The Spartan army was the toughest in the world. Every Spartan man was enlisted, and they were feared around the world. Sparta did away with city walls, believing its men strong enough to make walls useless. It was the only country that Alexander the Great saw and left unconquered—and he never even had the courage to march his men into their land.

Spartan men were warriors because Spartan boys suffered through some absolutely incredible experiences. A child raised in Sparta wasn’t raised by his mother. He was raised by the state, and he was put through an education unlike any other in history.

10 Half Of All Spartan Babies Were Left To Die

In Sparta, weak children weren’t given a chance. If they were born weak, ill, or deformed, they were left to die—and that happened a lot.

When a baby was born, the father would carry the newborn to the town’s elders. The elders would examine the child, looking for weaknesses and deformities. If any were found, the father was ordered to leave the child defenseless and alone in a pit called the Apothetae, where it would starve to death.

Even if a child passed inspection, though, there was no guarantee it would live. When the father returned home, the mother would wash the baby in wine as an early epilepsy test. If the child was epileptic, the wine would make it break into a fit . . . and tell the mother that it wasn’t worth raising.

If a baby could survive all this, it was promised a free plot of land, but the odds were pretty low. It’s estimated that about half of all babies born in Sparta died from either neglect or murder.

9 Boys Lived In Military Barracks From Age Seven

Mothers didn’t get to take care of their children for long. As soon as a boy turned seven, he was considered ready for education, known as the agoge, and he left his parents for the care of a teacher called a “warden.”

Life in the agoge wasn’t easy. The children would be actively encouraged to haze and provoke each other and even to challenge each other to fights. This wasn’t a school where teacher maintained the peace; if two kids were bickering, the warden would goad them into resolving it with their fists.

The warden also carried a whip at all times, and if a boy misbehaved, he would use it to beat him. The beating would be hard, but that wouldn’t be the end of it. If the child’s father found out he was beaten, then he was obliged to beat his child a second time. Anything less was considered spoiling the child.

8 They Had To Steal Food To Eat

During the agoge, boys only received the barest necessities. Shoes were considered a luxury, so the boys trained barefoot. Clothing made one weak against the elements, so the boys wore a single, thin cloak. And food made people fat, so the boys were only given the bare minimum they needed to survive.

That didn’t mean that they couldn’t get more. The trainees were encouraged to steal food if they were hungry. The catch was that they weren’t allowed to get caught. If a boy was spotted stealing food, he would be beaten and deprived of rations, but if he was stealthy enough to get away with it, the wardens figured he had earned a second course.

7 Starved Trainees Were Ordered To Fight Over Cheese

The Spartans had weird ways to pass the time. They held an annual festival in which cheese would be placed upon an altar to the god Artemis. Starving trainees would then be set loose, fighting each other in a desperate battle to grab as much cheese as they possibly could.

While they fought each other, older men would also be beating them with whips—sometimes even to death. It was the duty of the boys to keep strong faces throughout and to grin as they were beaten and clawed at while they fought for cheese.

To the audience, this was hilarious. Great rows of people would gather to watch the show and would laugh while they watched boys brutally maim each other. The one who left with the most cheese would also be honored with the title of “Bomonike.”

6 Spartan Food Was Terrible

When Spartans did eat, it wasn’t exactly the meal you’d get at a five-star restaurant. A man from Italy who sat down with a Spartan army and joined in one their meals famously said, “Now I know why the Spartans do not fear death.”

He was talking about “black broth,” a dish made by cooking meat in a mixture of blood, salt, and vinegar. Spartans ate together, with everyone sharing the same food under the same tent, and the black broth was considered the highlight of the meal. It was the only meat they served, and everyone only got a small portion.

The only way to get more meat was to hunt. If a hunter took down a deer, he had to share it, but he was allowed to take a little bit of the venison home for a second course. This was the only time a Spartan could eat at home; anything else was strictly forbidden.

5 If Trainees Failed Oral Quizzes, They Were Bitten

When supper was over, an under-master would sit down with the trainees and ask them questions. These questions were sort of like modern essay prompts: They’d be asked questions like, “Who is the best man in the city?” and would be expected to support their answers with reasons.

Their answer had to be clever, well thought-out, and prompt. If it wasn’t, they were punished—in an extremely weird way. According to Plutarch, anyone who gave a weak answer was bit on the thumb.

Life wasn’t much better for the under-master. When the question session was over, the under-master was taken out back and reviewed. If his masters felt he’d been too strict or too kind, he was beaten.

4 All Other Forms Of Education Were Banned

If you were a Spartan, you were a soldier. You weren’t an accountant or a merchant or a farmer; you were just a soldier. Your education made sure you stayed that way.

Spartans were taught to fight, to be tough, and—only as a necessity—to read. Everything else was strictly forbidden from the education system. Extracurricular education was considered a dangerous luxury. Spartan students weren’t allowed to spend their spare moments learning how to add and subtract or contemplating life’s philosophical mysteries.

Soldiers had to obey any order without delay, so traditional education was viewed as something that would make them weaker. If a Spartan soldier was considering a career as a lawyer or the complexities of free will, he wasn’t focusing on fighting and listening to his commander—so he was kept from learning anything else.

3 Boys Were Publically Whipped For An Annual Festival

The Spartans had a annual festival they called the “Diamastigosis,” and it was brutal. In this one, the boys were taken in front of a crowd and beaten with a whip until they couldn’t stand it anymore.

It sounds like torture, but for the Spartans, it was a great honor. They would eagerly volunteer to be whipped in front of a crowd, wanting to prove to their city that they could withstand the abuse for longer than any other person.

This was such a novelty to other cultures that, when the Romans found out about it, they started vacationing in Sparta just so they could watch it. By AD 300, the Spartans had even set up a theater and sold tickets, buying into a little commercialism to profit from the Roman Empire.

2 They Murdered Slaves For Sport

The Spartans kept Palestinian slaves whom they called “Helots,” and they were absolutely terrible to them. Among the many atrocities committed against them was a ritual called “Crypteia,” meant to strike terror in the slaves and to get boys ready for battle.

Spartan boys would be given daggers and small rations of food and then sent out on a mission to ambush and murder as many helpless slaves as they could. They would hide until night and then jump out and attack Helots walking on highways and working in the fields.

The slaves would be brutally murdered, giving the boys a little practice on the field and reminding the Helots where their place in society really was.

1 Spartans Only Got Tombstones If They Died In Combat

If a Spartan died of old age, he wasn’t given any honors. He’d be buried in an unmarked grave, essentially being shamed for living out a full life.

They only way to get a tombstone was to die in combat. If a Spartan died in battle, he’d be buried where his body laid, and, as a special honor, he’d be given a tombstone with his name and the words “in war” written below it.

Women, who didn’t fight in the wars, could still get tombstones, but only under one circumstance: If a mother died in childbirth, she was given a warrior’s honors. To the Spartans, she had died fighting a battle of her own—and creating more boys to become the soldiers of Sparta.

+Further Reading

Let’s face it—you can never read too much about the Ancient world. So here are a few more lists from the archives to satisfy your cravings:

10 Amazing Facts About Ancient Sparta
10 Common Misconceptions About the Ancient Greeks
Top 10 Greatest Historical Warriors
Top 10 Badass Female Warriors

In the early 1950s, the CIA started a program called MK-ULTRA. Fearing that the Soviet Union was getting ahead in espionage, they investigated whether LSD could be used for mind control.

The existence of MK-ULTRA is fairly well-known, but most people don’t know just how crazy the details were. CIA agents did some absolutely insane things with LSD. It’s not entirely clear that the government actually learned anything, but they definitely got some incredible stories out of it.

10 Agents Slipped Each Other LSD

In the early days of MK-ULTRA, LSD was mostly tested on willing agents. CIA agents would very carefully take small doses of LSD and take notes on the effects.

As time passed, though, it escalated. Any agent who took LSD also agreed to be dosed unexpectedly at any time. Agents would secretly spike each others’ drinks so often that finding out your morning coffee had acid in it was just considered an “occupational hazard.”

It got so bad that when the CIA held an office party in 1954, they had to send a memo out to their staff specifically instructing them not to put LSD in the punch. Even then, the agents didn’t trust each other. One agent allegedly still brought his own wine bottle—and refused to put it down for even a second.

9 A Magician Taught The CIA Sleight Of Hand

Drugging people with LSD didn’t remain an in-house activity for long. In short time, the CIA decided to expand its program onto unsuspecting citizens, so they called in the experts—magicians.

John Mulholland, a professional illusionist, wrote a manual on sleight of hand, specifically so agents could add a little zest to your drink with a splash of LSD. He taught agents how to distract an audience with a dramatic action, such as lighting a match, to hide what their other hand was doing. He even suggested tricks that the CIA could use, such as gluing a pill to a matchbook and making it fall into a cup.

The manual features a little deception of its own: In the foreword, an attached message says that Mullholland’s methods “were never actually used,” but other documents reveal that Mulholland’s deceptions were a key part of the MK-ULTRA program.

8 The CIA Hired Prostitutes To Drug Their Clients

One way the CIA tested out LSD was through Operation Midnight Climax—an operation that truly lived up to its name.

The CIA set up a brothel and paid prostitutes $100 to lure unsuspecting men inside. Once there, the men were given LSD-laced liquor and brought to a bed next to a one-way mirror, with agents on the other side, watching.

Officially, the CIA was testing the prostitutes to see if they could become secret agents. They wanted to know if they could get information from a target using sex and drugs.

Unofficially, however, this may have just been an excuse for CIA agents to watch people have sex. The head of the project, George White, later wrote that it was “fun, fun, fun” and mused, “Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the all-highest?”

7 Mental Patients Were Drugged Into Comas

Canada got involved in MK-ULTRA, too. A McGill professor named Dr. Hebb successfully brainwashed students into accepting that God created the world in seven days. He put atheist students in a sensory deprivation tank and played them recordings supporting creationism. When they came out, the students were “very supportive” of the idea that the universe was created by an all-powerful god.

Another McGill scientist, Dr. Cameron, took Dr. Hebb’s ideas a step further. He believed he could use them to completely rewrite a person’s brain. He used a cocktail of drugs to put mental patients into a ten-day coma. When they came out of it, he started giving them electroshock therapy twice a day, nearly five times more often than normal treatment.

Dr. Cameron hoped he could “depattern” a person’s brain and then rewrite their entire worldview—and it just may have worked. A few years later, Dr. Cameron’s method showed up in the CIA’s interrogation training manual.

6 A Man Was Kept High For 174 Days

Some experiments simply tested how long agents could keep somebody high. As it turned out, the answer was for a very, very long time.

In one experiment, a group of African Americans with preexisting drug habits were brought in and given LSD. One group of seven men received LSD every day for 77 days straight. Every time they built up a tolerance to the drug, the researchers would double or quadruple their dosage to see if they could break through.

That was their record for a group, but it was a far cry from the top score. A mental patient in Kentucky was pulled out and drugged up so often that he was allegedly continuously high for 174 days. After the experiment ended, the mental patient supposedly appeared to be in a permanent acid trip for the rest of his life.

5 They Gave LSD To A Cat

The CIA drugged animals, too. Allegedly, they gave LSD to everything from dogs to spiders. One experiment, done on a cat, was even filmed and publicly circulated.

First, they put a sober cat in a cage with a mouse. Predictably, the cat immediately snagged and ate the mouse. When they loaded the cat up with drugs, though, the cat’s behavior changed. While high on LSD, the cat was absolutely terrified of the mice. It would leap to the corner of its cage and try to scurry to safety every time a tiny mouse came near it.

Most of MK-ULTRA was kept secret but not this experiment. The video you see above was even sent out to the Army as proof of just how much progress the government was making in the important field of getting various creatures high.

4 They Overdosed An Elephant

The CIA tried LSD on everything—including an elephant.

In 1962, the University of Oklahoma, working with the CIA, conducted an experiment on the effects of LSD on elephants. They wanted to see if they could make an elephant go savagely violent by shooting it with an LSD-filled dart, but they ended up killing it instead.

The elephant weighed 3,200 kilograms (7,000 lb), so the researchers loaded it up with a massive 297-milligram dose of acid. The elephant didn’t go crazy; instead, it let out a trumpet, collapsed onto the ground, pooped itself, and started having a seizure.

They tried to save the elephant by pouring 2,800 milligrams of Sparine into its ear, but it didn’t work. The elephant lay on the ground convulsing for an hour and 40 minutes before it died.

3 They Drugged A French Town

In 1951, a town in France was overcome by sickness and hallucinations. One man thought he was being eaten alive by snakes and jumped into the water, trying to drown himself. Another man saw his heart crawling out through his feet and begged doctors to put it back. Others saw red flowers growing all over their bodies. Many were hospitalized, and at least five died.

The official explanation was that a local bakery’s bread was contaminated with ergot, a psychedelic mold. One journalist named H.P. Albarelli Jr., though, claims that sources within the CIA have told him that they laced the bread with LSD.

As soon as Albarelli made his claim, other articles came out accusing him of lying, and nobody knows for sure if the CIA really was behind this one. The biggest thing that makes this chillingly possible, however, is that the CIA doesn’t even deny the other items on this list. The only claim they still dispute is that they killed five citizens in an allied country.

2 They Tried To Drug Fidel Castro

The CIA was determined to hurt Fidel Castro. All kinds of mad schemes came out, from ways to kill him to ways to humiliate him—including one that involved getting him high.

The plan was to dose Castro with LSD while he was giving a live conference on TV. The agents hoped that if Castro felt the effects of LSD while giving a speech, he’d start to freak out and embarrass himself in front of the nation.

The scheme was scrapped when the United States decided to move away from plans to humiliate Castro and onto plans to murder him. They didn’t give up on the idea of drugging enemy leaders, though. It was floated again a little while later when talking about what to do with Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser.

1 They Only Stopped Because They Found A Better Drug

In 1962, the government released a clause that required agents to request special permission from the FDA before using LSD in an experiment. The wild days of surprising people with LSD-spiked drinks were to coming to an end, and while MK-ULTRA wouldn’t be canceled for more than a decade, it started to calm down.

The CIA, however, was already using LSD less, anyway. It would be nice to say that this was because they grew a conscience, but they just found something harder. By this time, the CIA was experimenting with a drug called BZ.

After MK-ULTRA ended, the agent in charge declared it “useless,” but he’d made a bigger impact on the world than he knew. One of his subjects would go on to start the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, credited with sparking the hippie movement. Another would become the Unabomber.

MK-ULTRA didn’t exactly make the world a safer place—but it definitely made it a different one.

+Further Reading

Shockingly, this list is but a scratch on the surface of terrible acts perpetrated by the CIA. Here are some of the many many more from the archives:

10 Dirty Secret CIA Operations
10 Secret CIA Prisons You Do Not Want To Visit
10 Real Victims Of The CIA’s MKULTRA Program
10 Things You Should Know About The CIA’s Torture Program

In 1704, an American girl named Eunice Williams was abducted by Kahnawake Mohawks. When her parents found her, they thought she would be relieved at the chance to go home to her family. Instead, she refused. Life, she explained, was better with her Mohawks captors.

Eunice wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Puritan life was harsh and difficult—and even stricter than you imagined.

10 Christmas And Easter Were Banned

The Puritans who settled in America didn’t believe in celebrating Christmas—or any holiday. Anyone caught celebrating the birth, death, or resurrection of Christ was seen as a blasphemer who risked punishment.

According to the Puritans, celebrating holidays took away from the holiness of Sunday, “The Lord’s Day.” So everyone in a Puritan colony was required to keep showing up for work.

One Puritan diary recounts the tale of a troubling December day when a group of newcomers were caught outside, sinfully celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. When the governor spotted them, he yelled that, on Christmas, “there should be no gaming or reveling in the streets!”

The revelers fled into their homes. The entry ends by reassuring us that “[since that] time, nothing hath been attempted that way, at least openly.”

9 Adultery Was Punishable By Death

If you read The Scarlet Letter, you already know how strictly the Puritans frowned on adultery. Getting a scarlet “A” emblazoned on your dress, though, was actually getting off easy. When it came to adultery, Puritans followed Biblical laws, which meant that the punishment for adultery could be death.

You didn’t have to actually commit adultery to be punished, though. You would be publicly flogged if you even proposed it. One man, for example, was charged with propositioning another man’s wife on the grounds that he was “taking hold of her coate and inticing her by words.”

Women, of course, had the worst of it. They could even be charged for not responding properly while being sexually assaulted. Legal records tell us that one woman was charged 50 shillings for the crime of “not crying out when shee was assaulted.”

8 A Man Was Hanged For Bestiality Because A Piglet Looked Like Him

George Spencer was a balding, unattractive man with a missing eye. He wasn’t popular, either. The whole town thought he was up to something but just couldn’t put their finger on it until a pig gave birth to a piglet with one eye.

The one-eyed piglet, the people felt, was “incontrovertible proof” that Spencer had been having sex with pigs. This, they believed, was a divine message from God, who wanted them to hang Spencer.

Spencer was given two choices. He could be hanged as a sinner, or he could confess and find mercy. He decided to tell them he did it, believing that “mercy” meant he wouldn’t be killed. But they were talking about the sort of divine mercy that only comes after an angry mob kills you.

In court, he revoked his confession. But the court found him guilty anyway. Spencer was hanged, and even the pig was sentenced to death.

7 Following Other Faiths Was Punishable By Death

The Puritan colonies didn’t allow other faiths, especially the Quaker faith. Like Puritans, Quakers were Christians who believed in Jesus and the Bible. But Quakers had the gall to say that God’s original blessing was more important than man’s original sin. So obviously, they had to die.

In 1658, a law was created in Boston saying that any Quaker who did not immediately leave could be sentenced to death. Over a period of three years, four Quakers were executed.

The mass murder of Quakers only slowed down after the death of Mary Dyer. She was raised a Puritan but converted to the Quaker faith after a visit to England. She was warned never to set foot in Massachusetts again. When she did, she was hanged.

After Dyer’s execution, King Charles II revoked the legal permission that Massachusetts had been granted to murder Quakers.

6 They Took The Word ‘Cock’ Out Of The Language

The word “rooster” didn’t exist until the Puritans came to America. Until the 1600s, the only word used to describe a male chicken was “cock.” When “cock” picked up a second meaning, the Puritans were embarrassed.

It seemed indecent to have a cock on your farm or to serve cock for dinner. So the word “rooster” was created so that Puritans wouldn’t have to say something that sounded like male genitalia.

They didn’t stop there, though. Every instance of the word “cock” was excised from the English language. “Haycocks” became “haystacks,” “weathercocks” became “weather vanes,” and “cockroaches” became “roaches.”

Even names were changed. Louisa May Alcott, the author of Little Women, was an “Alcox” until her father changed their family name. He was humiliated to be the family of “all cocks.”

5 They Gave Their Kids Insane Names

Some Puritans believed that giving your child a normal name was worldly and sinful. No one with a name like “John” or “Peter,” they believed, could ever be truly devoted to Jesus Christ.

When the time came to name their children, the Puritans just labeled their kids with slogans. Puritans had some strange names like “Praise-God Barebone” and his son, “If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barebone.”

Even the short names were fairly strange. Kids walked around with names like “Sorry-For-Sin Coupard” and “Kill-Sin Pimple.”

Most Puritan names that came from virtues and slogans didn’t really catch on. Nevertheless, we still use a few Puritan names today. Any current “Felicity,” “Hope,” or “Prudence” was named following the same tradition that gave us the name “Abstinence.”

4 Fiddles Were Created By Satan To Make People Commit The Sin Of Dancing

According to the Puritans, the violin was a tool of the devil, created to lead innocent Christians into the sinful act of dancing. In a Puritan colony, dancing was immoral, especially dancing with the opposite sex. These were acts of raw, physical sexuality, and they risked enticing people into fornication.

However, the young people knew that other colonies were holding shameless hoedowns before the light of God without the slightest apology. They wanted the freedom to dance, too. So they created a clever work-around.

Young Puritans held “play-parties”—celebrations where young people would follow the steps in a children’s game to music so that they technically weren’t dancing. Songs like “Skip to My Lou” were written so that Puritan boys and girls could dance together—and tell their parents they were playing a kids’ game.

3 Unmarried Men Needed Permission To Enter A Town

Unmarried men were dangerous to a Puritan colony. If a man reached maturity without having a family, he was prone to drinking, gambling, and fornication. So single men could only enter a town with express written permission.

Almost every hobby that didn’t honor God was forbidden. Anyone caught adorning their shirt with laces or ruffs was seen as an excessive follower of vanity. If you were caught with a deck of cards or dice, you had to throw them away or face punishment.

Some recreation was permitted but with strict rules. Bars could sell alcohol. But they had to make sure nobody got drunk from it, and they had to close by 9:00 PM. You could go hunting, which was a way to feed your family. But to the Puritans, it was also classified as a recreational luxury.

2 Missing Church Was Punishable By Whipping

During every church service in Virginia, parishioners were reminded that they were required to attend church twice every day. If they missed it once, they would lose a day’s food. A second offense was met with a whipping, and anyone missing three days of church was sentenced to six months of rowing in a galley.

After a long voyage at sea, one man was so excited to see his family again that he kissed his wife in public—forgetting that it was Sunday. For his crime, he was charged with “lewd and unseemly behavior” and sentenced to hours of public humiliation in the stocks.

Even children were punished for not going to church. One boy was caught playing with chalk and brought in front of a court on charges of “irreverently . . . playing and recreating himself in the time of publick worship.”

1 Kissing The Bible Was Considered Blasphemy

Puritans took offense at anyone caught kissing The Holy Bible, believing that it was an act of idolatry that offended God.

Usually, that didn’t create a problem until Edmund Andros, who wasn’t a Puritan, was made governor general of New England. Andros declared that witnesses and jurors should kiss the Bible before swearing an oath in court. The Puritans were outraged.

People arranged protests by refusing to sit on juries or serve as witnesses in court on the grounds that they refused to step into a courtroom with such blasphemous rules. Andros’s rule—along with his other restrictive laws—aroused such fury in the colonists that there was an all-out revolt in Boston in 1689.

The Puritans won. Today, every American in a courtroom raises their right hand when they swear an oath—a legacy of Puritan beliefs that we still follow.

+ Further Reading

Given the historic events unfolding daily in the current presidential election, it seems fitting to spend a little time looking at more historic US lists. Here are but a few from the archives:

10 Conspiracy Theories That Helped Shape American History
10 Things You Didn’t Know About The Puritans
10 Surprising Facts About America’s First Book
10 Strange Examples Of Colonial Justice

Rome was a beacon of civilization in a dark world. In the words of one of their own, Rome was “the seat of virtue, empire, and dignity,” ruled by laws so just that they could “surpass the libraries of all the philosophers.”

The Romans, though, had a different definition of “virtue” and “dignity” than we do today. Some of the laws the Romans were so proud of were a little bit strange, and some of them were outright insane.

10Wearing Purple Was A Crime

Purple, in ancient Rome, was viewed as the most dignified and majestic of all colors. The emperors would dress themselves up each morning in the finest of purple togas, and they looked so good in it that they wouldn’t let anyone wear it.

The law against wearing purple was a “sumptuary law,” a Roman law designed to keep lower classes from making extravagant displays of wealth. Romans wanted to be able to take one look at somebody and know their social standing, to make sure they didn’t go around accidentally being polite to peasants. These laws were strict. If you weren’t a citizen, you weren’t allowed to put on a toga.

Purple togas were reserved for the emperor, because purple dye was incredibly expensive. It had to be imported from Phoenicia, where they made the dye from mollusks. To make enough dye for one toga, they had to crush 10,000 mollusks, so a purple toga was literally worth its weight in gold.

9Women Were Forbidden From Crying At Funerals

A Roman funeral started with a procession, where people would walk your body down the street, weeping as they went. The more people you had weeping, the more popular people figured you were. So, to impress their neighbors, some people hired professionals to pretend to cry.

Women who didn’t even know the deceased would be paid to walk in the procession, literally ripping out their hair and scratching their own faces in make-believe sorrow as they went. It got so bad that they had to outlaw crying at Roman funerals, just to keep people from hiring actors.

8Fathers Could Murder Their Daughter’s Lovers

If a man caught his wife having an affair, he was encouraged to lock his wife and her lover up and call every neighbor he could to come see. He had 20 hours to call as many neighbors as he could and invite them to check out the guy his wife has been sleeping with.

He then had three days to make a public declaration describing where he found his wife, who was having sex with her, and any extra juicy details he could supply. He was also legally required to divorce his wife, or else he would be charged with pimping.

He could murder his wife’s lover if he was a slave or a prostitute. If it was a citizen, though, he would have to talk to his father-in-law. Fathers, in Rome, could legally murder their daughter’s lovers no matter how nice of a toga they wore.

If a woman caught her husband having an affair, pretty much the only thing she could legally do was cry about it. As long as there weren’t any funerals going on nearby.

7The Ultimate Punishment Was Drowning In A Sack Filled With Animals

If you did something sort of bad, you’d get away with a simple beheading. If it was really bad, they’d take you up to the roof of the prison and throw you off. And if you killed your own father, you were sentenced to something truly horrible.

If someone was found guilty of patricide, they were blindfolded and told that they were unworthy of light. They would then be taken to a field outside of the town, stripped naked, and beaten with rods. When you couldn’t take anymore, then put you in a sack, throw in one serpent, one dog, one ape, and one rooster, and you and your whole menagerie would all be sewn in there together and thrown into the sea.

6Prostitutes Were Required To Dye Their Hair Blonde

Roman ladies all had naturally black hair. Natural blondes, in Roman time, were barbarians, especially the Gauls. Since the prostitutes couldn’t be associated with the dignity of a proper Roman woman, they had to make themselves look like barbarians, so they made them dye their hair.

It didn’t totally work, though. Roman women were jealous of all these blonde barbarians. Some started dying their hair blonde, while others forcibly chopped the hair off of slaves to make them into wigs, and, once again, the high-class ladies were indistinguishable from prostitutes.

5Suicidal People Could Apply To The Senate For Permission

In some circumstances, committing suicide was just considered prudent thinking. Kings typically kept poison on hand in case things turned bad, and sick people would be encouraged to drink hemlock to put an end to their suffering.

The only people who couldn’t commit suicide were soldiers, slaves, and prisoners, and this was just for economic reasons. Soldiers were useful and couldn’t be allowed to quit. Criminals couldn’t be allowed to die before they were convicted because if they did, the state couldn’t seize their property. And if a slave committed suicide, the owner was often entitled to a full refund.

In one area, they even had a formalized system to request suicide. A depressed person could file a petition to the senate requesting death, and if the senate agreed they really were better off dead, they received a free bottle of poison.

4People Killed By Thunderbolts Couldn’t Be Buried

Lightning strikes, the Romans believed, were acts of god performed by Jupiter. If something got hit by a lightning bolt, it wasn’t bad luck. Jupiter just really hated it. Whether it was a tree or a person, Jupiter had decided it was time for it to go.

If it was your friend who got hit, you were legally forbidden to lift the body above the knees, and you definitely couldn’t bury his body. If you did, you’d stolen a sacrifice from Jupiter.

They let people make up for it, though. If you buried someone who got hit by a lightning bolt, the Romans would sacrifice you to Jupiter instead.

3Fathers Could Only Sell Their Sons Into Slavery Three Times

Fathers in Rome had the legal right to temporarily sell their kids. An agreement would be made between the father and a buyer, and the son would become the buyer’s possession. The buyer, as part of the bargain, was expected to bring the kid back home.

Anyone who sold their child into slavery three times, though, was considered an unfit father. Their child would have to finish his third session as a slave because a deal is a deal, but afterward, he would be legally emancipated from his parents.

The limit, though, was three sales into slavery per child. So if you’d already sold your eldest twice, you could always move on to the next kid.

2Women Had To Leave Home Three Days Each Year Or Become Property

Romans had a set rules they called “usuacpio,” which were laws on how long you had to possess something before it became your property. If you held onto anything long enough, it could become legally yours, including people.

Wives, legally, became their husbands’ property if they stayed in his house for one straight year. But if she really wanted her freedom, she could have it—as long as she left her house for three continuous days each year. So, every year in Rome, women would leave their homes and hide somewhere else for a few days, or else become possessions.

1Fathers Could Legally Murder Their Whole Families

In the early days of Rome, there was no limit to what a father could do to his family. He could dole out any degree of abuse he could imagine. That didn’t just mean he was allowed spanking: If his children misbehaved, he could straight up murder them.

Fathers held on to those rights even after their kids grew up. Daughters still had to fear their fathers after marriage, and his sons only earned independence when their fathers died.

In time, Rome relaxed these laws a little bit. The right to murder family members ended in the first century BC, although, even then, they kept a few exceptions. Now, the law said, fathers could only murder their sons if they’ve been convicted of a crime.

There are far too many celebrity hoaxes as it is. If it isn’t Avril Lavigne being replaced by a doppelganger, then its Jeff Goldblum falling off of a cliff in New Zealand. While these are often laughed about and forgotten very quickly, there are still people out there that believe to have seen The King clear as day and in the rotting flesh. Here are the top 10 places Elvis’s cold, dead feet are supposed to have grace-landed in recent years.

Top 10 Rockers Who Are Better Than Elvis

10 Elvis is an Undercover DEA Agent

During his career, Elvis was known to have worked alongside president Nixon in spreading awareness against drugs. He was even known to have denounced the Beatles for their “hippy” and “anti-American” lifestyle. But rather than dying on the toilet from long term drug-abuse, some sources say that his massive image in american culture was too dangerous for someone with a Bureau of Narcotics badge. So they faked his death to keep him safe, now he appears around the world in various disguises to continue the fight against drugs.^[1]

9 Elvis Is An Extra In Home Alone

In this clip from Home Alone (1990), you can clearly see someone who resembles The King delivers one of his famous head tilts. It’s an uncanny resemblance, right? Actually it’s entirely ‘canny’; the extra used in this scene was confirmed to be none other than Gary Grott.

Grott was a close friend of Home Alone’s director, Christopher Columbus (yes that really is his name) and he appears in several of Columbus’s lesser known films. The head tilt was actually Grott’s best attempt at acting like an annoyed airport civilian. Maybe there’s a reason he never hit the big time. Unfortunately, Gary Grott passed away due to a heart attack in 2016 but as his family can attest, he was said to have enjoyed wearing the suede shoes for awhile. Who knows, maybe Grott is still out there too!^[2]

8 Elvis Is A Groundskeeper In Memphis

If you lived a crazy life as the world’s biggest rock star, you’d most likely end up retiring as an 83 year old groundskeeper. Right? It sounds far fetched, but there is a clinically insane fan base that would tell you otherwise. This clip shows “Elvis” doing various groundskeeper tasks. The real identity of the man in question is still unknown. He does, in fact, wear an Elvis t-shirt. So, by that logic, anyone wearing an Elvis t-shirt right now could very well be The King, Keep your eyes peeled.^[3]

7 Elvis Attended His Own Birthday Party

Photographs surfaced of Elvis’s 82nd birthday celebration in Memphis where a man with similar stature is in attendance. He wears a black baseball cap and glasses, has a bushy white beard and is seemingly accompanied by a small security detail which leads people to believe that Elvis was attending his own birthday in disguise. And if that’s not him, fans will have you believe it’s his stillborn twin, Garon. Although, Garon seems to be brought up any time there is a hole in an Elvis-is-alive argument. If it isn’t Elvis, it’s his brother, who also died.^[4]

6Elvis is in Argentina Under Witness Protection

Shortly after Elvis’s death, there were several claims that he was seen checking into a Memphis airport under the name John Burrows, which was an alias he was said to have used throughout his career. The plane was set for Argentina and as an Argentinian military member once claimed, a Pan Am flight did land there in 1977. With the knowledge that Elvis had a relationship with American government and a Bureau of Narcotics badge, an attempt to infiltrate a criminal organization called “The Fraternity” went sour. Elvis was found to be a mole for the government and was quickly escorted out of the country.^[5]

5 Elvis Is At Home, Kickin’ It By The Pool

Yep, you read correctly. In 1978, there was a heated debate surrounding a photograph that was taken by a poolside in Graceland. It shows a pool house screen door with a familiar face lurking behind it. The photograph even made it on CNN as Larry King and several other people involved went back and forth discussing its legitimacy. The photograph was taken by Mike Joseph who initially claimed it to be The King but later went back on his statement saying he had met with two of Elvis’s friends who were able to confirm that the photograph was not of Elvis, but of his cousin Jimmy, whom Elvis never got along with.^[6]

4 Elvis is Sending Roses To His Exes

What would you do if everyone thought you were dead? Mess with people’s heads is the only correct answer. Only a day after Elvis’s death, Lucy De Barbin, one of his ex girlfriends, received a single rose in the mail sent by none other than El Lancelot. This was apparently her odd term of endearment for Elvis and is a name only she would have been able to recognize. We are only left to assume that this was his way of telling his loved ones that he was not dead.^[7]

3 Elvis Escaped In A Helicopter

In a novel titled The Presley Arrangement, Monte Nicholson describes an experience he had working with the Los Angeles Police Department. He was informed that not only was there a suspicious helicopter hovering over Graceland the night of Elvis’s death, but that there were photographs taken of Presley himself getting into that helicopter from earlier. Some theorize that somehow, Elvis was replaced with a wax figure look alike moments before he was found dead. Could he have made the switcheroo?^[8]

2 Elvis Is A Ghost That Talks Through People

An entire book was written by Hanz Holzer about a housewife from New Jersey who claims that Elvis could speak through her and to his family. Elvis even pops up in modern day articles where people with psychic abilities decide to take on messages from the Late King. One including someone named Amy, or as she is also referred to as “The Closet Clairvoyant.” In the article titled, “Conversations With Dead People: A Medium’s Session With Elvis Presley” Elvis is quite the chatterbox. He rattles off some obvious buzzwords like, “sugar” and “honey.” Or maybe that’s just what was in the room at the time.^[9]

1 Elvis Is In Vegas

Elvis comes in droves if you’re in Vegas. They’ve got old Elvis, young Elvis, short Elvis, fat Elvis. What better place for an Elvis to retire and stay hidden than a city full of people pretending to be Elvis? I have my own personal theory that if he were to be alive to this day, he would be smart enough to hide in plain sight. Of all the theories you’ve heard today, which one sounds the most believable? Just sayin. We will most likely never know whether Elvis has truly left the building or not.^[10]

About the Author: I play in a San Diego rock and roll band called Lefties. @lefties_sd on media platforms. I’ve always had top 10 lists rolling around in my abstract head, its nice to have an opportunity to drain my brain.

People who lived in the past had some pretty crazy ideas about the world. There was a time when no one was safe from being accused of witchcraft and burned at the stake, and people refused to sail across the Atlantic for fear of falling off the edge of the world. Today, we can laugh at our ancestors for actually believing this junk, but their beliefs about medicine and the human body make the Salem Witch Trials and Flat Earth Theory look as normal and boring as a folded blanket.

10The Tapeworm Diet

A little over 100 years ago, society started giving women the idea that they need to be super thin, but it wasn’t easy for all women to drop the pounds fast. The medical industry saw fit to help these women with diet pills containing tapeworms. It took everyone a while to realize that while tapeworms do cause weight loss, they can also cause diarrhea, vitamin deficiencies, insomnia, and malnutrition.

Today, no one is sure if this practice really existed. The only evidence of tapeworm diet pills are old advertisements and rumors. However, these advertisements do indicate that whether or not these diet pills actually contained tapeworms, people wanted them to. Although the sale of tapeworms is now banned in America, there are reports of people buying tapeworms as diet aides online. Inevitably, these people just end up getting sick.

9Bat Blood Cures Blindness

The tropical, marshy environment along the Nile River made eye infections a common problem among the ancient Egyptians. They had to concoct some sort of cure to combat this complaint, and one of the solutions was dripping bat blood into their eyes.

The logic behind this cure isn’t actually all that crazy. The Egyptians thought since bats flew around at night, they must have had fantastic eyesight, and their blood might contain magical, eyesight-restoring properties. Of course, we now know that bats have horrible eyesight and only know where they are going thanks to echolocation.

8Having Sex With Virgins Cures STDs

By the 1500s, syphilis had become a big problem all across Europe. People soon realized that the disease spread through sex. Their understanding went badly wrong, however, when it was decided that the way to get rid of syphilis was to have sex with a virgin.

People believed at the time that those who had syphilis were diseased by their sexual misconduct and virgins possessed a powerful purity. As a result, by the 1800s, people infected with syphilis were having sex with virgins as a cure. The fault in this method soon became apparent when even more people contracted syphilis.

Mercury was also believed to rid people of this pox. They bathed in mercury and rubbed mercury ointments onto their skin, often resulting in death from mercury poisoning. Nevertheless, it was used through the 20th century to cure syphilis, but all it really did was cause tooth loss, nerve damage, and death.

7Cannibalism Cures Everything

As crazy as it sounds, it was shockingly common in Renaissance Europe to use cured human flesh as a cure for countless ailments, including epilepsy, nausea, and the common cold. Many people, including royals and priests, ate human meat and rubbed human fat on their bodies. Some even crafted delectable marmalades made with human blood. Sometimes they didn’t even bother cooking the blood and drank it like a fine wine instead. Treatments that involved human blood and flesh became almost as popular as herbal medicines in the 16th and 17th centuries.

European cannibalism was probably inspired by the ancient Greeks and Romans. The Greeks, who followed Galenic medicine, believed illnesses caused an unbalanced body and the only way the body could regain equilibrium was if the sick person ate healthy body parts corresponding to their particular ailment. For example, if you had a headache, you could nibble on some powdered skull to stop the pain. Meanwhile, the Romans started the trend of drinking human blood to cure epilepsy. They believed that untimely deaths left unused energy and life in the body, which could be captured by drinking the blood of fallen gladiators.

European folks eased themselves into cannibalism slowly. First, they ate the powdered remains of stolen Egyptian mummies. Later on, they consumed pulverized skull powder before finally upgrading to eating human flesh. They mostly ate the bodies of dead beggars, lepers, and executed prisoners. Just like the Romans, they thought they could gain the years that should have been left of these people’s lives. This idea persisted for an astonishing length of time, but in the 1700s, most people finally stopped calling cannibalism “medicine.”

6Women Had Roving Uteruses

The belief of the wandering womb originated from the ancient Greeks, who thought uteruses traveled around women’s bodies to follow good scents and run away from bad ones. Overwork and sexual abstinence was also thought to contribute to the womb’s movement.

The wandering womb was said to cause an array of physical and emotional ailments for women, which were were lumped under the catch-all term of “hysteria.” Symptoms of hysteria might include lethargy, headaches, vertigo, choking, suffocation, and heartburn. Even though men were acknowledged to have similar symptoms, it was never considered that their sexual organs were the cause. There were two solutions for troublesome traveling womb: One could lure the womb back home by inserting pleasant-smelling vaginal suppositories and smelling or swallowing something nasty (sometimes including feces), or simply get pregnant.

It took society well over 2,000 years to finally let go of the idea of the wandering womb. Even though the concept had mostly faded from medicine by the Enlightenment, hysteria was still regarded as a genuine phenomenon hundreds of years later. By the 1700s, the disease was blamed on women’s suggestible and damaged brains. This idea persisted until the mid-1900s.

5Penises Should Be Cultivated Like Houseplants

Back in the day, people used something called the “theory of humors” to explain medical conditions and the state of the human body. The theory was that since the world was composed of four elements (earth, air, water, and fire), there were four corresponding states of the human body (cold, dry, moist, and hot). Men were believed to have warm, dry bodies, which allowed them to grow penises. Women, however, were cold and wet like frigid swamps, so they lacked the proper conditions to grow penises.

You would think that the ancient Greeks—the same civilization that introduced geometry and democracy—would have known that plants grow best with warmth from the Sun and moisture from water, but they seem to have ignored the importance of moisture with this belief. Furthermore, vaginas are not exactly known for their icy temperatures.

4Spiderwebs Combat Malaria

A few hundred years ago, malaria was a devastating diagnosis with a high mortality rate and no known cure. Before quinine and modern medicines were implemented, people decided that the answer to the yellow fever was consuming the silky strands of protein that come out of spider abdomens.

Of course, they weren’t just sitting around gnawing on spiderwebs—that would be barbaric. Instead, they tucked the webs inside tablets to give to people who were suffering from malaria. Surprisingly enough, this did absolutely nothing, so to make the spiderweb cure more potent, sick people were instructed to eat actual spiders in butter in addition to the web pills. Somehow, that also failed. The Italians had a particular cure for malaria that was just as bizarre and ineffective: carrying around a spider enclosed in a walnut shell.

Luckily, people no longer have to eat spiders and their webs to cure malaria. After quinine was first introduced to Europe in the 1600s, the ineffective spiderweb cure became obsolete.

3Smoking Tobacco Cures Asthma And Cancer

When Europeans arrived in the Americas and first made contact with the natives, they found tobacco. They observed the natives smoking tobacco during religious celebrations and for medical purposes, so they took a small amount back to Europe. By the mid-1500s, the Europeans figured out how to ship enough tobacco from the New World for mass consumption, and everyone decided they should smoke it.

Tobacco became wildly popular in only a few decades. It took even less time for people to decide that it was a sacred healing herb that could cure all of their ailments, despite a lack of any supporting evidence. One doctor, Nicolas Monardes, claimed that tobacco could cure 36 different health problems, including cancer. People even thought smoking cured asthma. These ideas prevailed through the 1920s.

Doctors didn’t start noticing that smoking caused health issues until the 1930s. A few decades later, they finally figured out that smoking caused and exacerbated many diseases, including asthma and cancer.

2Elves Cause Illness

Whether you’re more familiar with the elves at Santa’s workshop who build toys or the ones who live in trees and bake delicious cookies, every image you’ve ever had of elves is about to be destroyed. These quaint and innocent renderings of elves wouldn’t have existed if you lived in Europe during the Middle Ages. That’s because people believed that elves were in league with the devil and sought to make humans sick by shooting them with tiny arrows.

As horrifying as it is to imagine demonic elves wielding miniature bows of destruction, more than one group of people believed this. Scandinavians believed in dark elves who created endless mischief, mostly spending their days causing devastating diseases. The English also believed elves caused disease, while the Scottish believed that arrows shot by elves caused internal pain and had the ability to afflict livestock in addition to humans. Those afflicted by elf-shots were treated as though they were possessed by a demon: They smoked herbs to expel evil spirits, prayed, and drank holy water to banish diseases caused by elves.

1The Healing Properties Of Dog Poop

It’s safe to say that all of us have had a sore throat at some point in time, and we have all sought some sort of relief. It’s also probably safe to say that none of us have ever thought of swallowing dog poop to relieve a sore throat, but this was a fairly common cure in the Middle Ages. People actually searched for white dog poop, crushed the dried poop into a powder, and mixed it with honey to soothe a scratchy throat.

Although the treatment’s effectiveness is unknown, the risk of consuming dog feces far outweighs any potential benefits. It includes the possibility of nausea, vomiting, abdominal pains and cramps, fever, and even bloody diarrhea. It’s pretty amazing that anyone of European ancestry is even alive today.

Julie Battin is a student at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania.

Sometimes, a weapons designer gets tired of making regular, boring guns and bombs and decides to make something . . . special. The results are often as awe-inspiring as they are utterly wacky.

The following 10 examples are the kinds of weapons produced by the fevered minds of engineers when they stop caring about things like subtlety and practicality.

10 Panzer VIII Maus

Irony surely played a part in the naming of the Panzerkampfwagen VIII Maus (“Mouse”) as it bears no resemblance to its namesake. Weighing in at a whopping 188 metric tons, it still holds the title of largest armored fighting vehicle.

Its top speed was only 22 kilometers per hour (14 mph). But with armor up to 220 millimeters (8.7 in) thick, it could afford to be slow. Whenever the lumbering behemoth eventually reached its target, the combination of its sheer weight and 128-millimeter (5 in) main gun would surely be enough to smash through any obstacle in its way. With a weapon like this, the Nazis would surely be invincible, right?

Well, Hitler seemed to think so as he was arguably the tank’s biggest proponent. Truthfully, though, Maus had numerous flaws that held it back. For one thing, a powerful engine was needed to propel the beast, which was a terrible gas guzzler. Its sheer weight meant that it couldn’t even cross bridges. Its gigantic size would have also made it an easy target for Allied bombers.^[1]

Out of an initial order of 150, only two were produced before Hitler canceled the project.

9 Messerschmitt Me 163 Komet

You can say this for the Nazis: They did not lack for audacity. They were willing to try just about any insane idea if they thought it would help them win the war.

Unfortunately for them, the Komet only came into service in the final year of the war—much too late to turn the tide in their favor. Then again, given how insane this thing was, it’s entirely likely that it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

To get the positives out of the way, the 163 was a rocket-powered aircraft in a time when most planes were still prop-driven. So it did at least have that going for it. But that’s about it.

For one thing, the craft was dangerous just to start as vacuums would occasionally form in the fuel liquid, causing it to explode when turned on. This fuel was also a mixture of two highly corrosive materials that would spontaneously combust upon mixing whether or not one wanted it to.^[2]

Once in the air, the 163 only had enough fuel for eight minutes of powered flight, which drastically limited how long it could operate. It also flew too fast for its main guns to be very accurate. Landing was a dicey proposition as troublesome landing gear made the Me 163 prone to overturning, at which point it would often explode.

8 Northrop XP-79

Let’s turn away from the Third Reich for a moment as they were not the only military to dabble in weaponized insanity. Enter the Northrop XP-79, a so-called “bomber-rammer” that was intended to do exactly what its name implies. The XP-79 was designed to ram enemy bombers out of the sky using the reinforced leading edges of its wings. The cockpit was made with armored glass that would protect the pilot from the impact.

The XP-79 never got out of the testing stage, though not for the reason you probably think. During its first and only flight, the pilot lost control of the craft, entered an irrecoverable spin, and crashed. Harry Crosby, the test pilot, was killed when he was hit by the plane upon attempting an emergency exit. The program was subsequently abandoned.^[3]

7 Antonov A-40

A flying tank sounds like the kind of thing a nine-year-old or perhaps Hideo Kojima might come up with, but that didn’t stop Oleg Antonov. Oleg wanted to devise a way to get a battle-ready tank onto the battlefield without risking a plane being downed by enemy fire.

When simply dropping tanks out of planes and having their crews parachute down to them proved to be an unfeasible solution to this problem, he had a simple solution. Slap some glider wings on that bad boy, and let it glide to the ground.

But as you might expect when trying to make a tank fly, weight proved to be a problem. Just to get the vehicle airborne required the removal of its weapons, fuel, and armor. To its credit, the test pilot described the landing as “smooth” and was even able to drive it back to headquarters. Sadly, this was not enough and the program was eventually scrapped.^[4]

6 SLAM (Project Pluto)

The Supersonic Low Altitude Missile (SLAM) was a weapon that is insane even by the standards of an article about crazy weapons. Envisioned as a third method of retaliation against the Soviets in the event of a nuclear war, the SLAM was a nuclear weapon delivered with nuclear power.

A nuclear-powered ramjet would heat air rammed into the missile as it flew, which would theoretically give it unlimited range. While the missile itself would carry a single nuclear warhead, it was also designed to carry multiple smaller nuclear bombs. Once on final approach to its target, it would rain down its nuclear payload before the missile itself detonated at its final destination.

There were many reasons why the project was canceled. One of the biggest was that just testing the thing would prove unfeasible. The unshielded nuclear reactor that powered it would render any land it flew over lethally radioactive.

If the radiation didn’t do the job, the shock wave might have as it was speculated that the shock wave might kill anyone underneath it. Finally, wherever the thing landed would become a nuclear disaster area. The government eventually decided that ICBMs could do the same job far more efficiently, and the project was scrapped.^[5]

5 Railguns

If you don’t respect the power of magnetic energy already, you probably will after seeing a demonstration of a railgun firing. Using the power of electromagnetism, these weapons can accelerate a projectile to speeds in excess of Mach 7.

The projectiles hit with even greater destructive power than a 12.7-centimeter (5 in) naval gun and with even longer range. As its ammunition is smaller in size than that of a traditional shell, more rounds can be stored and carry no risk of exploding if hit by enemy fire. Sounds like a perfect weapon, right?

Well, not quite. The intense heat generated by firing quickly warps the rails of the gun, greatly limiting how many full-powered shots it can discharge. It also requires a massive amount of energy to fire. Currently, only two ships in the navy can generate enough to fire it. Finally, the actual shots are hard to aim, meaning that a guidance system will be needed to make it accurate.^[6]

However, unlike the other entries on this list, the railgun is still being developed by militaries all over the world. So there’s a good chance this one might actually see the light of day.

4 Convair X-6

Nuclear-powered vehicles are an attractive proposition for any military because it would allow them to operate for extremely long periods of time. Unfortunately, radiation is a fickle mistress and one must be aware of its propensity to harm as much as it helps.

Just ask the fine folks who designed the Convair X-6. It was envisioned as a nuclear-powered strategic bomber that could stay aloft for weeks at a time.^[7]

To protect the crew, 12 tons of rubber and lead would have been needed to shield the reactor. While a few test flights were conducted, the program was eventually scrapped. (The Convair NB-36H, pictured above, was the only US aircraft that carried a nuclear reactor.)

3 Project Babylon

Third World dictatorships are like the annoying younger brothers of their more advanced cousins. Whatever big brother has, they want one, too. Naturally, this applies to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Saddam Hussein, in particular, had a serious case of WMD lust and tried at various points to acquire nuclear and chemical weapons. But Project Babylon would have taken things to the next level.

Creator and project leader Gerald Bull envisioned a “supergun” capable of launching satellites into orbit, but Saddam had other plans. The dictator would have used the 156-meter (512 ft) barrel to launch projectiles farther than the Scud missiles he already possessed.

However, the gun was so big and heavy that it would have had to be mounted into the side of a hill, making it impossible to aim. Its huge size would have also made it an easy target.

The project was eventually canceled when Bull was murdered, possibly by Mossad agents.^[8]

2 Panjandrum

Turning back to World War II on the Allied side, the Panjandrum was a device consisting of two rocket-powered wheels propelling a cart full of explosives. It was intended to be used on beach fortifications.

The only problem: Once you pointed it at a target and lit the fuse, it was up to the capricious whims of fate as to where the thing actually went. Also, the rockets that propelled it would sometimes come loose and fly off in random directions.^[9]

After a disastrous launch that almost resulted in the weapon killing a crowd of VIP spectators, the project was abandoned.

1 Boeing YAL-1

Since the rise of the ballistic missile, countries have scrambled to come up with a way to protect themselves from these weapons. The YAL-1 was Boeing’s answer to this problem. It was a plane equipped with a chemical laser to shoot down missiles. During testing, it actually shot down two test missiles.

But the laser was expensive and required a huge amount of electricity to operate. The plane that carried it was also large and unwieldy, an easy target for enemy interceptors. The project was canceled, and the plane was scrapped for parts.^[10]

Dan Cayce is a writer who does writer things.

There are nearly 144 million inhabitants in Russia, putting it at ninth place in the list of countries by population. With a total land area of 16,376,870 square kilometers (6,323,142 mi²) and a population density of only nine people per square kilometer (23 people per mi²), there is plenty of space for people to do dumb and unusual things.

That might be why Russia has an unlimited supply of odd stories and events despite containing only 1.87 percent of the world population.^[1] Here are ten more examples of their weird news stories which can rival the famous “Florida Man.”

10 Stadium Blasts Dying Bird Noises To Scare Away Birds

If you think your neighbors are too loud, try living next to Gazprom Arena. Residents flooded police departments with noise complaints after a new bird-scaring system went live in the popular St. Petersburg arena in June 2019. Reportedly, the system emitted sounds of dying birds and gunfire.

One resident named Anastasia said: “Children either can’t fall asleep or wake up asking ‘why are the birds suffering?’ ” Football Club Zenit did not say whether any birds were harmed in the recording of the sounds. Another resident complained that the people in charge of Gazprom Arena promised to adjust the volume, but it only seemed to get louder.

St. Petersburg isn’t the only place dealing with troublesome birds. The Moscow metro recently installed nearly 300 bird of prey stickers at 21 station lobbies to scare away birds and prevent them from crashing into glass panes to their deaths.^[2]

9 Former Teacher Kills Friend Who Claimed That Poetry Is Not Real Literature

In early 2014, a 53-year-old man in Irbit, a town in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals, was charged with the murder of another man, 67, said to have been a friend. They were drinking together in the friend’s flat when he said only prose was “real literature.”

According to federal police in the Russian region of Sverdlovsk: “The host insisted that real literature is prose, while his guest, a former teacher, argued for poetry. The literary dispute soon grew into a banal conflict, based on which the 53-year-old admirer of poetry killed his opponent with the help of a knife.”^[3]

The killer fled the scene and was later found hiding at an acquaintance’s house in a nearby village. He confessed to the murder and faced a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

8 Two Drunk Men Cut Off Their Ears For A Bet

Another odd news headline appeared in early 2014, when two intoxicated men in a Siberian mining region cut off their own ears after betting on an arm-wrestling contest. Police reported that the men were drinking to celebrate Orthodox Christmas and held an arm-wrestling contest, agreeing that the loser had to cut off his ear.

One man won the first match, but his opponent insisted on a second round, which he won. The men decided that according to their rules, both must cut off their ears. “The men voluntarily cut off their left ears. One completely, and the other half off. They were hospitalized with these injuries,” police said.^[4]

7 Naked Cheesemakers Take Photos In A Vat Filled With Milk

A group of cheesemakers celebrated the beginning of 2014 by swimming in the milk used for cheese processing. They posed and took pictures, which quickly went viral. An Artem Romanov posted the photos on the VKontakte social network with the caption: “Yeah, our job is really boring.” One man is even seen holding up his shorts for the camera.

Although the original images were removed, a wave of reposts and comments spread across the web. Some Internet users commented, “Now we know why the cheese is so salty.” Turns out that Romanov had previously posted other bizarre photos and videos. Earlier, he had posted a video of nearly naked men preparing dried braid cheese on the factory floor.

Their stunt may have caused some serious damage to the cheese industry in Omsk, a major Russian center for food processing. “If you plan to buy stringed-cheese the next time you go to the supermarket, you may want to check that it wasn’t made in Omsk,” warned The Moscow Times.^[5]

6 Man Fights Off Siberian Bear By Biting Its Tongue Off

In 2019, Nikolay Irgit, 30, and his two friends were collecting deer and moose antlers without the necessary permits in a forest reserve in the Tuva region. The antlers were used for making furniture as well as for medical purposes and often sold for a hefty price on the black market.^[6]

The men split up to cover more ground. Deep into the forest, Igrit stumbled across a brown bear. Weighing up to 600 kilograms (1323 lb), Siberian bears can rip an adult man apart. Igrit tried to scare away the beast by screaming, but the bear charged at him and repeatedly bit his face and head, also injuring the man’s hands and stomach.

As the bear was snapping at his face, the man bit the bear’s tongue off, scaring it away. Covered in blood, Igrit called for help, and his friends arrived to call an ambulance. Although the man survived the bear attack, he did not escape the law. Police launched an administrative case against him for illegal activities in the forest reserves.

5 Clairvoyant Purchases Psychic Cat For $84,000

An unusual news headline appeared at the start of 2017, when a clairvoyant bought a “psychic” cat in Russia. Dimitry, the cat’s owner, inherited the cat from his aunt when she died. He claimed that the cat could suddenly appear from behind locked doors and use mind tricks to make Dimitry go shopping for the cat’s favorite food in the middle of the night.

The owner reported that he hates fish and sausage, but the cat made him hungry for these foods. “He would wake me up at 5 am giving me a strong desire to eat fish or sausage,” said Dimitry. “So much so that I had to go out right then to buy it, and give it to the cat. And as soon as the cat started to eat, my hunger disappeared.”

The cat also stared into empty spaces, evidently seeing things humans could not. Even Dimitry’s marriage suffered, with his wife feeling uneasy around the “psychic” pet. That was until a clairvoyant from Novosibirsk, around 4,500 kilometers (2,800 mi) away, mysteriously heard about the cat and came to inspect it.

Labeled as a “witch” by local media, the woman paid five million rubles (around $84,000) for the cat, intending to put it to work in her seances. “She is a clairvoyant and came with all her paraphernalia. She closed the cat in the room, and then rapidly decided to buy it,” Dimitry said.^[7]

4 Cargo Plane Drops Three Tons Of Gold Over Siberia

For a brief moment on March 15, 2018, the gray skies of Siberia were filled with gold. A Cold War-era cargo aircraft took off from Yakutsk Airport in Siberia, carrying an estimated $378 million in gold, platinum, and diamonds on behalf of a private mining company. During takeoff, the cargo hatch tore open and spilled nearly 200 gold bars.

Most of the ingots immediately landed on the Yakutsk Airport runway, but the plane continued flying for another 16 kilometers (10 mi) to make an emergency landing and dropped more cargo along the way. A police spokesperson stated that nobody was injured, and the treasure was recovered. Apparently, the plane’s maintenance crew was to blame for improperly securing the cargo.^[8]

3 Dagestan Hosts Sheep Beauty Queen Contest

To celebrate the Muslim “Festival of Sacrifice,” known as Eid al-Adha in Arabic and Kurban Bayram in the Russian and Turkic-speaking world, the city of Dagestan held a sheep beauty contest in August 2018. Considered as one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar, Kurban Bayram celebrates the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son on a command from God.

An outdoor livestock market in central Dagestan held the contest to mark the occasion. According to the Buynaksk district website, “The jury faced a truly difficult task: To pick the most worthy candidate for the ‘Most Beautiful Sheep’ title out of 10 decorated and fairly good-looking sheep.”

They awarded the owner of the winning sheep, named “Princess Aisha,” with a traditional handmade dagger. Estimates say roughly 300,000 sheep are slaughtered on Kurban Bayram every year, but no words were given about the ultimate fate of Princess Aisha.^[9]

2 World Chess President Claims He Was Abducted And Aliens Invented Chess

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was the world chess president from 1995 to 2018, defeating the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov for the job. He was also the president of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia from 1993 to 2010.

However, one unusual claim sets Ilyumzhinov apart from the average politician. He says that aliens wearing yellow spacesuits abducted him from his Moscow home in September 1997:

I was taken [from] my apartment in Moscow to this spaceship, and we went to some star and after that, I asked them, “Please bring me back.” They are like people, like us. They have the same mind and the same vision. I talked with them and I understand that we are not alone in this whole world—we are not unique.

Considering Ilyumzhinov’s alleged otherworldly encounter and his long-term association with the World Chess Federation, it is not surprising that he made a connection between aliens and the game of chess:

My theory is that chess comes from space. Because it’s the same rules—64 squares, black and white, and the same rules in Japan, in China, in Qatar, in Mongolia, in Africa—the rules are the same. Why? I think maybe it is from space.^[10]

1 Bag Of 54 Severed Human Hands Found In Siberia

A fisherman in Siberia made a grim discovery in March 2018. He was walking along the icy Amur River when he noticed a hand sticking out of the snow on a small island near the city of Khabarovsk. Soon, he discovered that there was an entire bag full of hands.

The bag contained 27 pairs of human hands, severed at the wrist. Photos of the 54 hands lined up in neat rows quickly gained media attention. But according to the Russian government, it was not the work of a hand-obsessed killer.

Medical bandages and plastic shoe coverings commonly used in facilities such as laboratories and hospitals were also found in the bag. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation determined that their origin was a Khabarovsk-based forensics laboratory, which disposed of its biowaste improperly.

“The biological objects (hands) found are not of a criminal origin, but were disposed of in a manner not provided for by law,” wrote the committee. However, it is not known why the laboratory severed the hands in the first place.^[11]

There are nearly 144 million inhabitants in Russia, putting it at ninth place in the list of countries by population. With a total land area of 16,376,870 square kilometers (6,323,142 mi²) and a population density of only nine people per square kilometer (23 people per mi²), there is plenty of space for people to do dumb and unusual things.

That might be why Russia has an unlimited supply of odd stories and events despite containing only 1.87 percent of the world population.^[1] Here are ten more examples of their weird news stories which can rival the famous “Florida Man.”

10 Stadium Blasts Dying Bird Noises To Scare Away Birds

If you think your neighbors are too loud, try living next to Gazprom Arena. Residents flooded police departments with noise complaints after a new bird-scaring system went live in the popular St. Petersburg arena in June 2019. Reportedly, the system emitted sounds of dying birds and gunfire.

One resident named Anastasia said: “Children either can’t fall asleep or wake up asking ‘why are the birds suffering?’ ” Football Club Zenit did not say whether any birds were harmed in the recording of the sounds. Another resident complained that the people in charge of Gazprom Arena promised to adjust the volume, but it only seemed to get louder.

St. Petersburg isn’t the only place dealing with troublesome birds. The Moscow metro recently installed nearly 300 bird of prey stickers at 21 station lobbies to scare away birds and prevent them from crashing into glass panes to their deaths.^[2]

9 Former Teacher Kills Friend Who Claimed That Poetry Is Not Real Literature

In early 2014, a 53-year-old man in Irbit, a town in the Sverdlovsk region of the Urals, was charged with the murder of another man, 67, said to have been a friend. They were drinking together in the friend’s flat when he said only prose was “real literature.”

According to federal police in the Russian region of Sverdlovsk: “The host insisted that real literature is prose, while his guest, a former teacher, argued for poetry. The literary dispute soon grew into a banal conflict, based on which the 53-year-old admirer of poetry killed his opponent with the help of a knife.”^[3]

The killer fled the scene and was later found hiding at an acquaintance’s house in a nearby village. He confessed to the murder and faced a sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

8 Two Drunk Men Cut Off Their Ears For A Bet

Another odd news headline appeared in early 2014, when two intoxicated men in a Siberian mining region cut off their own ears after betting on an arm-wrestling contest. Police reported that the men were drinking to celebrate Orthodox Christmas and held an arm-wrestling contest, agreeing that the loser had to cut off his ear.

One man won the first match, but his opponent insisted on a second round, which he won. The men decided that according to their rules, both must cut off their ears. “The men voluntarily cut off their left ears. One completely, and the other half off. They were hospitalized with these injuries,” police said.^[4]

7 Naked Cheesemakers Take Photos In A Vat Filled With Milk

A group of cheesemakers celebrated the beginning of 2014 by swimming in the milk used for cheese processing. They posed and took pictures, which quickly went viral. An Artem Romanov posted the photos on the VKontakte social network with the caption: “Yeah, our job is really boring.” One man is even seen holding up his shorts for the camera.

Although the original images were removed, a wave of reposts and comments spread across the web. Some Internet users commented, “Now we know why the cheese is so salty.” Turns out that Romanov had previously posted other bizarre photos and videos. Earlier, he had posted a video of nearly naked men preparing dried braid cheese on the factory floor.

Their stunt may have caused some serious damage to the cheese industry in Omsk, a major Russian center for food processing. “If you plan to buy stringed-cheese the next time you go to the supermarket, you may want to check that it wasn’t made in Omsk,” warned The Moscow Times.^[5]

6 Man Fights Off Siberian Bear By Biting Its Tongue Off

In 2019, Nikolay Irgit, 30, and his two friends were collecting deer and moose antlers without the necessary permits in a forest reserve in the Tuva region. The antlers were used for making furniture as well as for medical purposes and often sold for a hefty price on the black market.^[6]

The men split up to cover more ground. Deep into the forest, Igrit stumbled across a brown bear. Weighing up to 600 kilograms (1323 lb), Siberian bears can rip an adult man apart. Igrit tried to scare away the beast by screaming, but the bear charged at him and repeatedly bit his face and head, also injuring the man’s hands and stomach.

As the bear was snapping at his face, the man bit the bear’s tongue off, scaring it away. Covered in blood, Igrit called for help, and his friends arrived to call an ambulance. Although the man survived the bear attack, he did not escape the law. Police launched an administrative case against him for illegal activities in the forest reserves.

5 Clairvoyant Purchases Psychic Cat For $84,000

An unusual news headline appeared at the start of 2017, when a clairvoyant bought a “psychic” cat in Russia. Dimitry, the cat’s owner, inherited the cat from his aunt when she died. He claimed that the cat could suddenly appear from behind locked doors and use mind tricks to make Dimitry go shopping for the cat’s favorite food in the middle of the night.

The owner reported that he hates fish and sausage, but the cat made him hungry for these foods. “He would wake me up at 5 am giving me a strong desire to eat fish or sausage,” said Dimitry. “So much so that I had to go out right then to buy it, and give it to the cat. And as soon as the cat started to eat, my hunger disappeared.”

The cat also stared into empty spaces, evidently seeing things humans could not. Even Dimitry’s marriage suffered, with his wife feeling uneasy around the “psychic” pet. That was until a clairvoyant from Novosibirsk, around 4,500 kilometers (2,800 mi) away, mysteriously heard about the cat and came to inspect it.

Labeled as a “witch” by local media, the woman paid five million rubles (around $84,000) for the cat, intending to put it to work in her seances. “She is a clairvoyant and came with all her paraphernalia. She closed the cat in the room, and then rapidly decided to buy it,” Dimitry said.^[7]

4 Cargo Plane Drops Three Tons Of Gold Over Siberia

For a brief moment on March 15, 2018, the gray skies of Siberia were filled with gold. A Cold War-era cargo aircraft took off from Yakutsk Airport in Siberia, carrying an estimated $378 million in gold, platinum, and diamonds on behalf of a private mining company. During takeoff, the cargo hatch tore open and spilled nearly 200 gold bars.

Most of the ingots immediately landed on the Yakutsk Airport runway, but the plane continued flying for another 16 kilometers (10 mi) to make an emergency landing and dropped more cargo along the way. A police spokesperson stated that nobody was injured, and the treasure was recovered. Apparently, the plane’s maintenance crew was to blame for improperly securing the cargo.^[8]

3 Dagestan Hosts Sheep Beauty Queen Contest

To celebrate the Muslim “Festival of Sacrifice,” known as Eid al-Adha in Arabic and Kurban Bayram in the Russian and Turkic-speaking world, the city of Dagestan held a sheep beauty contest in August 2018. Considered as one of the holiest days in the Islamic calendar, Kurban Bayram celebrates the willingness of Ibrahim to sacrifice his son on a command from God.

An outdoor livestock market in central Dagestan held the contest to mark the occasion. According to the Buynaksk district website, “The jury faced a truly difficult task: To pick the most worthy candidate for the ‘Most Beautiful Sheep’ title out of 10 decorated and fairly good-looking sheep.”

They awarded the owner of the winning sheep, named “Princess Aisha,” with a traditional handmade dagger. Estimates say roughly 300,000 sheep are slaughtered on Kurban Bayram every year, but no words were given about the ultimate fate of Princess Aisha.^[9]

2 World Chess President Claims He Was Abducted And Aliens Invented Chess

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was the world chess president from 1995 to 2018, defeating the former world chess champion Garry Kasparov for the job. He was also the president of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia from 1993 to 2010.

However, one unusual claim sets Ilyumzhinov apart from the average politician. He says that aliens wearing yellow spacesuits abducted him from his Moscow home in September 1997:

I was taken [from] my apartment in Moscow to this spaceship, and we went to some star and after that, I asked them, “Please bring me back.” They are like people, like us. They have the same mind and the same vision. I talked with them and I understand that we are not alone in this whole world—we are not unique.

Considering Ilyumzhinov’s alleged otherworldly encounter and his long-term association with the World Chess Federation, it is not surprising that he made a connection between aliens and the game of chess:

My theory is that chess comes from space. Because it’s the same rules—64 squares, black and white, and the same rules in Japan, in China, in Qatar, in Mongolia, in Africa—the rules are the same. Why? I think maybe it is from space.^[10]

1 Bag Of 54 Severed Human Hands Found In Siberia

A fisherman in Siberia made a grim discovery in March 2018. He was walking along the icy Amur River when he noticed a hand sticking out of the snow on a small island near the city of Khabarovsk. Soon, he discovered that there was an entire bag full of hands.

The bag contained 27 pairs of human hands, severed at the wrist. Photos of the 54 hands lined up in neat rows quickly gained media attention. But according to the Russian government, it was not the work of a hand-obsessed killer.

Medical bandages and plastic shoe coverings commonly used in facilities such as laboratories and hospitals were also found in the bag. The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation determined that their origin was a Khabarovsk-based forensics laboratory, which disposed of its biowaste improperly.

“The biological objects (hands) found are not of a criminal origin, but were disposed of in a manner not provided for by law,” wrote the committee. However, it is not known why the laboratory severed the hands in the first place.^[11]

If you suddenly woke up inside a mental hospital, do you think you could convince everyone that you’re not crazy and to let you go home? Convincing the world you’re sane may not be as easy as you think. It is shockingly easy in the United States and around the world to be wrongfully and involuntarily committed to an insane asylum.

10 Banking Conspiracy Theorist

Gustl Mollath was an ordinary German man who made a living by restoring vintage cars. But then he stumbled upon a banking conspiracy so grand that the world thought he was crazy enough that he was institutionalized for seven years.

While Mollath made a humble living working on cars, his wife worked at one of Germany’s largest banks, HypoVereinsbank. It was through his wife and her work that Mollath discovered a massive tax evasion scheme undertaken by the German bank. Mollath’s discovery quickly caused conflict in the marriage. After allegations of domestic violence between the couple, the marriage was heading for divorce. Mollath took what he knew about the bank’s tax evasion scheme to the German public. He then filed a large criminal complaint against HypoVereinsbank and its employees—including his wife. He claimed that HypoVereinsbank was making illicit money transfers to Switzerland that would soon be labeled money laundering.

At first, the German media ignored Mollath’s claims, but the German authorities did not. Mollath’s wife went forward with the divorce and told the authorities that he had slashed her tires. She also claimed that he was abusive following his discovery of the banking conspiracy. German prosecutors charged Mollath and used his criminal complaint against HypoVereinsbank as “evidence that he suffered from paranoid delusions.” They successfully had him involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.

Though Mollath remained locked away in an insane asylum, not everyone thought he was crazy. Bloggers, activists, and conspiracy theorists began to investigate Mollath’s claims against HypoVereinsbank and found them to be correct.

Many years later, an internal report by HypoVereinsbank that proved the tax evasion and money laundering scheme was leaked to the public by a German newspaper. Mollath’s claims were found to be true and led to HypoVereinsbank being raided by German police on suspicion of tax fraud. Mollath was released from the mental hospital by a court.

9 NYPD Whistle-Blower

Adrian Schoolcraft was a New York Police Department (NYPD) cop. That is, until he decided he had to take a stand against corruption in the NYPD.

Officer Schoolcraft first started his effort to expose wrongdoings by his fellow NYPD officers in 2008. He secretly taped conversations among the NYPD from 2008 to 2009. The tapes contained evidence of widespread corruption that included the use of illegal arrest quotas that led to many wrongful arrests in New York City.

As Schoolcraft began compiling his tapes and voicing his dissent, he began experiencing harassment from other officers in the NYPD. When Officer Schoolcraft took his concerns to his superiors, they dismissed his claims and suggested that Schoolcraft was losing his mind. They recommended that he be given psychological treatment. When Officer Schoolcraft did meet with an NYPD psychologist, the psychologist made him surrender his weapons and Schoolcraft was reassigned to a menial desk job.

Schoolcraft persevered with his allegations of corruption and got his claims to the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau. The NYPD responded by putting Schoolcraft under “forced monitoring.” Soon after, an NYPD lieutenant confiscated the notes Schoolcraft had compiled as evidence of the corruption. Schoolcraft then received a call from his father, a former policeman himself, warning him about actions the NYPD may take against him. Mere hours later, members of the NYPD invaded Schoolcraft’s apartment after obtaining the key by telling Schoolcraft’s landlord that he was suicidal.

Just before the NYPD officers raided Schoolcraft’s apartment, he turned on two tape recorders to record the incident. After the NYPD officers broke into Schoolcraft’s apartment, they interrogated him before handcuffing him, taking him away, and involuntarily committing him to psychiatric ward in the nearby Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.

Schoolcraft was held in the psychiatric ward against his will. He was handcuffed to his bed and prevented from using the telephone to call for help at the orders of the NYPD.

After six days, Schoolcraft was able to leave the mental hospital and promptly filed a lawsuit against the NYPD and the mental hospital that held him against his will at the nefarious orders of the police. After his release, Schoolcraft was indefinitely suspended without pay from the NYPD. NYPD officers continued monitoring Schoolcraft and visiting him at his apartment for multiple weeks. Schoolcraft’s allegations of corruption, arrest quotas, and underreporting among the NYPD were later vindicated by the Village Voice.

8 The USSR’s Critics

The Soviet Union had a problem with its treatment of its dissidents and with its psychiatric practices that resulted in widespread abuse of the mental health system. During the 1960s and ’70s, the USSR systematically diagnosed its critics with mental illnesses in order to discredit them and move them from the general population to insane asylums.

The USSR even invented psychological conditions including “delusion of reformism,” and “sluggish schizophrenia.” The condition of sluggish schizophrenia was invented so that people could be diagnosed with schizophrenia even if no signs or symptoms were evident. One Soviet dissident, Valery Tarsis, was wrongfully diagnosed and forcefully committed to an insane asylum after he smuggled his novel The Bluebottle—which was critical of the USSR government—out of the Soviet Union to have it published.

Tarsis spent eight months locked away in a Soviet mental hospital. During his time there, he wrote one of the first literary works to address the USSR’s nefarious use of psychiatry, an autobiographical novel entitled Ward 7.

Soviet poet Jospeh Brodsky was also committed against his will in the same year as Tarsis, 1963. Brodsky was accused by Soviet officials of pursuing a “parasitic way of life.” He was diagnosed insane and forcibly institutionalized. Brodsky endured a horrendous treatment, being forcibly injected with tranquilizers and woken in the middle of the night by being immersed in cold water. He spent a total of 18 months in the insane asylum.

7 Pain Medication Side Effects

Back in 1993, a Nebraska man named John Montin took some pain medication to try to manage his chronic back pain. This action inadvertently got him committed to an insane asylum.

According to the psychiatrist who evaluated Montin, the pain medication he took induced a temporary psychosis. This dazed state caused Montin to go knock on the door of a rural Nebraska home and try to “take ownership of it” by claiming it belonged to his ancestors.

Accounts of what happened next differ drastically. Nebraska police initially claimed that Montin engaged in an 11-hour shoot-out with the cops that resulted in no injuries to either party. However, at Montin’s trial, the owners of the home were alleged to have pulled shotguns on a dazed Montin, which prompted Montin to hide in a nearby ditch overnight.

Most of the charges levied against Montin were dropped by prosecutors. Jurors presiding over the trial acquitted Montin of the remaining attempted murder and weapons charges. The jurors also cleared Montin of the charge of false imprisonment and use of a weapon “by reason of insanity.” Based upon police reports of Montin’s behavior during the incident, Montin was then involuntarily committed to a mental hospital.

When the affects of his back pain medication wore off hours after the incident, Montin was no longer insane. But when Montin was involuntarily committed to the psychiatric ward in Lincoln Regional Center Hospital, his psychiatrists never bothered to evaluate him to determine if he was still insane and worthy of being involuntarily and indefinitely committed to their psych ward. Instead, they relied upon the police reports of his behavior during the incident.

Montin remained involuntarily committed in that psychiatric ward for 20 years until he was finally able to convince a doctor in the hospital to reevaluate him. After examining him and hearing his story, Montin was found to be sane after all and released. Montin subsequently sued that Nebraska mental hospital for $33 million. The case has not yet been settled.

6 Anti-Segregation Activist

As a history professor at Alcorn State University, Clennon Washington King Jr. had an inside view of the racially segregated school system in 1950s Mississippi. Professor King began to attract attention from the public in 1957 when he wrote letters to the editors of local newspapers advocating for the end of racial segregation in schools, prompting some pro-segregation Mississippians to threaten to boycott Alcorn University.

Professor King was unfazed and continued to fight segregation. In 1958, he tried to enroll one of his own children in an all-white elementary school. His attempts were unsuccessful, and his wife and children ended up fleeing for fear of retaliation in the racially charged South.

Later that year, King, the well-qualified academic, tried to enroll himself into the University of Mississippi. The only problem was that in 1958, the University of Mississippi didn’t allow African Americans like King into their college. Not only was he rejected, but university officials literally thought he was crazy for trying to enroll at a university that barred black men. King was committed to an insane asylum as a result. Fortunately, his brother was able to free him after a 12-day stint in the mental institution.

Two years later, James Meredith succeeded where Professor King could not and became the first black student to enroll in the University of Mississippi.

King would later run as a presidential candidate in the 1960 presidential campaign for the Independent Afro-American Party. He received 1,485 votes in Alabama, making him the first black presidential candidate in the United States to run as a party nominee.

5 The Surveiled Honors Student

Sophia Chinemerem Eze emigrated from Nigeria to New York City to attend Brooklyn College as an international honors student, but her American dream turned into a waking nightmare.

The trouble for Eze began in her off-campus apartment, where she was suspicious that her former landlords and roommates were engaging in “potentially criminal activity” and defaming her on the Internet. Most startlingly of all, she thought that her landlord had installed a hidden camera in her bedroom.

Eze took her concerns to her college’s security and psychiatrist, but they didn’t believe her and offered her no help, even after she purportedly discovered a hidden camera inside her bedroom. Despite the fact that Ms. Eze had no history of mental illness, she was forced into an ambulance by school personnel against her will and taken to the psychiatric ward of a Kings County Hospital without her consent. She was then involuntarily committed and held for two weeks in that psychiatric ward.

When she was eventually released from the psychiatric ward, staff at Brooklyn College allegedly did not allow Eze to complete her final examinations. Eze has since transferred out of Brooklyn College.

Ms. Eze filed a lawsuit against the company that owned the mental facility that wrongly committed her for two weeks and won $110,000. She has also filed a lawsuit against Brooklyn College.

4 China’s Dissidents

Similarly to the USSR, The People’s Republic of China has also made a habit out of labeling its dissidents insane and forcibly committing them into mental institutions. One such critic was Xu Lindong, a 50-year-old farmer with a fourth grade education who spent his whole life working on his farm.

Lindong tried to help his illiterate neighbor claim ownership of a small piece of land next to her home and filed on her behalf to obtain the small plot. After the claim was rejected in a Chinese court, Lindong sent petitions to government officials to try to find someone who would help his neighbor.

The Chinese government took notice of his grievances but didn’t exactly address them. Instead, they decided that he and his grievances were insane and had him involuntarily committed to a mental hospital—despite the fact that he showed no signs or history of mental illness.

While Lindong was locked away in that mental hospital, he was given 54 brutal electro-shock treatments. He was also forcibly restrained and given medications against his will. He felt so hopeless that he tried to commit suicide three times. Xu Lindong ended up spending 6.5 years in two different mental hospitals until he was released after his brother was able to get a journalist to publish his story in the local press.

Lindong’s case isn’t out of the ordinary in China. Other cases include Xu Wu, a former security guard who petitioned the government in a wage dispute and was involuntarily committed for four years. Wu also faced electro-shock treatment and considered suicide.

3 Homosexuality As A Mental Illness

Psychiatry before the 20th century was considerably less scientific than it is now. The bizarre reasons one could be committed to an insane asylum included “laziness,” “bad whiskey,” “imaginary female trouble,” and “parents were cousins.” It was also common for gay and lesbian individuals to be committed for their attraction to members of the same sex and for young women to be committed for promiscuity if it was deemed that their sexual appetites were inappropriately voracious.

The practice had a longstanding influence. Until 1973, the American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. One shockingly recent case of a lesbian being wrongly committed is that of an American named Lyn Duff, now a journalist. In 1991, at age 14, she came out publicly as a lesbian. Her mother did not take the news well. She took Duff from their California home to Rivendell Psychiatric Center in Utah and put the teen in treatment.

Once at the Utah mental hospital, Duff was visited by Mormon missionaries who considered her homosexuality a mental illness. Hospital staff tried to use conversion therapy on Duff. One of the most bizarre treatments Duff was subjected to was being forced to watch lesbian pornography while smelling ammonia in a Pavlovian attempt to make her straight. She was given psychotropic drugs, put under hypnosis, and sent into solitary confinement.

Duff spent a total of 168 days involuntarily committed in the mental hospital. She eventually escaped in May 1992 and fled to San Francisco. Soon after, she successfully had her mother’s parental rights terminated by a California court and was adopted by a lesbian couple in San Francisco.

2 Ex-Muslim Nigerian

Being an atheist is hard in Nigeria, an ardently Muslim country where 51 persent of Muslims believe that all those who leave the religion of Islam should be put to death. Mubarak Bala was one of those former Muslims, but instead of being put to death, he was deemed insane.

Bala first went public with his non-belief in Islam when he told his family that he had renounced the religion. After his family heard that Bala had left the religion of Islam, they took him to a doctor, thinking he could be mentally ill. The first doctor they saw found no signs of mental illness in Bala, but the family was able to convince a second doctor that Bala’s atheism was a form of mental illness and a “side effect of a personality change.” Bala was involuntarily committed into a psychiatric institution and forcibly drugged by the hospital staff.

Bala began using Twitter and email to call for help from the world while he was locked away in the mental institution. Eventually, a humanist charity was able to help get him freed, and Bala was released after being held for 18 days. Unfortunately, things didn’t get much better after he was released. He claimed to receive death threats and went into hiding.

1 The First Hand-Washing Doctor

Back in the 19th century, medicine was a far dirtier practice than it is today. Doctors wouldn’t wash their hands—even before delivering babies. When one lone doctor suggested that medical professionals should more rigorously wash their hands, the medical community thought he was crazy.

While practicing medicine in a German hospital, Doctor Ignaz Semmelweis raised an eyebrow when he saw his fellow doctors walk from the bedsides of dead or dying patients directly into the hospital’s maternity ward to deliver babies. Pretty soon, Dr. Semmelweis suggested that the doctors wash their hands before handling newborn babies to reduce rates of infant mortality. The medical community was outraged at the accusation that doctors were inadvertently causing some of their patients horrid deaths with their dirty hands. One of his many detractors was Doctor Carl Levy, who published a paper rebutting Semmelweis’s claims: “He is concerned only with general infection from corpses without respect to the disease that led to death. In this respect his opinion seems improbable.”

Ever persistent, Semmelweis argued with influential doctors—and was eventually dismissed from his position at Vienna General Hospital. Left ostracized from the medical community and without a job, Dr. Semmelweis became impoverished, his mental state deteriorating as he fell into a state of depression as a result of his abjuration.

Dr. Semmelweis was eventually committed to an insane asylum in 1865. He tragically died in that mental asylum of a blood infection after a violent beating by workers in the asylum when he demanded to be released. Dr. Semmelweis died at the age of 47, long before the medical community realized his zeal for hand washing wasn’t mad at all.

Twenty years after Semmelweis’s death, his theory received widespread acceptance after French microbiologist Louis Pasteur penned the theoretical framework for the germ theory of disease. Soon after, doctors began to heed Semmelweis’s advice and washed their hands before delivering babies. Unsurprisingly, the hand-washing practice has dramatically reduced infant mortality rates during childbirth.

As a lesson to us all, the term “Semmelweis reflex” was coined in response to Semmelweis’s tragic story. It refers to the reactionary reflex to reject new ideas or practices when they oppose established norms, theories, or beliefs.

Nathan is a freelance journalist and screenwriter.