The legend of Pocahontas and explorer John Smith is cherished as one of the most touching love stories in American history. The problem is that none of it is true. The real story of Pocahontas is a story of massacres, rapes, and genocides, full of some of the darkest moments in American history.

10 Pocahontas’s Father Committed Genocide

When John Smith first arrived in America, he landed at Chesapeake Bay. However, the Chesapeake tribe, who had given the bay its name, was nowhere to be found. Instead, Smith met Pocahontas’s father, Chief Powhatan.

Powhatan led a confederacy of 30 tribes and 15,000 people that spanned across the area of modern Virginia. He was an extremely powerful man who was capable of terrible things.

A year before Smith had arrived, Powhatan’s priests had prophesied that a nation would arise from Chesapeake Bay that would “dissolve and give end to his empire.” At that time, only a small tribe of 300 to 400 peaceful people lived around Chesapeake Bay.

Powhatan assumed that the prophecy was a warning about them. So he and his 30 tribes rounded up every man, woman, and child in the Chesapeake tribe and systematically murdered them.

9 Pocahontas And John Smith Weren’t In Love

When Pocahontas met John Smith, she was 11 years old and John Smith was 28. There was no romance between them. That was a fictional tale that grew from a story Smith told about Pocahontas saving his life.

Powhatan was worried about the Europeans encroaching on his territory. So his brother, Opechancanough, captured Smith and brought him to the chief. There, Powhatan put Smith’s head on a block and prepared to beat his brains in. Smith was saved when Pocahontas threw herself into harm’s way and pleaded with her father to let Smith go.

The story was later rewritten into a romance, but it was nothing more than sympathy. Some historians have even suggested that Smith may have made up the story to take advantage of Pocahontas’s popularity with the English.

8 John Smith And Powhatan Threatened To Kill Each Other

Smith arrived with a group of English gentlemen who weren’t used to working—and some who flat-out refused to do so. The English settlers literally wouldn’t plant a crop to save their own lives. As hard as Smith tried to get them to work, the group started to starve.

Smith’s only option was to barter with Powhatan, but Powhatan refused. He pretended he didn’t have any food to share, hoping to starve Smith and his men out of the country. In the end, Smith got Powhatan to cooperate by threatening his life.

“The weapons I have can keep me from want: yet steal, or wrong you, I will not,” Smith told Powhatan, “unless you force me.”

Powhatan didn’t take the threat lightly. He planned a surprise attack to kill Smith in retaliation and only gave up the plan because Pocahontas warned the settlers before Powhatan could strike.

7 John Ratcliffe Was Flayed And Burned Alive

In the Disney film Pocahontas, John Ratcliffe is depicted as a greedy villain. But the real Ratcliffe was a well-liked, generous man. After Smith was injured in an accidental explosion and had to return to England, Ratcliffe was given command—and he paid a terrible cost for the responsibility.

With Smith gone, Powhatan stopped sharing crops with the settlers, once again hoping to starve them out. The settlers blamed Ratcliffe and accused him of keeping a secret hoard of food for himself.

When Ratcliffe finally convinced Powhatan to share his corn, Ratcliffe thought he’d saved his people. Instead, he and the men who went to pick up the corn were ambushed by tribal warriors. The warriors killed every man except for Ratcliffe, who was stripped naked, tied to a tree, and slowly burned and flayed alive.

6 Pocahontas Was Kidnapped And Raped

The settlers and the tribes broke into an all-out war. People died and did terrible things on both sides—until Pocahontas was kidnapped.

A European called Captain Argall captured Pocahontas, hoping that he could trade the chief’s daughter for prisoners and weapons. Argall killed her husband, Kocoum, and tried to slaughter her baby son, who only survived because another woman hid him. Pocahontas was brutally raped and then dragged to Europe and forcibly trained in European culture and religion.

Powhatan gave into Argall’s demands. Powhatan released the prisoners and returned the stolen weapons, hoping to see his daughter alive again. But Argall didn’t honor his part of the deal. Pocahontas was kept in Europe and never told that her father had agreed to the trade.

5 Pocahontas Gave Birth To Her Rapist’s Child

In Europe, Pocahontas realized that she was pregnant. In time, she gave birth to a child who was half-white. According to some accounts, this happened before she ever met her European husband, John Rolfe, meaning that Pocahontas’s son was conceived in a rape.

She married John Rolfe in the hopes that it would make peace between their people. But their marriage caused a scandal because a princess had married a commoner. Powhatan had been crowned by England and written about as an emperor, so the English viewed Pocahontas as royalty.

Rolfe risked the scandal, though, because he thought Pocahontas could help his business. Rolfe had already made a small fortune planting Trinidadian tobacco in Virginia, which would soon become the colony’s most valuable export. He hoped that marrying Pocahontas would get Powhatan to help him grow his crops.

4 The Settlers Told Pocahontas That John Smith Had Died

Pocahontas had heard that John Smith was injured in a gunpowder accident, but she wasn’t told that he had returned to England. Instead, the settlers told Pocahontas that Smith was dead.

When she unexpectedly spotted Smith in England, she broke into tears. The reunion was emotional for Pocahontas, but Smith was cold and formal. In America, she had called Smith “father” as a term of endearment. In England, he spoke to her as though she were a stranger he’d only heard about in the news.

“Lady,” Smith explained, “I dare not allow that title, for you are a king’s daughter.”

“You were not afraid to come into my father’s country and cause fear in him and in all his people,” she replied. “Fear you here that I should call you father?”

3 Pocahontas Died At 21

In America, Powhatan and the settlers had an uneasy truce. While Pocahontas was in Europe, the war was called off. Powhatan wouldn’t risk the death of his favorite daughter.

When word came that Pocahontas and her new husband were coming to Virginia, Powhatan was elated. He thought he would finally see his little girl again and meet his grandson. But Powhatan never did.

As soon as their ship left the dock, Pocahontas became sick. She had no immunity against the diseases of Europe. Like many of her people, contact with the Europeans had left her stricken with a deadly illness. John Rolfe had the ship sent back to England, where Pocahontas died.

Powhatan still held out hope that he’d meet his grandson. But Pocahontas’s boy was left in England, and Rolfe traveled to Virginia without him. Powhatan died within the year without meeting his grandson.

2 Pocahontas’s Uncle Led The Jamestown Massacre

With Powhatan dead, his brother, Opechancanough, was put in charge of the 30 tribes. Rolfe’s tobacco trade was booming, and his success attracted settlers from all over Europe. White men were rushing into the country in droves, spreading their colonies and their diseases across the land.

Opechancanough no longer had any reason to keep the peace. He took a harder stance than Powhatan and plotted to get rid of the English colonists altogether.

Opechancanough and his men entered Jamestown unarmed, pretending that they wanted to sell a few goods. Once they were in, though, they grabbed every tool and weapon available and slaughtered every person they could find, sparing neither women nor children.

One-quarter of the settlement’s population died in the attack. It was a horrific massacre, and it meant the end of the fragile peace between Pocahontas’s and John Smith’s people.

1 Pocahontas’s People Were Almost Entirely Exterminated

After the Jamestown Massacre, open war began again. Opechancanough opened up a new era of cruelty in battle tactics, and the settlers repaid him with the same cruelty he showed them.

The English lured 200 Native Americans to a supposed peace talk. There, the settlers poisoned their guests and then chased down and scalped the few who survived. Even Pocahontas’s son was sent to kill his own Native American people.

In the end, Opechancanough was captured and paraded through Jamestown before a jeering crowd. The rest of his people were killed off, either by the settlers or their diseases. The few natives who survived were sent into slavery.

The prophecy of Powhatan’s priests had come true. Due to his brutality, his empire was wiped off the map, his daughter was raped and stolen away from him, and his grandson raised up arms against his own people.

Americans tend to treat George Washington like a god. That might seem like a strong word, but his first biographer called him “a hero and a demigod,” the Capitol Building has a mural of Washington ascending to Heaven, and a statue in the Capitol Rotunda literally depicts him as the Greek god Zeus.

Washington, though, was a mortal man, and he had faults and weaknesses just like everyone else. The stories we hear about him are full of hero worship and legend. There are, however, a few little details usually get cut out.

10 His Mother Made His Life Hell

You’d expect the mother of the first US president to do nothing but beam with pride, but George Washington’s mother mostly just complained. Mary Ball Washington was strict, criticizing far more than she praised. One of Washington’s childhood friends once said, “Of the mother, I was ten times more afraid than I ever was of my own parents.”

When George moved out, she constantly wrote him begging for money, even when he was fighting the British. She even wrote the state of Virginia demanding a pension, which humiliated her son. He wrote to them, urging them not to give his mother money: “All of us, I am certain, would feel much hurt, at having our mother a pensioner, while we had the means of supporting her.”

As she got older and sicker, George urged her move in with one of her children for an easier life—just not with him. Even when she died, he slipped a little sour note into his plans for her estate, sneaking in the line, “She has had a great deal of money from me at times.”

9 He Bought His First Elected Position With Alcohol

In Washington’s time, they served alcohol on election days. As odd as it seems today, polling booths would be full of liquor. It was practically mandatory. If you didn’t give your voters alcohol, as Washington learned, they didn’t vote for you.

When Washington ran for the House of Burgesses in Virginia in 1755, he tried to take the higher road. He refused to liquor up his constituents, so he lost horribly, 271 votes to 40.

When he ran again three years later, he’d learned from his mistakes. He served voters 545 liters (144 gal) of alcohol, offering everything from beer to straight rum. That was almost 2 liters (0.5 gal) of liquor for every person voting, and he still worried it wouldn’t be enough. It worked, however; Washington was voted in by a landslide.

8 His False Teeth Were Pulled From Slaves

You know you’ve made an impact on history when people make up stories about your teeth. Legend says that Washington’s were made of wood, but that’s not true. The real story behind Washington’s teeth is much, much more screwed up.

Thanks to a combination of terrible diet and genetics, Washington had a disgusting mouth. He struggled with tooth pain most of his life and eventually just lost them all. Being rich, though, Washington had the means to get false ones. His dentist fashioned him a set of false teeth carved from hippopotamus ivory and affixed with gold wire springs and brass screws, all set up to hold a set of real human teeth—that were ripped from the mouths of slaves.

Records show that in 1784, Washington paid his slaves 122 shillings to buy nine of their teeth. This was actually only one-third the going rate for human teeth. Washington then had his dentist shove the teeth he’d pulled from his slaves right into his mouth, which is probably why we just tell children his teeth were made of wood.

7 He Made A Fortune Off Whiskey And Slaves

Other than the current president-elect, George Washington was the richest president in US history, mostly through inheritance and marriage. His wife, Martha, inherited a massive property when her first husband died. This was a huge, 8,000-acre plantation dotted with five separate farms, run, at its peak, by over 300 slaves.

He made another fortune, though, when his presidency ended. In 1797, as he was leaving office, he opened a whiskey distillery. It didn’t take long before it was the biggest one in the country. By the time Washington died in 1799, he was shipping 42,000 liters (11,000 gal) of whiskey across the country each year.

6 He Grew Marijuana

Washington owned a lot of land and grew a lot of crops—including marijuana. We know for a fact that the first US president farmed hemp, and he wasn’t using it to make rope.

Washington’s diaries make it clear that he was farming marijuana to harvest THC from the female plants. The diaries repeatedly talk about his struggles to properly separate the male and female plants. On May 12, 1765, Washington wrote, “Sowed hemp at muddy hole by swamp.” Later, on August 7, he complained that he “began to separate the male from female plants—rather too late.” The next year, he wrote that he was “pulling up the male hemp.”

It’s highly likely that he smoked his harvest, too. For one, there was no law against doing so in his time. There are also unconfirmed reports that he had a habit of stuffing pipes full of marijuana. According to one story, Washington and Thomas Jefferson liked to swap their homegrown crops of marijuana as personal gifts.

5 He Was Paid More Than Any Other President

When George Washington was appointed general of the revolutionary army, he asked for no salary. All he asked was that they reimburse his expenses. It seemed incredibly noble . . . until he came back with the bill.

Washington racked up every expense he could. He hired actors and theaters to put on plays. He spent $6,000 on booze. While the army nearly starved, he ate so luxuriously that he actually gained 14 kilograms (30 lb). In the end, his bill came to $449,261.51. Congress, having already signed the deal, had to pay him every penny.

When they made him president, Washington tried to get the same deal—but Congress had learned their lesson. They made him accept a salary. Still, Washington managed to negotiate the highest salary any US president has ever received—one that made up two percent of the national budget.

4 He Thought Chinese People Were White

When the founding fathers set up all those laws and freedoms that only applied to “free white men,” Washington may have thought he was being a bit more generous than he really was. After all, he thought China was full of white people.

The US opened trade channels with China in 1785, and the country was flushed with all kinds of Chinese novelties. Tea, silk, and Chinese porcelain came in, often decorated with images of people.

Washington began collecting Chinese goods as a hobby. Reportedly, he saw, on the side of a pot, a picture of a Chinese person for the first time, and he was shocked. He had known that the Chinese were “droll in appearance,” but he’d never realized until that moment that Chinese people weren’t white.

3 He Illegally Transported Slaves

When Washington became president, he was forced to live in Pennsylvania, which was a problem. Pennsylvania was the first state to ban slavery, and Washington had a lot of slaves. Pennsylvania had introduced the Gradual Abolition Act, which stated that any citizen living in Pennsylvania could hold slaves for no longer than six months. After that, they had to be freed.

The slave owners found a bunch of loopholes to get out of it, so the law had to amended with new rules. By 1788, transporting slaves in and out of Pennsylvania to get around the law was explicitly illegal.

This is exactly what Washington did. The law was already in effect when he became president, but he rotated his slaves every six months anyway. By all accounts, the government seems to have been fully aware of what he was doing. Afraid to be the ones to arrest the first president, though, they just pretended they didn’t notice.

2 He Set The World Record For Library Fines

In 1789, Washington borrowed two books from the New York Society Library: Law of Nations and Volume 12 of Common Debates. An apparently excited librarian marked his name down as “The President” in the ledger, told him to return the books on November 2, and let him go.

Washington never came back, though, and his late fees kept building up. It wasn’t until 1934 that the library found the ledger and realized that Washington had stiffed them.

Finally, in 2010, Washington’s Mount Vernon estate ordered copies of the books online and sent them to the library. By then, Washington had technically accrued a record-setting late fee of more than $300,000.

1 His Friend Wanted To Reanimate His Corpse

Washington held a lifelong fear of being buried alive. He made his secretary promise not to let anyone bury him until he’d been allowed to decompose for three days. When he died in 1799, they put his body on ice, just in case he woke up.

His friend and physician, William Thornton, was pretty sure he could make it happen. He believed that the blood of lambs had almost magical properties, and he was confident he could use it to bring people back to life. He wanted to try it on George Washington.

He told Martha that he wanted to thaw Washington’s body by the fire and rub it with blankets. He would then inject Washington with lamb’s blood. Next, he would perform a tracheotomy, insert a bellows into Washington’s throat, and pump his lungs full of air. This, Thornton was sure, would bring the dead president back to life.

For some reason, Martha declined.

Have you ever heard a story about how a different actor was almost cast in an iconic role played by someone else? Like how Will Smith could have been Neo in The Matrix or how Eric Stoltz was first cast as Marty in Back to the Future? There are hundreds of examples, and it makes for some fun movie trivia. 

Less well-known than the actors we missed are the subplots. Sometimes a story gets cut down for time, or because the studio didn’t like a certain part, or because something just doesn’t work.  Here are some of the most incredible subplots we never got to see.

10. Tommy Wiseau’s The Room Had a Vampire Subplot Removed

Tommy Wiseau’s The Room is infamous for its badness. It’s so bad that another movie was made about making the movie just to explain the whole fiasco. People have watch parties just to watch Wiseau’s awkward vision unfold in all its glory and if you haven’t seen it, it’s hard to explain just how poorly the whole thing comes together.

Wiseau not only starred in the movie, he wrote and directed it. The result is a cult classic of “so bad it’s good” nonsense, but we almost had so much more. Co-star Greg Sestero said that Wiseau’s original plan was for his character to be a vampire. 

Nothing in the movie lends itself to the idea that anyone should or could be a vampire, but nothing in the film really lends itself to anything that makes sense, so maybe it’s not a big deal. That said, the vampire subplot would also have included a scene in which Wiseau’s character flew away in a car because, for him, vampires have flying cars. 

9. A Trans Character’s Storyline Was Cut from Paper Mario

In the incredibly vast universe of Mario games, Paper Mario is a sort of subset of games that are part puzzle, part RPG, and can be a lot of fun to play. The first Paper Mario dates back to the N64 in the year 2000 and they are still being made. The series could be considered groundbreaking for a transgender subplot in the Japanese version that was cut from the English language release.

In the gameplay, you befriend a former villain named Vivian. She’s part of a group of sisters but she’s the bullied one and, as an outcast, joins Mario at a time when he’s an outcast. 

In the Japanese version, you can use a skill that gives you a description of Vivian which says she “appears to be a girl but is really a boy.” At one point in the game when Vivian gets into a fight with her sisters, one calls her a man. She also goes on to say she is a woman now and proud of her transformation. So, for a 2004 game deemed acceptable for children in Japan, it was pretty progressive.

The English translation for Western audiences lost all of this and the character’s status is never really relevant at any point.

8. The Godfather Left Out a Bizarre Subplot About the Size of Sonny Corleone’s Genitals

Considered by many to be one of the greatest movies ever made, The Godfather was based on a book and that’s where most of the story comes from. As with any book-to-movie adaptation, some things had to be cut to make a coherent story that was not 12 hours long. One subplot that didn’t make the grade was the very bizarre subplot about the size of Sonny Corleon’s nether region.

It’s hard to talk about this in a way that doesn’t sound both offensive and entirely made up, but there’s a whole section of the book in which the character Lucy Mancini misses Sonny because of his “manly stature.” And this is compounded by the fact that author Mario Puzo decided to include details about Lucy’s dimensions. He was very obsessed with this idea. 

It’s not a one-off either. This is consistently mentioned throughout Sonny’s story. Puzo was really obsessed with it and obsessed with the women in his book who were obsessed with it. 

7. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Had a Cheating Subplot

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles is a classic comedy and one of the few Thanksgiving movies that people watch every single year. Steve Martin and John Candy are brilliant together and the film provides a lot of laughs. It also includes one quick but weird scene.

When Martin’s character returns home and his wife finally meets John Candy’s Del she seems very emotional, almost on the brink of tears. Arguably she was just relieved to see her husband, but there’s a longer cut of the movie that makes this scene more logical. 

In the original script, there was a subplot in which she’s worried that her husband is with another woman, that Del is not a man at all and that he’s having an affair. The only remnant of this in the movie most of us saw is that relief on her face when she sees him for the first time. 

6. James Gunn’s Scooby-Doo Had a Lesbian Subplot 

Scooby-Doo has been a staple of children’s entertainment since back in 1969. And since that time it’s also been mired in jokes about just what’s in those Scooby Snacks that Shaggy eats, not to mention potential relationships between characters. While many people speculated a Fred and Daphne romance, there was a long speculated subtext that Velma might be a lesbian.

Was she written that way intentionally? Who’s to say, unless you mean in the more modern iterations when yes, Velma was very explicitly and intentionally written that way. In fact, James Gunn’s movie from 2002 may have kicked off the intentional story when he wrote a lesbian subplot for the character that was later axed from the movie. 

According to Gunn, the subplot was watered down by the studio, then edited out, and then she was given a boyfriend in the sequel.

5. House of 1000 Corpses Was Supposed to Have a Skunk Ape Subplot 

Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses was the horror movie director’s first foray into film, and it’s still a memorable grindhouse-inspired horror classic that gets down and dirty. Among the many memorable scenes is a psychedelic dream sequence that briefly shows us something called a skunk ape.

The skunk ape is a cryptid sort of equivalent to Bigfoot, but more of a regional variety. The movie only gives us a brief glimpse of it and that’s it, but Zombie originally had bigger plans. He talks about it in the director’s commentary briefly, but the original script was said to have included a bit where the skunk ape shows up for real to wreak some havoc. Ultimately, it never made the grade. 

4. There Was an Epilogue to The Shining

The filming of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining is the stuff of legends. Numerous articles have been written on the nightmare Shelly Duvall experienced and there’s even a documentary about the whole thing. There are so many good, weird, or unbelievable stories. One that gets overlooked a lot is the actual story itself. Kubrick filmed an epilogue to the movie that was even released with the first cut of the film.

In the original cut, and still available to read in the screenplay, we find out that Danny and his mom are fine after the events at the Overlook, at least physically. They’re in a hospital recovering from the trauma they endured and, you know, that’s it. Nothing zany or spooky happens. Apparently, the intent was to let audiences know they were fine because Kubrick initially had a soft spot for the characters and thought audiences needed to know.

When Kubrick changed his mind about the scene he had to have it physically cut from the movie. That meant people went to the theaters in LA and New York that had prints and they used scissors to literally cut the scene out. Word is every copy was destroyed. 

3. The Movie Fantasia Cut an Evolution Sequence 

Disney’s Fantasia is beloved by many for its music and animation and the 1940 film contains a long evolution sequence that shows the origin of life up through the dinosaurs which is still very cool to watch. However, being the 1940s, the idea of evolution was still a touchy subject for a lot of people who chose faith over science and Disney could only get away with so much.

Originally, the evolution sequence was supposed to continue onward. It would go beyond the dinosaurs through the evolution of mammals and finally to the evolution of humans, the creation of fire, and all that good, Darwinian stuff. None of that made the final cut of the film, however. The early evolution parts stayed intact because this is just a musical and no one explicitly states anything about science. But the human parts were cut for fear of offending any fundamentalists who would protest the movie. 

It wasn’t just blind fear that made Walt Disney stop. According to animator John Hubley, Disney was threatened. Those fundamentalists, who would have wielded quite a bit of political and business clout at the time, made sure Disney knew they didn’t want humans connected to evolution. Disney was already concerned the movie would have a hard time gaining acceptance, so he bowed to their threats and cut the evolution. 

2. Zootopia Involved Predators Being Forced to Wear Shock Collars

Zootopia is a fun animated movie about a world full of anthropomorphic animals doing all the sorts of mundane jobs people do in the real world. The story follows a character named Judy who’s a cop and also a rabbit. Hijinks ensue. But the original plan for this movie was much darker.

Originally, Nick Wilde was going to be the main character and Judy would come in later. Nick, and all predators in Zootopia, was set to wear a shock collar that suppressed his predator instincts. Whenever a predator expressed a negative instinct, they’d get zapped. There’s a scene that was never fully animated in which Nick and Judy witness a taming party in which a little bear is forced to wear a taming collar to be accepted into Zootopia.

Producers eventually decided this was much too dark, and the characters were unlikable so they tweaked the story, but early concept art still exists. 

1. Kangaroo Jack Was Filmed as an R-rated movie

Kangaroo Jack isn’t the most famous film in history by any means, but the PG-rated 2003 buddy comedy does have a solid 8% rating on Rotten Tomatoes so even if you haven’t seen it, you can try to imagine what it might be like. 

The movie involves two friends trying to chase down a kangaroo that has accidentally made off with some mob money, something that likely happens all the time in Australia. The movie was once much different than the final cut leads us to believe, however. Star Jerry O’Connell once confirmed that the movie was originally R-rated and even included full-frontal nudity. It was supposed to be a crime-comedy like Midnight Run about low-level mob guys. And then the studio stepped in.

Apparently, test audiences were under the impression that, due to the wacky kangaroo in a jacket used in the promo material, it was going to be a family-friendly comedy for kids. Needless to say, people were unimpressed. Rather than change the film’s marketing, the studio recut the movie to be a family-friendly comedy. And, based on the critics’ response, it didn’t work.

Normally, when historical figures show up in movies, they’re exaggerated. Desperate to keep fiction more fantastic than life, filmmakers have to take all the complexity out and turn them into mad, cartoonish caricatures of real human beings.

Usually, anyway. Emperor Commodus, though, is the exception to the rule. When the creators of the movie Gladiator cast him as their villain, they actually had to tone the facts down a little. Because the things the real Emperor Commodus did were so completely insane that nobody would have believed them.

10 He Nearly Bankrupted Rome by Playing Gladiator

We’ve told you before about Commodus’s obsession with playing at being a gladiator. Regular readers may already know how he would strip naked, walk into the arenas, and bash physically handicapped people in the head in front of a roaring crowd of Roman citizens. But we haven’t told you just how big of a problem it was.

Commodus wasn’t like a normal gladiator. He was brutal, even by the standards of men who beat each other to death for the amusement of an audience. He would force gladiators to come to his home and practice with him. The invitation meant almost certain death; no one would dare beat him, and when he won, he would show no mercy. The lucky left his home with missing noses and limbs, and the unlucky never left alive.

When a fighting gladiator tried to spare his opponent’s life, Commodus would stop him. Hungry for blood, he would have the gladiators tied together and force them to fight until one was dead—or else they would never be freed.^[1]

Murder isn’t a normal pastime, but it even crippled the economy. Every time he showed up in the gladiatorial arena, Commodus charged the state a million sesterces for his appearance. His love of killing didn’t just cost lives—it helped spiral the Roman economy toward total collapse.

9 He Served Two People at a Banquet

Commodus’s depravity didn’t stop when he left the arena. He had a strange obsession with torturing the physically disabled—once even forcing men with dwarfism to fight each other with cleavers for an audience’s amusement—and he found ways to work torture into every part of life.

He even brought it into dinner. Once, he served two disabled men at a banquet. He invited a crowd of Rome’s elite to his home, had them gather his dining table, and then had his servants open up the silver platter to reveal two hunchbacked men smeared in mustard.^[2]

He didn’t actually eat them. The men were alive, put on the table as nothing more than a centerpiece meant to amuse his guests. They were forced to sit there on the cold silver platter throughout the whole dining party, naked and coated in mustard, pretending to be food to amuse the emperor and his friends.

8 He Renamed the Months of the Year After Himself

Commodus’s ego was unparalleled. He legitimately believed that he was a living god. He had the head of the Colossus chopped off and replaced with his own likeness and even pressured the Senate to officially declare him a living god.

But he wasn’t just any god; Commodus believed that he was specifically the Greek demigod Hercules. When his madness was its fullest, he started walking around with a cloak made out of a lion’s hide so that he could look more like Hercules, and he forced everyone to refer to him as “Hercules, son of Zeus.”

He even changed the language to force people to praise him. He renamed Rome “Commodiana” and called the Roman people “Commodiani.” And he changed the names of every month into variations on his own name.^[3] August became “Commodus,” September became “Hercules,” and the other ten months were all renamed to one of the many nicknames he’d bestowed upon himself.

7 He Fed His Friends to Animals

The emperors of the old world went mad with power in a way that modern man just can’t compete with. They could get away with things modern leaders can only dream of—and it gave them some crazy ideas.

But Commodus was unique. He was the only emperor born while his father ruled Rome, which meant that he started going mad with power from the first moments of his life.

It made him a little sociopath. According to the Roman rumor mill, the young preteen Commodus would have anyone who made fun of him “cast to the wild beasts.”^[4] Playmates who slighted him (or, one time, a slave who made his bath too cold) were all put to death.

He conducted experiments, too. As a boy, he wanted to be a surgeon, so he’d practice—on living people. Once, he cut open a fat man’s belly with scalpels just to see what it looked like inside. His teachers just had to stand by, watch, and even help him do it. If they didn’t, they’d be next.

6 He Repeatedly Threatened to Kill His Senators

Commodus didn’t like his senators very much. He wanted complete power over Rome, and having to listen to the grumblings of the people’s representatives drove him wild. He had plans to get rid of them altogether—and he wasn’t subtle about it.

He had a massive statue erected outside of the Senate house. It was in his own likeness, showing him as an archer, with an arrow pointed directly at the building. Every time they stepped in, they’d have to look at a massive bronze bust of his likeness staring at them, poised to kill.

Once, while he was fighting animals in a gladiatorial arena, he threatened his senators with an ostrich head.^[5] He decapitated the bird, held its severed head up, pointed a bloodied sword at his senators, and shot them a long look of pure hatred, letting them know that they were next. And meanwhile, behind him, a headless ostrich was running around bumping into things.

5 He Devalued Roman Currency

Commodus wasn’t just a dangerous, egotistical maniac, though—he was part of the reason the Roman Empire fell. He devalued the Roman currency, sparking off a chain reaction that would ultimately bring on Rome’s collapse.

In Roman times, devaluing currency was a much more literal process than it is today. Commodus actually lowered the amount of gold and silver in Roman coins, which made each coin lighter and literally less valuable. He wasn’t the first person to do this (Nero had started it), but Commodus devalued Roman coins by more than any emperor since then.

Even in his lifetime, it crippled the country. One Roman who lived through Commodus’s reign complained that he had brought Rome “from a kingdom of gold to one of iron and rust.”^[6]

4 He Shirked His Duties

Commodus didn’t really bother with the duties of being an emperor, either. For most of his rule, he just put somebody else in charge. When he became emperor, he gave all of his duties to a man named Perennis—and then put himself in charge of the living-like-a-king part.^[7]

When he wasn’t fighting gladiators, Emperor Commodus was in his personal brothel. He had a harem of 300 concubines, which he’d built up by having his soldiers round up the most beautiful women and drag them to the palace by force.

Commodus had some weird fixations. He brought in a young boy, who he ordered to sleep with him naked and even forced to legally rename himself “The Boy Who Loves Commodus.” And Commodus brought in his family, too. Rumor has it that he made his own sisters join his harem and even gave one of his concubines his mother’s name.

The arrangement fell apart when Perennis realized he didn’t actually need Commodus and tried to kill him—but little changed. Commodus survived, Perennis was executed, a new guy named Cleander was put in Perennis’s place, and Commodus went right back into his harem.

3 He Betrayed His Friends

Cleander did all of Commodus’s work, but he didn’t get much of a reward for it. The whole of Rome turned against him when the country went through a food shortage. The person in charge of grain, a man named Papirius Dionysius, blamed it on Cleander to save his own head, and pretty soon, there was an angry mob out to kill Cleander.

Cleander ran to Commodus for help, and for a while, Commodus let him hide in his castle. But when his favorite mistress in his harem, a woman named Marcia, told him to throw Cleander to the mob, Commodus listened to her. After his years of service, he had his friend killed.

That’s pretty bad—but he didn’t stop at just killing Cleander. Commodus put Cleander’s head on a spear and gave it to the angry mob. Then he had Cleander’s friends put to death, along with his wife and children. And, to appease the crowd, he had the kids’ mutilated bodies dragged through the streets of Rome, thrown into the sewers, and left to rot.^[8]

2 He Slaughtered an Entire Family for Being Wealthy

Cleander’s wasn’t the only family Commodus massacred. He also had the Qunctilii family almost completely wiped out, but it wasn’t because they’d betrayed him or because anybody demanded it. They were just wealthy and respected, and as far Commodus was concerned, that meant it was just a matter of time before the people started calling for them to rule Rome.^[9] So they had to die.

He sent his men out to kill the entire family and very nearly wiped their whole line from history. Only one managed to survive: a boy named Sextus Condianus. When they came for Condianus, he filled his mouth with the blood of hare. Then he deliberately fell off his horse and spat out the blood, pretending to be bleeding from the mouth so that they’d think he’d saved them the work and killed himself.

It worked. They left him for dead, letting him sneak out and run off into the wilds. Afterward, though, Condianus had to lay low and stay in disguise, trying to avoid the bloodhounds Commodus had sent after him.

1 He Tried to Kill the Woman He Loved Most

Commodus’s mistress Marcia, the woman who’d told him to kill Cleander, seems to have been his one true love. He treated her like a wife, took her advice, and respected her more than any other person on Earth—until she disagreed with him, at least. Then, because love only goes so far, he tried to kill her.

Commodus was planning on declaring himself the sole supreme dictator of Rome. He was going to wipe out the Senate and start ruling on his own from inside the gladiators’ barracks. He was also going to announce it at a gladiatorial arena, dressed like a gladiator and flanked by gladiators.^[10]

Marcia begged him not to do it, believing he was about to ruin an entire country, so he sent out an order to have the love of his life murdered. The only reason Marcia survived was that Commodus’s boy sex slave, The Boy Who Loves Commodus, warned her. Apparently, he didn’t really live up to his name.

Marcia, working with others who wanted him dead, poisoned Commodus, but he vomited the poison up. While cleaning off the vomit in the bath, a wrestler named Narcissus was sent in to strangle him to death. That’s how Commodus really met his end—choked by a naked man while he washed vomit off of himself.

Hurricanes are one of nature’s greatest forces. With great power comes great . . . all right, hurricanes have no responsibility. (Sorry, Spider-Man.)

But they do leave interesting things in their wake. Uprooting ancient artifacts and freeing the biggest alligator is just the start. The superstorms also solve cold cases, creep out the Internet with monsters, and leave behind incredible survivors.

10 Incredibly Strange Facts About Hurricanes

10 Island-Hopping Cows

Cedar Island is home to wild herds of horses and cattle. After Hurricane Dorian swept into North Carolina in 2019, locals decided to check on the animals’ well-being. They were devastated to find that 17 cows and 28 horses were missing. Their worst fears were confirmed when the bodies of some of the horses began to wash ashore. The rest of the missing animals were presumed to have also drowned.

Cape Lookout National Seashore is separated from Cedar Island by roughly 6–8 kilometers (4–5 mi). The distance is not cow-paddle friendly. Yet, three of the missing bovines were found happily grazing on Cape Lookout.

How they made it to the island alive is a mystery. Even if the storm surge pulled them along, the fact that they survived being tossed in a brutal sea the entire distance is a miracle.^[1]

9 Civil War Cannonballs

After Hurricane Dorian left South Carolina, a couple combed the beach for tidbits. The area, Folly Beach, had already delivered 16 cannonballs from the Civil War after Hurricane Matthew swept through the region in 2016. The couple found two more cannonballs from the same war. Initially, they mistook the weathered artifacts for rocks. But a closer look revealed a complete cannonball and a partial shell.

The authorities took the discovery seriously and cordoned off the area. The myth that all cannonballs are solid metal is a dangerous one. Some are live explosives because they contain gunpowder.

The two artifacts probably contained gunpowder because most of the Hurricane Michael batch did. Explosive experts took over both cases, and the cannonballs were likely destroyed for safety reasons.^[2]

8 Irma Closed A Police Case

In 2013, Rodelson Normil decided to go for a swim in the ocean. The 17-year-old was last seen near Gulfstream Park when a riptide pulled him into the open sea. His body was never found. Four years later, Hurricane Irma hit the area. Among the things pushed ashore by the storm was a human bone.

The femur was taken to a laboratory in Texas for identification. As Normil was known to have vanished in the area, scientists extracted genetic material from his toothbrush and from his parents.

The DNA from his family and his toothbrush matched the bone’s DNA, confirming that the teenager had not survived. The case was finally closed as an “accidental drowning.”^[3]

7 Floating Fire Ant Colonies

When Hurricane Florence waltzed through the Carolinas in 2018, she brought severe flooding to several neighborhoods. The water hid many dangers, including snakes and downed power lines. But another threat floated openly on the surface—colonies of ticked-off fire ants.^[4]

When a flood hits, this species floats to safety by clinging to a living raft. It consists of all the ants clustering together, including their eggs, larvae, and queen.

Although this strategy stops the colony from drowning, the ants are quite vulnerable out in the open. That makes them nobody’s friend. The ants attack anyone who touches them.

The unbelievably painful sting has earned them the name “fire ants.” Indeed, during the aftermath of Florence, the rafts looked like harmless debris. But they posed a very real danger to rescue workers and people moving through the water.

6 Fresh Evidence Of Historical Explosion

In 1816, the US Navy attacked a fort in Florida. The fort held 320 people, mostly Native Americans and former African-American slaves. The community refused to surrender, and a week-long battle ensued.

During a devastating moment, a shot fired by the navy hit the fort’s ammunition depot. The explosion killed 270 people. Later, the survivors succumbed to injuries inflicted by the blast and the soldiers who stormed the fort.^[5]

In the following years, the site was renamed Fort Gadsden. Vegetation sprang up everywhere. But in 2019, Hurricane Michael toppled roughly 100 trees. When archaeologists returned to assess the damage, they discovered fresh artifacts from that terrible day.

Stuck in the root balls of the trees was ammunition from the depot, including musket balls. Apparently, as time went by, the trees grew over the devastation, pushed the items deeper into the ground, and kept them out of sight until Michael ripped their roots from the earth.

5 Imelda Freed America’s Biggest Alligator

Imelda was technically a tropical storm. Had the tempest been slightly stronger, it would have been classified as a hurricane. But nobody at Gator Country cared for the somewhat reduced status of the storm. When Imelda hit their alligator sanctuary in Texas, the reality was terrifying.

Imelda arrived in 2019 and dropped 109 centimeters (43 in) of rain on the Beaumont facility. The floodwaters rose above the fences that kept the alligators in their pens.

When the waters receded, many gators were missing—including Big Tex. Measuring 4.3 meters (14 ft) and weighing 454 kilograms (1,000 pounds), he was the biggest alligator that had ever been captured in America.^[6]

Luckily for the neighborhood pets, the gator was found and returned to the sanctuary within a few days. The reptile was lucky, too. He had escaped during the peak of alligator hunting season.

4 Miracle The Dog

Hurricane Dorian (of the island-hopping cow fame) also razed the Bahamas. This time, the storm devastated pets along with their homes. Animal welfare organizations rescued any dogs that they could find. But as the weeks fell away, so did the hope that more pets would be found alive under the rubble.

One organization, the Big Dog Ranch Rescue in Palm Beach County, refused to give up. They used drones to search the worst-affected areas and difficult-to-reach places. That’s how they noticed a dog trapped under an air conditioner in Marsh Harbor. Incredibly, despite not having eaten anything for almost four weeks, he was still alive.

The emaciated pet became the 138th dog rescued by the group and was suitably named Miracle. He recuperated at Big Dog Ranch for a few weeks. Once Miracle had put some fat on his bones, the plucky pup was put up for adoption.^[7]

3 Hurricane Harvey’s Monster

Texas endured Hurricane Harvey in 2017. Shortly after the storm fizzled, science communicator Preeti Desai went for a walk on the beach and found a creature pulled from the ocean by Harvey.

The animal was already decomposing, which was why Desai could not identify it straightaway. But with the serpentine body and jaws lined with fangs, it looked like the proverbial sea monster.^[8]

The Internet went ape. The beast reached stardom among cryptid sleuths, but the experts agreed that Desai had found an eel. The species was a mystery. Desai had taken pictures of the creature, but she had left its body behind.

As DNA tests were out, the carcass was matched to known eel species based on the length of its body and scary set of teeth. The suspects for Harvey’s monster include the fangtooth snake-eel, the tusky eel, and the stippled spoon-nose eel.

2 Ophelia’s Strange Red Sky

The former Hurricane Ophelia pulled a number on Ireland in 2017. While the damage was noteworthy, the most memorable moment occurred after the storm had passed. In Britain, the sky was no longer blue. Instead, the atmosphere had an eerie red glow.

On the way over to Ireland, Ophelia scooped sand from the Sahara desert. This grainy cloud was so large that it disrupted the atmosphere’s physics. Specifically, the dust messed with the color blue.

Any wavelength that carried blue was reflected into the sky, while red waves were allowed to go through. This desert-in-the-sky filter led to the hazy redness that lasted for at least a day.^[9]

1 Homes In The Air

The horror known as Hurricane Sandy landed in 2012. Among the places flooded by the superstorm was the Jersey Shore. Countless properties were damaged or destroyed by the water. The community responded in an unusual way. Instead of moving to a safer place, many residents simply moved their homes higher into the air.

Several years after Sandy, the neighborhood has been changed forever. Some houses are down on the ground, while the rest are raised high in the sky. Their elevated garages cannot be used, and their front porches (steps and all) now look more like strange balconies.^[10]

10 Hurricane Survivors And Their Stories Of Survival

Going into surgery can be scary enough; depending on the procedure, there can be many steps and preventative measures that need to be taken to ensure that the patient will recover completely. Trusting in the staff, from the nurses to the doctors to the surgeons themselves, is a leap of faith.

TV shows like Grey’s Anatomy and ER have prepared the viewer to expect the worst: blood flying, body parts being cut off, organs not getting there in time. The reality is less dramatic—well, almost. With an estimated 28 million surgeries preformed yearly, mistakes can be made.^[1] However, the mistakes made in the following surgeries are those stemming from the creation of one’s worst nightmares. Ranging from towels to needles to even whole instruments, patients found out after they left the operating room that they were left with mementos from their procedures they hadn’t expected, or wanted.

Though surgeries may not be a dramatic as they are on TV, finding out that something is in your body that shouldn’t be isn’t what you want to hear after you’ve already been sewn back up.

10 The Gloves Are Off

Having surgery to stop her heavy menstruation was supposed to be the end of one French woman’s problems. The procedure, which she underwent in April 2017, was new, something that would be aid in stopping periods without being a full-blown hysterectomy.^[2] The promise was that once her surgery was completed, she wouldn’t be experiencing any more bleeding or pain.

However, the woman, who was told her operation went well and that there were no complications, did not feel anything near relief. After her surgery, she began feeling pain in her lower adbomen—the exact reason she had gone in to begin with. This pain led to a loss of sleep and her constantly feeling ill. Unable to handle it any longer, she called her doctor, who attributed it to her weight and gave her painkillers.

The painkillers did nothing to stop her pain, however, and after three days, she began to feel sharp stabs of pain due to contractions. Her contractions resulted in her pushing out a glove and five compresses that had been left inside her during her procedure, as well as a large pool of blood that led to her being sent to the hospital.

A similar case happened to a woman in England in 2013, when a routine hysterectomy left the woman in severe pain. The pain continued three days after Sharon Birks’s surgery, and she was provided antibiotics by her doctors, as they believed her procedure had likely resulted in an infection.

However, the pain didn’t stop. Though Mrs. Burks began to believe it was her catheter, a trip to the bathroom proved otherwise. While in the bathroom, the pain was accompanied by pressure, and a surgical glove came out of her. While no damage occurred, the experience itself was apparently horrifying enough.

Talk about unexpected births.

9 Needle In A Haystack

The old adage “finding a needle in a haystack” relates to trying to find something that cannot easily be found. In this case, the adage applies to a Tennessee man who died after surgeons left a needle inside him in May 2017.^[3]

John Burns Johnson had just come out of a nine-hour heart surgery when his surgeon realized that he was missing a needle. Confirming through X-ray that the needle was, in fact, still inside Mr. Johnson, a second operation was conducted. It’s uncertain if the needle couldn’t be found or removed, but nevertheless it remained inside Mr. Johnson.

Mr. Johnson unfortunately passed away a month later due to the complications caused by the needle’s presence in his body. The needle was found and removed during his autopsy.

As shocking as this is, it isn’t the only time this has happened. A woman found out there was an epidural needle left in her back, 14 years after her caesarean surgery back in 2003. The Florida woman had experienced back pain for years but did not realize it was a serious issue until an X-ray showed the epidural needle had broken into three places along her spine. The needle being left behind resulted in nerve damage along her spine and severe scarring.

In case you’re rethinking surgeries, never fret; only ten percent of the items found inside patients end up being needles.

8 Throw In The Towel

A California man went into his doctor’s expecting the worst-case scenario when it came to his diagnosis. Months after an April 2014 abdominal surgery for bladder cancer, he started to experience pain in his bowels, along with a sense of fatigue and an inability to even drive himself to his appointments. Though he had expected a diagnosis that the previously treated cancer had spread, it turned out that the mass which had been causing all his pain was not cancer but, shockingly enough, a towel.

Despite all the surgical instruments being accounted for, the surgical team forgot to keep track of the towels used during surgery. This lead to a misplaced towel ending up in this man’s abdomen, where it caused him a myriad of health problems, not to mention the fear that his cancer was spreading.

Towels being left in patients is not unheard-of; they account for 2.1 percent of items left inside patients during surgery and are undetectable by X-rays. In 1995, an Ohio woman went in for lung surgery and left feeling off. The feeling that something was sitting in her chest stayed until she passed away seven years later. It wasn’t until the autopsy that they found the cause of her pain: a green towel which had been balled up and left in her lung.^[4]

Unfortunately, it was too late to correct the problem, but it did explain the woman’s odd feeling of something moving in her chest despite it nothing being found on X-rays. In the case of the California man, he made a full recovery, and the doctor who performed the surgery was fired. The man sued the hospital to help soak up the damages.

7 No Sponge About It

Bleeding is an unfortunate side effect of surgery, and using sponges is common practice to ensure that the blood doesn’t spread. Leaving the sponge inside the patient, however, is not.

A woman in Japan experienced strange abdominal bloating for three years off and on, with no explanation. After she went to the doctor in hopes of finding the culprit, test results revealed that she not one but two sponges inside her abdomen. The sponges were believed have been left in there during her caesarean six years prior and had attached themselves to the folds connecting her stomach and abdomen as well as her colon.

While surgery provided her much-needed relief, sponges being left inside patients is quite common. Roughly 70 percent of the items found in patients are sponges, and they can do lethal damage. Almost two-thirds of cases where items such as sponges were left inside patients have led to serious infection, injury, and even death.

In 2007, another woman who had a sponge left inside her after a dual bladder and hysterectomy surgery left her feeling ill. Doctors claimed it was a gastrointestinal issue and sent her home, but when the pain began to be accompanied by bleeding, her gynecologist believed it was an ovarian cyst. After her ovaries were removed, the pain continued, and subsequent tests showed that a mass had gathered in her intestines. This mass had been blocked previously by her ovaries, but its identity was obvious now: A sponge had been left behind and had embedded itself into her body. After yet another surgery, and having a large portion of her intestines removed, the sponge was taken out.^[5]

6 Wire Not?

Wires are a common instrument used in surgeries, and depending on the procedure, some have to be kept in the body. However, in the case of a patient in England, a wire was left behind after a routine surgery in August 2018. The wire wasn’t noted as missing until 12 hours later. Luckily, that was still soon enough that the patient suffered no side effects, and a follow-up surgery was scheduled to remove it.

A similar heart-wrenching case happened to Donald Gable in Philadelphia. After his heart surgery, Gable returned home feeling fine. It wasn’t until a follow-up with his doctors that he found out that a 0.6-meter (2 ft) wire had been sitting in his chest for six weeks. Thankfully, the wire was able to be removed, though Mr. Gable was lucky it didn’t pierce a vein, given its precarious positioning.

Wires are often used to aid doctors in guiding instruments to where they need to be. At the Albany Medical Center, two wires were left behind in patients during surgeries. One wire had been used for guiding during a catheter procedure. It wasn’t until the patient had an X-ray done that doctors were able to locate and remove it.

The other incident occurred during a caesarean, during which the wire from a probe was accidentally cut. While the staff were aware the piece of the wire was missing, they didn’t believe it was inside the woman and closed her stitches. Yet again, it wasn’t until she went in for X-rays later that the wire was discovered.^[6]

Though no major damage occurred from these accidents, surgical staff were mostly certainty cutting it too close to the wire.

5 Rock, Paper . . . Scissors?

During childhood, it’s almost too common for parents to have to remind their children to be careful with scissors. For a woman in Australia, the same warning should have been given to her surgeon.

After going in for surgery in 2001 to remove part of her colon, 69-year-old Pat Skinner experienced pain but had been instructed that because of the nature of her surgery, this was to be expected. The pain didn’t stop, and although doctors claimed it was because of the surgery, Mrs. Skinner didn’t think so. This pain wasn’t similar to the uncomfortable feeling doctors warned her about; it was much, much worse. Turns out, Mrs. Skinner was correct.

An X-ray performed by her general practitioner showed that 18-centimeter (7 in) scissors had been left inside her during her surgery. The scissors had become wedged against her tailbone, causing much of her excruciating pain. Unfortunately, by the time the scissors were noticed, tissue had begun to grow over them, and a more extensive surgery had to be done to remove them, resulting in doctors having to remove part of her bowels as well.

Shockingly, this isn’t the only time this has happened. In 2016, a man who had received surgery after an accident 18 years prior began experiencing abdominal pain that didn’t seem to abate despite receiving meds. An X-ray revealed that scissors from the prior operation (pictured above) were still inside the man, identified as “M.V.N.” The scissors, which had rusted due to being left inside his body for so long, had to be removed in a three-hour-long surgery due to the rusted handles being embedded in some of his organs.^[7] Despite the scissors being in M.V.N. for 18 years, he made a full recovery and was sent home within days.

It seems the doctors weren’t playing with scissors; they were playing with their patient’s lives.

4 To Scalpel Or Not To Scalpel?

A surgeon can only be as good as their hands and their tools, which is why it’s surprising when a surgeon loses said tools . . . inside their patient.

This shock came to an Army veteran who underwent surgery in 2013 to remove his prostate after a cancer diagnosis. The surgery went on longer than expected, but Mr. Glenford Turner was not told of any complications or given any indication that there was anything amiss. The pain, however, did not fade, despite the doctor’s reassurances that it would. After four years, Mr. Turner went back in to see his doctor due to unrelenting abdominal pain.

What they found was not a tumor but a foreign object. The scalpel (pictured above) was confirmed to be from his prior surgery and had been left inside him, moving between his bladder and rectal area, causing much of his pain.

Thankfully, the scalpel was able to be removed. This is unlike the case of Victor Hutchison, who was admitted to the hospital after experiencing what he thought were gallbladder issues. Once he was brought in for an X-ray, it was obvious that his gallbladder was not the problem. Months earlier, Mr. Hutchinson had undergone heart bypass surgery in which the scalpel used in the procedure had gone missing. While staff were aware of the missing scalpel, they couldn’t find it and had checked Mr. Hutchinson’s chest using an X-ray, only to come up empty-handed.

Unknown to the surgical staff, the scalpel had left the chest cavity and had lodged itself in Mr. Hutchinson’s abdominal cavity around his spine. Once the scalpel had been found during his subsequent X-ray, the doctors ruled that it was in too precarious of a position to be removed.^[8] Of all the mementos to keep, it’s doubtful Mr. Hutchinson wanted to keep this one from his surgery.

3 You’ve Got This, Clamp

Clamps are very useful during surgery, due to their ability to keep things in place when everything else seems to be moving. They’re so helpful, in fact, that they’re sometimes forgotten about. That is, until the patient is rudely reminded.

Sometimes, even the most routine procedures can lead to harrowing results. After going in for a routine surgery to remove their gastric band in 2011 caused one unnamed patient to end having much more removed. While it seemed that the surgery went well, surgical staff had not realized that a 20-centimeter (8 in) clamp had been left inside the patient. The clamp was detected three days later, and another operation was scheduled to remove it. During this surgery, the patient began to unexpectedly bleed profusely and ultimately had to have their spleen removed.^[9]

2 Retract This!

Retained foreign bodies do occasionally happen, and while objects such as sponges, gauze, and needles are more likely, whole objects such as scissors, wires, and even entire retractors are not unheard-of.

A man in Seattle can testify to this after he continued to have pain following his surgery in 2000. His doctor reassured him that the pain was normal and could last a month after the procedure. However, after setting off metal detectors in an airport, Mr. Donald Church went to his physician to get a second opinion. A CAT scan showed that an entire 33-centimeter-long (13 in) retractor had been left inside him during his surgery to remove a cancerous tumor a month prior. The retractor had been putting pressure on his abdomen and chest, making him feel as if he was slowing dying.

This incident occurred at the University of Washington Medical Center, which admitted in the subsequent lawsuit against them that this is not the first time such a thing had happened. In fact, almost a year prior, a woman had a retractor left inside her during her surgery to remove her cancer. The retractor had remained inside her for almost a month before doctors realized what was causing the pain.

While these incidents were quickly handled, one unnamed patient wasn’t so lucky. His pain lasted off and on for 27 years after his surgery in 1979 to remove polyps in his abdomen. After the operation, the patient felt pain in his side, though doctors attributed it to an abdominal hematoma. However, two decades and some change later, during an X-ray, doctors noticed a large metal mass on the side of his pelvis. The culprit was a 28-centimeter (11 in) surgical retractor which had been overlooked after his first surgical X-rays, 27 years prior.^[10]

Despite the name, it seems that doctors easily forget to retract the objects they use in surgery.

1 Everything But The Kitchen Sink

While many of these cases seem troubling, nothing is as disturbing as a man going in for cancer surgery and leaving with 16 additional problems. Those problems? Surgical items which had been left inside him during the procedure.

Dirk Schroeder’s 2009 surgery was supposed to be an easy procedure, one with minor side effects. What Mr. Schroeder experienced post-surgery was the complete opposite. After his operation, Mr. Schroeder experienced pain, fatigue, discomfort, and illness. Still, his doctors believed it was all expected as part of his recovery. That was until his home health care nurse noticed a gauze pad in a place it shouldn’t be: coming out of Mr. Schroder’s stitches.^[11] Scans found that there were 16 items left in his body during his surgery, including: swabs, a 15-centimeter (6 in) roll of bandage, a compress, needles, and other surgical tools, including part of a surgical mask, which had been impairing his body’s ability to heal correctly.

A total of 1,500 patients a year experience items being left inside them during surgery. They range from gauze to large tools, but rarely are multiple different items left in a patient. For Mr. Schroeder, it cost him two more surgeries to get the 16 objects, either whole or in fragments, out of his body.

How the staff didn’t notice a large number of their tools missing after the surgery is the question both Mr. Schroeder’s family and everyone would like answered.

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it left behind many remnants of its existence. The ex-Soviet states are dotted with abandoned villages, mines, factories, and sometimes even whole cities.

Here are 10 of the most interesting ghost cities the Soviet Union left behind.

10 Kadykchan

Kadykchan, once a thriving coal mining town, is now a collection of burned-out houses. The city was founded by gulag inmates in the 1940s. The town was soon discovered to have coal, which made it a desirable site for a settlement. The town grew, and by the late 1970s, it had a population of over 10,000.

Unfortunately, the decline of the Soviet Union had a devastating effect on the coal industry, and the town’s population dwindled. At its peak, the town housed nearly 11,000 people. But after the 1990s, coal prices began to decline, forcing it to close its mines. In 1996, a mine explosion killed six people, decreasing the population to under 300. By the early 2000s, the town was only home to a handful of residents. Visiting Kadykchan in winter can feel like a visit to a lost world. The ruins of decayed Soviet apartments and abandoned children’s playgrounds still stand on the town square.

When a huge coal deposit was discovered in Far East Siberia, the Soviet government used gulag workers to build the town and a highway, which became known as the Road of Bones. Kadykchan is completely isolated from both eastern and western Russia, and it takes at least three days to reach the nearest city center. In addition, the Kolyma highway is impassable for most of the year.^[1]

9 Skrunda-1

The abandoned Skrunda-1 military complex was once a thriving community. Unfortunately, it has fallen into ruins over the years. Several attempts have been made to repurpose the site for tourism, such as developing an industrial park. However, the site is currently under military control, so it is not possible for civilians to visit.

Skrunda-1 was first built in 1963. As a secret military installation, it was a site with a vast array of buildings and underground bunker networks. At its height, the area was home to over 5,000 Soviet soldiers and a thousand civilians. It contained two massive radars that scanned the sky to detect enemy intrusions. The complex included many buildings, including schools, factories, and barracks.

Skrunda-1 has now slipped into complete isolation. After Latvia received its 7.5 billion euro bailout from the European Union in 2008, the government was forced to auction the property. The government paid €12,000 for the town, which was significantly less than the price at previous auctions. The local government unanimously approved the purchase.^[2]

8 Neftegorsk

The quake that ripped through Neftegorsk on May 28, 1995, was the worst earthquake in modern Russian history. The quake’s magnitude was 7.6 on the Richter scale, and according to official statistics, at least 2,040 people died—more than half of the town’s residents. The city was decimated, with nearly everything destroyed; only the chapel, a cemetery, and a memorial remained.

The city was once thriving. But as the tar sands were sucked out of the earth by the prospectors, it deteriorated. Thousands of people were displaced.^[3]

7 Mologa

The relocation of the city of Mologa was a four-year project. Earlier, two nearby regions protested, imposing delays. As a result, the central government’s funding for the project dried up before the town could be relocated.

The historic town of Mologa was flooded by Stalin in 1935 to make way for a hydroelectric power station. The city’s history goes back to the 12th century, and it was an important trading post between the Baltic Sea and Asia. But the Soviet Union had other plans. They wanted to build the Rybinsk Reservoir, a hydroelectric power station. As a result, more than 130,000 residents were forced to relocate from the city, and there are reports that over 300 of them drowned.

Today, the town’s residents still gather in the nearby town of Rybinsk in mid-August to celebrate the Day of Mologa. The town’s ruins occasionally appear when the lake’s levels are low. Aerial photographs show streets emerging from the lakebed.^[4]

6 Wunsdorf

The Wunsdorf complex is located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) outside Berlin. Originally, the area was a Prussian shooting range. Later, it became the headquarters of the German armed forces. During World War II, the Nazis also used the complex as a military command center. The 60,000-acre 242-square-kilometer) complex became one of the largest military bases in Europe. When the Soviets took control of the town in 1945, Wunsdorf was closed. It then housed up to fifty thousand Soviets. Wunsdorf was the largest Soviet military camp outside of the Soviet Union. There were schools, shops, hospitals, and leisure facilities. Wunsdorf became known as “Little Moscow,” as there were daily trains to and from the Soviet capital.

By the time of the Berlin Wall collapse, the town’s population had fallen from 60,000 to just six thousand. The Soviet troops stationed in the town were called home after the fall of the Wall. The resulting chaos was exacerbated by the uncertainty of the soldiers, who had no idea where they were heading or whether they would be able to find housing. Some of them even bought buses to use as shelter.

While Wunsdorf-Waldstadt is now a thriving town, it’s still a strange post-apocalyptic landscape. Some buildings have been swallowed up by the forest, while others have been refurbished and used as homes. There is a real struggle to keep the structures that remain in the town usable. Now, a local government company is looking for investors who want to restore the buildings to reuse them for educational purposes.^[5]

5 Veszprem

The city of Veszprem was captured by Soviet troops during the Vienna Offensive during World War II. During the Cold War, Veszprem served as a major base for Soviet helicopters. The buildings at the airfield were built in the 1930s and were expanded by the Soviets during the 1980s. They have not been restored to their former glory, but you can still see the massive buildings that once filled the base.

Veszprem was home to several Soviet units, including a tank division and an armored training regiment. There was also a paratroop battalion, a chemical defense battalion, and an SGF NCO training school. In all, there were 10,400 Soviet troops stationed in Hungary at the time.^[6]

4 Irbene, Latvia

A Russian astronomer and his wife traveled 186 miles (300 kilometers) from Riga to Irbene, Latvia, to visit the largest radio telescope in Northern Europe. On their way, they discovered that the city was now a ghost town. Cafes and power plants stood abandoned. However, the buildings of the abandoned Soviet town were still in good shape when the Russian military left. There were still a few Soviet buildings, and the utilities and sewers were still functioning.

The Soviets abandoned the town in 1993. However, the radio telescope remains there, and you can even climb up near the huge dish, which is the largest in Northern Europe. But you can only visit the facility if you have a special permit.

The secret military base was more than 494 acres (200 hectares) and was used by the military unit 51429. The antennas were used to listen to phone calls in a wide area and even to communicate with enemies of the Soviet Union. The smallest antenna measured a diameter of 32.5 feet (10 meters) and was used to listen to incoming calls.^[7]

3 Klomino

Klomino, Poland, is a former Soviet-era ghost town. Though the town is currently abandoned, it was once a Soviet prison camp. Today, the town has a population of only five and no rail or bus connections. There are also no shops and no place to eat. The town has mostly been looted.

The Soviet Union occupied the village in 1945 and renamed it Grodek. Though the village did not appear on Polish maps, it was home to over 6,000 Soviet soldiers. In 1993, after the Soviet Union collapsed, the Polish military took over and began the process of selling the village. However, the Polish military was forced to leave the town after just one year because nobody wanted to purchase it, and the local authorities lacked funds for its upkeep.

Today, the only numerous residents of Klomino are the local ghosts. It is possible to walk through the empty buildings of the former Soviet Army. There are no tourist shops and no buses in the town. While it may be hard to imagine living in such a place, the few human residents are very happy despite the isolation.^[8]

2 Vozrozhdeniya Island

In 1948, Vozrozhdeniya Island, once an unassuming island in the Soviet Union, was turned into a top-secret biological weapons research facility. The island’s former village of Kantubek was turned into the military town of Aralsk-7, and laboratories were built on the island’s southern side. In this facility, scientists tested out the most lethal pathogens ever created.

In the southern part of Vozrozhdeniya Island, the Soviets built an open-air test site to study the dissemination of bio-weapon agents and methods to detect them. The testing grounds were equipped with detectors spaced at 0.6-mile (one-kilometer) intervals. The tests included anthrax, brucellosis, the plague, and typhus.

The Vozrozhdeniya Island test site remained operational even after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Eventually, the evacuation of the remaining Russian military personnel took place. In the years since, the site has fallen into disrepair and has been taken apart by scavengers. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. and Uzbek governments joined forces to thoroughly clean up the island and ensure no residual pathogens remained. As the Aral sea continues to dry up, Vozrozhdeniya Island has now become a peninsula shared by Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.^[9]

1 Tskaltubo

Tskaltubo was once a fashionable Soviet destination that drew party elites, military personnel, and even Joseph Stalin himself. The decaying hotels, bath houses, and sanitoriums that dot the landscape now appeal to new, more adventurous visitors. The resort’s past is reflected in its ruins, with many buildings depicting Georgian motifs and patriotic symbols.

Tskaltubo has a radon spring that is believed to have healing powers. Stalin ordered the health resort to become the largest balneological center in the Soviet Union. In fact, the Soviet Union built 19 sanatoriums in the city between the 1930s and 1950s. These sanatoriums would become a symbol of the Stalinist style of architecture.^[10]