

Humans have wisely stayed away from the hippopotamus, one of the world’s deadliest animals. More people are killed by hippos every year than lions, elephants, leopards, buffalo, and rhinoceroses combined.

Obviously, any meeting between a human and a hippo will most likely end up badly for the human. Hippopotamuses have large teeth and are unbelievably fast. Hippos can run up to 48 kilometers per hour (30 mph) despite their massive weight. Usain Bolt, the world’s fastest man, barely reaches 45 kilometers per hour (28 mph).

Nevertheless, there have been independent attempts to domesticate the hippo. As expected, those efforts ended badly. In 2011, Marius Els, a South African farmer and army officer, was killed by a 1.2-ton, five-year-old hippo he was trying to domesticate.^[9]

Els called the hippo Humphrey and considered it a pet. He often took Humphrey swimming and once rode on it, saying that the animal was “like a son” to him. Humphrey did not consider Els as a father because it killed him in the same river in which they used to swim.

Before killing Els, Humphrey was already a known local terror in the area in which they lived. The hippo once chased a man and his grandson up a tree after they canoed on the river that ran through Els’s farm. Humphrey was also infamous for killing calves and chasing golfers at a nearby golf course.

1 Coyotes

All attempts to domesticate the coyote have failed because they naturally avoid humans. Human breeders are also wary of these animals because they can be infected with dangerous diseases like rabies and tularemia.

However, some breeders have braved these risks and tried to domesticate the coyote. One common method is to crossbreed a male coyote with a female dog. While the resultant hybrid is less aggressive toward humans, it is not a true coyote.

Another method is to take young wild coyotes from their mothers and train them into adulthood. Wild coyotes become less wary of humans after about three generations, but they are not domestic animals. In fact, several attempts to domesticate a coyote have ended with the coyote attacking the breeder.^[10]

This happens because a coyote close to humans could begin to consider a human as prey and will look for the best time to attack. Interestingly, coyotes are slowly becoming domesticated. This is happening naturally, the same way it probably did with bonobos.

As we all learned through high school dating, it takes a tremendous amount of failure to learn anything worthwhile. The same lesson applies to modern sports. Sports would not be where they are today without the mind-boggling failures of many other leagues. These upstart leagues made the same mistakes over and over again, all while leaving behind important touchstones which still resonate in modern sports.

10Coloured Hockey League

The National Hockey League (NHL) fielded its first black player in 1958 when Willie O’Ree signed with the Boston Bruins. Eight years earlier, a player named Art Dorrington signed with the New York Rangers in 1950, but he never played in the NHL. This was nearly five decades after the formation of the Coloured Hockey League (CHL), which was Canadian as the spelling shows. Founded in 1895, the CHL featured only black players along with an incredibly modern style of play.

Hockey at the turn of the 20th century was a stale, low-scoring affair, lacking in both speed and agility. And slap shots. There were no slap shots before the CHL. Eddie Martin, a CHL player, is believed to have invented the slap shot decades before it was introduced into the NHL.

The CHL was also innovative in how goalies were used on the ice. Previously, goalies never left the crease, and played the entire game standing up. CHL goalies changed this by chasing pucks out of the crease and dropping to their knees to stop pucks. The goalies quickly became the team leaders in the CHL, a role they still hold today. These CHL tactics were quickly co-opted by neighboring white leagues, who were, of course, averse to giving credit to the black players.

The CHL toiled as a moderately successful regional league in eastern Canada until World War I robbed it of many of its best players, and the league folded in 1925.

9Federal League

Only once in Major League Baseball’s history has anyone attempted to challenge “America’s Game.” Naturally, the attempt ended in dismal failure, but it led to some interesting footnotes which still reverberate in modern baseball.

In 1913, the Federal League (FL) enacted its plan to become the “third” professional baseball league—after the American League (AL) and National League (NL)—in 1913. The FL offered players exponentially higher salaries than the other major leagues, and started franchises in major baseball markets to compete directly with already established franchises.

The plan was unsustainable since the FL could never hope to make enough money to pay the players in already saturated markets. It didn’t help that many FL teams lacked official nicknames and instead went by “Brooklyn Feds,” “Kansas City Feds,” etc. These factors caused the Federal League to disband in 1915, but not before suing the AL and NL for being “illegal monopolies.”

This case was decided by the Supreme Court in 1922 in Federal Baseball Club v. National League in favor of Major League Baseball. The Supreme Court ruled the MLB was a legal monopoly since it was primarily entertainment, and the Sherman Antitrust Act did not apply to it. This ruling effectively ended all future attempts to create rival baseball leagues, and gave the MLB the freedom to do whatever it wanted.

Additionally, the forgotten Chicago Whales of the Federal League built a stadium which came to be known as Wrigley Field, a minor cultural touchstone in baseball history.

8World Football League

The World Football League (WFL), begun in 1974 as a rival to the upstart NFL, immediately ran into trouble after the Philadelphia franchise gave away tens of thousands of tickets, but then marked them down as “paid for” in the accounting books. This caused many to view the league as illegitimate and amateurish. These naysayers were supported by the constant financial problems which plagued the league. Players were not paid during the season, and at least one team used McDonald’s coupons as meal money. The Birmingham Americans’ jerseys were even repossessed immediately after they won the championship.

Amid all of this turmoil, there was the bizarre situation of the Houston Texans’ John Matuszak. While Matuszak played in the WFL, the NFL’s Houston Oilers, who Matuszak had previously been under contract with, filed an injunction banning him from playing in the WFL. This injunction caused federal marshals to force Matuszak off the field in the middle of a game immediately after he sacked the opposing quarterback.

Additionally, the schedule (a blistering 20 games long) was so poorly formatted that teams often played each other in back-to-back weeks. And the league instituted a bizarre new rule where touchdowns were worth seven points and a bonus “action point” made them worth eight.

But the WFL achieved notable success in luring nearly 60 players, including Super Bowl Champions Ken Stabler and Larry Csonka, to switch leagues. However, like many upstart leagues, the salaries they offered (a combined nearly $3.5 million to Larry Csonka, Jim Kiick, and Paul Warfield)—in an era without multimillion-dollar contracts—were unsustainable.

Besides exorbitant salaries, the league was years ahead of the NFL with many other innovations. The WFL added an overtime period for games tied at regulation, and outlawed bump-and-run coverage after three yards (changed to five yards in the NFL). Most importantly, the WFL changed the location of the field goal to its modern location. Until then, the field goal was puzzlingly located at the front of the end zone. This helped to end the dominance of field goal kickers at the time and just makes complete sense.

7Continental League

By the 1950s, baseball was a stale game. There had been no new franchises since the MLB’s formation, and the Yankees won every single year. Also, when the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles they discovered that people west of the Mississippi liked baseball, too, but they simply had no other teams in that half of the country. This state of affairs prompted Branch Rickey, the guy who signed Jackie Robinson, to orchestrate his Continental League (CL) “scheme.”

In 1960, the CL publicly announced its plans to add new franchises in major cities currently without baseball teams, such as Houston. No one knows if Rickey was serious about the Continental League or if he simply wanted to force MLB’s hand to expand. Either way, his plan worked and the mere threat of a new major league caused Major League Baseball to immediately expand into Minnesota, Houston, and Washington, D.C. All of these cities were chosen since they would have been the homes of Continental League teams. Over the next 15 years, the MLB added teams in Seattle, Toronto, Kansas City, Montreal, and San Diego, and threw in the New York Mets for good measure. Without a single pitch being thrown, the Continental League shoved baseball into the modern era.

6United States Football League

Donald Trump has been the part of many failures over the years—often marriage-related—and his forays into sports have been no different. In the mid-1980s, Donald Trump, then a legendary real estate tycoon, decided he had had enough of the National Football League. He teamed with David Dixon, the guy who built the Superdome, to create the United States Football League (USFL) in 1983.

Dixon had a conservative plan, which called for moderate spending, a spring schedule, and slow expansion into NFL markets, to allow for the USFL to successfully compete. The Dixon Plan was moderately successful over the league’s first two seasons as the USFL signed three straight Heisman Trophy winners, including Herschel Walker, and began to generate interest from major networks for a network television deal.

The deal with Herschel Walker, valued at $5 million over three seasons, foreshadowed the USFL’s demise, as it greatly exceeded the $1.8 million salary cap established for each team by Dixon. Once the Walker deal was allowed, other teams began signing exorbitant contracts, some to future Hall of Famers like Steve Young and Jim Kelly. These deals gave the league credibility but made it financially unstable.

But the league could have perhaps survived if “The Donald” had not convinced the other owners to switch the USFL to a fall schedule in 1985 to compete directly with the NFL. The results were disastrous, and the league decided to stake its future on filing an antitrust lawsuit against the NFL. Shockingly, the USFL won the lawsuit, but were awarded only three dollars in compensation. The jury found the NFL was an illegal monopoly, but that the USFL had failed based on its own poor management, so they did not deserve any compensation. Almost immediately after this, the USFL folded in disgrace.

But the dispirited league left behind the legacy of the two-point conversion, instant replay reviews, and a salary cap, all of which the NFL adopted within a decade.

5American Basketball League

The American Basketball League (ABL) was founded when Abe Saperstein, the owner of the Harlem Globetrotters, was spurned for the new Los Angeles NBA franchise in 1960. Naturally, as revenge, he decided to create his own league, because that’s how rich tycoons settle grudges. To enact his plan, Abe enlisted the help of a relatively unknown young man named George Steinbrenner, who would lose boatloads of money in this venture before finding success with the New York Yankees.

The ABL was doomed for failure from the start since many of the players were amateurs, washed-up stars, or players previously banned from the NBA. To worsen matters, the owners clearly did not know how to run professional teams. Such was the chaos that Steinbrenner, owner of the Cleveland Pipers, sold player Grady McCollum’s contract at halftime. These wild moves caused Steinbrenner to personally lose over $2 million and taught him well for his future sporting ventures.

However, the ABL was instrumental in introducing two new innovations to the game of basketball. They added a three-point line and a wider free throw lane to curb the dominance of big men like Wilt Chamberlain. In time, both of these changes were implemented in the NBA, providing for a more energetic and high-scoring game.

4World Hockey Association

Surprisingly, the National Hockey League was made up entirely of North American players before the late 1970s. That all changed after the upstart World Hockey Association (WHA) attempted to, and failed to, compete with the NHL. As with many upstart leagues, the WHA signed its players to lucrative contracts which forced NHL owners to pay their players more. The WHA’s higher salaries had a major impact on the NHL since, until then, NHL players had been by far the worst paid of the Big Four leagues.

These high contracts eventually caused the WHA to fold in 1979, but it allowed the WHA to achieve playing parity with the NHL. The WHA won the majority of interleague exhibition games during its existence.

Most importantly, though, the WHA decided its best bet was to sign players from Europe. Until then, Europe had been a surprisingly overlooked market considering how dominant European teams were in the Olympics. This flood of foreign talent forced the NHL to do likewise, and changed the game into a more fast-paced and high-scoring affair, more like European hockey.

Wayne Gretzky started as an unknown player in the WHA before becoming “The Great One,” and five modern teams (among them the Edmonton Oilers, who became an NHL dynasty in the 1980s) originated in the WHA. Hollywood is even indebted to the WHA, as the Hanson brothers from Slapshot are based on the Carlson brothers who played for the WHA’s Minnesota Fighting Saints.

3North American Soccer League

Before the North American Soccer League (NASL) began in 1968, soccer was a mostly unknown and, at times, reviled sport to many Americans. The game’s mechanics, such as a clock which counted up, and a plethora of draws, made no sense to traditional American viewers. However, the English victory in the 1966 World Cup captivated English-speaking viewers around the world and gave the NASL the boost it needed to slowly bring soccer to America.

By 1973, the NASL was popular enough for the Philadelphia Atoms to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated, the first time soccer had been profiled by a major American sports publication.

Then, in 1975, the New York Cosmos signed Pele—arguably the greatest soccer player ever—and American soccer exploded. Soon, the Cosmos were regularly drawing crowds of 50,000 people and Pele was a media sensation. Pele was the sort of famous where his mere presence caused Nigeria to pause its civil war for 48 hours when he visited.

Such a star attraction caused CBS to pick up the Soccer Bowl (the NASL championship), and other networks began broadcasting regular season NASL games. Other NASL teams also signed aging European stars such as Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff to create a truly cosmopolitan league.

Pele’s popularity during three seasons with the Cosmos created a youth soccer boom, which catapulted soccer to the top of many youth sports statistics. The ensuing popularity led FIFA to award the US the 1994 World Cup. Of course, the NASL was still unable to make soccer a fully profitable league, and the high salaries to European players, along with the 1980 economic downturn in the US, led to its demise in 1983.

However, the lessons learned from the NASL were remembered by those in Major League Soccer (MLS), which began in 1994 and still operates today. The MLS imposed a strict salary cap, while still maintaining a high level of play and luring in past-their-prime-but-still-famous European players. Thanks to the NASL, soccer finally “made it” (kind of) in America.

2National Basketball League

The modern day National Basketball Association (NBA) was formed in 1949 when the Basketball Association of America merged with the National Basketball League (NBL). Yet, in 1996, the NBA celebrated its 50-year anniversary, which marked the 50th anniversary of the BAA, completely ignoring the NBL’s contribution to modern-day basketball.

This historical disregard for the NBL is unfathomable since the NBL was the league which first welcomed African Americans into the basketball world. The NBL also was where George Mikan, whose athletic prowess and star power practically saved the NBA in its unstable early years, began his career. Mikan’s scoring dominance eradicated the dead ball era of basketball, where scores were routinely in the 20s and 30s.

The Fort Wayne Zollner Pistons (which became the Detroit Pistons), a stand-out NBL team, were owned by Fred Zollner, an automobile magnate, whose money was integral to the NBA in its infancy. Additionally, five current NBA franchises—the Detroit Pistons, Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Lakers, Sacramento Kings, and Philadelphia 76ers—can trace their lineage to the NBL. Without the NBL, there might not be Christmas Day basketball.

1American Basketball Association

Plain and simple, the American Basketball Association (ABA) is one of mankind’s greatest creations, and certainly the only truly successful upstart major league. There was an ABA coach named Slick and a star player named “Bad News.” They played with a red and white ball, the Indiana Pacers even used a wrestling bear as a halftime show, and a franchise called the Memphis Tams offered all their players $300 to grow a mustache. All those novelties, combined with frequent financial chaos, created the most colorful sports league in history.

The ABA, founded in 1967, brought NBA basketball out of the doldrums and into the modern era by redefining how basketball was played. Like the ABL, the ABA instituted a three-point line which dramatically increased scoring by forcing defenses to defend the perimeter. This, in turn, created more space for drives and dunks. Given how obsessed modern basketball is with dunking, its shocking to know that dunks were not a major part of the game until the ABA’s flashy playing style began. The ABA capitalized on the popularity of dunks with a yearly slam dunk contest.

Furthermore, the ABA revolutionized the financial structure of basketball by allowing free agency, eliminating the reserve clauses which tied players down, and recruiting players directly out of high school. This allowed the ABA to grab talent before the NBA, and gave them a competitive balance most upstart leagues never achieved.

The list of NBA legends who began their career in the ABA is simply ridiculous: David Thompson, George “Ice Man” Gervin, Connie Hawkins, Spencer Haywood, Artis Gilmore, Jerry Lucas, Moses Malone, Dan Issel, and the human highlight reel—Julius (Dr. J) Erving. Future NBA coach Larry Brown also began his career coaching the ABA’s Denver Nuggets.

Yet, for all its flashiness and innovation, the ABA still failed because it was poorly managed, and put franchises in places like Pittsburgh and Baltimore. In 1976, amid dwindling revenue and only nine remaining teams, (most of) the ABA merged with the NBA in 1976. From the ABA came the Indiana Pacers, Denver Nuggets, San Antonio Spurs, and the New York Nets, along with an influx of talent which resurrected the NBA from declining attendance and TV sponsorships in the early 1970s.

Geoffrey earned seven worthless liberal arts degrees before deciding to become a comedian. Follow his missteps on Twitter @filthyson.

Other than the handful of people born with conventionally-attractive features, most of us don’t know what makes us attractive to the opposite sex. It can be something as minor like how we do our hair, or something obvious like how recklessly we drive.

The same is true for our unattractive features; things that negatively affect our attractiveness with a potential partner. While we can’t do anything about most of these, we can take some comfort in the fact that physical appearance isn’t the only thing making us unattractive.

10 Smelling Similar To You

Many studies have confirmed that smell plays a crucial role in social interactions, especially those of the romantic kind. How you smell directly influences the outcome of your dates, as smell is intrinsically related to health and hygiene. Bad odor indicates that you’re more prone to bacteria and parasites, which lowers your rating as a prospective mate.

That’s not it, as smell affects attractiveness in other, less obvious ways, too. Many researchers and scientists have found that we tend to find people who smell similar to us to be less attractive. While it may sound weird, it makes perfect sense. We’re evolutionarily designed to avoid mating with someone from the same genetic lineage. It’s an evolutionary mechanism to make sure that you don’t accidentally get it on with a distant cousin.^[1]

9 Eating Certain Things (Like Bread)

We don’t assume food to have any effect on attractiveness, other than whatever you end up eating on the date. Even then, the only way it can have any effect is if you have a piece of it stuck in your teeth, which may put some people off.

If one study is to be believed, what you eat affects attraction in other ways, too (at least in the case of women). It found that men who ate a lot of vegetables and fruits smell better to women than the ones with a lot of processed carbohydrates – like pasta and bread. Moreover, men with a meat-heavy diet weren’t found to be any more or less attractive than others.^[2]

8 Happiness

Instinctively speaking, being happy sounds like a definite positive in the dating scene. It tells a potential partner that things are going well in your life, as well as indicates mental and financial well-being. If we were to conduct research on the subject, most of us would assume that happiness would be found to be directly related to attractiveness.

According to science, though, that’s really not the case, at least in case of women. One study by researchers at University of British Columbia found that on first glance, men who come across as happy or smiling are much less preferred than those with a more brooding appearance. Surprisingly, it’s the exact opposite for men, who find smiling women to be more attractive than others.^[3]

7 Contracted Appearance

We’ve known that our body posture and how we physically present ourselves affects many parts of our life, like job interviews and showdowns with beasts of nature. Appearing bigger and more expansive than we usually are indicates strength and confidence, and it may just be the factor that gets you your next job (or keeps you alive in a gruesome jungle encounter).

While we don’t think that the same should apply when it comes to romantic pursuits – as the dynamics are totally different there – studies have found that it does. In one study, they found that Tinder photos with expansive body language score much higher than those with more contractive features. Surprisingly, the results were uniform for both men and women.^[4]

6 Confidence

Online blogs and dating magazines have been telling us the benefits of appearing confident since they’ve been in business. Confidence suggests that you know what you’re doing and aren’t afraid to ask for what you want, both important qualities to sustain a relationship.

If some studies are to be believed, however, confidence may not be such a desired trait. It’s not just one study, either, mounting research on the subject suggests that people find humility to be more attractive than outright confidence. We’re not even talking about overconfidence; test subjects have routinely preferred humility over any level of confidence, as it indicates that you’d treat your partner well and be more accommodating in the relationship.^[5]

5 Low-Pitched Voice

Apart from people who obviously sound annoying, how we sound shouldn’t affect our attractiveness. It’s highly subjective for most people, too, as everyone finds different types of voices to be more attractive.

While research on how our voice affects our dates has been limited, there have been some studies that prove that it’s not as subjective as we thought. In one of them, researchers found that men prefer women with a small body size and high-pitched voice than others. Conversely (and unsurprisingly), women find men with a lower pitch to be more attractive, as it indicates a bigger body size and higher strength.^[6]

4 Being Young

It’s no surprise that older men are popular among young women. They’ve had more time to accumulate resources and desirable traits than their younger counterparts, as women instinctively look for the ability to provide in a romantic partner. Where it gets unclear, though, is when the women are older, too.

Common sense would suggest that older, more successful women would go for the younger guys, for the simple reason that they no longer have to give up on the attraction of youth for the ability to provide for their family. Surprisingly, that’s not the case. According to one study, older men are overwhelmingly preferred among older women, too, even – and especially – in the case of high-earning women.^[7]

3 Symmetry

Common wisdom says that symmetry is an attractive trait to have. It’s associated with low levels of parasites and genetic problems, which should make people with perfectly symmetrical faces and body structure better partners. It makes sense, too, as symmetrical faces – on paper – sound like they’d be more attractive than asymmetrical ones.

If you look at studies on it, though, you’d find that symmetry isn’t all that it’s hyped up to be. Research has found that less-symmetrical faces are rated to be more attractive, which presumably came as a surprise to them. They think it’s because asymmetry gives your face more character and range of emotions, as opposed to one-dimensional symmetry that may make you seem unemotional.^[8]

2 Too Much Or Too Little Facial Hair

Exactly how much beard is attractive has varied over time. Everything from completely clean-shaven to growing your beard out to look like you live in the jungle has been in fashion at some point or another. Unanimous opinion on it, however, has eluded us till now.

As a study found, almost all of us are doing it wrong. The amount of beard found to be the most attractive was neither a full beard (Instagram would disagree) nor a completely clean-shaven look. It was somewhere in the heavy stubble area. Men, on the other hand, found fuller beards to be the most attractive. Both men and women, though, agree on clean shaven being the least attractive look.^[9]

1 Cosmetic Surgery

Cosmetic surgery has earned some bad rep over the years, mostly due to those horrible Botox jobs we keep seeing on TV. We may not realize it, but it has revolutionized medicine, too, as corrective surgery also helps people literally get their faces back after accidents (to an extent). It has also allowed us to finally have the tech to fix our natural flaws – like bad looks. A well-done nose job – say – is indistinguishable from the real thing, as long you keep it at that and don’t get multiple surgeries.

While you’d think that people would find it more attractive, studies have found that it’s not the case As a researcher from Massey University discovered, women find models with facial surgery to be less attractive than others. According to them, it may be due to women instinctively perceiving other attractive women as evolutionary competition. Unsurprisingly, whether or not the models had any surgery had no effect on the men, who found them hot regardless.^[10]

It is one of our favorite fantasies: what if someone had killed Adolf Hitler? How different would the world be if somebody had just taken out the future Führer before he could plunge the world into war and horror?

But it’s not as if nobody ever tried. More than a few people did their best to take out the leader of the Third Reich—but Hitler, as it turns out, was surprisingly hard to kill. Dozens of people tried to take out Hitler—at least four before he became Chancellor and more than 40 afterward—but nobody ever pulled it off.

It’s one of the forgotten stories of history: the many, many plots to take out Hitler. Some are stories of heroism, some of madness, and some are just downright strange—but if any one of them had succeeded, the world would have completely changed.

10Johann Georg Elser Missed Hitler by Minutes

On November 8, 1938, Hitler came within inches of death. He was scheduled to make a speech at the Munich Beer Hall, but, worried about the bad weather, decided to rush out 30 minutes early to catch a train back home. And if he hadn’t, he would have died that night.

Less than ten minutes after Hitler left the building, a timed explosive in the column behind his podium exploded.^[1] It killed eight people, wounded sixty, and undoubtedly would have incinerated the Führer if he had not just snuck out of the building.

The bomb had been planted by Johann Georg Elser, a carpenter, a union member, and a communist. He had told a friend a few days before that Germany would never get back on track unless someone brought down Hitler. With him out of the way, Elser believed, the Communist revolution could begin.

Hitler survived because of what is tempting to call an act of God, and Elser was caught trying to flee into Switzerland. He was tortured, sent to the Dachau Concentration Camp, and ultimately killed.

The very day after his plot failed was the Kristallnacht—the day Jewish businesses and synagogues across Germany were burnt to the crowd; the day, some would say, the Holocaust began.

9Maurice Bavaud Tried to Kill Hitler the next Day

Hitler would not have survived another 24 hours if Maurice Bavaud had been a better shot.

Bavaud was a theology student from Switzerland who, whether in a fit of madness or wisdom, convinced himself that Hitler was the antichrist. Hitler, he believed, was a threat to the Christian faith and to humanity itself—and it was his divine duty to kill him.

Bavaud packed a pistol and headed into Germany, where he desperately tried to arrange a meeting with the man he planned to murder. When he realized it would fail, he joined a crowd of eager of Nazi supporters watching Hitler parade down the streets of Munich, his pistol hidden in his pocket.

When Hitler came his way, though, the crowd threw up their hands in salute, blocking Bavaud’s shot. He only had a few seconds to decide whether he should fire and trust that God would lead bullet safely through the crowd and to his target—or if he should put his gun down and be sure he did not accidentally end an innocent’s life.

Bavaud decided not to risk it and ran. Shortly after, on a train ride to France, he was caught using a fake ticket. When the guards looked through his things, they found the gun and a map of Hitler’s vacation home.^[2] For Bavaud, it was all over.

Bavaud was executed by guillotine in May of 1941. “I want to cry, but I can’t,” he wrote his parents on the day before his death. “I feel my heart would explode.”

8William Seabrook Tried to Kill Hitler With Voodoo Magic

While the Germans and the Swiss were trying to take out Hitler with guns and explosives, an American writer was taking a slightly different route. He was going to take out Hitler, William Seabrook resolved, with black magic.

On January 22, 1941, Seabrook gathered a group of friends together in a cabin in Maryland for a “hex party.”^[3] Until the break of dawn, they would drink rum, pound on drums, and try to summon pagan gods to take out the leader of Germany.

They dressed a dummy up in a Nazi uniform, chanting at it, “You are Hitler! Hitler is you!” Then Seabrook led his followers to call the pagan deity Istan to transmit the dummy’s wounds to Hitler while they spat at it, “We curse you!”

With the pounding of drums around them, the drunken occultists hammered nails into the dummy’s heart. Then Seabrook chopped off its head with an ax and buried it deep in the woods, leaving it for the worms to devour.

Hitler, somehow, survived this attempt on his life. Historians remain at a loss to explain how this plan could have failed.

7The First Attempt on Hitler’s Life

By then, people had already been trying to kill Hitler for at least 20 years. That was when the first confirmed attempt on his life happened: November 1921, long before Hitler took control of Germany.

He had been speaking at the Munich Beer Hall, addressing a massive audience of hundreds about the glory of National Socialism. His crowd, though, was not entirely supporters. More than 300 people there were bitter opponents on the opposite ends of the political spectrum, and while they listened to Hitler espouse ideas that went against everything they believed in, they were getting blindingly drunk.

One line set them off, and a mob of people started hurtling beer steins at the stage. Hitler’s supporters struck back, and soon the place had erupted into a full riot. Chairs were flying through the air, lead pipes and brass knuckles were in people’s hands, and the place was getting bloody.

Hitler’s guards started forcing the troublemakers out, but in the chaos, somebody pulled out a gun and opened fire on Hitler.^[4] That could have been the end of the Nazi Party—but he missed.

Hitler was unfazed. He didn’t run for cover—in fact, according to some accounts, he even pulled out a gun of his own and shot back. Then he went on with his speech, talking for another 20 minutes, even while his audience were beating each other bloody and trying to kill him.

6Operation Flash

Not every German was happy when Hitler came into power. As the Nazis started erasing their political opponents and massacring Jews, Gen. Henning von Tresckow vowed to put an end to the Nazi Party. He helped start the German Resistance and promised he would stop at nothing to take out Adolf Hitler.

He got his chance on March 13, 1943. Hitler was flying from Vinnitsa, USSR, back into Germany and, on his way home, would have a layover in Smolensk. There, Tresckow would have his opportunity to strike.

He handed one of the officers flying with Hitler a bottle of expensive Brandy, pretending it was a gift for the Nazi officials in Berlin.^[5] Inside the bottle, though, Tresckow had hidden a bomb set with a 30 minutes fuse. The officer fell for it and put the explosive bottle in the plane, and Tresckow watched them take off, waiting to see Hitler explode in the sky.

The bomb didn’t go off. The luggage compartment it was stored in was too cold, and the explosives failed to ignite. Hitler made it safely home, unaware his life was ever in danger—and a frantic Tresckow had to start calling people in Berlin, begging them to sneak the bottle out before anyone found it.

5Rudolf von Gersdorff Got a Bomb Within Inches of Hitler

Tresckow did not give up. Shortly after, he devised another plot to take out Hitler. Someone would have to be willing to sacrifice their own life to make it work—Nazi General Rudolf-Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff volunteered. He was ready to die if it meant a world without Hitler.

Hitler was scheduled to be in Berlin opening an exhibition of captured Russian equipment on March 15, 1943, and Göring and Himmler would be with him. If Gerstorff could get close enough to them to set off a bomb, he would take out the three most powerful men in the Nazi Party in one blast.

Gerstorff packed his coat pockets with explosives rigged to explode ten minutes after he set the fuse and went to the exhibition, struggling to look calm while he waited for his target to arrive. Hitler, though, was hours late—and Gerstorff was forced to stand around a crowd of Nazis with bombs in his pockets.

When Hitler showed up, a speaker announced he only had eight minutes to spend on the tour.^[6] That meant that if Gerstorff started his ten-minute timer, his bomb would not go off until after Hitler had left. He would blow up himself and an audience of spectators—but the Führer would walk free.

It wasn’t worth the risk. Gerstorff had to stand, smile, and watch Adolf Hitler breeze through the exhibition—and then get out before anyone noticed what he had hidden in his coat.

4The Oster Conspiracy

In 1938, Hans Oster, head of Germany’s Military Intelligence Office, planned to not only take out Hitler but to overthrow the entire Nazi Party. Hitler had demanded control of Czechoslovakia, and Oster was sure his threats would pull Germany into a world war. He was going to stop it.

He planned a coup d’etat. With a team of 60 officers, Oster was going to take Germany from the Nazi Party. He would arrest Hitler and, one way or another, get rid of him. Some wanted to execute him, some wanted to declare him mentally ill,^[7] and Oster himself wanted to gun him down and pretend he was resisting arrest—but everyone agreed that Hitler would have to go.

The coup d’etat never happened. To everyone’s surprise, the Munich Agreement let Germany annex Czechoslovakia without firing a single shot, and the world war Oster had feared did not happen. The conspirators fell apart, believing the crisis was over. And by the time the war had really started, they were too fractured to do anything to stop it.

3The British Snuck Estrogen into Hitler’s Food

Not every assassination plan ended with Hitler dead. Some were just character assassinations—but they were every bit as sensational as the plots to kill him. Like, for example, the British plot to feed Hitler estrogen.

Hitler’s sister was a mild-mannered secretary, and the British were convinced that, if Hitler got in touch with his feminine side, he would become as docile as she was. They had spies on hand who could get access to his food,^[8] and while they were not sure they would get poison past his food testers, they were pretty sure they could get estrogen supplements into his diet.

This wasn’t just a hare-brained plan—they actually did it. The British bribed a gardener to inject estrogen into his carrots, and he agreed to do it. The plot to feminize Hitler went into motion.

It is not entirely clear how it all ended, but it does not seem to have worked. Perhaps the food testers spotted the estrogen-laced carrots, or maybe the gardener sold the spies out. Or—who knows?—maybe the plan worked, and the Nazi invasion of Russia was all just a very confused man struggling with the rush of new hormones that came with transitioning into womanhood.

2The 20 July Plot

On July 20, 1944, Count Stauffenberg came the closest anyone ever would to killing Hitler. He had the chance to step into the Wolf’s Lair, the top secret conference room where Hitler conspired with his most trusted men, and he was going to use that chance to bring the Second World War to an early end.

He brought a briefcase full of explosives with him and snuck off into a room to set the fuses. He only managed to light one, though, before a guard knocked on the door and told him that Hitler was waiting for him. Stauffenberg had to head in with only one bomb triggered to blow and hope it was enough to take out Hitler.

He headed into the conference room with his briefcase bomb and slid it under the conference table, trying to push it as close to Hitler as he could. Then he excused himself, stepped out, and waited for the explosion.

The bomb went off, blowing the room to pieces. Four people died—but with only one fuse lit, it was not strong enough to finish off Hitler. The Führer got out with only a few injuries,^[9] and Stauffenberg was caught and killed.

1Operation Foxley

The British had all kinds of plots to kill Hitler. First, they plotted to bomb Hitler’s private train, and then later to poison his water supply—but they could not get any of them to work.

That changed, though, in 1944, when they captured one of Hitler’s personal guards. They interrogated him and found out that he worked at Hitler’s mountain retreat in the Bavarian Alps, and he was willing to tell them what they needed to know to take him out.

When Hitler was at his retreat, the guard told them, the Nazi flag was hoisted over the building. Every day at 10:00 a.m., he would take a solitary walk to a nearby teahouse.^[10] For about 20 minutes, he would be unguarded and alone, walking down a path by a forest where a sniper could easily be hidden.

The British had everything in place to do it. They had a marksman ready, and an inside man who was willing to help him get in—and the plan probably would have worked.

Lt. Col Ronald Thornley, though, managed to convince them that they were better off leaving Hitler alive. Killing him would make him a martyr, keep the ideas of Nazism alive, and a better strategist would be put in Hitler’s place. By then, the war was almost over. The Allies were actually better off with Hitler alive than dead.

Well-known companies dominating their market don’t always have lucky stars on their side. From failed Halloween-themed products to weird items unrelated to the merchandise they are famous for, these 10 companies are examples of how pushing the boundaries can prove embarrassing.

Top 10 Failed McDonald’s Products

10 Tesla: Cybertruck

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla, is an entrepreneur, engineer, and industrial designer who revolutionizes transportation on Earth and into space. Elon Musk started Tesla in 2003 and aimed to create environmentally friendly all-electric cars. Tesla’s total revenue has increased from 204.24 million U.S dollars in 2011 to 21461.27 million dollars in 2018. But there have been some bumps in the road.

Although you cannot fully classify this product as a complete flop, the Cybertruck did have an embarrassing demonstration in 2019. Tesla boasts on their website that they built the Cybertruck for “ultimate durability and passenger protection.” The materials used on the car are Ultra-Hard 30X Cold-Rolled stainless-steel and armor glass that will not shatter. But shatter it did.

For the unveiling of the Cybertruck in a 2019 event, Elon Musk started the durability demonstration by slamming a sledgehammer to the car’s body. Next was to throw a large metal ball at the impenetrable armor glass. Lead designer Franz von Holzhausen threw the ball twice, and twice the car’s window smashed. Elon Musk admitted there was “room for improvement” and later explained that the sledgehammer had created an invisible crack in the glass.

9 Apple: Macintosh TV

Apple was founded in 1976 by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. These two college dropouts wanted to make computers small enough for the home and office, and they ended up building an empire. Today Apple has many popular products like the iPhone, iPad, and Mac computer. They grew from annual revenues of eight billion U.S. dollars in 2004 to over 270 billion dollars in 2020.

While Apple is well-known for their technological prowess, they are not immune to unsuccessful product ideas. Among their many failed products is the Macintosh TV. It was meant to be a hybrid TV and Mac computer but ended up too expensive, lacking enough storage, and lacking standard video output ports. Apple introduced the Macintosh TV in October 1993 and within four months terminated it in February 1994.

8 Coca-Cola: Diet Coke Plus Green Tea

The Coca-Cola Company was founded in 1892 and is one of the world’s largest non-alcoholic beverage manufactures. They introduced the first bottles made from recycled materials and invented the six-pack in 1932. While Coca-Cola has been successful in many ways and with many flavor variations, not all their products have global popularity.

Despite being a soda company, Coca-Cola tried to cater to health-conscious consumers with their Diet Coke Plus line of products. One product, in particular, the Diet Coke Plus Green Tea, was launched in Japan in 2009, hoping to be a big hit. It contained tea antioxidants that can reduce inflammation and prevent certain cancers.

Japan is known to consume green tea at over 600 grams per person. This fact made it easy to market the drink there. However, Coca-Cola didn’t deliver on the product’s taste, so it never made it globally, including no appearance in the United States.

7 Colgate-Palmolive: Kitchen Entrees

If a brand is known for one product, it doesn’t mean it can easily extend into another market. This case was true for Colgate-Palmolive when they did a test run for their Colgate Kitchen Entrees in 1964. At the time, the company wanted to get into the 4.2 billion dollar convenience food field. However, it failed to gain momentum for its dried chicken and crabmeat entrees. Consumers thought of personal hygiene with Colgate, not TV dinners, so the Kitchen Entrees were never officially launched.

Currently, in 2021, Colgate-Palmolive is the second leading personal care brand worldwide. It has a brand value of 17.4 billion U.S. dollars. It seems sticking to toothpaste and toothbrushes was a wise choice!

6 Burger King: Halloween Whopper

McDonald’s is not the only burger kingpin that has made meals that flopped over the years. In 2015, the Burger King Halloween Whopper proved out of place in the Home of the Whopper when customers reported unpleasant side effects. The burger’s black bun represented the Halloween spirit but led to green bowel movements the next day. As a result, what customers found in their toilet bowls became more popular than the burger’s taste.

The following year, there was no Halloween Burger to be found. But why did it turn feces green? In children and adults, eating food coloring can result in green bowel movements. Our stomachs don’t absorb most food coloring. When dye colors such as blue or purple mix with our yellow-green stomach bile, the result can be green feces.

5 BMW: The M1

Bayerische Motoren Werke AG, commonly known as BMW, is a German car and motorcycle company founded in 1916. Today it is the leading luxury car brand worldwide. The company’s local revenue in 2020 was 99 billion Euros despite car sale drops due to COVID-19.

Although always well-known for its well-designed, reliable luxury cars, BMW didn’t start with a reputation for supercars. In 1978, the company failed to make a dominating sports car for the race tracks. The M1 was unable to compete with the Porsche cars that ruled European racing at the time. For example, in the 1979 Le Mans, France race at Circuit de la Sarthe, Porsche cars finished first to fourth, and the BMW M1 came in sixth. BMW built a limited number of M1 cars and discontinued the line by 1982.

BMW has not given up on developing supercars and recently launched the popular i8 sports car in November 2013. This car is a plug-in hybrid that sold about 28,000 units in 2020 before BMW discontinued it the same year. But this time, not due to lack of popularity.

4 Amazon: Fire Phone

A lot of us have bought something on Amazon, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic while in quarantine. This e-commerce company offers a wide variety of products ranging from retail to pantry items. In 2020, Amazon was the leading e-retailer in the United States with almost 386 billion dollars in net sales.

Jeff Bezos’ Amazon may be the king of e-commerce, but their 2014 Fire Phone burned to the ground. The phone was too expensive at $200, designed more for Bezos than the consumers, and entered the smartphone market too late. In 2014, Apple and Android already had at least eight generations of smartphones. Another reason for its failure was the limited number of apps compared to competitors. The Amazon app store had approximately 240,000. In contrast, Google Play had over 1 million apps in 2014.

The unsold Fire Phones cost Amazon $170 million within three months, and phone companies significantly dropped the retail price. For example, after two months, AT&T offered a deal of 99 cents for the Fire Phone with a 2-year contract.

3 Donald Trump: Trump Steaks

Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, is well known for his business empire, including finance and real estate. However, among his successes, he has multiple failed ventures under his belt. One is the Trump Steaks released into the market in 2007. Trump sold the steaks only on QVC and the Sharper Image website. The latter is known for selling electronics, home furnishings, and personal care items more than food. This discrepancy in selling platforms most likely contributed to the failure of the product. The Sharper Image website also decided to discontinue the steaks after only two months.

2 Frito Lay: Cheetos Lip Balm

Charles Elmer Doolin invented Cheetos in the 1940s, and by 1961 when the Frito Lay Inc. company was formed, it had annual revenues of $127 million. Cheetos was one of the largest snack food brands produced by Frito Lay. They dominated their market, so why go out of their comfort zone?

While you can expect cheesy fingers after eating a bag of Cheetos, not everyone enjoys deliberately smearing cheese on their face. Frito Lays found this out the hard way in 2005 when they released their Cheetos Lip Balm. The company quickly discontinued the product after numerous negative reviews. For example, one customer left a review explaining it “smells like moldy cheese. It doesn’t moisturize well either. An overall thumbs down.”

1 Evian—Water Bra

Evian is a company known for mineral water. It was founded in 1789 by a French nobleman in the town of Évian-les-Bains. In 1978 they were the first natural spring water brand imported in the United States and Canada. With such a success story in the mineral water market, we would assume they would generate water products that make a splash. But this is not the case.

In 2005, Evian decided to expand into the clothing market with a Water Bra. Evian designed the bra to cool down breasts during the warmer months with pads containing mineral water. There was a filter funnel that allowed women to top off the water to their preference levels. The bra also featured a pouch to hold a miniature water bottle. Evian marketed the water bras’ benefits as toning and shaping your body to be beach-ready in addition to its cooling feature. However, the product was unsuccessful and discontinued not long after its launch. Today, Evian still has no clothing products on their website.

Top 10 Apple Failures

About The Author: Sara enjoys research, art, and seeking a sustainably fun life, balancing physical and mental health. Read more on how she explores, learns, and balances all her interests at www.saramenges.com.

Every once in a while, someone comes along with the world’s greatest invention — or so they say. New devices come about all the time, but few have the societal impact of actually changing the world.

Most new inventions offer a slight improvement on previous designs, or they might even offer something unique. Still, changing the world with a single invention is rare, and not every new thing is going to be the next radio, television, or Internet.

These ten devices made such a claim, but despite being praised upon their introduction to the world, they completely failed to change it.

10 Dangerous Misconceptions About Nuclear Technology

10 Flying Tanks

Believe it or not, there was once a time when people thought it was a good idea to strap a couple of wings to an armored tank and use it in combat. Flying tanks were designed to take the firepower of armored combat and combine it with the tactical use of airpower, but as you probably can guess, it didn’t exactly work.

Essentially, these were glider wings attached to tanks, and they could be towed or carried beneath an airplane. They would then be released and glide into combat to support infantry operations on the battlefield. They were marginally effective, but various projects never achieved much success.

Instead of changing the way humanity fights in war, the concept was scrapped shortly after World War II, though the Soviet Union continued developing the concept well into the 1970s.

While flying tanks have become a thing of the past, they’ve largely been replaced by modern technology. The AC-130 Gunship is loaded with equipment and weaponry that makes tanks look like toys. They carry 25mm or 40mm Gatling guns and a 105mm cannon, which effectively makes them far superior to a tank with wings.^[1]

9 Videophones

Long before the invention of the television, people imagined a world in which they could engage in a telephone conversation while seeing the person they were speaking to on the other end. Because of this, the technology to do exactly that was developed at great cost for a consumer market that had been imagining videophones for decades.

By the time such a product was made available, it was far too expensive, and few could afford it. The first devices cost $1,500 for a single phone, and the service cost nearly $100 a month, making it unaffordable for consumers and an iffy purchase for companies.

By the turn of the millennium, companies were still working hard to transmit video communications over telephone lines, but the technology was still expensive and difficult to perfect. This ultimately led to an overall abandonment of dedicated videotelephony over phone lines.

In its place came different video teleconferencing means, using data networks and the Internet to make calls. Today, people use apps to communicate, but while the technology is more than available for anyone who wants to use it, most people don’t bother to appear to the person they communicate with, preferring instead to text, email, or make a simple call.

Video calls have been around for a while now, but they’ve hardly managed to change the world. People still do business over voice communications far more than the video alternative, and it’s unlikely that will change.^[2]

8 The Fiske Reading Machine

Bradley Allen Fiske created numerous inventions throughout his life. Of course, not every one of them was as well thought out as his telescopic sight for naval guns. One such invention, the Fiske Reading Machine, sought to change the way the world digested information, but it failed to catch on with the world’s readers.

The idea was to take a small handheld device with a magnifying lens for one eye and a shield masking the other. Text was minituarized using photo-engraving techniques, and printed onto cards measuring roughly six by two inches. This was impossible to read using the naked eye.

Using the device, a person could look through the lens and read everything printed onto the card. The idea was to reduce the need for paper, create a new pocket-sized means of reading, and literally change the way people consumed text.

To demonstrate his invention, he condensed Mark Twain’s The Innocents Abroad onto 13 cards. He believed he single-handedly revolutionized the publishing industry, but if this is the first time you’ve heard of his invention, you know he didn’t. It wasn’t necessarily a bad idea, but it wasn’t how people wanted to read books, and the Fiske Reading Machine never made it to mass production.^[3]

7 Cryptocurrencies

The world’s first cryptocurrency was the Bitcoin. When it was first created in 2008 (by an unknown person or group), it looked as if it might be a world-changing invention. Cryptocurrencies are forms of digital currency that exist without a central bank or administrator.

They are relatively complex, and they can be “mined” using sophisticated graphics chips that use their processing power to create new blocks in a consistent blockchain. Essentially, they crunch numbers and slowly create new Bitcoins.

In the beginning, Bitcoins weren’t worth very much real-world money, but by 2016, their value shot up to $2,900, and within five years, they peaked in value at $19,511, though that value quickly crashed.

Cryptocurrencies theoretically could change the way people conduct international business. Still, the anonymous nature of mining and spending them has really only benefited criminal organizations.

Even though it is a decentralized monetary system, it’s still susceptible to the same problems as a traditional currency, including counterfeiting, market manipulation, and more. Cryptocurrencies are still around, and there are many more than just Bitcoin. Still, it’s unlikely to change international monetary systems for a myriad of reasons.^[4]

6 Daylight Motion Pictures

When you go to the movies, you find yourself sitting in a large theater, and the only significant source of light is the powerful lamp in the projector. That light is reflected off the screen, and it works best when there are no other sources of light — turning one on would wash out the image, making it harder to see.

Despite this fact, there was a time when people thought it best to watch movies in the daylight out of a need for security. In 1910, that’s exactly what some people tried to do with “daylight motion pictures.” It was a trend that raced around the United States, and it spread like wildfire.

The concept utilized darker screens, brighter and stronger projectors, and the misapprehension that movies needed to be enjoyed in the full light of day. California even passed a law stipulating that movie theaters were required to sufficiently illuminate their theaters so that patrons could see one another.

Of course, the craze didn’t last for very long. Projectionists complained that movies didn’t look good in well-lit rooms. Various other problems caused Daylight Motion Pictures to become a thing of the past, ultimately changing nothing as darkened theaters returned.^[5]

10 Unconventional Uses Of Nanotechnology

5 The Helio-Motor

In 1900, Dr. William Calver created a device he called the Helio-Motor, which he believed would revolutionize the energy industry. He was inspired by the legend of Archimedes’ heat ray. He created a device to utilize the sun’s energy to be used in other applications.

He believed he had “solved the use of the sun’s rays,” having created a device that concentrated sunlight using mirrors. They would target that energy onto bricks or water, storing the energy and generating power without using electricity.

The debut of his Helio-Motor was met with excitement, and people lined up to invest in his idea. Leland Stanford (of the university that bears his name) once told Calver, “The steam engine made a great revolution, and this will make another.”

Since nobody has a Helio-Motor running every device in their home, it clearly didn’t revolutionize energy in any way. It wasn’t efficient — far less than other means of generating and storing energy.

While the Helio-Motor never changed the world, the concept has evolved over the years. Present-day systems that use mirrors to reflect sunlight into concentrated solar power plants are viable, though they are far more advanced than what Calver created.^[6]

4 Cinerama

Long before IMAX was a thing, the best way to view a widescreen formatted film was through a process called Cinerama. It was developed by the motion picture industry to counter the growing trend of television. The first time it was used was back in 1952, when the movie, This is Cinerama, was premiered for a crowd of cheering and enthusiastic people on Broadway.

The new format projected the video onto three large, deeply curved screens, making for a massive image. It was touted as the future of movie watching. Still, it never managed to take hold of the marketplace, and it eventually fell into obscurity.

The problem with Cinerama technology, at least initially, was that it required three projectors (and three projectionists) to perfectly synchronize their projection at the exact same time. If that wasn’t achieved, it wouldn’t work correctly, so Cinerama needed a lot of people and money to operate.

Most movie theaters weren’t willing to upgrade due to the cost. By the time digital technology made it possible to link the projectors without the need for multiple people, it was too late. There are still some Cinerama locations in use around the country, but it’s more of a novelty than a viable “world-changing” means of watching movies.^[7]

3 Dymaxion House

In the 1930s, Buckminster Fuller sought to create a new industry and solve the growing need for affordable housing through the invention of the Dymaxion House. The idea was to develop an easily-manufactured home that could be put up quickly and satisfy the needs of as many people as possible.

The homes met that challenge, as they could be delivered via a truck to anywhere in the country and could be set up in only two days. They contained two bedrooms and a bathroom, but their standardized format proved more of a problem than a solution.

It was nearly impossible to find furniture that fit nicely inside a round home, and there was no way to customize them at all. Despite the fact that the relatively inexpensive homes might have solved the growing need for housing following WWII, Fuller felt the design needed improvement.

Instead of letting the prototype be made commercially, he insisted he could make a better design, but this never manifested. As a result, the Dymaxion House remains an architectural oddity that failed to revolutionize housing in post-war America’s expanding suburbs.^[8]

2 Radioactive Products

After radium was discovered in 1898, it wasn’t long before people started putting it into every product imaginable. It was widely believed that the substance was capable of doing everything from growing hair to increasing male virility.

There was a time when radium could be found in everything from lipstick to chocolate, and as we now know, that was a terrible idea. Radium became the early 20th-century buzzword in much the same way people buy things for sporting “Non-GMO” or “Organic” today.

The product was thought to change the world, and it did — just not for the better. Radium was put into butter and so much else, that by 1925, the New York Times ran the headline, “Radium Disease Found; Has Killed 5.”

The newly-dubbed “radium necrosis” was clearly a dangerous problem, and radium quickly flew off the shelves and out of consumers’ reach. The discovery of radium was certainly a world-changing event, but the various products containing it managed only to hurt people.

Radium continued to be used in the marketplace until the 1960s. The last products to feature radium were luminescent timepieces.^[9]

1 Flying Cars

People have been imagining a world filled with flying cars since before automobiles were even invented. Over the years, there have been some legitimate attempts at creating them. Various prototypes were developed in the early 20th century, but they never managed to change the world.

In 1940, Henry Ford said, “Mark my word: a combination airplane and motorcar is coming. You may smile, but it will come.” He wasn’t exactly wrong, either. The Aerocar was flying through the skies by the end of the decade. That vehicle never entered production, and neither did any other prototype.

The biggest problem with flying cars has to do with people. Most of us aren’t trained to fly a plane, much less a car with wings or jets that keep it aloft. Because of this, no government has made it legal for a person to fly about the country without serious regulation. The Aerocar, for example, was only able to fly from airports and couldn’t simply take off from a highway.

The dream is still alive for many inventors, and every so often, a new flying car makes headlines around the world. In September 2020, a Japanese country tested a new manned flying car for the first time, and while it hasn’t changed the world, it theoretically could… one day.^[10]

10 Astonishing Feats Of Modern Technology

Industrialists are honest about one benefit of war: it tends to drive innovation. But so does peace. The following ten inventions were all to that end, or at least to minimizing carnage. 

It’s not their fault they tended to make things much worse.

10. The United Nations

Formed as the League of Nations after WWI, the UN was meant to end war. It formally began in 1945, just months after the end of WWII. By 1947, however, amid the East-West Conflict, it was clear it wasn’t up to the job. The “peace-loving major powers” of a supposedly united planet were now too busy arguing over who got what from the spoils of WWII. Constructive committee meetings were impossible and the UN’s growth, including that of its all-important Security Council, was stunted from the very beginning.

Nowadays, things are no better. Clearly. In fact, they’re arguably worse as corruption has become institutionalized. For one thing, Security Council members misuse foreign aid as a way to buy votes. Poor, nonpermanent member states receive as much as $45 million extra from the United States alone in important years. But this isn’t the only reason why most resolutions are unanimously passed. Another is that, where support is doubtful, invasions aren’t put to a vote. This was the case with the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

But it’s not just corruption that cripples the UN’s alleged intentions. It’s also impotence. There are generally no consequences whatsoever for violating Security Council resolutions.

9. International language

War is all God’s fault according to the Bible. Seeing us all working together on the Tower of Babel, he was appalled and came down to step in. “Look,” he said, “they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” Henceforth (according to Christians and Jews, but not, interestingly, Muslims), humanity was at odds with each other. What if we could undo God’s mischief and restore some basic common ground? An international language may help to bring us together. After all, language is more than just a manner of speaking – it also guides our worldview. 

Esperanto is one of the more prominent attempts at a “language of international peace”. Devised by the villainous-sounding Doktoro Esperanto (aka Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof) in 1887, it draws primarily on the Latin-based (i.e. Romance) languages of Europe – complete with a 28-letter Latin alphabet. As a result, it’s easy for many Westerners to learn. With its simple, intuitive grammar and cultural flexibility, it’s also straightforward for others to learn. And, as an added bonus, studying Esperanto before other languages helps to accelerate the process.

By 1915, following an uptake in the Russian Empire, then Europe, North and South America, China, and Japan, the Iranian delegate to the League of Nations proposed that Esperanto be adopted by the body. Everyone agreed too… except for France, whose snooty delegate single-handedly voted against. After that, Esperanto speakers (or Esperantists) drew persecution from the Nazis, Spanish fascists, and the Soviet Union – all of whom correctly saw the language as a threat to their nationalism. In Hitler’s case, it didn’t help that Esperanto’s inventor was Jewish; the paranoid Fuhrer imagined it must be part of a conspiracy.

8. Satellites

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky was not called the “father of astronautics” for nothing. Not only is he credited with calculating escape velocity, he also invented multi-stage rockets to get there, as well as steerable rocket engines, airlocks, satellites, space stations, and closed-cycle biological systems to sustain human space colonies. 

Without leaving the planet himself, Tsiolkovsky even anticipated the ‘overview effect’ whereby astronauts looking down on our lonely blue marble are struck by its beauty, fragility, and its absence of borders. This, he believed, would eliminate war. Immediately. Writing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he thought 2017 would see the first human space flight as well as world peace. Life aboard satellites would, he thought, would be utopian: unlimited solar energy; artificial temperature regulation (so no need for clothing, beds, or quilts); no heavy labour thanks to zero gravity; no resource disparity (so no social classes), and so on.

What he didn’t foresee (apart from the decades-earlier first human space flight) was the utility of satellites for war. While they still haven’t been used as weapons per se – thanks to the increasingly precarious Outer Space Treaty – they’re routinely used for reconnaissance. And it’s really just a matter of time before they’re mounted with lasers and worse.

Speaking of which…

7. Laser weapons

Laser weapons weren’t meant to end war, but they were meant to make it less deadly by significantly cutting down on the human and environmental costs. Unlike conventional weapons, lasers are precisely accurate and minimize collateral damage. Traveling at the speed of light, they’re also capable of stopping incoming missiles no matter how fast they’re traveling – and lasers themselves can’t be intercepted.

However, they’re also much cheaper. Whereas defensive missiles cost $1-10 million each, lasers are $1-10 per shot. Hence they’re rapidly becoming widespread – in addition to conventional weapons. And, worryingly, they can reliably do something that other weapons cannot: blind soldiers. This was the reason they were originally banned by international treaty.

6. Teleforce

In a lengthy piece for Liberty magazine in February 1935 — “A Machine to End War” — Nikola Tesla said he once thought, “like other inventors,” that “war could be stopped by making it more destructive.” But he realized he was wrong. Also a eugenicist, he believed it would take more than a century to “breed out” man’s “combative instinct.” Instead, his solution was to level the battlefield and give each nation equal and insuperable defence. He called it the Teleforce.

Although it would take a lot of power, he said, it would form a protective field — destroying any approaching hostilities, “men or machines,” within a radius of 200 miles. He described it as “a wall of power … against any effective aggression,” and theorized that if no country could successfully attack another war would simply fizzle out. Although he was tight-lipped about how this invention worked, he said that it wasn’t by “death rays.” Instead, the Teleforce projected particles with “trillions of times more energy than is possible with rays of any kind.” He also imagined it would greatly improve television, removing all limits to the “intensity of illumination, the size of the picture, or distance of projection.

Despite the reverence netizens have for him nowadays, Tesla was often mistaken. He believed, for example, that by 2035 the Secretary of Hygiene or Physical Culture would be more important in Washington than the Secretary of War. And while he’s yet to be proven wrong, with 12 years to go it’s looking unlikely. Even if his Teleforce was actually built, it’s obvious how it would have been abused — to kill immigrants, for example (which, to be honest, Tesla probably would have supported, hoping as he did for global eugenics by 2100 to sterilize “the criminal and the insane.”)

5. Gay bomb

Surprisingly, the Pentagon had a plan to make the least deadly, most peace-loving bomb in the world. As recently as 1994, under Bill Clinton, the Department of Defense thought about deploying aphrodisiacs on the battlefield to make enemy troops drop their weapons, then their pants, and start banging. According to declassified documents, the sudden and widespread homosexual behavior would cause a “distasteful but completely non-lethal” drop in enemy morale. 

If this relatively benign weapon seems out of character for the US, remember that its enemies were the fairly orthodox Muslims whose oil they wanted. So, with its “gay bomb,” the sadism was very much there; it was just psycho-spiritual instead of physical.

Still, had they actually followed through with the Sunshine Project, war might have been different today. Another plan was to release the smells of farts or bad breath among enemy troops. But this “Who? Me?” bomb as it was called had been considered since 1945. And it wouldn’t be suitable for many invasions, as, according to the researchers, “people in many areas of the world do not find faecal odor offensive, since they smell it on a regular basis.”

4. Drones

Telechirics (from the Greek words for ‘distance’, tele, and ‘hand’, kheir) are remote technologies allowing manipulation from a distance while providing a safety buffer between operators and dangerous jobs. Applications include space and ocean exploration, exposure to nuclear radiation, firefighting, mining, and war. Writing in New Scientist in 1964, engineer John W. Clark, apparently pre-empting Avatar, described consciousness being “transferred to an invulnerable mechanical body.”

Although that’s not so much a way to end war, it does represent a way to minimize its cost in human life. Unfortunately, however, it’s not that simple in practice. Because of the economic disparity in most international conflicts, drones are only used by one side, and therefore not against drones but people. The result is a less dignified, more shameful, but much easier way to wage war — exclusively available to wealthy invaders. In fact, ever since their first deployment in Afghanistan just after 9/11, drone attacks have become so routine they’re hardly even reported on any more.

3. Nuclear weapons

In the past it was thought that bigger, more destructive weapons would ultimately discourage warfare. Clearly they were wrong. But it didn’t stop them building what remains the most destructive to date. The Nazis came up with the plan, but the US liked it so much they brought the scientists to work in America. A little while later, President Truman became the first (and hopefully last) to drop it on civilians.

Of course, the flaw in the nukes-for-peace idea was putting them in the hands of the least peaceful people on the planet. The bloodthirsty Truman hopped straight from nuking Japan to waging war against communists. The rest is history. Nuclear warheads proliferated in Russia to balance the threat of the US, and neither side has ever stopped since – which in turn has forced other states to follow.

Has this led to a more peaceful world? Well, no. It’s true there hasn’t been a World War III yet, but the nuclear powers themselves continue to invade other countries.

2. Submarines

Narcis Monturiol, the Spanish inventor of the modern submarine, thought it would put an end to war. A feminist, communist, and utopian revolutionary, he was hiding from authorities at the time — holed up in a village on the coast. There, he was enchanted by the coral people dove for, which were sold as decorations for the home. He thought of the divers as being on a quest for the magical “new continent” beneath the waves — and was therefore deeply troubled when one of his new heroes drowned. 

So he got to work inventing something to make their lives easier. With the help of a master shipwright, as well as a designer, his submarine resembled a wine barrel (which happened to be his father’s trade) with its double olive wood and copper hulls tapered at the ends. 23 feet long, the pedal-powered craft was also equipped with “appendages for gathering coral.” He called it Ictíneo, a word he made up from the Greek for ‘fish’ (icthyus) and ‘boat’ (neus).

Dives up to 60 feet deep lasting several hours were successful and Monturiol was awed by the experience, writing: “The silence that accompanies the dive…; the gradual absence of sunlight; the great mass of water, which sight pierces with difficulty; the pallor that light gives to the faces; the lessening movement in the Ictíneo; the fish that pass before the portholes—all this contributes to the excitement of the imaginative faculties.”

He wasn’t even put off when a freighter crashed into the sub while it was docked in Barcelona, destroying it. Immediately, he set to work on Ictíneo II — which was larger and powered by steam engine. Unfortunately, in his pursuit of investment (which he needed just to feed himself, let alone build more submarines), the pacifist Monturiol courted the interest of military powers and even offered to install cannons on the subs. But nobody was interested — at least until the Nazis.

1. Manned aircraft

The first manned flight was not by the Wright brothers but a “Brazilian homosexual dandy” called Alberto Santos Dumont (who was, incidentally, also the first to fly a balloon around the Eiffel Tower in a set time and to wear a Cartier watch). Whereas the Wright brothers’ secretive “flight” was just catapulted gliding, Dumont’s 220-meter journey was verified by a panel of judges.

Already despondent after the Wright brothers stole his glory, Dumont was further pushed into despair by the military use of manned flight. He’d imagined the prospect of aircraft dropping bombs would discourage nations from fighting. But he was wrong.

In 1932, wracked with guilt after seeing them in action, he returned to his hotel room in Brazil and, having told the elevator man he’d “made a big mistake”, unceremoniously hanged himself. And that was long before the nuking of Japan.

With the world in enforced isolation, video software has become more important than ever. Conferencing apps like Zoom are a lifeline to people in lockdown. For many of us, they are the only way to see our loved ones face to face, as well as a tool for work and education.

But not everyone has managed to get their head around this new technology. Middle-aged technophobes keep accidentally turning on novelty filters. People are bad-mouthing each other without realizing that everyone can hear them. And politicians have an unfortunate habit of turning up for important meetings with no clothes on. More than a year since the start of the pandemic, the Zoom mishaps show no sign of slowing down. These are ten of the most embarrassing.

10 Map Mistakes With Momentous Consequences

10 Naked Meeting With Brazilian President

For many of us, it is the ultimate anxiety dream. You turn up for work only to realize you are completely naked. Everything is hanging out for all of your colleagues to see. Luckily for most of us, it is nothing more than an embarrassing nightmare. But for one businessman, this actually happened. And the president of Brazil was watching.

The man appeared completely nude in an online meeting with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Bizarrely, he decided to take a shower in the middle of the conference and accidentally left his camera on.

Paulo Skaf, an entrepreneur from São Paulo, organized the meeting for a discussion about industry. But, after spotting that one of the attendees was in his birthday suit, the president interjected, “Paulo, there’s a colleague there in the last little square. He left. Is he OK?”

Paolo Guedes, the Minister of Industry, then explained, “There is a guy having a shower there, naked.”

“Unfortunately we saw,” the president acknowledged. “It was a shaky picture but we saw.”

9 Boss Turns Herself Into A Potato

One Monday morning, workers in Washington DC logged into an online meeting to find their boss had turned herself into a potato. Lizet Ocampo had accidentally installed a filter that made her look like a spud. Her face was completely gone, replaced by an image of a potato in the soil with only her eyes and mouth visible.

As soon as they saw the potato-headed executive, everyone in the meeting burst into fits of giggles. Ocampo, a national director at People For The American Way, was bewildered by her tuberous appearance. She tried to turn the filter off, but it was no good. In the end, Ocampo decided to keep her spud-faced visage, much to the amusement of her colleagues. According to employee Rachele Clegg, who posted footage of her boss’ mishap on Twitter, the laughter lasted for a good ten minutes.

8 Irish Politician Forgets His Pants

In June 2020, Irish MEP Luke “Ming” Flanagan tuned into a European parliament meeting without wearing any pants. The Roscommon politician had just returned from a run. He threw a shirt on so that he was smartly dressed from the waist up and believed that his bottom half was off-camera. But, unknown to him, he was filming himself in portrait mode instead of landscape. Flanagan’s Continental colleagues tried to suppress their laughter as the MEP flaunted his bare legs during a discussion on agriculture policy.

Flanagan, an independent left-winger, is nicknamed Ming after the Flash Gordon character Ming The Merciless. Although, after his legwear fiasco, social media users have suggested he should be renamed Ming The Trouserless. Flanagan seems to have taken all of the ribbing in good humor. “Who could have known that my legs would be so popular? Should I get them insured?”

7 Half-Dressed Parents Get High During Their Kids’ Classes

Imagine the sight. You are getting ready for your first online class only to spot your classmate’s mom walking by in her underwear smoking a joint. Under lockdown, teachers are struggling to deal with some parents’ behavior in their remote lessons.

One Florida teacher used a school board meeting to issue a warning to the half-dressed moms and dads popping up in her online classes. Edith Pride of Boca Raton Elementary encouraged parents to put some clothes on and hide the marijuana while their kids are on Zoom.

“Parents, when you are helping your children at their computer, please do not appear with big joints in your hands and cigarettes,” Pride advised. “Those joints be as big as cigars. Oh yeah, we’ve seen it all.”

6 Lecturers Mouth Off About Student Presentations

When on Zoom, always check who can hear you before you start making rude comments. Two college lecturers found themselves in hot water after inadvertently broadcasting a stream of insults to their students.

The business lecturers were assessing student presentations at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology in Ireland. Neither was impressed by what they saw. After they thought the students had left the virtual meeting, the lecturers started venting about the quality of work. The pair described one student’s presentation as so painful it was like having their teeth drilled. Another, they said, was so slow it made them wonder if she was disabled.

But the lecturers’ private conversation was a lot more public than they thought. The pair failed to notice that the students were still connected to the Zoom call. Every word of their insults was broadcast live to the class. One of the students recorded their exchange and, after uploading it to social media, the college duly apologized.

5 Mexican Politician Skives Off Work Badly

Some people will try and find any excuse to sneak out of work. In September 2020, Mexican politician Valentina Batres Guadarrama was caught slyly dropping out of a Zoom meeting. The congresswoman had put up a photo of herself to feign attendance, then quietly edged out of the meeting.

But this was not the inconspicuous exit Guadarrama had hoped for. In a video of the meeting, she can be using Zoom’s background function to put up an image of herself then walking out of the meeting. After her less than discreet departure, Guadarrama’s baffled colleagues occasionally caught sight of her arm reaching over the webcam.

Jorge Gavino from Mexico’s Democratic Revolutionary Party shared the footage online, where it received over 70,000 views. “I was thinking you were paying a lot of attention to my speech,” he sassed, “until I realized that your attentive look was a photograph.”

Guadarrama denies playing truant from the meeting. She claims she put up the background by mistake and then dipped out to ask for technical help.

4 Congressman Flips Himself Upside Down

Sometimes, Zoom filters are more trouble than they are worth. In February 2021, US congressman Tom Emmer appeared in a video call with his face the wrong way round.

The Minnesota politician attended an online House of Representatives committee meeting with a filter accidentally installed. He planned to deliver a speech on job security, but his colleagues seemed distracted by his upended head. Attendees tried to hold in their laughter. “You’re upside down, Tom,” someone kindly pointed out. One person wondered whether his topsy-turvy appearance was a metaphor for the current state of the world.

Luckily, all Emmer had to do was turn his device off and on again, and he was back the right way round. If only all political issues were that easy to fix.

3 Californian School Board Bad-Mouths Parents

A school board in Northern California was caught ranting about parents after failing to realize that they were in a public Zoom meeting. The Oakley Union Elementary School committee was overheard venting about the number of complaints they had received about the school’s closure. But the group was unaware that their callous comments were being streamed live to the public.

The board accused parents of treating the school staff like babysitters, and claimed that some only want their children back in school so they can get high at home. “My brother had a delivery service for medical marijuana, and his clientele were parents with their kids at school,” they joked.

At one point, one board member went on a profanity-full rant about a parent who had criticized her on social media. “Bitch, if you’re going to call me out, I’m going to fuck you up,” she said to the laughter of her peers.

But their laughter soon turned to looks of horror when the group discovered that they were broadcasting to the public.

An NBC reporter posted footage of the meeting on social media, leading to an online petition calling for their removal. In the end, the whole board resigned.

2 Mexican Senator Goes Topless

In May 2020, a lawmaker in Mexico messed up when she joined a government Zoom meeting topless. Martha Lucía Mícher Camarena did not realize that her camera was recording when she bared her upper body during a discussion about the economy. The senator had taken her top off to get changed. The other attendees soon alerted Camarena to her slip-up, and she apologized to everybody watching.

However, the politician said she refused to be ashamed of her exposed body. “I am a woman of 66 years of age,” she wrote on Twitter, “who has breastfed four children, three of whom are today professional and responsible men, and I feel proud of my body for having nourished them.” Several of Camarena’s colleagues supported her stance, calling her an “exemplary woman.” Instead, they criticized the people who spread images of her mishap on social media.

1 Filipino Chief Caught Sleeping With Treasurer

Perhaps the worst thing you can be caught doing on Zoom is sleeping with someone. A government official in the Philippines accidentally live-streamed himself having sex with his treasurer during a video conference.

Fatima Dos village council chief Jesus Estil was discussing the pandemic with other local officials. In the middle of the meeting, he muted himself and, believing that he was hidden, began making love to his staff member. When the pair had finished, Estil slips back into the meeting as if nothing happened, unaware that he had just broadcast himself in the act.

Estil’s steamy mishap was recorded by another attendee. Both officials have resigned from their posts.

Top 10 Foods That Were Invented By Complete Accident

Most fans of American colonial history know about the harrowing disaster of Roanoke or the many problems faced by the first Jamestown settlers. What is less known, however, is that European attempts to settle North America started almost a century before the Jamestown colonists first landed in Virginia.

Despite numerous attempts between the 1520s and the 1600s to establish permanent, successful colonies in the modern US and Canada, nearly all of them failed—Santa Fe and St. Augustine being the famous exceptions. Colonial life was hard, and the early Europeans lacked the supplies, tools, and geographic knowledge they needed to thrive in the New World. In this list, we’re exploring ten of the most notable failed attempts to settle North America.

10 San Miguel De Gualdape
1526

In 1521, a Spanish expedition set out to explore South Carolina. They returned to Cuba with 60 captives and a glowing report of a land that would make a great colony, populated by friendly natives who wouldn’t need to be conquered. A wealthy local official, Lucas Vazquez de Ayllon, was impressed by their report and soon got permission from the Spanish crown to found a new settlement in the land. Ayllon indebted himself funding the expedition of six ships and 600 colonists. Laden with supplies, they departed in July 1526 to found the first European colony in North America since the Vikings over five centuries before.^[1]

They soon ran into trouble. After they landed in Winyah Bay in August, their native pathfinders abandoned them, and their flagship sank, taking many of their supplies with it. Finding the land unsuitable for building a settlement, Ayllon organized a wide-ranging scouting mission. Based on the scouts’ reports, they headed toward another site over 320 kilometers (200 mi) away, which they finally reached in late September. They christened the new town San Miguel de Gualdape after the feast day of Saint Michael.

It was too late in the year to plant any crops, and the natives were unwilling to trade. The weather was much colder than they had expected, and disease, especially dysentery, killed many and made more unable to work. In early October, Ayllon himself died, and the colonists split into two groups, one wanting to stay and wait for resupply and the other wanting to abandon the colony. The dispute broke out into a full-blown mutiny in which the leading rebels were captured, and their homes were burned down by slaves. By November, the survivors had decided to abandon the settlement, but only after three quarters of the colonists had died.

9 Charlesbourg-Royal
1541

The next settlement to be built in North America was founded by Jacques Cartier, who had spent many years surveying the coast of Canada with the original aim of finding a safe sea route to China. Though he was unsuccessful, he did note several spots that he thought would be good places to settle, and with the king’s permission, he established a colony of roughly 400 people in modern-day Cap Rouge sometime between June and September 1541.^[2] He named this settlement Charlesbourg-Royal after Charles II, duke of Orleans.

At first, the colony was successful, surviving its first winter despite the harsh Canadian weather and being on neutral, if not friendly, terms with the native Iroquoians. They built a fort in two sections, one by the base of the river to protect the ships and houses and another at the top of a nearby hill for defense. The colonists went hunting for precious metals and found piles of diamonds and gold. It seems, however, that Cartier struggled to discipline his men, and unruly engagements with the Iroqouians turned them hostile. While they were supposed to wait for the arrival of de Roberval, the official leader of the expedition, Cartier and his men believed the colony would fail and departed for France in June 1542, slipping past de Roberval’s vessel under the cover of night. When he arrived in France, however, Cartier learned that the diamonds and gold they’d thought they’d found were actually worthless (but very similar-looking) minerals.

De Roberval took over control of the settlement, but the situation only worsened, and they abandoned it in 1543 after disease, bad weather, and clashes with the natives made the fort uninhabitable.

8 Fort Caroline
1564

St. Augustine is famous today for being the oldest continually inhabited European settlement in North America. The story could have been much different, though. In June 1564, a year before St. Augustine was founded, 200 French colonists built Fort Caroline on the Northeastern Florida coast.^[3] The fort’s garrison struggled to contain bouts of mutiny while they wrestled with attacks by the natives, hunger, and disease. The fort persisted, though the morale of its inhabitants was very low by the time the Spanish learned of its existence in early 1565.

The fort was reinforced by Jean Ribault and hundreds more colonists and soldiers in August, but by that time, the Spanish government had already organized an expedition to conquer it. The Spanish expedition, led by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, sailed up the northern coast but ran into Ribault’s fleet, who drove them off. The Spanish soldiers made landfall further south and built a fort. This fort would come to be known as St. Augustine. Ribault gathered an army of 600 and sailed south to destroy the new fort, but his fleet was hampered by a sudden storm. Menendez took advantage of the weather and marched overland to Fort Caroline, launching a surprise attack in September and seizing it, killing all inside except 50 women and children.

The Spanish burned the fort down, but Fort Caroline continued as a rebuilt Spanish outpost until 1568, when a French adventurer, de Gourgues, burned it down in revenge.

7 Santa Elena
1566

Two years before Ribault built Fort Caroline, he and his followers had founded Charlesfort further up the coast, in modern-day South Carolina. The settlement failed within a few months, and they ultimately moved to Fort Caroline. However, Menendez (pictured above), whether to add insult to injury to Ribault or because he liked the site, decided to resettle Charlesfort as the Spanish colony of Santa Elena. It was intended to be the capital of Spanish Florida, and the government was moved there from St. Augustine in 1566.^[4]

Santa Elena quickly became the center of military and religious missions going north, particularly for Juan Pardo’s expedition, which established a string of short-lived forts up the Appalachian mountain range, the furthest European colonists would venture inland for another century. Santa Elena itself was, alongside St. Augustine, the first successful long-term European colony in North America, thriving until it was attacked and burned by natives in 1576. The Spanish returned next year, and in 1580, they successfully pushed back an attack by 2,000 natives. Despite Santa Elena’s size and heavy fortification, however, the Spanish ultimately lost interest in the Carolinas and abandoned the settlement in 1587, choosing to focus their efforts on Central America instead.

6 Fort San Juan
1567

Following the colonization of Santa Elena, the Spanish crown planned to extend its influence inland through what they called La Florida—modern-day North and South Carolina. The goal was to find an overland route to Mexico which the Spanish could use to transport silver to St. Augustine and ship to Europe without having to contest the dangerous Caribbean waters.

This expedition was led by Juan Pardo, who took a force of 125 men with him. They soon came across the native town of Joara. Renaming it Cuenca and claiming it for Spain, the Spanish built a fort to control the town, Fort San Juan, and left a garrison of 30 to protect it before moving on.^[5] They built five more forts across the Carolinas, but none were as big as San Juan. Pardo never made it to Mexico: Hearing of a French raid on Santa Elena, he turned back and headed straight for the Floridian capital. He never returned to the Carolinas.

Soon after the main body of troops had returned to Florida, the natives turned on the Spanish and burned down all six forts, killing all but one of the Spanish soldiers, who only escaped by hiding in the woods. The Spanish never returned to the North American interior, considering the venture a huge failure.

5 Ajacan Mission
1570

In 1561, a Spanish expedition to Virginia captured a Native American boy. He was taken to Mexico, raised as a Catholic, and christened as Don Luis. He was taken to Madrid and even met the Spanish king before he became part of another Spanish expedition back to Virginia in 1570.^[6]

Father de Segura, an influential Jesuit in Cuba, planned to establish an unarmed religious mission in Virginia. While it was considered highly unusual at the time to send a mission without soldiers, he was granted permission. He and seven other Jesuits, a Spanish boy, and Don Luis, their interpreter and guide, set off for Virginia in August 1570. They arrived in September and built a small wooden mission before establishing contact with the nearby native tribes. Don Luis told them he wanted to find his home village, which he hadn’t seen in roughly a decade. The Jesuits let him go.

As time went on, the Jesuits became increasingly concerned that Don Luis had abandoned them. They tried to find him, since they couldn’t communicate with the natives without his help. In February 1571, three of the Jesuits found Don Luis’s village. Don Luis and the natives killed them, and then he led the native warriors to the mission, where the rest of the Jesuits were executed. Only the Spanish boy was spared. He was taken back to the village.

In 1572, a Spanish expedition returned and recovered the boy, killing 20 natives in retaliation. The mission was abandoned, however, and the Spanish never returned to Virginia.

4 Roanoke
1585

In 1584, Queen Elizabeth granted Walter Raleigh a charter giving him the right to establish a colony in North America. His goal was to establish a base from which to harass the Spanish treasure fleet, which was the main artery of Spain’s economy at the time, and also for future exploration of the continent. While Raleigh never visited North America himself, he financed and organized an expedition in 1584 which scouted out the area of modern-day North Carolina, mapping the region and bringing back two natives with knowledge of the tribal relationships in the area.

Based on this, Raleigh organized a second expedition in 1585. They landed in Roanoke in August and established a small colony of around 100 people.^[7] The fleet then returned to England to bring more supplies. In June 1586, the settlement was attacked by natives. Sir Francis Drake stopped at the colony shortly after and picked up the colonists, taking them back to England. The original fleet returned with supplies from England after that and, finding the colony abandoned, left a small contingent of 15 men behind to hold the island in Raleigh’s name before returning to England.

In 1587, Raleigh dispatched another 115 colonists to collect the contingent and take them to the Chesapeake Bay, where a new colony would be built. When they arrived in Roanoke, however, all they found of the 15 men was a single skeleton. The new colonists remained in Roanoke instead, and the fleet returned to England to find help and support. Unfortunately, the outbreak of war with Spain made the long sea voyage almost impossible, and it was late 1590 when the fleet was once again able to make it to Roanoke.

They returned to find the settlement abandoned. There was no sign of a struggle, and the buildings had been dismantled in an orderly way, suggesting there was no rush to leave. All they found was the word “CROATOAN” carved into a fence post, and the letters “CRO” on a nearby tree. Since the colonists had agreed to carve a Maltese cross if they’d had any difficulty, it was assumed that the colonists had moved to the nearby Croatoan Island. Bad weather prevented the English from checking, however, and they returned home. The English didn’t return until the colonization of Jamestown 17 years later, and they never found any definite trace of the Roanoke colonists.

3 Saint Croix Island
1604

Today, Saint Croix Island is an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine, with no public access. In the early 1600s, though, it was the site of an early French colony that was supposed to be the first permanently occupied (instead of seasonal) settlement in the region the French called Acadia, or l’Acardie. Since the failure of Charlesbourg-Royal some 60 years before, the French crown had shown little interest in modern-day Canada. But after the attempts to colonize Sable Island in 1598 and Tadoussac in 1600, French interest in Canada was growing again.

Saint Croix was chosen after considerable surveying of the region had identified the best possible locations for settlements.^[8] The island seemed ideal: Well-defended from both the natives and the English, it could only be attacked from one direction by boat, which made it very defensible. The soil was good, and there were plenty of trees.

In the early days of the colony, morale was high, and the settlement was established very quickly. Natives even visited to study the colony and asked the French to mediate their disputes. However, it began to snow on October 6. The winter had come earlier than expected and lingered a long time, sealing the settlers on the island as the river froze over. Many succumbed to a strange “land disease” which made their teeth fall out and sapped their energy. Later analysis of their bones revealed that they were plagued by scurvy.

When the original leader of their expedition, Francois Dupont, returned in June the next year with boatloads of supplies, they made the decision to move to a different site. The buildings were dismantled and shipped across the bay to the new site of Port-Royal.

2 Port-Royal
1605

Port-Royal (replica pictured above) was a much better-suited location for a thriving settlement.^[9] Located on the shore of a huge bay, the French envisioned it as potentially mooring hundreds of ships one day, so they gave it the name Port-Royal, or Royal Port. They built their first settlement against the northern mountains by felling trees and putting up a simple wooden palisade around the buildings for protection. Supported by the fertile soil and temperate climate, and assisted by the nearby Mikmaq people, they prospered. Concerned about the low morale at Saint Croix, they even established a social club which hosted frequent feasts and art shows, including theater productions. However, the colony had to be abandoned in 1607 after its founder, Pierre Dugua de Mons, had his fur-trading license revoked, removing the colony’s main source of income.

The colony was left in the hands of the Mikmaq and recolonized by a small French expedition in 1610. The colony never grew to any considerable size, however, and conflicts over the involvement of the Jesuits in the colony led to divisions. It was burned to the ground while the colonists were out by the English adventurer Samuel Argall. The colony was abandoned once again, and the settlers went to live among the Mikmaq.

1 Popham Colony
1607

Encouraged by growing English interest in North America, King James invested two companies with the rights to settle New England: the London Company and the Plymouth Company, both of which were parts of the Virginia Company.^[10] To foster competition, the king specified that the company whose colony was most successful would win the rights to own the land that lay between them.

After a flurry of excitement and investment, the London Company established their colony of Jamestown in Virginia, and the Plymouth company settled theirs at Popham in Maine. Unlike the Jamestown colony, which lost over half of its people to disease, the Popham colony was largely successful to begin with. Things took a turn, however, when they were unable to trade with the natives as much as they’d expected, and their leader, George Popham, died in 1608. They continued their efforts to expand the colony despite this, even building the first-ever English seafaring ship in North America, the Virginia.

The winter was bitterly cold. The colonists complained about the unceasing snow. A fire burned down the storehouse, destroying most of their supplies. Following food shortages, over half the colonists chose to return to England on the next supply ship. The remaining colonists were determined to continue on, however, and the summer was better.

The settlement was ultimately brought down by a crisis not in America but in England. A supply ship arrived carrying news that the colony’s new governor, Raleigh Gilbert, had inherited his family’s lands in England following his brother’s death. Raleigh decided to return to England. Unwilling to face the prospect of another harsh winter—this time without a leader—the rest of the colonists glumly agreed to return to England with him.

Ever since Zeus invented technology (that’s what happened, right?) mankind has been constantly inventing. Some creations – like the iPod or the electric nose hair trimmer – become so ingrained into our everyday lives we can’t imagine a world without them. Others, meanwhile, are… these. Some inventions, no matter how brilliant, are mostly remembered for failing incredibly hard.

The Mattel Intellivision was a home game console released in 1979. Development began less than a year after the introduction of its main competitor / arch-nemesis, the Atari 2600. It had graphics and sound capabilities that put the 2600 to shame, but that was only the beginning of its innovations. Intellivision was the first 16-bit gaming system, the first to feature voice synthesis, and easily the first to feature downloadable games via cable.

But poor marketing, along with a poorly designed non-ergonomic 16-direction control pad lead to Mattel selling only 3 million units over its lifetime. Not bad, you say? The underpowered Atari machine sold ten times that number. In 1983, the video game market crashed – only to be revived by the Nintendo NES, a system with all of the Mattel’s innovations but none of its shortcomings.

The first digital home video format was introduced in 1978, known as Laserdisc or “DiscoVision” because this was the ’70s. Brought to market just two years after the introduction of videocassettes, this high-capacity digital storage format meant video and audio quality far exceeding any VCR. Compact Discs, still four years down the road, were based on this technology. Laserdiscs boasted extremely sharp images – the likes of which had not yet been seen on home video – as well as digital surround sound.

Unfortunately, the discs were heavy and easily damaged, and the players quite loud compared to VCRs. There was no recording capability, and the discs and their players were super expensive. VCRs reigned supreme until the advent of the DVD, which was a kind of mini Laserdisc.

The very first widescreen projection format, Cinerama, made IMAX look like a wussy. Projecting a Cinerama film meant projecting three synchronized 35mm projectors simultaneously onto a gigantic curved screen. While technically challenging to present and requiring a skilled projectionist (or three), the results were visually astounding and far ahead of any other method of the time. 

Did we say “technically challenging”? We meant “damn near impossible.” Projecting three films with perfect synchronization is every bit as hard as it sounds, and there was no means of automation. The projectionists just had to be that good. Plus, very few theaters were willing to make the necessary and expensive modifications. As a result, only a couple of dozen films ever used the format.

As the other home videocassette format, Beta is synonymous with “also-ran.” Sony’s format offered much smaller, more durable cassettes and better resolution than JVC’s competing VHS format. Betamax even beat VHS to the US and Japan markets by over a year. So what went wrong?

The “format wars” between Beta and VHS (see: Sony and everyone else) are the stuff of tech legend. Sony misjudged the home video market in a number of ways, but the most likely cause of Beta’s failure was Sony’s reluctance to license its technology. JVC had no such qualms, resulting in a wide array of manufacturers selling VHS machines much more cheaply than Betamax. Also, Beta machines could initially only record for 60 minutes, compared to the 3 hours of VHS. VHS wins…

Simply put, Quad would now be called 4.0 surround sound. Like stereo, but… twice as much. It was intended to replicate the experience of live sound on speakers, which it did. Debuting in 1971, several quad vinyl records were released in differing (and incompatible) formats. Played on the right system, the “3-D audio” result was pretty spectacular. 

But there are about a billion ways to produce quadraphonic sound, and no single format was ever agreed upon. Dolby surround sound, which does pretty much the same thing, was standardized and eclipsed quad quite quickly. Of course, surround is primarily used for movies. For listening to music, most people think stereo is just fine.

Look familiar? That is a QR code, short for “Quick Response”, and they’ve been popping up all over the place for the last ten years or so. Storefronts, packaging… you probably have one tattooed on your butt. They’re like barcodes on crack; they serve the same purpose (as barcodes), but hold a lot more information. They were originally used to track parts during manufacture by the auto industry, but what fun is that when they can be used in advertising?

The problem is, nobody knows what the hell to do with them. PR for the QR was severely lacking. A recent study showed that about 80% of college students, that most tech-savvy of demographics, have no idea what to do with a QR code. Hint: scan them with some third party app on your smart phone.

And once we do figure it out, what’s our reward? Why, intrusive, in-your-face advertising, of course… what tech-savvy consumers love most of all. I have no idea what went wrong.

DATs were introduced in 1987. They were tiny little cassettes that record digitally at CD quality or better, meant to replace standard cassette tapes. They were far superior to cassettes, more durable and portable than even CDs, capable of 16-bit sampling and widely varying recording lengths. Why, they’re the Superformat of the future! And since the music industry is never scared of new technology, we can’t figure out why – oh, wait.

The failure of DAT as a format for selling music was (of course) mainly due to piracy concerns. Music industry types were concerned that piracy would skyrocket with a high fidelity, recordable medium – and effectively buried the technology for consumer use. This paved the way for all-digital formats like mp3, which of course are much easier to pirate. Great job, music industry!

As seen in every ’90s sci-fi movie, fully immersive 3-D computer generated imagery is essentially virtual reality. Even in the early ’90s, companies like the cleverly-named Virtuality were releasing VR arcade games like “Dactyl Nightmare” that placed you right inside the cheesy, blocky action.

The technology simply wasn’t advanced enough to meet the vision, and attempts at true VR were underwhelming to say the least. While technology has obviously come a long way, we’re still pretty damn far off from having a real-life Holodeck which – let’s face it – is what we all really want.

Long before Apple released the iPod and began dominating mobile devices up one side and down the other, there was this 1993 ill-advised attempt at that market. The Apple Newton was essentially the father of all PDAs, and was innovative in many ways, but was ultimately a spectacular failure.

The Apple Newton PDA never quite caught on due to a hugely inaccurate handwriting recognition system and an exorbitant price tag, not to mention that it looks like a Commodore 64 mated with a tape recorder. The 1995 debut of the smaller, cheaper and more functional Palm Pilot was the final nail in its coffin. The Newton was discontinued in 1998.

In its first incarnation, DIVX will likely go down as one of the biggest tech flops of all. Its innovation was in catering to those who wanted a way to “rent” movies digitally (you know, like everyone does now), but the way it was implemented was a misstep, in the same way that falling down the stairs is a misstep.

Piloted by electronics retailer Circuit City, the idea was simple enough. You rent a disc, watch it for two days then throw it away. Simple, right? Except that it was like a DVD without all the features, required a separate player that consumers had to buy, and the video rental industry fought against it tooth and nail.

By the time Netflix and Blockbuster came along to make digital rentals simple, DIVX was but a memory, having been sold only between 1998 and 1999. Its legacy lives on in annoying, unnecessary software constantly trying to get you to download it for some reason.

Mike Floorwalker’s blog is freakin’ sweet.