Why do people get tattoos?

Because of traditions and some cultural milestones? For personal fulfillment and a sense of identity? But why are tattoos so fascinating? Is it the tools used to make these markings or the stories that lie beneath the surface of the ink?

This list compiles a diverse group of tattoo pieces, traditions, and stories that are both interesting and answer some of these questions.

10 Olive Oatman And The Mojave Tribe

Native Americans have extensive cultural traditions that involve tattooing, but each group has different customs. In the past, several factors affected their tattooing, such as the location of the group, the natural resources to which they had access, and the religion and creation stories in which they believed.

A specific example is the Mojave tribe, which was known at least as far back as the 16th century by the Spanish. Located mainly in California and Arizona along the Colorado River, the tribe used ink from the blue cactus plant to tattoo adolescents as a rite of passage. The Mojave also got tattoos for luck and protection when heading into battle and for religious ceremonies.

Unfortunately, there aren’t many pictures of the Mojave people available today. However, a set of famous pictures of Olive Oatman shows her Mojave chin tattoos. Her story is unorthodox because Oatman wasn’t a Mojave person. She was white.^[1]

When Olive was a child, a group of Native Americans, thought to be the Tolkepayas/Western Yavapai, killed her family. Olive and her sister Mary Ann were taken captive by the group as slaves. Only their brother Lorenzo survived the attack as a free person, though he was badly injured.

The girls were frequently mistreated by their captors until they were traded to a Mojave group in California a year later. Tribal leader Espianola and his family adopted the girls. Espianola’s wife, Aespaneo, and daughter Topeka gave the Oatman girls land to farm.

The Mojave gave both girls blue cactus tattoos on their chins, a tradition in their group to ensure a good afterlife. The girls lived with the tribe for several years until Mary Ann tragically died of starvation during a drought that killed several other Mojave people.

Olive left after the US Army bribed and then threatened the Mojave people. Reunited with Lorenzo, Olive would speak often of her time with the Mojave. Although she was positive in the beginning, her opinion of them appeared to sour as time went on. How she truly felt about her time with the Mojave remains a mystery.

9 Dulong Tattoos

The Dulong people are a minority in China who lived in an inaccessible area in the Yunnan Province until a highway was built in late 1999. It was a tradition for girls to get a face tattoo when they began puberty, a tradition called “Hua Lian” (“painting the face”) or “Wen Mian” (“tattooing the face”).

The tattoos were first drawn with soot and water by an elder and then stabbed into the skin using a needle or sharpened stick. When the drawing was finished, they would rub some soot or grass juice into the wound to turn the resulting scars blue.

In the areas along the upper and middle reaches of the Dulong River, the tattoos were a complex pattern of connecting diamonds down the bridge of the nose and across the cheeks and mouth. In the lower reaches, the designs were much simpler. All tattoos were butterfly shaped as they believed that the dead turned into butterflies when they passed.

The reasons for these tattoos vary, although several sources claim that the tattoos were supposed to make their women less attractive to Lisu and Tibetan slavers. Tibetan landlords demanded that the Dulong women be taken as slaves if their families could not pay their taxes.^[2]

In passive defiance, Dulong women carved and dyed their faces black and blue with soot. The girls made sure that their markings couldn’t be washed away in the hopes of making themselves less attractive, even frightening, to foreigners.

The practice became a cultural tradition until the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Fewer than 30 women with traditional Dulong tattoos are still alive today.

8 R.H. Macy

As a young man of 15 years, Rowland Hussey Macy became a sailor on Emily Morgan, a whaling ship, in the early 19th century. During his four years as a whaler, Macy got a red star tattooed on his forearm. This symbolized the stars that guided him on those cold nights at sea.

When Macy returned home, he opened a string of failed stores and then went to work for his brother-in-law’s shop in Boston. Afterward, Macy did a brief stint searching for gold in the California Gold Rush of 1849.

Once again, Macy experienced bitter failure. But he never truly gave up his dreams of opening a successful shop. So Macy opened another dry goods store in Haverhill with his brother and, for the first time, had some success with the business.

This inspired Macy to finally move to New York in 1858 to open R.H. Macy & Co. The first day only brought in a modest $11.06. By the end of the year, the store earned $85,000. R.H. Macy & Co expanded into 11 buildings and became a department store. Its logo became R.H. Macy’s red star tattoo.^[3]

7 William Lithgow

William Lithgow was a Scotsman who traveled the world and documented his adventures in several literary works in the 17th century. During a visit to Jerusalem, he and some companions got their pilgrimage tattoos. Lithgow’s tattoo was a quote professing his pride and loyalty to his homeland’s monarchy. He wrote of the tattoo:

In the last night of my staying at Jerusalem, which was at the holy grave, I remembring that bounden duty, & loving zeale, which I owe unto my native Prince; whom I in all humility (next and immediate to Christ Jesus) acknowledge to be the supreme head, and Governour of the true Christian and Catholicke Church; by the remembrance of this obligation I say, I caused one Elias Bethleete, a Christian inhabitour of Bethleem, to ingrave on the flesh of my right arme, The never-conquered Crowne of Scotland, and the now inconquerable Crowne of England, joyned also to it, with this inscription, painefully carved in letters, within the circle of the Crowne, Vivat Jacobus Rex.

At the time, most pilgrimage tattoos contained solely Christian emblems and quotations. Lithgow got other pilgrimage tattoos, but they were only mentioned in annotations.

In his biographies, he has frequently been referred to as a spy. During one of his adventures in Spain in 1620, he was captured and tortured for giving crucial information to an English ship. Trying to get a confession from Lithgow, Spanish inquisitors cut his tattoo and a sizable amount of flesh from his arm.

His account of the event was this: “The Corrigidor . . . gave direction, to teare a sunder, the name, and Crowne (as hee sayd) of that Hereticke King, and arch-enemy to the Holy Catholicke Church . . . cutting the Crowne, sinewes and flesh to the bare bones.”^[4]

Lithgow never fully recovered and narrowly avoided being burned at the stake. Later, he returned to Britain.

6 Otzi The Iceman

Otzi is a mummy that was naturally preserved in the Otztal Alps over 5,000 years ago. He was found by two German tourists in 1991. Otzi is so well-preserved that anthropologists can still see his tattoos, of which 61 have been identified.

Scientists have speculated on everything from Otzi’s cause of death and illness to his modern relatives and his diet. They also have theories about his tattoos. For example, they were probably done by first pricking the pattern using some kind of needle or stick and then rubbing soot over the skin.

Given how dark Otzi’s skin is, some of his tattoos are difficult to see with the naked eye. Several were discovered using a noninvasive multispectral imaging technique to separate each color wavelength on Otzi’s skin.

Anthropologists have speculated that many of Otzi’s tattoos were an archaic form of acupuncture that was done for therapeutic reasons. Many were located where he had physical damage—such as his Achilles tendon, lower back, wrist, and ankles.

If so, it would mean that acupuncture was developed nearly 2,000 years earlier than previously thought. Even so, researchers said:

Of course, we can’t be absolutely sure why these tattoos were placed in those locations. It’s possible Otzi’s people believed those regions of the body were spiritually significant. Still, it’s very possible that this was an early effort at acupuncture.

For example, the tattoos of Otzi’s chest are not placed over any recognizable ailment or injury. The true purpose of his tattoos are still unclear. But whether they were decorative or therapeutic, they open a window into Otzi’s culture and heritage that we never would have witnessed otherwise.^[5]

5 Mai

Mai was born on Raiatea, an island in French Polynesia. He fled to Tahiti during an invasion of Raiatea by Borbora warriors in the 1700s. Captain Wallis and his crew on the HMS Dolphin were the first Europeans to “discover” Tahiti around 1767. They tried to claim the island for Britain and crush the resistance of the natives who fought against the invasion.

As time went on, more European ships arrived and the islanders suffered from the restricted food supply and conflict with the colonizers. Some islanders were taken as “specimens” back to England but perished during the journey.

When Captain Cook returned in 1773, Mai (mistakenly called Omai by the British) asked to accompany them back to Europe so that he could obtain guns and other weaponry to fight back against the men of Borabora and reclaim Raiatea.

Mai was paraded around the country by another English man, Sir Joseph Banks. Mai met many high-society members including King George III. Before Mai returned with Captain Cook to Tahiti in 1776, he had his portrait done by the famed painter Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Portrait of Omai has a shoeless Mai clad in white robes with his tattooed hands outstretched to draw the attention of the viewer. Mai’s tattoos were a series of dots over the back of his hands and around his wrists.

His tattoos displayed his foreignness to the European public. At the time, he was the perfect representation of the European ideal of the “noble savage” who was seen as less than human.^[6]

4 People Of The Arctic And The Inuit

It was speculated that people of the Arctic took part in a string of similar tattooing traditions after an ivory mask, that may have dated back over 3,500 years, was recovered on Devon Island. The tattoos depicted on the mask are sets of parallel lines from forehead to lips to chin. Similar designs were found in several northern communities around the globe.

The Inuit traditions involving tattooing were first recorded by Sir Martin Frobisher in 1576 when he wrote:

The women are marked on the face with blewe streekes down the cheekes and round about the eies. [ . . . ] Also, some of their women race [scratch or pierce] their faces proportionally, as chinne, cheekes, and forehead, and the wristes of their hands, whereupon they lay a colour, which continueth dark azurine.^[7]

Unfortunately, the Inuit people were shamed for their facial tattoos for many decades when their communities were Christianized by missionaries. Shamans were converted to Christianity, and their cultural and religious practices were phased out. Some tattoos were also done for pain relief (like acupuncture), but the medical techniques of the Europeans rendered those practices obsolete.

Luckily, cultural tattoos in the Arctic Inuit communities are being destigmatized, albeit slowly, due to the work of people like Holly Mititquq Nordlum and Maya Sialuk Jacobsen. They are a pair of artists/tattooists who are slowly reintroducing the tattooing techniques of skin stitching and hand poking to their community through their apprenticeship programs.

3 Bert Grimm And The US Criminal Underworld

Bert Grimm was a US tattooist. He started his career after running away from home at 15 to become a sideshow tattoo artist. While on the road, Grimm met with other tattooists—such as Shorty Schultz, Percy Waters, and Long Andy Libarry—which helped to develop his technique. Eventually, Grimm operated different tattoo shops in Chicago, Las Vegas, Long Beach, and St. Louis.

Grimm was also an avid storyteller, taking time during a session to sell his brand and talk about his experiences. The eccentricities of his most famous customers are one of the many things that made Grimm so fascinating. He was rumored to have done tattoos for the famed crime couple Bonnie and Clyde, although what the tattoos looked like is unclear.

Reportedly, Grimm also tattooed Charles Arthur (“Pretty Boy”) Floyd, the US bank robber. Floyd had a “Rose of No Man’s Land” tattoo. (A song by the same name was meant to honor Red Cross nurses from World War I.)

Floyd’s tattoo was described in the scars and marks section of one of his wanted posters. Grimm claimed that he had tattooed Floyd at some unknown time at his shop in St. Louis.

Apparently, Grimm had been unaware of this until a US marshal had shown up at his shop. The marshal asked Floyd about the tattoo because he wanted one done on himself. After visiting Grimm, the marshal left with the same tattoo.

Grimm’s gift of gab helped spread his reputation as “the greatest tattoo artist in the world.” His career continued for approximately 70 years until his death in 1985.^[8]

2 Irezumi

Irezumi (“inserting ink”) is the Japanese term for tattooing, which originated in the Jomon period. Evidence of facial tattoos that were associated with established social ranks or evading evil spirits has been found from several clay figurines in tombs. The full body tattoo (horimono) is a beautiful and intricate tradition that showed off wealth, especially when tattoos were still illegal in Japan.

Tattoos became controversial in Japan mostly due to an association with criminal activity such as the Yakuza, a crime syndicate that is feared in the country. The Yakuza believe that tattoos are a sign of courage because of the pain to have them done.^[9]

Also, this negative view of tattoos may have occurred due to the rising Chinese influence in Japanese culture during the 17th century. Prisoners were given facial tattoos in China as a permanent branding to mark their criminality if the offense was severe enough. After the branding, criminals could be exiled as well.

This practice was adopted by the Japanese. Each region had a design for different crimes so that people could tell where the crime had been committed. Tattoos have been legal in Japan for decades, but the negative connotations are still present in some areas.

1 Tattooed Ladies And Circus Freaks

The public has been fascinated by the strange and unusual for centuries, so it stands to reason that someone would capitalize on that fascination at some point. “Freak shows” peaked in popularity in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

These shows spotlighted people with peculiar physical and mental conditions, such as Schlitzie (“The Last of the Aztecs”), Frank Lentini (“The Three-Legged Man”), and Joseph Merrick (“The Elephant Man”). But not every person was born with their peculiarity. Tattooed people, particularly women, enthralled audiences with fantastic and often false tales of how they got their tattoos.

George Contentenus (“The Tattooed Man”) had over 300 tattoos and claimed to be a prince raised in a Turkish harem. He said that his tattoos had come from “savage natives” of Burma who had threatened to cut him into pieces unless he covered his body in their markings.

Initially, he was so insistent about the truth of this story that he even published a book about the tale. Years later, he admitted that it was a false narrative designed to make him rich and famous.

Many tattooed ladies told fictitious stories about Native Americans giving them their tattoos. But not all their fame came from the stories they told.

Artoria Gibbons was the highest-paid tattooed lady of her time and had all her markings done by her partner, “Red” Gibbons. Artoria had an impressive following, most of whom were male, and continued performing as a tattooed lady into her eighties.^[10]

Although freak shows have died out, the fascination they had with tattoos lives on. The exhibition of tattoos in these shows helped to glorify and normalize tattooing in Western culture.

Savannah O. Skinner is a freelance writer and author from Canada, sometimes working under the pen name S.O. Skinner.

Classical music usually soothes with its dulcet tones. Usually. But sometimes it is raw and shocking. Sometimes it expresses the side of man that we avoid the consideration of. This list looks at ten such pieces of music. None of these pieces pre-date the 20th century which, when you consider that art mimics society, is rather condemnatory of our time. Some of these items contain nudity, flashing images, and scenes of horror. Now, turn up the volume and steel yourself . . .

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10 Too Terrifying For The Exorcist

Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin, best known for writing the theme to Mission Impossible was asked by William Friedkin to produce the soundtrack for The Exorcist, which he was directing. Schifrin wrote the theme and it was placed in a trailer. However, then the unexpected happened. In his own words: “The people who saw the trailer reacted against the film, because the scenes were heavy and frightening, so most of them went to the toilet to vomit. The trailer was terrific, but the mix of those frightening scenes and my music, which was also a very difficult and heavy score, scared the audiences away.”

According to Neil Lerner’s Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear, Friedkin had asked Schifrin for a score that “did not sound like music” and which was “tonal and moody.” But it proved too disturbing for the audience to handle and apparently Friedkin threw the score out the window. Listen to the theme above (followed by the more delicate track for the closing titles) but be warned: it starts with a bang.

9 Jack The Ripper, Lesbians, Whores

Whores. Lesbians. Jack the Ripper. These are not things we normally associate with opera. But here we are. Lulu is a superb opera formed in the mind of one of the greatest 20th century composers: Alban Berg. He was a student of the more famous (in general circles at least) Arnold Schoenberg (whose Pierrot Lunaire is below) and he used the same compositional technique: 12 tone rows. In Lulu, Berg surpassed his teacher and fellow member of the Second Viennese School Anton Webern (the first school comprised Mozart and Haydn) in his ability to take the strict rules of serial composition and produce something lyrical.

In this, the final scene of his opera (incomplete on his deathbed), the main character Lulu is stabbed to death by Jack the Ripper after she has had sex with him for money, while the disgraced Countess Geschwitz (Lulu’s lesbian lover) looks on in horror. In its day you can imagine the controversy and shock that would have been experienced by a viewing public unused to homosexuality and candid discussions of prostitution and murder. I am excited to say that the Metrpolitan Opera will be staging Lulu next year.

8 Eerie Repeating Numbers

American composer Philip Glass would be more typically found on a list of beautiful music because his minimalist style is usually quite calming and more “classical” sounding. Here, however, we see a part of his 1976 opera Einstein On The Beach which, as you will see, involves recitation of numbers with seemingly unrelated and random excerpts of text, backed by a mind-numbing track on synthesizer with a choir repeating numbers over and over and over and over . . . In other parts of the opera the singers recite the solfeggi (“do re me”, etc) and a violin takes the place of the main character of Einstein in recognition of his love for the instrument. This is definitely a creepy and disturbing piece of classical music.

Here is a more formal staging of the same excerpt from above, and here is a crazy scene in which you can be certain every performer is wearing an earpiece to keep track of where the hell they are in the four and a half hour long performance. This is the first of three operas Glass refers to as his “Portrait trilogy”, the other two cover Mahatma Gandhi and Pharaoh Akhenaten.

7Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima

When the theme written for The Exorcist by Lalo Schifrin (item 10 above) was rejected, William Friedken settled on a more famous existing piece of music: Threnody For The Victims of Hiroshima by acclaimed Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki written in 1960. The piece uses tone clusters to produce a sound world rather than the tunes and harmonies we are used to in music. In fact, most of the written score allows the players to actually pick whatever notes they want to play. It is a disturbing and penetrating piece of music long studied in schools as an example of modern classical music.

The Threnody was also used during the much-talked-about long scene of a nuclear explosion seen in the Twin Peaks return of 2017. The scene is pretty amazing and you can watch it here. Sadly Krzysztof Penderecki died one month ago of a long illness. Here is further viewing: a video of the master himself conducting his work Polymorphia, also used in The Exorcist.

6 The Banshee

Scritching, scratching, scraping and squeaking are the various noises mostly associated with this bizarre piece of piano music by the very highly regarded American composer Henry Cowell. (Actually those sounds are not atypical for much of Cowell’s work.) This composer was a teacher of John Cage (as was Arnold Schoenberg—see Pierrot Lunaire below) who, in turn, was an inspiration for much of the more avant garde music of pop singer Björk Guðmundsdóttir.

Another highly recommended piece by Cowell is The Tides of Manaunaun (written while Cowell was 15!) which you can listen to here. Much of the playing is performed with the entire arm against the whole piano keyboard creating a disturbing sound world.

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5 Black Angels

Black Angels is for electric string quartet and was written by American composer George Crumb in 1971. As you can see in the perforce, a variety of other instruments are involved and played by the various quartet members. These include wine glasses filled with liquids and percussion instruments—skip to 12:57 to hear these being played. It was written during, and in representation of, the Vietnam war and the troubles in the contemporary world. Like Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima, the piece also appeared on the original soundtrack for the movie The Exorcist (it plays partly through the end credits).

4 Helicopters, Camels, And Trombones

Yes that is a fake camel on the stage. No I don’t know why (I guess they couldn’t train a real camel to do the leg movements!) The music is all over the place, the characters are not all human (the leading man is actually a trombone performer, not a singer), and the third scene involves a string quartet flying around the sky above the opera house in four separate helicopters (yes really). This may not be as frightening as some of the pieces on this list but it is certainly disturbing. Perhaps it is the very sinister notion of helicopters as musical instruments; is that where we, as a society, have come to?

That said, as bizarre as it sounds, this performance is a legitimate opera by Karlheinz Stockhausen and is, in fact, just one of the six he completed (one for each day of the week, though he died before writing his seventh). This one is Wednesday From Light, but you may also want to look at Donnerstag Aus Licht (Thursday From Light) which is equally insane and written earlier.

3 Faust: Taken By The Devil

Alfred Schnittke may one day be, to the twentieth century, what Mozart was to the 18th. He wrote enormous amounts of music in a variety of styles but, through all of it, he remained true to a very particular quality: eclecticism. In this piece of music we see the Alto solo in his Faust Cantata – a piece in the same form as the well-known Messiah by Handel in which soloists stand in a line and perform songs between choral pieces. In this cantata we see the perfect example of Schnittke in a nutshell.

The outstanding singer (Iva Bittova) belts all over the place, yells, grunts, growls and takes liberties liberally. The orchestra includes unexpected instruments—the most weird being the flexatone played by a soloist beside the singer in this video, but also piano, electric guitars, jazz drums, and organ. And even the choir gets a bizarre modern makeover with directions to whistle at various stages of the composition. This is a superb performance of a stunning piece of music. It is creepy and hellish, and will have you on the edge of your seat for the sheer guttural power of it.

2 Descent Into Insanity

Pierrot Lunaire by Arnold Schoenberg was a groundbreaking piece of chamber music when it was first written in 1912. In the video performance here we see chopped up people, cockroaches crawling around, transvestites, and an insane narrator marching through it all nonchalantly as she descends into madness. Pierrot Lunaire is a chamber music setting of the German translation of poems by Belgian poet Albert Giraud.

Be warned: this video contains full frontal nudity. Though Schoenberg pioneered the use of the twelve-tone row in serial composition, this piece is atonal meaning it lacks a harmonic or tonal center but is free from the formal device of serialism, the system for which he ultimate became most famous. His students were equally disturbing in their compositions as evidenced by Lulu above (item 9).

1 Doom, A Sigh

“Doom. A Sigh, is based on two songs that Istvan Marta, a Hungarian composer, recorded during a 1989 visit to Romania. The first, sung by Mrs. Pieter Benedek, 58, evokes her long dead parents, and the second, sung by Mrs. Gergel Imre, 46, recounts the scene of a bloody battle.” For assisting in the making of these recordings, the people involved were fined by the Romanian government and Istvan Marta, the composer, was told, in no uncertain terms by the government, to never return. He didn’t. Words cannot do justice to this mournful and extremely tragic piece. Just listen to it.

+ Magnificently Macabre

I am wrapping the list up with something that is incredibly entertaining to watch but only a touch disturbing (in contrast to the other items on the list). This is a famously difficult piece to perform – for the singer, the orchestra, and most especially the conductor. Yet here we see an amazingly talented Canadian soprano and conductor, Barbara Hannigan, perform Mysteries of the Macabre, taken from the opera Le Grand Macabre (1974–77) by Hungarian composer György Ligeti) singing, acting, AND conducting. This is unheard of and this performance is nothing short of amazing because of it. The raucous standing ovation at the end is well deserved and you can see the toll this piece takes on the performer in Hannigan’s face.

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When we picture the ancient world, it is often an idealized society we conjure up. In this serene Golden age intellectuals wandered about in clean streets surrounded by elegant and gleaming white statues. In fact the ancient world was often dirty, smelly, and noisy. Many of the white sculptures in museums today were originally painted in gaudy colors as you can see on our list of Top 10 Color Classical Reproductions.

When artefacts were excavated in the past they were often suppressed if they did not fit the cultivated image people had of the ancient world. It can therefore be a shock when we are confronted with the naughty, erotic, or frankly bizarre sexual imagery that our ancestors reveled in. Here are ten of the most shocking pieces of erotic art from the deep past.

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10 Ain Sakhri Lovers

The oldest image we have of two people having intercourse comes from 11,000 years ago. Currently held in the British Museum, the Ain Sakhri Lovers were discovered in a cave near Bethlehem. The 10cm tall statue is thought to come from the Natufian Culture of the ancient middle east. While at first it merely looks like a crude piece of carving it is in fact a clever work of art.

The person who created the Lovers used a stone tool to pick out the details. When viewed from the side it is unmistakably a pair with their legs wrapped around each other during sex. But without facial features on either figure it gives their heads a somewhat phallic appearance. This resemblance to a penis continues if the statue is turned sideways. From different angles the Lovers can also appear as a pair of breasts or dangling testicles.

What the Lovers was originally intended for is unknown. As with any archaeological find it may well have had a ritual meaning, but it is also possible that our ancestors were like us and simply preferred their porn 3D.

9 Pompeii Brothel Pictures

Pompeii was a cosmopolitan port. From the graffiti found in the ruins of the town we know that visitors were speaking a variety of languages from Latin to Greek to Oscan and maybe Hebrew. With potential language barriers popping up how then was a prostitute to earn her living?

When Vesuvius erupted it both destroyed and preserved Pompeii. Excavations have revealed exactly what Roman towns were like and one of the entertainments offered in Pompeii was a trip to a brothel. In the Lupinare, one of Pompeii’s pleasure houses, were a series of wall paintings showing couples in various sexual positions. It is thought that these images were used as a sort of sexual menu telling punters exactly what was on offer, in much the same way a picture of a hamburger helps a foreign tourist order in a restaurant.

8 Min

To describe something as ithyphallic is to say it has an erect penis. If you know anything about the Egyptian god Min it is that he is ithyphallic – his statues will not let you forget that fact.

Min, an early god known as ‘the maker of gods and men,’ was among the first Egyptian deities to have large statues raised to them. Those statues did not attempt to hide his anatomy. He is often shown holding his penis in his left hand. At his cultic sites his sacred animal was usually a bull – animals known for their virility. When Min was linked to the constellation Orion the three famous stars in Orion’s midriff were definitely not representing a belt.

Min was associated with a type of wild lettuce that when cut produces a thick, white sap. Some archaeologists have made claims about just what this sticky white fluid could have brought to the Egyptian mind.

7 Priapus

Having a big penis is generally thought to be lucky. For the Greeks and Romans however a large phallus was not only lucky in itself it was also a bringer of luck. Carvings of penises have been found at many ancient sites and one figure of mythology is particularly associated with them. Priapus is a fertility deity with a (to us) comically large penis who was thought to be helpful in farming, gardens, and anything you might consider using a penis for.

Pompeii once again offers a great view of how sex was seen in the ancient world. Paintings and statues of Priapus are found all over the city. One famous fresco of Priapus shows him weighing his penis against a bag of gold, perhaps hinting at a role in business as well.

Statues of the god often show him holding fruit in his robe which is lifted to reveal his erect penis beneath. We cannot be sure how exactly the Greeks and Romans viewed these images. Were they viewed with reverence or laughter? Perhaps the two were not separate things back then. Bear that in mind the next time someone laughs at your anatomy.

6 Herms

Herms in ancient Greece were a unique style of statuary. On top of a square pillar sat the head of either a human or a god. This much is fairly standard but around half way down the pillar was carved a set of male genitalia.

The god Hermes was often the deity shown on a herm and he had a role in protecting borders and warding off thieves. It is thought that herms acted as guards in both private and public settings, as well as being general good luck charms. When the herms were attacked it was an attack on the whole city.

In 415 BC the city of Athens awoke to find its herms had all been mutilated. A gang had torn through the streets during the night vandalizing them – probably by smashing off their penises. Suspicion for this sacrilegious act fell on the statesman Alcibiades and led to his downfall and banishment from the city. Luckily for him the law of “an eye for an eye” was not yet in vogue.

5 Tintinnabula

The penis was a lucky charm for the Romans but so were bells. It, therefore, made sense for them to hang bells from a phallus to increase the power of these charms. Called tintinnabula these wind chimes were hung from doorways and in gardens to ward off evil spirits. But simply mixing two charms together was not enough for the Romans.

Some tintinnabula are a complex mix of imagery. The central figure might be an erect phallus with wings and a lion’s tail. This flying phallus might also be sporting an erect phallus of its own. Hanging from these conjoined penises could be bells or even other phalluses, with yet more bells attached.

4 Warren Cup

The Warren Cup, bought by the British Museum in 1999, is one of the finest pieces of Roman silver work in existence. It is also one of the most pornographic. Usually dated to the 1st century after the birth of Christ, the silver drinking vessel shows four figures in a heavily decorated room surrounded by musical instruments. These signs of luxury are not what catch the eye, however.

On one side a pair of youthful men (“twinks”) are shown making love while on the other a young man or boy lowers himself into the lap of his older, bearded lover (or “daddy” in modern parlance). As if to underline our own role as voyeurs a fifth figure can just be seen peeping at the copulating couples from around the edge of a door.

To show just how far tastes can change the Warren cup was refused entry into the United States in 1953 because the imagery on it was just too shocking.

3 Sheela na gig

When PJ Harvey sang a song called Sheela Na Gig, some listeners may not have understood what she may have been singing about. The lyrics include lines like:

“Sheela-na-gig, Sheela-na-gig
You exhibitionist
Put money in your idle hole”

So what is are sheela-na-gigs? They are statues with exaggerated vulvas that they are gleefully opening up to the world. They are often found on churches, which seems like the last place you would find an exhibitionist female statue. Most commonly found in Ireland and Britain sheela na gig-like sculptures can also be found in mainland Europe. When they appear on churches they are usually positioned over doorways or windows. It is as if the portal being opened by the statue is mirrored in the one below.

No one knows exactly why these sculptures began appearing in the 11th century or what their purpose was. The best guess is that like other erotic figures they were used to ward off evil spirits and to keep them from entering the church, perhaps by offering a more tempting place for spirits to enter.

2 Babylonian copulating couples

Freud said “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” When it comes to erotic art sometimes porn is just porn. This may be the case with the copulating couples of ancient Mesopotamia. From across millennia and locations in the middle east plaques and statues have emerged from the sands which show nothing other than couples in various acrobatic poses.

Two famous plaques from Iraq that are nearly 4000-years-old are illustrative. One shows a man taking a woman from behind, apparently to the satisfaction of both. The other shows a couple in a similar position but with the pair taking a break from their exertions to have a refreshing drink. The lady sips up thick Babylonian beer through a straw while the man drinks from a cup. It has been theorized that these different drinking styles may relate to male and female oral sex.

Here may be an example of a simple joyous reaction to sex from the ancient world untainted by any spiritual meaning. For the Mesopotamians it seems that sex was just sex and not something to be ashamed of. For us modern readers, however, it is absolutely shocking to see such a perverse and unashamed promotion of drinking straws.

1 Pan having sex with a goat

When an excavation in 1752 at Herculaneum (the other Roman town buried by the Vesuvius eruption) revealed a statue of the god Pan, the discoverers were left in a quandary. What do you do with a sculpture that plainly shows the half-human, half-goat deity penetrating a she-goat? One early viewer wrote home to say that the depiction was too indecent to describe and suggested that it should be tossed back into the volcano.

Instead the sculpture was placed in a collection of other pieces of erotic art from the ancient Roman sites that could only be accessed by getting the permission of the King of Naples. Or by bribing a guard. Women were banned entirely from viewing the objects.

For those desperate to see what all the fuss was about prints and drawings of the statue became available. The sculptor Joseph Nollekens created a terracotta copy from memory. Today however anyone paying the entrance fee to the Archaeological Museum in Naples can see it among the other artefacts in the ‘Secret Cabinet’ of ancient artworks once considered too filthy for the public.

A soldier’s life is a practical one, with gear designed to match. When we imagine warriors, whether modern or ancient, we think of gear designed for function and not form.

But throughout history, symbolism has held a powerful place in our cultures. This is reflected in armor from ages past that portrays otherworldly creatures, folklore, or exaggerated features to make the wearer an object of fear. Sometimes for show, sometimes for survival, these are 10 of the most fantastical pieces of armor ever crafted.

10 Maximilian I’s Frog-Mouth Helmet

Unusual in form and name, the frog-mouth helmet seems to be the most impractical helmet possible. Its lower front plate was curved upward and protruded, which provided its signature look.

With only a narrow slit to see out of, this helmet provided no peripheral vision. It was routinely bolted in place, so there was no ability to move it at the neck. What’s more, the wearer couldn’t see forward unless he was leaning ahead slightly.

Heavy and unwieldy, this helmet would have been a death sentence on most battlefields. But it was used almost exclusively in a different sort of combat, jousting. This was an ancient extreme sport where two mounted horsemen charged at one another with lances. The goal was to dismount the opponent while not being dismounted yourself.

In this environment, the frog-mouth helmet excelled. Its lack of peripheral vision was meaningless because knights jousted in straight charges at their opponents. Also, the helmet’s odd shape helped to repel lance blows instead of absorbing them.

The frog-mouth helmet shown above was used by Maximilian I during a jousting tournament to celebrate his wedding at Innsbruck, Austria, in 1494. A masterful example of the frog-mouth helmet, it was crafted by famous armorers Lorenz and Jorg Helmschmid.

9 Bearded Parade Helmet Of Charles V

Like his grandfather, Maximilian I, Charles V appreciated outstanding armor. From his boyhood on, Charles possessed many beautiful pieces of armor, though most were symbols of his wealth and power and not used in actual combat.

One piece, in particular, stands out: a parade helmet created by famed Italian armorer Filippo Negroli. While allowing the wearer’s head to be completely enclosed, this parade helmet featured golden curly hair and a matching beard. It ensured a good hair day for any discerning Holy Roman Emperor.

The helmet, while stunning, has not survived completely. The opening now present on the upper face of the helmet would have included an additional but now missing plate.

8 Mask Visor In The Form Of A Human Face

For about 30 years between 1510–1540, popular fashion in Germany and Austria included helmet visors sculpted to look like humans, either for frightening or humorous effect. It is hard to say which effect Kolman Helmschmid was going for when he created the helmet pictured above. Perhaps he was trying to outdo the look of his glorious rump armor.

The helmet depicts a mustached man with bug eyes and a smashing nose. Visors like these were used mostly for pre-Lenten festivals and were designed to be exchanged for more traditional visors during the everyday use of the helm.

7 Wings Of The Polish Hussars

The Winged Hussars of Poland were one of the most effective cavalries the world has ever seen. For nearly two centuries, they won battle after battle, often against seemingly impossible odds.

In one such case, 200 hussars successfully defended a city from a force of 30,000 in 1581. Sweden’s King Carl X Gustav said, “If I had some 10,000 of such soldiers, I would expect to easily conquer not only Turkey, but the entire world.”

One of the most fascinating facts about this elite cavalry was that they were, in fact, winged. Dyed eagle, ostrich, or crane feathers were affixed to a decorated wooden batten and then attached to the hussar’s backpack, giving him his signature wing.

There has been much debate over the function of this piece of equipment. Some suggest that it was a noisemaking device to rattle enemy horses not accustomed to the sound. Others believe that it was a protection against lassos used by Asian horsemen.

Still, the most prevailing theory is that it was simply an intimidation tactic. These seemingly invincible horsemen were clad in furs and wings, giving them the air of otherworldly attackers.

6 Face Guard Of King James II

The Royal Coat of Arms was created in 1399 during the reign of King Henry IV. It has been used by the British royal family ever since, although some have used it in more interesting ways than others.

King James II, who was crowned in 1685, had a harquebusier’s armor commissioned that included a breastplate, backplate, long gauntlet, and a pot helmet as the centerpiece of the set. The helmet displayed the Royal Coat of Arms with its standing lion and unicorn immediately in front of King James II’s face.

This set of armor was bulletproof—aside from the holes in its fascinating face guard—and was commissioned for £100.

5 Armor Garniture Of George Clifford

If we know nothing else about George Clifford, we know that he was a man who didn’t mind being noticed. He was appointed as champion for Queen Elizabeth I in 1590, and he incorporated her into his armor as much as possible.

His black suit of steel and gold armor was decorated with the Tudor rose, the fleur-de-lis, and the cipher of his queen (two E’s back to back). Though George Clifford did see battle—most famously perhaps was his capture of a Spanish fort in San Juan, Puerto Rico—this armor was designed for tournament use.

4 The Gifted Horned Helmet Of Henry VIII

This iron helmet was one part of an entire suit of armor originally gifted to King Henry VIII by Maximilian I in 1514. Today, only the helmet survives. However, its freakish horned appearance has caused much confusion over the years.

Originally, it was thought to have belonged to Henry VIII’s court jester. This makes sense as the helmet depicts the fool, a popular character in court pageants, complete with wrinkles, dripping nose, and stubble. Scholarly debate over the nature of this gift still rages, and we’re all left to wonder what the rest of the set may have looked like.

3 Lion’s-Head Sallet

We don’t know who made this helmet or who wore it, but we do know what inspired it. The Nemean lion’s demise was the first of Hercules’s recorded exploits. Though no weapon could penetrate the lion’s hide, Hercules strangled the legendary animal to death and then wore the beast’s skin as a mantle.

Naturally, anyone would be keen to channel this story, which was often seen in Renaissance art as a symbol of strength, courage, and perseverance. So this helmet was crafted to imitate the mythological hero’s victory. The underlying helmet was plain. But the top layer is a gold-and-copper lion, sure to inspire friends and frighten enemies in equal measure.

2 The Many Kawari Kabutos

A kawari kabuto (“strange helmet”) was a popular style of helmet used by high-ranking samurai between 1467–1603. These personalized helmets frequently depicted demons or fierce animals and were used to distinguish generals from their lower-ranking inferiors.

Though a staple of the ancient Japanese warrior for centuries, the kabutos have outlived their military usefulness. Now they survive in traditional Japanese wisdom and everyday sayings.

One such saying is: “Tighten your kabuto after winning.” This warns not to rest too soon after a victory. “Take off the kabuto” is a saying that means to surrender or suffer defeat.

1 Bamen

If a samurai would cover himself in terrifying representations of folklore and nature, he would naturally want the same for his horse. The bamen (“horse mask”) and bagai (“horse armor”) were used by samurai after the 17th century.

The armor was crafted from many small tiles of leather and gold that were sewn into cloth. The mask was made from boiled leather that was then shaped into the likeness of a horse or dragons, complete with horns, scales, and fiery red nostrils. The entire battle-ready horse and rider conveyed the owner’s prestige and power.

Ever since Zeus invented technology (that’s what happened, right?) mankind has been constantly inventing. Some creations – like the iPod or the electric nose hair trimmer – become so ingrained into our everyday lives we can’t imagine a world without them. Others, meanwhile, are… these. Some inventions, no matter how brilliant, are mostly remembered for failing incredibly hard.

The Mattel Intellivision was a home game console released in 1979. Development began less than a year after the introduction of its main competitor / arch-nemesis, the Atari 2600. It had graphics and sound capabilities that put the 2600 to shame, but that was only the beginning of its innovations. Intellivision was the first 16-bit gaming system, the first to feature voice synthesis, and easily the first to feature downloadable games via cable.

But poor marketing, along with a poorly designed non-ergonomic 16-direction control pad lead to Mattel selling only 3 million units over its lifetime. Not bad, you say? The underpowered Atari machine sold ten times that number. In 1983, the video game market crashed – only to be revived by the Nintendo NES, a system with all of the Mattel’s innovations but none of its shortcomings.

The first digital home video format was introduced in 1978, known as Laserdisc or “DiscoVision” because this was the ’70s. Brought to market just two years after the introduction of videocassettes, this high-capacity digital storage format meant video and audio quality far exceeding any VCR. Compact Discs, still four years down the road, were based on this technology. Laserdiscs boasted extremely sharp images – the likes of which had not yet been seen on home video – as well as digital surround sound.

Unfortunately, the discs were heavy and easily damaged, and the players quite loud compared to VCRs. There was no recording capability, and the discs and their players were super expensive. VCRs reigned supreme until the advent of the DVD, which was a kind of mini Laserdisc.

The very first widescreen projection format, Cinerama, made IMAX look like a wussy. Projecting a Cinerama film meant projecting three synchronized 35mm projectors simultaneously onto a gigantic curved screen. While technically challenging to present and requiring a skilled projectionist (or three), the results were visually astounding and far ahead of any other method of the time. 

Did we say “technically challenging”? We meant “damn near impossible.” Projecting three films with perfect synchronization is every bit as hard as it sounds, and there was no means of automation. The projectionists just had to be that good. Plus, very few theaters were willing to make the necessary and expensive modifications. As a result, only a couple of dozen films ever used the format.

As the other home videocassette format, Beta is synonymous with “also-ran.” Sony’s format offered much smaller, more durable cassettes and better resolution than JVC’s competing VHS format. Betamax even beat VHS to the US and Japan markets by over a year. So what went wrong?

The “format wars” between Beta and VHS (see: Sony and everyone else) are the stuff of tech legend. Sony misjudged the home video market in a number of ways, but the most likely cause of Beta’s failure was Sony’s reluctance to license its technology. JVC had no such qualms, resulting in a wide array of manufacturers selling VHS machines much more cheaply than Betamax. Also, Beta machines could initially only record for 60 minutes, compared to the 3 hours of VHS. VHS wins…

Simply put, Quad would now be called 4.0 surround sound. Like stereo, but… twice as much. It was intended to replicate the experience of live sound on speakers, which it did. Debuting in 1971, several quad vinyl records were released in differing (and incompatible) formats. Played on the right system, the “3-D audio” result was pretty spectacular. 

But there are about a billion ways to produce quadraphonic sound, and no single format was ever agreed upon. Dolby surround sound, which does pretty much the same thing, was standardized and eclipsed quad quite quickly. Of course, surround is primarily used for movies. For listening to music, most people think stereo is just fine.

Look familiar? That is a QR code, short for “Quick Response”, and they’ve been popping up all over the place for the last ten years or so. Storefronts, packaging… you probably have one tattooed on your butt. They’re like barcodes on crack; they serve the same purpose (as barcodes), but hold a lot more information. They were originally used to track parts during manufacture by the auto industry, but what fun is that when they can be used in advertising?

The problem is, nobody knows what the hell to do with them. PR for the QR was severely lacking. A recent study showed that about 80% of college students, that most tech-savvy of demographics, have no idea what to do with a QR code. Hint: scan them with some third party app on your smart phone.

And once we do figure it out, what’s our reward? Why, intrusive, in-your-face advertising, of course… what tech-savvy consumers love most of all. I have no idea what went wrong.

DATs were introduced in 1987. They were tiny little cassettes that record digitally at CD quality or better, meant to replace standard cassette tapes. They were far superior to cassettes, more durable and portable than even CDs, capable of 16-bit sampling and widely varying recording lengths. Why, they’re the Superformat of the future! And since the music industry is never scared of new technology, we can’t figure out why – oh, wait.

The failure of DAT as a format for selling music was (of course) mainly due to piracy concerns. Music industry types were concerned that piracy would skyrocket with a high fidelity, recordable medium – and effectively buried the technology for consumer use. This paved the way for all-digital formats like mp3, which of course are much easier to pirate. Great job, music industry!

As seen in every ’90s sci-fi movie, fully immersive 3-D computer generated imagery is essentially virtual reality. Even in the early ’90s, companies like the cleverly-named Virtuality were releasing VR arcade games like “Dactyl Nightmare” that placed you right inside the cheesy, blocky action.

The technology simply wasn’t advanced enough to meet the vision, and attempts at true VR were underwhelming to say the least. While technology has obviously come a long way, we’re still pretty damn far off from having a real-life Holodeck which – let’s face it – is what we all really want.

Long before Apple released the iPod and began dominating mobile devices up one side and down the other, there was this 1993 ill-advised attempt at that market. The Apple Newton was essentially the father of all PDAs, and was innovative in many ways, but was ultimately a spectacular failure.

The Apple Newton PDA never quite caught on due to a hugely inaccurate handwriting recognition system and an exorbitant price tag, not to mention that it looks like a Commodore 64 mated with a tape recorder. The 1995 debut of the smaller, cheaper and more functional Palm Pilot was the final nail in its coffin. The Newton was discontinued in 1998.

In its first incarnation, DIVX will likely go down as one of the biggest tech flops of all. Its innovation was in catering to those who wanted a way to “rent” movies digitally (you know, like everyone does now), but the way it was implemented was a misstep, in the same way that falling down the stairs is a misstep.

Piloted by electronics retailer Circuit City, the idea was simple enough. You rent a disc, watch it for two days then throw it away. Simple, right? Except that it was like a DVD without all the features, required a separate player that consumers had to buy, and the video rental industry fought against it tooth and nail.

By the time Netflix and Blockbuster came along to make digital rentals simple, DIVX was but a memory, having been sold only between 1998 and 1999. Its legacy lives on in annoying, unnecessary software constantly trying to get you to download it for some reason.

Mike Floorwalker’s blog is freakin’ sweet.

Humans are by nature pretty wasteful. Once we have extracted our use from any items we tend to discard the remnants and not care too much about what happens to them. While today’s landfill sites are overflowing waste management is not just a modern problem however. As far back as we look we can find evidence of human habitation by searching for their garbage. And sometimes it is that very rubbish which provides the greatest insights into our history. Here are ten bits of archaeology that are literally rubbish.

10 Strange Archaeological Discoveries

10 Holey Skulls

When archaeologists find human remains the amount they can learn from them can be spectacular. Everything from their age, sex, social class, down to their diet can be revealed from their bones. Often the context that they are discovered in is just as important. Were they buried with great pomp and loaded with grave goods? In the case of four skulls found in an Incan village in the Andes they were excavated from a pit full of food scraps and other domestic detritus. Just what was going on?

Found without their bodies and in the middle of garbage it is unlikely that these skulls belonged to the honoured dead. When the fragments of the skulls were pieced together it was revealed that holes had been cut into the tops of them. These holes and other marks left on the bones suggest the skulls were strung up on rope – likely as a warning to others.

The skulls date from a period when the Inca were expanding. Those that resisted their take over would face death or enslavement. That the four skulls came from three women and one child probably reflects the fact that men were too valued as hard-working slaves to be wasted on terror tactics.^[1]

9 Collapse of Elusa

Elusa was once a flourishing city in the middle of the Nagev desert in modern-day Israel. Up to 20,000 people called the city their home and enjoyed all the delights of a Roman and Byzantine metropolis. Growing grapes and producing a valuable wine allowed the city to expand and build theatres, bath houses, and churches. Yet within a few generations the city dwindled to insignificance and all that was left were ruins buried under sand or ransacked by outsiders. Were Muslim invaders to blame for the fall of Elusa? The clues to what happened were found in the refuse left behind by the inhabitants.

By studying the layers of garbage in the cities dumps archaeologists could date fairly precisely when rubbish stopped being brought to them. With a date of around 550 AD this was far too early for the collapse of the city to be caused by Islamic forces. Combined with other evidence it may show that climate change was to blame.

Three major volcanic eruptions seem to have caused what researchers call the Late Antique Little Ice Age. With crops failing across Europe there was likely a disruption of trade that brought an end to Elusa’s wine business. All those who depended on it must have abandoned the city in search of better prospects.^[2]

8 Mudlarking

Rivers have always served cities as an easy way of getting rid of sewage and garbage and the Thames in London is no exception. Hundreds of years ago people with no other way of making a living searched the foreshore of the river for anything that had been discarded which could have any value at all. Because of the clinging London mud and their bird-like dependence on the tide these scavengers were called Mudlarks. Nowadays mudlarks are amateur archaeologists who still wade out into the mud, now searching for artefacts that might reveal clues about London’s past.

On the banks of the Thames there have been finds dating from all periods of the city’s habitation. Swords and other blades from the Bronze Age have been recovered from the water. Often bent and damaged on purpose they were likely deposited as ritual offerings – blurring the line somewhat between garbage and religion. Roman pottery and pieces of hypocaust tile show how they lived, while burned roof tiles can tell us about the time Boudicca sacked the city. Everything from gold coins to broken bottles can reveal the lives of Londoners from throughout history. Rubbish from all ages was simply swept into the Thames and awaits those brave, or foolhardy, enough to go searching there.^[3]

7 Chinese Oracle Bones

Ironically predicting the future has given us one of our greatest windows into the past. The earliest surviving Chinese writing was recorded by those who, over 3000 years ago, tried to divine the future from bones and turtle shells. Those tasked with predicting the future would write the question that needed answering on the scapula bone of an ox or the underside of a turtle shell. Then a hot rod of metal was placed on the bone until it cracked. The way in which the cracks broke across the surface was interpreted to reveal the answer to the question – which helpfully was also recorded on the bone.

The oracle bones were rediscovered when 1899 when the Chancellor of the Imperial Academy fell ill. Prescribed a traditional medicine made from ‘Dragon Bones’ he ordered some and was startled to discover they were covered in ancient Chinese script. Soon searches were made for the source of these bones and over 50,000 discarded bones with writing on them have since been turned up revealing pieces of Chinese history that would otherwise have been lost.^[4]

6 Viking Middens

Norse explorers were the masters of sea travel. Setting out from their homes in Scandinavia they travelled across the known world, and even beyond it. The Norse discovered Iceland, Greenland, and even visited North America. Yet despite their successes the settlements in Greenland and North America failed to survive. Just why has always been a puzzle but middens, heaps of garbage, are beginning to clear up the mystery.

By examining the remains of Norse food left in the middens of farmsteads archaeologists can tell what the settlers were eating. In the earliest levels the diet was similar to those of the Norse at home as cattle and farming techniques they brought with them flourished in the new lands. Yet as time went on more and more the Norse had to rely on seal and fish to survive. The middens tell the story of harsh winters and a failure of trade to replenish the settlers’ supplies.^[5]

10 Pigments With Colorful Histories

5 Megamiddens

Shell middens are a particular type of rubbish dump primarily made from, obviously, shells. These tend to be the shells of molluscs like mussels, limpets, and whelks but also fish bones and other marine creatures. Wherever they are found they excite archaeologists because they can tell us a lot about how our ancestors lived by looking at what their diet consisted of. But sometimes it is their size that excites our interest.

In some places the pile of shells is so large that the middens are termed Megamiddens. Hundreds of metres wide and metres deep they can be made from billions of sea shells that are all that remains of our ancestors’ lunches. There are those however who think shell middens may be more than mere trash.

In Florida an area covering 100 acres has been found to have been created using leftover shells. Banks, canals, walls, and mounds were all constructed from shells piled together.^[6]

4 Monte Testaccio

Rome in its Imperial heyday was one of the largest cities in the world. It stands to reason then that it must have had some of the largest garbage dumps in the world too. At Monte Testaccio, now in the heart of a trendy Roman suburb, you can find a hill formed from the trash created by Rome’s oil trade. And archaeologists could not be more excited.

Olive oil was the lifeblood of Ancient Rome used for everything from cooking, to cleaning the body, to fuel in lamps. All the olive trees in Italy could not support the desire for oil and so vast amounts of oil had to be transported to the city. Moved in large ceramic vessels called amphorae the oil industry produced a huge amount of waste pottery. Up to 80 million amphorae were disposed of at Monte Testaccio – enough to create a hill 150 feet tall.

In the centuries since the abandonment of the dump it has been used as both a park and a gun emplacement. By digging into the hill archaeologists can create a chronology of the oil trade by examining the amphorae and tracing them to their origin.^[7]

3 Ostraka

In many Western countries it is common to look back on the ancient Athenian democracy as the source of our own democracy. Yet in many ways it was a weird place. One of the defining features of the Athenian system is entirely absent from ours – Ostracism. Though maybe it is worth bringing back.

Each year the Athenians would gather and vote on whether to have an ostracism. If the vote was in favour then another vote was held where each Athenian citizen would be allowed to vote for the person they most wanted to see thrown out of the city. Whoever received the most votes was exiled for a period of ten years. This procedure was used as a way of ridding the city of those who were thought to be a threat to the democracy.

The name Ostracism comes from the ostraka, sherds of pottery, on which the names of those people wanted to ostracise were scratched. Several of these broken bits of pottery still survive and bear the names of some of the great figures from antiquity including Themistocles, Pericles, and Aristides.^[8]

2 Letters from Hadrian’s Wall

Hadrian’s Wall in northern England was once at the extreme frontier of the Roman Empire. Historians would love to know much about Hadrian’s Wall – including what exactly it was designed to do. In one way though it is adding a great deal to our knowledge of life in the Roman Empire. At Vindolanda, one of the forts along the wall, many letters sent and received by those who lived there have been recovered from trash heaps.

Written in ink on thin strips of wood these letters have survived because of the damp conditions in which they were thrown away. Among the letters are everything from military orders to complaints about food. One letter, an invitation to a birthday party, is the earliest surviving writing in Latin by a woman.

Alongside such domestic matters are clues as to how the Romans viewed the British they had subdued. “The Britons are unprotected by armour. They are very many cavalry. The cavalry do not use swords, nor do the wretched Britons take up fixed positions in order to throw javelins.”^[9]

1 Oxyrhynchus Papryi

The sands of Egypt have produced some of the most spectacular archaeological discoveries but the most important are probably not golden masks or mummies. The rubbish dumps of a provincial city called Oxyrhynchus have proved to be the source of more ancient written material than anywhere else in the world.

Discovered in 1896 one of the first documents to emerge from the dumps was one called ‘The Sayings of Jesus’ which caused a sensation when translated. Most of the papyri that were excavated proved to be less extraordinary but are no less important to historians. They document private letters, contracts, business deals, horoscopes, and spells that reveal the lives of ordinary people in the area.

For fans of Ancient Greek literature Oxyrhynchus the discarded papyri have been a godsend. Authors as famous as Sappho, whose work is mostly lost to us, have emerged from the dumps. One fragment of a poem reads:

“Some say an army on horseback,
Some on foot, and some say ships,
Are the most beautiful things,
On this black earth,
But I say it is what you love.”

Written mostly on papyrus the texts have mostly degraded to fragments that need to be pieced together to make sense. This project of transcribing and translating papyri is still very much ongoing with an estimated half a million fragments awaiting examination.^[10]

10 Discoveries That Completely Baffle Modern Scientists

Joseph Goebbels was the mastermind behind Nazi Germany’s propaganda machine, and has been hailed as the inventor of marketing strategies that are still in use today, in addition to creating the idea of ‘fake news.’

However, once the Second World War broke out in 1939, problems in Goebbels’ propaganda paradise soon surfaced. Under the constant threat of invasion, and frequent allied bombings, the German public were not as willing to simply absorb Nazi values and principles. The pressure of war led to blunders in propaganda, along with the ever more eccentric ideas of Goebbels failing to hit the spot with the German population.

Although Hitler’s National Socialist Party was successful in altering the ideology of an entire country, not all of the Third Reich’s propagandist pursuits went to plan.

Top 10 Things The Nazis Got Right

10 Hitler’s perfect Aryan baby

In 1935, Joseph Goebbels, launched a campaign in search of the ‘perfect Aryan baby.’

On the contrary to all Aryan values however, Goebbels selected a brunette, brown-eyed baby that opposed much of the Aryan propaganda at the time.

The baby’s face was soon appearing in printed propaganda of every kind across the country. But no one was more shocked to see a baby’s face appear amongst the usually militaristic propaganda of Nazi Germany, than the baby’s parents themselves; Jacob and Pauline Levinson. Particularly when they knew that their daughter was Jewish.

A rebel artist named Hans Ballin, had recently taken the Levinson’s daughter’s picture in his Berlin studio. Ballin hated the Nazi regime, and submitted this photo of Hessy Taft, in the hopes that it would undermine Goebbels’ entire competition.

Whilst Ballin did succeed in humiliating the Nazi regime, the artist’s decision put the Levinsons in a lot of danger, and they ended up having to flee Latvia.^[1]

9 Hitler’s Premier Example of a Full-Blooded Aryan Soldier

Werner Goldberg was a German who was of half Jewish ancestry, and appeared in posters across Nazi Germany as the ideal Wehrmacht Aryan soldier.

On December 1st 1938, Goldberg joined the German army and took part in the invasion of Poland in 1939. Shortly after the outbreak of war, Goldberg’s photograph appeared in the Berliner Tagesblatt Newspaper, with the caption “The Ideal German Soldier.” The photograph had been sold to the newspaper by the army’s photographer, and was later even used on recruitment posters.

Within less than a year, this ‘Ideal German Soldier’ would soon be banished from the army for which he had fought, after Hitler issued an order on April 8th, 1940, which stated that anyone with 1st degree Jewish ancestry must be expelled from the forces.

Not quite the ideal German soldier Goebbels had hoped for.^[2]

8 The Far Too Successful Degenerate Art Gallery

Before the Nazis came to power in 1939, Germany was the centre of Modern Art. Dadaism and the Bauhaus Movement were becoming renowned across the globe, and artists were looking to Germany for inspiration.

However, when the Nazis came to power, the liberty of the German art scene was destroyed. The party could sense the public’s anger towards these restrictions, and concluded that they were simply misled. An art exhibition, entitled, ‘Entartete Kunst’ or ‘Degenerate Art’ was arranged in Munich, in order to showcase why modern art was dangerous and shameful.

Over 650 pieces of art were taken from German galleries and arranged chaotically. Explanations on why the pieces of art did not support the Nazi regime were displayed alongside the works. At the same time, the Nazis opened an art gallery entitled the ‘Great German Art Exhibition,’ which showcased Aryan-approved art only, in a bid to prove the superiority of this art form.

This plan backfired however, and five times as many people visited the ‘Degenerate Art’ gallery. In fact, it was so popular that in one day over 36,000 visitors attended.^[3]

7 Radio Caledonia

Radio Caledonia’s sole aim was to turn the Scottish public against the British government, and was an arm of Goebbels’ Nazi propaganda machine.

Its broadcasts were written and hosted by Scottish fascist Donald Grant, who argued that a Hitler-Controlled Scotland was better than a Scotland ruled by an English Churchill.

Reception of Radio Caledonia in Britain was so poor however, that the station would frequently have lengthy periods of time off air. The Scots Independent actually openly denounced Radio Caledonia and regarded it as a risk, running a column which claimed that the radio station was not helpful to the cause of Scottish nationalism.

Radio Caledonia failed miserably, and ceased airing broadcasts in 1942.^[4]

6 Life Goes on

By 1944 most of the German population were prepared for an inevitable defeat, and a sense of hopelessness gripped the nation.

Even with the end of the war in sight, Goebbels still naively believed that propaganda would distract the German public. After watching, Mrs Miniver, which depicted Londoners banding together against the Blitz bombing, Goebbels decided that Germany needed its own uplifting film.

This film would come in the form of Life Goes On and Goebbels regarded it as his pride and joy; hiring the Third Reich’s leading cast and crew.

Filming began in January 1945, as Allied troops were quite literally driving onto German soil. In fact, by the time shooting of the film started, most of the Berlin buildings and landmarks in the film had already been destroyed by Allied bombings. Goebbels was determined to complete the movie, and even diverted vital materials from re-building efforts to the production instead!

Eventually, the director was forced to shoot his film on the run as the approaching Red Army would continually attack locations where the cast had been filming just hours before.

With only days left before German surrender, the production was finally suspended. The reels of film have never been found, with some rumours stating that they were hidden in the ruins of a cathedral. Historians have tried to track any remnants of the footage, however all that remains of Goebbels’ final piece of propaganda are storyboards and newsreel footage of the production.^[5]

Top 10 Plans Hitler Would Have Put In Motion If The Nazis Had Won

5 Jesse Owens- 1936 Berlin Olympics

The 1936 Olympics held in Berlin, were the first to be televised around the world. Hitler consequently seized this opportunity for worldwide Nazi notoriety and channelled funds towards constructing an enormous new stadium.

At the time, Jesse Owens, a black American athlete, was taking the athletics track by storm- matching the world record for the 100 yard dash whilst only still in High School! American decision makers were aware of Nazi Germany’s discriminatory policies against Jewish athletes and nearly boycotted the 1936 Olympic Games. However, the politicians were overruled by the American Olympic Committee and their attendance went ahead.

Owens in fact openly expressed his desire to attend the Olympic Games, regarding the politicians’ stance against Germany as one laced with hypocrisy. Growing up in a country which endorsed Jim Crow Laws and blatant discrimination- in the eyes of most black athletes, the politicians who were debating the boycott had no moral high ground to stand upon.

The games reached viewers in 41 countries, and much to Hitler’s dismay, it was a black American, Jesse Owens, who instantly became the star of the Summer Olympic Games. Winning four gold medals in track and field events; Owens became the first American to win 4 gold medals in a single Olympics.

Whilst Owens couldn’t single handily halt the rise of the Nazi regime, he did managed to undermine an entire nation’s ideology and steal the spotlight from one of history’s most fanatical leaders.^[6]

4 William Shakespeare

By the end of the 19th Century, William Shakespeare became known in Germany as “our Shakespeare”, and in no other country on Earth were his plays performed more often. Shakespeare was thus a central pillar of Germany’s culture which could not simply be pushed aside by Nazification.

For the Nazis, theatre did not solely function as a political weapon; with Goebbels himself noting that “a good mood is an instrument of war…and even a factor in determining the outcome of war.” In May 1934 therefore, Goebbels introduced the Unified Theatre Law Act, which meant all theatres were officially under his control.

Nonetheless, a dynamic version of Shakespeare’s Hamlet made its way onto the Berlin state theatre stage, and entirely undermined the principles of heroism that Goebbels wanted all main characters to follow. The production consequently contained subversive messages, and yet was proclaimed by Goebbels himself as ‘a summit of German theatre,’ and was even used as a piece of propaganda in a state visit to Vienna. The director Jurgen Fehling took this one step further and openly undermined the Nazi regime’s tyrannical dictatorship through a production of Richard III. The character of Richard of Gloucester was given a limp that directly mimicked Goebbels and the costumes replicated the same style as SA troops. Unfortunately for Goebbels, this was one of the most popular theatre productions throughout the Third Reich.

Shakespeare would not be squeezed and manipulated into such a tight fitting, propagandist straitjacket. Although endless Theatre Laws could dictate a theatre’s reparatory, the Nazis could never gain ultimate control of a population’s imagination.^[7]

3 The V-2

The V-2 rocket was the German army’s most advanced weapon of the Second World War. It was promoted widely as one of Hitler’s ‘revenge weapons,’ and paraded to the public as the weapon which would win Germany the war.

The V-2 was an enormous ballistic missile which carried a one ton warhead, it was rocketed to the edge of space before falling at supersonic speeds onto its unsuspecting target below. The weapon was used predominantly against London and Antwerp during the war, and there was no defence against it at the time.

Although the rocket’s development began before the war, it was not actually ready to be used until the Autumn of 1944- a time when arguably, Germany was already losing. Overall, the weapon inflicted very little damage in comparison to the huge sums of money that had been invested in its development. Only 3,000 V-2s were ever launched and it is believed that they killed a total of 9,000 people; a figure which was far lower than the number of slave workers who perished whilst building the missiles. Even more embarrassingly, the total quantity of explosives delivered by all of the V-2s ever launched, was far less than could be dropped by a single air raid from RAF Bomber Command.^[8]

2 Ark Royal

H.M.S Ark Royal was an aircraft carrier of the British Royal Navy that served during WW2, and was the first purpose built aircraft carrier.

Her reputation was enhanced when her crew successfully sunk the first German U-boat of the war, torpedoed the German Battleship Bismarck and successfully scuttled the German’s ‘Admiral Graf Spee’ – an embarrassing affair for the German Navy.

The Ark Royal soon became known as the ‘Lucky Ship’, narrowly avoiding two torpedoes which missed the ship’s stern by only a few 100 yards, surviving a U-boat attack and an attack from three Luftwaffe Dornier seaplanes.

The successful sinking of the Ark Royal was falsely reported on the German radio several times, with the British crew of the ship even choosing to listen in to the blatant propagandist lies as a form of entertainment. The sinking of the Ark Royal was so pivotal in Goebbels’ militaristic propaganda, that Lieutenant Adolf Francke who led the Luftwaffe attack on the ship and reported a successful sinking, was publicly decorated.

In reality, the bombing had broken nothing but the ship’s cutlery and Winston Churchill himself invited the US Naval Attache to view the Ark Royal in dock, in a bid to both reassure the Allied forces and embarrass the German Navy.^[9]

1 Axis Sally

Mildred Elizabeth Gillars, nicknamed ‘Axis Sally’, was an American broadcaster employed by the Nazis to broadcast propaganda on the German state radio.

In 1942, Gillars was cast in a radio show called ‘Home Sweet Home’, whose sole aim was to make US forces feel homesick. Gillars’ key tactic was to discuss the potential infidelity of soldiers’ wives and girlfriends back home. Gillars also broadcast a show called ‘Midge at the Mike’ which brought American Jazz interrupted by defeatist propaganda across the radio waves of Europe. Most disturbingly however, was her show titled ‘GI’s Letterbox’ in which she broadcast information on captured or wounded American soldiers in order to worry families in America.

Nonetheless, this propaganda did not have the effect that Goebbels had intended, and instead many accounts by US Troops found Axis Sally very entertaining- even gaining fans amongst the forces. How else were the troops going to be able to listen to hot jazz in the midst of war?^[10]

Top 10 Horrific Nazi Human Experiments

Finding treasure—who wouldn’t want to do that? We’ve all heard about treasure hunters diving among sunken ships or adventurers seeking hidden gold in caves or mines. Often these attempts take careful study and planning, involving many resources and even more money. But sometimes, people simply stumble upon surprising finds while doing nothing at all.

What better motivation to get outside and take a walk? Ten people found remarkable artifacts and natural treasures while out and about doing other things. And not one of them needed a metal detector to find their treasures and artifacts…

Related: 10 Legendary Treasures Still Waiting To Be Found

10 Forest of Fossils in the Foothills

A park ranger and naturalist, Greg Francek, was walking in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Sacramento, California, in May 2021. He was employed by a utility department that provided drinking water to the region. It was near one of the watersheds that he noticed an oddity in the soil. Francek had wandered into a forest of petrified trees, a site with primeval origins.

He was drawn to the forest many times but contacted experts when he found fossilized vertebrae. That was when paleontologist and geologist Russell Shapiro brought his team to the site. Francek’s find exceeded their expectations. The ancient forest dates from ten million years ago, during the Miocene Epoch, when the earth was warm enough to sustain tropical forests. Within the forest of six hundred petrified trees, they found the skull, tusks, and teeth of a well-preserved mammoth from eight million years ago.

Shapiro’s team also found another ancestor of the elephants, a gomphothere with four tusks, and an ancient camel that once stood as tall as a giraffe. Dozens of species were categorized, along with hundreds of specimens. Rhinos, horses, tapirs, giant tortoises, and fish were found, including a salmon that weighed over three hundred pounds. It was determined that floods and volcanic debris flow had carried the remains to the flood plains.

The mastodon skull, tusks, and teeth were put on display in California State University Chico’s Gateway Science Museum. As of yet, the forest site remains undisclosed. Further developments are to be published.^[1]

9 The Mapmaker’s Cache

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

It was April 2021 when Tomas Karlsson roamed a forest in Western Sweden and made an astonishing discovery. He was a surveyor and mapmaker with an orienteering club, at work on a map. His eyes were on the ground when he first caught sight of something metal. He had found ancient jewelry loosened from the rocks nearby.

Karlsson was soon in contact with the University of Gothenburg.

Researchers found over eighty Bronze-Age artifacts at the site, all dating from 750 to 500 BC. This time period ushered in the eras of Greek city-states where cultures were established, like the Phoenicians and the Etruscans. It was during those eras that Homer is said to have written The Iliad and The Odyssey.

The Gothenburg archaeologists unearthed bracelets, necklaces, buckles, and other clothing ornamentation, such as headpieces and ankle jewelry. All the artifacts were intact. It is believed they were left as an offering to a god or goddess or with the deceased in a burial site.^[2]

8 A Farmer’s Find

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

A farmer tended to his field in August 2021 in a central province of Çorum, Turkey. He was behind a plow in his field when he struck a bracelet of bronze, nickel, silver, and gold. The curious farmer brought it to the Çorum Museum, where they determined the bracelet was 3,300 years old from the end of the Bronze Age. It had been crafted in the 13th century BC by the Hittites, known as the first civilization to craft iron weapons and armor.

Very few jewelry pieces from the Hittites had been found, let alone one with such detail. The bracelet was covered with Hittite symbols, while the interior was coated in gold. Etched in the gold-plated interior were depictions of the goddess Shaushka and her two servants, Ninatta and Kulitta. She was a goddess in the Hurrian religion, a deity of love and war.

Since the find, the bracelet has been restored. It rests in the city of Hattusha, a heritage site that was added to UNESCO’s World Heritage List in 1986. The ancient Hittite city was described as “an open-air museum” of city walls with gates and underground tunnels that spanned miles.^[3]

7 Sword and Axe from a Stone

In November 2021, Roman Novák was searching for mushrooms across the rural forests and hills near his home in Jesenik, Czech Republic. During his travels, he paused to inspect a piece of metal that he noticed lodged between stones. The blade of a sword was soon revealed, and beneath it, a bronze ax. Though the blade was broken near the hilt, the pommel and hilt were engraved with rows of circles and crescents.

His report to archaeologists at the Silesian Museum, Opava, intrigued them enough to send a team to the site. After analysis, the sword was dated to the Bronze Age, 3,300 years ago. It was likely to have been a ceremonial sword, as the blade’s metal would have been too weak for use in battle. Oddly, the site of the sword was far from any known settlements, prehistoric included.^[4]

6 A Clump on a Beach

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

A tour guide was on a camping trip with his family in August of 2021, near Atlit, Israel, when he made the discovery of a lifetime. Yotam Dahan almost walked into a mound of treasure. Under his flashlight beam, he saw an odd mass of corroded metal that shone bright green in places. They turned out to be coins that had fused together from centuries of submersion or exposure to salt in the air. Dahan lugged the 5.8-kilogram (13-pound) coin bundle to a safer location.

Dr. Donald Zvi-Ariel, a coin expert for the Israel Antiquities Authorities, said the coins were doubloons from 1,700 years ago. There were only trace amounts of fabric around the coins, the bag long since deteriorating. It was unknown where the coins were from, whether they were buried on the beach or washed onto shore from a ship. Either way, Dahan was very fortunate to have made such a large discovery. Fortunate, too, that he didn’t walk into the heavy treasure in the dark.^[5]

5 Hikers Cross Paths with Gold

In April 2019, four ninth-graders wandered a field north of Nazareth, Israel, near a stream in the Galilee, when a glint of gold in the area caught their eyes. The students had found a gold coin. They brought the coin to their geography and history teacher, Zohar Porshyan. He reached out to the Israel Antiques Authority, who authenticated their find as a Byzantine Era, 1600-year-old gold solidus. It was the first of its kind found in Israel.

The solidus had been minted in the ancient city of Constantinople, now known as Istanbul, under the rule of Theodosius II in AD 420–423. Theodosius II was a Christian emperor of the Byzantine Empire from AD 401–450. Interestingly, he was only seven when his reign began. He’s most remembered for the Codex Theodisianus, or the Theodisian Code, a compilation of Roman laws from AD 312, which wasn’t completed until AD 438.

The coin didn’t depict the emperor—as one might expect—but instead, it sported the Roman Goddess Victoria, or “Victory,”‘ as the engraving read. Though the coin resides within the state treasury, the artifact finders were issued a certificate of Good Citizenship by the Israel Antiques Authority. (I’d rather have the coin.)^[6]

4 Farmer Removes Rocks from Field

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

In August of 2021, a farmer in Poland from the Lubusz province labored to clear the rocks from his field. His only intent was to spare his farm equipment. Was it a good day for the farmer? Absolutely. Under a few of those rocks, he found bronze artifacts. Surprised, he secured the site and alerted the proper authorities.

The farmer had found three scepters, three bronze daggers, an ax, a chisel, and a hatchet, according to the Voivodeship Historic Preservation Office. The Únětice artifacts were from the early Bronze Age, 2200–1500 BC. Early civilizations of the era were best remembered for their metallurgical skills with tin-bronze. The Únětice culture spanned several countries—Bohemia in the Czech Republic, Bavaria in Germany, and Lower Silesia in western Poland.^[7]

3 Oysters in Indonesia

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

A woman in Indonesia was on the search for oysters when she pulled in an incredible find in November of 2013. She was from the village of Gampong Pande in the northern part of Indonesia. On that day, she found a box covered in shells. The box was full of gold coins from the 1200s through the 1600s. Her find may have been possible due to the tsunami in 2004 that disturbed an ancient cemetery near the village.

Once gossip of her discovery spread, hundreds of people began to swarm the river, searching for more treasure. Other salvaged coins were sold in nearby villages or museums. Who knows how far the coins have been transported now? The portion of the country has yet to be declared a protected site. Officials pushed for further protection as of 2013, though the matter is still in limbo.^[8]

2 Couple Finds Copper

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

Cornwall, 1974, a couple was walking along Loe Bar Beach in England when they found a copper ingot in the sand. It wasn’t until twelve years later that they found a gold coin that was 600 years old.

Due to their find, experts and divers further investigated and discovered a ship from 1527. It was a Portuguese carrack that had been mired off the coast of Loe Bar. The ship carried copper and silver, cloth, and linen. Also found on the ship were musical instruments, navigational tools, and cannon with pitch and tar.

An amazing discovery after many long walks along the beach.^[9]

1 Beach Clean-Up Day

A beach restoration day was held in Norfolk, England, in March of 2022. Jennie Fitzgerald was one of the volunteers, a medical secretary from Sprowston. Fitzgerald was ready to turn back after a long day when she noticed an unusual piece of timber in the sand. She pried it from its resting place, stunned to find a locked treasure chest. On the lock were the initials “VR,” with a little crown. Victoria Rex, the Queen of England during the Victorian era? Fitzgerald thought the chest to be from that time period, an opinion that was confirmed once the contents were revealed.

The Fitzgerald family was able to open the chest. Within it, they found coins of different kinds from more than 100 years ago, clear and amber-colored gems, a pocket watch, and a bottle of perfume. More interestingly, they found a signet ring and a silver matchstick holder engraved with the name Ernest.

They brought the artifacts to the Norwich Council, who sent the items to the historical authorities to be appraised. Updates are eagerly anticipated.^[10]

From WatchMojo.com to preshows in movie theaters to… well, TopTenz, everyone wants to provide small novelty pieces of information about beloved movies. Unfortunately, the high demand means that the product has gotten a bit diluted over time. Misunderstandings or even outright lies now permeate the pop culture landscape. We’re inclined to believe a lot of them if for no other reason than the reputation that people have in show business for being weird, or for crazy things to happen when millions of dollars are spent on make believe.

Here at TopTenz there’s too much respect for the truth to let that stand. Well, at least we want to help our readers put some smug people who think they’re the smartest people in the world because they know some piece of trivia in their place.   

10. Alien’s Gender Flip

Since Ellen Ripley’s status as the main character (and sole survivor, not counting the cat) of the Alien franchise was a surprise in the original film of the series, the part being played by Sigourney Weaver instead of, say, her then-more famous male co-star Tom Skerritt made it a subject of a lot of discussion from 1979 onwards. One of the claims that popped up over the years was that the character was originally intended to be male. This seems to be a carryover from the genderflipped character Ruth Leavitt in the slightly less famous 1971 science fiction classic The Andromeda Strain.

None other than screenwriter Dan O’Bannon refuted the story. He clarified that, intentionally, none of the characters were gender specific in his script so that the casting director could take care of that. He had even included notes about this decision on the last page of his original screenplay. We’ll leave it up to the reader to decide what if anything this says about gender roles in fiction.

9. Johnny Depp/Jackie Earle Haley

It’s a classic story of an audition with a comical twist: Someone who doesn’t even intend to be an actor is just going along with a friend to audition for a job. Turns out the casting director prefers the friend who wasn’t intending to act, and that person goes on to be a big star. Something very similar to that happened to Bob Hoskins, for example. The single most famous example of this would likely be in 1983, when Jackie Earle Haley brought Johnny Depp along with him for a role in A Nightmare on Elm Street and ended up launching his friend’s career. Then for a fun coincidence, Jackie Earle Haley was cast as Freddy Krueger for the 2010 remake.

Except… no. Haley clarified in an interview in Esquire that all this talk of him and Depp at the audition was just a rumor. He doesn’t even know what the origin of the rumor could have been, just that him not bringing Depp there was crystal clear.

8. Daniel Day Lewis’s Insane Method Acting

Daniel Day-Lewis is as much famous for his extreme method acting as he is for winning three Academy Awards for Best Actor. For example, playing the primarily paralyzed Christy Brown in My Left Foot involved him staying in a wheelchair for the duration of the shoot. He supposedly insists on only being referred to by his character’s name. It’s all designed to instill the belief that he spends all day trying to think of himself as the character in some maniacal worship of the acting profession.

On the podcast I Was There Too, Paul F. Tompkins (who worked with him on There Will Be Blood) clarified that Lewis wasn’t so intensely in character at all. Between takes he would discuss the characters as if they were characters, he wouldn’t insist at all on being referred to by his character’s name, and he was fine with dropping the accent once the shoot was done for the day. Indeed, as Tompkins opines, it would be an indication that Lewis isn’t a good actor if he makes others uncomfortable with such unreasonable demands, since part of the nature of being a good actor is to pay attention to the needs of your collaborators.

7. Tricking Alan Rickman

No, this isn’t an assertion that it’s untrue that Alan Rickman was ever tricked. This is referring to a story that, in order to get a better reaction out of Hans Gruber for the shot when he is dropped off Nakatomi Plaza in Die Hard, supposedly the director told him that he would be dropped on the count of three. However, to get a genuinely shocked reaction before Rickman had properly braced himself, though, he was dropped on the count of one.

Sorry to ruin everyone’s fun, but Rickman was asked about this very thing during a Q&A event. He unambiguously didn’t remember it happening, which – considering how vividly he remembered the director saying “we’re going to drop the actor” – means that would have been an aspect that would have stuck in his memory. Considering he remembered the fall being higher than the generally reported (40 feet instead of 25) he clearly wasn’t in the mood to downplay anything.   

6. Al Capone’s Tailor

Bringing it back to the subject of method acting, we all know perhaps the second biggest method actor in the world was Robert DeNiro for years and years, starting with becoming a real cab driver for weeks to prepare to play Travis Bickle in 1974’s Taxi Driver. By the time 1987 rolled around, for The Untouchables the news went around that DeNiro was supposedly personally tracking down Al Capone’s tailor so that the pajamas he wore (and even his underwear) matched the crime lord’s.

As was pointed out by others well after this misconception spread, given that there was a 56-year gap between Capone’s incarceration and the production of The Untouchables, Capone’s tailor was very unlikely to be in the right shape to work. For one thing, Capone’s tailor was actually Louis Dinato, an associate of Capone’s whose main noteworthy aspect was being repeatedly questioned by the police even after Capone was imprisoned (to no avail), as if he were some sort of interrogation punching bag. The person who actually did the costume work for DeNiro was Rich Bruno, and given that he was only 52 when The Untouchables was made, it would have been quite a trick for the costumer to be tailoring for Al Capone.

5. Spider-Man’s 156 Takes

This one has been a favorite of trivia sites for years: Somehow Sam Raimi’s 2002 film Spider-Man had enough time in the production schedule to devote hours and hours (if not days) to shoot 156 takes of Tobey Maguire catching a tray full of food. Now granted, in 2002 CGI affordable enough for a throwaway gag wasn’t quite up to scratch, so there’s plenty of reason to do it mechanically instead of with computers. But Maguire didn’t do it alone and the “156 takes” claim is certainly a joke (evidenced by the fact that in its source, a commentary track, the commenter gets a laugh from it).

It explicitly was a combination of using a “mechanical rig” to drop the food and gluing the tray to Maguire’s hand, and using force-absorbing gel on the bottom of said food. In fact, if you go frame-by-frame, you can see a white substance stuck to the bottom of the apple. That at least confirms it wasn’t CGI, since why would a CG artist put that on there? Still, it definitely puts this back in the “SFX” category.   

4. Werner Herzog’s Shoe Bet

Errol Morris and Werner Herzog are two of the most interesting documentary filmmakers working today, and their film careers were connected in a rather befuddling way. Errol Morris began his career in 1978 with the cult documentary Gates of Heaven (particularly beloved by Roger Ebert) at a time when he had little funding and getting distribution for the film would have been extremely difficult. Herzog came up with a bizarre bet to motivate his friend: If the movie were completed, Herzog would eat his shoe at the premiere. It was enough of an event that a short film was made of the preparation of the meal.

Then Morris came along during a Q&A session at the Lincoln Center and revealed that they actually didn’t have a wager – it was just something that Herzog had made up as an excuse to eat a shoe. Not wanting to be comedically upstaged, while telling the truth about this, Morris said he would joke for years that the bet had actually stipulated Herzog’s foot.    

3. The Dark Knight’s Remote Futzing

Heath Ledger’s performance as the Joker in this 2008 blockbuster was so compelling that much of his manic behavior felt completely natural, leaving audiences open to the notion that even the biggest parts were improvised. A scene where the Joker claps in jail is an example. But the best known example is the scene where the Joker is blowing up Gotham General Hospital, but stops when there seems to be a problem with the detonation. In what was alleged to be improv, Ledger messes with the remote, and then the explosion resumes, leaving him to scramble onto the bus.

As director Christopher Nolan explains in a behind the scenes feature included on The Dark Knight blu-ray, the sudden stop in the explosion and the Joker’s pause was actually planned in advance. In fact, Warner Brothers provided a CGI mockup of how the scene would be staged as evidence. That’s much further than most studios go in debunking a piece of trivia.

2. Citizen Kane’s Non-Plot Hole

Since this 1941 film has for decades been known as arguably the best ever made, it was a delight for film buffs and critics alike to claim that the story has a gigantic plot hole right in the middle of it. The impetus for the story is that the titular Kane’s last word was “Rosebud” and it was supposed to be said to an empty room. Which begs the question of how anyone heard what his final word was if he was alone. There was a story circulated that this was pointed out to auteur Orson Welles by a member of the crew, and Welles responded some variation on “don’t you ever tell anyone this.”

The problem with the plausibility of that little story is that it’s not consistent with the content of the movie. While the opening scene has been watched by cinefiles and parodied many times by shows such as The Simpsons, the scene’s person who heard the words doesn’t appear until much later. Very near the end, the reporter that’s been spending the movie trying to learn from Kane’s intimates what Rosebud could mean has a brief chat with the butler Raymond, who explicitly says he’s the one who heard it. Raymond’s other main contribution to the movie is telling the reporter about the famous scene where Kane wrecks his room until he sees a snow globe and says Rosebud the first time. So if someone had asked Orson Welles about who heard the words, Welles would just have said Raymond instead of acting as if his entire movie were in jeopardy.    

1. Being John Malkovich’s Beer Can

A lot of this trivia took a concerted effort to debunk or a celebrity to wanted to set the record straight. In this case, the thing that disproved it was completely unintentional. Indeed, the performer in question might not even have ever heard of the false story.

In Being John Malkovich, there’s a scene where the titular actor is walking by a road while he’s in a rut. An extra in a passing vehicle yelled “Hey Malkovich, think fast!” and threw a beer can at his head. Supposedly the scene was completely unscripted and instead of being rebuked for potentially ruining a take, the actor got a raise (some versions say he got a Screen Actors Guild card) because the line of dialogue was used.

The truth didn’t come out until Malkovich was doing a question and answer session known as a “AMA” (Ask Me Anything) on the popular website Reddit. One of his fans asked about that particular scene without mentioning it was supposedly completely spontaneous. The actor said that he was especially fond of that scene, and had been looking forward to it… as soon as he read it in the script. In fact, director Spike Jonze wasn’t even sure if any of the actors would be able to hit Malkovich in an acceptably low number of takes. In hindsight, it would have been a pretty bad idea to actively encourage extras to do things that might harm actors and ruin takes, so everyone should have found the story dubious even before Malkovich accidentally corrected them.    

Fun Fact: Dustin and Adam Koski also wrote a hilarious and exciting fantasy novel.

Literary critics have invented a host of phrases and concepts to separate artists from their art. By far the best known is “death of the author,” which comes from a 1967 essay by Roland Barthes. Essentially, the notion is to imagine that the author cannot be asked for their intent, or how their own life experiences shaped their writing, so the theorist’s interpretation is at least as valid as the author’s intention–provided said interpretation is reasonably derived from the text.  

While that’s a worthwhile literary exercise, there can be a problem that comes from many people knowing pieces of writing through cultural osmosis instead of actually reading the text. Indeed, sometimes there are aspects of the text that simply aren’t as haunting as the passages in stories that become touchstones. So interpretations of stories can be demonstrably incorrect. As is the case with…

10. The Hunchback of Notre Dame

When the 1995 Disney adaption of this movie came out, many critics and audience members were united in decrying the supposed borderline desecration of the original story. They pointed to the 1939 or 1920 versions of the story as proper adaptations, which properly portrayed the unsavory nature of Quasimodo, the tragic fate of the gypsy Esmeralda, clergyman Claude Frollo, and so on… and all in the shadow of one of the most celebrated buildings in French history.

It was a criticism completely undermined by how Victor Hugo wrote the original 1831 version of the story. As Lindsay Ellis explains in her highly recommended video essay, in the original novel, Quasimodo is a mere bit part and certainly not a sympathetic figure. There’s no tragic romance with the gypsy Esmeralda, who it turns out was actually a caucasian abandoned as a child. In brief, Hugo didn’t write his novel as a tragedy, so much as a tribute to the cathedral itself, which at the time of writing was less a French institution than a wreck that had been vandalized numerous times over the centuries and neglected.

That Hugo’s sympathies were with the building over the people who lived in and around it is much less surprising to anyone who knows that the original title was “Notre-Dame de Paris” and that he did not approve of the English title change. Perhaps that theme would resonate with misanthropic architecture students, but it certainly wouldn’t have been the crowd pleaser many subsequent adaptations have been  

9. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Washington Irving’s 1820 story, set in a Dutch community in 1790s New York (loosely based on real events), as we all know is about a schoolteacher named Ichabod Crane, who gets chased by a headless horseman across a bridge. When the horseman can’t catch him, he throws a pumpkin at Crane. Those who read an abridged version in class might remember that it was heavily implied that Brom Bones was pretending to be the Headless Hessian Horseman to scare off Crane so that he could marry Katrina Van Tassel without any competition from superstitious schoolteachers. Considering Ichabod disappears and Bones gets what he wants through pretty underhanded and aggressive means, it seems like this slice of Americana should be a pretty dark, spooky tale where the villain wins in the end, be he ghost or local tough guy in disguise.

Readers have that impression because many of them lost track of how odious a person Irving wrote Ichabod Crane to be. Like many schoolteachers of the time, Crane is described as having romantic interest purely for financial reasons (Irving explicitly describes him as looking at her father’s fortune with “green eyes”). He’s also explicitly a mooch and a glutton, only getting away with it because he knows a lot of local ghost lore. The story also ends with a postscript noting there was talk in Sleepy Hollow that Crane was seen again later, having moved to another community and becoming a judge. However, the locals rejected that because his supposed disappearance made for a better story. If anything, Irving went overboard in assuring audiences not to worry about ol’ Ichabod.  

8. Jabberwocky

Lewis Caroll’s titular monster, which was first introduced to readers in Alice Through the Looking Glass, has been portrayed as a serious beast in such adaptations as the 1985 movie. Even those who know better than to portray such serious versions of the monsters from the poem assume that “slivey toves” and “more raths” from the opening verse mean “unidentifiable beasts,” such as in the version done for The Muppet Show.

Jabberwocky’s origin was in 1855, in a magazine called Misch-Masch, which had a circulation of Lewis Carroll’s immediate family. It was not only meant as a parody of folk poems, but he actually handily explained what all the words meant, so those terms aren’t so much nonsense as coded. For example, “slivy toves” are actually cheese-eating badgers. “Mome Raths” are turtles. Bryllyg is said to be the early afternoon, as it refers to the time of broiling dinner. All things considered, the opening verse is much closer to a slightly offbeat version of Wind in the Willows than it is a surreal menagerie of cryptids.

7. Harrison Bergeron

In Kurt Vonnegut’s 1961 short story, equality is perverted so that every exceptional person is limited to be no better than the worst performing person, either by restraints that weigh them down or by zapping them if they think too much. This idea has been embraced by right wing publications like National Review. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia cited it in a ruling requiring tournament golfers to walk between shots.

What they don’t seem to notice is the portrayal of the eponymous character. As critics have more recently pointed out, Bergeron is a ridiculously overpowered human being who not only stands 7-feet tall at age 14, he is also literally capable of flying as he dances (once he removes his restraints that weigh hundreds of pounds). More revealingly, he proclaims himself “emperor,” which probably isn’t something Vonnegut would have a “heroic” character do.

He also makes this declaration and displays his powers on live television, which of course means that the Handicapper General Diana Moon Glampers would have no trouble hunting him down and shooting him, as she does seemingly effortlessly in the story. Clearly, Bergeron is a parody of the Howard Roark and John Gault-type supermen that are so perfect and so, so underappreciated in Ayn Rand’s novels. Considering Vonnegut’s left-wing views throughout his writing career, it’s objectivism that’s in his sights at least as much as socialism.

6. The Satanic Verses

When it was published in 1988, author Salman Rushdie struck free publicity gold when his book was interpreted as blasphemous and banned in India while the Ayatollah demanded his head. He surely didn’t celebrate this, as he had to go into hiding from very real threats. Several translators of the book were attacked—one fatally. Considering that the book is a formidable 600 pages long, it’s not so surprising that many people didn’t read the entire story and were content to go off a vague sense of what the novel was about, or a heavily abridged version.

The Satanic Verses tells the intertwined stories of two Southeast Asian Muslims, one born wealthy and the other poor. The pair both survive a plane crash, and the rich one becomes cursed (one way is he smells bad) while the other becomes angelic. Still, the rich one survives the novel while the other commits suicide while wanted for murder (he is unambiguously responsible for several deaths). The offending portions of the book are a secondary narrative of a few dozen pages about the rise of the prophet Mahound, written in an approximation of Koranic verse.

The “Satanic Verses” of the title are an allusion to a claim by the prophet that, for some contradictory statements he made, it must have been Satan pretending to be Allah. In a manner that paralleled a scene that offended many in The Last Temptation of Christ, Rushdie styled his parody of the prophet as a very elaborate dream sequence to give him plausible deniability that he was portraying an in-universe, fictional version. The version many Muslims were given, however, only showed the dream sequence without the larger context, and so inevitably it misled many on the intent of the book.     

5. Valley of the Dolls

These days, this 1966 novel is better known for selling forty million copies than it is for its contents. Its story of three women who try to enter show business but run into such pitfalls as creative compromise, sexual exploitation, and drug addiction (the “dolls” of the title are upper/downer pills) was so salacious for its time that it couldn’t help but become one of, literally, the bestselling books of all-time. No wonder it got a couple film adaptations: a much derided smash hit in 1968, and a TV movie in 1981.

An aspect of the literary juggernaut that, for decades, was held up as the impetus for its success was the titillation of guessing which characters were modeled on which specific real people. For example, was the character that had a pill addiction Judy Garland? Was the over-the-hill singer who stands in the protagonist’s way based on Ethel Merman? According to Jacqueline Susann, the answer to all these guesses was “no” and that all of the characters were invented to fit a theme instead of to reveal the truth behind a real entertainer’s persona. She eventually said of the misconception, “Let them think that, it sells more of my books.”  

4. Dracula

Bram Stoker’s 1897 classic isn’t just one of the two most influential horror novels of the 19th century (alongside Frankenstein). For many outside Central or Eastern Europe, it was the popularity of Dracula that led them to learn of 15th century Romanian ruler Vladislav III, better known as Vlad the Impaler. Deposed early in life, Vlad fought against both the Ottoman Empire and fellow Romanians and eventually died in battle, but not before leaving behind battlefields laden with impaled prisoners of war as an attempt to demoralize his enemies. Such a person seems tailor-made to inspire a monster in human shape.  

Which completely misunderstands Stoker’s real writing process. It’s not so much that he didn’t carefully study Vlad Tepisch’s life for inspiration for his iconic character, as there’s no evidence that he even knew the bygone monarch had existed. In 1890 (the year he began working on it) he noted that he read a book on Westphalia and came across the word Dracula, but he misinterpreted it as being the local word for “evil.” While Vlad is from approximately the same area of Europe as Dracula, Vlad was certainly not much associated with Transylvania, which would have been a key connection to invoking the memory of the historical figure. In short, Stoker seemed to have more lucked into the historical echoes than anything else.  

3. The Great Gatsby

Nearly 80 years after its initial disappointing release in 1925, F. Scott’s Fitzgerald’s Jazz Age triumph sells roughly 500,000 copies a year. It’s resonated with readers enough to make its way to the silver screen in 1926, 1949, 1976, and 2013. Each release was greeted with a critical thrashing and to very mixed results at the box office.  

But that’s not to say readers, who generally regard themselves as more astute than movie fans, don’t mistake Fitzgerald’s intention with Gatsby. As explained by Sarah Churchwell in The Guardian, most people misinterpret Gatsby as being a suave charmer. There are a few telling descriptions that undermine this: His pink suits (tacky even in the Roaring ’20s) and his bewilderment in the face of the high society that narrator Nick Carraway takes for granted. That’s why he overcompensates for his parties, doing such things as hire entire orchestras. Gatsby is a dreamer, pining for the fantasy version from his youth of his neighbor Daisy Buchanan, not a man with his feet on the ground in the present. Not that this dissonance is anything new: Fitzgerald wrote back in the day that, “Of all the reviews, even the most enthusiastic, not one has the slightest idea what the book was about.”

2. Don Quixote

It’s been just over 400 years since Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece was first published in English. Since then, the image of a nobleman putting a washing basin on his head, taking a nag for a noble steed and his trusty assistant Sancho Panza on a number of delusional, pointless quests in an attempt to restore chivalry to the land has only become more poignant. Don Quixote is both absurd and loveable, and many readers have mixed feelings about the ending where he regains his sanity enough to dictate in his will that his niece be disinherited if she marries a man who reads books of chivalry.  

As recounted in the New York Times, the title character actually comes across as much less sympathetic when you really look at the text. While Quixote means well, Cervantes does not skimp on the details of the pain he causes. Not just to his assistant Sancho Panza (who gets beat up because Quixote doesn’t pay a hotel bill), but even mules that can’t drink from their water trough because Quixote insists the water is holy. It’s an aspect of the story that is understandably omitted from adaptations such as Man of La Mancha, which contributed to those interpretations being dismissed as “kitsch.”

1. Slaughterhouse Five

Well, when an author writes as many famous satirical, morally complex, and whimsical stories as Kurt Vonnegut did, it’s not surprising that he’d have multiple works end up on lists like this. So it is with his 1969 anti-war classic (that he self-deprecatingly called his “famous Dresden novel”) about a WWII veteran named Billy Pilgrim, whose subjective experience of his life jumps back and forward through time. Within the intro of the book, Vonnegut quotes an associate who asked authors writing anti-war books why they didn’t instead write an “anti-glacier book.” Meaning, of course, that the human tendency towards war is as implacable as glaciers.

A similar sentiment is expressed by the alien race called the Tralfamadorians, who consider their own atrocities and eventual destruction of the universe as utterly inevitable, because they can see the entirety of all the time they live, all at once. Hence many have viewed it as a pro-fatalism book as they wonder whether the events of the book are real or not.

The text makes explicit that the aliens don’t exist. Within the book, the aliens Billy Pilgrim meets, and the environment they place him in (specifically a zoo), are described as something he read in a novel by hack sci-fi author Kilgore Trout. Further, Pilgrim does not express anything to anyone else about the aliens until after a plane crash that leaves him unconscious (i.e., likely with brain damage and trauma). As Michael Carson of Wrath-BearingTree.com points out, when Pilgrim first discusses the lessons he supposedly learned about the inevitability of war and the atrocities that come from it, it’s with a war hawk named Rumfoord, who Vonnegut mocks. Pilgrim merely echoes Rumfoord and then says he learned all of what Rumfoord told him on Tralfamadore.

On the other hand, Vonnegut also makes it explicit that the Tralfamadorians believe they will eventually destroy the universe. Vonnegut’s message isn’t that war and atrocities are inevitable, but that to follow this fatalist philosophy (that could come from absurd aliens that are the result of head trauma) makes its adherents into puppets, and leads to disaster for everyone.     

Adam & Dustin Koski also wrote the occult horror novel Not Meant to Know. Feel free to read and misinterpret it.