Throughout history, man has tried to control the forces and processes of nature. Agriculture is just one example. We learned to farm so that we could control food sources on our own terms rather than desperately hunting and searching for food.

However, one force of nature that we haven’t been able to tame—the weather—affects agriculture severely. Sure, we have found ways to shield ourselves from the weather (buildings) and have even produced environments within buildings (indoor ski slopes). But we are still at the mercy of Earth’s climate systems, such as droughts and monsoons.

There have been significant world applications of weather modification. The US military created artificial rain during the Vietnam War, and China controlled the weather for the 2008 Olympics. Although these were serious projects, we’re going to explore the crazier stuff—from theory to practice—instead.

10 Examples Of Cloud Seeding And Weather Control

10 Shoot And Be Noisy To Stop Hail

A hailstorm can easily destroy fields of crops. Even in ancient times, some people realized that they couldn’t pray away the hail. In fact, ancient Roman legal code called the Twelve Tables prohibited superstition in the fight against hail. Technically, it didn’t say anything about fighting hail with weapons and sound, though.

This started a tradition despite laws to stop people from doing so. In 789, Charlemagne (aka Charles The Great), king of the Franks, had to forbid people from ringing church bells and exhibiting prayer tables every time there was hail.

Later, people moved to firing arrows at the clouds. When gunpowder became widespread, cannons, muskets, and rifles were used. In 1750, the Austrian Empire made this illegal. However, by 1886, they seemed to have given up and were conducting their own anti-hail experiments by firing big mortars at the clouds.^[1]

9 Plant Forest, Burn, Repeat

In 1836, James Pollard Espy, the US government’s first official meteorologist, devised an answer to the question of how to cause storms: set stuff on fire. His theory was that storms are created by hot air rising in columns (which produces rainfall).

He wanted a forest stretching north to south in the western US. Sections could be burned if rain was requested by farmers. This idea was rejected by the government despite his polite request for a 966-kilometer (600 mi) stretch to use as a test. Some scientists pointed out that forest fires happen all the time without creating rainfall, which didn’t help his case.

However, some people were worried that Espy’s method would be successful and give power to the federal government to control the weather. Senator John Crittenden of Kentucky noted, “And if he possesses the power of causing rain, he may also possess the power of withholding it.”^[2]

Essentially, they thought Espy was going to turn into a crazed weather dictator with government approval.

8 Blowing Up Government Money

At least one man was given money by the US Congress to carry out his weather experiments. In August 1891, Robert St. George Dyrenforth traveled to Midland, Texas, with $9,000 worth of an arsenal, including massive kites, 3- to 6-meter-tall (10–20 ft) balloons, mortars, six kegs of blasting powder, and 230 kilograms (500 lb) of manganese oxide.

The plan: Blow up the sky with exploding kites and balloons.^[3]

Initially, things went well because no big newspapers sent reporters to check on Dyrenforth. He was taking credit for rain that happened far away from his site and even for showers predicted by the Weather Bureau. The Sun described it as “a great success” despite never having been there.

In 1892, Congress gave Dyrenforth another $10,000, but his luck ran out. In October 1892, his nighttime explosions in the Washington, DC, area around Fort Myer produced nothing in the diverse community but “profanity in 17 different languages.”

By December, Dyrenforth had moved to Texas. There, the media started turning against him. A San Antonio newspaper wrote that his plans had “gone up like a rocket and come down like a stick.” After that, Congress refused to give him the remaining $5,000 in his budget, which ended his adventure.

7 The Rainmaking Gun

The Steiger Vortex gun, designed by Albert Steiger, was a 5-meter-tall (16.4 ft) metal device shaped like an ice cream cone. The gun was designed to produce vibrations that destroyed hail and caused rain. It was used in Austria to protect wine-growing regions.

Clement Wragge, a government meteorologist in Australia, was impressed by this and decided to bring the technology back to his homeland. Six guns were placed in Charleville in September 1902. Despite firing repeatedly at two-minute intervals, no rain was produced. In fact, the only thing dampened was Wragge’s career in meteorology.^[4]

6 Melting The Ice Caps

In this era of climate change anxiety, we are often told that we should be concerned with the melting of ice caps and the poles. Back in the day, though, they wanted to declare outright war on these things.

Writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 1877, N.S. Shaler had nothing but hate for the poles, describing the cold weather they brought as “ruthless as Huns, slaying and scalping all the creatures of summer like barbarians as they are.”

In his opinion, we needed to reroute the Pacific Ocean’s warm Kuroshio Current through the Bering Strait. This would cause arctic temperatures to rise by 16.67 degrees Celsius (30 °F), and we wouldn’t have to deal with winter anymore in North America.^[5]

10 Conspiracy Theories About Weather Modification

5 Move The Earth

In late 1912, the North Pole and the South Pole were still considered the enemy. According to The New York Times, we needed to end “the iceberg menace.” The Titanic had sunk in April of that year, so maybe the hostility was understandable. Carroll Livingston Riker, an engineer from New York, had a $190 million plan.^[6]

He wanted to reroute the Gulf Stream by building a 320-kilometer (200 mi) jetty eastward from Newfoundland. This would have obstructed the cold Labrador Current and moved it eastward to meet the Gulf Stream (which was moving northward) in deep water. The jetty would have had 9 meters (30 ft) of rocks upon it.

Warm water is lighter than cold water, so warm water would have been able to travel farther—approximately 645 kilometers (400 mi) north to warm those currents as well. According to Riker’s theory, this would have melted Greenland’s heavy ice cap and shifted the Earth’s axis.

Nothing came of these plans, and the poles were safe for another day.

4 The Nuclear Solution

In 1945, Julian Huxley, a cofounder of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), spoke at a conference in Madison Square Garden about using nuclear bombs as “atomic dynamite [for] landscaping the Earth” (melting the polar ice cap).

This was extremely inappropriate for two reasons. First, the US had just dropped two nuclear bombs on Japan, killing over 100,000 people. Second, this conference was about arms control, which leaves us somewhat doubtful that the participants wanted to drop more nuclear bombs.^[7]

3 Build A Huge Dam

Although Russia is a huge landmass, a lot of it is covered in ice or is inhospitable due to the extreme cold. During the Cold War, the Soviets planned to build a massive dam from their eastern coast to Alaska. This was another attempt to direct the Gulf Stream up north and warm the Arctic. In this case, it would have opened up more landmass for the Soviets to use.^[8]

Even crazier, the Americans almost agreed to this plan despite being in the middle of the Cold War. The Soviets argued that everyone was likely to benefit from a warmer climate. The idea was floated to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists who brought up the matter in the 1960 presidential debates.

Then-Senator John F. Kennedy responded that it was “certainly worth exploring” in the context of greater cooperation.

2 Grand Theft Cloud

In 2018, Iran accused Israel of stealing water from clouds before they reached Iran. At that time, Brigadier General Gholam Reza Jalali, head of Iran’s Civil Defense Organization, declared, “We are faced with the cases of cloud theft and snow theft.” He also referred to a study which had concluded that all highlands above 2,200 meters (7,200 ft) from the Mediterranean to Afghanistan—except for those in Iran—had received snowfall.

Fortunately, Ahad Vazife of the Iran Meteorological Organization stepped in to stop this from escalating into a full-scale diplomatic war at a time when the two countries were at odds over Syria. Vazife pointed out that if countries could hijack clouds, then the US would not have been suffering from a water shortage. According to Vazife, the Americans would have just stolen someone else’s rainfall.^[9]

1 Burning Up The Sky

Sometimes, seemingly crazy ideas can work. During World War II, the Royal Air Force (RAF) invented the Fog Investigation and Dispersal Operation (FIDO) system to allow their planes to take off in foggy conditions.

FIDO worked by running pipes with burners around airfields. These would be fed by tanks of petrol, causing flames to shoot up and raise temperatures enough to disperse fog. It allowed the RAF to get planes airborne and attack German forces that were still grounded by the fog.^[10]

The operation ran from 1943 to 1945 but was discontinued due to the costs. The RAF had burned over 380,000 liters (100,000 gal) of petrol per hour to operate FIDO. The project remained dormant until 1959 when the last system was removed from RAF Manston.

10 Types Of Alien Weather That Put Earth To Shame

[WARNING: This list contains disturbing footage.] Archaeological finds have shown that people have been modifying their bodies in interesting ways for much of human history. Body modification remains popular today, and while it can be something as ubiquitous as an ear-piercing or tattoo, some cultures have taken it a step further.

The cultures that appreciate body modification are widespread throughout history, and some of them are far more extreme than others. These ten examples are truly some of the most fascinating examples of cultural body modification.

See Also:Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Yourself

10 Neck Elongation

Neck Elongation is the practice of placing neck rings around a woman’s neck at various points throughout her life to achieve an ideal standard of beauty. Over time, they stack and create the illusion of a long neck, as they don’t physically lengthen the neck. Instead, they push the clavicle and ribs down, making it look as if the neck is longer than it truly is.

Over time, the rings’ weight twists the collarbone and upper ribs 45º lower than where they would naturally be. Neck elongation is found in African and Asian cultures, though they are likely best known in the Kayan Lahwi Tribe in Myanmar.

Kayan girls wear brass collars as early as two to five years old. Over time, they add rings as the girl ages, creating the bones’ deformity that results in the illusion of neck elongation. The practice was first described to the West by Marco Polo, who wrote about it in 1300 AD.

The modification to the body is permanent. While removing the rings is possible, it can result in death if done incorrectly. Simply removing them often causes pain, so for most women, the addition of rings is a permanent choice.^[1]

9 Lip Plates

It’s relatively common in the West to see people placing successively larger gauges in their earlobes to create large holes, but the practice isn’t new. In some parts of Africa, increasingly larger disks made from clay or wood are placed into a pierced lower lip (sometimes upper) until a large lip plate can be worn.

The practice was independently invented at least six times in Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Mesoamerica, and Ecuador, with Africans starting as far back as 8700 BC. The placement of lip plates continues in various places around the world, though it is most common in Ethiopia.

The Mursi and Surma people who inhabit the lower Omo River valley begin the process about six to 12 months before marriage. This is usually around the age of 15 to 18 when the lip is first pierced. At this time, a wooden peg is inserted.

Over time, the peg is replaced by larger pegs, and eventually, a plate is inserted into the hole. The size of the plate depends on any of several factors, though the largest one ever recorded, in 2014, measured 23.4″ (59.5 cm) in circumference and 7.6″ (19.5 cm) wide.^[2]

8 Blackening & Filing Teeth

The Bagobo people of the Southern Philippines in Mindanao are an ancient tribe who have inhabited the region for centuries and is credited with bringing Hinduism to the area. While many members of the tribe have embraced modern life, some continue their traditional practices, including sharpening and blackening their teeth as a rite of passage for young Bagobo.

When a Bagabo youth reaches the age of puberty, they have their teeth filed by placing their heads against the person carrying out the sharpening. They then bite down on a stick, and the teeth are filed, leaving only the stump of the tooth, ending in a sharp point.

Once the filing is completed, the teeth are then blackened to complete the process. To darken the teeth, powder created from a tree or black smoke passed through bamboo is applied to the teeth, which blackens them.

Throughout this process, the person having the treatment done is not allowed to drink any water, nor can they eat sour food. They are also prohibited from attending a funeral, so their less-than-pristine teeth don’t cause offense.^[3][4]

7 Circumcision

These days, people don’t often think about circumcision as anything more than a simple medical procedure. Still, the practice has a long history, and it very much is a form of cultural body modification. Circumcision is a form of genital mutilation that involves removing the skin (prepuce) covering the tip of the penis.

It’s most commonly performed shortly after birth. In many hospitals throughout the West, it’s common to circumcise a child without any cultural or religious stipulation. Despite this, the practice is deeply rooted in history and has been conducted by numerous cultures around the world.

Circumcision and other forms of genital mutilation began in eastern Africa sometime after 3,000 B.C. Early uses of circumcision likely centered around the fact that a man’s foreskin is the location of their primary erogenous sensation. Removing it may have been seen as a sacrifice of enjoyment in life for a potentially better afterlife.^[5]

The ancient practice was carried into modern times via Jewish customs, which continue to conduct circumcisions on newborn boys, eight days following birth. Judaism ascribes circumcision as a commandment honoring of the covenant between Abraham and God.

6 Scarification

One of the oldest known practices of body modification is tattooing. Still, another similar process of creating images on the skin is called scarification. The process involves cutting, branding, scratching, or etching images into the skin. Doing so creates permanent scars in the desired image.

The reasons someone might use scarification over tattooing are various, though there are several potential cultural reasons. They could be done as a rite of passage, for religious reasons, or for social reasons. In that respect, scarification is found more often in dark-skinned cultures, as the resulting images are easier to see than traditional tattoos.

There are numerous cultures worldwide, and throughout history, that have utilized some form of scarification for various reasons. It is most commonly found in sub-Saharan Africa, West Africa, and East Africa, including the Gonja, Tiv, and Maasai people.

Regardless of the methods used, scarification is inherently more dangerous than tattooing. The skin is subjected to a much larger trauma, and the risk of infection is substantially greater. Additionally, the process takes much longer than tattooing due to the need to heal between treatments.^[6][7]

See Also: 10 Horrifically Botched Circumcisions

5 Fingertip Removal—Dani Village, New Guinea

There are several instances of fingertip removal across various cultures in history, with Yakuza members being one known to many around the world. Another culture that practices removing portions of the finger is the secretive tribe of the Dani found deep in the jungles of Indonesia.

Whenever a loved one dies, female members of the tribe have the upper half of their fingers amputated, in a process called Ikipalin. This is done as part of a ritual meant to ward off spirits. It is believed that removing the upper part of the finger helps to keep the deceased person’s restless spirit away from the family.

Additionally, it is meant to be a symbol of the pain of bereavement, and it doesn’t stop with adult women. In some cases, the mothers will bite the tips of the fingers off of their own babies to have them take part in the practice.

The Indonesian government banned fingertip removal, but members in Western New Guinea are believed to continue the practice. Older women are often found to be missing parts of their fingers, which suggests Ikipalin continues in some areas of the country.^[8]

4 Genital Beading

Genital Beading or Pearling is a form of body modification believed to have originated in Southeast Asia sometime in the early 1400s. A more famous account of Pearling came from members of the Yakuza, who insert a single pearl for each year they are imprisoned.

Pearling involves permanently inserting small beads beneath the skin of the genitals. It is most commonly done by men who insert pearls in the penis’ shaft, though women have been known to do it directly under the labia’s skin. There are several reasons a person might do this; however, it is commonly done to enhance sexual pleasure during vaginal or anal intercourse.

Historically, pearls were used in the practice, hence the name, though any material can be used, including gold and ivory. In modern times, Teflon, surgical steel, titanium, and silicon are used, as they are the safest option for permanent insertion into the body.^[9]

These days, it’s common for Filipino sailors, who largely do Pearling to curry favor with prostitutes. “Filipino seaman are famous for them… that’s why they [women in port] like us, why they keep asking for us. When they hear that Filipinos are coming, they’re happy.”^[10]

3 Female Genital Mutilation

While removal of the prepuce in boys only lessens their erogenous pleasure during sex, female genital mutilation aims to destroy it altogether. The practice involves the partial or complete removal of the clitoral hood, clitoral glans, inner & outer labia, and the vulva’s closure, leaving a small opening for the passage of urine and menstrual blood.

While most people around the world consider female genital mutilation to be barbaric, that hasn’t stopped it from being carried out on an estimated 200 million women living in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.^[11]

The practice began long ago, but the origins remain unknown. It is believed that female genital mutilation may have been practiced in ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period, which would set the custom as far back as 2050 B.C. Evidence has been found in hieroglyphics, though it hasn’t been found on mummies from the period.

It is known that Egypt continued the practice well into the 2nd and 3rd-century. Pilio of Alexandria wrote that “the Egyptians by the custom of their country circumcise the marriageable youth and maid in the fourteenth (year) of their age when the male begins to get seed, and the female to have a menstrual flow.”^[12]

2 Foot Binding

Foot binding is the Chinese custom of wrapping a young girl’s feet tightly so that over time, they change shape and size. The practice is believed to have originated among upper-class dancers in the 10th century but became popular over time among the elite during the Song dynasty. By the Qing dynasty, the practice spread to all classes in China.

When a woman’s feet were bound in this manner, they were considered to be exhibiting a beauty standard called lotus feet. There were various means of carrying out the practice, but the end result was often the same: the feet were smaller and had the toes tucked unnaturally beneath the sole.

The process began before the arch fully formed and could begin with girls as young as four. They would begin in the winter months to take advantage of the cold’s numbing effect and soak the feet in a mixture of herbs and animal blood. The nails would then be cut back as far as possible, and bandages were used to tightly bind the feet until the toes broke.

Once broken, the toes were held tightly against the foot’s sole, and the arch was then broken. The process was maintained and repeated for years until the foot’s shape was completely altered. Fortunately, the practice concluded in the 20th century.^[13]

1 Head Shaping

Head Shaping, or artificial cranial deformation, is an ancient form of body modification that aimed to alter the skull’s formation through flattening or binding. The practice could only be done before a child’s fontanel closing during the normal growth process.

Head shaping predates written history, and several cultures around the world have been found to practice it. Evidence has been found in Proto-Neolithic humans’ bones dating as far back as 9000 BC, where skulls have been found to be elongated to a near conical shape.

The earliest written record of the process comes from Hippocrates’ writings, who named the Macrocephali (long-heads) as practitioners around 400 BC. In the Americas, the Maya and Incans reshaped their children’s heads, as did some Native American tribes in North America.^[14]

People in France practiced head shaping until the late 19th century. They would bind an infant’s head in a tight bandage, which was left in place for two to four months. The bandage was replaced with a fitted basket, which would be strengthened as the child grew using metal threads.

The Vanuatu people of Tommen Island continued head binding well into the 20th century, though the practice has widely been abandoned in the 21st century.^[15]

See Also: Top 10 Human Sideshow Freaks