If we asked you if something was natural or not, there’s a good chance that you would find it easy to answer. After all, we have well-defined ideas of what’s man-made and what’s not.

If you dug a bit deeper, though, you’d realize that many things we automatically assume to be natural aren’t natural at all. Instead, they are the direct results of man-made actions at various points in history.

10 The Amazon

Whenever we talk about the Amazon, we refer to it as an untouched tropical paradise that we’re all responsible for ruining. The latter part may even be true as we’re totally doing that. But it’s the “untouched” thing we almost always get wrong. The Amazon is the way it is precisely due to many historical civilizations having extensively transformed it with their ways of living.

The idea that the Amazon was undisturbed by civilization before the “discovery” of the Americas is increasingly being questioned. In the last few decades, plenty of studies have found that many diverse groups of people used to live there long before the rest of the world even knew it existed. These groups completely changed the landscape in their own ways.

It can be seen most clearly in the flora native to the Amazon. Many plant species found there are modifications of their original versions. Take peach palm, for example. The original fruit only weighed about 1 gram (0.4 oz). However, the type found in the market today can weigh as much as 200 grams (7.1 oz), even though we think of it as a naturally occurring variety of the fruit.^[1]

Crops like cocoa beans and Brazil nuts were essentially invented by the different tribes that once lived in the Amazon. For centuries, they domesticated local plants and crossbred them with other species. In fact, studies are ongoing as to how much impact humans have had on the forest, making us question if any of it is in a pristine, natural form at all.

9 Pearls

There was a time when pearls were one of the rarest and most expensive things we could get our hands on. Only a few could afford to own them. The high price was due partly to how good they look and partly to the perilous procedure of having to dive to the bottom of the ocean to retrieve them.

Although jewelry and other ornamental pieces made of pearls are still expensive, they’re now accessible to a lot of us even though they continue to be difficult to find. So, what changed? In a nutshell, we figured out how to make them in the lab by replicating the natural process.

Sure, a tiny minority of pearls are still found in the ocean and picked up as in old times. However, the majority in the market are cultured pearls. These aren’t fakes. They’re made by injecting gold and silver into mollusks and replicating the natural conditions in the lab—a process that was introduced and perfected by Japanese scientists in the early 19th century.^[2]

8 Morning Glory Pool

If you’ve ever visited Yellowstone National Park, you may have come across the multicolored body of water known as the Morning Glory Pool. Although the park is home to multiple hot water springs and pools spread throughout its vast landscape, this one stands out. Its unique pattern of concentric blue, red, and yellow circles is not found anywhere else in the park—perhaps even the world.

It’s a sight to behold, though the reason has almost nothing to do with nature.

The pool was first named Convolutus after a Latin word that translates to “morning glory” and describes a global family of blue flowers. The blue at the center comes from a type of bacteria that thrives in the heat of the pool.

However, the yellow on the periphery is entirely due to man-made reasons. Over the years, people have thrown a variety of things in the Morning Glory Pool, so a lot of the thermal vents have been blocked. This eventually allowed other types of bacteria to move in, producing the red and yellow tinges at the edges that give the pool its unique palette.^[3]

And yes, those bacteria will eventually engulf the whole pool. That’s bad news for people who like the blue color as well as for those who’d like to keep the pool in its natural form.

7 Lemons

If you don’t cook a lot, you probably won’t realize how important lemons are in our day-to-day lives. From marinating meat to adding a bit of flavor to most summer drinks, lemons are a versatile fruit that also happen to be loaded with vitamin C.

Though its most prevalent use is in the phrase “when life gives you lemons . . . ,” which doesn’t sound like a bad thing as lemons are awesome and life is always welcome to give us more of them. However, if we trace their origins, we’d realize that life never gave us lemons in the first place as they’re not a naturally occurring crop.

Lemons were first made by humans by interbreeding naturally occurring citrus varieties like sour oranges and citron to come up with the yellow fruit that we see today. It’s also one of the most mysterious crops as far as tracing its origins, though it’s generally agreed that lemons first showed up in the lower foothills of the Himalayas in Burma and Assam some 2,000 years ago.^[4]

6 Lake Mead

If you’ve ever taken a road trip to Las Vegas, chances are that you’ve come across Lake Mead—a large water body surrounded by beautiful peaks and spanning a huge area in Nevada. One of the largest lakes in the country, Lake Mead has a length of about 180 kilometers (112 mi) and a depth as much as 162 meters (532 ft).

It’s one of the main sources of water for many nearby states as well as quite a bit of Mexico. Lake Mead also happens to be one of the world’s largest man-made reservoirs.

Originally created as an outlet for all the excess water in the Colorado River—as the darn thing used to keep flooding before that—the lake was first formed by the construction of the Hoover Dam. Soon, Lake Mead was one of the most scenic picnic spots for people in the surrounding states. More recently, climate change and a severe water crisis in the area has caused it to shrink by quite a bit, so it’s no longer the largest man-made lake in the country.^[5]

5 Vanilla

The vanilla flavor might have become less popular over time due to better synthetic tastes we can now produce in the lab. But it was one of the rarest and most expensive flavors when it was first discovered in Mexico. Brought to Europe and the rest of the world by Spanish explorers, vanilla was first mixed with chocolate and instantly proved to be quite popular among Europe’s elites.

However, there was a problem because the vanilla plant was from Mexico. Vanilla beans wouldn’t grow anywhere else as bees would refuse to pollinate vanilla orchids unless they were in their native environment. When pollinated, these flowers produce vanilla beans, which are the source of vanilla flavor.

The problem was first solved by Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old slave in Reunion, an island in the Indian Ocean. Working under the supervision of a plantation owner, Albius figured out a way to hand-pollinate the plant, something no one else had been able to do.

The two men soon took this technique to other plantations. Within years, the island inhabitants started exporting tons of vanilla around the world as the demand for the coveted plant was high at that time. All the vanilla in the market today is made by that technique (as the bees are still quite stubborn about not doing it themselves). This keeps the price low and makes vanilla available to everyone instead of an elite few.^[6]

4 Killer Bees

If you live in the Americas and have ever been outside, chances are that you’ve heard of killer bees. They resemble other bee species, which are harmless unless their hives are disturbed. Even then, cases of normal bees attacking people rarely make the news.

On the other hand, killer bees have earned their reputation by having killed around 1,000 people since they were discovered. At first, you’d think all the deaths were due to individuals just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, if you’d read up on the origins of these dangerous stinging insects, you’d realize that nature has nothing to do with the creation of these killing machines. Instead, it was good old human error.

Killer bees were not originally found in the wild. Their very existence is a result of a biology experiment gone horribly wrong. You see, back when European honeybees were first brought to Brazil to amp up honey production, they weren’t doing much except chilling due to the difference in temperature. To remedy that, biologists took a few African honeybees to get them to breed with the existing populations in controlled conditions.

That didn’t turn out well. In 1957, some 26 queens from the African species along with other European honeybees escaped their confinement. In the years since, they have interbred on their own and become an aggressive and murderous species we now identify as killer bees.

They soon spread across South and Central America as well as most of the states in the US that have a border with Mexico—seemingly everywhere that it’s hot enough for them to survive as they die if it gets too cold.^[7]

3 Corn

In case you missed your high school history classes, corn has been the cornerstone of American civilization since organized tribes started showing up across the two continents. It won’t be a stretch to say that the history of the Americas is the history of corn cultivation. It has been an important part of the economies of almost all the most successful empires (including the United States) that ever existed here.

It’s even more surprising if you consider the fact that corn never existed in the form that it does now in the wild. Instead, corn was derived by native populations from a type of wild grass. Known as teosinte, this grass didn’t look anything like the maize crops we see today.

According to studies, native tribes started experimenting to increase the size of the cobs and kernels found on teosinte in Mexico about 6,300 years ago. After millennia of trial and error with farming and breeding methods, they stumbled upon what we now know as corn. It was then taken to places like North America by other tribes around 1,000 years ago. Even today, the crop cannot exist without human intervention and protection.^[8]

2 Dogs

No animal has a more intimate relationship with human beings than the trustworthy dog. Also known as “man’s best friend,” dogs are an indispensable part of human life around the world in a variety of ways—from helping to keep other farm animals in check to sniffing out drugs at border checkpoints.

If we asked you to guess where they came from, you’d likely say wild dogs. However, the only known species of wild dogs (African wild dogs) doesn’t belong to the same family of species as dogs (canines) at all. So, are dogs magic?

Not really. All the dogs we see today—from tiny Chihuahuas to the intimidating-yet-cuddly Tibetan mastiffs—descended from a single group of wolves at some point in human history.^[9]

Although the exact point at which dogs first appeared in our fossil records isn’t clear, scientists have estimated it to be 20,000–40,000 years ago. Whenever it happened, we can say for sure that dogs as we know them never existed before we decided that we needed a cool animal to be friends with.

1 Fly Geyser

The first time you take a look at the Fly Geyser—a unique, seemingly natural formation in Nevada—it comes across as an artist’s visualization of an alien world. Quite unlike any other formation found on Earth, the Fly Geyser is a tiny, multicolored hill that consistently spews boiling hot water throughout the year. It is surrounded by terraces filled with water.

It would be incredible if the Fly Geyser was a natural formation, but all the credit for this one goes to classic human error.

It all started when a geothermal energy company drilled a hole in the ground to find hot water and eventually turn it into energy. They abandoned the idea when the temperature of the water was discovered to be below the required level. Then they tried to cap the well. But they didn’t completely succeed, giving way to one of the best things that man has accidentally created from nature.^[10]

The colors are due to the algae growing on the calcium carbonate deposits, which also gave the geyser its unique conical shape over time. Interestingly, the formation is now a Burning Man property, which somehow sounds appropriate if you think about it.

You can check out Himanshu’s stuff at Cracked and Screen Rant, get in touch with him for writing gigs at [email protected], or just say hello to him on Twitter.

Mankind often stretches the boundaries of preconceived norms with creations so extraordinary that they become more than the sum of their parts. The Eiffel Tower is a cultural icon of France and, although not warmly received at first, its beauty has since transfixed people the world over.

So it might come as a surprise to learn that, from 1925 to 1936, French automobile manufacturer Citroen essentially utilized this extraordinary structure for the mundane task of advertising their brand. In fact, the very thing that saved the Eiffel Tower from demolition was its role as a radiotelegraph communications tower in World War I, hardly a glamorous occupation for one of the most romanticized structures in the world.

Despite having a functional purpose, the Eiffel Tower still remains extraordinary, but what about things mankind has created that are ordinary, even mundane in their very creation and essence? Let’s take a look at 10 man-made things that are so extraordinary, they deserve to transcend their ordinary origins.

10The Niesenbahn Funicular Service Stairway

It would be fair to assume that the longest stairway in the word is in an extraordinarily tall building, but that title actually goes to the service stairway running alongside the Niesenbahn Funicular railway near Spiez, Switzerland. At 11,674 steps, it claims the Guinness World Record for longest staircase in the world. To put 11,674 steps into more relatable terms, the stairway covers a distance of 3.5 kilometers (2.2 mi) and rises 1,669 meters (5,476 ft) in elevation along that distance.

Before you enthusiastically venture out to conquer this Everest of stairways, you must first register to do so. It’s only open to workers, excluding the annual stairway run—in which you can pay to run on stairs for over an hour. Admittedly, that sounds terrible, but since it’s in Switzerland the views are probably gorgeous.

9The Cleveland Federal Reserve’s Vault Door

From its installation in 1923 to its retirement in 1996, the 1.5-meter-thick (5 ft) door at the Federal Reserve of Cleveland served as the largest vault door installation in the world. At a weight of 100 tons, the swinging section of the door alone is akin to the weight of a Boeing 757 before fueling and loading, and its 5.5-meter (18 ft) hinge adds an additional 47 tons to the total weight. Yet it’s so perfectly balanced that one person can open and shut it with ease.

The door is so large and heavy that, when the time came to transport it to Cleveland, Ohio from York, Pennsylvania, the largest railcar in the United States was required to carry it, and the route had to be carefully planned to avoid bridges, because the sheer weight of the cargo threatened to collapse anything that wasn’t solid Earth. Once the car arrived in Cleveland, it took two full days just to unload the door from the railcar. No crane existed that was strong enough to lift it, so massive hydraulic jacks were used instead. If that wasn’t enough, once unloaded from the railcar, it took a total of four days to travel from the rail station to the bank, a distance of merely 1.6 kilometers (1 mi).

8Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C

The world’s longest ship, Emma Maersk, is astounding in its own right, with a size comparable to the height of the world’s tallest skyscrapers at 397 meters (1,302 feet). It’s been the record holder for the world’s longest ship since 2007, but it’s the heart of this mighty beast that’s truly staggering. It’s befitting that the longest ship on the planet be powered by the largest reciprocating engine in the world—the Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C, an engine roughly the size of a small three-story apartment building.

Without getting too technical, an engine of this size generates 110,000 horsepower and weighs 2,500 tons; compare that to the average horsepower and weight of an automobile engine at 150 horsepower and 160 kilograms (350 lb). Despite being so immense, the Wartsila-Sulzer RTA96-C is incredibly efficient, but nonetheless it still consumes 39.5 barrels of fuel every hour and costs $46 a minute to run.

7The Delaware Aqueduct

Many of us reading this have the luxury of instant access to clean water in the comfort of our homes, but we usually don’t think of the unseen engineering marvels put in place so we can do something so simple as fill a glass of water. Most modern cites aren’t blessed with the foresight of the founders to settle near an adequate water supply, and New York City is one of them. Early settlers dug the first permanent well in 1677, and the first reservoir delivered water to 22,000 residents via hollow logs nearly 100 years later in 1776. Aqueducts became the solution to New York’s growing population and their increasing thirst all the way up until 1944, when the Delaware Aqueduct was constructed.

As of today, it still delivers 50 percent of the metropolis’s drinking water. At 137 kilometers (85 mi) long, it is the world’s longest continuous tunnel, and its deepest point lies 450 meters (1,500 ft) underground—nothing short of incredible, considering that it was constructed by drilling and blasting through solid rock. The aqueduct is also incredibly efficient—95 percent of its water is delivered by gravity alone, which is no small feat considering it delivers 1.9 billion liters (500 million gal) of water per day. Unfortunately, the fact that it leaks up to 130 million liters (35 million gal) of water daily—and has been since 1988—makes it one of New York’s biggest current problems. Plans are underway to spend $1.2 billion on diversion tunnels by 2019.

6KVLY-TV Television Mast

Before Dubai’s Burj Khalifa was built in 2010, the record for the world’s tallest man-made structure belonged to the KVLY-TV antenna in North Dakota. It took just 33 days and 11 men to assemble the antenna to a dizzying height of 628.8 meters (2,063 ft). The tower is so tall that if one of those 11 workers dropped his wrench at the top, it would be traveling at 400 kilometers per hour (250 mph) by the time it reached the ground—fast enough to ruin your day in a hurry if it happened to land on your toes.

If you’re feeling brave, there’s a small, two-man service elevator that takes you 594 meters (1,950 ft) up the tower, but the last 275 meters (900 ft) or so—the actual antenna—are only accessible by climbing. The gusts up there can reach 112 kilometers per hour (70 mph) and the tower sways up to 3 meters (10 ft), so maybe it’s best just to visit the Burj Khalifa’s air-conditioned observation deck instead.

5The Australian BHP Iron Ore Train

How would you like to be stuck behind a train that is 7.3 kilometers (4.6 mi) long? While it might not seem that impressive at first glance, know that the amount of cars in this record-breaking run was a staggering 682 cars with a combined weight approaching 100,000 tons, making it both the longest and heaviest train to ever move. This becomes even more impressive when you learn that the entire train was under the control of a single driver harnessing the power of eight massive General Electric Diesel locomotives spaced evenly throughout the train to increase traction and braking forces.

BHP Iron Ore is no stranger to long trains, however, and routinely operates trains at half this size, meaning that they are regularly the largest trains on the planet at any given time. If you ever find yourself blocked at a railroad crossing by one of these beasts, it might be best to just head back the way you came.

4The Luxor Sky Beam

No matter how common lightbulbs are these days, it’s hard to overlook the light mounted on top of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas. This light is the second brightest man-made light in the world. While its setting is anything but ordinary, there’s no trickery or magic behind the “sky beam,” as it’s called in Las Vegas. It uses 39 xenon-powered lamps and the aid of simple reflector shields. Granted, these aren’t your average consumer-grade lightbulbs, as each one costs a hefty $1,200 and uses 7,000 watts. When combined as a unit, they make 40 billion candlepower. It’s so bright that it has reportedly been seen at night by airline pilots 430 kilometers (270 mi) away in Los Angeles, and the air temperature around the lamps reaches 260 degrees Celsius (500 °F).

This might sound impressive, but the world’s brightest light used to be even brighter when it was first installed in the 1990s. The hotel once claimed that American astronaut Daniel Brandenstein remarked that the light was so bright that it would awaken his comrades on the space shuttle. While that story was revealed to be a hoax, the Luxor sky beam is still powerful enough to use as a navigational landmark, as more than a few Las Vegas residents have admitted to doing.

3Large European Acoustic Facility

The Large European Acoustic Facility (LEAF) is so loud it can kill you. Glossing over how the scientists behind it found that out, let’s try to put one of the world’s most powerful artificial sound systems in more relatable terms. At its base, the LEAF isn’t much more than a juiced-up sound system pumping sound waves into an acoustically optimized room, similar to a loud stereo system playing into a hard-walled closet. The only difference is, the room is 15 meters (50 ft) tall and the system is fueled by nitrogen to produce sounds just 40 decibels quieter than a TNT bomb.

The device is used to test whether satellites and other electronics can withstand the decibels produced at takeoff. As some of the loudest man-made sounds on the planet, rocket blasts sometimes damage the sensitive equipment being launched into space. And yes, the LEAF can kill you—because of this, the designers engineered a fail-safe that doesn’t allow the system to be turned on unless the door is closed.

2The Aerium

Businesses fail all the time, and the more ambitious ones usually leave behind large facilities in their wake. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to sell a standard office building than it is to sell, say, an aircraft hangar 210 meters (688 ft) wide and 107 meters (350 ft) high. That’s the predicament German airship company CargoLifter AG found itself in in 2002 when they declared insolvency. Fortunately for tourists in Europe, the Malaysian company Tanjong had the extravagant plan to convert the world’s largest freestanding building into an indoor water park and resort.

The result is nothing short of astounding. While the structure is nothing more than a clever aircraft hangar, and the resort is standard fare for tourists and business moguls alike, the two combine to create one of the most fascinatingly odd man-made attractions in the world. Just how big is the world’s largest freestanding building? The Aerium can fit the Statue of Liberty standing up or the Eiffel Tower lying on its side; the floor space alone can fit eight American football fields. With all that space available, it’s barely surprising to learn that it holds a 2,700-square-meter (9,000 sq ft) pool with 180 meters (600 ft) of sandy shoreline. It also contains the world’s largest indoor rainforest with 50,000 trees.

1SEA-ME-WE-3

Submarine telecommunication cables are the unsung heroes when it comes to connecting the world. It seems that in our modern age of increasingly advanced technology and rapid development, the majority of communications would be delivered via satellites, but the reality is that most of our data circumnavigates the globe the same way our computers connected to the Internet 10 years ago—with really long cables. Most people don’t even know they exist, and SEA-ME-WE-3 is the world’s longest at a staggering 39,000 kilometers (24,233 mi). Completed in 2000, the cable runs from England to Australia and has 39 landing points in 33 countries and four continents.

What’s even more incredible than the sheer scale is how mundane and simple these cables are. Modern submarine fiber optic cables like SEA-ME-WE-3 are little more than 6.8 centimeters (2.7 in) in diameter, which accounts for a rubber shell, protective synthetic bedding, copper insulation, and the optical fibers themselves. The difference between your household Ethernet cords and submarine fiber optic cables isn’t that great in principle, and everyone who’s had a data cord break on them knows how frustrating it can be. As it turns out, this exact thing can happen to data cables as well.

A miscalculation by a ship’s navigator or even a curious sea creature can sever a cable, resulting in millions of users without Internet access. Even the mighty SEA-ME-WE-3 isn’t immune to the risks—this exact thing happened in 2005, resulting in Pakistan essentially being isolated from the rest of the world for weeks.

Patrick Fuller is a university student studying industrial design who is fascinated by incredible man-made things.

Believe it or not, some of the popular fruits, nuts, and vegetables we eat today are man-made hybrids. They were created in laboratories through selective breeding, a process whereby only plants with favorable traits are replanted. That said, there have been rare instances where insects were responsible for creating the hybrid plants through cross-pollination.

SEE ALSO: 10 ‘Natural’ Things You Won’t Believe Are Actually Man-Made

Of course, these insects would never have been able to cross-pollinate the plants if humans hadn’t planted at least one of them in the area. Most of the entries on this list are surprising because the majority are fruits, nuts, and vegetables that we consider to be natural.

10 Cabbage, Broccoli, Cauliflower, Kale, And More

Cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, brussels sprouts, collard greens, kohlrabi, and several closely related vegetables originated from the same plant species: Brassica oleracea. Its original form is known as wild mustard and still exists today.

About 2,500 years ago, wild mustard only grew in some parts of Europe and the Mediterranean; its taste varied greatly depending on where it grew. Ancient Romans and Greeks soon realized that they could plant it for food so they engaged in selective breeding by planting seeds from wild mustard with larger leaves. The result was the vegetables that we now call kale and collard greens.

Selective breeding continued in the 1600s when people bred wild mustard with bigger leaf buds. The result was a new vegetable covered with lots of leaves—this was the first cabbage. Wild mustard selected for its bigger stems became kohlrabi, the ones with small heads became brussels sprouts, and the ones with big flowers became broccoli and cauliflower.^[1]

The hybridization of wild mustard and its derivatives continued up to the 20th century. In 1928, Russian biologist Georgii Dmintrievich Karpechenko crossed a radish with a cabbage to produce what he called the rabbage. The rabbage should have been impossible because the radish is not related to the cabbage. However, the plant never caught on because it failed at being either a radish or a cabbage.

Later in 1993, the Sakata Seed Company of Yokohama, Japan crossbred broccoli with kai-lan to create broccolini, or as some call it, baby broccoli, asparation, asparations, broccoletti, broccolette, and Italian sprouting broccoli. It’s a derivative of wild mustard and is the Chinese version of broccoli.

9 Orange

Many varieties of the orange exist today. However, every variety traces its roots to the man-made hybrid when the pomelo was crossed with the mandarin. The pomelo is almost as bitter as the grapefruit, while the mandarin is sweet. The mandarin has an orange color, which is why many people misidentify it as a variety of the orange. Wrong! The mandarin is an ancestor of the orange.

The history of the orange is unclear, but it is believed to have first appeared in southern China. Over the years, humans have selectively bred oranges to create many varieties, making it easy to confuse the orange with other citrus fruits. To be clear, a fruit needs to have evolved from the pomelo and mandarin to be considered an orange.

That said, the tangerine is not considered an orange because it evolved from the mandarin but not the pomelo. However, the tangelo, which we’ll get to shortly, is in a gray area. It’s a cross between a tangerine and a pomelo. And as we mentioned already, the tangerine was created from the mandarin.^[2]

8 Peanut

The modern peanut is a hybrid of two earlier types of peanuts, the Arachis ipaensis and the Arachis duranensis. The Arachis duranensis grows in the Andean valleys between Bolivia and Argentina, while the Arachis ipaensis grows inside Bolivia.

Both plants were found so far away from each other, they couldn’t have crossbred naturally. Researchers ultimately discovered that the earliest settlers in South America took the Arachis duranensis from the Andean valleys as they migrated into today’s Bolivia 10,000 years ago.

However, the settlers did not quickly realize the potential of their new crop and it was the bees that actually cross-pollinated both peanuts. The result was a new peanut that is the ancestor of today’s peanuts.^[3]

7 Banana

The modern, common banana is a man-made hybrid of the wild Musa acuminata and Musa balbisiana banana species. Musa acuminata has a fleshy inside, but it has a very unpleasant taste. Musa balbisiana has a pleasant-tasting inside but contains too many seeds.

Both bananas naturally crossbred in the forests of South Asia. However, the resultant banana, which is the ancestor of the modern banana, was sterile. About 10,000 years ago, early humans discovered the hybrid and learned that they could replant the shoots to create new trees. They engaged in selective breeding and only replanted bananas with favorable traits. This led to the creation of the modern banana.

Although we’ve managed to create the perfect banana, we could not figure out a way to grow bananas from seeds. So, bananas will become extinct if we stop planting them. The absence of a seed also means that all bananas have the same genetic properties as they are replanted from the shoot of another tree. As a result, all the world’s banana trees could be wiped out by a single disease.^[4]

6 Almond

The almond is a man-made hybrid of the wild almond, which is notoriously bitter and could be deadly when consumed in considerable amounts. The history of the modern almond is unclear, and scientists still can’t determine which variant of the wild almond was selectively bred to create the modern almond.^[5]

Scientists have their theories though. They suspect that the wild ancestor of the almond is the Amygdalus fenzliana (Fritsch) Lipsky because its trees, seeds, and fruits resemble the modern almond. It’s also found in Armenia and Azerbaijan, where today’s almond is believed to have been selectively bred by humans. Besides the origin, scientists cannot determine how our ancestors managed to create a perfect, sweet almond because the almond is poisonous.

SEE ALSO: 10 Foods That Exist Because Of Ancient Genetic Engineering

5 Grapefruit

The grapefruit is a relatively new hybrid. It’s believed, although not confirmed that the grapefruit first appeared around 1693 when Captain Shaddock transported pomelo (Citrus maxima) seeds to the West Indies and planted them close to some orange trees. The pomelo and orange later cross-pollinated to create the grapefruit (then called shaddocks). However, the grapefruit was still unknown outside the Caribbean.

Europeans eventually learned of this citrus fruit in 1750 when Reverend Griffith Hughes encountered one. Hughes was so surprised with the discovery that he named the grapefruit “the forbidden fruit.” That was its name until 1814 when John Lunan, a planter and Jamaica magistrate, called it a grapefruit because they resembled the smaller and unrelated grapes when they were still growing.

The grapefruit finally reached the United States in 1823, but was mistaken for the pomelo. It was only determined to be a distinct fruit in 1837. However, botanists were still confused about its origin. It wasn’t until 1948 that they discovered it was a hybrid of the pomelo and the orange.^[6]

4 Boysenberry

The boysenberry was created by Rudolph Boysen of Orange County, California in 1923. Boysen, a horticulturist, planted grafted berry vines on his in-law’s farm in Anaheim, eventually cultivating a successful hybrid. Unfortunately, Boysen’s berries never found commercial success and it seemed like his unique vine would go the way of the dodo bird.

Several years later, a fellow farmer from California named Walter Knott heard about the berry and asked its creator if he could try to make something of it. Knott successfully brought the dying hybrid back to life at his Buena Park, California farm. Knott then named the fruit after Boysen, and Knott’s Berry Farm eventually became the would famous amusement park we know today.

The boysenberry is considered to be a variant of the blackberry, although it’s actually a hybrid of a blackberry and either the loganberry or the red raspberry. For all we know, Boysen could have created the berry from of all three vines.

That said, tere are claims that the boysenberry is actually a cross between the Eastern dewberry and the man-made loganberry. The loganberry was created in 1881 when James Logan crossed a raspberry with a wild blackberry. However, the early boysenberry was not a commercial success due to its short shelf life. It decays just two days after harvest.^[7]

3 Tangelo

As we mentioned earlier, the tangelo is a man-made hybrid of the tangerine and the pomelo. In fact, that’s where the tangelo got its name. However, it is common for people to confuse the tangelo with the tangerine, mandarin, and orange.

To add to the confusion, there are different varieties of tangelos and all are not necessarily created from tangerines and pomelos. One common variant, the Minneola tangelo, is a hybrid of the tangerine and the Duncan grapefruit. Another variant was created by crossing a mandarin with a pomelo, which technically makes it an orange.

The tangelo is believed to have first appeared in the forests of Southeast Asia 3,500 years ago when insects cross-pollinated the mandarin with a fruit that is closely related to the grapefruit. However, today’s tangelos are the result of a selective breeding program that started in the 1800s.^[8]

At the forefront of the tangelo project was the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which created the popular Minneola tangelo sold across the United States. The USDA released the seeds of the Minneola tangelo in 1931. It’s named after the city of Minneola, Florida.

2 Carrots

Carrots haven’t always been orange. Natural carrots were either white or purple and probably inedible. There are even accounts that white carrots were eaten in the Roman Empire, but historians believe that they could have been parsnips, white carrots, or both. Ultimately, the modern orange carrot we eat today is a hybrid of the yellow carrot, which is a hybrid of the white carrot.

The earliest-known ancestor of the modern consumable carrot appeared in Persia in the 10th century. Some accounts say it was white, and others say it was purple. Unlike today’s carrots, those vegetables had lots of smaller roots of varying sizes. The Persians selectively bred the carrots with the biggest roots to create bigger roots and, ultimately, a big single root.

As the selective breeding continued, the carrots mutated from white or purple to yellow and finally orange. Selective breeding of carrots continued until modern times to improve their flavor and color.^[9]

1 Strawberry

The modern strawberry is a man-made hybrid of the smaller wild strawberry, which has a shorter shelf life as well as a better flavor and aroma. The modern strawberry first appeared in France in the 18th century. However, the hybridization program began much earlier.

In the 1300s, French botanists started planting wild strawberries in their gardens when they realized that wild strawberries reproduced by cloning. Strangely, some strawberries never produced fruits and half of the ones that did suddenly stopped cloning and making fruits after some years.

The French managed to create wild strawberries that were 15 to 20 times their normal size, but they were still incredibly small. Antoine Nicolas Duchesne created the modern strawberry on July 6, 1764, when he crossed a male Fragaria moschata with a female Fragaria chiloensis from Chile.^[10]

Before Duchesne created his strawberry, French botanists had never realized that strawberries had male and female parts. This was the reason some never produced fruits as some botanists had planted either males or females. Duchesne continued working on the strawberry until the French Revolution, leaving American and British botanists to perfect the modern strawberry.

We all know Mother Nature likes to put us in our place. Earthquakes, tornadoes, and other assorted calamities all serve to keep us in check and knock our human ego down a notch. Sometimes, however, we don’t need the help.

Some of the worst disasters in our history can be chalked up to human error. We like to think things are under control, that the people in charge are careful and responsible, but as the following stories show, that’s not always the case.

10 Halifax Ship Explosion
December 6, 1917

A giant game of chicken caused one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history. This big bang was the result of two ships, the Norwegian vessel SS Imo and the SS Mont Blanc, colliding in the harbor of Halifax, Nova Scotia.^[1]

The Mont Blanc, a French cargo ship laden with explosives for use in World War I, was on its way to Bordeaux from New York with a stop in Halifax. As it entered the lane of the Halifax Channel, it met the Imo, which was on its way out. There was a protocol for this type of situation, with each ship assigned to opposite sides of the narrow waterway, but that day, the two captains refused to move out of each other’s way. At the last minute, the Mont Blanc turned but was hit broadside by the Imo.

The resulting explosion caused the harbor to momentarily empty of water, with waves washing tsunami-like onto the surrounding shore. This, in combination with the shock from the explosion, obliterated everything for a 0.8-kilometer (0.5 mi) radius. Structures were flattened, trees snapped, and piles of debris burst into flame. All in all, nearly 2,000 people were killed, and 9,000 were injured. Shock waves were felt 177 kilometers (110 mi) away, and to top it off, rescue and recovery efforts were hampered by a blizzard which blanketed Halifax in 41 centimeters (16 in) of snow. Do-over day, anyone?

9 Deadly Molasses Flood
January 15, 1919

Cause of death . . . molasses? That was what killed 21 inhabitants of Boston’s North End after a thunderous wave of brown goo smashed buildings and smothered terrified bystanders.^[2] It was Wednesday, Jan 15, 1919, when one of the weirdest man-made disasters of all time occurred.

It began when a giant holding tank full of molasses began to creak and groan. When citizens reported the problem, authorities seemed unconcerned. The metal tank had made such noises before, and everyone agreed it was just the molasses settling. Besides, how would anyone go about repairing such a thing? The tank was 15 meters (50 ft) tall and built to hold 8.7 million liters (2.3 million gal) of molasses. The decision to ignore the problem was a bad one.

The creaking sounds grew steadily worse until around 12:30 PM, when a deep rumble was followed by the shriek of rending metal. When the tank exploded, its contents flooded the area. In the aftermath, 150 people were injured, and 21 were killed. It was nearly impossible to identify victims under the dried brown glaze, much less remove them from the streets. Boston Harbor was brown for weeks as a result of the flood. This kind of molasses wasn’t so sweet.

8 Johnstown Dam Failure
May 31, 1889

In 1879, a group called the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club built a luxurious lodge near Johnstown, Pennsylvania, to be used by its wealthy members for vacations, hunting, and fishing trips. While the club members spent lavishly on the lodge, they neglected to update the earthen dam which held beautiful Lake Conemaugh in check. On May 31, 1889, everyone paid the price.

After two days of torrential rain, the lake rose to the top of the dam. Efforts were made to siphon off some of the water, but it was too late. At 3:10 PM, there was a great roar, and the dam burst. Millions of tons of water pounded down the valley at 64 kilometers per hour (40 mph).^[3]

By the time the water reached Johnstown, it was loaded with houses, wagons, animals, and trees. A 50-year-old survivor named Lisa Phipps said, “It resembled a rolling mountain, so filthy was its water.”

To add misery to an already epic misfortune, an enormous wall of debris which had stacked up against an old stone bridge caught fire, killing all who sheltered there. When the flood finally dissipated, over 2,200 people had died, and 10 square kilometers (4 mi²) of Johnstown were destroyed.

7 London’s Killer Smog
December 5, 1952

Killer smog sounds like the plot of a horror movie, but this was the real thing. For five days in December 1952, a smothering cloud descended on London, killing thousands.

December 5 was a cold day, and as Londoners woke, they stoked their fireplaces and lit their coal stoves, sending plumes of black smoke into the air. Smoky diesel-fueled buses carried people to work, and factories belched tons of pollution into the air.

Unfortunately, on this day, an inversion set in, trapping pollutants on top of the city. With no wind to clear the air, the smog had nowhere to go. By noon, it had turned a sickly yellowish brown and began to smell like rotten eggs. Parents were warned to keep their children home from school, for fear they might become lost in the vaporous haze. The air was so thick that people couldn’t see their feet, and river traffic was halted on the Thames. Birds died when they flew into buildings, and livestock suffocated. People suffered similar fates.

It is estimated that as many as 12,000 people died of respiratory ailments related directly to the sulfurous air.^[4] Finally, after five nightmarish days, a fresh breeze blew in and whisked the killer smog out to sea. It was not until 1956 that a clean air act was finally passed.

6 Exxon Valdez Oil Spill
March 24, 1989

Prince William Sound and the lands around it are home to the grizzly bear, otter, and countless species of birds and aquatic life. This pristine and peaceful area also supported a large fishing community. Life here was forever changed on March 24, 1989, when an oil tanker named the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound.^[5]

On impact, the Valdez began spouting sticky crude oil. Roughly 41 million liters (11 million gal) gushed into the water, poisoning sea creatures and destroying the delicate ecosystem. It wasn’t long before black goo also began to wash up on the shore, covering seabirds and harbor seals.

Local fishermen who rushed to help were initially refused, but as the overwhelming effects of the spill became apparent, thousands of volunteers were recruited to help clean up beaches and animals. As the oil-soaked creatures were collected, they were carefully cleaned and rehabilitated, but tragically, thousands of seabirds and otters, hundreds of seals and bald eagles, and 22 orcas did not survive.

Despite being drunk and turning control of the ship over to an unqualified pilot, Joseph Hazelwood, captain of the Valdez, got off relatively easy with community service and a $50,000 fine. Living with the aftermath of the spill wasn’t nearly so easy for those affected. Only time will tell the extent of the damage.

5 Bhopal Chemical Disaster
December 3, 1984

Used in the production of pesticide, methyl isocyanate, or MIC, is also deadly to humans. This became all too clear during the early morning hours of December 3, 1984, when the world’s worst industrial accident occurred at Union Carbide’s chemical plant in Bhopal, India.^[6]

Thanks to a leaky storage tank, malfunctioning warning systems, and multiple safety violations, a chemical reaction sent clouds of poisonous gas pouring into the surrounding neighborhoods. The victims, mostly poor and living in a densely populated area near the plant, were largely asleep at the time, but even those who tried to escape found it impossible. The suffocating cloud was heavier than air and hovered close to the ground. Carried by the wind, the gas spread faster than victims could run.

The final death toll was estimated to be between 3,800 and 16,000, with over half a million injured. Survivors suffered long-term consequences, such as lung damage, eye irritation, blindness, and other effects of exposure to the toxic gas. While some of the victims received compensation for their pain and suffering, the amounts were paltry and hardly sufficient to make up for a lifetime of disability.

4 London Beer Tsunami
October 17, 1814

Beer has always been a popular beverage, but most people prefer it in a glass, not flooding the streets of their town. In the early 1800s, many London breweries utilized giant wooden beer vats.^[7] They started as tourist attractions but soon turned into an unofficial competition to see who could build the largest cask.

The owners of the Horseshoe Brewery were proud of their vats, which held thousands of barrels of beer. On October 17, 1814, one of their vats burst, causing a domino effect with the surrounding vats. The result was a 4.6-meter-tall (15 ft) wave of beer which crashed through New Street into the St Giles Rookery, one of London’s poorest areas.

Two houses fell like matchsticks in the face of the solid wall of liquid, while shocked citizens were swept away in the torrent. After the wave of beer dispersed and rescuers arrived, they were instructed to be silent to better hear the cries of survivors who were buried in the rubble. In the end, eight people died. In a sad twist, five of the casualties were mourners at the funeral of a young boy who had died the day before.

The accident was determined to be an act of God, and the brewers got off scot-free. The victims were not compensated for their losses in any way.

3 Terrible Train Collision
July 9, 1918

The Dutchman’s Curve train wreck occurred in Nashville, Tennessee, over 100 years ago but is still considered the worst rail collision in US history. On July 9, 1918, two trains traveling at high speeds collided. The resulting impact was heard 3.2 kilometers (2 mi) away.

At around 7:00 AM, train engineer David Kennedy pulled his #4 train out of the station and onto the single track that headed for Memphis. After giving the okay, the tower operator noticed that another train coming from the opposite direction had not yet arrived in the station. Realizing his error, the tower man blew the emergency whistle to stop the #4. It was too late.

Each train was traveling around 100 kilometers per hour (60 mph) in opposite directions on the same track.^[8] The trains met in a furious crash. Cars piled on top of each other, littering the surrounding area with debris and bodies. “It was a mess,” said one rescue worker, “just a twisted jumble of steel and humanity.” When all was said and done, 101 people died, and 171 were injured.

In an ironic twist, Kennedy, the engineer of the #4 train, had been planning his retirement. Before departing that morning, he told a coworker that this would be his last run.

2 Arsenal Hill Explosion
April 5, 1876

It was a pleasant day in Salt Lake City, and crowds had gathered for the semiannual General Conference of the Mormon Church. People played baseball in the park, rowed in the lake, and picnicked in bright sunshine.

Two young men, Frank Hill and Charles Richardson, both 18, were tending cattle on Arsenal Hill near the powder magazine which held the city’s store of ammunition. In attempt to ward off boredom, Hill and Richardson began taking potshots at a flock of geese flying overhead.

Moments later, 40 tons of gunpowder, blasting powder, and various other types of explosives and ammunition detonated in three consecutive blasts.^[9] Both boys were killed instantly. Horses bolted, trees fell, and the baseball players were knocked to the ground. Shards of glass flew through the air, and boulders—some as heavy as 52 kilograms (115 lb)—fell from the sky. Every building within a 3.2-kilometer (2 mi) radius was damaged.

Remarkably, only four people were killed on this terrible day. In the end, it was estimated that 500 tons of rock fell on the city. The area where the powder magazine sat was reduced to a moonscape of craters. The local papers declared this was a day no one would forget, but today, the disaster is relatively obscure.

1 Chernobyl
April 26, 1986

One of the all-time worst man-made disasters was the Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986.^[10] Thanks to plant mismanagement and reactor design flaws, a massive explosion released enormous amounts of radioactivity into the air. Though the Soviet government tried to keep the disaster a secret, surrounding countries quickly noticed elevated levels of radioactive particles and tracked it back to the source.

Several people died immediately after the explosion, and 237 people suffered acute radiation poisoning. Due to lack of detailed information, it is not known how many people ultimately died from cancer and other side effects of this accident, but estimates are in the tens of thousands.

Though the area surrounding Chernobyl is still unsafe and will not be officially habitable for at least another 20,000 years, some people have returned to their homes. And in the ultimate act of defiance of danger, the Chernobyl catastrophe area has now become a tourist attraction.

While I’m a writer by trade and a wanderer by nature, and I like to combine the two activities whenever possible. I’m also lucky enough to be a book lover who works in a library, so I’m constantly inspired by the great writers I come in contact with each day.
For more of the Library Lady, see https://libraryladytravels.com.

While we have no control over natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes, humans have been able to match – and sometimes far surpass – the damage caused by anything nature has thrown our way. Over time, ecological accidents caused by corporate greed, poor national policies, deregulation, and a bunch of other factors have caused considerable damage to already-sensitive ecosystems around the world. The worst part is that unlike natural calamities, all of these man-made environmental disasters in history were entirely avoidable. 

10. Minamata Disease

Minamata disease is named after the Japanese city of the same name, where in 1956, a mysterious sickness appeared overnight and started to affect the residents. It was a neurological disease, causing symptoms like slurred speech, muscle weakness, and tremors. It could even cause death in worst case scenarios, though back then, no one knew exactly what was causing it.

Now, we know those symptoms to be telltale signs of mercury poisoning. In Minamata, the culprit turned out to be a chemical manufacturer known as the Chisso Corporation. They had been dumping massive amounts of mercury – or more precisely methylmercury – into the freshwater supply of the city, which eventually made its way to the fish and other marine creatures living in Minamata Bay. 

In a 2004 ruling, the Japanese Supreme Court officially recognized the role of the state in the disaster. It resulted in about 3,500 citizens filing damages against the government, though some activists claimed that the real number could be as high as 30,000.

9. Love Canal Chemical Spill

The neighborhood of Love Canal in Niagara County, New York was named after a nearby landfill dating back to the 1890s. While originally imagined as a model neighborhood, it would soon turn into one of the worst cases of groundwater poisoning in US history. Beginning some time in the 1920s, the canal was used as a dumping ground for a variety of chemicals and other industrial waste, including nuclear waste from early attempts to build the bomb during WW2. 

Love Canal was eventually covered and sealed by the owners of the land – the Hooker Chemical Company – and replaced by a residential neighborhood in the 1950s. As you’d expect, all that chemical waste soon started showing up across town, mostly in the form of puddles filled with noxious substances that suddenly appeared in yards and basements. 

From the 1950s to the 1970s, residents of Love Canal experienced high rates of medical complications like miscarriages, birth defects, and chromosome damage. The case resulted in the formation of Superfund – a 1980 federal program aimed at dealing with chemical waste sites across the country.

8. Four Pests Campaign

In 1958, Mao Zedong kicked off the Four Pests Campaign across China. It was a part of the larger Great Leap Forward, aimed to reduce the number of the four most problematic pests in the country – rats, mosquitoes, flies, and sparrows – in order to increase crop yields and eradicate diseases. The Chinese were especially mad at the sparrow, particularly the Eurasian Tree Sparrow, as it consumed a large amount of grain at a time people were starving. 

Many innovative methods were tried, including making loud noises with household utensils like pots and pans to disturb their feeding patterns. The government even rewarded the agencies and groups that killed the highest number of any of these pests, which ultimately proved successful. By one estimate, the campaign resulted in the deaths of over 1 billion sparrows, along with 1.5 billion rats, 220 million pounds of flies, and over 24 million pounds of mosquitoes. 

While it was great for the crops, the whole thing had an unintended consequence, as the sparrows were also crucial to keep crop-destroying insects in check. Without them, the insects multiplied, leading to massive crop losses and a famine that might have killed anywhere between 15 and 36 million people across China. 

7. Cantara Loop Chemical Spill

On July 14, 1991, a Southern Pacific train derailed near Mt. Shasta in California, dumping about 19,000 gallons of a chemical known as metam sodium into the Sacramento River. It’s a soil fumigant and herbicide, which would have a devastating effect on the ecology of the entire region. According to reports, the spill and resulting chemical plume could be seen across a 41-mile radius, with the chemicals eventually spreading up to Shasta Lake. 

The accident would result in the death of all forms of life in the river over a 45-mile stretch, which included more than a million fish and tens of thousands of other creatures like crayfish, mollusks, and insects. Additionally, hundreds of people living in the area reported symptoms like burning eyes, headaches, and nausea. 

While a $38 million settlement was reached with all the affected parties after the damage was properly assessed by agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the effects of the spill have still not been fully reversed. 

6. Kyshtym Nuclear Disaster

The Kyshtym Nuclear Disaster happened on September 29, 1957 in the city of Ozyorsk, Russia,  caused by an explosion in one of the concrete nuclear waste storage tanks at the facility. It was estimated that the explosion released around 20MCi of radioactive material into the environment, making it the third most catastrophic nuclear accident in history. 

The disaster would have a lasting impact on the locals, as it resulted in the contamination of about 9,000 miles of land in and around the site, with over 10,000 people evacuated from the region because of it. Additionally, due to the secrecy surrounding the incident, it would take many more years before the true extent of the damage was fully revealed to the Soviet public. 

5. Kuwaiti Oil Fires

Kuwait was occupied by Iraqi forces in August 1990, triggering a military response from a coalition of 39 countries that we now know as the Gulf War. While that ensured a prompt Iraqi retreat, they resorted to scorched-Earth tactics by setting more than 650 Kuwaiti oil fields on fire, resulting in one of the largest environmental disasters in recent history. 

Due to the smoke, the entire area was covered with a thick sheet of harmful smog for over ten months, made up of harmful pollutants like carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide. The amount of leaked oil was so large that it created about 300 lakes of oil in the Kuwaiti desert, while the rest of it flowed into the Persian Gulf. On top of all that, acid rain caused by the burning oil was responsible for killing large numbers of plants and animals across the region. 

While the fires aren’t burning anymore, the damage to the Kuwaiti ecosystem and environment lingers on. The contaminated regions are out-of-reach for the public or even authorities, as they’re also littered with unexploded ordnance from the war. 

4. Disappearance Of Aral Sea

The Aral Sea in central Asia, located between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, was once the fourth-largest lake in the world. It all changed during the Soviet era, however, when exhaustive agricultural projects, climate change, and a few other factors resulted in the near disappearance of the water body. By one estimate, the Aral Sea has lost over 90% of its size compared to about fifty years ago, making it one of the largest environmental disasters of our time. 

One major factor was the rerouting of major tributaries that drained into the lake, which was also a major source of fish and other marine wildlife for the local population. With its near-disappearance, the local fisheries have been almost wiped out. On top of all that, the rapid drop in water levels led to the exposure of the lakebed, which is full of harmful material like salts, pesticides, and other pollutants. As a result, the air and water in the regions is now severely contaminated, leading to a wide range of health problems for people living in the region.

3. Bhopal Gas Tragedy

In December 1984, the city of Bhopal in India went through what many have since called the ‘worst industrial accident in history’. It began in an insecticide plant owned by the Indian subsidiary of the American chemical giant, Union Carbide Corporation, when about 45 tons of a dangerous gas – methyl isocyanate – escaped in the densely-populated environment. Due to lack of regulation and proper government rules, the plant was built right in the middle of the city, further exacerbating the overall impact of the disaster

The toxic cloud spread rapidly, killing over 3,000 people within the first 24 hours. While estimates vary, the total death toll from the tragedy may have been as high as 20,000, with many more suffering from chronic diseases like cancer, respiratory illnesses, and reproductive disorders directly because of the exposure. 

2. Niger Delta Oil Spills

The Niger Delta in southern Nigeria is easily one of the most polluted places on Earth, and many factors are responsible. It’s a resource-rich region, despite the poor quality of its soil and inaccessible terrain, as it’s home to vast reserves of various kinds of hydrocarbons. That turned it into a hub for oil and gas extraction some time in the 1950s, immediately triggering a violent native insurgency that continues to this day. 

Over the decades, there have been multiple oil spills in and around the delta region, thanks to lax regulation laws and corruption among local authorities. A total of 822 spills were recorded just within the years 2020 and 2021, spilling about 28,00 barrels in the local environment. As one would expect, it had a devastating impact on local wildlife and food yields, further worsening the conflict situation in the region. Despite all that, the Niger Delta remains a top driver of Nigeria’s economy, as it’s responsible for over 90% of the country’s GDP.  

1. Amazon Forest Fires

The huge fires in the Amazon rainforest made global news back in 2019, as the world watched the largest forest cover burn up due to reasons that weren’t immediately clear. Were they natural forest fires, like the ones observed in many other parts of the world every year, an accident that blew out of proportion, or something else entirely? 

As a 2020 study would go on to establish, the primary culprit was, again, corporate greed and government deregulation. We now know that fires are widely used by the cattle, logging, and farming industries in the Amazon, as they provide a quick, low-cost way of clearing out the land for agriculture and ranching. As the study found, most of the fires were associated with industrial operations, many of which continue to operate without state oversight even today. An earlier study had found that the beef-producing regions in the Amazon are three times more likely to experience forest fires during dry seasons.