They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for some lucky and daring photographers, that picture can be worth $15,000 and some serious notoriety. The Pulitzer Prize for photography has existed in various forms since 1942, and the award has been given to photographers of some of the most important images ever recorded.

While most pictures tell a tale, the ones chosen for the award often have stories of their own that explain why or how the image was taken. These 10 stand above the rest as some of the most important Pulitzer Prize–winning pictures ever taken. (The year of the award appears below the title or description of the photo.)

10 Firing Squad In Iran
1980

Jahangir Razmi’s provocative photograph, Firing Squad in Iran, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980, but Razmi didn’t receive the credit he deserved until 2006. The picture was taken on August 27, 1979, but it was published anonymously in the Iranian daily newspaper Ettela’at. Razmi was the only photographer to receive a Pulitzer Prize anonymously, but he had good reason to keep his name out of the papers alongside his intense photograph.

The picture captures the moment when a group of Kurdish militants were executed at the Sanandaj airport. Eleven prisoners were charged with firearm trafficking, inciting riots, and murder in a 30-minute trial. Their execution was carried out immediately afterward.

Razmi followed the condemned men outside where they were quickly put in place for execution. His picture captured a moment when some in the firing squad had fired and some hadn’t. Razmi’s name was protected by the publisher to ensure the photographer’s safety from government reprisal. In 2006, Razmi finally revealed that he was the photographer in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.^[1]

9 Fire Escape Collapse
1976

The 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography went to Stanley Forman for his picture titled Fire Escape Collapse. Forman captured the moment when a woman and a child fell from a collapsed fire escape in Boston on July 22, 1975. The two victims were 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her goddaughter, two-year-old Tiare Jones.

Bryant died as a result of the collapse, which occurred when a turntable ladder on a fire engine was being extended to save them at a height of approximately 15 meters (50 ft). Miraculously, Jones was saved when she landed on Bryant’s body.

When Forman arrived on the scene, he put himself in a position where he could capture what appeared to be the start of a daring rescue. Firefighter Bob O’Neil was in the process of reaching Bryant and Jones when the fire escape suddenly gave way beneath them.

Forman continued to shoot the images as the fall took place but realized that he “didn’t want to see them hit the ground.” So he turned away at the last moment. The photograph was also recognized as the World Press Photo of the Year.^[2]

8 The Murder Of Heather Heyer
2018

In 2017, Ryan Kelly was working his final day at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Virginia. On that day, a protest was carried out in the city over plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

During the demonstration, a man who had ties to a white supremacist movement drove his car into a group of counterprotesters. That attack led to the death of Heather Heyer. It also won Kelly the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2018 for his untitled photograph showing the moment when Heyer and around 35 others were struck.^[3]

After heading outside, Kelly began taking long-shot photographs of the march. But as soon as a car began to barrel down the road, the journalist in him kicked in and he captured the moment that led to Heyer’s death.

The picture became emblematic of the demonstrations taking place across the country and the racial tensions spreading throughout. Kelly had already accepted a new position as the social media manager for a local brewery but opted to remain in the office to help out in case the Unite The Right rally got out of hand.

7 Lone Jewish Woman
2007

Oded Balilty was working for the Associated Press when he was told to photograph a group of Jewish settlers protesting against Israeli security forces in the West Bank. The picture was taken on February 1, 2006, and Balilty was later chosen as the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner in Breaking News Photography for snapping the image.

As of this writing, Balilty is the only Israeli photographer to be honored with the award, although he has been nominated twice in this category. For this shot, Balilty was on the scene in the settlement of Amona, east of Ramallah, when he noticed a single woman standing up to a flood of security forces by herself.

He quickly took the photograph of the woman’s resistance against the forces advancing on her position. Although as many as 200 people were injured while resisting the Israeli security forces during the clearing of the settlement, this one woman became the defining symbol of opposition against the government in Israel. Not only did the photo capture the intensity of the moment but of the entire situation as well.^[4]

6 Burst Of Joy
1974

Slava “Sal” Veder was working for the Associated Press when he covered the return of Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Stirm at Travis Air Force Base in California. Stirm had been held as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese for more than five years. He was greeted on the tarmac by his 15-year-old daughter (center) and the rest of his family. The photograph truly captured a moment of joy as his daughter rushed to see the father she had lost more than five years earlier.

When the Burst of Joy photographer was chosen to receive the Pulitzer Prize in 1974, copies of the picture were made and sent to each family member in the photograph. Now adults, the children display their copies proudly in their homes.^[5]

Unseen in the picture is the anguish felt by Stirm who had received a “Dear John” letter only three days before he arrived. He and his wife divorced within a year, but the photograph stands as a beautiful depiction of a soldier returning from war to a loving family.

5 The Terror Of War
1973

Napalm was used throughout the Vietnam War. Although intended to be a defoliant, it was often used against enemies and civilians alike. When such an event occurred on June 8, 1972, Huynh Cong Ut, professionally known as Nick Ut, was there to document one of the most harrowing stories of the war.

The picture was taken as a group of terrified children ran down Route 1 near Trang Bang village following a napalm attack against a suspected Vietcong safe haven. Featured prominently in the photograph is nine-year-old Kim Phuc whose nudity triggered Facebook’s content censor back in 2016.

Despite the eventual censorship from Facebook, The Terror of War was chosen for the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography as well as the World Press Photo of the Year. Not only did Ut take the iconic photograph, but he also rushed the young girl to the hospital. There, she was saved despite having sustained burns to more than 30 percent of her body.^[6]

4 Saigon Execution
1969

On February 1, 1968, South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, who was the chief of the national police at the time, executed a Vietcong officer named Nguyen Van Lem. Loan carried out the execution on the streets of Saigon in plain view of anyone who happened to be watching. This included NBC’s television cameramen and Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams, who took this iconic photograph.

Immediately after shooting the man in the head, the general walked over to the reporters and plainly said, “These guys kill a lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me.”

Adams’s photo immediately became a symbol of the brutality of the ongoing conflict. But there was far more going on before that image was taken than was widely known at the time.

The executed man was the leader of a “revenge squad” and had killed dozens of unarmed civilians earlier that day. Despite this, the imagery of his execution haunted Adams, who regretted taking the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph. “The general killed the Vietcong; I killed the general with my camera.”^[7]

3 Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima
1945

There are many photos of soldiers fighting in World War II. But the image that became the iconic representation of the American fighting spirit was taken by Joe Rosenthal at the top of Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945.

The photograph was taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima about 90 minutes after a smaller flag was raised on the mountain. The image was so popular throughout the United States that it became synonymous with American pride and the Marine Corps’ fighting spirit.

A sculpture of the event was made into the Marine Corps War Memorial located in Arlington Ridge Park. Rosenthal took photographs throughout the war, but this image is his best known. He received little money for his work but has since been honored for his contributions.

Following his death, he was posthumously awarded the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award by the United States Marine Corps. Sig Gissler, an administrator for the Pulitzer Prizes for Columbia University, once said, “Of all the images that have captured Pulitzer Prizes, none is more memorable than Joe Rosenthal’s raising of the flag on Iwo Jima.”^[8]

2 Victim Of The Oklahoma City Bombing
1996

The Oklahoma City bombing was the most devastating case of homegrown terrorism that the United States has ever seen. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City resulted in the deaths of 168 people.

This tragedy was particularly devastating due to the presence of a day care center in the building which had 15 of the 19 child victims of the attack. Though the bombing and its aftermath were well-documented at the time, the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph by Charles Porter IV serves as a haunting reminder of the terror caused that day.

Taken on April 19, 1995, the photograph shows a fireman holding the body of a severely wounded infant in his hands. Porter was not a photographer covering the event but happened to have a camera on him.

He worked as a credit officer at Liberty Bank when the bombing occurred. As he was an aspiring journalist who was taught to “keep a loaded camera in my car at all times,” he was ready and able to snap the photograph that earned him the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Spot News Photography.^[9]

1 The Vulture And The Little Girl
1994

Of all the Pulitzer Prize–winning photographs, The Vulture and the Little Girl serves as the one with the most tragic story. Kevin Carter took this picture—which appeared in The New York Times on March 26, 1993—to document the situation going on in Sudan at that time.

The child, who is a boy but was believed to be a girl at the time, was struggling to reach a United Nations feeding center when he collapsed, weak from starvation. Carter took the picture of the emaciated toddler with a vulture standing nearby and received the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1994.

The image immediately evoked harsh criticism of Carter, whom many condemned for taking a picture instead of helping the child. Four months after receiving the Pulitzer, Carter committed suicide. The psychological trauma he suffered from witnessing such hardship accompanied by the criticism he received for covering it pushed him to end his own life.

Bishop Desmond Tutu wrote of Carter’s suicide, “And we know a little about the cost of being traumatized that drove some to suicide, that, yes, these people were human beings operating under the most demanding of conditions.”^[10]

Jonathan is a graphic artist, illustrator, and writer. He is a retired soldier and enjoys researching and writing about history, science, theology, and many other subjects.

Throughout history, human hair has been the subject of much vanity, research, and stereotyping. Hair traits and associated medical and social implications influence our perceptions of each other and ourselves. In this sometimes hair-raising account, we explore some of the most fascinating facts in the study of human hair.

10Melanesian Blondes

Blond hair is usually seen as synonymous with Caucasian people. However, blond hair actually also regularly occurs among the Melanesian people of New Guinea and some Pacific islands. Melanesian blond hair is curly, and while it appears straw-colored, it is actually associated with a completely different gene than the blond hair common to Europeans. In addition, this very different version of blond hair is not correlated with blue eyes (the Melanesians also aren’t subject to the stereotypes that plague Caucasian blonds). The blond hair is based on a genetic mutation that affects amino acid patterns. Genetically related, but long separate, Australian Aborigines may also exhibit blond hair.

9The Not-So-Naked Ape

While proud of not being covered in “primitive” fur, humans also sport the dubious nickname of “The Naked Ape.” Chimpanzees, our closest living relatives, appear to be covered in hair compared to us. However, human body hair is actually present in approximately the same density as chimpanzees per square inch. While this might seem unbelievable, your experience is based on visual perception. Only the most significant, thickest, and boldest of human body hairs are readily visible, creating a false impression. If you take a magnifying glass to any part of your body, you will find a multitude of fine, pale hairs, which are hard to see regardless of your hair type. These hairs add up to equal the hair count of our coarser-haired primate relatives.

8Blonde Women Have More Estrogen

Hair color might not instinctively seem applicable as an indicator of human traits. However, hair color is an outward indicator and genetic phenotype component that means different things according to the gender of the person bearing it. For example, blondes are sometimes perceived as especially feminine. In fact, scientific investigation indicates that blondes have higher levels of estrogen than other females.

Blondes may thus have finer features and a more “youthful” personality than darker-haired women. Surprisingly, blond hair does not seem to relate as much, if at all, to male hormone levels, although more research could always uncover surprises. Both male and female blonds have more hair, with an average of 130,000 hairs, compared to 100,000 for brunettes and 80,000 for redheads.

7Redheads Get Hurt Easily

Redheads are often stereotyped as hot-tempered. While the jury may still be out on that particular personality trait, the science is fairly strong on the fact that redheads are definitely prone to getting sore—referring, of course, to how they perceive pain. Dentists and scientific researchers have noted that natural redheads are in fact more sensitive to pain than blonds or brunettes.

At the same time, redheads are hit with an unfair and ironic combination—they are less sensitive to the effects of painkillers than blonds or brunettes. Redheads often avoid going to the dentist, and it turns out that a dose of painkillers 20 percent higher than the norm may be needed to properly inhibit their pain reception, according to a study recently published in the British Medical Journal. Redheads are also more susceptible to skin cancer, and, oddly, never develop gray hair. Redheads may eventually turn blondish, and then pure white.

6Blonds Are Behind In Britain

British people, descended to a fair extent from Germanic and other European mainland ancestors, boast a high percentage of blonds (male) and blondes (female). While blond jokes have often targeted females, male British blonds seem to be subject to some, possibly discriminatory, variable that is restricting their professional success. A recent study in the UK looked at the possibility of discrimination against blond males in a sample of 500 CEOs from the London Financial Times Stock Exchange. Chi square statistical analysis revealed that only 25 CEOs (five percent) had blond hair. Since 25 percent of the UK population is naturally blond, this indicates a noticeable under-representation of blonds in the upper echelons of British corporations. However, redheads, who make up only one percent of the UK population, were over-represented, comprising a surprising five percent of CEOs.

5The Science Of The Beard

Beards have been celebrated as among the most distinguished male traits, although ironically they may also be perceived by some as unprofessional or informal. The science is even more interesting than the complicated sociology of beards. There are actually two types of human hair. Fine, sometimes nearly invisible, strands known as vellus hairs cover much of the human body. The more limited in extent, but far more prominent, terminal hair is found on our heads.

Facial and chest hair in men and pubic hair in both sexes is also terminal hair, making it the same type as our head hair rather than the rest of our body hair. Strongly pigmented and relatively coarse, the terminal beard hair becomes thicker in men due to testosterone. Now that we understand beards, we’ve discovered that these aspects of male beauty are also strikingly practical. Scientific research indicates that bearded men receive only a third of sun-related radiation on the areas protected by facial hair as compared to bare skin. This may reduce skin cancer risks.

4Legally Blonde, Smoking Brunettes

The comedy Legally Blonde humorously plays off the term “Legally Blind,” but research shows the ideas may unfortunately go together on a deeper level. Blonds, especially blonde females, are more susceptible to age-related macular degeneration compared to redheads or brunettes. The eye condition can cause serious visual impairment, but proper nutrition from dietary vegetable intake, along with the use of sunglasses, may help to stave it off. Blonds of both genders, like redheads, are more susceptible to skin cancer, and will often burn more quickly in sunlight. On the subject of hair color and cancer, brunettes are more prone to non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Surprisingly, smoking addiction is more likely to affect brunettes, as their higher overall melanin content prevents their liver from metabolizing nicotine effectively.

3Learning Disabilities And Hair Color

Blond hair and blue eyes might be seen as a striking combination, but they could also be correlated with an increased incidence of certain medical conditions. In a study of 50 learning disabled children, 20 percent were blond. However, only 11 percent of non-disabled children were blond. The blond hair and blue eyes combination is also often seen in patients affected by phenylketonuria, where phenylalanine builds up in the body. Behan et al. (1985) suggest a higher rate of blue-eyed blonds in the dyslexic population (they were also more likely to be left-handed). Another study noted a slightly increased incidence of learning disabilities reported by blond professionals. It is believed that melanin may play a role in the development of neural circuits, and some blonds may be more subject to certain conditions as a result of their reduced melanin levels.

2Eyelash Hair Mites

While head lice are unfortunately an all-too-familiar concern, the apparently sparse eyelash hairs are the last of the human hair zones you’d examine for parasites. But while the other entries on this list tend to focus more on genetics, we must cover the unsettling fact that humans frequently have tiny, wormlike mites living in their eyelash follicles. The mites feed on waste products, including sebum, which is the only possible potential benefit to their hosts—who include nearly all humans. Rates of colonization increase with age. Eyeliner or mascara use may also increase their numbers, and overpopulation could force out an eyelash by loosening the follicle. Eyelash mite infestations can also lead to discharges, with impaired vision and eyelash loss in severe cases. Either way, being host to eyelash mites is one of the more bizarre and unexpected elements of the human condition.

1Baldness Is Linked To Heart Disease

The loss of hair, whether as a result of a medical condition or aging, is often a great source of concern. It is usually males who go bald, while women almost always keep their hair, a fact related to testosterone levels. Baldness might seem cosmetic, but a recent medical study of 40,000 men has linked balding to a much greater risk of coronary heart disease. The risk of heart disease in men with male pattern baldness was found to be 70 percent greater than in non-balding males. Different levels of baldness carried differing risk levels, from 18 percent at mild to 48 percent for serious balding. The correlation between top of the head baldness and heart disease is believed to relate to multiple factors, potentially including insulin and hormone-related variables. Interestingly, a receding hairline and hair-loss away from the top of the head was not associated with heart disease.

Ron Harlan investigates the mysteries of nature, the human body, and the bizarre findings that often crop up on this planet. He is a freelance writer, researcher and graduate student of sciences at Royal Roads University.

Much of archaeology involved digging for small artifacts to piece together a picture of life in the past, but occasionally, much bigger finds occur. When enormous ancient ruins are discovered, it’s always exciting for those who wish to know our history, and these sorts of discoveries have been made all over the world.

10 The Temple Of Pan

Archaeologists excavating the ancient city of Hippos in Northern Israel found a large bronze mask depicting the Greek god Pan. Additionally, an enormous entrance to a large stone building was found, and it’s believed to be the remains of a temple compound dedicated to Pan. The temple compound itself dates to the time of the Roman emperor Hadrian (around AD 117–138) and was located just outside the city limits, similar to other locations dedicated to Pan.

Pan was the mischievous half-man, half-goat deity who represented shepherds, and celebrations for the god were known to get out of hand. Often, worship took the form of ecstatic rituals including drinking wine and dancing nude. Due to the nature of the rituals for the wild god, celebrations were held outside the city in rustic settings like a cave or a forest, but a temple outside the city could also work.

9 The Petra Monument

Petra has been an important archaeological site for centuries, but an entirely new discovery has recently been made in the area—a massive monument that was found by satellites. A raised platform the length of an Olympic-sized swimming pool, it has no known parallels to any other structure in Petra. The site, now a tourist attraction, was once a bustling caravan city at the crossroads of the world.

Since Petra was first mapped in 1812, ancient structures have been found in what was its urban core, but this monument had remained obscure until now. When it still stood, the monument would have been built as a raised platform with a small building on top surrounded by a massive facade. Pottery found near the monument indicates that it was built during the city’s early years as part of a public building program.

8 The Goliath Gates

The Bible makes frequent mentions of the Philistines throughout the Old Testament, but proof of the Philistines’ existence remained elusive for years. In 2015, an excavation in modern-day Israel uncovered the massive gates that would have been the entrance to the famed biblical metropolis of Gath. The gates were dubbed “the Goliath Gates” due to their enormous size.

During biblical times, Gath would have been one of the largest cities in the region, so it isn’t much of a stretch to believe that it would have been an intimidating regional power. The ruins of Gath have been investigated on and off since around 1899, but it was only in recent years that the sheer size of the city has been recognized. The newly unearthed monumental gates illustrate even more clearly how impressive Gath once was.

7 ‘Superhenge’

Just 3.2 kilometers (2 mi) away from Stonehenge lies a stone monument 15 times the size of its more famed neighbor. Located at Durrington Walls in Great Britain, “Superhenge’s” origins are just as murky and obscure as Stonehenge’s. Unlike Stonehenge, Superhenge is no longer visible above ground, but the buried stones uncovered in 2015 provide a clear picture of how it once appeared. The stones would have stood around 4.5 meters (15 ft) high when it was built during the Neolithic period.

For some unknown reason, the stones fell over around 4,500 years ago and were then buried. Inside of the henge, smaller, timber-ringed circles have been discovered. There has been only one stone taken from the site—the so called “cuckoo stone,” which was built from sarson stones, the same stones quarried for Stonehenge.

Because of its close proximity and similar qualities to Stonehenge, Superhenge is believed to be related in some way, although we can only guess about its true purpose due to lack of historical records.

6 Gigantic Aztec Skull Rack

A gruesome find from the time of the Aztecs was partially uncovered behind a colonial-era cathedral in Mexico City. Known as a skull rack, or tzompantli, the massive wooden structure would have served to shock and awe anyone arriving in the Aztec capital. Built between 1485 and 1502, the skull rack stood 35 meters (115 ft) tall and was 12 meters (40 ft) wide—an imposing sight for sure.

The rack would have held hundreds of skulls, many of which were obtained through human sacrifice. The skulls, bleached white for preservation, weren’t of ordinary people; they were enemy warriors who were captured and decapitated. The skull rack would have been symbolic of two important characteristics of of the Aztecs—war and spiritualism.

5 Ancient Welsh Bridge

In 2012, one of the most unique archaeological finds in Europe was uncovered. The remains of three timber logs that were placed together were found in Monmouth, Wales. The logs were enormous in length and were likely created from whole tree trunks cut in half. At first, it was believed that the timbers were just ancient sleeper beams, but when researchers realized that the area where the timber logs were found was once a lake, they began to theorize that it may have been a bridge to an artificial island in the middle of the lake.

The lake was eventually filled entirely with silt, burying the timber beams along with it. At its oldest, the bridge could have been built during the Bronze Age around 4,000 years ago, but a more likely date places it during the Iron Age. There were other uses for the structure; remains of burnt charcoal were found underneath the bridge, suggesting that there was some kind of trough for heating water.

4 The Roman Villa At Wilshire

In 2016, construction workers digging in the backyard of a residential home in Wilshire, England, uncovered an intricate red, white, and blue mosaic. It soon became clear that the property was built atop a massive Roman villa. The mosaic dated to sometime between AD 175 and 220.

The villa was spacious and luxurious, suggesting that it was built for someone of great importance and standing in Roman-era Britain. It was once three stories high and contained 20 to 25 rooms before it was knocked down around 1,400 years ago. The Wilshire villa has allowed historians a glimpse of life for the Roman aristocrats who occupied Britain and is one of the most important finds in Great Britain.

3 Neanderthal Cave Circles

Inside Bruniquel cave in Southern France, hundreds of carved stalagmites can be found jutting from the cave floor. The cave was originally found in 1990 but remained closed off until 2013. Researchers were finally able to examine the mysterious circles constructed from the stalagmites. The stalagmite circles are notable because there is evidence that they were altered and used by early men for heat, lighting, and cooking.

It was believed that they had been built around 40,000 years ago, but carbon dating places them at an astonishing 165,000 years old. The only species in the area at that time were the Neanderthals, once thought to be brutish and unintelligent. The 400 elaborate stone stalagmite structures tell a different story. The Neanderthals apparently possessed sufficient knowledge and cunning to create such elaborate constructions.

2 The Ancient Greek Naval Base

Thousands of years ago the bustling port city of Athens, Greece, began to prepare for war against the encroaching Persian Empire by building hundreds of triremes (ships with three oar banks). Those ships were housed in a massive naval base. It has taken over a decade to fully study the remains of the base, and it is clear that the structure would have been one of the largest buildings in the world at the time of its completion.

Due to highly polluted waters, there was very little visibility when divers tried to investigate the site, so research progressed slowly, but we now have enough information to make an educated guess as to the purpose of structure. Built between 520 and 480 BC, the naval yard existed around the time of one if the most pivotal naval battles in Greek history—the Battle of Salamis. It is believed that many of the ships at Salamis were housed in the naval shed at Athens.

1 The City At Old Sarum

Located near Salisbury, England, Old Sarum is a historical site that sits above the ruins of a recently examined medieval city. The city dates back to the late 11th century and contained a cathedral and a castle. It died out in the 13th century, around 300 years after its construction.

It had long been known that there was once a city at Old Sarum, but it was only only recently excavated and researched since Old Sarum is a protected site. Old-fashioned excavation isn’t permitted, so high-tech laser techniques have been employed to get a sense of the underground structures.

The remains of defensive buildings form an outer wall, with many of the city’s other structures located inside of the area. Ruined residential homes are scattered about the area, and mineral deposits indicate furnaces and ovens. However, why the city was abandoned remains a mystery.

Gordon Gora is a struggling author who is desperately trying to make it. He is working on several projects but until he finishes one, he will write for for his bread and butter. You can write him at [email protected].

Eating out-of-date food is a gamble. On one hand, it could be perfectly fine; on the other, it could lead to crippling diarrhea and a ruined sofa. With that in mind, we’d advise people to avoid eating while reading this—not because it’s disgusting, but because it teaches us that food can be left for a lot longer than most of us assume. For example, consider . . . 

10 Kiviaq, The Dish You Leave Outside For 18 Months

In Greenland, during the colder winter months, food was traditionally incredibly scarce. Natives came up with a rather ingenious solution to the problem of potentially starving to death: kiviaq, a food that stays edible for up to a year, even if you leave it outside.

We should point out that we’re using the word “edible” very liberally here. Kiviaq is so pungent it’s advised to never eat it indoors, but it does stave off hunger, which is why we assume people still tolerate it. The dish is made by shoving as many auks (sea birds) into a seal carcass as possible, which is usually between 300 and 400 birds. The seal skin is then sewn up and stored under rocks.

The tiny auks liquefy and melt into a fine gooey paste. It may not be tasty, or good at parties, but you have to be impressed that you can leave food out in a pit and still be able to eat it a year later. Try that with a sandwich and a squirrel will just take it. But speaking of sandwiches . . . 

9 Battle Butties, The Sandwich That’s Fresh Two Years After You Buy It

The military has had a tradition of feeding personnel long-lasting, freeze-dried meals, but soldiers would always ask for the one thing they’d rather be eating: a simple fresh sandwich.

Scientists found two problems while trying to create a non-perishable sandwich. Bread goes stale, and the filling makes the bread soggy. Both problems may have been solved with the invention of “Battle Butties” a new, long-lasting sandwich that can sit for an astounding two years before going stale.

The creators say their ultimate goal is to create an immortal peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but in the meantime, soldiers have been generally positive about the fillings already on offer. As once soldier put it, “They’re the best two-year-old sandwiches I’ve ever eaten.”

We guess that’s as a good a review as they’re going to get.

8 Hardtack, The Cracker That Lasts For Years

When the military doesn’t feel like bothering with such details as “freshness” and “flavor,” it comes up with low-tech foods that last a good deal longer than any sandwich. For centuries, soldiers and sailors dined on a type of cracker called “hardtack.” The cracker contains just water, flour, and salt, and it’s specifically made to be as dry as possible to increase its lifespan. Though it’s commonly associated with the Civil War, variations on the hardtack recipe have existed for hundreds if not thousands of years.

We don’t really know the upper limit of hardtack’s lifespan, but soldiers regularly received year-old hardtack during the Civil War. These soldiers were so wary of the cracker that they often joked that the “BC” stamp on it represented not the bakers initials, but the date it was made.

Due to its exceptional dryness, a properly stored cracker would indeed last for years, at which point it could be eaten by adding it to water, coffee, or even whisky. Although you could eat hardtack dry, it was highly advised not to. If you’re wondering why, an alternate name for hardtack was “tooth dullers.”

Though unsubstantiated, persistent rumors even say hardtack made during the Civil War was later reissued during the Spanish-American War 35 years later.

7 Rations That Lasted 40 Years

Actually, never mind those rumors about hardtack. We know for certain that some military rations have lasted 35 years—and then some.

Stories tell of rations dating back as far as World War II being eaten up to 75 years after being prepared, but we’d like to focus on one story in particular. Mainly because the food in question is cake, a food that normally goes bad in just days.

US Army Colonel Henry Moak made a promise to himself that on the day he retired, he’d eat a piece of pound cake issued to him during the Vietnam War. True to his word, at his retirement ceremony in 2009, Moak opened and then consumed a 40-year-old piece of cake. He cut it with a sabre, of course, for optimal coolness.

Asked about the taste, Moak responded with a simple thumbs up, which means either it tasted great or he wanted an ambulance.

6 The Chicken Eaten After 50 Years

When Les Lailey married his wife Beryl in 1956, he made a promise that one-upped Colonel Moak’s. The pair received a can of chicken in a wedding gift hamper, and Les proclaimed to his new wife, “On our 50th wedding anniversary, I will eat that can of chicken.”

That can of chicken served as a constant sentinel to their marriage over the next 50 years. And on their anniversary in 2006, Les opened the can and dug in. He suffered no ill effect, other than a canned-shaped hole in his life as a result of eating poultry older than most people he’d ever met.

5 The 64-Year-Old Can Of Lard

Some of you may not even know what lard is, since it’s one of those things you rarely see anymore. Lard is animal fat that was commonly used in cooking. It can also be eaten raw, or with bread if you really have nothing else to cook with it.

We don’t advise people to take that latter option, but it’s the path eventually chosen by German food expert Hans Feldmeier. Hans received a can of lard in 1948 as part of a care package to Germany from the US, and he decided that he’d save the freedom fat for emergencies.

Sixty-four years later, no emergency had presented itself. But Hans did find himself getting into an argument one day about canned foods and expiry dates. The man pointed to his own can of lard (which had no expiry date on it) as proof that food in cans lasts more or less indefinitely.

Hans’s argument convinced no one, so he put his lard where is mouth was, opening the can and eating the contents. This proved his point, and also gave him the worst case of stink breath recorded in German history.

4 The 125-Year-Old Cake, Eaten By Jay Leno

We were pretty impressed a little while back by the army’s aged pound cake, but if we choose a different cake type, we can up the ante quite a bit. Bakers and cake aficionados reading this are likely well aware that fruit cake takes months to make properly and can last for years. Under the right conditions, science says that a fruitcake could last forever.

Fidelia Bates baked a regular fruitcake for Thanksgiving in 1878. She died before the holiday, and her family sentenced the cake to eternity in limbo beneath a plastic cover. In 2003, the ancient fruitcake got a last shot at life when Morgan Ford, Fidelia’s 83-year-old great grandson, sent it to Jay Leno at the Tonight Show. He took a bite with no visible ill effects.

3 Wine Drunk After Hundreds Of Years

Wine does indeed last for centuries, and people regularly pay incredible amounts for bottles found in forgotten larders or shipwrecks. But how often do those buyers actually end up drinking from the bottle? Rarely maybe—but it happens.

In 2010, for example, Finnish divers found 200-year-old bottles of beer and champagne in a boat wrecked in the middle of the Baltic sea. Researchers drank several of them after testing and declaring them safe for consumption. It just so happens that the bottom of the ocean is a great place to store alcohol. According to champagne bigwig Richard Juhlin, “Bottles kept at the bottom of the sea are better kept than in the finest wine cellars.”

As for the beer, the crew were hugely excited about it. Along with getting to shotgun a bottle older than a house, they had the chance to analyze the contents to replicate the recipe. The beer fizzed up as they opened it, indicating that the yeast inside it was still alive.

In other parts of the world, people have dug up and drunk even older bottles of wine. Perhaps the oldest ever were consumed by wine experts working with the Museum of London in 1999. The team tested 300-year-old wine bottles from a nearby archaeological excavation and then promptly drank the contents, for science. The experts described the irreplaceable wine as “fresh, clean, lively.” Which is pretty much what you’d find written on a 10-dollar bottle of plonk at 7/11. Great insight, guys.

2 Honey Edible After Thousands Of Years

Honey will virtually never go bad. Ever.

It can last for “millennia,” according to the Smithsonian Institute. This is because of honey’s acidic nature, and because it is “hygroscopic,” which is fancy way of saying it contains little moisture.

Honey is so hardy that scientists opening up ancient Egyptian tombs have found completely edible pots of honey among the 5,000-year-old mummies.

1 Animals Eaten After 50,000 Years

That’s not a typo. People have actually eaten food older than most of humanity itself.

If you’re wondering which magical animals have flesh edible after such a length of time, we hate to disappoint you by not answering, “Unicorns.” But we’ll try to make up for that disappointment by answering with: “Extinct ones.”

Mammoth corpses can and have been found with plenty of meat on their bones, due to the bodies lying in areas covered in permafrost. Some of this flesh is indeed edible. Many unconfirmed but interesting stories tell of hungry explorers, usually Russian ones, taking bites out of mammoth corpses.

We also have some confirmed cases of people eating food tens of thousands of years old. Like the paleontologists who cooked and ate a dish made with the marrow of a 50,000-year-old horse bone. Or the researchers who ate a piece of meat from a 36,000-year-old bison corpse, for no other reason than to see if they could.

We guess what we’re trying to say is one of two things. One: Old food isn’t going to kill you if you’re careful. Two: Studying hard might let you eat a dinosaur steak.

If you’d like to contact Karl, you can do so via Twitter or Facebook.

The cold cubes in your soda deserve a hat tip. They are made of capable stuff, spawning mysterious feats like emerald green icebergs in Antarctica and ice volcanoes in space.

The frosty wonder can also move in nanoseconds, hide things for millions of years, and become the material of choice in a nuclear disaster. Ice is celebrated in a big way all over the world—from China to Norway, where festivals bring out the true splendor and weirdness of this natural wonder.

10 Long-Lasting Ice Pop

A hot day can melt an ice pop so fast that you end up licking your hand more than the snack. In 2018, a British firm announced the answer. They called it the world’s first “non-melting ice lolly.”

In truth, it does melt. To be more positive, it lasts hours longer than ordinary ones. The company, Bompas & Parr, is known for quirky foodstuffs like flavored fireworks. Their solution to the irritating ice pop drip was clever.

In World War II, Geoffrey Pyke invented pykrete, ice that contains wood pulp and sawdust. Pike envisioned that aircraft carriers could be build from the material. Winston Churchill supported him. But when the project cost too much and was shut down, Pike committed suicide. He could not have foreseen his invention’s influence on the non-melting lolly.

The pykrete inspired the snack’s main design for heat tolerance—strands of fruit fibers. Although it sounds simple, the ice pop took a year to develop and was rolled out to the public in apple flavor. Thanks to the fiber content, this ice pop is a little more chewy than ordinary ones.^[1]

9 The Giant Spinning Disk

In Maine, winter 2019 left a treat in the Presumpscot River. Near a bend in the river churned a disk of ice. It was hefty, measuring 100 meters (330 ft) in diameter.

Slowly spinning in a counterclockwise direction, the swirl was unusual but not unique. The right circumstances will spawn one right there and then. A large eddy, usually where a river kinks, traps pieces of ice.

The one in Maine probably began with ice fragments tracing the egg-like rotation of the eddy. As pieces kept arriving from upstream, the swirling and knocking against the shoreline crushed the ice together. It froze into a solid plate. As it kept turning with the eddy and chafed against the banks, the disk became circular.^[2]

Presumpscot River likely has produced similar ice wheels in the past, and in 1993, the same thing happened in North Dakota. The Sheyenne River produced a disk (smaller than the one in Maine) when ice collected at an eddy.

8 Destruction Of Larsen B

Larsen B was an ice shelf in Antarctica. Noteworthy for its stability, the structure was around 10,000 years old. In 2002, it collapsed within weeks. Around 3,250 square kilometers (1,250 mi²) of ice tumbled into the sea, the first time that this volume had vanished so quickly.

The only clue was a dramatic one. Over 2,000 lakes had sprung up all over the shelf during the months before. These meltwater lakes are normal for the summer season when ice melts and collect in basins. As one reservoir can hold over a million tons of water, researchers wondered if their combined weight caused Larsen B to break apart.

In 2016, the theory was tested. With melt season approaching, several basins on the McMurdo Ice Shelf were rigged with measuring equipment. The data showed that lakes filling with melt caused the shelf to bend.^[3]

McMurdo survived the season. But during a hypothetical test, the shelf “broke” when the lakes were slightly bigger and closer together. This was pretty much the smoking gun for Larsen B.

7 Frozen Mountain Range

Antarctica’s biggest mountain range is the Gamburtsevs. It’s about the same size as the European Alps, but nobody had ever seen the giant in the flesh, so to speak.

The whole thing is covered by a layer of ice as thick as 3,050 meters (10,000 ft). The frozen blanket is why the 100-million-year-old mountains look baby fresh. At that age, they should have been severely eroded. This natural process probably hit a pause button when ice enveloped the region, including the then-young Gamburtsevs.

During a four-week project that ended in 2009, scientists zipped over the range in planes. Radar measured everything below and revealed a stunning geography. The mountaintops were 2,700 meters (8,850 ft) above sea level. Deep valleys flowed with rivers and lakes.

Curiously, at certain points, the water flowed uphill. Heavy pressure from the ice overhead helped the liquid to move against gravity. At higher elevations, however, the water froze and provided the layer of ice that preserved the Gamburtsevs.^[4]

6 Fukushima’s Ice Wall

In 2011, an earthquake and tsunami wrecked a nuclear plant in Japan. The consequences continue to this day. One of the worst is water contamination. In 2017, the government devised a plan to stop radioactive water leaking from the Fukushima plant from reaching groundwater.

They constructed an underground wall made entirely of permafrost. Running 30 meters (100 ft) deep and 1.6 kilometers (1 mi) long, the project cost $320 million.^[5]

From the start, the ice barrier has had its critics. Soon, it became obvious that the wall slowed down the contamination, but it did not seal anything. Radioactivity continued to contaminate a frightening 500 tons of water every day. The good news was that about 300 could be pumped out to be purified. Before the ice wall was installed, the daily amount was worse.

However, the venture remains expensive. The permafrost hedge requires $9.5 million per year to maintain. For now, it remains the best solution for a plant so irradiated that not even robots can enter to clean up the uranium trapped inside.

5 Ice Volcano

Ceres is an odd duck. From the 1800s to modern times, astronomers changed its classification three times. It was discovered as a planet and then demoted to an asteroid before its recent upgrade to a dwarf planet.

This chameleon is noteworthy for something else—the first evidence of cryovolcanism. This occurs when volcanoes made of ice spew boiling salt water instead of hot lava. Scientists suspected that cryovolcanoes existed in the solar system, but they had never found one.

In 2016, NASA’S Dawn spacecraft investigated the 965-kilometer-wide (600 mi) Ceres. Of particular interest was Ahuna Mons, a massive mountain standing 3,962 meters (13,000 ft) tall and measuring 17.7 kilometers (11 mi) wide at the base.

Finding such a gargantuan cone on a small planet was weird. Even stranger, it stood alone. But the shape and the isolation were healthy signs of a volcano. (Only volcanic activity can create lone mountains.) To boot, Ahuna Mons was made entirely of ice. It even had a volcanic dome, flanks, and summit similar to Earth’s volcanoes. Everything points to Ahuna Mons being the first recorded cryovolcano.^[6]

4 Ice Instruments

The 2018 Ice Music Festival in Norway happened on a stage carved entirely from ice. Musicians also played instruments fashioned from the frozen waters of Lake Finse as well as a local glacier. Things like drums, woodwinds, guitars, trumpets, and harps are made to resemble—and sound like—the real things. The festival also created the world’s first ice double bass and saxophone with two openings.

As far as music goes, people are often surprised by how similar the ice instruments sound to traditional ones. The most notable difference is volume. The frosty pieces whistle, thump, and toot in softer tones. Musicians also face an unusual challenge. Playing with gloves hampers the quality of the music, so none are worn.

Handling an ice guitar in extremely cold conditions is enough to suck the feeling from anyone’s fingers. During a performance, musicians take turns to warm their hands or play.

The most mysterious fact about the ice instruments concerns their origins. When carved from natural ice, they produce musically accurate sounds. Instruments that come from artificial ice (the freezer type) have no acoustic properties.^[7]

3 The Harbin Festival

Every winter, China hosts a spectacular festival. The theme is all about ice. In 2019, 10 million visitors were expected to arrive at the 35th annual Harbin International Ice and Snow Festival.

For two months, people explored massive ice and snow sculptures. They included buildings like castles and the Colosseum constructed with giant ice bricks. However, the real magic happened at night. The replicas were lit from inside with different colors, giving a fantasy feel that almost distracted tourists from the extreme cold.

There was no chance for sightseers to get bored. The ice creations covered 743,000 square meters (8 million ft²) of the city of Harbin. Building the wonderland required around 113,000 cubic meters (4 million ft³) of material. This achievement was made within days by an army of workers in the thousands who carved the large blocks.

Apart from the icy architecture, the festival also hosted subzero swimming, mass weddings, and snow sculpture competitions.^[8]

2 Green Icebergs

The Southern Ocean has a lot of icebergs, but some of them are green. Impressively green. Scientists first boarded one in 1988 near East Antarctica. More surprising than the color was the clarity. The ice looked like solid glass without bubbles. This type of ice hails from ancient glaciers, but those are usually blue.

At first, the green wonders seemed like a quirk of nature. When researchers searched for the reason behind the hue, it became clear that the icebergs could play an important role in dispersing ocean nutrients. The green ice did not come from glaciers on land. Instead, they calved from the undersides of floating ice shelves.

A recent study found that the Amery Ice Shelf (where the 1988 iceberg was found) was packed with iron. The iron came from rocks crushed into a powder as glaciers snailed over them. Eventually, they end up in shelves and oxidize in seawater.^[9]

Iron oxide particles turn green when light shines through them. The icebergs probably disperse iron to phytoplankton, helping them survive in remote places where they normally could not.

1 Ice VII

In 2018, the world’s quickest ice was found inside diamonds. Discovered deep underground, Ice VII grows at over 1,600 kilometers per hour (1,000 mph).

Laboratory tests revealed a few characteristics about the speedy stuff. It formed when high pressure and temperatures were both present. The ice could also freeze almost all at once or work its way down from the surface.

The two variations confused scientists until they discovered that Ice VII does not freeze water in the usual way. Normally, heat must be reduced before a liquid can turn solid. This makes ice expand slowly as it cools its way into growth.

Ice VII first blooms inside molecule clusters. This bypasses the heat problem, allowing the ice to spread in nanoseconds. Whether it explodes all over the place or works downward from the surface depends on temperature differences between the water and ice crystals.^[10]

This type of ice could help to find extraterrestrial life, ironically by eliminating the dead worlds. The pressure needed to create Ice VII is several thousand atmospheres—too much to allow life. Any alien world with this kind of pressure is likely to be barren.

As the great philosopher Rodney Dangerfield pointed out, some people “get no respect.” One would think after inventing a permanent part of pop culture for generations, one might finally be entitled to some respect. Even that’s not true. In fact, as these following 10 people show, sometimes one only gets properly celebrated after having their entire life destroyed.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Things Americans Get Wrong About Their Own History

10 Tony Kaye Went Down in American History X

Tony Kaye has good ideas. Most of them have nothing to do with American History X though. Previously known for directing music videos, American History X was Kaye’s chance to become a household star. The resulting film was a lauded triumph. The movie’s dark and mature tale of the glorification of violence led to cartoonish antics off screen.

The Oscar nominated finished product was unrecognizable from Kaye’s original vision. The first edit barely clocked in at 95 minutes. New Line Cinema insisted he recut. Kaye refused. To stretch out the run time and emotional weight, Edward Norton secretly inserted more clips of his performance. Kaye felt so betrayed he ordered his name be taken off the credits and replaced with the pseudonym “Humpty Dumpty”. Obviously not wanting their deft look on neo-Nazism to be associated with a clumsy egg, New Line kicked Kaye out. Accompanied by a priest, a rabbi, and a Tibetan monk, Kaye barged into the office demanding to be brought back on board. Sounding like a literal joke, the studio denied his request.

To besmirch the movie’s reputation, Kaye published full-page ads insulting Norton and the studio. Financially ruining himself, the 35 ads cost Kaye nearly 1 million dollars. Persona non grata in Hollywood, Kaye’s filmography afterwards is a scattershot collection of half-finished projects and moments of genius. 20 years later, Tony Kaye has never made a movie as celebrated as American History X. Because of American History X, he never will again.^[1]

9 Napoleon Dynamite Blew Up in Efren Ramirez’s Face

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The power of a fictional school president in a bizarre indie flick from 2004 corrupts bizarrely. Efren Ramirez has found moderate success over the years with the quirky movie Napoleon Dynamite and its short lived animated spinoff. He will always be most recognized as Pedro Sanchez, even if a lot of people cannot recognize Efren Ramirez.

Everything about Napoleon Dynamite’s success was unlikely. However, the most statistically improbable thing about the movie is that both of the main protagonists are sets of identical twins. Jon Heder and his brother Dan remained close during Napoeleon’s height. Efren and Carlos did not.

Wanting to cash in on the fame, Carlos crashed public appearances by posing as his brother. Likely overestimating the frequency of necessary Pedro sightings, Carlos says Efren sanctioned these hijinks when Efren was too busy to attend himself. Carlos has confessed that on at least one occasion he attended without Efren’s knowledge, “to get back at him for a personal matter which involved the girl I was dating at the time.” Neither Carlos or Efren have specified what Carlos meant by that. Luckily thanks to Napoleon Dynamite, Efren has a history of dealing with love triangles.

Efren’s subsequent behavior discounts Carlos theory that this was all in jest. Threatening to sue, Efren issued a cease-and-desist order. Carlos had to pay a 10 million dollar fine if he ever impersonated Pedro again. A rift enveloped the twins. Citing “the magnitude of Napoleon Dynamite and everything that has come along with it,” Carlos says the movie has ruined his life. The two have yet to reconcile.^[2]

8 Winifred Sackville Stoner Got No Poetic Justice

It is probably the first thing taught in United States History class, even if the author never is. Kindergartners can easily remember the dawn of European expansion in the Americas with the handy mnemonic “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. Winifred Sackville Stoner Jr would hate that people are still quoting her works. Her mother would love it.

Winifried Sackville Stoner Sr was more than your typical stage mom. Fluent in Esperanto, Winifred Stoner Sr. was convinced that the universal language was the best way to educate children. Paraded around the country, Stoner Sr trumpeted Stoner Jr as a child genius. It was hard to disagree. Remarkably, Stoner Jr was talking at one years old, writing at two, and typing at three. Like a lot of details about her prodigy years, Stoner Sr likely exaggerated some facts. Either way, her mother felt vindicated when Stoner Jr’s 1913 poem “History of the United States” earned the 12-year-old child acclaim.

Grown out of childhood, Stoner renounced her years as a prodigy, including her poetry. Looking back on her time in the spotlight, Stoner says her mother’s experiment damaged her for life. Isolated as a prodigy, Stoner rebelled by going through a series of terrible relationships. Her first disastrous marriage was to the 35-year-old French count, Charles de Bruche. Before Stoner Jr could divorce de Bruche, he supposedly died in a car accident in Mexico City. Her four other marriages were equally doomed, including an engagement to Woodrow Wilson’s former Secretary of State Bainbridge Colby, a man more than twice her age. After faking his death, Charles de Bruche returned to try and blackmail Stoner as a bigamist. He had tried similar cons across Europe. For 50 years, she secluded herself from the public and marriage. In nineteen hundred eighty three, Stoner Jr. died lonely.^[3]

7 Philo Farnsworth Had Plenty of Reason to Hate Television

It took a lot of work to invent the greatest tool of laziness. Primitive cumbersome television models existed for years before Philo Farnsworth perfected the technology. Drudging up dirt on the gridlike pattern of his ranch, Farnsworth had a major breakthrough. By scanning an image line by line, one could broadcast a clear picture onto any screen. This idea was the literal groundwork for the 1927 “Television System” patent.

Four years earlier, Vladimir Zworykin patented a similar system. The key difference was that Zworykin’s machine did not work. That hitch did not bother David Sarnoff, head of radio behemoth RCA. Fearful of television’s competition to radio, Sarnoff tried to buy out Farnsworth’s superior technology. The Mormon farmer turned down the proposal. Sarnoff went to war. While suing Farnsworth for patent violation, Zworykin and Sarnoff sent spies to monitor him. Subterfuge was not far enough, so they simply released a line of TVs anyway without Farnsworth’s permission. RCA lost the suit and had to acknowledge Farnsworth owned the rights to the patent. It was a short lived victory. His patent expired in the mid40’s, missing television’s explosion by mere months.

After struggling for decades, he could finally relax and enjoy his invention. With a television in every home, he dreamed that people would “learn about each other.” His utopian vision turned to static. Viewing westerns and gameshows convinced him he “created kind of a monster, a way for people to waste a lot of their lives.” Farnsworth did not have much more life to waste. Stress from his squandered fortune caused a fatal bout of pneumonia. He was 64.^[4]

6 Robert Indiana Does Not Love “LOVE”

The simplest ideas are often the most popular. Perhaps no idea is simpler than LOVE. Robert Indiana’s iconic sculpture depicts a L supporting a leaning O stacked on top of a V and E. Like plenty of people, Robert Indiana feelings toward LOVE is complicated.

During the 1960s, Robert Indiana was primed to take over the Pop Art scene. Avoiding the sex and drugs associated with the movement, Indiana embraced the art-form’s ethos by stripping down ideas to their essence. The Museum of Modern Art thought this genre could translate to the limited space of a Christmas card. On a green and blue background, Indiana’s blocky red letters LOVE made their first appearance in 1965. It would not be the last. The image has been slapped on everything from t shirts, magnets, and a particularly popular series of postage stamps in the 1970’s.

Over the next few years, imitators popped up in cities around the world. Not wanting to disturb the simplicity of the design, Indiana did not put his signature anywhere on the piece. He was totally anonymous. With no recourse to sue for his art, Indiana barely turned a profit. Wrongly assuming he made a fortune, his fellow artists branded him a sell-out. Museums rejected his other work as too commercial. Excluded from the art world, he left New York. For the rest of his life, he isolated himself in the small coastal city of Vinalhaven, Maine. He hated his most famous creation. Robert Indiana wished he could have been known for more. Nevertheless, when it comes to an enormous artistic legacy, all you need is LOVE.^[5]

5 A Trip to the Moon Cratered George Melies’ Career

George Melies’ talent was literally out of this world. More than any of his peers, Melies understood the possibilities of film. Trained as a magician, Melies turned his sense of showmanship into surrealistic sketches that pioneered the basics of cinematic special effects. No film better showcased his revolutionary editing and framing techniques than 1902’s A Trip to the Moon. While the shot of a space capsule jutting out of the man in the moon’s eye is endlessly referenced, the other 14 minutes are equally dreamlike. Melies’ life was less whimsical.

A blockbuster in Europe, Melies planned on recouping his special effects laden production budget by distributing the movie in the United States. Like many other inventors before him, Thomas Edison stole Melies’ success. Bootlegs and pirated copies of the movie flooded the market. Using the same business model as those Transmorpher cash grabs, Edison directed his own knockoff film called A Trip to Mars to trick the audience into seeing his version. All of the royalties were funneled to Edison. Flushed with money from ripping off Melies’, Edison used his own production company to muscle Melies’ struggling Star Films into bankruptcy.

When World War One broke out, the neglected reels of Star Films were melted down to become soles for shoes. A large portion of Melies’ movies are now lost forever. Stripped of his rightful earnings and his greatest achievements, Melies spent the last few years selling toys in a train station. Even the father of modern cinema could not get a Hollywood ending.^[6]

4 Herman Melville was a Whale of a Failure

For Herman Melville, fame was as elusive as his titular white whale. The saddest part of Moby Dick’s rejection was that Melville had already known success. Both of his first two books, Typee, and Omoo, were instant hits. Churning out one adventure story per year, Melville was heralded as a great new voice in nautical yarns. In the vein of his other stories, Moby Dick was initially another rollicking tale of bold men braving the high seas. Then in 1849, he met Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter author was the first person to suggest the epic quest could work as an existentialist tome. Over the next two years, Melville studied philosophy and literature. In 1851, those years of introspection resulted in the Great American Novel.

Echoing the thoughts of many future high school students, readers at the time hated the book. Noted editor, Henry F. Chorley, of the London Athenaeum, called it “as much trash belonging to the worst school of Bedlam literature.” Critically and commercially a flop, the book only sold 3,000 copies. Complaining to Hawthorne, Melville said that “dollars damn me” Hawthorne ignored Melville’s pleas, and their friendship crumbled. Melville’s income and popularity sank faster than the Pequod. His follow-up, Pierre, was similarly dismissed. Dejected, the 33-year-old Melville basically retired from writing, only releasing the occasional poem over the next decades.

In 1867, Melville plunged further into alcoholism and depression when his oldest son killed himself. In 1891, the local newspaper summed up the tragic life of the notoriously longwinded author in just six lines. His obituary could not even get his name right. Though wrongfully called “Henry”, Melville’s name lives on.^[7]

3 Grant Wood Did Not Live the Simple Life

The parodies are almost as ubiquitous as the original. Through the hundreds of homages to American Gothic, the pitchfork wielding farmer and his wife have stood in for countless types of careers and relationships. Grant Wood never got to experience much of either.

Influenced by European tradition, Wood’s portfolio contains many exaggerated scenes of Iowa farmlife. Modeled after the local dentist Byron McKeeby and his sister, Nan, the couple in his most iconic work were filled with the same admiration of his town. Within weeks of its debut at the Art Institute of Chicago, the art world did not take it that way. Critics embraced the painting as a joke, a satirical take down of middle America. Wood regretted that interpretation, but went along with it as the painting’s popularity soared. Nan expressed similar discontent for the haggard stretched out face of the woman and the age gap in the relationship.

The troubled legacy extended to the world outside the painting. Internationally known as the personification of Midwestern values, Wood faced growing scrutiny about his bachelorhood. A closeted gay man, Wood claimed that he forwent marriage to take care of his sister and widowed mother. Unable to hide his sexuality, he got into a sham marriage in 1935. The marriage drained him emotionally, financially, and artistically. Wood refused to paint for years.

Outed in Time magazine, Wood was fired from teaching at the University of Iowa in 1941. His few remaining months were not much better. In 1942, Wood died from pancreatic cancer, a day before his 51st birthday.^[8]

2 A.A. Milne’s Story is Sadder than Eeyore’s

Winnie the Pooh is the essence of innocence. His origin is as lovable as he is. A.A. Milne told his son, Christopher Robin, fantastical adventures of the boy and his teddy bear. The only people who could possibly dislike Winnie the Pooh just happen to be everyone involved with making it.

Winnie the Pooh was far from A.A. Milne’s first story. All totaled, Milne wrote seven novels, five nonfiction books and 34 plays. Readers abandoned him when he did not write about Hundred Acres woods. Pigeonholed as a children’s writer, Milne hated the character, because he felt he could never fully write what he wanted to again. These limitations do not come close to his son’s existential crisis.

Despite entertaining millions of children, A.A. Milne was not as similarly affectionate with his only child. Locked in his office, A.A. Milne abandoned the real Christopher Robin most days in his office to write with the one in the book. As the namesake of the character, Christopher Robin could not escape the association. While attending boarding school in 1930, the other students constantly taunted him, physically and verbally.

After school, Christopher Robin struggled to find a job, in part because of depression from “the empty fame of being his son.” Much to his parent’s protest, the inspiration for one of children’s literature most wholesome characters fixed his sadness by having sex with his first cousin, Lesley de Selincourt. The schism in the family finally ruptured when Christopher Robin publicly announced he never felt close to his parents. Not really disproving his claim, his mom and dad cut off all ties. In the last fifteen years of her life, he only spoke to his mother once. Laying on her deathbed, his mother refused to see him.^[9]

1 George Ferris’ Wild Ride

What goes up must come down. If anybody would understand this, it would be George Ferris. With his eponymous invention, the Ferris Wheel, George Ferris has brought joy to thousands. The Ferris Wheel only brought him despair.

The Ferris Wheel was built out of spite. In 1891, Chicago needed an innovative display for their upcoming world’s fair. The director wanted something that could surpass the recently erected Eiffel Tower. Engineers around the country submitted proposals. Most of them amounted to constructing larger towers. The most creative was George Ferris’ unwieldy contraption of a series of carriages revolving every five minutes. Chicago dismissed the plan as structurally unsound. Ferris knew it could work. On Nov. 29, 1892, they made a deal. The World’s fair would display the prototype, but Ferris would have to fund it on his own. 29 weeks and $250,000 later, Ferris revealed his exhibition. Crowds adored it. George Ferris had reached his peak.

The downturn followed quickly. Amusement parks across the U.S. packaged their own models without compensating Ferris. For the next three years, Ferris fought against the imitators in court with little success. Falling deeper in debt, Ferris kept investing in bigger versions of his machine. Nobody was buying. With no money left, George’s wife divorced him in 1896, directly increasing his rampant alcoholism. Later that year, George Ferris died alone in Pittsburgh’s Mercy Hospital. Faced with a litany of medical issues, Ferris never sought help. He let himself succumb. He was 37. Nobody claimed his ashes for 15 months. 10 years later, his original Ferris Wheel went out too. Dismantled in bankruptcy court, the remnants were dynamited in 1906. The scraps of one of America’s greatest technical marvels were unceremoniously dumped in a landfill.^[10]

It’s the weekend! Hooray! What better way to celebrate than to spend some time looking at videos? There are two basic methods for creating a time-lapse—recording one long video and speeding it up, or taking many individual images after set time intervals and stitching them together in the end. The first method is much simpler, while the second uses significantly less memory.

SEE ALSO: 10 Amazing Videos About Incredibly Unique Places

Time-lapse videos continue to grow in popularity because of their ability to condense information and show changes that are normally too slow to notice. There is something fascinating and deeply satisfying about watching a process that would normally take days, months, or even years, happen in only a few minutes.

Another reason behind their growing popularity is the rapidly increasing access to smartphones worldwide. Many of the recent smartphones have built-in features that make time-lapses easy to capture and share. Here are 20 amazing time-lapse videos that might even inspire you to make one of your own.

20 Water Evaporation

Water evaporation is usually associated with higher temperatures; so many people do not realize how quickly water can evaporate in a normal indoor setting. Although increased heat makes water evaporate faster, it still turns into a gas called water vapor at any temperature. Even ice turns directly into gas through a transition called sublimation.

Evaporation is one of the three main steps in the Earth’s water cycle alongside condensation and precipitation. It accounts for 90 percent of the moisture in the Earth’s atmosphere, while the other 10 percent is due to plant transpiration. But at lower temperatures, evaporation is typically too slow to be noticed. This time-lapse shows how water evaporates from a regular drinking glass over a period of 66 days.

19 Egg

Eggs contain a lot of two proteins—globulin and keratin. As globulin decays, a flammable and toxic chemical called hydrogen sulfide is released. And as keratin breaks down, it releases high levels of an amino acid called cysteine, which is full of sulfur atoms. Both of these proteins release the sulfurous smell that can immediately be recognized as rotting eggs.

Most people do not have the time, interest or tolerance of stenches necessary to leave a raw egg on a plate and watch what happens to it over time. Luckily, the creator of the water evaporation time-lapse also recorded this 13-day long experiment, so nobody else would have to.

18 Realistic 3D Egg Painting

Speaking of eggs, there is one man who is incredibly skilled at painting them. Italian artist Marcello Barenghi has created six hyper-realistic paintings involving eggs. Sometimes called “the hyper-realist artist of the common things in the era of YouTube” Barenghi began his YouTube channel in 2013 and has painted many amazing artworks over the years.

According to Barenghi, every single object has its own beauty—even an empty bag of potato chips. Without the time-lapse videos, many of his paintings could be easily mistaken for real objects.

17 Earthquake Resistant 30-Story Building Built In 15 Days

Although there is no sustained threat of earthquakes in China, the country has a long history of devastating natural disasters. Three of the ten deadliest earthquakes in known human history took place in China.

This lurking threat has led to a lot of innovation among engineers and construction workers in China. Speed and precision are key, as the Broad Sustainable Building company shows in this time-lapse by building a 9.0 magnitude earthquake resistant 30-story building in only 15 days.

16 One World Trade Center

Located in lower Manhattan, the One World Trade Center has 496 restaurants, 5,400 hotel rooms and 1076 places to shop. It is not only the tallest building in New York City but the tallest in the Western Hemisphere and the seventh-tallest in the world.

While it is fascinating to watch something as huge as the One World Trade Center be built, its construction started in 2006 and was not finished until 2013. Fortunately, a time-lapse of the building’s construction is available for those who do not have seven years to spare.

15 Bridge Demolition

Watching something be built is definitely enjoyable, but for some reason, it is even more satisfying to watch something be demolished. In this time-lapse, an entire bridge is taken apart and cleared within ten hours. Such a speedy accomplishment likely baffles the people who are used to seeing the bridge every day and suddenly find it missing.

The old M9 Chartershall Bridge near Stirling, Scotland, had been struck by overheight vehicles several times and was beyond repair. Eight 30-ton rock-breakers were used to demolish the bridge within the ten-hour window. It was later replaced by a new bridge with greater headroom clearance.

14 Kitten To Adult Cat

When you see your cat every day, it can be hard to notice how quickly it grows and changes. Kittens typically go from weighing around 100 grams to 2-3 kilograms within ten months after birth. At 5-7 months old, cats reach sexual maturity. And their development nears its end after only two to three years.

This short and sweet time-lapse shows the rapid growth of a silver tabby Maine Coon cat over a period of ten months. According to the video description, each image is taken 2-3 days apart at the start, increasing to 10-15 days by the end.

13 Flood Engulfing Railway

Floods are rarely taken as seriously as other natural disasters. Many underestimate their speed, power, and potential for devastation. However, floods can be just as dangerous and deadly as earthquakes, volcanos, and hurricanes. In fact, the China Flood of 1931 might be the deadliest natural disaster ever recorded.

The Yangtze River runs through southern China, one of the most populated areas on Earth. When the river-basin received far-above-average rainfall in April 1931, followed by torrential rains in July, the stage was set for disaster. An estimated 3.7 million people were directly and indirectly killed by the flood over the course of several months.

The flood in this unbelievable time-lapse took place in northern Queensland, Australia. It shows what has been called a “one-in-500-year” flood event, as a week’s worth of rainfall swallows the Corolla Creek railway. Thousands of people were displaced, and nearly 1,000 homes suffered severe water damage, placing the recovery bill at $124 million.

12 Giant Hornet Queen Building A Nest

Hornets are the largest eusocial wasps in the world. These social insects live in extremely organized colonies. The community hive, where hornet eggs mature into adults, is often constructed by chewing wood from buildings, fences, and telephone poles. By mixing the wood with saliva, it is converted into a papery construction pulp.

Despite their remarkable construction skills, hornets are rarely a pleasant sight. Most hornet species are less toxic than bees, but their massive stingers still terrify children and adults alike. The one case when spotting a hornet may be more fascinating than scary is during its nest construction, which can be seen in this time-lapse.

11 Solar Eclipse

Captured on March 20, 2015, this stunning time-lapse shows the sunrise and solar eclipse over Iceland’s capital Reykjavík. An eclipse of the Sun occurs when the Moon moves between the Sun and Earth, blocking out the Sun’s rays. Because the shadow of the Moon is not big enough to engulf the entire planet, this event is limited to a certain area.

Most calendar years have only two solar eclipses, with a rare maximum of five solar eclipses in a year. According to NASA, only 25 of the past 5,000 years have had five solar eclipses. The last time was in 1935, and the next year with five solar eclipses will be 2206.

10 One Month Of The Sun

For a giant burning ball, the Sun is surprisingly peaceful and relaxing to watch. This relatively long time-lapse shows one month of solar activity in great detail. The footage was taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), which captures an image every 12 seconds.

The SDO was launched in 2010 for NASA’s Living With a Star program. This program was designed to understand the causes of solar variability and its impacts on Earth. SDO allows NASA to study the solar atmosphere on small scales of space and time and in many wavelengths simultaneously. This time-lapse, for example, was captured on wavelength 304.

9 Milky Way

While we are on the topic of space, there is another amazing time-lapse that deserves some recognition. This one captures a tiny slice of our galaxy and highlights some interesting objects in the night sky.

At roughly 100,000 light-years across, the size of the Milky Way is difficult to even imagine. If one could look down onto our galaxy from the top, they would see a central bulge surrounded by four large spiral arms that wrap around it.

Because the Milky Way is constantly rotating, the arms are moving through space. And the solar system is traveling with them. The solar system travels at an average speed of 828,000 kilometers per hour (515,000 mph). Even at this speed, the solar system would still need approximately 230 million years to travel all the way around the Milky Way.

8 Dam Removal

On October 26, 2011, the nearly 100-year-old Condit Dam was breached at its base with 318 kilograms (700 lb) of dynamite. The reservoir draining took about two hours and the last piece of the Condit Dam was removed in late 2012.

Demolishing the 38-meter (125 ft) tall dam was a significant milestone for river restoration and dam removal nationwide. This spectacular time-lapse speeds up the draining process and shows how the White Salmon River in Washington state began to flow freely yet again.

7 Swarming Worms And Sea Stars

Many think that sea stars, also known as starfish, are adorable creatures. What they might not realize is that most sea stars feed by latching onto prey with suction-cupped feet and pushing their stomach out through their mouth. Then the starfish oozes digestive juices into its prey, dissolving tissues and sucking them out like soup.

Because sea stars are slow animals, this time-lapse speeds up the graphic process. This video may not be for the faint of heart, as it shows hundreds of carnivorous sea stars swarm and begin to consume a baby seal carcass alongside three meters (9.8 ft) long nemertean worms that burrow inside the seal through its eye sockets.

6 Corpse Flower

The corpse flower is one of the world’s largest and rarest flowering structures. It blooms rarely and for a short time, during which the flower emits an odor similar to rotting meat or a decaying corpse. The smell, color, and even the temperature of the corpse flower are meant to attract pollinators and ensure the continuation of the species.

In 2013, a time-lapse of Perry the corpse flower growing in the Gustavus Adolphus College greenhouse became famous due to the plant’s quick growth and massive size. The footage shows Perry from the moment it begins to grow, to the moment when the spadix collapses 45 days later.

5 Snowzilla

This minute-long time-lapse captures the blizzard unofficially nicknamed “Snowzilla.” The footage shows 48 hours of snowfall between January 22 and 24, 2016 in northern Virginia, USA. According to the photographer, the final measurement on the yardstick was 31 inches or 79 centimeters.

While “Snowzilla” may have set a record for snowfall, experts consider it an economically minor event. The fact that the blizzard hit the East Coast during the weekend meant it was far less disruptive and costly than expected. Estimates range from $850 million to $3 billion.

4 Bees Hatch Before Your Eyes

Bee metamorphosis begins when the queen lays a tiny egg, only about 1.7 millimeters (0.07 in) long. Worker bees clean and prepare the cells for raising the brood and the queen lays a single egg in each cell. If a cell is not spotless, she moves to another one. Eggs hatch into larvae, which transform into pupae.

That is when these little creatures begin to take on the familiar features of adult bees. The wings, legs, and eyes take shape until the fine hairs that cover the bee’s body finally develop. Fully developed bees chew their way through the wax capping and join their siblings. Thanks to modern technology and time-lapses, observing this amazing hidden process has become much easier.

3 Three Decades On Earth

Satellites have taken millions of high-definition images of earth over the years. NASA and the U.S. Geological Survey collated and assembled these images into something of a flip-book that reveals the slow changes of our world.

Google finished what the two science agencies started by turning some of the choppy, hazy images into smoothly streaming videos. The three-decade time-lapse of earth unveiled by Google condenses decades of topographic changes into short clips.

The Google Earth Engine team worked with over 5.4 million images taken since 1984 and gave images individual attention, filling in missing pixels and occasionally scrubbing away clouds. While the average high-definition TV image consists of roughly 300,000 points of light, the Google time-lapse images pack 3.95 trillion pixels into a single frame.

2 Earth From The ISS

The International Space Station (ISS) is the largest single structure humans ever put into space. Although its main construction was completed between 1998 and 2011, the station continually evolves to include new missions and experiments.

The ISS flies at an average altitude of 400 kilometers (248 mi) above Earth and circles the globe every 90 minutes at a speed of 28,000 kilometers (17,500 mi) per hour. Not only is this spectacular journey available in a time-lapse format, but there is also a continuous live stream from the ISS that can be found on Youtube.

1 Portrait Of Lotte

Dutch filmmaker Frans Hofmeester took one short video of his daughter Lotte every week throughout her childhood. Once these videos were sped up and stitched together, they created one of the longest and most fascinating time-lapses ever created, spanning 18 years.

This ongoing project has gone viral since the first video of Lotte growing from a newborn to a 12-year-old within mere minutes. However, as Hofmeester published new time-lapses every one to two years, his videos continued to gather millions of views.

Another portrait of 20-year-old Lotte is coming soon but the current most popular time-lapse summarizing 18 years of her life has more than 11 million views. The Dutch filmmaker has also done the same for his younger son Vince, who is currently 16 years old.

“Sometimes they did not feel like it,” said Hofmeester. “Then I said ‘Just one minute. Tell me about your ball game, did you win?’ That way I stalled them so I could complete the shot.”

When fighter planes and ships were downed by their enemies in World War II, it didn’t always mean the death of every person aboard. Sometimes, a few people survived but found themselves stranded behind enemy lines. With no one searching for them, they were forced to find their way back home on their own.

Some of the people who made these journeys went through unbelievable experiences—and they made it back alive.

10 Five Americans On A Lifeboat Sailed Through A Typhoon

Calvin Graef, a prisoner of war aboard a Japanese vessel, was cooking rice when he heard his captors in a panic. US ships had found them, but this wasn’t the rescue he’d dreamed of. The US ships had fired torpedoes and destroyed the Japanese ship with Graef and other prisoners of war still trapped on board.

Graef survived by clinging to pieces of the wreckage. Soon, four American POWs who’d escaped picked him up on a lifeboat and helped him aboard. The men made a rudder for their boat by breaking up parts inside. Then they sailed west toward China.

Their trip took them through a typhoon and over 480 kilometers (300 mi) of ocean. In the end, Chinese fishing boats took them to shore, fed them, clothed them, and sent them home.

9 Japanese Soldiers Walked Through 16 Kilometers (10 Mi) Of Crocodile-Infested Waters

In January 1945, Japanese soldiers were forced off Ramree Island by a troop of invading British soldiers. One thousand of the men escaped, fleeing through a swamp. They thought they were going to make their way to safety.

Instead, the men began a 16-kilometer (10 mi) trek through a swamp infested with crocodiles, some weighing as much as 900 kilograms (2,000 lb). The blood of the injured soldiers lured the crocodiles in. Meanwhile, the men struggled through as crocodiles emerged out of nowhere, grabbed the men, and dragged them under, never to be seen again.

The soldiers fired their guns wildly every time one emerged, but it didn’t stop the crocodiles. One by one, the men were dragged into the water by the hungry animals. By the end, only 400 of the 1,000 men who’d entered the swamp made it out alive.

8 A Soviet Pilot Stole A Nazi Fighter Plane And Flew Home

When Soviet Lieutenant Kuznetsov was shot down by a German pilot, he crash-landed in an open field and ran for cover as his plane exploded behind him.

But the German pilot who’d shot him down made a mistake that saved Kuznetsov’s life. The German flew down to the wreckage, eager to take a souvenir of his kill home. He climbed out of his plane and went through the wreckage, unaware that Kuznetsov was still alive.

Kuznetsov sneaked out of his hiding spot, climbed into the German’s plane, and took off, leaving the man who’d shot him stranded on the ground.

Then Kuznetsov had to fly home, entering Soviet airspace in a German plane and having to dodge fire from his own men. Fortunately, he made it through alive and returned to the safety of home.

7 A Japanese Fighter Flew Home After Being Shot In The Face

In 1942, Saburo Sakai, one of Japan’s greatest flying aces, was nearly taken by an enemy bomber. The bomber riddled Sakai’s plane with bullets, one of which hit him in the face. Sakai lost sight in his right eye and couldn’t get the left side of his body to move.

Sakai was determined to go out as a hero. He planned on making a kamikaze run against the first ship he saw. But he didn’t stumble upon a single ship. For four hours, he flew over 1,050 kilometers (650 mi) with half of his body paralyzed.

But he made his way home.

6 A Soviet Pilot Dragged Himself Across A Forest For 18 Days

When Alexsei Maresyev’s plane was shot down by Germans, he found himself trapped inside German-controlled land. He was bleeding from several wounds and was quickly losing the use of his legs. But he was determined to survive.

Maresyev crawled through the forest, gradually making his way through enemy lines and back into Soviet territory. His legs were so badly injured that he eventually lost the ability to stand. It took 18 brutal days of pulling his body across the ground to get through. When he made it back, he was so badly hurt that his legs had to be amputated.

After being fitted with prosthetic legs, Maresyev went right back into his plane and back into combat. “There’s nothing extraordinary in what I did,” he told reporters later. “The fact that I’ve been turned into a legend irritates me.”

5 A Plane Crashed Into A Jungle Filled With Cannibals

In May 1945, a plane flying over New Guinea crashed into a jungle. The pilot, who couldn’t see past the clouds, just flew into the side of a mountain. His mistake killed 19 of the people aboard and left the last few survivors stranded 260 kilometers (160 mi) from civilization.

A tribe living in this jungle still used Stone Age technology, and rumor had it that they were cannibals. In time, the plane crash survivors were spotted by the tribe. The survivors were terrified, but they had no choice but to offer a greeting and hope for the best. To their surprise, this tribe of supposed cannibals just flashed them a smile and then helped to feed and protect them.

Meanwhile, US paratroopers staged a rescue. The lost crew was found and flown out of the thick jungle on gliders.

4 A Chinese Sailor Drank Shark Blood To Survive 133 Days At Sea

Poon Lim was a steward on a British ship traveling to Surinam when Germans attacked the ship with torpedoes. Lim grabbed a life jacket and jumped overboard just seconds before the ship exploded. He was the sole survivor.

Lim climbed aboard a raft in the wreckage and then set out on a grueling journey alone. After the rations on the raft were gone, Lim became so desperate for water and food that he actually tried to lure sharks to him.

At one point, he killed a bird with a knife he’d fashioned from a biscuit tin. Then he used the dead bird to lure a shark to his raft, bashed the shark’s head with a jug, and drank its blood.

Lim passed by several US and German vessels but was ignored by every one. Finally, he was spotted by Brazilian fishermen who brought him ashore after 133 days at sea.

3 Prisoners Escaped From A Soviet Camp And Walked 6,400 Kilometers (4,000 Mi) To India

Slavomir Rawicz spent two years in Siberia as a prisoner of war. Then, with the help of the camp commandant’s wife, he and six others escaped. But their trip to safety wasn’t easy.

The men left during a blizzard and had to wander through the Siberian Arctic, living off what they could catch or find. When they made their way out of the Siberian Arctic, they were stuck traveling through the Gobi Desert and then the Himalayas in their desperate journey to the safety of India.

By the end, they had traveled 6,400 kilometers (4,000 mi) and lost three men. Four of the men survived, though, after traveling through the harshest environments in the world.

2 An American Prisoner Of War Stole A Nazi Plane And Flew It To Holland

When Bob Hoover was trapped as a German prisoner near the end of the war, he saw an opportunity to escape. A German fighter plane had been left unattended, so he took it.

It wasn’t until Hoover was in the air that he realized how insane his plan was. He intended to fly to Holland, but he realized that he would undoubtedly be shot down when they spotted him in a swastika-adorned plane.

As soon as he saw an open farmer’s field, Hoover touched down. Dutch farmers charged at him with pitchforks, believing he was a downed Nazi pilot. Hoover tried yelling to them, but they couldn’t understand. It seemed like the end—until a British army truck drove over.

Hoover yelled, “I’m a Yank!” The British soldiers translated for the Dutch farmers and took Hoover home.

1 A Soldier Spent Nine Weeks Traveling Through Snow With One Foot Exposed

As Jan Baalsrud’s ship was attacked by Germans, he and his crew realized that they couldn’t win. Hoping for nothing more than a few more enemy casualties, the men lit a fuse, jumped overboard, and let their ship explode.

Baalsrud swam to shore and watched as his crew was rounded up by German soldiers. When they came for him, though, he shot two of them dead. Then he fled through the snow.

Baalsrud was wet, missing a boot, and trapped in frozen lands. For nine weeks, he traveled through the cold. His bare foot froze, and he had to cut off his own toe to stop the spread of gangrene. He was hit by an avalanche and buried under snow for four days.

Still, he dug through the snow and made his way to a group of villagers, who carried him to safety on a stretcher. Jan Baalsrud survived.

+Further Reading

For more astonishing tales of survival, look no further than the archives:

10 Epic Tales Of Survival Against All Odds
10 Freak Accidents People Somehow Survived (pictured)
10 Astonishing Desert Survival Tales
10 Off-The-Wall Survival Tricks And Tools
10 People Who Survived Against Nature

Accidents happen every day. Some are minor, but many are life-threatening. The same holds true for diseases. When these things happen, some people lose hope and wait for the inevitable. The people on this list, however, faced certain death after being involved in various types of accidents or being diagnosed with deadly diseases. But they all made a miraculous recovery.

10Okkhoy

A father desperately clutching his seven-year-old bleeding boy and riding on a rickshaw to the nearest hospital is not something you see every day. This is exactly what happened to a little boy only known as Okkhoy and his father in Bangladesh in 2010.

A group of four men had viciously attacked the boy just a couple of hours earlier. The men, having an obvious lack of regard for life, hit the boy over the head with a large brick after tying his hands and feet up. As if this weren’t brutal enough, the men also sliced an upside-down cross into the child’s body and finally chopped off his penis and one of his testicles.

Okkhoy was lured from his safe family home by three other kids. These children promised to give him a treat if he went along with them. Feeling uneasy after a while, Okkhoy decided to go back home. It was then that the group of men grabbed him. They tried to force Okkhoy to beg for money. The child threatened to tell his father what they were doing, and this led to the horrific attack. They left him for dead.

Okkhoy’s mother found her boy lying next to a warehouse in a pool of blood. It was here that that Okkhoy’s father found them and rushed his son to hospital using the only means of transport he could afford: a rickshaw.

Despite the horror of this day, Okkhoy made a remarkable recovery within three months in the hospital. However, two years later he still carried the physical scars of what had happened to him and he will most likely always be afraid of the dark. After his story attracted international attention, surgeons at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore succeeded in reconstructing a functioning penis for him.

9Janne Kouri

In August 2006, 31-year-old Janne Kouri was playing a game of beach volleyball with his friends on a California beach. Life had been good to Janne up to that point. He was a star football player on the verge of catching the eye of bigwigs at the NFL and also the director of a social network.

On that beautiful day, Janne felt like going for a quick swim between games and he ran down to the ocean. Then tragedy struck. As Janne dove into the waves, his head struck a sandbar, damaging his spinal cord and rendering him instantly paralyzed.

After Janne was rushed to the hospital, his girlfriend and family received the devastating news that he would never walk again. He would spend the next two months in ICU and almost lose his life twice, all while battling pneumonia. His bright life and future seemed dark and hopeless.

Janne told his girlfriend, Susan, that she was free to leave him, and he didn’t expect her to take care of him. Susan stuck by him no matter what and refused to give up on him getting better. After coming across many dead ends in their research, the couple finally happened upon a doctor in Louisville. Sharing the same name as Janne’s girlfriend, it seemed that providence led the couple to this doctor who proclaimed there was a chance of recovery.

Dr. Susan Harkema was right. Janne Kouri stood up on his own without a walker five years later. It was a tough road to achieving this seemingly impossible goal and involved the constant practice of a training routine called loco-motor training. The entire experience inspired Janne and Susan to start a non-profit rehab center to ensure others in Janne’s situation could also benefit from loco-motor training.

And, while still on his road to recovery, Janne and Susan got married after realizing there was nothing they couldn’t face together.

8Randon Timmons

“Skitching” almost cost 18-year-old Randon Timmons his life in 2014. In the small town of Van Buren, Indiana, some teenagers have no fear of grabbing hold of a moving vehicle and letting the driver drag them along while balancing on a skateboard. They call this “skitching.”

Randon was doing exactly this when his skateboard hit a bump in the road, and he went flying through the air before landing head first on the pavement.

He had almost no brain activity when doctors examined him and ended up having most of his skull removed because of the extreme brain swelling. There was very little hope that Randon would make it through the night.

While Randon’s dad and the rest of his family stayed at the boy’s bedside, the citizens of Van Buren arranged a prayer vigil, concert, and walk-a-thon in support of the family.

Almost miraculously, after a few weeks his condition had improved enough to be discharged from the hospital. Randy, Randon’s father, had already suffered the loss of his own brother and father in a car crash and refused to give up on his son. He kept telling his son how much he loved him and that he couldn’t leave him. Randy believes love and prayer helped his son get through the brain trauma.

While there is some permanent damage, such as mild amnesia and subtle parts of Randon’s personality that have changed, doctors believe that he will continue to lead a normal life. He does, however, have to wear a helmet while doing certain activities especially considering that he was not wearing one the day of the accident.

7Alcides Moreno

Alcides Moreno’s wife wasn’t too upset when he reached out his hand and attempted to stroke another woman’s face. Even though it was their special thing. After all, he was in a hospital bed and no one believed he would survive much less be able to stretch out his hand and speak.

Alcides and his brother Edgar were washing windows on the 47th story of a building on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City when the platform they were standing on suddenly became loose and dropped out of the sky. The two men landed in an alleyway. Sadly, Edgar was killed on impact. Alcides was conscious and sitting up when rescuers and firefighters got to the scene.

By the time he reached the hospital, he was on the border of unconsciousness and tests revealed the catastrophic nature of his injuries. On top of serious brain injuries, Alcides also suffered spinal injuries, a broken arm, cracked ribs, and two broken legs, among other injuries. After an initial emergency operation, Alcides underwent nine more operations.

Doctors were stunned when Alcides Moreno spoke up after the trauma he’d been through. Rosario, his wife, wasn’t in his room on Christmas Day in 2007 when Alcides attempted to stroke a nurse’s face thinking it was his wife’s. She was there, however, when he spoke his first words since the accident took place. He simply asked, “What did I do?”

The doctors at the time predicted that Alcides would be fully recovered in just one year. They also believed that he would recover his ability to walk. Rosario only had one final thing to say to those interviewing her about her husband’s miraculous recovery: He was not going back to his old job.

6Elijah Belden

An early birthday party for nine-year-old Elijah Belden, held in October 2014, almost turned fatal when a freak accident happened. Elijah was posing for a picture with one of his friends when he came into contact with a metal support structure on the patio of his home. Outdoor lighting supported by the pole had somehow caused the pole to be electrified and the boy to be electrocuted.

Doctors placed him in a medically induced coma. After 10 days of uncertainty and despair, Elijah woke from his coma. When asked by medical personnel what his name was he was able to respond correctly. His rapid recovery after this was called a miracle by his doctors and his father agreed.

Within two weeks of waking from his coma, Elijah started rehab and was able to take a walk outside. After this, he would be tested on a treadmill and doctors believed they would be able to send him home just a week after. Getting back to baseball practice is the next focus for Elijah and his family.

5Rachel Lozano

Rachel Lozano was diagnosed with an Askin’s tumor during high school and would fight a courageous battle against this rare form of cancer throughout the rest of her high school years.

The cancer went into remission twice. In order to achieve this, doctors performed multiple surgeries on Rachel including a bone marrow transplant. Rachel never lost hope and took the small victories and disappointing losses in stride. Even when her hair started falling out from chemo sessions, she allowed her bald head to be used as a canvas. She simply took everything as it came.

Then, the devastating news came. The cancer was back for a third time. Doctors told Rachel the tumor would claim her life within a couple of weeks, all depending on the organ it would take out first.

It was agreed that Rachel would undergo one last surgery as a last-ditch effort to remove the tumor. During the surgery, however, doctors were mystified and perplexed at the complete lack of a tumor. In fact, they could not find any cancerous tissue anywhere in the girl’s body and eventually closed her up without doing anything.

The hospital had no explanation for this incident and doctors would later testify that they had no medical explanation for not being able to find a tumor in Rachel’s body or even why she was still alive.

During an interview in 2013, Rachel, who had at that point been cancer-free for nine years, stated that her recovery from cancer was nothing less than a miracle. She also confirmed that she attended an honor ceremony for Father William Chaminade in 2000 and visited his grave. It was here that she prayed to the deceased clergyman for healing.

Rachel’s healing was proclaimed a miracle by the St. Louis Archdiocese and could become the second miracle attributed to Chaminade, making him a saint.

4Sam Schmid

In October 2011, Sam Schmid, a junior at the University of Arizona, never thought his life would change as drastically as it did when he got caught up in a horrific car accident involving five cars. The Jeep he was traveling in struck a light pole and flipped sideways. He was airlifted to the hospital in critical condition with two broken legs, a broken left hand, and severe brain injuries.

The news didn’t get any better at the hospital, and the young man was placed on life support. Doctors tactfully began to prepare Schmid’s family for the worst after surgery that was performed on him for a brain aneurysm resulted in a stroke.

Neurosurgeon Robert Spetzler, who operated on Schmid, was dumbfounded with his patient’s lack of response after surgery because his scans did not indicate fatal injury. Going according to his own instinct, Spetzler decided to keep Sam on life support for a while longer.

Just a few hours before the hospital could act on the decision for Sam to be removed from life support machines, Spetzler requested a new MRI scan. Against all odds, the scan showed positive improvements on the patient’s part. The same day, Sam started responding to what was happening around him. He was also able to follow instruction from the doctors.

By December 2011, Sam could walk with the help of a walker and was able to speak almost normally again. He doesn’t remember anything about the accident that almost claimed his life.

3Lesley Bunning

Over 300 people in California alone succumbed to the H1N1 virus in 2014. When 61-year-old Lesley Bunning was diagnosed with the virus in January 2014, she was rushed to the emergency room by her family as soon as they saw her condition deteriorating.

At the hospital things further deteriorated and, to her family’s utter shock, Lesley was placed on life support and also in a medically induced coma. She spent 10 weeks this way, with doctors doing everything they could to help her, and her family praying for a miracle.

After the medical experts did everything to their medical knowledge to help Lesley, even consulting other doctors for additional measures, she still couldn’t breathe on her own. However, as they prepared the family for her inevitable death, Lesley suddenly breathed on her own. Doctors were flabbergasted.

They were able to remove her from the ventilator which was no longer necessary. They inserted a feeding tube to help her get stronger and gave her family the extraordinary news. One of the doctors went as far as to call her recovery a miracle.

Lesley Bunning has confirmed that she will never again skip her flu shot. She refused to take the shot before she contracted the virus. Now, she is determined to get it whenever necessary and also make sure the rest of her family takes theirs as well.

2Nicole Graham

By the time Nicole Graham’s junior prom rolled around, she had not only beat cancer but survived two strokes as well. When she should have only been thinking of homework and boys at the beginning of her junior year of high school, Nicole had to come to terms with the fact that she had leukemia. So, instead of hanging out with her friends and gossiping about the latest celebrity meltdown, Nicole had to start chemo sessions.

The 16-year-old’s journey since her diagnosis has been difficult considering that between the diagnosis and her eventual recovery she had major setbacks including the above-mentioned strokes, organ failure, sepsis, and even paralysis on one occasion.

However, her recovery happened in record time. Once she started rehab, it only took her two months to recover fully from all that had happened to her. When she entered the process of rehabilitation she couldn’t even sit up. After the two months were done she could literally run around. Throughout this time she was supported not only by her family and friends but also her boyfriend.

Soon after leaving the hospital, Nicole rejoined her lacrosse team and became the team’s captain. Pupils in her school also voted for her to become homecoming queen for a night to celebrate her recovery.

1Luke Burgie

Four-year-old Luke Burgie’s recovery from a mystery illness was proclaimed a miracle by Pope Francis himself. In 1998, the little boy suddenly fell ill. Everything he ingested came out in bouts of diarrhea and, if that weren’t enough, he would experience intense pain after eating a meal. His parents took him to specialists at a Denver hospital but even they had no idea what could possibly be ailing the boy.

By January the next year, it seemed that little Luke’s condition was grave. He was losing weight rapidly and no amount of treatment seemed to make a dent in his condition. Out of sheer desperation, his parents enlisted two nuns to pray for their child. The nuns in turn prayed to Mother Maria Theresia Bonzel who founded the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration back in 1863 and has been dead for more than 100 years. The prayer session lasted nine days.

The doctors meanwhile came up with a theory that poor Luke might have a tumor somewhere in his little body and scheduled a colonoscopy for him. However, when his parents brought him to the hospital for the test, Luke wasn’t sick anymore. His mother told the doctors that her son has simply jumped up from the couch he’d been lying on one afternoon and announced that the pain in his tummy was gone.

His mother was convinced of a miracle. While many remained skeptical, with some even indirectly accusing Luke’s parents of deliberately making their son ill “for the attention,” Pope Francis agreed with Jan Burgie. Fourteen years after Luke Burgie’s miraculous recovery, the Pope officially proclaimed the incident a miracle.

Estelle lives in Gauteng, JHB. She loves happy endings like the ones on this list.

Siberia is massive, stretching eastward from the Ural Mountains to the Pacific and Arctic Oceans. With roughly three inhabitants per square kilometer, it is one of the least densely populated places on Earth. However, it has proven to be a treasure trove for archaeologists. The cool, dry air and permafrost has a unique way of preserving the deep past. Despite our view of it as inhospitable, Siberia was once a cradle of mankind.

10 Shigir Idol

Archaeologists discovered the world’s oldest wooden sculpture while excavating a bog in Western Siberia in the late 19th century. Determined to be 11,000 years old, the idol is twice as old as the great pyramids and 6,000 years older than Stonehenge. The 2.8-meter (9.2 ft) figure was carved from a larch tree that was 157 years old when it was felled with stone tools.

Conditions in the bog preserved the idol. The statue’s face remains vivid, as do the series of lines and squiggles that crisscross the idol’s body. Some believe the idol’s smaller faces and lines contain encrypted information. One has suggested that they represent various types of terrain. Others believe that the idol, which once stood 5.2 meters (17 ft) tall, might represent a prototype of a Native American totem pole.

9 Gender-Bending Amazon

In 1990, archaeologists thought they’d unearthed the remains of an female warrior in Siberia’s Altai Mountains. The 2,500-year-old, pig-tailed teenager was believed to have been part of an elite group of Pazyryk warriors. Buried alongside shields, battle axes, and bows and arrows, the teenager had a physique suggesting an expert horse rider. Ancient Greek writer Hippocrates noted that the Scythians had female warriors called Amazons. Many believed they had finally discovered one of these mythical warriors. However, DNA analysis shattered this view.

It turns out she was a he. Roughly 16 at the time of his death, the “Amazon” was buried surrounded by fertility symbols like cowrie shells as well as amulets. The coffin, wooden pillow, and quiver were all smaller than those found in men’s graves. The remains of nine horses, including four bridled ones, suggest high status. The cause of the pig-tailed warrior’s death remains a mystery.

8 Oldest Cancer

Many believe cancer to be a modern disease. For years, researchers have speculated that the lives of premodern humans, who were active and ate natural foods, were cancer-free. However, the 2014 discovery of a Bronze Age Siberian man who died of prostate cancer refutes this. While 6,000-year-old benign growths have been discovered, this 4,500-year-old example is the oldest absolutely confirmed case of cancer.

The man was discovered in a small burial site in Siberia’s Cis-Baikal region. Most of the men found at the site have been discovered on their backs with hunting and fishing gear. However, cancer man was different. He was found in a fetal position with an intricately carved bone spoon beside him. This suggests he lived a life outside of the normal community. However, the arrangement might be related to the slow and agonizing death he suffered, nauseous and unable to breathe.

7 Racially Realigned Idol

Archaeologists believe that a 2,400-year-old Siberian stone idol underwent “racial realignment” in the early Middle Ages. The Ust-Taseyevsky idol has flared nostrils, a large, open mouth, a mustache, and a bushy beard. Experts theorize that around 1,500 years ago, someone gave him “plastic surgery” to look less Caucasian and more Asian.

Archaeologists believe that the Ust-Taseyevsky idol was originally carved during the Scythian period, when inhabitants of the region were European-looking. During the early Middle Ages, the population of the Angara River region shifted with an influx of Mongols. There is evidence of a less talented sculptor narrowing the idol’s eyes. The bridge of the nose was flattened, and its contour was altered. The beard and mustache were partially “shaved” off. Researchers believe the idol received another alteration in the late 17th century, after Russian occupation. A small, conical hole was drilled into the mouth for a tobacco pipe.

6 Bone Armor

Archaeologists recently unearthed a suit of bone armor in Siberia. The 3,900-year-old protective gear was made from an unknown animal and was buried separately from its owner in the forested western steppe around Omsk. While most of the finds in the area are from the Krotov culture, researchers believe the armor belongs to the Samus-Seyminskaya culture, which originated in the Altai Mountains before migrating southwest.

The armor was found in “perfect condition” and is believed to have been a gift, exchange, or perhaps spoils of war. The protective bone gear was discovered 1.5 meters (5 ft) underground near a sanatorium that was being renovated into a hotel. The separate burial suggests the armor’s involvement in ritual. Armor of this nature would have required constant care and was believed to have belonged to an elite warrior. Bone armor is not unique to the Altai. The Aleuts, Inuit, and Tlingit people were all known to wear bone armor.

5 Oldest Sewing Needle

Archaeologists recently unearthed the world’s oldest sewing needle in Siberia’s Altai Mountains. The 50,000-year-old needle was discovered in Denisova Cave and was used by non-Homo sapiens. The 7-centimeter (2.8 in) needle contains a hole for thread and was made from the bone of a large, unidentified bird. Researchers had previously found needles in later cave layers, but this is the oldest and longest one yet discovered.

This needle predates the previous earliest-known specimen by 40,000 years. It was discovered in the same layer as our mysterious hominid cousins, the Denisovans, who were named after the cave. The Denisovans were more technologically advanced than Neanderthals. A precise hole in a Denisovan bracelet could only have been accomplished with a high-rotation drill similar to those used today.

4 Okunev Noblewoman

In the Siberian republic of Khakassia, archaeologists discovered the remains of a noblewoman from the ancient Okunev culture. Experts consider the Okunev to be the Siberian ethnic group most closely related to Native Americans. Dated to between the 25th and 18th centuries BC, the unmolested grave also contained the remains of a child and vast wealth.

The tomb contained 100 decorations made from animal teeth, bone and horn tools, two jars, cases filled with bone needles, a bronze knife, and more than 1,500 beads adorning her funerary garb. A clay incense burner contains the same Sun-shaped faces that adorn other ancient Siberian rock art. Before, these “masks” had been shrouded in mystery. Now, experts can definitively connect these carvings with Okunev burials. A stone slab containing the image of a bull suggests a southern origin for the Okunev. These bull slabs are uncommon in Siberia but are found throughout Kazakhstan.

3 3,000-Year-Old Brain Surgery

In 2015, archaeologists unearthed a skull at Siberia’s Nefteprovod II burial site that shows evidence of brain surgery being performed 3,000 years ago. The patient died between the ages of 30 and 40, and the chips taken out of his skull suggest surgical intervention. His open parietal bone showed signs of healing, suggesting that he lived for a period of time after the trephination. Experts believe his death was caused by postsurgical inflammation.

Common painkillers like opiates do not grow in the region, but there was no shortage of mind-altering substances in ancient Siberia. Juniper and thyme were used in shamanistic practices and as analgesics. Fly agaric mushrooms were powerful hallucinogens commonly used in Northern Siberia. Cannabis was common in the region and is often found in burials. It is likely that cannabis, hallucinogenic mushrooms, juniper, thyme, and shamanistic ecstatic dancing were used to bring the patient into a state of altered consciousness where surgery could be performed.

2 Dina And Yuan

In 2015, researchers discovered two extinct lion cubs in Siberia’s permafrost deposits. Dubbed Dina and Uyan, the cubs may be 57,000 years old. Dina and Uyan are cave lions, which went extinct around 10,000 years ago. They were siblings around one or two weeks old when their den collapsed. An opaque white fluid discovered in their stomachs may be the world’s oldest milk.

Cave lions dominated Eurasia, Alaska, and Northern Canada between the Middle and Late Pleistocene. Researchers are hoping that the cubs will help them discover what drove cave lions to extinction. Most experts believe these ancient predators were eradicated for their pelts.

South Korean cloning expert Hwang Woo-suk plans to replicate the cave lions. He has already made progress with woolly mammoths. His team will try to preserve the specimens as long as possible, and hopefully, cloning technology will catch up with the state of remains.

1 Couple Holding Hands For 5,000 Years

Archaeologists recently unearthed a Siberian couple who have been holding hands for 5,000 years. The Bronze Age skeletons are believed to belong to a dignitary and his wife or lover. Discovered on the shores of Lake Baikal, the couple belongs to the ancient Glazkov culture. The burial was filled with rare white jade rings, pendants of red deer and musk deer teeth, a 50-centimeter (20 in) jade dagger, and an unidentified metal object in a pouch between the man’s legs.

The couple was found lying on their backs. Their heads are turned to the west, and their hands are joined. The male skeleton is complete. Unfortunately, rodents disturbed the upper portion of the female. The use of the woman’s large jade knife remains unknown. The bodies were found in an ancient sacred burial ground overlooking the lake. To deter grave robbers, the exact location of the burial has been kept secret.

Abraham Rinquist is the executive director of the Winooski, Vermont, branch of the Helen Hartness Flanders Folklore Society. He is the coauthor of Codex Exotica and Song-Catcher: The Adventures of Blackwater Jukebox.