Artists sometimes explore unique and unconventional methods in their attempts to create masterpieces. Some take things a bit further and turn to very obscure art forms or even end up creating their own. These artists’ work can either make us go, “Wow!” or cringe in disgust.

Some artists take to painting with unconventional paints made from their own feces or semen. Others turn their own genitalia into brushes. Some media artists also use unexpected programs like Microsoft Excel to create their artworks. Whatever their methodology, every artist on this list has some unique selling point.

10 Tatsuo Horiuchi Draws With Microsoft Excel

When we think of Microsoft Excel, we think of spreadsheets and the occasional graph. But thanks to Japanese artist Tatsuo Horiuchi, we can start thinking of art, too.

Horiuchi uses Excel to draw, which is the last thing most people would consider using it for. Horiuchi started to use Excel to draw at the time he neared retirement. He had never used the program before then but had seen his workmates use it to make spreadsheets and graphs. The colorful graphs were the reason Horiuchi thought Excel would make a good drawing program.

Horiuchi did not consider regular graphic and drawing programs because they were too expensive. Excel also came preinstalled in Windows, which made it sort of free of charge. Horiuchi continues to make unbelievable artworks with Excel, which he says is easier to use than Microsoft Paint.^[1]

9 Tim Patch Paints With His Penis

Tim Patch is an Australian artist who paints with his penis. No joke; he uses his penis as if it were a paintbrush. This is why he calls himself Pricasso, which is obviously a portmanteau of “prick” and “Picasso.”

Patch got the idea to use his member as a drawing tool while attending a Christmas party. He quickly checked the Internet and was glad to discover that no one was doing something similar.

He started off with dipping his penis into regular acrylic paint and rubbing it on canvas, but the canvas was too harsh on his penis. These days, he mixes the paint with petroleum jelly before applying it to the canvas.^[2]

8 Martin Von Ostrowski Paints With Poop And Semen

German artist Martin von Ostrowski paints with his own feces and semen. Ostrowski first made the news when he created a painting of Adolf Hitler using his poop. He later created fecal paintings of Friedrich the Great, Otto von Bismarck, and Kaiser Wilhelm II—all of whom had ruled Germany or its predecessor states at some point.

Ostrowski also got the idea to use his semen as paint after observing some oil paintings of ejaculations created by an unnamed artist sometime in 1988. That artist masturbated on his artworks, as the paint didn’t look authentic enough. Ostrowski does not masturbate on his paintings, though. Instead, he masturbates and freezes his semen for later use.

Ostrowski says he had to orgasm over 1,000 times between 2003 and 2008 for his art. A single portrait requires 40 ejaculations. The Gay Museum in Berlin, which exhibited Ostrowski’s work in 2008, claimed that the smell of dried semen set off sexual feelings in people. Nevertheless, Ostrowski says he is just being organic.^[3]

7 Milo Moire Paints With Her Vagina

Milo Moire is a performance artist who paints with her vagina. She calls her art form PlopEgg painting. This is because she inserts small eggs filled with ink and paint into her vagina. Then she stands over a canvas and aims the eggs right at it. The eggs burst as they hit the canvas, creating a splashing effect. The piece pictured above is called The PlopEgg Painting Performance #1—A Birth Of A Picture.

Moire, who is often naked during her performances, says PlopEgg is all about feminism. However, some people do not think so. Jezebel called it “the best advertisement you’ll ever see for Kegel exercises.”^[4]The Guardian was more critical with its words. It called her work “silly” and said it should be considered a “joke.”

The Guardian added that PlopEgg was Moire’s weird but desperate attempt at becoming popular. The writer said that it made no sense, even though many artists thought it did. The Guardian then went on to attack performance art, saying that people who claim to be fascinated by performance art were either lying or likely to fall for dumb ideas.

6 Uwe Max Jensen Also Paints With His Penis

Tim Patch is not the only artist capable of painting with his penis. Danish artist Uwe Max Jensen paints with his genitals as well. Jensen’s most popular penis artwork is a recreation of Kim Kardashian’s famous “Break the Internet” photo where she bared her naked butt to the camera.

Jensen painted the portrait by inserting his penis in acrylic paint and applying it straight on the canvas. In an interview with The Daily Dot, Jensen mentioned that larger penises are better for painting because they can recreate small details which smaller penises cannot. He added that he held his penis and the canvas in his hands until he completed the painting.

Jensen also revealed that the Kim Kardashian portrait was actually the second painting he’d done with his penis. The first was a portrait of a male politician in his native Denmark. He gave the portrait to a friend but sent a picture of it to the politician through Facebook. The politician responded by blocking him.

The two penis artworks add to the list of eccentric things Jensen has done. He has made the news before for destroying the head of a statue of the Little Mermaid as well as for urinating in a water sculpture exhibited in a museum.^[5]

5 Graham Fink Draws With His Eyes

Graham Fink draws using only his eyes and computer software. Fink had a programmer develop a special software program that tracks his eye movement. The setup works with two infrared lights that are directed into his eyes.

A camera tracks the movement of his eyes and sends it to the software. The software straightens the lines Fink makes with his eyes, which soon become visible on his computer. And it continues like that until Fink completes a drawing.

Fink requires lots of concentration to complete a single drawing. He makes the drawing using a single line, since breaking off eye contact would end the portrait. He is also unable to erase anything. Fink says he spends between five minutes and an hour to create a single portrait, depending on his level of concentration.^[6]

4 Ian Sklarsky Draws With A Single Line And Doesn’t Look At His Artwork

Like Fink, Ian Sklarsky draws with just a single line. However, he does not use any software. Instead, he uses his hands. Interestingly, Sklarsky does not look at his artwork until it is completed. This technique is called blind contour drawing—an art form that forbids an artist from looking at his drawing until it is completed.

Sklarsky says he has been making blind contour drawings since childhood. He often visits bars and events where he creates blind contour drawings for interested people. A single drawing takes seven minutes to complete, after which he will sometimes add colors while looking at the drawing.^[7]

3 Steven Spazuk Paints With Fire

Fire is one thing that we generally want to keep away from our artworks. However, Steven Spazuk wants his art near fire because that’s how he creates it. To be clear, Spazuk does not actually paint with the fire but with the soot from the flame.

This art form is called fumage and was not invented by Spazuk. It has been practiced by artists throughout history. In fact, historians suspect early humans used it to create cave paintings.

Spazuk creates fumage paintings by putting his artwork right above a candle or blowtorch. The soot from the flame rises to the paper, where it forms blackened outlines. Thereafter, Spazuk draws around the soot using a pencil or feather. Sometimes, he uses acrylic paints to add more color to the artwork.

The process of creating fumage on paper is a bit complicated, since the paper needs to be as far away as possible from the flame to make sure it does not catch fire. At the same time, it needs to be near enough so that the soot will create the required outline.^[8]

Spazuk said he got the idea of painting with soot after dreaming about wandering into an art gallery. The gallery was black and white, which Spazuk said was caused by soot after a fire. He tried out the fumage technique the next day. However, the paper repeatedly burned until he switched to a thicker cardboard paper.

2 John Bramblitt Paints Despite Being Blind

John Bramblitt is blind. You’d think painting would be the last thing he would consider for a career, since he obviously needs to see to get the job done. However, he has broken that barrier and proven that you do not need sight to become a painter.

Bramblitt lost his sight after suffering complications caused by epilepsy when he was just 30 years old. He fell into a serious depression—one which he only defeated by painting. Bramblitt paints by using his hands to trace the outline of drawings he makes himself. He determines and mixes his colors by just feeling their textures.

Interestingly, Bramblitt draws people, too. He cannot see but makes a mental outline of his subject’s face after touching it with his fingers. This simple touch is more than enough for him to create a portrait of the person.^[9]

1 Katsu Draws With Drones And His Poop

Cops have a hard time catching graffiti artists. It seems that it’ll only get harder as graffiti artists turn to drones. In 2015, Katsu, a popular and radical but anonymous graffiti artist created the first drone graffiti when he attached a spray can to a DJI Phantom drone.

His target was a six-story-tall billboard of Kendall Jenner in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Katsu used the drone to spray red paint on Jenner’s face. Katsu later commented on the incident, saying, “It’s exciting to see [drones’] first potential use as a device for vandalism.”

Katsu made the news earlier that same year when he used his poop to create a smiling portrait of Mark Zuckerberg. Katsu does not like Zuckerberg, and his criticism of the Facebook billionaire worsened after he watched The Social Network, a movie about the founding of Facebook. Katsu had earlier attacked Zuckerberg by pasting posters of him with a blackened eye around New York.

For the poop portrait, Katsu ate a lot of Thai food before pooping into a container. He was so dedicated to the task that he used a mirror to confirm that his fecal matter was getting into the container. Then he drew Zuckerberg, using his poop in place of a pencil.

Katsu later stated that the whole thing was so messy that he frequently changed his gloves. He also wore a respirator and had incense burning to weaken the smell. He added that it is actually difficult to draw with feces, since poop contains excessive amounts of moisture that could destroy the artwork.^[10]

We have plenty of things living on and in us. Most of the organisms that reside on or in us are not only perfectly natural but perfectly healthy as well. From the bacteria and fungi that dwell on our skin to the microflora that call our gut home, most of these creatures actually help us to protect ourselves, to survive, and to perform the basic necessary bodily functions of the human organism.

Occasionally, we’re reminded of the damage that can be done by something growing in our bodies, like when a terrifying flesh-eating microbe decides to eat away at us. Other times, small, unseen organisms can hijack our minds and alter our behaviors and even our perceptions. But beyond the usual pathogens, sometimes the organisms that grow on or in us are actually visible (or at least their effects are). Here are ten cases of infestations that actually took place inside people’s bodies.

10 The Hand

Barnacles are crustaceans that inhabit marine waters. Around 850 species of barnacles are largely immobile and don’t do much at all; think of the kind you see attached to the hulls of ships. These barnacles contain an extremely strong adhesive paste that they use, almost like cement, to attach themselves to things in such a way that it requires tremendous force to remove them. Other species of barnacles are internal parasites that infect other crustaceans and can seriously threaten ocean life from time to time.

A man named Chris Johnson would one day end up seeing a doctor about a strange growth in his hand that had become seriously concerning. Not knowing what the growth was, the doctors took samples, which they tested. They never expected that they would find barnacles growing inside the man’s hand—but that’s exactly what happened.^[1] Both the doctors and Johnson himself were terrified.

9 The Lung

In another absolutely bonkers case of living things growing inside someone, a Boston man named Ron Sveden was having some severe chest problems in 2010. Already suffering from emphysema, Ron resigned himself to his fate, believing that he had cancer. Once one of his lungs collapsed, though, enough was enough, and Ron went in to see the doctors to diagnose him with the appropriate lung cancer.^[2]

But that isn’t what happened. Doctors took the appropriate X-rays and indeed found a growth inside Mr. Sveden’s lung, but it wasn’t a clump of cancerous cells like they were expecting—it was the humble beginnings of a pea plant. Months prior, Ron had been eating, doctors hypothesized, when he must have taken a pea down the wrong tube and into his lung. The pain that ensued was from the pea being lodged inside his lung, but it didn’t stop there. The pea began to sprout and actually grow, infesting the inside of Mr. Sveden’s body.

8 Fir Tree

A very similar and slightly crazier incident hails from Russia in 2009. Yet again, an individual was pained in their chest, specifically their lungs, and something was removed. What exactly was that? The humble beginnings of a growing fir tree, which was apparently 5 centimeters (2 in) long. The doctors who performed the operation said that they were 100-percent certain that a tumor in the man’s lungs was cancer, but when they went to open him up, a sprouting fir tree was what was found inside.^[3]

While no one aside from the surgeons and the patient verified the claim, considering the story of Ron Sveden in the United States, it’s very possible the men were telling the truth. Seeds sprout without sunlight, and plants only really need light to photosynthesize once leaves begin to grow.

7 Maggots

Next on the list is an extremely unusual case of maggot infestation, one that ended up being most definitely a good thing. Pham Quang Lanh was a 28-year-old laborer working as a guest worker in Malaysia, outside of his native Vietnam, when he an iron bar fell off a building and onto his head in 2015. Fortunately, Lanh survived the injury, at least in the short term, thanks to surgery and a titanium plate that doctors were able to implant into his head.^[4]

But the story doesn’t end there. Lanh was in pain, and the site where the plate was inserted was swelling and generally not looking good. However, thinking it only a minor infection, he didn’t seek treatment. His family decided to take a closer look, and that’s when they discovered live maggots eating away at Lanh’s head.

In an unusual twist, while the man did, in fact, have a maggot infestation in his head, he also had a very bad infection—the kind that eats flesh, leading to necrosis of the skin cells, which can ultimately be lethal. But Pham Quang Lanh survived long enough to have the site treated because the maggots were eating away at the necrotic tissue that developed from the infection, which means the maggot infestation ultimately saved the man’s life. Talk about disgusting luck.

6 More Maggots

Believe it or not, the stroke of luck that Lanh had isn’t exactly unusual. Maggots can be very, very efficient nasty-bacteria-eating machines and can devour infections for our benefit.^[5] Not only is this reality, but it’s medicine, as doctors are willing to employ maggots when other options have run out. This almost sounds like some bizarre quack medical practice out of the Middle Ages, one that might have been used to (wrongly) fend off the Black Death, but no, this is current, modern-day medicine.

In 2012, a team of doctors at a hospital turned to maggots for a man named Waclaw Tyszkiewicz, who was suffering badly from an infection in his foot that was quickly spreading up his leg. The infection as such that amputation was the only choice—aside from literally dumping maggots on the infection site; and that’s exactly what they did. Once a week for three weeks, 800 maggots were applied for 36 hours, after which the area was doused in hydrogen peroxide, and guess what: It worked. While Waclaw still lost a toe in the ordeal, he managed to keep everything else and heal up nicely. Thanks to maggots, he was able to keep walking.

5 Morgellons

Morgellons disease is an odd one. A part of the problem in understanding this unusual skin disease is that different studies have drawn radically different conclusions over time, leading to a lot of confusion pertaining to what’s actually going on with the poor people who suffer from this extremely rare condition.^[6] Most of the symptoms are pretty common and shared with other diseases and syndromes, such as depression, fatigue, and skin rashes, but some of them stand out as downright mortifying: People with Morgellons disease begin to feel like insects are crawling inside their skin or like there is movement inside them beneath the skin.

From there, it just gets even more terrifying, as fibers actually begin to appear under the skin. The fibers are long and stringy, often black, and many of them have been tested and turned out to be cotton. Medical science doesn’t know for sure why this happens to some people (mental illness has been blamed), but it does.

4 Bird Mites

Bird mites are tiny, eight-legged, parasitic creatures that live on the blood of warm-blooded hosts—and they also sometimes make their way inside a person and decide to call them home. They sometimes dig into the noses of humans, too.

The most terrifying thing about bird mites is their symptoms, the main one being feeling like insects are crawling underneath your skin, which is to be expected. But bird mite infestation also causes severe psychological anguish as well as the usual depression.^[7] Fortunately, such mites can’t complete their life cycle inside human beings alone and thus must travel back into birds (where they come from) in order to do so.

3 Scabies

Scabies are awful for anyone to get—tiny mites infect the skin and cause the host organism extreme discomfort. Even worse, by the time a person infected with scabies notices any symptoms, it’s already too late, and they’ve become an infestation, as there is an incubation period of several weeks. Scabies can be treated most times with the simple application of a topical ointment, but sometimes, due to just the nature of these little critters, they can spread like crazy and wreak havoc.

One such instance was something straight out of a Stephen King book or movie. An infestation of scabies went absolutely crazy and even ended up being fatal.^[8] The outbreak took place, tragically, in a memory care facility, a place where people are kept when they have impairments such as dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. Between 2013 and 2016, the SouthTowne Memory Care facility in Eugene, Oregon, had an outbreak that it would ultimately be sued for mismanaging, one which infected at least a few dozen people.

The painful, unceasing itching that scabies causes is absolutely mortifying. One 83-year-old woman named Pat Lancaster had left the facility but ultimately ended up dying a few months later. Between the time she left and the time she died, she had gone to the hospital, where doctors were shocked to see her condition so poor, with scabies so deeply embedded. They treated her and were able to remove the external scabies with ointments, but the mites had gone deep inside her, and she ended up dying from them. She was found having scratched massive chunks of skin off in a terrifying fashion. Scabies is no joke—it can kill you and should be taken very seriously. Two others also died in the outbreak.

2 Cockroach

Did you know that sometimes, cockroaches actually crawl inside people? They do, and the ear is a likely place of entry. When cockroaches are afraid, usually of weather changes or a perceived predator, they hide, sometimes inside your ear hole. They make themselves at home, and even more terrifyingly, sometimes, they’ll choose your ear as a perfect spot to lay their eggs. The fact that they generally can only go forward and not backward means that they probably won’t come out on their own.

In one terrifying situation, a woman from Florida named Katie Holley was sleeping one night in 2018 when she felt something seemingly cold slide into her left ear canal. Attempting to solve the problem and thinking the object was inanimate, she put a Q-tip into her ear and tried to figure out what it was—and that’s when she felt it move.^[9] That’s when things got even more awful: She removed the Q-tip to find what appeared to be legs on it.

It would take Katie a full nine days to get every piece of the roach out of her ear. She initially went to the emergency room, where most of the cockroach was removed, but then a week went by, and something just wasn’t quite right with her ear. After an uncomfortable several days, she decided to follow up with her doctor, who looked inside her ear, only to find more of the roach. Her doctor then removed the remainder, and her nightmare was finally over.

1 Super Gonorrhea

Just the name itself sounds absolutely horrifying: “super gonorrhea.” Super gonorrhea is an extremely antibiotic-resistant strain of the regular gonorrhea bacterium which is currently untreatable and spreading around the world slowly but surely. Unlike some other STIs, super gonorrhea is also transmittable through oral sex, making it a bacterium that’s relatively opportunistic.

In what has been called the worst case of super gonorrhea so far, a British man caught the bacterium after sleeping with a woman while on a trip to Southeast Asia in 2018. It was so bad that UK health officials attempted to track down his other sex partners themselves to warn them. Antibiotics failed to treat the disease, leading officials to worry what lies in the future when it comes to combating these critters that might infest and parasitize us. The complete inability to treat this man’s case with the go-to antibiotics was a first.^[10]

From toy makers to airlines, many companies have dealt with financial troubles at some point in time. Included in this list are 10 companies that are so popular that you would not have expected them to have once been on the brink of bankruptcy.

Related : 10 Fascinating Histories of Iconic Products

10Fed Ex

The Founder and CEO of Fed Ex once saved the company with nothing but luck. Frederick Smith created the company with a combination of loans, inheritance money and funding. With the money, he purchased eight planes with which he shipped packages across the United States. No other business was operating this way at the time. Instead, their method of transportation was mostly trucks. This worked out for Smith, until jet fuel charges began to rise. Unable to cover the cost of fuel whilst maintaining the pricing strategy, Fed Ex was down millions of dollars. Smith had two choices: either he could file for bankruptcy, or he could take the final $5,000 in the company’s budget and use it to gamble in a Las Vegas casino. I’m sure you guessed which option he chose.

Within a week, he had $32,000, which was enough to refuel the planes and complete the deliveries. $24,000 was the amount needed to pay the oil companies for the jet fuel. Whilst Smith’s gamble had prevented the company from collapsing for only a week, the limited time allowed him to seek out additional funding and eventually grow the company into what it is today.^[1]

9 Lego

One of the most popular toy companies in recent years has not went without its troubles. It experienced a series of problems between 1998 and 2003. After the drop in profits and the threat of bankruptcy, a new CEO took over and paired up with George Lucas and his production company. This allowed them to produce Lego sets based on Indiana Jones and Star Wars. This decision likely saved the company. Instead of generic ‘pirate ship’ or ‘construction site’ sets, they moved on to make movie themed products. It is difficult to imagine that a toy company that went on to earn millions through their movie franchise alone was once on the brink of collapse. The company is now more successful than ever, meaning that we can all continue to accidentally stand on those tiny bricks and be in pain for years to come.^[2]

8 Sega

When Sega was in threat of bankruptcy in 2002, the then-President Isao Okawa donated all of his stock to the company, in order to save it. He was towards the end of his battle with cancer, which killed him shortly after his donation. Their troubles had been caused by the decision to end production on Dreamcast, their latest console. The release had been underwhelming, leaving them at a loss of 80 billion Yen. Okawa’s personal fortune of 85 billion yen made up for the hit that the company was about to take. If only Sega could convert Sonic coins to Yen – they would have solved their issues a lot sooner!^[3]

7 Apple

1997 was a terrible year for Apple. The iPod, which went on to become the company’s flagship product, had not been invented yet. Had an unexpected company not decided to invest in Apple, then we may never have had a convenient way to carry our music around with us. We may have had to do something else to distract ourselves on the commute. When Apple ran into some financial issues, Microsoft invested $150 million to save it from having to declare bankruptcy. Microsoft is the last company you would expect to save Apple, as they are their biggest competitor. It ultimately turned out to be a great business decision, as Microsoft made a huge profit off this investment.^[4]

6BMW

In 1948, BMW began to create luxury cars. This was a move away from their usual affordable automobiles, a huge risk for the company. After all, Mercedes-Benz dominated the luxury car market. In 1951, the BMW 501 was released and it was priced at 4 times the average wage of a citizen. Very few cars sold, leaving the company close to bankruptcy. The Quandt family, most notably Herbert Werner and Harald Quandt, German industrialists and the sons of members of the Nazi party, made a large investment in the company which saved it. This investment did not come free, however, as the family demanded a restructuring of the company, with new managers put in charge. Now, BMW is well known for making luxury cars, but had it not been for the job-losing decision to change the company’s focus, then they would not have the same great reputation.^[5]

5 Six Flags

Despite having a reputation for being a place of joy, Six Flags has went through some dark times. In June 2009, it filed for bankruptcy, after falling $2.4 billion in debt. On top of this, it had to pay $300 million to its stockholders in August of that year. With less than two months left to make up the money for these payments, Six Flags had no choice but to file for bankruptcy. It had had a relatively good year besides the debt, as it profited $275 million from the 25 million visitors so far that year. A few months later, the company returned thanks to its lawyers arranging a restructuring of the debt. It now continues business, with a series of theme parks and water parks across America. It sure was a “rollercoaster” of a journey.^[6]

4The Walt Disney Company

The early years of The Walt Disney Company was by no means a perfect fairy tale. Disney was at the brink of bankruptcy twice, once in 1920, when their financial backer went bankrupt himself and again in 1937. The creation of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ was a huge financial burden for the company. It was their first feature length film, but it required a $1.5 million investment from Walt Disney and a bank loan in order for it to be completed. Looking back, it was a huge risk, because had it failed, then Disney would not have become the household name that it is today. ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ went on to make $8 million at the box office, which is especially good considering how it was released during the Great Depression.^[7]

3 American Airlines

American Airlines once found its self in such a bad situation that it was removed from the New York Stock Exchange. The stock had fallen to 20 cents per share and in its entirety, the company was worth $90 million. It may seem like a lot of money, but ‘The Wall Street Journal’ put this into context by appropriately comparing it to “less than the typical list price of a new passenger jet.” The company has since returned to the New York Stock Exchange, with a value of $300 million. Had it not been for a large amount of investors buying the stock cheap, American Airlines may have went the same way as Eastern Airlines and Pan American World Airways. A partner for Pinnacle Investment Advisors purchased roughly $50,000 of shares in the airline, which resulted in a huge profit for him, after the company returned strong.^[8]

2 Tesla and SpaceX

It is incredibly difficult to believe that the company that once sent a car into space was once bankrupt. In the beginning, Elon Musk feared that his companies would fail. He was so sure of this, in fact, that he did not take money from investors. Instead, he opted to fund the company with his own money, which he had a substantial amount of due to the sale of his company PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002. He continue to fund it until 2008, when the financial crisis almost destroyed Tesla and SpaceX. Without any other options, Musk shut down operations, being essentially bankrupt for a few hours. That is when, at the last minute, he secured a $50 million investment in time to save the company. Daimler invested in Tesla and SpaceX, despite themselves being in financial trouble. Whilst this money saved the companies from being closed down, it was not a permanent fix. He still had to work hard to ensure their continued existence. Musk is quoted as having said “we only narrowly survived … we actually closed the financing round on Christmas Eve 2008. It was the last hour of the last day that it was possible.” Only 10 years later, he had sent a car into orbit to the tune of ‘Starman’ by David Bowie.^[9]

1 Etch a Sketch

This children’s toy would not have been as iconic as it is today, had it not featured in a popular Pixar movie. Etch a Sketch was on the brink of bankruptcy in 1999, when the creators of Toy Story 2 approached them. The scene in question featured an Etch a Sketch for only 12 seconds, but this appearance revived the popularity of the product. It allowed the company time to seek financing, with which they moved production of the toy from Ohio to China. This cut down production costs and prolonged the life of the company. They were not the only product which appeared in Toy Story 2 (obviously, a movie about toys would be pretty dull without toys in it.) Barbie and Mr Potato Head were also written into the script, but neither of them were as reliant on this appearance as Etch a Sketch. Thanks to Toy Story 2, it was named one of the top toys of the century in 2008. Who knew that an appearance in third highest grossing movie of 1999 could make you so popular?

Etch a Sketch belongs at the top of this list because unlike the other companies featured, they produced something which was a typical household item. It did not need batteries or make any noise, so it became a popular gift for parents to buy. Had the business went bankrupt and the toy disappeared from shelves, it would still be remembered as a part of many people’s childhood memories. Few people would remember one of many airlines disappearing, or a production company who had only made one movie in the late 1930s. The escape from the brink of bankruptcy allowed Etch a Sketch to be exposed to many more generations of children, brightening their childhood with two dials and a hundred little lines.^[10]

Most of us think of traditions as warm and fuzzy customs that were passed down through the years to remind us of a simpler time as well as the love of our friends and family. Then there are the insanely brutal traditions that may have started out with good intentions but now make us wonder why anyone would engage in such barbaric rituals in the 21st century.

10 Mingi

Just as Lord Voldemort is known as “He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named” in the Harry Potter book series, mingi is the tradition that must not be named among the Kara, Hamar, and Banna tribes in the Omo Valley of Ethiopia. There are about 225,000 of these tribe members isolated in primitive villages, practicing their ancient ritual in secret.

Mingi means that a child is cursed and must be killed to protect the tribe. (Although we’ll use male pronouns, this tradition applies to both male and female children.) A child is mingi if his top teeth come in before his bottom teeth, if he breaks a tooth or injures his genitals, if he is born to unwed parents, or if his parents do not have the ceremonial blessing of the village elders to have children. Adults who don’t cooperate with these traditions are also designated as mingi and banished from the tribe.

If a child is mingi, the tribal elders will snatch that child from his parents and drown him in the river, leave him to starve or be eaten by animals, or push him off a cliff to his death. The elders may also suffocate the child by filling his mouth with soil.

These Omo Valley tribes believe that a mingi child will bring evil spirits to their village, resulting in drought, famine, and sickness for the tribe. Although no one knows the exact number, as many as 200 to 300 mingi children may be killed annually.

Even among the members of the tribe, mingi is a taboo subject. Children under 15 are never told about the ritual killing. It certainly isn’t something to be discussed with outsiders. Yet Lale Labuko, a young man from the Omo Valley who was the first of his tribe to be educated at a boarding school 105 kilometers (65 mi) away, found the courage to tell an adult outsider. Together, they’ve spearheaded efforts to save mingi children. In some cases, the government has imprisoned mingi executioners. The tradition is still practiced today—just more discreetly.

9 Pig Slaughter Festival

Each year in the small village of Nem Thuong in northern Vietnam, hundreds of people watch the ritual slaughter of two well-fed pigs to bring the village residents luck for the coming year. Always occurring on the sixth day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the Pig Slaughter Festival is held to honor Doan Thuong, a local protector deity.

According to legend, Doan Thuong was a general in the Ly Dynasty who drove invading forces off the villagers’ land. He fed his starving troops with slaughtered pigs, which is supposedly how the festival started. The pigs’ blood represents good luck in the forms of a good harvest, reproductive ability, monetary success, and good health.

As music is played, the villagers parade the live pigs around the village. Participants in the ritual lay the animals on their backs, pull their legs away from their bellies with ropes, and use swords to hack the squealing pigs in half in front of the crowd. The villagers rush to smear banknotes with the pigs’ blood so that they can place the notes on altars in their houses for good luck.

Animal rights activists have tried to convince the government to stop the festival. Although Vietnamese officials have pressured the village elders to be less publicly cruel to animals, the government has refused to ban the festival. Officials seem to be less concerned about animal cruelty and more apprehensive about the world’s opinion of their local festivals now that pictures can be disseminated over the Internet so quickly.

8 La Esperanza Rain Ceremony

Nobody likes a drought, especially farmers, so many cultures have rituals designed to bring rain. Even today, some Native Americans perform rain dances. In Takhatpur, India, the villagers conduct elaborate frog marriages to call upon their rain gods to end a drought. The frogs dress for the occasion and even kiss after they exchange vows.

But the village women of La Esperanza in Guerrero, Mexico, prefer a different approach. Each May, as the male farmers get their fields ready for planting, the women prepare a large feast of cultural foods like chicken, turkey, mole, boiled eggs, rice, and tortillas. They bring the food to a ceremonial site to share with others from the village. It’s a traditional day of offerings to their deities to ensure that the village has enough rain for the crops.

After they recite their prayers and offer food and flowers to their gods, they form a large circle and wait for people from neighboring villages to arrive. The children ready their cell phones to take pictures and videos of the festivities. And then the fun begins.

Inside the cheering human circle, the able-bodied women—young and old—find opponents from neighboring villages and beat each other to a pulp with their bare hands. Sometimes, men and children fight, too. This is a day-long blood fest for the female warriors. The goal is to make as much red liquid stream down their faces as possible. There are no winners or losers. No issues of revenge. At the end, they hug each other.

As a sacrifice to the gods, the spilled blood is collected in buckets and later ploughed into the fields where the crops are grown. The fights continue unabated until dark, when the proud and bloodied women walk home, happy that their sacrifice will help to feed the village for the next year.

7 Coconut Head Smash

In Tamil Nadu in southern India, thousands of devotees go to the Mahalakshmi temple to engage in a tradition in which they ask their gods for success and good health or offer thanks for wishes already granted. As a crowd gathers to watch, a priest smashes the head of each believer, who is seated on the ground, with a large coconut. A devotee must be at least 18 years old to participate.

The ritual takes place on the second Tuesday of the Tamil month of Aadi every year. It’s believed that the tradition started in the 19th century when the British tried to build a railroad through the village. The residents protested, so the British sarcastically offered to reroute the transportation line if the locals would break large stones with their heads. When the villagers complied, the railroad was built elsewhere.

The stones were soon replaced by coconuts as the preferred instrument to break over the devotees’ heads, but this tradition still comes with considerable risk depending on the coconut’s size and the force with which the head is whacked.

According to neurosurgery professor Anil Kumar Peethambaran in an interview with National Geographic, “What happens is . . . there is a certain amount of tolerance for the skull beyond which it will cause damage to the skull. So, if the coconut is big and if the coconut breaks, that means that a part of the energy is dissipated and the damage done is less and if the coconut doesn’t break, more damage is done to the skull.”

Dozens of people are treated for serious head injuries every year. Ironically, this good health tradition may be deadly.

6 People Trampled By Cows For Luck

A lot of cultures have rituals designed to bring them good luck. But in villages around the Ujjain area of India, the annual tradition of male residents getting trampled by their cows on Ekadashi, the day after the Hindu festival of lights known as “Diwali,” is probably one of the strangest. Stranger still, they’ve been doing this for centuries.

Cows are sacred to the Hindus in India, which may explain why the villagers claim that no one has ever been hurt in such a seemingly dangerous tradition. Before the ritual trampling, the cows are decorated with henna patterns and brightly colored baubles. As others crowd around to watch, the men lie with garlands in the street while their herds of cows literally run over them. In this way, the trampled men believe that their prayers will be answered by the Hindu gods and that they will receive good luck in the coming year.

5 Easter Rocket War

Just off the coast of Turkey, the villagers of Vrontados on the Greek island of Chios celebrate Greek Orthodox Easter a little differently than most believers in the faith. As the Sun sets on Easter Saturday, they like to pelt each other with tens of thousands of homemade bottle rockets in a traditional rocket war known as “Rouketopolemos.” The two sides in this mock war are the followers of the town’s two Orthodox churches, Agios Markos and Panagia Erithiani, who continue their battle into the wee hours of Easter morning.

Although the goal is to hit the opposing church’s bell while services are being held inside, there’s never really a winner. There can be a lot of property damage despite the protective wire mesh that covers the churches and surrounding houses. There have also been serious injuries and even deaths from the rockets.

Technically, it’s illegal to make rockets in Vrontados. The annual celebration is a big tourist attraction, so the local police usually pretend not to notice the deafening and illuminating illegal activities that have been going on around them for at least 125 years.

The origins of this battle are unclear, but there are two competing stories that the locals like to tell. In one version, cannons on local ships that were first used to battle pirates were eventually fired each Easter as part of the holiday’s celebration. When Ottoman invaders took the cannons in the late 1800s, the villagers began firing rockets on Easter instead.

A second version of the story is that the villagers wanted to celebrate the Easter services that the Turks had prohibited. The Greeks faked a war between their churches to keep the frightened Turks away while they celebrated Easter mass.

Some residents don’t like this rocket war. “We live as hostages to this tradition,” said one unnamed villager to the BBC in a 2004 interview. “We can’t breathe when it takes place, we have to be on standby in case a fire breaks out because if you are not careful you can even lose your house.”

4 Santhara

To outsiders, santhara (or sallekhana) is often confused with suicide or euthanasia. To the followers of Jainism, an ancient religion in India that focuses on spiritual discipline through a simple life that eschews physical pleasure, santhara is a religious right to worship as they choose. Every year, as many as 500 believers in Jainism starve themselves to death to liberate their souls from the cycle of death and rebirth through reincarnation. Instead, they believe this is the way to attain nirvana, the ultimate state of bliss.

Unlike Christians, who consider the body a temple of the soul, Jains see their bodies as prisons of their souls. Santhara can be a cause for celebration and pride for those left behind because the person who made the starvation oath took control of their own path to salvation.

Jains don’t see santhara as suicide, which they view as a violent act against the body, because santhara is nonviolent. It is physically painful but supposedly punctuated by moments of euphoria as the soul is transformed. Throughout the process, people near the starving person continually touch and hold that person. When it is time for the person to die, they are raised to a sitting position because divine beings in the Jain religion are never seen sleeping. They always appear in a sitting position or a half-sitting position.

Those practicing the ritual are seen by other Jain followers as living saints. Other Jains may travel from across the country to witness, endure, and be blessed by the sacrifice of the person who has taken this oath. As the person dies, the witnesses chant the names of divine beings.

Both monks and laypeople, the healthy and the dying, take the starvation oath. More women than men do it. The practice has been controversial for years among the general public. On August 10, 2015, the Rajasthan High Court in India declared santhara to be illegal. However, that ruling is being challenged in the Supreme Court as of late August 2015.

3 Costa Rica Bullfighting

Unlike bullfighting in Mexico and Spain, which usually ends with the death of the bull, Costa Rican bullfighting is a more humane tradition that elevates the status of the bull to that of a celebrity. No one can hurt the bull, although he’s free to hurt or kill anyone he chooses without reprisal. The rules may have less to do with love for the animal than with practicality. Thousands of farming families depend on cows for their livelihoods, so they don’t want their bulls killed. Even so, some animal rights activists believe that the animals are mistreated.

When a bull enters the ring in Costa Rica, an announcer introduces him by name and gives his weight and information about his background, including his father’s bullfighting history. Then the improvisados, or rodeo clowns, face him down. Most improvisados are untrained young men who either stay close to the fence for a quick getaway or foolishly taunt the bull to amuse the crowd. They try to be as daring and entertaining as possible to win cash prizes from the festival’s organizers and sponsors.

The trouble is that when these bulls get fired up, it’s almost impossible to outrun them. If you can’t get over the fence quickly enough, your best hope is that the bull becomes distracted by someone else because you’re not permitted to fight the bull. You can only run away from him, and he’s darn fast.

As shown in the video above, there are a lot of rear-end collisions, with the bull tossing the men into aerial somersaults before sometimes trampling their bodies when they land on the ground. There’s no time limit on how long you can stay in the ring with the bull. But more time is not your friend. Hundreds of improvisados are injured each year.

No one’s sure how this tradition began, but bullfighting festivals are held throughout the country each year. It’s almost a rite of passage for young Costa Rican men to enter the bullfighting ring after they turn 18. “It’s just the Tico thing to do,” said Jon Carlos Cattano, 28, to the Tico Times. “It’s important to do it at least one time in your life.”

2 Gotmar Mela

Each year for at least a century, the residents of Pandhurna and Sawargaon, two villages in India divided by the Jam River, have pelted each other with stones for one day in a festival known as Gotmar Mela. Before each battle begins, a tree trunk with a flag tied on top is stuck in the middle of the riverbed. The team that retrieves the flag first is the winner.

However, climbing the tree to grab that flag while villagers throw big rocks may be the last thing a participant ever does. Injuries number in the hundreds every year, and there have been at least 17 deaths. Government officials have tried to persuade the villagers to use rubber balls instead of stones—to no avail. An outright ban didn’t work, either, and was lifted after pressure from the villagers.

There are conflicting stories about how the festival began. In one version, a Pandhurna boy fell in love with a Sawargaon girl, but their parents forbade their marriage. The young lovers decided to elope. As the boy carried his lover across the river to Pandhurna, the Sawargaon villagers began throwing stones at him. The Pandhurna residents returned the favor from their side of the river. Eventually, everyone agreed to let the kids get married, and they throw stones at each other once a year to mark the occasion.

Another version of the legend says that the king of Pandhurna abducted the beautiful daughter of Sawargaon’s ruler about 300 years ago. When the villagers of Sawargaon realized what had happened, they began pelting stones at the Pandhurna king, who had escaped to the other side of the river by then. To protect their king, Pandhurna villagers fired stones at Sawargaon. The king made it safely to his palace, and now the grooms from each village supposedly throw stones during the annual festival to win brides from the other village.

1 Yanshui Beehive Rocket Festival

“Insane” is almost too mild a word to describe the annual Beehive Rocket Festival held in the Yanshui District of Tainan, Taiwan. The Beehive Rocket Festival is part of the Lantern Festival that celebrates the Chinese New Year. But in some ways, it’s a uniquely dangerous celebration. During the Easter Rocket War in Greece that we talked about earlier, bottle rockets are launched toward church bells. They’re not meant to hit people directly.

However, with the Yanshui Beehive Rocket Festival, bottle rockets are arranged in large beehive structures, and people willingly move toward the exploding fireworks, deliberately trying to get hit as many times as possible. The more times you’re hit, the luckier you’ll be in the coming year. The often tightly packed crowds seem to bounce up and down with the rocket blasts, which at their peak can sound like the buzzing of bees in a hive.

Most participants suit up in protective gear, including fire-resistant clothing and helmets with face masks. Some young men rely on faith to protect them, wearing only a loincloth and a towel to shield their eyes from the intense heat and flying debris. Despite the cavalier attitude of the crowd, people do get hurt and sometimes require treatment at a hospital.

The festival began as a response to a cholera epidemic that raged in the city about 200 years ago. To ward off the evil spirits that were believed to be causing the illness, residents lit a massive firework display to win the favor and protection of their god. The epidemic subsided, and the rocket festival became an annual event for good luck.