No tribe could stand against the might of the colonial British Empire. In the era of colonialism, when the British Empire swept through every corner of the globe, no one could stop them. Few made them fight as hard, though, as the Maori of New Zealand.

The Maori, before colonialism, were brutal warriors. They were cannibals. They were head hunters and slavers. Above all, they believed in “utu”—that every kind and cruel deed should be repaid in kind. And, when the British colonialists took over New Zealand, they were ferocious enough to make sure they paid for it.

10First Contact with the Maori Ended in Four European Deaths

When the Maori met their first Europeans, they did not shake hands and welcome them in. Right from the very start, there was bloodshed.

First contact happened in 1642, when Abel Janszoon Tasman and his crew became the first Europeans to meet the Maori. The Maori, though, saw them first. As Tasman sailed into the Golden Bay, signal fires lit up along the shore. The Maori were letting one another know that a strange ship was approaching and to get ready for the worst.

On their first meeting, the Maori canoed out toward Tasman’s boats, blowing shell war trumpets and trying to scare the Europeans away. Tasman responded with cannons. The Maori fled—but now they had no doubts. These were definitely people to fear.

The next day, Maori canoes came out toward the boats again. Tasman’s men figured it was a friendly gesture, inviting them to come to shore—until the Maori started ramming their boats. One Maori clubbed a sailor in the back of the head with a pike and knocked him overboard. Then the others attacked—and killed four men before Tasman’s men could get away.

Tasman named the area “Murderers Bay”. This, he said, “must teach us to consider the inhabitants of the country as enemies.”

9A Tribe Cannibalized James Cook’s Crew

For the next hundred years, Europeans stayed away from New Zealand. The Maori were left alone—until James Cook arrived.

At first, Cook’s men had a rocky but relatively peaceful relationship with the Maori. They had some problems, though. One man, Jack Rowe, had angered some of the Maori when he tried to kidnap a few of their men—and the Maori, it seems, were getting ready for revenge.

On December 17, 1773, Jack Rowe led an expedition ashore to collect food. They never came back. The men waited for them, growing more and more worried as time passed. In the morning, a second group led by James Burney went ashore to find them.

Soon, they found a Maori canoe and the remains of what they hoped was a dog. When Burney came in for a closer look, though, he found a human hand among the torn flesh. It was tattooed “TH”—the initials of Thomas Hill, one of the men who had gone ashore.

Burney and his men ran for their lives. When they made it to the beach, hundreds of Maori ran out to taunt them. Burney looked back. The Maori were roasting the pieces of Rowe’s dismembered body over a fire. They were devouring the flesh of Rowe and his men and feeding their entrails to the dogs.

8The Boyd Massacre

Europeans started colonizing New Zealand, despite the threat the Maori posed. Soon the country had towns and ports filled with white faces. The encounters, here, became less hostile, and some Maori began to trade with the Europeans and even work on European ships.

One of those Maori was Te Ara. He boarded a ship called The Boyd, believing he would be treated with all the honors due to the son of a chief. The captain, though, did not care whose son he was. He expected Te Ara to work—and, when Te Ara refused, he had him flogged.

Te Ara told his tribe what happened, and they were furious. They waited until the captain went to shore, then jumped out on him and his party. They murdered every person there and cannibalized their bodies.

Then they put on their clothes and used them to get onto The Boyd. They killed nearly every person on board, murdering 66 people in all. Before they were allowed to die, many had to watch while the Maori dismembered their friends’ bodies. Only four people were spared: three children and a mother.

New Zealand, after that, got a new name—the “Cannibal Isles.” Travel guides across Europe listed it with a warning: “Avoid if at all possible”.

7Introducing Muskets to the Maori Led to More Than 18,000 Deaths

Not everyone avoided the Maori. Some people actually joined them. Runaway sailors and escaped convicts from Australia joined Maori tribes and married Maori women. They were known as the Pakeha Maori—white men living Maori lives.

With the help of the Pakeha Maori, the Maori were able to get muskets—a moment that changed their history ever. Maori tribes had fought one another for years, but muskets meant a total change in that balance of power.

The Ngapuhi tribe got muskets first, and started using them to dominate their enemies. Other Maori responded by getting their own, and, for the next 40 years, New Zealand erupted in the most vicious tribal warfare it had ever seen.

By the end, a massive chunk of the Maori population was dead. There were only about 100,000 Maori in 1800. By 1845, by conservative estimates, 18,000 people had died—although others put that number twice as high. By some estimates, up to half of their population was wiped out.

The British were getting nervous. Open trade, they now believed, was very dangerous. From here on in, the British started changing how they dealt with the Maori.

6The Wairau Affray

In 1840, the British signed a treaty with 540 Maori chiefs: the Treaty of Waitangi. This gave the British sovereignty over New Zealand. In exchange, the Maori kept the right to buy and sell land, and had the rights and privileges of British citizens.

Some of the Maori who signed it did not totally understand what it meant. They understood, though, that they had the right to their land—and they were not about to give it up.

The first fight happened in Wairau. Some British settlers purchased land in the Wairau Valley and realized they did not have as much as they wanted—so they started surveying some land that the Maori had not sold them. The Maori were not okay with this. They burned the surveyor’s equipment down and sent them back to their ships.

The surveyors tried to charge two Maori chiefs with arson and sent in a force to arrest them. The Maori, though, were ready for them. Their warriors refused to move—and, after the first shot was fired, they fought back. By the end, 22 Europeans were dead, and the rest chased away.

This, though, was only the first fight of many. The British would keep encroaching on Maori land, and they would keep pushing back. For the next sixty years, the history of New Zealand was filled with land conflicts and bloodshed.

5The Flagstaff War

In 1842, a Maori man named Maketu was tried and hung for murder. He had been working for a European who he felt mistreated him—and he dealt with it by going to her home and slaughtering her and her entire family.

One Maori chief, Hone Heke, was furious. Maketu had been tried under British law. This was further proof that the Maori no longer had control over their own country. They were paying taxes and tariffs for the first time in their lives, and they were subject to foreign courts. Hone Heke decided he would no longer live under British rule.

He had his men cut down a flagpole that waved the Union Jack. When the British put it back up, he cut it down again—and again. The British tried to put it back up three times, and Hone Heke cut it down every time. “God made this country for us. It cannot be sliced,” he wrote to the British forces. “Return to your own country, which was made by God for you.”

The two sides fought to a standstill, with no clear winner. When the fighting ended, though, the Union Jack still laid trampled in the dirt.

4The Massacre of the Gilfillan Family

A few years later, a British sailor named H. E. Crozier shot a Maori man named Hapurona Ngarangi in the face—something he maintained was an accident. His crewmates managed to treat Ngarangi and keep him alive, but Ngarangi’s tribe was not satisfied. They wanted Crozier dead.

The British refused, but Ngarangi’s tribe demanded “utu”. They could not leave a bad deed unpunished—they needed vengeance. If the British would not give them Crozier, they would carry out their revenge on the nearest settler they could find.

They went to the home of a painter named John Gilfillan and massacred his family. John assumed they were after him and ran out, expecting the Maori to chase him, but they let him go. Ignoring him, they slaughtered his wife and children and burned his house to the ground.

The British arrested the men responsible and had them executed—but the Maori would not accept that, either. Soon, a Maori tribe had the town under siege. Another war had broken out.

3The Horrible Death of Carl Sylvius Volkner

A new religion was starting in New Zealand: Pai Marire. It was a combination of Christianity and Maori beliefs, founded by a prophet named Te Ua Huamene. They would prove to be one of the biggest problems the British faced.

When fighting broke out between the Pai Marire and other Maori tribes, one German missionary refused to leave. Carl Sylvius Volkner was warned that he would die if he stayed where he was, but he was determined to stay and spread the gospel.

The Pai Marire did not appreciate it. They started to suspect that the reason Volkner was sticking around was because he was a spy, and so they got rid of him—in one of the most brutal ways in history.

One of Huamene’s disciples, Kereopa Te Rau, had Volkner taken prisoner and executed. Before he died, Volkner was allowed to kneel down and pray. Then he stood up, shook hands with his killers and told them, “I am ready.”

After he was dead, Kereope Te Rau hacked off Volkner’s head. He grabbed his decapitated head, walked into the church, and delivered a sermon with Volkner’s head on the pulpit. At the climax of his speech, before his followers, he gouged Volkner’s eyes out and swallowed them.

2The Massacre at Poverty Bay

Not all Maori fought the British. Some became loyal to, and fought side-by-side their colonizers, beating down Maori rebellions. Te Kooti was one of these loyalists—until the British became paranoid he might be a spy and threw him in prison.

Locked in a jail cell on the Chatham Islands, Te Kooti had a change of heart. He spent three years in prison before he broke out. He freed 298 other Maori prisoners, seized a ship, and sailed off, landing in Poverty Bay.

There, they were confronted by the town magistrate, Reginald Biggs. Te Kooti told Biggs they just wanted to pass through peacefully. Biggs demanded they give up their weapons. Te Kooti refused—and things escalated.

That night, Te Kooti and his men broke into Bigg’s home. They gunned him down and stabbed him with their bayonets, then killed his wife and his newborn baby. Then they ran through the town, slaughtering every person they could find. Before the massacre was through, 51 people had died.

Te Kooti, it was clear, was no longer a loyalist. When the massacre was over, he waged one of the biggest wars New Zealand would see.

1Riwha Titokowaru’s Guerilla Army of Cannibals

At first, Riwha Titokowaru pushed for peace with the British—but when he went to war, he went at them hard.

He brought back the old Maori tactics of war to strike fear in the hearts of the British. His men would cut out the heart of the first man they killed and cannibalize the others. “I have begun to eat the flesh of the white man,” he told the world. “I have eaten him like the flesh of the cow, cooked in a pot.”

He was trying to terrify the British—and it worked. Titokowaru’s campaign was so vicious that the British nearly gave up. One battle against Titokowaru was called “the most serious and complete defeat ever experienced by the colonial forces.”

“The small and utterly disorganised force here might any night be cut up and cooked by Titokowaru,” one man wrote. “Unless something is done and done quickly, we had all better clear out.”

In time, though, Titokowaru’s onslaught ended. The British did not stop him—he had an affair with a subordinate’s wife and lost the respect of his men. They abandoned his fort and gave up the fight.

The wars raged on and thousands more died—but, by the 1900s, the Maori had been pushed to the fringes of the country. The last insurrections were quelled. The Maori could not keep their land from being colonized—but they made the British go through hell to get it.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to . He writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion’s StarWipe and Cracked.com. [His website] (www.mark-oliver.com) is regularly updated with everything he writes.

It’s hard to make a film, but it’s even harder to get a film made. The period between pitch and the first day of shooting can be a long one, and many potentially great movies never find their way out of Development Hell.

The average cost of shooting a film is around $65 million, and many films come in at over $100 million. With such huge costs involved, production companies will only go ahead with a shoot if they are completely happy with every tiny detail.

And even after the project has received the green light, there are still plenty of opportunities for the studios to pull the plug. Here we look at 10 movies that might have been great, if only they had made it out of Development Hell.

10 Well Known Movies With Bizarre Backstories

10 When The Perfect Location Isn’t

Some films get all the way to shooting before they fail.
Terry Gilliam spent 10 years trying to get The man Who killed Don Quixote out of the starting blocks and on to location in Bardenas Reales in Spain.

The desert location had unique sandstone hills which had been eroded over time to form strange and beautiful shapes. Could there be a better place to tell the story of the great Spanish dreamer, Don Quixote?

Well, actually, there probably could.

The location scout must have missed the NATO airbase nearby. And the constant noise of aircraft carrying out target practices.

Gilliam decided to plow on, and try to replace the audio in post-production.

That was Day One of the shoot. When cast and crew arrived on set for Day Two, they discovered that a flash flood and gigantic hail stones had damaged all the equipment, and, what’s more, changed the beautiful landscape, so that it no longer matched the shots from the day before.

Not only that but Jean Rochefort, who was playing Quixote, had developed a herniated disc and couldn’t sit on his horse.

It was the end of the line for the production. A second film crew, who had been filming a Making Of documentary, made a different kind of film about the debacle, titled Lost In La Mancha, later released to critical acclaim, which must have been a kicker.

Terry Gilliam did manage to complete his film in 2018 with a different cast, almost 30 years after first pitching it. However, its troubles were not over as he had trouble releasing the film due to a legal dispute and only managed a limited release in 2020 and as a result had very poor box office receipts.

9 When Old Enough Isn’t Good Enough

Guillermo del Toro wanted to make At The Mountains Of Madness, an adaptation of a novel by HP Lovecraft about a group of explorers in the Antarctic who discover sinister ancient ruins. The book had long been considered unfilmable, but if anyone could bring it to life, del Toro could.

Or not.

In 2006, while everyone agreed that the screenplay looked great, Del Toro could not get Warner Bros to put up the money. They were concerned at the lack of love interest and the downbeat ending.

He tried again in 2010 with a different studio. Universal, after protracted negotiations, and with producers and stars lined up, decided not to green light the film because Del Toro insisted that the film should be R-rated, rather than the PG-13 the studio wanted.

Del Toro wouldn’t compromise, and the movie was cancelled. He later said he wished he had lied, until it was too late. He said, “The R [rating] was what made it. If ‘Mountains’ had been PG-13, or I had said PG-13 … I’m too much of a Boy Scout, I should have lied, but I didn’t.”

He made Pan’s Labyrinth, instead.

8 When The Money Runs Out

In the 1980’s the production company Carolco became a major Hollywood player, focusing mainly on action movies. They scored a hit with their first movie, First Blood, the first movie in the Rambo franchise, and they went on to score notable successes with, among others, Terminator 2: Judgement Day.

Fortunes change, however, and by the early nineties Carolco was beginning to struggle financially, largely due to having to buy out one of its partners.

In 1994, Arnold Schwarzenegger had signed on to star in Crusade, which was billed as a cross between Spartacus and Conan The Barbarian. Sets were already being built when the director, Paul Verhoeven, went to a finance meeting at Carolco.

The meeting, which was said to last only twenty minutes, did not go well. Verhoeven refused to guarantee that he would not exceed his $100 million budget. It may be that Verhoeven thought that the production company were bluffing.

They weren’t. They plugged the plug on Crusade and decided to place their bets on another action film, Cutthroat Island, instead.

That film bombed and Carolco declared bankruptcy shortly after.

7 When A Sequel Just Doesn’t Work

Gladiator was such an immense hit that the possibility of a sequel was always going to be considered by someone. There were a couple of hurdles, however, the first being, did Maximus Decimus Meridius actually die (Yes).

But that is just a minor detail, surely.

Ridley Scott, director of the first Gladiator, wanted a sequel that was set in the world of Gladiator, but without Russell Crowe’s character in it. Russell Crowe had other ideas. He hired Nick Cave to come up with a script that he could actually have a part in.

Although Cave was primarily a musician, he had produced one screenplay before, so he took on Crowe’s challenge to ‘sort out’ the minor snafu of mortality.

Cave did his best. His screenplay turned the Elysian Fields from the end of the first movie into a kind of miserable purgatory on the edge of a black sea. But, being Maximus, he manages to find a spirit guide to take him to a meeting with the Gods where he is offered the chance to be reunited with his family if he just kills one of them.

OK.

And then he is somehow (not quite clearly defined) transported back to the real-world Rome, ten years after his death, and he sets out to find his son (the one who also died in Gladiator 1)

There is some incidental persecution of Christians, just to set the tone, and a fight scene in the Colosseum, which has been flooded with water and filled with 100 alligators (don’t ask)

Finally, Maximus, that great warrior does a kind of time travel through the centuries, stopping off at every war along the way, before he ends up sitting behind a desk in the Pentagon waiting for the next big fight.

Even Russell Crowe found this script hard to swallow. When asked what he thought of the final script, he replied with his famous terseness, “Don’t like it, mate.”

However, Ridley Scott is still said to be developing his own sequel, so you never know.

6 When Life Imitates Art Imitating Life

When Francis Ford Coppola wants to make a film, you might think that nothing would be easier. But it seems that no matter how bankable you are, your projects can still fail, especially when real life gets in the way.

Coppola wanted to make Megalopolis, a sci-fi film about the rebuilding of New York after a major disaster. Talks had gone well, and he had begun to screen test actors. That was in 2001. And then, on September 11 of that year, disaster really struck New York when the twin towers where hit in a terrorist attack.

For a while, Coppola considered continuing with his project, but in the end felt that he couldn’t make Megalopolis without it turning into a film about 9/11, and he shelved the idea.

In 2019, he announced that he was finally ready to begin developing the film again, although to date no further progress seems to have been made. Coppola is now over 80, so if shooting doesn’t begin soon, it is unlikely to ever happen.
Coppola is largely retired. But he can rest on his laurels. Not only did he bring us Apocalypse Now, he also made The Godfather II, still regarded as the best Mafia movie ever.

10 Of The Most Sought-after Lost Films

5 When Someone Else Had The Same Idea

Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a movie about Napoleon.

After the huge success of 2001: A Space Odyssey, he “sent an assistant” to travel around the world in Napoleon’s footsteps.

Nice work if you can get it.

Kubrick himself had done a lot of research on his subject, and had an all-star cast lined up. He had even arranged to ‘borrow’ tens of thousands of real-life soldiers as extras.

Things began to fall apart when, in 1970, another film was released on the same subject. Waterloo, which starred Rod Steiger and Orson Welles, among others, bombed at the box office. Producers began to get nervous, and quickly withdrew the funding.

Kubrick tried again to revive the project during the 1980’s but in the end, like Napoleon, he had to admit defeat.

4 When The Director Really Doesn’t Want To

Close Encounters Of the Third Kind had been a massive hit for Steven Spielberg, and Columbia Pictures were anxious to have a sequel. Spielberg wasn’t so keen.

However, he knew from bitter experience, that if he turned down the opportunity to make a sequel (Close Encounters of the Fourth Kind?) they might offer the film to another director. When he had declined to make Jaws 2, they gave the movie to Jeanot Swarc and the result was horrible.

So, Spielberg came up with Night Skies, a dramatization of the so-called ‘Kelly Hopkinsville Encounter’, a real-life farm that was, allegedly, besieged by aliens. The script aliens were lost on a strange planet and terrorized first the livestock and then the humans.

OK. Spielberg then announced he would produce, rather than direct.

Although Night Skies was roughly in the same ballpark as Close Encounters – i.e. they both featured aliens, it was definitely not a sequel, which, Spielberg hoped, would be enough to preserve the reputation of the first movie.

A rather dark script was written, and NASA announced that Spielberg had booked a slot on their next space flight from which to film the opening shots of earth from space.

Possibly because of Spielberg’s lack of enthusiasm for the project, however, Night Skies ultimately did not go ahead. However, it was not all bad news. The script inspired several other projects, including Critters, about livestock terrorizing aliens, which was not made by Spielberg, and ET, which was.

3 When The Source Material Isn’t Film Material

Adaptations are always tricky. An adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman was almost impossible. First there were the 75 comic books, none of which were traditional stories, and all of which would be extremely difficult to translate to film.

Roger Avary decided to try; he hired Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, the team that had created Pirates of the Caribbean, to write the screenplay based on the first two volumes of the graphic novel.

Roger Avary liked it.

Warner Bros didn’t.

The producer, Jon Peters, in particular, didn’t seem to understand the Sandman premise and kept asking for more traditional film tropes. Another draft was called for.

Another screenplay was produced, this time by William Farmer. This script went down slightly better, but the studios still had issues. Who is the bad guy? Where is the love interest?

At one stage the studio wanted superhero capes, fistfights and a plot based around the Y2K disaster theories.

Thankfully, the project was put on hold indefinitely.

Since then, the rights to Gaiman’s most famous work has been acquired by Netflix. It is hoped the TV format, combined with Netflix’s big budget productions will finally bring The Sandman to life.

2 Sometimes an idea is just too weird

We all love new innovations in movies. A new way of telling a story, a never-before-seen special effect, or a cool new stunt.

Sometimes, however, writers can get a bit carried away.

Take The Tourist, for instance.

Not the Johnny Depp-Angelina Jolie travelogue for Venice, but the screenplay written by Clair Noto in 1980 about a hidden world of alien refugees, living beneath Manhattan. It has been described as one of the most influential sci-fi movies ever.

Which is pretty impressive when you consider that it was never made.

HR Giger, the artist who helped bring Ridley Scott’s Alien to life, produced concept art for the screenplay, which was considered a hot property in Hollywood. Francis Ford Coppola signed on to produce the movie, which was described as a kind of alien-erotica

The studios were worried that alien-erotica, however, would be something of a niche market. Noto refused to compromise on the script, and the studio backed out. The screenplay has influenced a number of later sci-fi films, including, it is said, Blade Runner.

Meanwhile, Clair Noto has barely been heard of since.

1 When The Script Just Doesn’t Make Sense

In 1977, after Eraserhead was released to widespread, uh, acclaim, and its director David Lynch announced that his next film would be Ronnie Rocket, a movie inspired by his favorite 1950’s sci-fi movies.

The film is listed on IMDB as having been ‘in development’ ever since.

Lynch found it difficult to raise the money he needed for the project. Possibly, the problem was the script, which was certainly on the strange side. The elevator pitch would have gone something like this: “A detective is able to enter the Second Dimension, by standing on one leg. However, when he gets there, he is chased by Donut Men, and gets lost in a never-ending maze of rooms. The detective is chasing Ronnie Rocket, a teenage rock-star of small stature, and his tap-dancing girlfriend, who uses his ability to control electricity to make cool music and kill people.”

Right.

In an interview in 2012, Lynch said he was still considering Ronnie Rocket, but there were still a few things he “hadn’t figured out yet”.

Things like, what the hell is going on in this film?

10 Insane Sequels That Were Almost Released

About The Author: Ward Hazell is a freelance writer and travel writer, currently also studying for a PhD in English Literature.

A hoax is usually defined as a humorous deception. While people may set out to deceive for all sorts of reasons – money, pride, guilt, being just a few, the hoaxer’s motives are purer. They will spend days, sometimes years, perpetuating the hoax for their own private amusement.

Some hoaxers go to enormous trouble, time and money to really sell their hoax to their unsuspecting target. Unfortunately, when, inevitably perhaps, the joke is rumbled, the targets do not always appreciate the amount of effort that was put in.

Here are 10 hoaxes that were perpetrated, just for the fun of it.

See Also: 10 Viral Photos That Were Proven To Be Hoaxes

10 Martin Marty and Franz Bibfeldt

Franz Bibfeldt was, supposedly, a German theologian who had written extensively about the Year Zero, that in-between year when the old BC calendar ended, and the new AD calendar began. Bibfeldt’s 1927 PhD thesis has been cited extensively in a number of academic periodicals.

Which is strange, since he never wrote a PhD thesis.

In fact, Bibfeldt never wrote anything. He began life as a footnote in a college essay. Robert Clausen, with a deadline looming, invented Bibfeldt and quoted him in his essay, relying on the fact that his tutor wouldn’t check. His roommate, Martin Marty, thought the made-up name was funny, and the two began to cite him everywhere. They wrote about him in the college magazine, and placed orders for his books at the university bookshop (the request always came back as out of stock), and made loan requests at the library. (Same).

Since his first appearance, Franz Bibfeldt has been embraced by theologians with a sense of humor all around the world, although most enthusiastically in the Divinity School at The University of Chicago, where, coincidentally, Martin Marty taught for 35 years.

9 The Dreadnought Hoax

Virginia Woolf is not particularly remembered for her practical jokes. However, in 1910, she, along with several literary friends, dressed in exotic clothes, blacked their faces and blagged their way onto a famous British battleship.

The friends, all part of the Bloomsbury group of modernist writers, posed as the Abyssinian royal family, with Woolf’s brother playing the part of the Abyssinian emperor. To get into the role, the friends all learned a little Swahili. Unfortunately, Swahili was not the official, nor the unofficial, language of Abyssinia, now Ethiopia.

But points for trying.

The welcome committee seemed not to notice that these were white people in make-up, and gave the them the VIP tour of the battleship. They also failed to notice that the beard of one of the party wasn’t quite attached to his face, which was lucky. Luckier still, the beard fell off altogether just after they disembarked.
When the story broke, the Royal Navy were embarrassed and threatened to sue. In the end, they decided to let the matter quietly drop. Which was probably wise. After all, the ‘Abyssinian’s’ disguise was rather thin. And, while the group did take the trouble to learn Swahili, no one bothered to check how to spell Abyssinia when they wrote the memo telling the navy they were coming.

That should have tipped them off right there.

8 The Banana Skin Hoax

The 1960s was an era of peace, love and experimentation. In particular, experimentation with drugs. LSD was the drug of the moment, but, despite what legend would have us believe, it was not always readily available. Nor was it cheap.

A rumor began to spread that bananas had the same chemical ingredients as LSD, and so, with the right treatment, could be turned from humble fruit to fabulous hallucinogenic. Strangely, the rumor was given credence by the song Mellow Yellow, by Donovan, which was released at the same time. The lyrics, which Donovan claimed were about a yellow vibrator, accidentally and coincidentally could be interpreted as referring to the special properties of the ‘electrical banana’, which, Donovan said, ‘Is bound to be the very next phase’.

And it was.

While it is true that bananas did contain some of the ingredients of LSD, principally serotonin, the amounts were far to small to produce any effect on the smoker. The origin of the hoax is thought to have been the 1967 issue of a counterculture magazine called Berkeley Barb, where the Recipe of the Week explained how to prepare the banana skins. (Apparently, you only used the white underside of the banana skin, not the whole thing).

Within a few months, the story was accepted as fact, and stories about the properties of bananas were reported in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Another recipe for cooking the drug appeared in The Anarchist Handbook of 1970, showing that, despite the fact that smokers never got high, the rumor just would not quit.

In fact, the story still resurfaces regularly, despite the fact that it has been thoroughly debunked. No one seems to have gained from the hoax, except, perhaps, banana growers.

7 The Maggie Murphy Potato Hoax

Some hoaxes require elaborate planning. Others, not so much. Joseph B Swan preferred to go with the easy option. Swan was a farmer from Colorado, who, apparently, had a taste for practical jokes. And potatoes.

With the aid of the local newspaper, he persuaded the potato growing community that he had managed to grow 26,000 pounds of potatoes in a single year on one acre of land, with his special variety, called the Maggie Murphy.

Which is a lot of spuds.

Not only that, he said, but he managed to grow a giant potato, so large it weighed in at over 86 pounds.

The potato growing community is, it seems, skeptical by nature, and they wanted proof. Swan, and his reporter friend, decided to provide it, and a photograph of swan hefting an enormous potato over his shoulder went the 1895 equivalent of ‘viral’.

The photograph was reproduced all over the country, but some experts soon declared it to be faked. They were right. The ‘potato’ was, in fact, a piece of wood, specially carved for the purpose. This didn’t stop enthusiastic potato growers inundating Swan with letters begging for some of his special potato seed.

In the end, Swan got fed up with the whole joke, and informed the disappointed potato enthusiasts that the magnificent potato had been stolen, and he was going out of the spud business.

6 The Erotic Novel Hoax

There has always been an argument about what is, and what is not, good literature. When a book contains a lot of sex, the lines can be even more blurred
In an experiment to prove that even reputable publishing houses will publish any old rubbish as long as it contains steamy sex scenes, a group of 24 journalists from Newsday, led by columnist Mike McGrady, jointly wrote ‘Naked Came the Stranger’.

They deliberately wrote the novel badly, with wooden characters, rubbish dialogue and a ridiculous plot. But with lots and lots of gratuitous sex.

Not only was the novel picked up by a publisher, it was reviewed in reputable newspapers, including The New York Times, who failed to spot that it was a spoof. The book even became a best seller.

At which point, the purpose of the joke seemed to go awry a little.

McGrady and his colleagues revealed that the book was a hoax, which only further increased sales. The group ‘outed’ themselves on The David Frost’ show, following which the book spent 13 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller List.

A film of the same name, which had nothing to do with their book, but which piggy-backed off its notoriety, also followed.

The moral of the story seems to be, perhaps, that trying to define what ‘literature’ is, is an impossible task. Alternatively, it might just mean that people like mucky books.

Who can tell?

5 The Plainfield Teacher’s College Football Team

1941 was a good year for the Plainfield Teacher’s College Football Team.

Morris Newburger and his friends took an interest in college football, and would study the results, which were printed in the back of the New York newspapers.
One day, presumably when he had nothing much to do, Newburger took to wondering how the scores were gathered, and whether some of the more unlikely sounding colleges were actually real.

Which got him wondering further. What if someone sent in an imaginary score? Would the newspaper print it?

There was only one way to find out, so he called all the New York Times, the Herald Tribune, and every other New York paper he could think of. And he told them that Plainfield Teachers College had beaten Winona, 27-3.

That Sunday, the result was printed on the back page of the Herald Tribune. And all 11 other New York papers.

He didn’t stop there.

The following week Plainfield Teachers College won again, and Newburger and his friends phoned all the New York papers, and the papers in Philadelphia. Now the college was playing in 2 states.

Interest in the team grew, and Newburger had a phone line installed, especially for the college football team. They began writing press releases, acquired a nickname, and new school colors (mauve and purple. Ouch).

Then they invented their star player, Johnny Chung. Half Hawaiian, half Chinese, Chung was 6 foot 3 and weighed 212 pounds. They even gave details of his half time snack.

And they composed a song, largely ripped off from Cole Porter’s hit ‘You’re The Top’.

The friends hoped that Plainfield would finish the season undefeated, and they may have succeeded, except that Time magazine received a tip off about the hoax, and they published the story of how the newspapers had been duped

Newburger sent out one final press release to the New York and Philadelphia papers, saying ‘Due to flunkings in the midterm examinations, Plainfield Teachers has been forced to call off its last two scheduled games.’

No one printed it

4 The Chess Playing Automaton

The Mechanical Turk was, supposedly, a forerunner of Deep Blue, the chess playing supercomputer. The Turk, however, was built in the 18th Century and, if authentic, it was almost 2 centuries ahead of its time.

Of course, The Mechanical Turk was anything but authentic.

Billed as a machine that could beat the strongest chess player, the Turk was created by Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen, a Hungarian inventor, and was unveiled at the royal court in Vienna in 1770, for the amusement of the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. It continued to be exhibited occasionally for almost 100 years before it was destroyed in a fire. Napoleon is said to have played (and lost) against it. Ditto Benjamin Franklin and a Russian Czar.

In fact, the Turk won most of his games. Possibly because the player was put off by the strangeness of their opponent.

In fact, the Mechanical Turk was a complete illusion. A human chess player hid in a specially built space behind the ostentatious machinery. The interior of the machine was constructed to so that the audience believed that they were looking all the way through it, while in fact, the back of the machine had a secret compartment. The long robes of the automaton Turk concealed the door. A master chess player would simply hide inside the machine, and play against their opponent, who was usually so unnerved that he lost quickly.

Which is just as well because the cavity in which the hidden player sat was small and very uncomfortable.

3 The Dictionary Hoax

Lexicographers and logologists are not renowned for their abilities as pranksters. Rupert Hughes was obviously an exception. He compiled the Music-Lovers Encyclopedia, which was published a number of times between 1905 and 1956.

The final entry in the encyclopedia was ZZXJOANW, which, he said, was pronounced ‘Shaw’ and was defined as a Maori word meaning ‘Drum’ or ‘Fife’.

Which was odd.

The entry remained in the encyclopedia for 70 years before anyone realized quite how odd. The Maori language has 14 letters, which does not include either Z or X. Maori words also always end in a vowel.

Whatever ever else the word might mean, it was extremely unlikely that it was a Maori word meaning drum.

The compiler of a musical encyclopedia would probably also have been aware that Maoris do not use drums in their traditional music.

There have been lots of theories about the entry (the discovery of which came too late for anyone to question the author), but it is entirely possible that they merely wanted to send kisses to someone named Joan Shaw.

Which, if true, is kind of nice.

2 The Science Fair Hoax

Most Science Fair projects are a bit boring. A baking soda volcano, or invisible ink, powering your alarm clock with a potato (great excuse for being late for class), or growing crystals are the usual sorts of things you will find in a school science fair.

In 1997, however, Nathan Zohner decided to think bigger. His Science Fair Project was, he said, an investigation into that dangerous chemical compound dihydrogen monoxide, or DHMO.

He gave 50 of his fellow students a copy of a report entitled “Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Unrecognized Killer”, in which he accurately listed the dangers of DHMO. If ingested it could cause excessive urination, bloating, sweating or even death. It is also known to be a major component of Acid Rain, and was so strong it could even cause metal corrosion.

Based on this information, Zohner’s classmates voted to ban DHMO.

Or water, as it is also called.

It turned out, Nathan Zohner’s Science Fair Project was not called “Dihydrogen Monoxide: The Unrecognized Killer”, it was called, “How Gullible Are We?”, and was an investigation into the lack of critical thinking in our responses to what we perceive to be scientific fact.

He took first prize.

1 Johann Beringer’s Lying Stones

Dr Johann Berringer was Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Würzburg in Germany in 1725, and was known to be just a little bit pompous. Which is perhaps why his colleagues decided to prank him.

Berringer had a particular interest in ‘lapides figurati’, stones which had formed naturally into recognizable images. His colleagues ‘planted’ a large number of stones. A very large number. In all, over 2000 stones were ‘discovered’ in 6 months, to Berringer’s great delight, and to the particular amusement of 2 of his colleagues

The joke soured, somewhat, when Berringer decided to write a book about his finds. His collection included stones in the shape of insects, small animals, astronomical features, and even a Hebrew text which spelled out the name ‘Jehovah’, which you might think would have tipped him off.

It didn’t.

He published Lithographiae Wirceburgensis in 1726, in which he wrote “The figures expressed on these stones, especially those of insects, are so exactly fitted to the dimensions of the stones, that one would swear that they are the work of a very meticulous sculptor. For there is scarcely one in which the dimensions of the figure are not commonly commensurate to the length and breadth of the tablet.”

Still didn’t twig.

In short, Johann Berringer was well and truly had. His colleagues, realizing that the joke had gone too far, tried to dissuade him from publishing, without acknowledging what they had done. They pointed out that some of the stones bore what looked uncannily like chisel-marks, but Berringer asserted that any chisel must have been wielded by God himself.

His colleague’s apparent skepticism, mixed with Berringer’s own pomposity, was a fatal combination and he published, only to become a laughing stock.

When he finally realized what had happened, Berringer sued his 2 colleagues, and the resulting scandal ruined the careers of all 3 of them

About The Author: Ward Hazell is a freelance writer and travel writer, currently also studying for a PhD in English Literature

City, suburb, farmlands, repeat. The world we’ve built for ourselves can be awfully dull and repetitive. Sure, there are some incredible mountains and rivers, and the world’s coasts aren’t half bad, but then you remember that Fresno, California exists.

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a bit of strangeness in our environment? A little something out of the ordinary to renew your faith in the Cosmic Jester?

If you answered “Yes,” this list will be for you. If “no” was your answer, and you’re happy with the drudgery and the liminality of your cookie-cutter world, just remember one thing: there’s a place on our planet where a waterfall falls horizontally. Don’t you want to see that?

Related: 10 Curious Facts Involving Canyons And Mountains

10 The Stunningly Beautiful “Zone Of Death”

If you have an interest in the natural world, this place is for you. If you have an interest in those stocking stuffer books of weird laws that never got repealed in some U.S. states, this place is for you. If both apply, buy a yurt and move here.

There is a curious strip of land in Idaho’s portion of Yellowstone National Park where laws don’t act in the way they should. The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed….”

Cool, but what happens when the crime is committed in the “Zone of Death,” a place where Wyoming has sole jurisdiction? If, say, a murder is committed there, the defendant would have to stand trial in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Yet, the crime was(technically) committed in Idaho. The wording of the Sixth stipulates “State” as well as “district.” So the rights of the accused would be violated by transporting them for trial beyond the state in which the crime was committed.

This is technically the case but practically untrue—the loophole has been “debunked” several times but (thankfully) never put to the test. The scenery is lovely there, though.^[1]

9 Falling Across

If you’ve ever been to a particularly touristy waterfall, you will have noticed the preponderance of guard rails and fencing all around. These are here for obvious safety reasons. Most other falls that attract the masses are usually precluded from the requirement for rails by the environment—only accessible by boat, the top is hard to get to, etc. What would you do, however, with a highly popular waterfall that doesn’t “fall”?

Among Australia’s more odd natural wonders is Garaanngaddim, aka the “Horizontal Falls,” in the Kimberly region of Western Australia. This is a fascinating place where the waters of Buccaneer Bay rush (imperceptibly) downward through a very narrow gorge. This causes the water to seemingly form rapids for no good physical reason, given that the incline cannot be seen among the frothing waters. If you’ve ever wanted to sail across a waterfall, this is a place you can do it…but you should probably lay off the entheogens too.^[2]

8 The Least Rainy Place on Earth

Nobody likes a rainy day. Even people who say they do are lying. You can’t go out unless you don some hydrophobic robe and hold a stick with a hexagon of material on the end above your head. The light disappears and lowers your mood, and the chances of all manner of devastating weather-based catastrophes occurring increase sevenfold—cars don’t skid on sunshine, and nowhere was ever flooded by a gentle breeze. Rain sucks.

So why hasn’t mankind moved to the areas of Earth where it rains the least? Because they suck worse, that’s why. Take the McMurdo Dry Valleys. There has been no rainfall there for two million years, making this one of the world’s most extreme deserts. But fret not, should you find yourself there, there’s a lovely big lake named Lake Vida. Except it’s a hypersaline lake. And constantly under ice. Yeah, this place is in Antarctica. No chance of sunstroke, at least.^[3]

7 The Islands That Are 21 Hours and 2 Miles Apart

These islands are an example of how mankind makes a lot of perfectly normal things in the natural world perfectly weird. The invention and implementation of time zones have done a lot for our species—reliable hours for work, allowing international travelers to accurately measure how many Xanax to take on a flight, and no more looking up at the sun to determine what time it is at the expense of your eyesight.

But there are downsides: some stubborn governments insist on keeping one unified time zone for the whole nation despite being big enough to warrant several (China), and certain Polynesian people get the unearned, grossly unfair benefit of ringing in the new year before everyone else.

Perhaps the most ridiculous example of this is the Diomede Islands, two small islands that are slap bang in the middle of the Bering Strait. Big Diomede is part of Russia, Little Diomede the USA. They are, as the title of this entry suggests, two-ish miles apart. However, due to the international date line, they are 21 hours apart. If you live on Big Diomede but have a pressing business meeting on Little Diomede, you can get there on a speed boat in an hour or so and be there yesterday and return the same day…which will then be tomorrow, Mr. McFly.^[4]

6 The (Slightly More) Leaning Tower of East Frisia

Yes, this medieval tower is on a more pronounced lean than its far more famous cousin in Pisa, Italy. Despite this accolade, the Italian tower is far more photographed, visited, and celebrated. Where’s the justice? Found in the village of Suurhusen, this leaning steeple was erected in the Middle Ages. The foundation was made with oak trunks that shifted considerably after the groundwater drained in the 19th century, causing the wonderful wonk. It beats that flashy, do-nothing tower in Italy.

But there is a problem.

Despite beating its more famous cousin, this isn’t the “most leaning” building on Earth. That accolade was given to the Capital Gate Tower in Abu Dhabi by the Guinness Book of World records in 2010, noting that the 18-degree lean was greater than that of the tower in Suurhusen. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the tower in the UAE was specifically built that way. It didn’t “earn” it like the leaning tower of East Frisia. Cheaters.^[5]

5 Dune Skiing…Followed by a Pint of Beer

You pop on your goggles, clip into your ski boots, adjust your camo shorts, and apply a last blob of sunscreen. The dune is tall; the slope is perfect for some high-speed shredding. You realize that all those people freezing their butts off in various snowy resorts are idiots compared to sand skiers and boarders like you. But where in the world are you? Egypt? The Negev? The Gobi?

Nope. You’re in Bavaria. Germany.

Nestled among the beautiful countryside is the town of Hirschau, a place where kaolinite was mined for the porcelain industry during the 1800s. A by-product of this was quartz sand—tons of the stuff. Enough, in fact, to make a mountain. Monte Kaolino. The massive mound is now a mecca for skiers who fancy a day on the slopes in the middle of July.

So next time you’re dragged to a stuffy antique dealership and forced to look at pastille-painted porcelain figurines of cows and beggar boys, just remember that one of the coolest resorts on Earth was formed as a by-product of that precious quaint crap.^[6]

4 Dåeeìýooöô

TV news networks have a few tried and tested segments they will run whenever there is a slow news day—somebody did something nice for charity, a pet has done something that animals don’t usually do, some kids have done something kids don’t usually do, and every once in a while, some cultural quirk from a far-flung corner of the world becomes relevant to the locale in question. A local man has learned Igbo in order to converse with staff at his local Nigerian restaurant in their mother tongue. A lady in Denver has returned from visiting a McDonald’s in every country the chain has a branch. And then there are the “Languages other than English are weird” sections…

You’ll see little titbits about the place in North Wales that’s incredibly long (*Author’s note* As a proud Welsh speaker, I can, of course, say Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch) or that place in New Zealand (Taumatawhakatangi­hangakoauauotamatea­turipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhen­uakitanatahu) pop up quite regularly in bland YouTube travel vlogs or local news shows.

But there are a number of places on earth that do the opposite; they have one-letter names. The title of this entry contains them all. From a windswept island off the coast of Scotland, a mountain in Hokkaido, and various small settlements across Scandinavia, one-letter places are varied in their characteristics, some mundane, some stunningly beautiful, some weird as hell.

Take the river D in Oregon. The City of Lincoln fought a decades-long battle with the Guinness Book of World Records to get their waterway recognized as the shortest (not only by name but by length—a reputed 120 feet—claiming that the Roe River in Montana was lying. In 2006, the book dropped the record altogether, allowing D-lovers to claim a moral, scorched earth victory. This may be how the next civil war begins…^[7]

3 This Region Is in Uzbekistan…Which Is in Kyrgyzstan…Populated by Tajiks…

Landlocked nations, exclaved regions, and partially recognized states are fascinating. All over the world map, you’ll see countries like Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Kosovo, which are disputed. You’ll also see little countries like Lesotho, which are entirely surrounded by another country—“You want to cross the border? Welcome to South Africa.” There are bits of India floating in a sea of Bangladesh and vice versa.

Perhaps the most fascinating anomaly in this weird geography space is the So’x (Sokh) District of Uzbekistan. It lies near the borders of Tajikistan and its official nation of Uzbekistan yet is completely surrounded by Kyrgyzstan. Almost all the people that live in this district of Uzbekistan that is surrounded by Kyrgyzstan are Tajiks. Imagine a small village in Cornwall that is officially part of Sweden but entirely populated by Swiss people—that’d be where all the chocolate-covered herring pasties are found.^[8]

Anyone hungry?

2 The Lake Where Jellyfish Live up to Their Name

On the tiny island of Eil Malk in the Pacific nation of Palau, there is a marine lake. It’s called Ongeim’l Tketau in the Palauan language. This means “Fifth Lake.” In English, it is known as “Jellyfish Lake” because, well, check the video. There’s a ton of the nasty little buggers, all floating and bobbing around, ready to sting any unlucky swimmer looking to cool off in the burning Pacific heat. Doesn’t it give you the creeps? Imagine the amount of pee you’d need to be sprayed on you back on the shore…

It shouldn’t—these jellyfish—the “Golden Jellyfish”—have been so isolated from their former home in the ocean that they have evolved. Due to the lack of predators, these formerly stingy blobsters have shed their clubs and, therefore, most of their toxic clout. So, they won’t harm you. But hungry saltwater crocs are swimming about. And a layer of highly toxic hydrogen sulfide about 15 meters (50 feet) below the lake’s surface that’ll absorb into your skin and kill you up nice and quick.^[9]

Maybe go to Disneyland again.

1 Boston, Schmoston! Milwaukee…

Zilwaukee!

This little city in the great state of Michigan is built on lies. Lies and deception. That’s according to a local legend regarding the provenance of the city’s name. When Daniel and Solomon Johnson from New York settled in the area, they built a sawmill. Over time, the settlement grew and became stable. But the place couldn’t develop past being a sleepy backwater with a lucrative mill. Immigrants searching for a place to lay down some roots were called to the big cities—St. Louis, Baltimore, Chicago.

And Milwaukee.

So, as the story goes, the town was named “Zilwaukee”’ in order to trick unwitting settlers into coming to their little corner of Michigan instead of making the trek to Wisconsin. Who likes power tools and cheese that much anyway?

Despite the lack of solid evidence that this legend is true, the locals seem to cling to it regardless. Perhaps the city’s motto should be “Ha! Fooled you, suckers!” and the city anthem should just be a massively blown raspberry.^[10]