If you’re hunting for 10 r rated history facts that your classroom never covered, you’ve landed in the right place. Schools love dates and battles, but they shy away from the salacious, the violent, and the downright scandalous. Below, we dive into ten unforgettable episodes that prove history can be as racy as any modern thriller.

10 James Cook Was Mistaken For A Sex God

British explorer James Cook earned fame for charting lands barely known to Europeans, such as Australia and New Zealand. During his third voyage (1776‑1779), he sailed into the Pacific islands and eventually met his end at the hands of Hawaiian natives – a tragedy possibly linked to his being mistaken for Lono, the Hawaiian fertility god.

Cook’s first contact with Hawaiians in 1778 was amicable, featuring trade and gift‑giving. After establishing friendly ties, he returned in 1779 to winter in Kealakekua Bay, only to arrive during Makahiki, a festival honoring Lono. Many Hawaiian priests interpreted his arrival as the god’s return.

Initially, this misidentification proved advantageous: Cook was paraded from village to village, showered with gifts, supplies, and even sacrifices. However, the Hawaiians grew uneasy as the Europeans disregarded local customs, especially when Cook’s crew began burning wooden idols of Lono for firewood.

Repeated cultural clashes led to native attempts to seize European goods. Cook’s men responded with gunfire, sparking extended skirmishes. In a final, desperate move, Cook kidnapped King Kalaniʻopū‘u, only to be killed on his way back to the ship – a scene vividly captured in the painting above.

9 The October Revolution Led To A Massive Drinking Binge

The 1917 October Revolution toppled the Tsarist regime and handed power to the Bolsheviks. The climactic assault on the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg was almost bloodless—its guards, mostly cadets and female soldiers, surrendered to a superior force. Years later, Lenin staged a dramatized reenactment called “The Storming of the Winter Palace,” watched by 100,000 people, which painted the Bolsheviks as heroic.

What the official story omitted was the Bolsheviks’ post‑capture binge. While rummaging through the palace, they uncovered the Tsar’s massive wine cellar—the world’s largest. The discovery sent the city into an unprecedented drunken frenzy lasting days.

Sober Bolsheviks attempted to contain the chaos: they barricaded the cellar, but the thirsty mob smashed the walls. They tried to pour wine down the drains, yet crowds gathered at the other end, drinking straight from the pipes. Some even drowned in the freezing Neva River while trying to retrieve crates tossed into the water. Order only returned after the New Year.

8 The Ballet Of Chestnuts

The Borgia family’s reputation for power, crime, and debauchery is legendary. Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) fathered many illegitimate children, one of whom was Cesare Borgia, a cardinal‑turned‑warrior. On October 30, 1501, Cesare allegedly staged the most depraved party ever held at the Papal Palace: the Ballet of the Chestnuts.

The event invited nobles, clergymen, and roughly 50 prostitutes. Initially, the women danced for entertainment. Then, servants scattered chestnuts across the floor. The prostitutes disrobed, got on all fours, and crawled between guests, gathering the nuts. Afterward, attendees were encouraged to sleep with the women, with rewards offered for the most vigorous participants, while the pope and his entourage watched.

Although this tale fits the Borgias’ notorious image, some scholars question its accuracy. The sole source is Johann Burchard’s Liber Notarum, a chronicle of papal ceremonies. Burchard, while respected, was not a Borgia ally, leaving the story’s veracity open to debate.

7 Olga Of Kiev’s Revenge

Saint Olga, revered in the Russian Eastern Orthodox Church, was the 10th‑century wife of Igor I, ruler of the Kievan Rus’. When Igor was slain by the Drevlians while collecting tribute, the Drevlians demanded Olga marry their prince, Mal.

According to the Primary Chronicle, Olga embarked on a grisly revenge. She first buried alive the Drevlians’ envoy who delivered the marriage demand. Then she pretended to accept the proposal, urging the Drevlians to send their finest men so she could leave Kiev with honor. When the delegation arrived, Olga invited them to bathe in a public bathhouse, only to lock them inside and set the building ablaze, burning them alive.

Unaware of the fate of their men, the Drevlians hosted a feast for Olga. While they were drunk, Olga’s forces slaughtered everyone present. The survivors offered tribute, but Olga demanded only three sparrows and three pigeons per household. She then tied burning embers to the birds’ feet and released them. The birds returned to their nests, igniting homes and setting the entire city aflame.

6 One Of Europe’s Most Powerful Dynasties Was Destroyed By Inbreeding

The Habsburgs ruled the Holy Roman Empire for three centuries and, at times, dominated most of Europe’s monarchies. In Spain, the dynasty lasted nearly 200 years, but their bloodline collapsed due to extreme inbreeding.

Charles II, the last Spanish Habsburg ruler, suffered numerous physical and mental disabilities. Though he reigned for 30 years and married twice, he produced no heirs. Contemporary observers blamed witchcraft, dubbing him “Charles the Hexed.” Modern genetics reveals severe inbreeding as the cause.

Royal families often married within their circles to preserve bloodlines, but the Spanish Habsburgs took it to an extreme, repeatedly marrying uncles, nieces, and first cousins. Researchers analyzing 3,000 family members across 16 generations calculated an inbreeding coefficient (F). Founder Philip I had an F of 0.025; Charles II’s F skyrocketed to 0.254—ten times larger.

Charles wasn’t alone; many Habsburgs displayed high F values, resulting in a mortality rate where only half of the dynasty’s children survived past infancy—a stark contrast to the 80 % survival rate in typical Spanish villages.

5 Ancient Rome Was Covered In Vulgar Graffiti

Graffiti provides a rare glimpse into the everyday voice of ancient Romans, bypassing elite perspectives. Thanks to well‑preserved sites like Pompeii and Herculaneum, we have abundant examples of wall scribbles ranging from heartfelt declarations to crude jokes.

Beyond uplifting messages, many inscriptions were downright filthy. Like modern bathroom stalls, Roman walls bore vulgar insults: “Oppius a clown,” “Teritus a nasty boy,” and “Phileros a eunuch.”

Sexual bragging was common. Outside the Bar of Athictus in Pompeii, one graffiti reads, “I screwed the barmaid,” while another poetically proclaims, “Floronius, privileged soldier of the 7th legion, was here. The women did not know of his presence. Only six women came to know, too few for such a stallion.” Scatological jokes also appeared, such as a wish for a successful bowel movement: “Defecator, may everything turn out okay so that you can leave this place.”

4 The Real James Bond

The true inspiration behind James Bond remains debated. While Ian Fleming met many fascinating individuals, double‑agent Dusan Popov most closely mirrored the iconic spy.

During World War II, Popov served both Germany’s Abwehr and Britain’s MI6. Though he despised the Nazis, he supplied them with information pre‑approved by British intelligence, keeping his double role hidden.

Popov’s lifestyle matched Bond’s reputation: a prolific womanizer, heavy drinker, and high‑roller gambler. MI6 even changed his code name from “Scoot” to “Tricycle” due to his penchant for ménage à trois. In the United States, his flamboyant parties annoyed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who threatened to arrest him under the Mann Act.

Popov’s most Bond‑like moment unfolded at a Portuguese casino, witnessed by Fleming. When a wealthy Lithuanian boasted “banque ouverte,” promising to match any bet, Popov raised the stakes with a £50,000 wager using Her Majesty’s money. Fleming turned pale, and the Lithuanian backed down, a scene that inspired the iconic poker showdown in Casino Royale.

3 One Of The World’s Largest Cutlery Companies Started As A Free Love Commune

Today, Oneida Limited supplies North America’s food‑service industry with dinnerware and ranks among the world’s largest flatware producers. Though founded in 1880, its roots trace back to a 19th‑century religious commune in upstate New York.

In 1848, preacher John Humphrey Noyes gathered followers to create a socialist utopia called the Oneida Community, adhering to Perfectionism—a belief in achieving sinless living in this world.

The community practiced communal living and, controversially, “complex marriages.” Noyes rejected monogamy (“simple marriages”), instituting a system where every woman was married to every man and vice‑versa. Sexual relations were permitted with mutual consent, and members took steps to avoid pregnancy.

The commune flourished for decades, expanding to other cities. However, Noyes fled to Canada to escape adultery charges. In 1879, the Oneida Community abandoned complex marriages, and by 1880 it transformed into a joint‑stock company, eventually becoming the cutlery giant we know today.

2 The Beggar’s Benison

In the 18th century, gentlemen’s clubs served as hubs for like‑minded men to discuss politics, commerce, science, and, in some cases, sex. The Beggar’s Benison, often hailed as Scotland’s first sex club, exemplified this trend.

Officially named The Most Ancient and Most Puissant Order of the Beggar’s Benison and Merryland, Anstruther, the society’s motto—“May Prick and Purse Never Fail You”—referenced a legend wherein King James V received a blessing from a beautiful beggar girl.

The club’s purpose was to celebrate male sexuality: members discussed sex, viewed pornography, and were sometimes entertained by nude “posture girls.” They likely engaged in group masturbation, protesting the era’s view of onanism as a social scourge. The Beggar’s Benison operated for nearly a century before closing in 1836. Today, only a handful of documents, meeting records, and novelty phallic relics survive in museums.

1 The Congress Of Vienna Was One Long Party

The Congress of Vienna marked a pivotal moment after Napoleon’s defeat, gathering Europe’s great powers to craft a lasting peace. Spanning nine months (September 1814 – June 1815), the conference aimed to redraw borders so no single nation could dominate again.

While delegates negotiated, they also indulged in a world of sex, parties, and alcohol. British ambassador Robert Stewart, Lord Castlereagh, earned notoriety with Viennese police for his drunken escapades, including a traffic‑related fistfight where a carriage driver cracked him with a whip.

Austrian chief negotiator Prince Klemens von Metternich favored women over wine, engaging in numerous affairs. Both Tsar Alexander I and British diplomat Frederick Lamb slept with Metternich’s mistresses under the guise of gathering intelligence. Even the defeated French ambassador Prince de Talleyrand joined the revelry, sleeping with a mother and her daughter.

These scandalous anecdotes reveal that the Congress of Vienna was as much a hedonistic marathon as a diplomatic summit, proving that even world‑shaping politics can be steeped in debauchery.

The top 10 real superpowers you can actually learn are waiting for you to unlock them. Superheroes may be fictional, but the extraordinary abilities they display have real‑world counterparts that can be cultivated through science, training, and perseverance.

Top 10 Real Overview

10 Superhuman Strength

Strength is a much more complex concept than many realize. It is not just about how much muscle we have, but even more so how well we use it. One need not be a bodybuilder to have super strength, as proven by grand master strongman and pound‑for‑pound strongest man in the world Dennis Rogers. Rogers has performed many incredible feats of strength, including preventing airplanes from taking off and holding back four Harley‑Davidson motorcycles at once. These are impressive feats for any strongman but are especially incredible considering that Dennis Rogers is only 168 centimeters tall (5’6″) and 76 kilograms (168 lb). And he’s in his fifties. So how does he do it? The answer is plyometrics.

The goal of plyometrics is to access more of the dormant strength in our muscles by partially bypassing a natural function of the nervous system called the inhibition reflex. The golgi tendon organ (GTO)—present in every muscle—sends nerve impulses to our spinal cords every time we use a muscle. The spinal cord then responds with an inhibition reflex, which limits the amount of power your muscle can use. This process exists because human muscles are capable of creating a higher degree of force than they and other structural elements of the body can withstand. If not for this, reflex muscles would tear themselves from tension, and people would strike things with more force than their bones and tendons could handle without breaking. The GTO however, does not suppress your power only at the edge of damage. Through training with quick, explosive exercises, plyometrics gives us the ability to force out more power more rapidly, before the inhibition reflex occurs.

The intent of plyometrics is to train your muscles to release more power more rapidly from the muscle that you have, with the goal of generating as much power as possible before the inhibition reflex occurs. To achieve this, plyometrics is based on quick, explosive exercises, which focus on generating immediate force and developing your fast‑twitch muscle fibers. In addition to training explosive burst techniques and exercises, an important part of developing fast‑twitch muscle is exhausting slow‑twitch muscles in other, more extended stamina‑oriented workouts, at which point fast‑twitch muscle fibers take over and begin to develop.

Plyometrics are wonderful, but muscle is still the source of that strength, so we still need some. There is a difference between how much muscle you have and how strong that muscle is. Both are equally important, and both are trained differently. Muscle growth, or hypertrophy, is best trained through pushing muscles to the point of exhaustion through high reps and consecutive workouts for the same muscle groups. Strength, on the other hand, is developed with lower reps of more weight and reasonable rest time in between.

9 Lightning Speed

You’re probably thinking, “Sure, there are some fast people out there, but there’s a difference between being really fast and ‘superhuman speed.’” However, anyone lucky enough to have had the illustrious pleasure of working with the late, great Bruce Lee would likely beg to differ. In order for Lee’s movements to be reasonably visible on film, they had to be slowed down two‑fold. First, he would intentionally move slower so that the camera could capture his movements, and then afterward, the film would be slowed so that the eyes of the viewer could follow what was happening. If these measures weren’t taken, it would appear that the villains surrounding him would simply fall over for no reason without any visible cause.

Fighting fast is one thing, but if we’re going to talk about real super speed, we need to take running and other types of movement into account as well. Luckily, this traces back to the same core concept, which is fast‑twitch muscle fiber. This is the same fast‑twitch muscle fiber discussed in the previous installment regarding super strength and is trained largely with the same type of concepts: plyometrics and explosiveness, as well as focusing these types of training on the muscle groups necessary for the abilities you want to achieve.

Fast movement, however, is not the only element of lightning speed. In order to be capable of utilizing this speed effectively, one must also have super reaction time. Without this, all the speed in the world is meaningless. The best way to train reaction time is through reaction‑oriented activities, such as the hand‑slap game and speed bag training, as well as through visual athletic training, such as robo‑pong, focus loop, and brock string exercises.

8 Incredible Agility

So far, we’ve explored a few powers that will help you knock around the baddies. To do so, you’ll need to get there in time to save … whoever it is you’re saving. Super speed will help you with that, but you’ll need to round it out with the super agility to get past obstacles that most people can’t, and quick!

Parkour is just what you need. As stated by founder David Belle: “Parkour is a method of training which allows us to overcome obstacles, both in the urban and natural environments.” Likely the most notable paths for parkour users (traceurs) is across rooftops, as shown in the Rush Hour BBC promo, which was the introduction of parkour to the mainstream. Being agile enough to climb and jump and run across daunting obstacles may not sound like much of a superpower, but just watch any of the wealth of homemade parkour videos out there, and you’ll be shocked by the incredible things already being done by many across the world!

Founded in 1990, parkour is a relatively new concept but has taken the world by storm and has many training schools around the world. This is important because parkour, when not learned under professional guidance, can be extremely dangerous for obvious reasons (including falling from the rooftops you’re jumping across).

7 Extreme Flexibility

Extreme flexibility is one of the most well‑known of all real superpowers. Contortionists have been a staple of the performance world since as far back as ancient Egypt and possibly beyond. A master of this art is Daniel Browning Smith, also known as “Rubberboy.” Recognized by Guinness World Records as the world’s most flexible man, he is known for squeezing himself through unstrung tennis rackets, rotating his torso 180 degrees, bending in half backwards from a laying position, and, of course, squeezing into tiny boxes, not to mention all of the other skills commonly associated with the art.

Jujutsu and its cousins, Brazilian jiu‑jitsu and judo, as well as other forms of technical grappling are highly effective and popular martial arts. These styles of ground combatives utilize submission, choking, limb‑breaking, and various other types of grappling techniques, and flexibility is essential. Flexibility also increases the quality of many striking techniques, and that’s not just for flashy moves and high kicks. Speed and range of motion in power‑generating body parts, like the hips, lead to more powerful strikes.

Healing and recovery are also dramatically increased with superior flexibility, as it decreases stress on joints and reduces pain, making us more resilient and getting us back into action more quickly after a particularly strenuous battle or damaging injury.

Training flexibility is largely based on engaging in all types of stretching regularly and frequently. Dynamic stretching involves gradually increasing reach, movement speed, or both, when moving parts of your body. Ballistic stretching is less controlled and relies on using momentum to push a body part beyond its usual range. Static stretching involves holding a muscle stretched at its farthest point and has two subtypes: static‑passive, which is holding the stretched muscle with some external force, and static‑active, which means using only the muscles to hold the stretch. Another type, isometric stretching, involves tensing of the stretched muscles, such as if a partner is holding your leg high while you try to push it down. (This is but one of many examples of isometric stretching.)

All types of stretching are necessary for extreme flexibility, but isometric stretching is the best for developing strength and range of motion for athletics and contortion, so using it as a primary focus in your training is key for this kind of ability.

6 Ultra Fortitude

For a truly superhuman body, fortitude and toughness are of primary importance, as superheroes are faced with constant threat to their bodies. Methods of body conditioning have been used for many years in the world of martial arts, one of the most common concepts being bone mineralization, also called calcification. Bones are primarily comprised of calcium, and the amount and density of calcium in those bones determines their size and structural strength. Resistance training in one’s workout routine is a simple and safe way to achieve mineralization. It is even suggested to help the elderly maintain their health.

When the body detects that its bones are absorbing large amounts of force, a natural mechanism sends more calcium into the bones, increasing their size, density, and weight, thus adding to the structural integrity of their owner’s body and, in some ways, even striking power. This concept is called Wolff’s law. Many types of martial artists through history have utilized this concept by striking objects repeatedly to cause a calcifying reaction in the bones, including the legendary Shaolin monks.

Davis’s law is a concept similar to Wolff’s law, the difference being that where Wolff’s law concerns bones, Davis’s law concerns soft tissue. The body’s capacity to respond to stress is not limited to bones, and the soft tissues of the body can be trained to harden through stress as well, resulting in more resilient muscles and organs, as well as a boost to pain resistance, which is important, as well.

Having a body that can structurally survive as much punishment as possible is great, but how much pain and suffering the hero can endure before giving in to a villain or extraordinarily arduous task is another thing and also extremely important. Pain has two primary concepts behind it: threshold and tolerance. Threshold represents how much stimulus is required for something to feel “painful,” and tolerance represents how much of that pain one can physically and psychologically endure. Unfortunately, there seems to be no way of increasing one’s pain threshold, but tolerance can be trained, and to a remarkable degree.

A good place to look for this is once again is to the Shaolin. These incredible warrior monks perform superhuman feats of pain regulation, such as lying on spears and having large stones smashed on their stomachs. How do they do it? Meditation. By controlling their minds, the Shaolin can actually distract themselves from and even reduce pain, making it nearly, if not totally, irrelevant. If that’s not superhuman pain resistance, than what is?

5 Surviving Extreme Temperatures

In 2007, Wim Hof set a world record when he immersed himself in ice for 72 minutes in nothing but shorts and boots, and this isn’t even his most incredible feat. He has also climbed Mount Everest, again, in nothing but shorts and boots (he was only stopped from reaching the summit by a foot injury), and run a marathon in the desert without water.

Wim Hof, or “The Iceman,” as he is known, manages such things with a heightened connection to and control of his body. This may sound like something that is likely a trick or hoax, but Hof has always done his work under scrutiny by scientists and journalists, all of whom verify his claims. Though he has been observed by the scientific community closely enough to prove his legitimacy, exactly how his methods work remains a mystery to science.

So how is it possible to train something that can’t be identified? And how is it that we can be sure that Wim Hof isn’t a one‑off freak of nature? Because he teaches people. That’s right, you can take lessons from the man directly, and even if traveling to Europe to train with the man is too much, there are training videos on his website!

4 Enhanced Immunity

Another accomplishment of the Wim Hof method is increasing your immunity! This was proven when Wim Hof was documented resisting that symptoms of an endotoxin introduced in a medical laboratory. The scientists were astonished by what they witnessed but doubted that anyone else could replicate Hof’s feat. To test this, 12 students of Hof’s were brought in, and all of them resisted the toxin, just like Hof!

The Wim Hof method may be incredibly impressive, but it’s not a cure‑all, and as dangerous as it may be, for many potential contaminants, the only way to protect ourselves is to expose ourselves. Tolerance to poisons and other toxins is most commonly achieved by consuming or injecting a very small, survivable amount into one’s body at a steadily increasing rate as the body’s natural defensive reactions continuously toughen the body’s immunity to said toxin. This term for this is “mithridatism.”

Vaccines are a similar concept, created as “imitations” of a disease that cause no illness and are intended to provoke a response from the immune system, which then produces antibodies and T‑lymphocytes which protect us against the illness in question.

3 Apnea Diving

Apnea diving, or freediving, is so popular and well‑known that it is not only a superhuman ability but also a sport! AIDA International Freediving is a democratic, international organization that sets rules and regulations for safety in the sport, in addition to maintaining world records and organizing events all over the planet. Although scientists believed for years that humans could only survive underwater for a few minutes tops and at depths no deeper than 50 meters (164 ft), some of the world records in this sport include dives to depths well over 200 meters (656 ft), with some lasting over 11 minutes on a single breath!

This is possible because of an evolutionary adaptation called the “diving reflex.” The action of this reflex is to shut down and/or slow physiological functions that use oxygen, thus allowing our bodies to operate on less oxygen for a longer period of time. Blood shift is another phenomenon also necessary in freediving. This function allows the lungs to fill with plasma, preventing their collapse from pressure.

Though recognized as a sport worldwide, freediving is still extremely dangerous to the ill‑prepared. Improper preparation and faulty or mismanaged equipment have caused numerous deaths in the sport. Because of this, it is important to seek proper instruction.

2 Echolocation

Many have heard about how some blind people can use echolocation to navigate their surroundings, but a 2013 study from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich biologists shows that sighted people can learn this skill, as well! It turns out that the ability to echolocate is a talent that lies dormant within everyone. This is because our brains have learned to shut out echoes so that we can focus more effectively on the primary source of a sound, rather than having the constant distraction of echoes of everything around us. The trick to learning echolocation is to learn to “tune in” to the echoes that already exist in the world.

The LMU experiment consisted of sighted people outfitted with a headset that contained earphones and a microphone. The participants made a vocalization, and the appropriate echo in relation to objects and spaces in the room was created through the earphones. This test allowed sighted people, over a few weeks of training, to learn to extrapolate information regarding shape, size, and distance from the given echo.

1 Mind Control

Controlling others like puppets may not be realistic, but implanting thoughts and altering the way people think very much is. The human subconscious is frighteningly vulnerable, and controlling minds through planted suggestion is more accessible a skill than many would presume. This is why the reader should learn about this, not only to use if need be but also to defend against it should one come across a user of these techniques.

The essential element of this process is to go after the subconscious mind while the conscious mind is otherwise focused, and here are the five most common techniques: Covert hypnosis entails convincing someone that your thoughts are their own through suggestive, focused conversation. When one engages in pattern interruption, they create a brief hypnotic moment by forcing someone’s concentration through an abnormal behavior (such as placing a hand on someone’s chest in place of shaking their hand in a greeting—the moment it takes them to analyze the situation will cause a brief hypnotic state). The Zeigarnik effect is concentration that naturally occurs in people toward incomplete tasks. This can be achieved by telling someone an incomplete story, otherwise causing them to focus on an incomplete task. During this period of distracted focus, they are highly suggestible. Another method is to use ambiguous phrases or comments that require someone’s focus to analyze, causing a brief period of high suggestibility. Finally, there are hypnotic keywords, subconscious‑evoking phrases like “imagine if … ” that can cause a rise in accessibility to someone’s subconscious. This technique is a bit vague and weaker but still very commonly used.

Controlling others is not, however, the only use of these skills. One of the most important uses—and the reason this item was saved for last on the list—is that these tricks can be used to help develop ourselves. The reader may be overwhelmed by the sheer apparent degree of effort needed to attain the things listed here, but by getting control of oneself using techniques such as self‑hypnosis, it is remarkable what challenges the average person can overcome and what accomplishments they are able to achieve.

Using mind control on yourself is largely made up of neurolinguistic programming (NLP), which in this context is largely made up of two techniques: The flash technique is an NLP exercise in which one visualizes an image associated with a negative feeling in a given circumstance brightly and vividly. The person then implants in that imagined image another, much smaller gray scale image of their preferred feeling in that circumstance. Gradually, the preferred imagine grows to take over the negative image, with the color draining from the negative image to the preferred image. This process is repeated over and over until psychologically successful. Anchoring is associating an internal response with an external or internal stimulus in order to reaccess the internal response (similar to how seeing something nostalgic will remind you of how you felt when you first saw it). This effect can be manually created by choosing a simple, self‑creatable stimulus—such as making a hand gesture or touching yourself in a certain way and repeating that action when you want to associate the anchored feeling to a given task at hand.

Though only a few techniques in each category have been listed here, there are actually a great number of others that can be used to achieve the same forms of control.

So there you have it: ten learnable superpowers ripe for practice. Clearly, in the brevity of this listicle, the complete process of learning such wondrous things is not expressible, but all of the items are out there and ready to be trained. All that’s left now is to reach out, grab for destiny, and, of course, always use your powers for good.

Excelsior!

Jason Karras writes, therefore he is.

Welcome to the ultimate guide to the 10 mental superpowers you can develop with a bit of dedication and practice. From dazzling party tricks to sharpening your everyday cognition, each of these abilities is within reach for anyone willing to put in the effort.

Explore the 10 Mental Superpowers

10 Want A Cool Party Trick? Learning To Speed Solve A Rubik’s Cube Is Entry Level

Everyone knows the Rubik’s cube, and most people have at least idly picked one up, solved one side, and then gave up when they realized they would have to destroy their work to fix another side. A lot of people have never bothered to go much further past this, but many wish they could complete one, at least to say that they finally did.

For those of you who feel that solving a Rubik’s cube is out of reach, and that trying to solve one as a speed‑cuber is even more out of reach, the nice thing is it actually isn’t really that hard. If you can solve one side, you can get the rest done, as long as you follow the right movement patterns. You see, there is a simple pattern of movement that will change other parts of the cube, but leave the parts you didn’t want changed as they are as you finish with the movement pattern. As for how hard it is to be a speed‑cuber, a nine‑year‑old in China named Yihang Wang has done it in under five seconds with decent consistency, so you can learn how to do it in a few minutes if you really practice and set your mind to it.

9 Training Yourself To Have An Incredible Memory Is Easier Than It Sounds

Some people see someone with a really good memory, and they’re shocked by that person’s genetic luck, and how they just “have” a good memory. This all goes back to so many people thinking that talent is something you just have, and not something that is mostly a learned ability. However, the truth is that true photographic, or eidetic, memories are considered a myth by most researchers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still have a great memory. The trick is, you actually need to train and discipline your mind properly to do it.

Now, while there are a ton of mnemonic techniques that can help you which we don’t have room for here, the main concept is just understanding how your memory works. Memory actually has addresses in your brain that trigger it, based on the context when you memorized whatever it was. This can make it hard to remember things, as we have to recall what else was going on at the time, but if we can train ourselves to use triggers that make more sense, we can control our memory much better.

Furthermore, if you use something called chunking, you can actually increase your working memory as well. Short‑term memory can hold up to nine chunks of information at a time, but if you take items and put them into categories, you can expand this capacity.

8 Learning To Count Cards Is Both Easy And Potentially Profitable

In movies like The Hangover, we see a character using crazy math calculations in order to count cards and get our main cast all the money they need to hopefully escape a sticky situation. The technique is made to look almost impossibly inaccessible to anyone who isn’t some kind of crazy genius at mathematics, and the drama is tuned up to the highest degree. However, the truth is it isn’t actually that hard to learn to count cards.

It does require discipline and practice, just like anything that you want to learn properly, and you will probably want to practice memory techniques as well to make sure you don’t make errors under pressure. However, it doesn’t require complex math. In fact, all it really requires is arithmetic, which is something most of us should have mastered long ago. As for whether it is legal, what happened in The Hangover was illegal as it was a conspiracy involving several people. However, if you are working alone without electronic help, you can count cards all day and all they can do is kick you out and tell you not to come back.

7 Learning Human And Animal Body Language Is Like Teaching Yourself An Extra Sense

Most of us know a decent amount of human body language just from being, well, human. But there are many things we don’t know about the science involved, and if we teach ourselves to learn these tricks, it can feel like opening up an entirely new sense. This can be especially helpful with pets, who speak an entirely different language than we do.

Dog body language is mostly well known, but a lot of people don’t quite know cats so well, as studies on them haven’t been as common until more recently. What we do know makes it relatively easy to understand them though, and can open up new understanding between you and your cat. The most important thing is to watch their tail movements, which indicate most of their mood. A raised tail, for example, indicates interest and openness, but a thrashing tail means your cat is really, really angry and frustrated.

As for people, one trick many don’t know about is that by watching which way their eyes are moving, you can often tell if they are telling the truth or not. The trick is that when remembering things, people typically look left, and when thinking of something new, they probably look right and upward. If they are looking right and downward however, it could indicate they doubt their own words.

6 Learn Classical Logic And Apply It To Your Everyday Thinking

A lot of us tend to think of ourselves as pretty logical, for the most part, and we like to believe that we are already applying logic most of the time to our everyday lives. However, while it is true most people are at least trying to be logical most of the time, that doesn’t mean they always are, or that they couldn’t be more logically sound if they took the time to learn classical logic. Now, the reason a lot of people don’t think too highly of it is that at its most basic level it can seem almost absurdly reductive, but that’s kind of the point.

The idea behind classical logic is to break things down into simple statements, like, “If I eat until I feel full, I ate enough; if I eat after I feel full, I ate too much.” It also breaks everything down into simple true, false, or both statements. This is actually really easy enough to learn, even if the more complicated version involves algebra. If you do teach yourself to start applying classical logic to everyday life, you can impress people with your complex problem‑solving skills. Also, by forcing yourself to look at things logically, it will be much harder for the news to emotionally manipulate you as well.

5 Learning To Read Lips Is Useful, But It Can Be Misinterpreted

You’ve probably never thought too much about learning to read lips. Most people don’t. This is usually because we tend to think of it as a skill that’s something you only learn if you’re hard of hearing. It helps you figure out what people are saying when your ears are not working properly, and allows the person to better understand a conversation without needing the other person to know sign language. However, it can be useful for more than just people who are deaf, as sometimes when looking right at someone we might miss a word or two due to sound, and not want them to repeat themselves, or we might be trying to pick up part of a conversation from across the room.

Now, while anyone can read lips, it is important to know that reading lips should be largely based on context and not just what you thought you read. You should also be careful not to take action simply from what you thought you read from their lips. The reason for this is that a lot of words or phrases will make the same exact movement as other words or phrases, and context is not always enough to entirely make up for this.

4 Learning Just The Fundamentals Of A Wide Variety Of Subjects Has Multiple Advantages

It can be easy to get frustrated during your early years in college. You might be annoyed at having to take a bunch of general education courses that don’t seem to fit your major. This is a very common complaint but the colleges stand firm, claiming that it is important for you to learn all of those things. Some people think it’s a conspiracy from the colleges to get you to spend more money going to unnecessary classes, but there is actually a good reason for all of this.

The thing is, while specializing is great, that doesn’t mean that you get to reach the skill of a specialist just by specialization alone. Most subjects have a lot of interconnected things that might not necessarily be a direct part of your major study, and making all these connections as you learn will help increase your understanding of your field. It will also make you a more well‑rounded person capable of impressing people by at least understanding the basics of a lot more subjects. Finally, it will also help you with employers, who are looking for people with a more diverse skill set, and can help land you jobs in interconnected fields.

3 Even Sighted People Can Benefit From Learning How To Use Echolocation

Echolocation is something a lot of people think is just a skill that is unique to heroes like Daredevil, who are not at all real (well, as far as we know…). Now, while it is true that you are unlikely to ever learn to be able to use echolocation to the level that Daredevil can in the comics, you can learn to use it to great effect, even if you can see just fine.

Some of you are probably wondering what the point of this is if you can already see, but echolocation is basically using your brain to create a sonar map. Anytime something is blocking your vision, you can use echolocation to get a better visual map of what might be behind the things that are obstructing your view. Some may think that only blind people can learn this, but the fact is that blind people actually don’t have extra hearing, and some studies have shown sighted people picking it up easier than blind people.

2 Train Yourself Not Just To See Or Hear, But To Observe

This all goes back to the basic principles of Sherlock‑ian deduction, which can be best illustrated by a conversation Holmes once had with Dr. Watson where he asks the good doctor if he knows how many steps lead up to their flat at 221b Baker Street. Watson cannot answer, and Holmes replies, “You see Watson, but you do not observe.” This fundamental principle is the basis of all of Sherlock’s deductions, as he has trained himself to actively observe everything around him, as opposed to just seeing it like most of us do.

Now, some may think this is splitting hairs, or just something you need if you are a detective, but there is a good reason for normal people to train their brains to think like this. There is something called situational blindness where we can see something daily, and be so used to the general schematic of it, that we don’t notice small changes. These changes could even cause you to have an accident in the wrong situation, so it’s good to actively keep your eye on things. Furthermore, by applying this skill to observing people, you will get a better handle on subtle mood shifts that you might have missed in your friends and workers.

1 You Can Become A Human Calculator By Learning Some Simple Tricks

Let’s start off by being clear that while everyone can learn it, there is a good reason this one is number one on the list. It’s easily the most impressive skill to learn, but it’s also going to require the most practice of any of them to really get down. That being said, for those who think this is a skill beyond them because it requires advanced math aptitude or skills, you can rest easy knowing that really isn’t the case. You may have seen people at the county fair or somewhere similar managing complex multiplication faster than you would be able to enter it into your calculator, and thought they were a real‑life Will Hunting. However, they are using simple tricks and not advanced math.

The first trick is knowing the basics of arithmetic really well, and understanding how to round up or down and simplify things by breaking them into chunks. If you know the basic principles, you just need to memorize most of the square roots, and then learn a simple formula you can use as a shortcut for advanced multiplication. If you understand that ((A Squared) – (B Squared)) = ((A + B) * (A – B)), how to plug in the right numbers, and you know your square roots, you too can be a math magician.

Ever imagined yourself as a linguistic superhero, juggling dozens of tongues with ease? Maybe you already converse in multiple languages without breaking a sweat. But have you ever taken on any of the top 10 hardest languages that give even veteran polyglots a serious run for their money? Buckle up, because we’re about to explore the ten most daunting languages you could ever attempt to master.

10 Mandarin Chinese

Mandarin Chinese is a sprawling linguistic beast that can feel like an endless puzzle box. Before you even think about speaking it, you have to wrestle with its writing system—thousands of unique characters that either scramble your brain or become a meditative art form, depending on your mindset.

Once you’ve survived the character marathon, the spoken side throws its own curveballs. Grammar is a whole other universe: there are no articles, and sentence structures differ wildly from English, making sentence construction feel like assembling IKEA furniture without an instruction manual.

To top it all off, Mandarin relies on four distinct tones, each capable of flipping a word’s meaning entirely. One mis‑tone and you could accidentally call someone “ugly” when you meant “smelly”—a faux pas that’s more embarrassing than painful, but still unforgettable.

For this reason, many learners abandon generic language apps and seek out native tutors who can guide them through the tonal maze and character labyrinth.

9 Arabic

Arabic, a Semitic powerhouse spoken by over 400 million people across 26 nations, carries deep cultural and historical weight. Its sheer reach makes its difficulty all the more intriguing.

The main obstacle? Dialectal variety. Arabic splinters into a multitude of regional dialects, each with its own pronunciation quirks, vocabulary twists, and grammatical quirks, turning a single language into a patchwork of distinct tongues.

Writing adds another layer of complexity: you write from right to left, and each letter morphs depending on its position in a word. Vowels often hide in plain sight, making the script feel like a secret code. Then there’s the grammar—intricate verb forms and noun declensions that demand meticulous attention.

8 Japanese

Japanese earns its spot with a blend of visual elegance and cultural nuance. Over 128 million people speak it, primarily in the Land of the Rising Sun, and its writing system is a true work of art.

The script fuses Chinese characters (kanji) with two syllabaries—hiragana and katakana—requiring learners to master three distinct character sets. Memorization and context become your best allies when navigating this tri‑script system.

Beyond the script, Japanese flips the typical English sentence order on its head: verbs sit at the end, compelling you to adopt a Subject‑Object‑Verb pattern. Mastering this inversion takes practice, but it’s essential for sounding natural.

Finally, social context reigns supreme. Politeness levels and honorifics shift depending on the speaker’s relationship to the listener, so using the wrong form can instantly turn a friendly chat into an awkward misstep.

7 Korean

Korean may initially look like a cousin of Mandarin or Japanese, but it’s a language with its own unique flavor—think of it as a Texan meeting a Louisianan: familiar yet distinct.

1. Grammar

2. Homophones

3. Phonetic Writing

The grammar challenges stem from an unfamiliar word order, verb endings, and an honorific system that reshapes vocabulary based on social hierarchy. Double consonants, aspirated sounds, and complex vowel combinations can leave English speakers tongue‑tied.

Homophones are another stumbling block—words that sound identical but carry different meanings. A slip could have you saying “leg” when you meant “bridge,” or “fever” when you intended “ten.”

The Hangul alphabet, while phonetic, introduces a fresh set of characters that feel like learning to read and write all over again for those accustomed to the Latin script.

6 Finnish

Finnish is a linguistic rollercoaster famed for its mind‑bending grammar, a cascade of 15 cases, and a mesmerizing vowel‑harmony system that keeps learners on their toes.

Diving into Finnish grammar feels like solving a Rubik’s Cube of syntax: each case reshapes a word’s ending based on its role, while vowel harmony forces you to match vowel sounds within a word. Add in consonant gradation, and you’ve got a recipe for head‑spinning fun.

Finnish also loves to borrow and compound words, creating lengthy terms that look familiar yet behave in wildly unfamiliar ways. It’s a linguistic concussion—recognizable pieces stitched together in a puzzling fashion.

5 Hungarian

Hungarian stands out as a true linguistic labyrinth, offering a steep climb for any language enthusiast.

Being agglutinative, Hungarian lets you stack prefixes and suffixes onto a root like building a Jenga tower, creating words of astonishing length. Throw in a whopping 18 grammatical cases—far more than the three we use in English—and the challenge skyrockets.

Adding to the difficulty, Hungarian isn’t part of the Indo‑European family, so familiar cognates are scarce. Its exotic vowel and consonant sounds demand dedicated pronunciation practice, often lasting well into the night.

Success hinges on learning vocabulary within context and digging deep into the roots of Hungarian words to truly internalize their meaning.

4 Basque

Basque proudly claims the title of Europe’s oldest mysterious language, standing alone without any known relatives—making it an instant challenge for learners.

Because it has no linguistic cousins, you won’t find familiar cognates or recognizable word patterns to lean on. Instead, you must plunge into its complex agglutinative grammar, unique phonology, and a pronunciation system that can feel like decoding an alien dialect.

Mastering Basque could reward you with an unforgettable study‑abroad experience in the picturesque region straddling France and Spain.

3 Icelandic

Icelandic may be a tough nut to crack, but it’s also a living time capsule that preserves its Viking roots with fierce pride.

The core challenge lies in its grammar: four noun, adjective, and pronoun cases each come with their own declension rules, and irregular verbs add an extra layer of memorization.

Every noun carries its own declension pattern, shifting based on gender and case—requiring you to wield a tongue as sharp as Loki’s wit.

Vocabulary adds to the adventure, drawing from Old Norse, crafting compound words, and constantly inventing neologisms, making the lexicon feel like Odin’s treasure trove.

2 Polish

Polish grammar is a wild ride, featuring seven cases that reshape nouns, adjectives, and pronouns depending on their grammatical role.

Verbs can boast up to six tenses, while the language’s signature nasal vowels and dense consonant clusters turn pronunciation into a tongue‑twisting challenge.

Inflection weaves through nouns, verbs, prepositions, and conjunctions, demanding constant attention to detail for accurate communication.

1 Navajo

Navajo, spoken primarily in the American Southwest, stands as a formidable test for any language enthusiast.

Its grammar resembles a puzzle, with prefixes and suffixes snapping together to form words, while a captivating tonal system lets pitch and stress reshape meaning.

During World War II, the Allies enlisted Navajo code talkers because the language was virtually unbreakable—proof that its complexity can even confound seasoned cryptographers.

So if you’re ready for the ultimate linguistic gauntlet, Navajo might just be the final boss you’ve been searching for.

Every February, schools across the United States set aside time to spotlight the rich tapestry of African American history, and the phrase 10 brilliant black women instantly springs to mind when we think of the unsung heroines whose deeds have shaped our nation. While most students can name Martin Luther King Jr., they often overlook the countless women who fought tirelessly for civil rights, broke scientific barriers, and left an indelible mark on culture. Below, we celebrate ten extraordinary Black women whose stories deserve a standing ovation.

10 Brilliant Black Women Who Shaped History This Feb Month

10 Diane Nash

Diane Nash entered the world in 1938 in Chicago, Illinois, growing up far removed from the overt segregation that plagued the Southern United States. Initially set on a religious vocation, she aspired to become a nun, honoring her Catholic upbringing. However, her trajectory shifted dramatically when she enrolled at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. It was there that she first encountered Jim Crow’s brutal reality, forced to use a “Colored Women” restroom—a moment that ignited a fire within her and redirected her path toward full‑time civil‑rights activism.

Immersing herself in the movement, Nash became a pivotal figure in sit‑ins that helped integrate lunch counters, joined the Freedom Riders to challenge segregated interstate travel, and co‑founded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Her relentless work also extended to the Selma Voting Rights Campaign, contributing significantly to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which opened the ballot box to millions of African Americans across the nation.

9 Ella Baker

Born in Norfolk, Virginia, in 1903, Ella Baker devoted roughly half a century to behind‑the‑scenes organizing, collaborating with titans like Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King Jr. While she rarely appeared on television, her strategic brilliance shaped countless events and nurtured a generation of activists, including Diane Nash, Bob Moses, and Rosa Parks. Her mentorship extended far beyond logistics, fostering a network of leaders who would drive the civil‑rights agenda forward.

As the chief advisor and strategist for SNCC, Baker earned recognition as one of the most influential African American leaders of the twentieth century. She famously remarked, “You didn’t see me on television; you didn’t see news stories about me. The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders.” This philosophy underscored her belief in collective empowerment over charismatic leadership.

8 Katherine Johnson

When the public reminisces about NASA’s early days and the Apollo missions, the spotlight often lands on the astronauts who walked on the Moon. Yet, without the meticulous calculations of mathematician Katherine Johnson, those historic steps would have remained a dream. Johnson’s work at NASA involved solving complex orbital mechanics equations by hand, enabling engineers and astronauts to chart precise trajectories, launch windows, and re‑entry paths that made lunar travel possible.

Her contributions predate NASA itself, as she assisted the Mercury program with trajectory calculations and later played a crucial role in the Space Shuttle program. Johnson’s expertise also extended to Mars missions, and her achievements earned her the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. The 2016 film Hidden Figures immortalized her legacy, showcasing how her brilliance helped propel humanity beyond Earth’s atmosphere.

7 Septima Poinsette Clark

Septima Poinsette Clark was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1898, and rose to prominence as a civil‑rights activist who championed literacy and education as tools for empowerment. She argued that true progress stemmed from knowledge, asserting that “the Civil Rights Movement followed the path that knowledge could empower marginalized groups in ways that formal legal equality couldn’t.” Her dedication caught the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who affectionately dubbed her “The Mother of the Movement.”

Despite her impact, Clark’s contributions were often eclipsed by gender bias within both society and the movement itself. She pioneered “Citizenship Schools,” which taught adults across the Deep South to read, thereby fueling the civil‑rights struggle by equipping thousands with the ability to navigate voter registration forms and understand their constitutional rights.

6 Esther Jones

In the heyday of Harlem’s vibrant nightlife, Esther Jones—better known as “Baby Esther”—captivated audiences at the legendary Cotton Club with her signature “baby talk” singing style. Her recordings of Helen Kane’s hit “I Wanna Be Loved By You” featured the playful “boo‑boo‑boo” and “boop‑boop‑a‑doop” syllables that would later echo in the iconic 1930s cartoon character Betty Boop.

Jones’s legacy highlights a recurring theme in African American history: cultural appropriation without credit. While Helen Kane sued Fleischer Studios, claiming the cartoon caricature was a rip‑off of her work, the court ultimately recognized Baby Esther as the original source of the “baby” vocal style. Despite this vindication, Jones never received the fame or financial rewards she deserved, and today she is remembered as the “black grandmother” of Betty Boop.

5 Mary Kenner

Mary Kenner, a native of Monroe, North Carolina, grew up with a curiosity for invention nurtured by her father. Her most celebrated creation, the sanitary belt, laid the groundwork for modern menstrual pads, yet racial prejudice delayed its patent for three decades. When she presented the design to a company, the revelation that a Black woman invented it caused the firm to reject the product, stalling its commercial success.

Undeterred, Kenner secured five patents throughout her career, ranging from a bathroom tissue holder that kept the next sheet accessible, to a carrier attachment for invalid walkers, and a back‑washer mounted on shower walls and bathtubs. Though she never amassed great wealth from her inventions, her innovations have improved daily life for countless individuals worldwide.

4 Marian Anderson

Born in Philadelphia in 1897, Marian Anderson emerged as a trailblazing vocalist who shattered racial barriers in the world of classical music. In 1955, she became the first Black artist to perform at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, a milestone that followed years of exclusion, including a 1939 denial from Constitution Hall by the Daughters of the American Revolution because of her race.

The Constitution Hall snub prompted First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt to intervene, arranging for Anderson to deliver an open‑air concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday 1939. Over 75,000 people gathered for the integrated performance, with millions tuning in via radio. Anderson’s historic achievements earned her numerous accolades and paved the way for future generations of Black musicians in a segregated America.

3 Claudette Colvin

While Rosa Parks is synonymous with the Montgomery Bus Boycott, a younger activist named Claudette Colvin made a similar stand nine months earlier. At just fifteen, she refused to surrender her seat on a Montgomery bus, resulting in her arrest and subsequent role as one of five plaintiffs in the legal challenge against the city’s segregation laws. The case, Browder v. Gayle, reached the Supreme Court in 1956, ultimately declaring the bus segregation statutes unconstitutional.

Despite her pivotal contribution, Colvin faced marginalization from civil‑rights leaders due to her age, unmarried status, and pregnancy. Nonetheless, she remained gracious, stating, “I’m not disappointed. Let the people know Rosa Parks was the right person for the boycott. But also let them know that the attorneys took four other women to the Supreme Court to challenge the law that led to the end of segregation.”

2 Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells was born into slavery in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in 1862, and gained freedom through the Emancipation Proclamation. By age sixteen, after both parents succumbed to yellow fever, she became the family’s primary provider. She later taught in Memphis, Tennessee, where she co‑owned the newspaper Memphis Free Speech and Headlight, marking the start of her influential journalistic career.

Wells rose to national prominence as an investigative journalist documenting lynchings across the United States, a pursuit that drew violent retaliation, including the destruction of her newspaper office and press. Relocating to Chicago, she became a fervent advocate for women’s suffrage and helped found the NAACP in 1909 as part of the “founding forty.” Her relentless activism ignited the flames that would eventually blaze into the modern civil‑rights movement.

1 Dr. Mae Jemison

Mae Carol Jemison entered the world in Decatur, Alabama, in 1956, but her family moved to Chicago when she was three, granting her access to superior educational opportunities. Renowned as the first African American woman to travel into space, she boarded the Space Shuttle Endeavour on September 12, 1992, logging 190 hours, 30 minutes, and 23 seconds orbiting Earth.

Before her NASA tenure, Jemison served two years in the Peace Corps, applying her medical training in Liberia and Sierra Leone. After departing NASA in 1993, she founded a technology‑focused company, appeared as Lieutenant Palmer on an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and earned nine honorary doctorates alongside her Ph.D., celebrating contributions across engineering, science, letters, and the humanities.