Turning songs into movies offers a unique way to explore the narrative depth embedded in music. While many songs serve as memorable movie themes, few are adapted directly into films that bring the characters and stories within the lyrics to life. These films often delve into the vivid tales depicted in the songs, adding layers of visual storytelling to the lyrical content.

This list of ten movies is based on popular songs, showcasing how filmmakers have expanded upon these musical narratives, creating entertaining experiences and sometimes reflecting relevant social issues. While none of these are classic Hollywood masterpieces, many still enjoy a cult following.

Related: 10 True-Story Movies That Will Restore Faith in Humanity

10 Ode to Billie Joe

The film Ode to Billy Joe (1976) was directed by Max Baer Jr. and starred Robby Benson. It expands on the mysterious and tragic story told in Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 hit song of the same name. Set in rural Mississippi in the 1950s, the movie follows the lives of Billy Joe McAllister and his girlfriend, Bobbie Lee Hartley. The plot centers on the events leading up to Billy Joe’s suicide, exploring themes of love, guilt, and societal pressure. The film attempts to answer the song’s central mystery: why Billy Joe jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

The song’s success and enigmatic story prompted Gentry herself to write a screenplay. The movie adaptation stayed true to the Southern Gothic tone of the song, adding depth to the characters and their backgrounds. Ode to Billy Joe grossed over $27 million, a significant achievement for a film of its genre at the time. It also sparked renewed interest in Gentry’s music, cementing the song’s place in American pop culture.^[1]

9 Take This Job and Shove It

The 1981 film Take This Job and Shove It is a comedy inspired by Johnny Paycheck’s 1977 country hit of the same name. Starrring Robert Hays, Art Carney, and Barbara Hershey, the story follows Frank Macklin, a young executive sent to a small town to improve the efficiency of a brewery. However, Frank faces resistance from the local workers, who are skeptical of his motives. As he reconnects with old friends and rediscovers his roots, Frank must decide whether to prioritize corporate success or the well-being of the community.

The film’s title and premise resonated with American workers facing economic uncertainties in the early 1980s. While it didn’t achieve critical acclaim, it became a cult favorite among fans of workplace comedies. The movie featured cameos from country music stars, including Johnny Paycheck himself, adding an authentic touch to its portrayal of blue-collar life.^[2]

8 The Indian Runner

The Indian Runner (1991), directed by Sean Penn, is based on Bruce Springsteen’s song “Highway Patrolman” from his 1982 album Nebraska. The film tells the story of the Roberts brothers, Joe (David Morse) and Frank (Viggo Mortensen), whose lives take divergent paths. Joe is a highway patrolman dedicated to upholding the law, while Frank is a troubled Vietnam War veteran who struggles to find his place in society. The movie explores themes of family loyalty, guilt, and redemption as Joe grapples with his duty to arrest his own brother.

Sean Penn’s directorial debut received praise for its emotional depth and strong performances. The film remains a poignant exploration of the complexities of brotherhood and moral duty. Penn’s adaptation stays true to the melancholic tone of Springsteen’s song, enhancing its narrative with a rich cinematic portrayal.^[3]

7 Coward of the County

Adapted from Kenny Rogers’ 1979 hit song, Coward of the County (1981) tells the story of Tommy Spencer, a young man known for avoiding conflict. The made-for-TV movie explores his life in a rural Southern town, where he is taunted for his pacifist ways. However, when his beloved Becky is assaulted by a gang called the Gatlin Boys, Tommy is forced to confront his fears and seek justice. The movie delves into themes of courage, vengeance, and moral choices.

Kenny Rogers not only starred in the film but also served as its executive producer. The movie was a ratings success, capitalizing on Rogers’ popularity at the time. Its strong moral message and compelling storyline resonated with audiences, making it a memorable entry in the genre of music-inspired films. ^[4]

6 Alice’s Restaurant

Alice’s Restaurant (1969), directed by Arthur Penn, is based on Arlo Guthrie’s satirical song “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree.” The film follows a dramatized version of Guthrie’s own experiences, starting with his visit to Alice and Ray Brock’s home in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. When Guthrie is arrested for littering, the story spirals into a broader critique of the Vietnam War draft and societal norms. The film’s blend of humor and social commentary captures the spirit of the 1960s counterculture.

The movie was released just a few years after the song’s debut and became a cult classic, embodying the anti-establishment sentiments of the era. Arlo Guthrie’s performance as himself added authenticity to the film. The movie’s success helped cement the song’s place in American folklore and highlighted the power of music as a tool for social change.^[5]

5 Copacabana

The 1985 TV movie Copacabana brings Barry Manilow’s 1978 disco hit to life. The film follows the story of Lola Lamar, a young singer who dreams of making it big at the famous Copacabana nightclub in New York City. As she navigates the challenges of the entertainment industry, Lola finds herself entangled in a love triangle with Tony, a bartender, and Rico, a gangster. The movie captures the glitz and glamour of the nightclub scene set against the backdrop of 1940s New York.

Barry Manilow starred in and composed original songs for the film, expanding on the story told in his hit single. The TV movie was well-received for its nostalgic charm and musical performances. It showcased Manilow’s versatility as a performer and solidified “Copacabana” as one of his signature songs.^[6]

4 Convoy

Convoy (1978), directed by Sam Peckinpah, is inspired by C.W. McCall’s 1975 song of the same name. The film follows trucker Martin “Rubber Duck” Penwald (Kris Kristofferson) as he leads a convoy of fellow truckers across the Southwest in defiance of corrupt law enforcement. The cast also included several 1970’s popular actors, such as Ali McGraw, Ernest Borgnine, and Burt Young. The movie captures the camaraderie and rebellious spirit of the trucking community, set against the backdrop of the 1970s fuel crisis and regulatory challenges.

Despite its mixed critical reception, Convoy became a box office success and a cult classic among fans of action films and trucker culture. Kristofferson’s portrayal of Rubber Duck added depth to the character, while the film’s thrilling chase scenes and memorable dialogue contributed to its enduring popularity. The movie’s success also helped boost the popularity of the CB radio fad of the late 1970s.^[7]

3 The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia

The 1981 film adaptation of The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia is loosely based on the 1972 song by Vicki Lawrence. The story follows siblings Amanda (Kristy McNichol) and Seth (Dennis Quaid), who find themselves embroiled in a web of small-town intrigue and corruption. Amanda and Seth travel to Nashville, Tennessee, to find fame as singers. When Seth is wrongly accused of murder, Amanda sets out to uncover the truth with Conrad (Mark Hamill) and clear his name. The movie blends elements of drama, romance, and suspense, capturing the essence of the song’s Southern Gothic narrative.

Although the film takes some liberties with the song’s storyline, it successfully captures its mood and themes. McNichol’s performance as Amanda received praise, and the film’s atmospheric setting added to its appeal. The movie contributed to the song’s lasting legacy, keeping it relevant in popular culture.^[8]

2 Harper Valley P.T.A.

Harper Valley P.T.A. (1978) is a comedy-drama film based on Jeannie C. Riley’s 1968 hit song of the same name. The story follows Stella Johnson, a single mother who challenges the moral hypocrisy of the Harper Valley P.T.A. after they criticize her lifestyle. Armed with wit and determination, Stella exposes the skeletons in the closets of the self-righteous committee members, turning the tables on them. The film explores themes of social judgment, small-town politics, and personal empowerment.

Barbara Eden, best known for her role in I Dream of Jeannie, brought charm and sass to the character of Stella Johnson, making the film a lighthearted and entertaining watch. The movie’s success led to a short-lived TV series adaptation in 1981, also starring Eden. Harper Valley P.T.A. remains a beloved classic for its humorous take on small-town hypocrisy and its celebration of individualism.^[9]

1 The Legend of Tom Dooley

The Legend of Tom Dooley is a 1959 Western film inspired by The Kingston Trio’s 1958 hit song, which itself is based on the real-life story of Tom Dula, a Confederate soldier accused of murdering his lover. The film follows Tom Dooley as he returns from the Civil War, only to find himself wrongfully accused of murder. As he flees from the law with his fiancée, Laura Foster, the story delves into themes of love, justice, and betrayal in post-war America.

Michael Landon, who later gained fame for his roles in Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie, stars as Tom Dooley, delivering a compelling performance that adds depth to the character. The film captures the tragic romance and the turbulent historical backdrop of the song’s narrative. Although not a major box office hit, it remains an interesting piece of Americana, reflecting the enduring appeal of folk music and historical storytelling.^[10]

+ BONUS: Born in East L.A.

Born in East L.A.(1987) is a comedy film written and directed by Cheech Marin, inspired by the 1984 song of the same name by Cheech and Chong. Their song was in itself a parody of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” The movie follows Rudy Robles (Marin), a Mexican-American who is mistakenly deported to Mexico despite being born and raised in East Los Angeles. Stranded without identification, Rudy embarks on a series of comedic misadventures as he tries to return home. The film addresses themes of identity, immigration, and cultural assimilation with humor and heart.

The film marked Cheech Marin’s directorial debut and showcased his ability to blend comedy with social commentary. It received positive reviews for its humorous yet poignant take on immigration issues and the Mexican-American experience. Born in East L.A. became a cult classic, resonating with audiences for its relatable story and Marin’s charismatic performance. The film’s success also highlighted the growing visibility of Latino culture in mainstream American media.^[11]

Being born is among the hardest things any creature will ever do. Going from a single cell to a fully formed organism ready to face the world is a path we all take. However, no two species face the exact same struggle to be born, and there are quite a variety of odd life cycles in nature.

It is no surprise, then, that some of the pregnancies contrived by evolution can seem extraordinarily weird, if not fodder for horror movies. Here are ten of the strangest ways animals enter the world.

10 Incest Cannibal Babies

Adactylidium mites have such a rapid life cycle that they emerge from their mother already pregnant. These mites survive by eating the egg of a thrips—a winged insect that is less than 1 milimeter long. A single egg supplies all the energy and nutrients the mite will require for her entire life. It also provides the energy needed for the mite to raise her brood.

The mite’s life cycle begins inside its mother. The eggs hatch within, producing a brood of six to nine females and a single male.^[1] The larvae proceed to devour their mother’s tissue. The larvae then develop into adults while still inside the exoskeleton of the mother. While there, the male mates with his sisters, impregnating them. Now carrying fertilized eggs, the mites burst out of their mother and look for a thrips egg of their own to eat. The male mite, his job done, makes no effort to feed himself and simply dies. The female mites wait for their own children to eat them.

9 Mammals From Eggs

Children learn in school is that one of the defining characteristics of mammals is that they give birth to live young. No one, it seems, told the monotremes. This group of mammals is identified by the fact that they all lay eggs. Today, only five species of monotremes exist—the duck-billed platypus and four species of echidna.

Monotreme eggs tend to be small and have a leathery, rather than hard, shell. The monotreme incubates the eggs for several days until the young hatch. Then, in the case of echidnas, the baby, or puggle, crawls into its mother’s pouch.^[2] Compared to other mammals, the newly hatched baby is tiny and practically helpless. For several months inside the pouch, the puggle laps up milk that is produced from mammary glands in the skin. Eventually, the puggle is developed enough for the mother to place it in a burrow, where she will return to feed it every several days until it’s mature enough to survive on its own.

8 Mouthbrooders

Fish are not always known for their parenting prowess. Often, eggs are released, fertilized, and the young left to fend for themselves. It is true that some species will defend their eggs and young, but for some fish, it is just too risky to leave them alone at all. These fish, known as mouthbrooders, carry their eggs in their mouths until they hatch and will often keep their young there well afterward.

In some species, like the pearly jawfish, it is the father who will have a mouthful of eggs. For the duration of their development, he will hold onto them, unable to feed himself until they hatch. African cichlids are maternal mouthbrooders. The mothers go up to 36 days without feeding. Once the eggs hatch, she will allow the young out to feed themselves, but she can signal them to swim back in for protection if she senses danger.^[3]

Unfortunately, not even this tactic can always protect their young. The cuckoo catfish attacks cichlids to get them to spit out their eggs. While the mother cichlid is gathering them back up, the catfish deposits her own eggs among them. The catfish eggs hatch more quickly than the cichlid’s and proceed to feast on the cichlid eggs inside the safety of the mother’s mouth.

7 Gastric Brooding

Sometimes, the mouth simply isn’t safe enough for a child to live in. For the gastric brooding frogs, eggs would be kept safe in the stomach. The mother would lay her eggs in the usual fashion but then eat them. Up to 40 eggs would be eaten, though no more than 20 young were ever seen to develop within a mother’s stomach. It is possible that the stomach acid digested some of the eggs. To avoid being dissolved, the eggs, and the tadpoles that hatched from them, produced a mucus which stopped production of the acid—leaving the mother unable to eat while carrying her young.

As the young grew, the stomach expanded with them until it took up the majority of the frog’s body space. The mother’s lungs collapsed to make room, and she had to breath through her skin. Only after six weeks would the mother release her fully formed young.

Unfortunately, the two species of gastric brooding frogs went extinct in the 1980s.^[4] But in 2013, scientists took the first steps in returning the frogs to life. Using cloning techniques, they were able to create living embryos. It is hoped that the gastric brooding frog will soon be swallowing her young again.

6 Three Vaginas

Kangaroos, as well as several other marsupials, have a female reproductive system that can seem a little confusing at first but is actually the key to reproducing quickly. In place of the standard single vagina, kangaroos have three. The two on the sides are used to pass sperm to the uteri (of which there are two), while the middle is the one that joeys pass through to enter the world.^[5] They have other developments which may allow them to remain almost permanently pregnant.

The kangaroo egg cell is fertilized by sperm and allowed to develop for just 33 days before the young joey emerges. Blind, pink, and shriveled, the joey must crawl up through the fur of its mother and make its way to the pouch and find a teat to feed from. For the next 190 days, it stays in the pouch feeding until it will begin to leave the pouch, returning to suckle. The mother kangaroo can then begin to develop another embryo that will crawl out and into the pouch. The mother will produce two different types of milk—one for the newborn and one for the older joey.

That’s not the end of it, though. The mother may get pregnant again at this point, even though she has no more room to feed a young one. Instead, any embryos created while a newborn is still suckling will be held in a form of arrested development in one of the uteri and only begin to grow again when there is a spare teat.

5 Birth Through A Pseudo-Penis

Female spotted hyenas can be hard to spot in the wild. This is not because they are particularly shy, far from it, but because they display what looks awfully like an 18-centimeter (7 in) penis. In fact, this appendage is a pseudo-penis formed from an elongated clitoris. The female pseudo-penis does pretty much everything a penis does, even getting erections, but it does not deliver sperm.^[6] To have sex, a female hyena must retract her pseudo-penis, and the male must deliver his sperm through a channel that runs directly through it.

As this is also the birth canal, childbirth in female hyenas can be very traumatic and is definitely not a laughing matter. A 1.8-kilogram (4 lb) cub must be passed through a hole barely 2.5 centimeters (1 in) across. For a first-time hyena mother, there is an almost 60-percent chance that the cub will become stuck in the pseudo-penis and die. If the cub is not eventually released, this can prove fatal to the mother, too. When the first cub is born, it tears the pseudo-penis, and a stretchy patch of scar tissue forms that makes subsequent births easier.

Why does the female spotted hyena suffer so much to have a pseudo-penis? As of yet, no researchers have come up with a compelling explanation.

4 Male Birth

In most species where eggs are cared for within the body, it is the mother who takes responsibility for nurturing them. For seahorses, pipefish, and leafy sea dragons, it is left to the fathers to get their offspring from eggs to hatchlings. All these fish perform lengthy mating rituals which involve the male and female wriggling and dancing for hours together. It is thought that their motions allow them to synchronize movements, enabling the female to accurately deposit her eggs into a pouch on the male before swimming away.^[7]

In male seahorses, the eggs are then fertilized and surrounded by fleshy tissue that regulates oxygen and nutrition for the eggs. The male can swell to a much greater than normal size, as up to 2,500 eggs develop within him. When the young are all hatched, the male with use muscle contractions to spill the tiny hatchlings out into the ocean. At this point, he is ready for his next batch of young and takes no interest in the babies he has just carried.

3 Under The Skin

The Suriname toad (Pipa pipa) is an unusually protective mother. Used to hiding from predators at the bottom of bodies of water, it will not allow its offspring to simply swim about until they are completely ready to survive on their own. When a male Suriname toad is ready to breed, it will signal its readiness by making a clicking sound with a bone in its throat. Once a female emerges, the male will cling to her back for up to 12 hours as they swim in flipping circles through the water.^[8] This allows the male to fertilize the eggs and hold them against the mother’s back.

Why is it important that the eggs remain against the mother’s back? Because it is where they will stay until they are fully developed. The mother will grow skin over the eggs and trap them within her flesh. As the young grow, they can be seen moving and quivering under the flesh. The Suriname toad will not even allow its babies to emerge as tadpoles. When the young have developed into toadlets, they will punch their way out of their mother and swim off as fully independent beings, leaving her with massive holes in her back.

2 Eating Siblings

The least you can hope for from life is that the struggle for survival will wait until after your birth. In nature, though, you can never rest easy, not even within your mother. A sand tiger shark may start with as many as 12 fertilized eggs inside her, but usually, only two will emerge. Once the eggs hatch, the largest baby sharks will kill and eat their brothers and sisters. This is called intrauterine cannibalism.^[9] This act of cannibalism allows the two survivors, held in the right and left uteri, to develop into roughly one-meter-long (3.3 ft) newborns able to survive on their own. The mother also provides unfertilized eggs for the baby sharks to eat during their nine-month gestation.

This method of motherhood gives the sand tiger shark the best chance of having strong offspring. The mother will mate with a number of males, but by allowing her children to eat each other in utero, only those with the best genes will survive.

1 Darwin’s Monsters

There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae . . .

While many see in nature the glory of an all-loving God, Charles Darwin thought it impossible that such a being could have knowingly made parasitic wasps. Only evolution is capable of making such wickedly efficient killers.

Parasitic wasps are incredibly common and target a huge number of other invertebrates.^[10] From spiders to butterflies to other parasitic wasps, they will hunt them down and lay their eggs within the still-living bodies of their prey. Some will paralyze their prey with venom, leaving them unable to move as the wasp’s larvae devour it. Others will attack caterpillars so that their own eggs can benefit from the caterpillar’s continued feeding. The larvae will often release chemicals that control the mind of their host to give them the best chance of survival, such as making a host spider spin them a cocoon. Whatever the host, the endpoint is the same—something you do not want to look too closely at is coming bursting out of you.

May is the month which offers the best chances for the hundreds of people who attempt each year to reach the top of the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. And every climbing season on Everest, people die trying to reach the summit. You have to go all the way back to 1977 to find a year where no climbers have perished on Mount Everest. And this year has been no exception as eight people have died. This list will look at some of the lesser known fatalities and the amazing and harrowing stories behind their attempts to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

The urge to be “the first” on Mount Everest is powerful. The biggest “first” was accomplished in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay when they became the first to reach the summit and stand at the top of the world. Everything since then has been, well, second. Not to be deterred at the thought of being second, there have been all manner of attempts since 1953 at other “Everest firsts”. The first to paraglide off Everest, the first to ski down Everest, the first blind person to climb Everest, etc. The other route to “Everest fame” is to be the oldest person (or youngest) to reach the summit and as such there have been multiple people to achieve that goal and hold the title of “oldest” (“youngest”) to climb to the top of Mount Everest. That is, they hold the title until someone older or younger comes along and tops it.

In 2011, the former Nepalese foreign minister, Shailendra Kumar Upadhyay, set out to be the latest oldest man to climb to the top of Everest. He was 82 years old. He made it as far as Camp I when he became ill. He was descending back to Base Camp for medical care when he collapsed and died. His body was airlifted to the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu. He was trying to break the record held by a 76 year old Nepalese man.

In 2013, in fact, just a few days ago, Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura at the age of 80 beat that record and became the oldest person to reach the top of Mount Everest. Not only has Miura, for now, claimed the “oldest to climb and reach the top of Everest” title, he also summited Everest twice before. Even more remarkable than his age is the fact he has had four heart operations and in 2009 he broke his pelvis while skiing.

Even casual observers of the history of climbing Mount Everest know of the dangers faced by climbers. Lack of oxygen, falls, and of course the cold, the ice, the wind and the storms. Lesser known is the threat posed by the landscape the climbers must pass through to reach the summit. The Khumbu Icefall is located at the head of the Khumbu Glacier just above Base Camp on the popular South Col route to the top of Everest. As such, to reach Camp I, all climbers attempting this route to the summit must pass through the Khumbu Ice Fall after leaving Base Camp.

The glacier is moving at a rapid pace and thus crevasses open up to swallow climbers with little warning. But the real danger are the seracs – huge, house-sized, towering blocks of ice, precariously balanced and ready to tumble over at any time, with no warning what so ever. Any climber caught in the wrong place when a serac decides to give way is out of luck. With no time to jump out of the way and nowhere to go, the climber is crushed. Many times the body cannot be recovered. The glacier moves down the face of the mountain at 3-4 feet per year. Sometimes the bodies emerge, years later, deposited back at Base Camp by the glacier.

One unlucky climber who was in the wrong place was Canadian Blair Griffiths. Griffiths was a Canadian Broadcasting Company cameraman documenting the Canadian Mount Everest Expedition in 1982. Griffiths and others were securing one of the many ladders used by climbers to cross over crevasses when the glacier decided to move. A six-story serac crushed Griffiths between two gigantic blocks of ice. After several attempts his climbing partners retrieved his body which was cremated on the mountain.

Many know of the tragic 1924 British Expedition that aimed to climb Mount Everest for the first time. This expedition led to the disappearance and death of climbing legend George Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine. Mallory’s body would be discovered in 1999 and his death appears to have been as a result of a fall. No sign of Irvine has ever been found and it remains unclear if they were the first to summit Everest and died on their descent, or if they died trying to reach the top.

Lesser know is the story of another Englishman, Maurice Wilson who ten years later, on his own, in either a fit of English eccentricity or madness (perhaps both) attempted a solo ascent of Everest. Where huge British climbing expeditions had failed before him, Wilson thought he could “do it alone”.

Believing the problems of the planet could be solved through fasting and faith in God, Wilson set out to climb Everest so as to promote his beliefs. Injured in WWI, Wilson overcame his suffering through 35 days of prayer and fasting. Wilson convinced himself that his beliefs could allow him to succeed where Mallory had failed. His plan was to fly a plane close to the summit and crash it, then walk the rest of the way (eccentric, yes, but a plan none the less). Not being able to fly an airplane and knowing nothing of climbing mountains, Wilson set out to teach himself both. He bought a used Gipsy Moth plane (which he called “Ever Wrest”) and set off for Asia by air. His mountaineering experience and training was even worse than his flying. He took off in 1933, crashed his plane, was grounded by the British Air Ministry, ignored the ban, and took off again.

Somehow, in two weeks, he made it to India. He wintered over near Tibet; by chance meeting three of the Sherpa’s who had worked previous British Everest expeditions. They joined Wilson and slipped into Tibet. He made his first attempt and was beaten back by the weather and his inexperience. After a time to recover his strength he set off again, this time with two of the Sherpa’s to guide him. He made it to an altitude of 22,700 feet where he encountered a forty foot ice wall. Defeated again, he and the Sherpa’s turned back. The Sherpa’s begged him to come down the mountain with them but he refused and in a gesture of British stubbornness that would make Robert Falcon Scott happy, he made one more attempt. This too failed. He died days later in his tent, just like Scott.

Although recovering bodies from the Death Zone on Everest is extremely dangerous, it has been done. One such example was the recovery of the body of Canadian climber Shriya Shah-Klorfine. Born in Nepal, climbing Everest had always been a dream for the 33 year old Canadian when, on May 19, 2012, she died trying to descend the mountain. Three other climbers would die that same day. The dangers of dying and having your body left behind on the mountain are not unknown to climbers, in fact, some Everest guide services have climbers sign a form asking them to choose to remain on the mountain should they die, or have an attempt made to recover their body (which can cost upwards of $30,000).

Ms. Shriya Shah-Klorfine died very near the summit, at an altitude of over 8,000 meters (nearly 27,000 feet). This would make her recovery very challenging. First a team of 6-8 Sherpa’s must climb the mountain to reach her body – dangerous enough on its own. Then the real danger begins. The only way to bring down a body from that altitude is to place it in a sled while the Sherpa’s, slowly, carefully, lower it (in a controlled slide) down the mountain at angles as steep as 60 degrees. They also need to pick up the body and lift it by hand over any crevasses encountered along the way. The trip down the mountain can take an entire day. It is very dangerous work on the steep icy mountain face. One slip and everyone on the ropes could fall to their own deaths. The goal is to lower the body to the elevation of Camp II (6,500 meters) which is the highest point on the mountain reachable by helicopter (to land, take on a load, and take off again). On May 29, 2012, the body of Ms. Shriya Shah-Klorfine was safely recovered.

The goal of Marco Siffredi was simple – become the first person to snowboard down Mount Everest. At the age of 22 in May of 2001 Marco summited Mount Everest with the plan to snowboard the Hornbein Couloir. But there was not enough snow that spring for him to snowboard that route. Instead he went to plan B and set off on his snowboard down the North Col Route. On the way down one of the bindings on his snowboard broke but he and a Sherpa were able to repair it. He eventually snowboarded all the way down to Advanced Base Camp, becoming the first person to successfully snowboard, continuously, down Everest. It took him four hours to do it.

However, his true goal has eluded him. He returns to Everest the following year, but fatefully, he forgets to bring the lucky cross he always wears around his neck. Marco has come in August this time hoping the snow will be deep enough to snowboard down the “true face” of Everest, the Hornbein Couloir. The Hornbein Couloir is the most steep and most continuous descent possible from the summit. This time there is plenty of snow, too much and he needs to wait for avalanches to subside. He and his team begin their ascent, establishing base camp and higher camps as they climb, sometimes in waist deep snow. Along the way Marco’s radio breaks. A new one is on its way back up to Marco to aid him in communicating with Sherpa’s and those below as he snowboards down the mountain, but he receives a good weather forecast and jumps at the chance to summit and snowboard. He sets off without the radio.

At 2:00 PM he and his Sherpa helper’s reach the summit after a 12 hour climb through chest deep snow. Marco tells his Sherpa he is “tired”. His Sherpa is elated at reaching the summit, but then his Sherpa doesn’t have a 3,000 foot of descent by snowboard at 45-55 degree angles yet to do. It is late in the day, 3:00 PM and his Sherpa’s urge him not to go, but Marco has come too far to not give his dream a try. So he tells his Sherpa he will ‘see him tomorrow” and pushes off down the face of the Hornbein Couloir. The last the Sherpa’s see of him is when he hangs the left away from their descent route to snowboard down the Hornbein Couloir. Later they believe they see a figure sliding down the face of the North Col. But there is nobody else climbing Everest at this time of the year, they have the mountain to themselves. Who could it be? The Sherpa’s descend to the bottom of the Hornbein Couloir.

Marco should be there as it would only take him two hours to snowboard the route. The Sherpa’s reach the point on the North Col. where they are certain they saw the man. There are no snowboard tracks. It appears Marco has fallen to his death. With no radio to even try to contact him, Marco has disappeared. A search party finds his snowboard tracks end about 1,500 feet down the Hornbein Couloir from the summit where he set off. His body has still not been found.

As if climbing Mount Everest is, in and of itself, not difficult or “extreme” enough, some extreme sports people need to take it even farther. Such was the case of Swedish skier Tomas Olsson and his partner Tormod Granheim who in 2006 wanted to be the first to descend the North Col (North Face) Route by ski. That’s right, ski down from the summit of Everest via one of the most difficult of all the difficult routes to the top of the mountain.

On May 16, 2006, after a full day of climbing, the two met up on the mountain and reached the summit. Exhausted, they wondered if they had the strength to ski down. Undeterred by their fatigue, they set off on skis down the North Face via the Norton Couloir at angles as steep as 60 degrees and a shear 3,000 meter drop. Unfortunately, just as they set off, and after only skiing down the North Face approximately 1,500 feet, one of Olsson’s skis broke. They tried to repair the ski with tape but at 27,900 feet, they reached a 150 foot rock cliff on the couloir. This they could not ski even with undamaged equipment so they tried to rappel down.

They set a snow anchor because they could find no good rock to set screws. Olsson went first, rappelling down the cliff still wearing his skis, when the snow anchor they were using failed and Olson fell 2,500 meters to his death. Granheim continued on alone by ski and by climbing and made it down the mountain alive. Several days later Olsson’s body was found by Sherpa’s at 22,000 feet.

The popular South East Ridge Route to the top of Mount Everest was at one time called by climbers “The Rainbow Valley” because of the sheer number of bodies that littered the route to the summit, all dressed in various colorful climbing gear. It was impossible to summit by this route without coming close to and seeing many of these dead climbers. Over the years, climbers have cut ropes and pushed some of these bodies over the side while snow and ice have covered others. But even today, multiple bodies are visible along the South Ridge Route.

One infamous example was that of German climber Hannelore Schmatz. In 1979 she died on her descent after summiting. At the time she was the first woman to die on the upper slopes of Everest. Exhausted and caught at 8,300 meters (27,200 feet) just below the summit, Ms. Schmatz and another climber made the decision to bivouac as darkness fell. The Sherpa’s urged her and American climber Ray Gennet to descend, but they laid down to rest and never got up. Genet’s body disappeared and has never been seen, but for years, climbers would pass the frozen remains of Ms. Schmatz, still sitting and leaning against her pack, eyes wide open and long hair blowing in the constant wind. A climber who had to pass her body to reach the summit described the experience: “It’s not far now. I cannot escape the sinister guard. Approximately 100 meters above Camp IV she sits leaning against her pack, as if taking a short break. A woman with her eyes wide open and her hair waving in each gust of wind…..it feels as if she follows me with her eyes as I pass by. Her presence reminds me that we are here on the conditions of the mountain.”

Five years after she died, two climbers attempted to recover her body. Yogendra Bahadur Thapa and Sherpa Ang Dorje somehow became tangled in their ropes and both fell to their deaths while trying to recover the body. Years later the wind finally blew her body over the edge of the mountain.

Perhaps the most infamous of all the dead bodies climbers must pass along the Northeast ridge route to the summit of Everest is a body known as “Green Boots”, believed to be the body of Indian climber Tsewang Paljor. The name comes from the green mountaineering boots he is still wearing and which stick out from the entrance to the small cave where his body can be found lying on its side. The body and cave are located at 27,890 feet (8,500 meters). It is thought “Green Boots’ crawled into the cave in a desperate effort to survive.

In the same year (1996) as the ill-fated Everest climbing season told in the book “Into Thin Air”, a six man team from India was also trying to reach the top of Everest by the northeast route. Close to the top they were hit by the blizzard that would kill so many in the Rob Hall and Scott Fisher mountaineering parties going for the summit on the more popular southeast route. Three of the Indian climbers turned back but Paljor and two others tried for the summit and disappeared. They radioed that they had reached the summit (though there is some doubt that they did) and no further radio contact was heard from the three.

Later, a Japanese team headed for the summit may have passed the three Indian climbers but were unsure because of the conditions. When the Japanese climbers found out from one of the three Indian climbers who had turned back that their climbing companions were missing, the Japanese offered to help with the search. But the ferocious storm prevented them from searching until the next day. It is thought that “Green Boots” is one of the missing Indian climbers because he was wearing such boots on that day.

In 2006, British climber David Sharp would crawl into “Green Boots cave”. Many climbers walked right past the dying Sharp, believing him to be Green Boots. By the time aid was rendered, Sharp died.

In 2007 British climber Ian Woodall, who was on the mountain in 1996, and had been haunted by the memory ever since, attempted to climb to the cave and give “Green Boots” a proper burial. But he was unable to dig the body out of the ice due to bad weather. He was planning on making another attempt if he could raise the funds.

On May 22, 1998, climber Francys Arsentiev accomplished one of the “Everest Firsts”, by becoming the first woman from the USA to summit without bottled oxygen. Unfortunately, she never lived to celebrate this accomplishment. Arsentiev and her husband climbing partner Sergei Arsentiev were in position to reach the summit on May 20 and May 21 but had to turn around both times. On May 22nd on their third attempt they made it. But they had been in the “Death Zone” above 8,000 meters for almost three days. Because they were exhausted from spending so much time above 8,000 meters they summited late in the day and had to camp and spend another night above 8,000 meters. The next morning they descended but somehow got separated. Sergei reached camp and found she was not there. He immediately went back up to find her carrying oxygen and medicine.

Late that morning an Uzbek team found Arsentiev frozen and struggling to survive. They attempted to help her and brought her down as far as they could before they became too exhausted to do more. They saw Sergei on his way back up the mountain as they descended. That was the last anyone would ever see of Sergei Arsentiev alive.

The next morning a team of climbers including Ian Woodall and Cathy O’Dowd found Francys Arsentiev where the Uzbek team had left her, amazingly, still alive, but barely. Sergei had left his ice axe and rope but there was no sign of him. There was nothing Woodall, O’Dowd and their party could do to save her and she died that morning. For a true account of what happened as told by O’Dowd, read this article.

Woodall and O’Dowd gave up their own chance at summiting to stay with her and care for her as much as they could. But they had to leave her where she died, and her body remained as one of the “landmarks” along the path from high camp to the summit for all subsequent climbers to see as they passed her on their way to the top. Sergie’s body was found a year later down the mountain face. He apparently fell to his death trying to save his wife.

For almost ten years the memory of her death haunted Ian Woodall and he set out in 2007 to try to reach her body and give her some manner of dignified burial. Although he was unable to free the body of “Green Boots” on this mission back to Mount Everest he called “The Tao of Everest”, Woodall did reach the body of Francys Arsentiev. After a brief ritual, Woodall lowered her body to a lower section of the mountain where she would no longer be visible to climbers passing by on their way to the top of Mount Everest.

One of the tragedies of Mount Everest is climbing it has become such an obsession for thousands of people that the mountain is now littered with junk left behind by the hundreds of expeditions who have come and gone over the decades. The liter includes used oxygen cylinders, trash, as well as human bodies. By the 2000s the trash problem had become so bad that expeditions were formed to try to remove some of it (as well as the bodies). But it was not until 2010 and the “Extreme Everest Expedition”, organized and lead by mountaineer Namgyal Sherpa, that bodies and trash were removed from the higher elevations of the mountain where it is most difficult to reach. The expedition was composed of all Sherpa’s.

Its goal was to clean the slopes of Everest above 8‚000 meters. The expedition removed 2,000kg (4,000 pounds) of waste and two dead bodies. One of the bodies they did not recover and bring down was that of climbing expedition leader Rob Hall who died on Everest during the infamous 1996 Everest disaster. Hall’s widow requested that his body remain on the mountain.

Namgyal Sherpa was a legend among Sherpa’s and the clients and climbers he guided on Everest. He worked his way up from porter, to cook, to starting his own company and leading Sherpa teams on some of the biggest Everest expeditions. He himself summited Everest an amazing ten times. But his tenth summit would be his last. On May 16, 2013 at 8,000 meters, he collapsed. He had complained of feeling ill and then pointed to his chest before he passed away.

There are many mysteries surrounding people who have tried to climb Mount Everest and died in the attempt. Did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit and die on the descent, thus beating Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay by 29 years? What really happened during the tragic 1996 Everest climbing disaster made famous in the bestselling book “Into Thin Air”?

There is no mystery about what happened to Irish businessman John Delaney. He died on May 21, 2011 at the age of 42 only 50 meters from reaching a lifelong goal of summiting Everest. He died from a common cause of death on Everest – altitude sickness. While climbing, his wife gave birth to a baby daughter he would never live to see.

What is mysterious about Delaney is not his death, but what happened afterward. Delany was the CEO and founder of the Internet trading website Intrade. Intrade received popularity during the 2012 US Presidential election as people wagered whether Mitt Romney would defeat Barack Obama and later, for bets people placed on who would be made the next Pope.

However, in 2013 Intrade shut down and it was announced that in the last two years of his life, Delaney’s personal account had received un-authorized transfers of money from the company totaling $2,600,000. A March 2013 audit confirmed the lack of documentation to account for this money, but there still is no firm resolution as to how Delaney pocketed this company money or if anything improper was even done. Apparently uncovering possible financial fraud is now more difficult than climbing Mount Everest.

Patrick Weidinger is a frequent contributor to Listverse.

Technology has completely changed how we live our lives, and it’s happening at an ever-increasing rate. Our worlds are completely different from the world of even 10 years ago. This obviously has resulted in differences in the way we work and play, but did you know it’s even changed the way we have sex?

10Netflix Adultery

A new issue causing strife between couples is “Netflix adultery”: watching TV shows and movies alone that they promised their partner they would watch together. Twelve percent of those surveyed said they do it, and 59 percent of cheaters even reveal spoilers, which means that more than 7 percent of us are dating huge jerks.

Netflix’s director of public relations Jenny McCabe says that couples are reporting some serious drama over the phenomenon, commenting “We hear people say, ‘We made a pact, we were going to watch this together.’ ” It’s a real violation of trust and lack of consideration that can cause tension every bit as real as fights over money or other relationship matters.

9Internet Infidelity

The Internet has made actual infidelity easy and guiltless. Cybersex offers a convenience and anonymity that can prove too tempting for many to resist, even if they have someone who is generally willing to have sex with them right there in the other room. There’s no physical contact, so what’s the problem? It’s not like cybersex is really cheating, right?

Wrong: 77 percent of people surveyed said that cybersex infidelity is unacceptable. Despite the many reasons a cheater could use to rationalize their activities, an overwhelming majority of people agree that cheating is cheating, period. This new and puzzling gray area is such a big problem that it was responsible for a full third of divorce cases in 2009.

8We’re All Creepy Stalkers

The Internet has given us unprecedented access to the personal lives of prospective and past partners, and boy are we making use of it. Almost 90 percent of us admit to “stalking” the social networking activities of our ex-partners, and 60 percent of us admit to doing so to a crush.

This can have catastrophic effects on our well-being, because the information often doesn’t fully satisfy our curiosity and causes even more anxiety. Stalking an ex can significantly hamper our recovery from the breakup, and even spur us to make really bad decisions like hopping back into bed with them (yes, scientists actually studied this stuff). It might be best to keep them out of feed, out of mind.

7 Fear Of Intimacy

Harvard professor Craig Malkin has coined the term “cybercelibacy” to describe the increasing number of people who turn to online games and networks to satisfy their social needs without having to face scary real people. It creates a vicious cycle, he explains, where people aren’t forced to face their anxieties about relationships, which makes those anxieties grow and causes them to retreat further.

How bad is the problem, exactly? Well, 28 percent of people surveyed admitted that they spend less time with meatspace friends in favor of online activities, and almost as many (20 percent) say they’re having less sex. It turns out that going outside occasionally is a really important step to taking up residence in someone else’s underpants.

6Facebook Provokes Your Jealousy

Following your partner’s Facebook feed creates needless jealousy, one study says. Even after controlling for other factors (that’s science for “weeding out the crazy people whose unbridled jealousy would exist either way”), the study found that the more time you spend reading your partner’s boring status updates, the more likely you are to turn into a raging psycho.

This happens because a good chunk of your partner’s social interaction becomes visible to you, but you don’t have those in-person cues that gives the exchange context. For example, when your lady’s gay co-worker or the best friend who loves her like a sister leaves an innocent “You look great!” on her picture, they know it’s a harmless compliment—but all you see is some dude hitting on your girlfriend.

5 Too Many Points Of Contact

A lack of communication can be a big problem in a relationship, but one study suggests that communicating too much can be a strain as well. A survey of 24,000 married people found that using more than five channels (such as social media, texting, instant messaging, etc.) to communicate with your partner actually decreases relationship satisfaction.

The stress of never being more than a series of ones and zeroes away from your partner and monitoring so many incoming data streams is a killer. Think about how easy it is to step over that threshold. You follow your partner’s Facebook and Twitter feed, obviously, and of course they have your phone number for calling and texting—if you regularly use even one more communication tool, you’re screwed.

4The Online Pornsplosion

With porn so easily accessible, convenient, and increasingly hardcore, many women are feeling either neglected or pressured to adhere to male-centric sexual scripts that they don’t enjoy. It turns out that many ladies don’t actually enjoy being sprayed in the face or poked in the butt (acts that are simply a matter of course in even mainstream porn nowadays) but feel like they have to if they want to please their man.

That is, if they’re being asked to please them at all: More women are reporting that they can’t compete with the blonde, tanned, and augmented video vixens, and their partners neglect them in favor of prerecorded thrills. It’s never a good thing if one person is unhappy with the naked-time routine, but the problem is so bad that in 2003, it was reported that online porn played a major role in a quarter of all divorce cases that year (and we’re pretty sure the amount of porn available hasn’t decreased any since then).

3 Gadgets

Some people are literally addicted to their smartphones; they can’t even leave the room without carrying them around like a colicky baby. Or maybe you like to bring your laptop to bed for some late-night work, or even just watch a little Letterman before tucking in. Well, all of those things could be wreaking havoc on your sex life, studies show. The mere act of having a phone nearby is so distracting that we can’t focus on the person we’re with, and simply having a TV in the bedroom can cut the amount of sex you have in half.

2 Dubious ‘Matching Algorithms’

Matching algorithms, such as those used by OkCupid and eHarmony, use questionnaire information about users’ personality and interests, which may help the strangers find things to talk about, but won’t in any way guarantee relationship success. Hold on, you say, isn’t it important that my partner likes Star Wars and skydiving as much as I do? If I end up with a scaredy cat who hates sci-fi, how are we even supposed to relate to each other?

Actually, the former has little to do with the latter. The way two individuals interact with each other specifically—i.e., plain ol’ chemistry—is the best indication of a good match, something that can’t be determined until two people meet. Maybe that overly cautious person keeps you grounded without holding you back, or the foreign film nut knows intuitively just what kind of support you need when you’ve had a bad day. Furthermore, the sites encourage users to objectify potential partners, “shopping” for matches based on these superficial and insignificant traits.

1Googling Your Date

There’s really no such thing as a blind date anymore: 48 percent of women will not hesitate to Google you before they agree to go out with you, and just as many are willing to decline if they find unsavory information. Sure, some serious bullets can be dodged this way, like if you find your potential date’s incoherent, violent blog about his serial killer fantasies, but in many cases, you might be rejecting your soulmate based on a false (or at least meaningless) representation.

According to one study, the more information we dig up about our suitors, the more likely we are to reject them. You might think that just saves everyone some time—you’re going to find out about her online shrine to Hanson eventually, right?—but before you judge too harshly, take a minute to Google yourself. Did anything potentially off-putting come up? That embarrassingly naive op-ed piece about Objectivism you wrote for your college newspaper, say, or videos of your misguided attempt at hip-hop superstardom? How representative are those things of you as a person?

The fact is, someone who’s had a chance to get to know all the virtues and quirks that come packed in the you-shaped bundle is probably going to find those things endearing, but someone whose first impression of you has been based on them is going to run away screaming. As study coauthor Joanna Frost, PhD., says, “Your disillusionment with someone during a conversation might take hours, during which your date has the opportunity to explain himself, whereas online that disillusionment can happen almost instantly.” So give that freak a chance to explain herself over a beer—it might just be a charming quirk in an otherwise flawless package.

Manna writes and wrongs from sunny Portland, Oregon. Check her out on Cracked, Twitter, and her blog.

Roman families would be both recognizable and unrecognizable today. Their strict social classes and lawful human rights violations will make any rational person glad to be alive in the 21st century. On the other hand, their homelier moments are eternal. Like today, children played similar games, the whole family coddled pets, and they enjoyed the finer things in life.

10Marriage Was A Mere Agreement

Girls married during their early teens while men tied the knot in their mid-twenties. Roman marriages were quick and easy and most didn’t flower from romance but from two agreements. The first would be between the couple’s families, who eyeballed each other to see if the proposed spouse’s wealth and social status were acceptable. If satisfied, a formal betrothal took place where a written agreement was signed and the couple kissed.

Unlike modern times, the wedding day didn’t cement a lawful institution (marriage had no legal power) but showed the couple’s intent to live together. A Roman citizen couldn’t marry his favorite prostitute, cousin, or, for the most part, non-Romans. A divorce was granted when the couple declared their intention to separate before seven witnesses. If a divorce carried the accusation that the wife had been unfaithful, she could never marry again. A guilty husband received no such penalty.

9Feast Or Famine

Social position determined how a family ate. Lower classes mostly had simple fare while the wealthy often used elaborate feasts to showcase their status. Bread featured heavily at both breakfast and lunch. While the lower classes added olives, cheese, and wine, the upper class enjoyed a better variety of meat, feast leftovers, and fresh produce. The very poor sometimes just ate porridge or handouts.

Meals were prepared by the women or slaves of the household, and the children served them. Nobody had forks, so food was consumed using their hands, spoons, and knives. Dinner parties of the Roman rich were legendary for their decadence and delicacies. Lasting hours, guests reclined on dining couches while slaves cleaned up the discarded scraps around them. All classes relished a stomach-churning sauce called garum. Basically the fermented guts of fish, it reeked so bad that it was forbidden to make it within city limits.

8The Insulae And Domus

One’s neighborhood pretty much depended on how high up the totem pole you were. Insulae were apartment buildings, but the kind that would make a modern safety inspector hit the roof. The majority of the Roman population lived in these seven-story-plus buildings. They were ripe for fire, collapse, and even flooding. The upper floors were reserved for the poor who had to pay rent daily or weekly.

Eviction was a constant fear for the families living in a one-room affair with no natural light or bathroom facilities. The first two floors of an insulae were reserved for those who had a better income. They paid rent annually and lived in multiple rooms with windows.

Wealthy Romans either lived in country villas or owned a domus in the city. A domus was a large, comfortable home. They were big enough to include the owner’s business shop, libraries, rooms, a kitchen, pool, and garden.

7Marital Sex

Things in the Roman bedroom weren’t exactly even. While women were expected to produce sons, uphold chastity, and remain loyal to their husbands, married men were allowed to wander. He even had a rule book. It was fine to have extramarital sex with partners of both genders, but it had to be with slaves, prostitutes, or a concubine/mistress. Wives could do nothing about it since it was socially acceptable and even expected from a man.

While undoubtedly there were married couples who used passion as an expression of affection for one another, the general unsympathetic view was that women tied the knot to have children and not to enjoy a great sex life. That was for the husband to savor, and some savored it a little too much—slaves had no rights over their own bodies, so the rape of a slave was not legally recognized.

6Legal Infanticide

Fathers held the power of life or death for a newborn, even without the mother’s input. After birth, the baby was placed at his feet. If the father picked it up, the child remained at home. Otherwise, it was abandoned outside for anyone to pick up—or to die of exposure. Roman infants faced rejection if they were born deformed, a daughter, or if a poor family couldn’t support another child. If the father was suspicious about the kid’s real paternity, he or she could be dumped near a refuge area.

The lucky ones were adopted by childless couples and received the family’s name. The rest risked being sold as slaves or prostitutes or being deliberately maimed by beggars who displayed such children to get more sympathy. If older children displeased their father, he also had the legal backing to sell them as slaves or kill them.

5Leisure For The Family

Downtime was a big part of Roman family life. Usually, starting at noon, the upper crust of society dedicated their day to leisure. Most enjoyable activities were public and shared by rich and poor alike, male and female—watching gladiators disembowel each other, cheering chariot races, or attending the theatre.

Citizens also spent a lot of time at public baths, which wasn’t your average tub and towel affair. A Roman bath typically had a gym, pool, and a health center. Certain locales even offered prostitutes. Children had their own favorite pastimes. Boys preferred to be more active, wrestling, flying kites, or playing war games. Girls occupied themselves with things like dolls and board games. Families also enjoyed just relaxing with each other and their pets.

4Education

Education depended on a child’s social status and gender. Formal education was the privilege of high-born boys, while girls from good families were only allowed to learn how to read and write. Schooling in Latin, reading, writing, and arithmetic were usually the mother’s duty until age seven, when boys received a teacher.

Affluent families had private tutors or educated slaves for this role; otherwise, the boys were sent to private schools. Education for male pupils included physical training to prepare them for military service as well as later assuming a masculine role in society. Country folk or children born of slaves received little to no formal education. To them it was more practical that sons learn their trades from their fathers and little girls learn housekeeping. There were no public schools for disadvantaged children to attend. The closest thing was informal get-togethers that were run and taught by freed slaves.

3Coming Of Age

While daughters crossed the threshold of adulthood almost unnoticed, a special ceremony marked a boy’s transition to manhood. Depending on his mental and physical prowess, a father decided when his son was grown (usually around 14–17).

On the chosen morning, the youth discarded his bulla and childhood toga, and a sacrifice was given. His father then dressed him in the white tunic of a man. If the older man had rank, the tunic reflected this—two wide crimson stripes if he was a senator and slim ones for a knight. The last of the new clothing was the toga virilis or toga libera, worn only by adult males. The father then gathered a large crowd to escort his son to the Forum. Once there, the boy’s name was registered, and he officially became a Roman citizen. After that, the new teenage man could expect an apprenticeship for a year in a profession of his father’s choosing.

2Pets

When it comes to ancient Rome’s animal policies, one can be forgiven if the first image that comes to mind is gory slaughter at the Colosseum. However, private citizens cherished their household pets. Dogs were by far the favorite, but cats were not uncommon. House-snakes were appreciated as ratters, and domesticated birds were also delighted in. Nightingales and green Indian parrots were all the rage because they could mimic human words.

Cranes, herons, swans, quail, geese, and ducks were also kept. While the last three proved very popular, Roman fondness and treatment of peacocks was almost on par with dogs. Some cruelty existed in bird fighting, but it wasn’t a widespread sport. Roman pets were so deeply loved that they were immortalized in art and poetry and even buried with their masters. Other pets included hares (a popular gift exchanged by lovers), goats, deer, apes, and fish.

1Women’s Independence

Ancient Rome wasn’t an easy place to be a woman. Any hopes of being able to vote or of following a career was about as possible as a modern person trying to pluck a diamond out of thin air. Girls were sidelined to a life in the home and childbirth, suffering a philandering husband (if he was so inclined), and having little power in the marriage and no legal claim to her children.

However, because child mortality was so high, the state rewarded Roman wives for giving birth. The prize was perhaps what most women dearly wanted: legal independence. If a free-born woman managed three live births (four for a former slave), she was awarded with independent status as a person. Only by surviving this serial-birthing could a woman hope to escape being a man’s property and finally take control over her own affairs and life.

As ancient civilizations go, the Egyptians are by far one of the more well-known. Their pyramids still stand to this day, and their mummies and sarcophagi pepper our museums, but is there more to them?

It turns out, some aspects of our modern life found their start in Egypt.

10Mathematics

The Egyptians were remarkable at mathematics. The earliest records of geometry come from Egypt, as their geometry specialists were called “arpedonapti.” The arpedonapti used ropes to calculate the area of lands, eventually passing this knowledge to Greece.

Egyptians also worked out efficient ways of performing multiplication and division. While we have various ways to perform such calculations, Egyptians used a more computation-friendly method that involved doubling numbers, a technique we still use in modern-day computing. The above video goes into detail as to how computers and ancient Egyptians come together.

Egyptians also invented basic fractions. Most had 1 on the top (called a “unit fraction”), and more complex fractions (such as “4/7”) had to be represented by adding up several unit fractions.

9Bowling

Egyptians played a game very similar to modern-day bowling.

Archaeologist William Matthews Flinders Petrie found a child’s grave containing crude pins and small marbles and concluded it might have related to bowling, but there was no proof that they were used for such a purpose. More solid evidence can be found in a room near a residential area from the second century. It featured several balls and a lane with a hole in the middle. Some of the balls could fit through the center hole, while others were far too big.

Archaeologists believe it was a competitive game; one person tried to bowl the smaller ball into the hole, while someone on the other side of the lane tried to knock the ball off-course with the larger ones.

8Alphabets

Of course, we don’t use any Egyptian alphabets today, but the idea of a phonetic alphabet (where each symbol represents a sound rather than a whole word) came from Egypt.

Egyptian hieroglyphs used a symbol for each word, but 24 uniliuteral signs were phonetic to pronounce loanwords and foreign words. Due to the complex nature of hieroglyphs, people had to be trained to use them, so Semitic people within Egypt crafted a 22-letter alphabet based on the uniliteral signs. It’s now known as the Proto-Sinaitic alphabet. It was wholly phonetic, with each letter used to construct a larger word—like our own alphabet.

It caught on with Egypt’s neighbors, including the Phoenicians. The Phoenicians would make it their own with an alphabet, simply called the Phoenician Alphabet, which spread around the Near East and Greece through trading. This acted as the foundation for alphabets around the world.

7Paper and Writing

While the Egyptians didn’t discover the paper we use today, papyrus was a huge step up from carving words into stone, both in terms of ease of writing and being lighter to carry around. The Egyptians discovered papyrus (and the reed pen, so they could actually write on it) in 3000 BC. Still, it would take until 500 BC for papyrus to catch hold in the Mediterranean and West Asia. Papyrus would become one of Egypt’s best exports; it was very expensive, and the secrets on how it was made were heavily guarded.

Inspired by Egypt’s work, Europe would eventually move on to parchment. China would invent paper in 100 BC using mulberry bark and hemp rags, using a method that would evolve into today’s technology. While Egypt’s grand invention fell out of use, it gave the world the idea of moving away from stone tablets.

6Wigs

The Ancient Egyptians had a little bit of a dilemma. They didn’t like to have a full head of hair under the heat of the Sun, but they also didn’t want to go totally bald due to both the head skin being roasted by the Sun’s rays and for personal fashion reasons. They needed a temporary head of hair that didn’t trap heat as much as normal hair did but still looked good. The answer, of course, was the wig.

Keeping the heat away wasn’t the only reason the Egyptians adopted the wig. It also protected against head lice. As for what the wigs were made from, the rich and influential could afford to wear wigs made from the real thing—hair, either from themselves or someone else.

5Recorded Medicine

People were treating wounds with all kinds of herbs and ground-up animal parts for a long time. Due to their new and convenient writing methods, however, the Egyptians produced some of the oldest logs we’ve found of both medical procedures and medicine recipes. So far, we’ve found nine separate papyrus logs that talk about how the Egyptians performed their medicine.

One of them, the Edwin Smith papyrus, discusses myriad different wounds on each part of the body and their treatments. It’s unique, as it’s the first historical medical description that doesn’t rely on supernatural or magical forces to treat the wounds, making it scientifically sound—at least, as sound as Egyptian science was at the time. If you’d like to read some of their methods yourself, you can read a translation of the Edwin Smith scroll online.

4Surgery

To go with their new-fangled recorded medicine, the Egyptians hold the title for the civilization with the earliest discovered surgical tools. They were found within the Tomb of Qar, known as “the Physician of the palace and keeper of the secrets of the king.” Kept next to Qar’s head were several bronze surgical tools, each of which sported a hole as if intended to be hung up on a hook.

Of course, given how Egyptians were now writing down their methods and procedures, we can also see written logs of surgery. They detail the removal of cysts and tumors, but more major surgeries that are performed today were probably never performed back then. Given how it was in the very early days of human biology study and anesthetics were still very crude, it’s easy to imagine why.

3Calendar

How we divide the day into hours and minutes and the structure and length of the yearly calendar owe much to pioneering developments in ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt was run according to three different calendars. The first was a lunar calendar based on 12 lunar months, each of which began on the first day in which the old moon crescent was no longer visible in the East at dawn. This calendar was used for religious festivals.

The second calendar, used for administrative purposes, was based on the observation that there were usually 365 days between the heliacal rising of Serpet. This civil calendar was split into twelve months of 30 days with an additional five epagomenal days attached at the end of the year. These five days became a festival because it was thought to be unlucky to work during that time. A third calendar, which dates back at least to the 4th century BC, was used to match the lunar cycle to the civil year. It was based on 25 civil years, which was approximately equal to 309 lunar months.

2Toothpaste

Methods of keeping the teeth clean of detritus have been around for a while, but the Egyptians invented the first recorded toothpaste specifically created and reported to help oral health. Some Egyptian tombs were even found with toothbrushes within, which consisted of a twig frayed on one end.

Found in papyrus documents, the recipe for an Egyptian-style toothpaste is a drachma (1/100 of an ounce) of rock salt, two drachmas of mint, a drachma of the dried iris flower, and some pepper. A dentist called Heinz Neuman gave this recipe a shot and said that while it made his gums bleed, his mouth definitely felt cleaner afterward.

1Glass

While glass can be found naturally formed around the world, the first proof that people were creating and using glass in crafts can be found back in 3500 BC, in both the Egyptian and the Mesopotamian civilizations, mainly in the form of small glass beads.

The Egyptians would go on to discover an efficient way of making vases, by plunging compacted sand molds into molten glass and rolling the result onto a cooled slab. The earliest Egyptian vases found were dedicated to Pharaoh Thoutmosis III, dating to around 1500 BC. Ancient Egyptians also managed to master the art of making red glass, which was very hard to do due to the glass having to be fired in an environment without oxygen.

Both the Egyptians and the Mesopotamians would spread their methods through trade and conquer, inspiring the Romans to take up the craft.

The idea that life often mirrors art is one with which many of us are familiar. In most cases, these parallels between fact and fiction feel like harmless fun. There are times, however, in which the blurred line between the two can start to feel unsettling, as though there was more at play than simple coincidence.

From novels that proved eerily prophetic to famous faces who met their end in uncannily familiar ways, here are some of the most tragic examples of life imitating art.

10 Carrie Fisher And The Fate of Princess Leia

We picture her with cinnamon bun hair, a flowing white gown, and a blaster gun in hand. Indeed, actress and writer Carrie Fisher is best remembered as the woman who breathed life into the iconic Star Wars heroine, Princess Leia.

Fisher experienced a medical emergency on a flight from London to Los Angeles in late 2016. After four days in a coma, she sadly died at age 60. Shortly before her death, Fisher had finished filming scenes for Star Wars: Episode VIII—The Last Jedi, her fifth official outing as Leia.

Though having the opportunity to see her once again on the big screen was welcomed by many as a touching tribute, others—including Fisher’s own brother—found certain scenes hard to swallow. He pointed out the uncomfortable irony that Episode VIII saw Leia falling into a coma, a sequence the actress had filmed mere months before suffering the same fate in real life.^[1]

Though Fisher tragically never regained consciousness, her fictional counterpart lived to fight another day. As such, Fisher’s legacy will live on through the character and the scenes she had already completed. It is a bittersweet silver lining that does not quite take the sting out of her untimely loss.

9 The Disappearance Of Agatha Christie

Agatha Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her world-famous crime stories have sold more than a billion copies in English and a further billion copies in translation. So, it is certainly fair to say that she knew a thing or two about penning a compelling mystery.

However, it was her own personal affairs that had the public gripped in December 1926. In an incident that could have been lifted right from one of her books, Christie disappeared without notice.

Her uncharacteristic and unexplained absence quickly made headlines, with thousands of volunteers scouring the country in search of clues. When her car was found abandoned near a quarry, her coat and ID discarded inside, many feared the worst. When it then emerged that her husband had recently announced plans to leave her for another woman, suspicion fell on him.^[2]

Christie would eventually be found alive, 11 days after first disappearing. But it was not exactly a happy ending. Somewhat disturbingly, she had checked into a hotel using the name of her husband’s new lover and claimed to remember nothing of the ordeal.

Doctors would diagnose concussion and amnesia, and the author would speak little of the difficult period again. New theories suggest that she had contemplated suicide and hid herself away in a bout of religion-fueled shame.

The more commonly held belief is that the stress of her husband’s betrayal added to her existing depression over the loss of her mother. The combination of the two proved to be too much and triggered a mental breakdown.

8 Mary Shelley And Her Husband’s Drowning

Mary Shelley is the author of the revered horror novel Frankenstein. Another of her major works, Mathilda, was not released until years after her death because its publication was suppressed by her father. Due to its gothic exploration of an incestuous infatuation, he feared that readers would think it was autobiographical.

In the novella, there is a scene which sees the titular heroine rushing toward the sea. She is distressed by the news that someone she loves may have drowned, but she would arrive too late to save him.^[3]

A couple of years after it was written, Shelley would find herself mirroring her character’s actions when her own husband met a similar watery end. Shelley later commented on the uncanny comparisons between the two incidents. She described how she identified with her tragic heroine’s plight and had come to consider the book “prophetic.”

7 H.G. Wells And The Atom Bomb

History best remembers H.G. Wells as the author of enduring sci-fi classics such as The War of the Worlds, The Time Machine, and The Invisible Man. As Wells was a pioneer of the genre, his writing was often considered ahead of its time, with prescient ideas and technologies that would later become reality.

One of his most disturbingly accurate predictions appeared in his 1914 novel, The World Set Free. He described a weapon of unprecedented power that would be dropped from planes to unleash untold suffering on the world below. He called it the “atomic bomb.”

Three decades later, a frighteningly similar nuclear weapon did indeed emerge and was even given the same name. When the bomb was unleashed upon Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even those involved in its development were said to be disturbed by the sheer scale of misery that it caused. Perhaps things would have turned out differently had they paid closer attention to the moral warnings that had been present in Wells’s fiction.^[4]

6 A Famous Dog’s Grisly End

The 1989 comedy-action film K-9 is about a cop and his faithful furry companion. The movie’s climax sees the dog shot while trying to apprehend a criminal. Though greatly injured, he manages to pull through, and they all live happily ever after.

In real life, things worked out considerably less well. Koton, the four-legged star of the film, was an actual police dog away from the big screen. He had a successful career and was responsible for more than 24 arrests.

Heartbreakingly, just like his character before him, Koton was shot in 1991 while pursuing a suspect. Unlike his fictional counterpart, he sadly didn’t make it.^[5]

5 The Death Of Paul Walker

US actor Paul Walker is best known for his long-running role in the big-budget The Fast and the Furious franchise. The films are high-octane action flicks, full of high-speed car chases and dramatic stunt sequences.

It is this fact that made his death in 2013 all the more difficult for his fans and loved ones to accept. At age 40, Walker was killed in a car crash when the Porsche driven by his friend collided with a lamppost and became engulfed in flames.

Production of the seventh film in the series was already well underway at the time of his passing. Filmmakers decided to use existing footage of the star to craft a suitable outcome for his character. This was deemed an appropriate and sensitive way to preserve the actor’s memory.^[6]

4 Eva Cassidy And ‘Fields Of Gold’

Given the widespread admiration that exists for Eva Cassidy now, it is hard to believe that she was virtually unknown at the time of her death from melanoma in 1996. Then just 33 years old, she had been a regular on the local music scene in Washington DC.

But with most of her recordings unreleased, international audiences were still largely unaware of her. These various unheard tracks were compiled and released posthumously, which led to extensive radio play, platinum sales, and a whole new level of appreciation for the tragic star.

Shortly before her death, however, Cassidy had released Live at Blues Alley, a collection of intimate recordings. It would prove to be the last release made during her lifetime. This album included her version of “Fields of Gold.” Originally by Sting, it is a track that has endured as one of her most recognizable and beloved songs.^[7]

The touching irony of the final verse—with lyrics that speak of being remembered after you are gone—was not lost on many. This sentiment took on a whole new meaning when the singer was dead mere months after the song’s release. Thanks to the music she left behind, Cassidy has at least been remembered fondly, just as the song wished for.

3 Bill Turnbull And Stand Up To Cancer

Bill Turnbull is a journalist and broadcaster and a familiar face on UK television. Fans of The Great British Bake Off from around the world may also recognize him from his stint in the famous tent as part of a charity special.

The episode, which first aired in early 2018, was produced in aid of Stand Up to Cancer (SU2C). The aim was to raise both awareness about the importance of getting health checks and funds to help improve treatment and survival rates.

In a twist of painful irony, Turnbull was diagnosed with prostate cancer while filming was taking place. Though he underwent several rounds of chemotherapy to slow the disease’s spread, he subsequently announced that his case is terminal. Facing the situation with dignity, he has used his story as a means to further drive home the importance of regular health screening.^[8]

2 J.K. Rowling And The Loss Of Her Mother

J.K. Rowling is best known as the author behind the Harry Potter series. Rowling had been working on the first book for around six months when her mother died from multiple sclerosis. She was just 45 years old and completely unaware of the fame and fortune that awaited her daughter.

At this time, with the book still in an early draft form, the eponymous boy wizard had already been written as an orphan. Suddenly finding herself without parental ties of her own, however, Rowling was able to identify with her fictional hero’s sadness on a much greater level.

This clearer understanding of the grief she had written for him was so profound that it prompted Rowling to rework the scenes concerning his loss. His parents’ deaths were no longer glossed over. Instead, they were imbued with a heavy dose of poignancy and emotional weight.

As Rowling said herself, “Everything deepened and darkened.”^[9] Though this was to the benefit of the story, it should not be forgotten that Rowling had to endure Harry’s pain firsthand to gain this heartfelt insight.

1 The Sinking Of The Titanic

Morgan Robertson’s 1898 novella, Futility (aka The Wreck of the Titan), was about a vast, luxurious ocean liner that struck an iceberg and sank, killing almost everyone on board.

Sound familiar?

Yes, indeed, the sinking of the Titanic is another example of a horrific real-life event that was eerily foretold in fiction. The book was published 14 years before the Titanic’s doomed voyage, but the name and fate of the two ships were not the only striking similarities.

It is little wonder that many suspected Robertson of clairvoyance once you start delving into the many unnerving parallels. These include the size and capacity of the two vessels as well as intricate, finer details such as the number of lifeboats present.^[10]

Even the time and date of each ship’s impact with the iceberg are nigh on identical. Prophecy? Coincidence? Whatever the case may be, it is one of the most tragic cases of life imitating art the world has yet seen.

Callum McLaughlin is a freelance writer based in Scotland. He writes content on a variety of subjects for blogs, websites, and magazines. He can be found on Twitter, where he’ll invariably be chatting about books, cats, and tea.

Ancient Rome holds a mythic place in our imaginations. It’s the land of historical epics like Ben-Hur and Gladiator, where men in golden armor ride chariots and emperors are fed grapes in reclining chairs.

Real life in Rome, though, was quite a bit less glamorous. In a time before modern sanitation and medicine, getting through an average day was a difficult task—and far more disgusting than you could ever imagine.

10 People Washed Their Mouths Out With Urine

In ancient Rome, pee was such big business that the government had special taxes in place just for urine sales. There were people who made their living just from collecting urine. Some would gather it at public urinals. Others went door-to-door with a big vat and asked people to fill it up.

The ways they used it are the last ones you’d expect. For example, they’d clean their clothes in pee. Workers would fill a tub full of clothing and pee, and then one poor soul would be sent in to stomp all over the clothing to wash it out.

Which is nothing compared to how they cleaned their teeth. In some areas, people used urine as a mouthwash, which they claimed kept their teeth shining white. In fact, there’s a Roman poem that survives today in which a poet mocks his clean-toothed enemy by saying, “The fact that your teeth are so polished just shows you’re the more full of piss.”

9 You Shared a Sponge After Pooping

Rome has been praised for its advances in plumbing. Their cities had public toilets and full sewage systems, something that later societies wouldn’t share for centuries. That might sound like a tragic loss of an advanced technology, but as it turns out, there was a pretty good reason nobody else used Roman plumbing.

The public toilets were disgusting. Archaeologists believe they were rarely, if ever, cleaned because they have been found to be filled with parasites. In fact, Romans going to the bathroom would carry special combs designed to shave out lice.

The worst part came when you finished. Each public toilet, which was shared with dozens of other people, would have a single sponge on a stick that you used to wipe yourself. The sponge would never get cleaned—and you shared it with everybody else there.

8 Toilets Regularly Exploded

When you entered a Roman toilet, there was a very real risk you would die.

The first problem was that creatures living in the sewage system would crawl up and bite people while they did their business. Worse than that, though, was the methane buildup—which sometimes got so bad that it would ignite and explode underneath you.

Toilets were so dangerous that people resorted to magic to try to stay alive. Magical spells meant to keep demons at bay have been found on the walls of bathrooms. Some, though, came pre-equipped with statues of Fortuna, the goddess of luck, guarding them. People would pray to Fortuna before stepping inside.

7 Gladiator Blood Was Used As Medicine

Roman medicine also had its fair share of eccentricities.

Several Roman authors report people gathering the blood of dead gladiators and selling it as a medicine. The Romans apparently believed that gladiator blood had the power to cure epilepsy and would drink it as a cure. And that was just the civilized approach—others would pull out the gladiators’ livers and eat them raw.

This was so popular that when Rome banned gladiatorial combat, people kept the treatment going by drinking the blood of decapitated prisoners. Strangely, some Roman physicians actually report that this treatment worked. They claim to have seen people who drank human blood recover from their epileptic fits.

6 Women Rubbed Dead Skin Cells Of Gladiators On Their Faces

The gladiators who lost became medicine for epileptics while the winners became aphrodisiacs. In Roman times, soap was hard to come by, so athletes cleaned themselves by covering their bodies in oil and scraping the dead skin cells off with a tool called a strigil.

Usually, the dead skin cells were just discarded—but not if you were a gladiator. Their sweat and skin scrapings were put into a bottle and sold to women as an aphrodisiac. Often, this was worked into a facial cream. Women would rub the cream all over their faces, hoping the dead skin cells of a gladiator would make them irresistible to men.

5 Pompeii Was Filled With Obscene Art

The volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii left it wonderfully preserved for archaeologists. When they got their first look at it, though, the archaeologists found things that were so obscene that they hid them from public view.

Pompeii was filled with art that was so filthy that it was locked in a secret room for hundreds of years before anyone was allowed to look at it. The town was full of the craziest erotic artwork you’ll ever see—for example, the statue of Pan sexually assaulting a goat.

On top of that, the town was filled with prostitutes, which gave even the street tiles their own special little touch of obscenity. To this day, you can walk through Pompeii and see a sight Romans would enjoy every day—a penis carved into the road with the tip pointing the way to the nearest brothel.

4 Dangerous Places Had Drawings Of Penises For Good Luck

Penises were pretty popular in Rome. They didn’t share our skittishness toward the male member. Instead, they displayed them proudly. Sometimes, they even wore them around their necks.

It was a fairly common Roman fashion choice for boys to walk around wearing copper penises on necklaces. This was about more than looking good. According to Roman writings, these would “prevent harm from coming” to the people who wore them.

They didn’t stop there, either. Good luck penises were also drawn on dangerous places to keep travelers safe. Sharp curves and rickety bridges in Rome often had a penis drawn on them to grant good luck to every passerby.

3 Romans Hold The First Recorded Mooning

Rome holds the unique distinction of recording the first mooning in history. Flavius Josephus, a Jewish priest, wrote the first description of a mooning while describing a riot in Jerusalem.

During Passover, Roman soldiers were sent to stand outside of Jerusalem to keep watch in case the people revolted. They were meant to keep the peace, but one soldier did a little bit more. In Josephus’s own words, the soldier lifted “up the back of his garments, turned his face away, and with his bottom to them, crouched in a shameless way and released at them a foul-smelling sound where they were offering sacrifice.”

The Jews were furious. First, they demanded that the soldier be punished, and then they started hurtling rocks at the Roman soldiers. Soon a full-on riot broke out in Jerusalem—and a gesture that would live on for thousands of years was born.

2 Romans Vomited So They Could Keep Eating

Romans took excess to new levels. According to Seneca, Romans at banquets would eat until they couldn’t anymore—and then vomit so that they could keep eating.

Some people threw up into bowls that they kept around the table, but others didn’t let themselves get so caught up in the formalities. In some homes, people would just throw up right there on the floor and go back to eating.

The slaves are the people you really need to feel sorry for, though. Their jobs were terrible. In the words of Seneca: “When we recline at a banquet, one [slave] wipes up the spittle; another, situated beneath, collects the leavings [vomit] of the drunks.”

1 Charioteers Drank An Energy Drink Made Of Goat Dung

Romans didn’t have Band-Aids, so they found another way to patch up wounds. According to Pliny the Elder, people in Rome patched up their scrapes and wounds with goat dung. Pliny wrote that the best goat dung was collected during the spring and dried but that fresh goat dung would do the trick “in an emergency.”

That’s an attractive image, but it’s hardly the worst way Romans used goat dung. Charioteers drank it for energy. They either boiled goat dung in vinegar or ground it into a power and mixed it into their drinks. They drank it for a little boost when they were exhausted.

This wasn’t even a poor man’s solution. According to Pliny, nobody loved to drink goat dung more than Emperor Nero himself.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to . His writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion’s StarWipe and Cracked.com. His website is regularly updated with everything he writes.

Whether we refer to the act of living or to all sentient beings in this world, life has always been a difficult concept for humans to understand. Even when life has preceded us on this planet for 3.5 billion years—and we ourselves have roamed Earth for plenty of millennia—there are many questions about it that we still cannot answer. What is the meaning of life? Is there life after death? These, among many others, are typical questions of any philosophical debate, questions as old as humankind itself.^[1]

But then we have strange questions, unconventional doubts about life that do not usually come to our minds on a normal day. Have you ever wondered what Earth would be like if it were devoid of all life? Then this article is for you. If not, keep reading anyway; some of the answers, or the questions themselves, exposed here will certainly not leave you indifferent.

10 How Much Life Has Ever Existed?

Currently, the human population is slowly approaching eight billion people. That is certainly quite a number, but it does not even compare with the 100 trillion ants under our feet. And it is estimated that, at any given time, there are five nonillion bacteria in the world—that’s a “5” followed by 30 zeros. There is no doubt that there are so many living organisms on Earth that trying to count them all would be an unachievable task. And again, all this is just about the currently existing life-forms. But what about all the life that has existed in the past?

Determining how many creatures could have inhabited Earth throughout the history of the planet is extremely difficult. It is believed that complex life has been around in this world for at least 570 million years. And the fossils we have managed to recover are a minimum percentage compared to the prehistoric remains that are either out of our reach or have been destroyed by geological processes. But using their ingenuity, scientists have come up with a correlation between the number of fossils and the currently known species to estimate the total of life that has ever existed. Today, the experts are pretty convinced that 99.9 percent of all species on Earth are extinct.

This number is understandable, considering that the Earth’s biosphere has suffered five mass extinctions during the last 400 million years. On average, more than 80 percent of all living beings were erased from the face of the Earth in each of these five events. And a significant part of the scientific community believes that today, we are facing a sixth mass extinction. Estimates say that species disappear 100 times faster today than before our existence, and in the last 50 years, humans have eliminated 60 percent of animal life. So, unfortunately for us, death is much more common than life in this world.^[2]

9 Is Life On Earth Of Alien Origin?

Today, most scientists are sure that all life on Earth comes from a common ancestor. This primal being would have been nothing more than a unicellular organism, created by random chemical reactions in the early Earth. However, what scientists do not yet understand is exactly how these processes took place. And all their attempts to replicate the origin of life have failed so far. Perhaps the answer to this mystery could be found in a theory called lithopanspermia.

The theory of panspermia suggests that early life-forms were brought to Earth from somewhere else in the universe, such as nearby planets. Within the same idea, lithopanspermia states that rocky fragments of another world containing microbial life were ejected into space after some kind of planetary impact. Millions of years later, those rocks reached Earth, and the life they carried inside began its evolutionary cycle here. The concept behind panspermia appeared several centuries ago in France, and since then, it has been an object of scientific study, although other theories generate more interest nowadays.

Nevertheless, there are several indications supporting the possibility that lithopanspermia really occurred. Using collision simulations, researchers at Pennsylvania State University have concluded that it is statistically possible that a space rock containing microbes can travel from one planet to another by ejection.^[3] Of course, there is the problem that space is too hostile to allow the survival of life, due to factors such as radiation and extreme temperatures. But we know that there are multiple bacterial species capable of resisting the harshest environments, from the hottest places on Earth to the nothingness of outer space.

In addition, a recent study shows that the main elements that make up life on Earth are common in stars, existing more abundantly toward the center of our galaxy than in our planetary region. In short, the matter we are formed from literally comes from another region of the universe. So life may not be so special across the cosmos after all.

8 Is It Possible To Be Dead And Alive At The Same Time?

The answer to this question has nothing to do with some kind of quantum theory, where someone can be in two states at the same time. Nor does it refer to whether we can be like zombies, the classic description of the “living dead.” We can say that, yes, some creatures seem to be alive and dead at the same time. But everything has to do with the inability of scientists to agree on what exactly differentiates a living being from dead matter.

Some scientists understood that all life-forms must share immutable similarities in their nature and behavior. So in 1997, they proposed a list of seven conditions that something must meet to be considered a living being. Every living organism must have a complex chemical composition and be made up of basic structures called cells. It must be able to grow, reproduce, and respond to external stimuli. The creature must also have a metabolism to produce its own energy and be able to adapt to the environment.

Now let’s consider the case of viruses. Generally, and even from the scientific point of view, viruses are considered to be biological entities—that is, they are living beings. A virus has complex genetic material inside and definitely adapts to the environment. But a virus cannot grow or produce its own energy. (It feeds on the energy already produced by its host.) It also does not reproduce but replicates itself using the cells of the host. In fact, a virus is not even made of a single cell, and it remains to be seen if it responds immediately to external stimuli.^[4] So we know that a virus is alive, but it does not meet most of the requirements to be alive, sharing more similarities with a machine instead.

It happens that many inert objects partially fulfill several of those conditions, too. Even fire could once have become a tricky phenomenon when it came to differentiating it from a true living being. As our knowledge of the elemental processes of life increases, we will be able to make the difference clearer.

7 How Much Does All Life Weigh?

Compared to the rest of our solar system, anyone who sees the Earth from space can quickly notice that it is a planet covered in life. More than 30 percent of the continents of our world are covered by green vegetation. This, along with the blue of the oceans, makes Earth look like a living oasis in the midst of emptiness. But then one might wonder what the real, physical weight that life exerts on our planet is. For obvious reasons, until recently, it was very difficult to estimate the total mass of life on Earth. But studies conducted in 2018 show that even all living creatures put together are negligibly small in comparison to the vastness of our world.

In May 2018, American scientists published a report containing measurements of the mass of all carbon-based life on Earth.^[5] Since all known life-forms are carbon-based, and carbon is an abundant element inside every living being, using it to estimate the total biomass seems appropriate. The results showed that in total, life on this planet weighs at least 550 gigatons of carbon, or, to simplify, 550 billion tons. Considering that the whole Earth weighs approximately 6.57 billion gigatons, that means that all living beings combined account for about one ten-millionth of the total mass of the planet.

As we can see, living nature is just a tiny portion of everything that makes our world. In this estimate, plant life represents more than 80 percent of the total biomass. Meanwhile, humans only represent 0.01 percent among all life. This is surprising, considering that our cities and buildings cover at least three percent of the Earth’s land surface, a huge proportion compared to the effect of other species. That means that although we are few, we are good at what we do, whether it’s something good or bad.

6 Is The Universe Itself Alive?

There are several philosophical theories that point out that the universe is in itself a living entity. For example, hylozoism holds that all matter is alive, while panpsychism is the idea that every object in the cosmos has a certain degree of consciousness. Over time, these theories were left aside, after the acceptance of new concepts such as evolutionism. But now, new discoveries and theories have allowed the idea of a sentient universe to gather strength again.

First, we have the case of some experts who have hypothesized about how consciousness could be an intrinsic part of any existing structure.^[6] British physicist Roger Penrose theorized that human consciousness is the product of quantum processes within small regions of our brain cells. Taking this into account, astrophysicist Bernard Haisch conceived the possibility that “quantum fields”—the elementary structures that make up the universe—are capable of producing consciousness. In other words, any structure in the universe (be it a person or a star) can be sentient, since quantum properties are part of its own nature.

On the other hand, both its very structure and behavior serve as possible evidence that the cosmos really is a thinking entity. According to a 2005 study, the intricate structure of the material universe looks strikingly similar to the neural network in our brains. In addition, it has been known for a long time that the structure of an atom is similar—even in proportional distances—to the planetary arrangement of our solar system. And as if that were not enough, new studies show that certain stars make unexpected corrections in their orbits across the galaxy. More information will be needed to confirm if the latter behavior is common in the rest of the universe, but the idea of a living cosmos is captivating science now more than ever.

5 Is It The Same To Die As To Stop Living?

The short answer is no, it is not the same. Here comes the long answer: The concept of death has constantly changed over the centuries, becoming more accurate as our knowledge and technologies advance. For example, in the 19th century, a person was pronounced dead after simply ceasing to breathe. A hundred years ago, someone was officially dead once their heart stopped beating. And today, we believe that death occurs when our bodies suffer irreversible cell damage—that is, our vital functions can no longer be reactivated.

But even after a person dies and their body begins to decompose, that does not mean he or she is entirely dead. In fact, new research indicates that some processes occurring in a corpse challenge our understanding of death. A group of American and European scientists discovered in 2017 that after certain animals die, many of their cells are still fighting to survive. And they not only remain alive for days after death, but in some types of cells, their activity increases.

Everything points to the fact that, in an attempt to repair themselves, the cells in a dead body accelerate the process by which they transform DNA into instructions to make new proteins. And stem cells in particular are able to continue living not for hours or days but for weeks after the death of the creature. It is understandable if we take into account that every animal is a being composed of multiple populations of different cells. For this reason, some cells are more resilient than others, even after the apparent death of the body. And the same researchers state that this behavior occurs in all multicellular beings, including us.^[7] So it is clear that the line between life and death is much more blurred than we thought.

4 Why Is Life So Diverse?

So far, scientists have discovered and studied nearly two million different living species. Among these, humans are part of a handful of 5,000 known species of mammals. In comparison, we know 360,000 species of plants and one million different types of insects. However, our knowledge about Earth’s biodiversity is very limited, and today, the scientific community believes there could be up to two billion life-forms on this planet. Knowing this and that, as previously mentioned, at this point, almost all life on Earth is extinct, one cannot help but wonder, why is there so much diversity of living beings?

We can say that life has a tendency to continue to multiply, no matter what, even if that means to radically change its nature. Since the emergence of life, the Earth has undergone multiple mass extinctions, hundreds of minor ice ages, and constant fluctuations in the sea level (on the order of hundreds of meters). Yet here we are, and studies indicate that in our time, biodiversity has expanded more than ever, at an exponential scale.

This is primarily due to the fact that every time a cataclysm erases much of life on the planet, survivors tend to adapt to the new environment, resulting in new species.^[8] A clear example is the explosive increase of mammal species after the Cretaceous extinction event, 66 million years ago. It is also well-known that in order for an ecosystem to survive, its different life-forms will have to specialize and help each other. The air we breathe and the food we eat, for example, are conditioned for our consumption thanks to the work of other living beings such as plants and insects. Even forests are more resistant to disasters when they are composed of multiple tree species. So in a few words, try to erase life, and it will grow even more instead.

3 Which Organisms Have The Shortest And The Longest Life Spans?

As we have just seen, life-forms on Earth are so diverse that the concept of a long life varies between species. What can be synonymous with longevity for one creature is only a fleeting moment in time for another. So in the following point, it will be more appropriate if we see some life spans of organisms very different from each other.

Let’s start by looking at the life spans of bacteria. As they do not grow in the way other living beings do, it is difficult to determine the age of a bacterium. But we do have a fairly precise estimate of its reproduction, the generation time. This term refers to the time that passes before a cell multiplies. If we presume that a bacterial population remains stable over time, then a bacterium will live at least as long as its generation time. In this case, the shortest-lived bacterium is the microbe Clostridium perfringens. It is estimated that its generation time is just 6.3 minutes. In the time it takes you to read four points of this list, a Clostridium perfringens has already lived and died.

In the animal world, the mayfly Dolania americana is surely one of the animals that lives the least. If we only consider the adult stage of its life in which the insect is fully developed, D. americana emerges, reproduces, and dies in 30 minutes or less. On the other hand, a clam found in Iceland in 2006 had lived for 507 years and could have lived longer if it hadn’t been killed as a result of being collected.^[9]

Of course, we can’t leave out plants, which we know are among the most perdurable beings in the world. In fact, the oldest-known individual tree is a bristlecone pine from California that is more than 5,060 years old. When the humans of antiquity were beginning to develop writing, this tree was a youngling in its early years. On the other hand, the shortest-lived plants are believed to be the so-called ephemeral plants. Among these, plants of the genus Boerhavia can complete their entire life cycle in less than four weeks.

2 What Would The Earth Be Like If Life Did Not Exist?

So it is true that, in quantitative terms, life is a tiny part of what makes our planet. But it’s one thing to measure living beings according to their mass or volume and quite another to determine the effects these beings produce on Earth. So, what would happen to the Earth if life did not exist? Well, we can be pretty sure that without life, our good blue planet would no longer be good or blue.

The Earth’s atmosphere is 21 percent oxygen, an essential element for life-forms like us. But oxygen is an unstable gas that tends to combine quickly with other elements. Plant life on the surface is what replenishes the atmosphere with oxygen, filtering the gas constantly. If life on Earth did not exist, only small traces of oxygen would remain in the environment, while the atmosphere would be mostly composed of carbon dioxide. By this process, the temperature on the Earth’s surface would end up rising drastically.

In turn, higher temperatures would cause the melting of the polar ice caps and the subsequent rise in the sea level by tens of meters. Without life on the planet, the landmasses would suffer rapid erosion, and the mountainous regions would be seriously affected. After a long time, it is believed that the Earth’s temperature would rise to at least 290 degrees Celsius (554 °F). At this point, the oceans would end up boiling, leaving the planet completely uninhabitable. In a period of millions of years, a thick layer of clouds would cover the planet, aggravating the greenhouse effect and making the Earth look more like Venus.^[10] If this sounds crazy, scientists believe that Venus—the same planet that today is pretty much Hell—once had liquid water and a pleasant temperature on its surface.

1 When Do We Start To Die?

The aging process occurs, in broad terms, because the number of new cells in our bodies is not enough to replace the number of cells that are dying. So when too many cells have died or no longer function, and therefore our organs can no longer function properly, we finally die. In short, we do not begin to age and die as long as our body can maintain a balance in the vitality of its cells. And even in fewer words, death happens when aging becomes too much for us. But then, when do we begin to age?

Certain literary authors and prominent figures have said over time that we begin to die from the moment we are born. That may be a thought-provoking reflection (and a good phrase, of course), but science would say that is not entirely true. For a child to become an adult, countless billions or even trillions of body cells will have to be formed, multiplied, and replaced in the meantime. And during such time, the person does not show tangible signs of aging but becomes more capable both physically and mentally.

In fact, we now know that until around the age of 25, the new cells outnumber or at least equal the number of cells that die in the body.^[11] It is from the age of 25 that the cells begin to die faster than they can regenerate, thus causing our aging. In addition, studies show that at the age of 24, the brain also starts to lose cognitive speed. So aging, the process that eventually worsens to an unsustainable degree and causes our death, begins in our mid-twenties.

Economy student, passionate about Graphic Design, an avid enthusiast of the art of writing.

We all like to try and guess what the future will look like. It’s human nature to dream of the future, after all. So it shouldn’t be surprising that throughout the 20th century people were already looking to the 2000s and dreaming of what life would be like in the next millennium.

We’ve collected together ten of the most interesting—and funny—predictions of what modern life would look like. Sometimes they were surprisingly close to the mark, even scarily so. Most of the time, though, they were hilariously wrong.

See Also: 10 Ancient Predictions That Came True

10 A Woman May Even Be US President

In the 1950s, a group of experts took to the papers to tell people what life would look like in the year 2000. Some of their guesses were surprisingly accurate, such as the rise of the US as the world’s dominant power and the creation of the International Space Station. On the subject of women, though, they missed the mark somewhat.

According to them, the woman of the year 2000 would be six feet tall and wear a size 11 shoe, with “shoulders like a wrestler and muscles like a truck driver.” She would be doing the same work as men, so she would naturally have to conform to the same standards. She would have short, cropped hair and would wear practical clothing—only ‘going frilly’ after dark, as they put it.

Because science would have perfected a balanced ration of vitamins, proteins and minerals by the year 2000, her proportions would be “perfect, though Amazonian.” She would play the same sports that men do and would probably compete against them in football, baseball and wrestling.

They even thought she might be presidential material!^[1]

9 Schools Would Be Run By Robots

A series of pictures recently surfaced on a Japanese forum. Taken from a Showa-era newspaper, they were an attempt to predict what Japan would look like in 2011. Many of the scenes look like they’ve come straight out of 1950s science fiction comics.

In one of the images, a camera and some water jets create an automated fire extinguisher system, technology that is widespread today. In another, people stand around in spacesuits staring at screens that seem to show in-progress space exploration. In the distance is an elevated stadium which looks like a science fiction habitation biome, all things which are not common in the modern world. Beside it, however, aircraft are taking off vertically and the roofs of skyscrapers are covered in vegetation: these technologies have existed for years.

Perhaps the most disturbing scenes, though, are to be found in the picture of a 2011 classroom. In it, the teacher has been replaced by a slideshow showing a math question. The children have computers on their desks to input the correct answer: if they don’t, they are beaten by a robot, which is effectively a big club on wheels. In the corner, a child grins as it is restrained by some kind of time-out robot. Everything looks very clean though, so at least there’s that.^[2]

8Everything Would Be Plastic

Here is an 8-minute video from 1957 which explores a house of the future. Fortunately for us, our modern homes look nothing like it. For starters, everything is plastic. Yes, everything. The floors, the walls, the ceilings, the countertops and the windows—all plastic, as are the cups and plates.

In the kitchen, the dishes are cleaned by a retractable dishwasher which uses ultra-sonic waves while doubling as storage space. The cooking range, meanwhile, isn’t gas. It isn’t even electric: it uses radiation waves, though it doesn’t look like there’s a protective screen. Tasty.

The narrator claims the bathroom contains objects of ‘pure fantasy’. These turn out to be an electric toothbrush and an electric razor, which we’d hardly bat an eyelid at today. The main entertainment in the living room is a built-in stereo system, something so phenomenally outdated that it’s almost laughable.

There is a scene, however, where one of the actors is speaking to her friend over the phone while getting ready to go out, without having to hold the telephone to her ear—so they were right about loudspeaker at least.^[3]

7 We Would Have Pocket Computers

In 1977, a group of middle schoolers wrote to their local newspaper with their predictions of what life would be like in the year 2000. Most of their answers were surprisingly sensible, predicting the rise of things like electric cars and environmental issues while hoping for lower taxes and a better crime rate. They were clearly a product of their age: many expressed fears of a fuel shortage or another Great Depression.

A couple of their guesses, though, were much wilder. Marty Bohen said that by 2000 we’d all be living in round buildings. All workers would be robots and everyone would have a robot maid, and a button which would bring them anything they wanted. It all seems rather far-fetched until he casually slips in a prediction that we will have pocket computers containing everything we can name. With the rise of smartphones since 2007, he seems to have guessed that one perfectly.

John Vecchione thought that the year 2000 would look much better than 1977, predicting that the pollution problem would be solved and that cars would float on air. He himself would have a job designing ‘modern’ houses run entirely by solar power, with furniture that folded out from the walls and button-operated controls.^[4]

6 There Would Be Flying Firemen and Robot Maids

Between 1899 and 1910, a series of French artists produced a series of pictures showing what they thought life would be like in the year 2000, some of which were displayed at the World Exhibition in Paris. The idea was to predict what the 20th century would bring: none of them predicted the horrors of the first and second world wars or the rise of communism, but they did predict that automation would become a big issue—just not in the way they thought it would.

From the pictures, they clearly saw the robots of the future taking the place of the domestic staff they saw in the homes of the upper classes in their day. In one image a robot cuts customers’ hair in a barber shop, while in another a maid pilots a cleaning robot with a stick and a wire.

Every science fiction fan likes to dream of flying, though, and these artists were no exceptions. Another image shows an ‘aero-cabs’ port, where some well-dressed Victorian people are boarding a flying taxi—which looks like a yellow train with wings stuck on the sides. A flying car, complete with propeller, hurtles into view from the other side, just in case we didn’t get the message the first time.

In another picture, firemen with shoulder-mounted wings circle a burning building, removing people from the blaze. A steam train trundles by below, completely oblivious to the century of change that is supposed to have happened around it.^[5]

5Fashion Would Be Scientifically Practical

A short clip made in 1939 tried to predict what clothing would look like in the year 2000. Unsurprisingly, it is often wildly inaccurate—but in some ways it predicted the future bang on.

It says the skirt will disappear entirely, with women going on to wear trousers. While dresses are still popular, the vast majority of women today tend to wear jeans as their main choice of casual wear. In the clip, though, this new outfit for women is also accompanied by an electric belt, which would supposedly adapt the body to climatic changes. No, we have no idea, either. Elsewhere, it predicts that women will wear dresses made out of net—and while their version, with weird coils of metal over the breast, never became fashionable, shirts made out of fabric mesh are a fashionable part of the modern wardrobe. Aluminum dresses and flashlights as hair accessories never caught on (un)fortunately.

Men’s fashion in the year 2000 is concluded in just over ten seconds. Men’s clothes won’t have any collars, ties or pockets: he will instead wear a strange set of overalls. He will carry a radio, telephone, and a set of small containers at all times, along with “candy for cuties”, something that might get you arrested today.^[6]

4Barcoded Money and Futura-Rock

In 1988, the Los Angeles Times magazine published a special issue predicting what life would be like in 25 years’ time. Their visions of the distant year of 2013 are surprisingly accurate in some areas: they even correctly predicted the internet when they said the world’s computers and electronic devices would all be connected to the Integrated Services Digital Network.

In other ways, though, they missed the mark completely. For instance, the article also predicts that bills would have barcodes on them, to avoid corruption and crime. The city of LA would have to make businesses stagger their working times to cut down traffic (though they were right when they said traffic in LA would still be a problem). And, no, most of us haven’t replaced our pets with robotic versions and robot butlers still aren’t a thing, even though they’ve been predicted by science fiction fans for decades.

In their view of 2013 LA, multiple families would have to cram into single homes because of a housing shortage. Drivers are taxed for using their cars in the city, and none of us have to brush our teeth because we’ll all use ‘denturinse’. Oh, and all the kids will listen to a new genre of music known as ‘futura-rock’. Of course, none of these things actually happened, though they were very plausible at the time.^[7]

3 Back To The Future 2 Was Plausible

This one is a little different: in 2014, Business Insider asked people over the age of 40 what they used to think the future would look like when they were young. The conclusion? Most people thought the 2000s would look a lot more like ‘Back to The Future 2’ than it actually does.

One respondent wrote that, when the film first came out, it seemed like a fairly reasonable—if slightly optimistic—view of what like in the 2000s would be like. They genuinely thought that by now we’d have discovered a way to feed ourselves with just nutritional pills, and that flying cars and fusion power would be a common sight. Another user said they thought the hoverboards in the film would certainly exist as a toy by now, and that they had expected jetpacks to exist as a form of transportation.

It seems rather funny to us, but when you consider that the film was released a quarter of a century ago, it’s reasonable for someone then to assume that we’d have a manned base on the moon by now, or that we’d all be riding in self-driving cars. After all, wouldn’t we in the present expect those things to exist 25 years from now?^[8]

2 Cities Suspended By Balloons

A report by the UK’s Office for Science, prepared for the British government, has recently revealed what people in the past thought the cities of now could look like. Titled ‘A Visual History of the Future’, it reveals some of the innovative plans put forward in the past for dealing with the problems of the modern city. Some are crazier than others.

Coastal problems are a legitimate issue in the modern world, but so far we haven’t found an ambitious solution. For the most part, our answer is to use hard engineering techniques like flood walls to protect our cities from coastal damage.

In the past much more ambitious ideas were put forward, such as this plan for a so-called sky city. In this plan, chosen communities would be hoisted into the air with huge helium balloons to protect them from damage. These contraptions would make use of cloud skippers, which would float on the jet stream, allowing them to be maintained in the air with minimal resources. The idea was a competition entry, designed as a housing solution to be used in the aftermath of a coastal disaster.^[9]

1 Multi-Level Traffic

Another unusual solution from the same report was drawn up by Colin Buchanan in 1963. At the time, car ownership was growing in the UK, and was only expected to grow quicker. The Ministry of Transport was worried about the effect this would have on roads, so they began thinking of potential solutions.

They came up with a plan that would fundamentally alter the look of cities in the UK. Alongside more conventional solutions, such as using speed bumps to encourage slower driving, they came up with a plan to separate pedestrian and vehicle traffic by building raised walkways for pedestrians. Multi-level traffic would allow the city to handle a much higher volume of traffic without having to tackle high levels of congestion or using too much space. The sheer cost of building these new concrete tiers probably meant the plan was never truly possible, but it’s an interesting vision of what the UK’s cities could have looked like. It would almost certainly have improved things, too—unless you were a cyclist.