People think of churches and other holy sites as peaceful places full of sunshine and fresh air, totally safe and perhaps a little bit dull. But saving souls is serious business to some, especially before the modern age. Furthermore, the business of building sacred sites upon the ruins of pagans can leave behind some unusual ghosts.

From a spring dedicated to a pagan virgin goddess to churches made almost entirely out of human bones, here are holy places that wanted to make sure you get their message and don’t mind creeping you out to do it.

10Crypt Of The Chiesa Immacolata Concezione
Rome, Italy

This 17th-century church was built by Cardinal Antonio Barberini, a Capuchin Franciscan and brother of Pope Urban VIII, and was designed by Franciscan friar Michele da Bergamo. It houses several high-profile tombs and famous paintings, but its greatest attraction is the chapels in the lower levels.

Five subterranean chapels contain the remains of 4,000 Capuchin friars and poor Roman citizens from the 17th century onward, laid out in an artistic fashion. It took 300 trips from 1627–1631 to cart the carriages filled with bones and mummified remains into place. The earth covering the pavement of the cemetery is said to be from the Holy Land, and a memento mori inscription near the exit reads, “You are what we have been. You will be what we are.”

The remains are arranged in elaborate mosaics and built up into columns, arches, or floral designs. The crypts are even arranged based on the type of bone. There is a Crypt of Skulls, a Crypt of Pelvises, a Crypt of Leg and Thigh Bones, as well as the Crypt of the Resurrection (with a centerpiece painting of Jesus summoning forth Lazarus), and a Crypt of the Three Skeletons (a highly symbolic diorama that reflects on death).

9Basilica Of Santa Croce In Gerusalemme
Rome, Italy

Also known as Heleniana or Sessoriana, The Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Holy Cross in Jerusalem) stands on what was part of a residential complex owned by Emperor Constantine in the third century. It was once part of the Sessorian Palace, owned by Constantine’s mother, Helena. It is said that the palace was built on soil Helena brought back from Jerusalem.

Constantine had the church’s basilica built to house a collection of relics brought back from the Holy Land by his mother, specifically relics relating to the True Cross itself. Highlights of this gruesome Christian artifact collection include three supposed pieces of the Cross—a nail, a segment of the elogium (or inscription; in this case the famous INRI “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudeorum”) inscribed upon a board said to come from the Cross, and two thorns alleged to come from the Crown of Thorns. They are all currently housed in the Chapel of Relics, designed by Florestano di Fausto.

If you happen to be a woman, and wish to see these holy objects, you will have to be patient. Women are only allowed inside once a year.

8Capela Dos Ossos
Evora, Portugal

Next to the Church of St. Francis in the Portuguese town of Evora is a small chapel called Capela dos Ossos. Like several entries on our list, it’s decorated with bones. Uniquely, not only is the interior of the chapel entirely covered with skulls and bones, but if you enter this small building and look up, you will find the remains of two full corpses, a women and a young boy staring back down at you, hanging from chains. It is said that they were the victims of a curse, who took shelter in the chapel. A welcoming sign at the entrance reads, “Nos ossos que aqui estamos, pelos vossos esperamos” (“We bones that are here, for your bones we wait”).

This 16th-century chapel houses the remains of about 5,000 monks, mostly exhumed from nearby cemeteries that had become overcrowded. There are several reasons why churches of the period decorated their walls in such a grisly fashion. One was practical—cemeteries were commonly overcrowded, and there were so few places to store the dead. The second was religious and social. Bones could be put to good use as a warning to the living to prepare one’s soul for death.

7Church Of Santo Stefano Rotondo
Rome, Italy

On the outskirts of Rome, away from the main thoroughfare of tourists, sits a church called The Basilica di Santo Stefano Rotondo al Monte Celio (Basilica of St. Stephen in the Round on the Celian Hill), or simply, the Santo Stefano Rotondo. It was consecrated by Pope Simplicius between 468 and 483 and is dedicated to Saint Stephen. Built on top of an old Roman site of Mithras-worship (known as a mithraeum), it’s a simply constructed church compared to others on this list, really only notable for being the first Roman church to be built with a circular plan, but it houses a unique collection of paintings.

Circling the inner walls are 34 paintings, each describing the death of a Christian martyr. Every one of them is hellishly violent, depicting in near-pornographic detail the tortures inflicted upon the martyrs, all in a perfectly naturalistic and life-like style. The paintings were commissioned by Pope Gregory XIII at the end of the 16th century.

No less a writer than Charles Dickens had this to say about the gruesome collection:

” . . . Such a panorama of horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with hatchets: women having their breasts torn with iron pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire: these are among the mildest subjects.”

6Aghia Moni Convent
Nafplio, Greece

The Monastery of Aghia Moni is a beautiful, if little-known, complex just outside of Areia near Nafplio in Greece. It currently serves as a Greek Orthodox women’s retreat under the auspices of the Bishopric of Argolis.

Aghia Moni is famous for the spring that is located on its grounds, one with seriously pagan connotations. Sources are cagey about it, but most will admit that the monastery was dedicated to Zoodochos Pigi (the spring or source of life). The spring itself is associated with Kanathos, a legendary spring from Greek mythology.

The Greek traveler Pausanias, in his “Description of Greece,” wrote that “In Nauplia [in Argolis] . . . is a spring called Kanathos. Here . . . Hera bathes every year and recovers her maidenhood. This is one of the sayings told as a holy secret at the Mysteries which they celebrate in honor of Hera.”

Hera was the Greek queen of the Olympian Gods, associated with the sky and heavens, women, and marriage. Pausanias is implying that the Hera cultists performed rituals (called “Mysteries”) at the spring that were associated with this legend, and it isn’t hard to guess the aim of these rituals. That isn’t really the kind of thing Christian Orthodoxy likes to promote, so the spring has fallen into relative obscurity.

5The Barberini Coats Of Arms, St. Peter’s Cathedral
Vatican City

At St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vatican City is the Baldachin Altar along with its sculpted bronze canopy known as the Baldachin, both of which were sculpted by Gianlorenzo Bernini between 1624 and 1633 under the direction of Pius VIII. One notable feature about the alter is four plinths (columns), decorated with the Barberini family’s coat of arms—three bees arranged in a triangle on a blue field resting on an sculptured shield, with a woman’s head above it.

A close look reveals that each coat-of-arms, arranged two-to-a-column to make up a series of eight, is slightly different from the one preceding it. Some people believe that the series represents childbirth (the position of the woman’s head and the overall shapes and elements certainly look suggestive). Furthermore, take a look at the woman’s expression throughout the series; she goes from happy to obviously distressed and back. Furthermore, the shield bulges throughout the series until near the end; the woman’s face is replaced with that of a cherub or angel. What is this doing in the middle of a church?

One popular story has it that the sculpture depicts a promise that Urban VIII made to his niece, Giulia Barberini, to build an altar in her honor if her labor was successful. Others contend that it symbolically depicts the earthly struggles of the church in the past until it was “delivered” by the pope, who took great pains to place symbols of his power and family throughout the Vatican.

4The Sheela-Na-Gig Of Kilpeck
Herefordshire, England

Kilpeck Church (The Church of St. Mary and St. David) is located in Herefordshire, England near the Welsh border. It’s a simple, Norman-style, two-cell church built atop an older structure with dozens of elaborate and often-grotesque carvings, many of which are heavily influenced by Celtic styles. It’s famous for its sexually charged corbel (a weight support for buildings that were commonly sculpted), known as the Sheela-na-gig.

Sheela-na-gigs have been found on structures all over England, Ireland, and France. They depict a squatting woman, possibly associated with “old women” or hags, displaying their grossly exaggerated genitalia for all to see. They are usually depicted in a grotesque or comical manner, and the one at Kilpeck could be said to display both. It’s a very old sculpture, dating to at least the 12th century, and possibly belonged to an earlier chapel that once stood on the site.

Popular theories have it that Sheela-na-gigs are a pagan remnant, perhaps associated with various goddess traditions, but when placed in proper context with other carvings found around them, the theory holds little water. They fit in nicely with other Christian motifs common to the region of the time and probably served as Romanesque-era warnings about the dangers of sexual sins. The earliest known figures date to the 11th or 12th century and are usually found on Roman churches. They probably had a Continental origin. Another theory holds that they were created as wards against evil, and there is some evidence for this belief. Corbels have been found above doors or gates out of immediate eyesight, where they could have stood guard as talismans.

As the symbolic significance of Sheela-na-gigs began to wane, they moved from churches to buildings such as castles and gateways. Toward the end of their use, they even showed up as carvings on flintlock pistols of the baroque era.

There are male variations of Sheela-na-gigs, some of which may have been present at Kilpeck Church. Several corbels have been removed there, supposedly by an unnamed Victorian lady who was offended by what they depicted. Whatever the case may be, corbels depicting the male member are relatively common, and they too serve as a warning about the insidious consequences of lust.

3Otranto Cathedral, Tree of Life Mosaic
Otranto, Italy

Consecrated in 1088, Italy’s Otranto Cathedral is on this list twice. The first reason is its floor, which is entirely covered by an amazing work of art called the Tree of Life Mosaic. It was commissioned in 1163 by archbishop Gionata d’Otranto and overseen by a monk named Pantaleone with labor provided by local and Norman craftsman and artisans from Tuscany. It was restored in 1993.

Every square foot of the church’s floor is covered by a mysterious mosaic that depicts a tree in a style similar to a genealogy illustration. Seen from above, the tree grows into every room of the cathedral, and the effect of the explosion of mythological and religious concepts all depicted together is mind-blowing.

What makes this mysterious work of art so intriguing is the variety of imagery and inscriptions that have no place in a Christian church. Images of the Greek goddesses Diana, Deucalion, and Pyrrha (the main figures in the Greek legend of a great flood) collide with images from Frazer’s Golden Bough, a depiction of King Arthur, and zodiac figures, to name only a few. All this is mixed alongside images of Adam and Eve, apocalyptic imagery and creatures, Cain and Abel, and other Christian concepts, but the whole thing is surprisingly free of any specific Christian symbolism. It even mixes in Islamic lore, such as bits of text in Arabic.

The Tree of Life Mosaic demonstrates that its creators were far more educated than the norm for cultures of its time. However they obtained their knowledge, the creators seem to have wanted to record all they knew of the world in one place.

2Otranto Cathedral, The Skull Cathedral
Otranto, Italy

The second reason that Otranto Cathedral makes the list is the skulls. Just off of the main altar is a chapel, and the walls therein house the remains of 800 Christian martyrs. Some of the remains were also moved to the Church of Santa Caterina in Formello at Naples. The walls are neatly lined with the skulls of these martyrs behind glass.

Turkish Sultan Mehmet II had already conquered Constantinople, and 27 years later, he began a plan to take Rome itself by establishing a beachhead on the Italian coast at the port town of Brindisi. Along the way, he changed his mind and decided to strike at Otranto instead . . . a decision that changed everything.

When the invasion hit and the siege began, 350 members of Otranto’s garrison fled, leaving only 50 soldiers to hold back the invaders. The remaining townspeople helped against the siege as best they could.

On August 14, 1480, after a two-week siege, the Ottomans broke through and began raping and pillaging and gathered the women and children to be sold into slavery. They then marched around 800 male inhabitants of the town to a place called the Hill of the Minerva (afterward called the Hill of the Martyrs) and gave them a choice: convert to Islam or be beheaded. The men chose death.

Antonio Primaldi (or Pezzulla) was chosen to be the spokesman for the town, and he was the first man to be beheaded. According to Saverio de Marco in his Compendiosa istoria degli ottocento martiri otrantini (The Brief History of the 800 Martyrs of Otranto), when the sword fell, his lifeless, headless body stood up and refused to be moved. An executioner was so awestruck, he converted to Christianity right on the spot and was immediately executed. Yet, despite this miracle the beheadings continued.

The sacrifice of the townspeople of Otranto gave Ferdinand I, king of Naples, the time he needed to eventually repel the Ottoman advance. If not for them, all of Italy and Rome itself could have fallen to Islam. This is why their skulls are displayed and memorialized today, and why, in May 2013, Antonio Primaldi was canonized by Pope Francis as a saint along with all the rest of the Otranto martyrs. The occasion was the largest canonization of saints of all time.

1Sedlec Ossuary
Kutna Hora, Czech Republic

Compared to the Sedlec Ossuary, other churches that house human remains are nothing more than a Disney park. The remains of no fewer than 40,000 skeletons are preserved here.

The Seclec Ossuary is a small chapel located in the suburbs of Kutna Hora, just outside Prague. In 1870, woodcarver Frantisek Rint was appointed to do something about all the bones interred there. The church and its cemetery had become overcrowded over the centuries, thanks both to the church’s good reputation (and the alleged presence of soil from Golgotha, marking it as a holy site) and plague. Rint’s approach resulted in one of the most unique churches in history.

Bones are everywhere within the church. One of the most impressive displays is the Coat of Arms of the Schwarzenberg family, and the famous chandelier of bones contains at least one of every human bone within it.

Interspaced within the vast display of skulls, ribcages, leg and arm bones, and every other kind of bone are intricate carvings of angels and cherubs. There are candleholders made of bones, and entire walls are lined in skulls. Rint even signed his name in a display of bones.

Words don’t really do it justice. This gallery of photos helps give a proper sense of the church.

Lance LeClaire is a freelance artist and writer. He writes on subjects ranging from science and skepticism, atheism, and religious history and issues, to unexplained mysteries and historical oddities. You can look him up on Facebook.

A lot of work goes into the creation of a movie or television program such as writing the screen- or teleplay, pitching the idea to a production company, casting, and all the technical tasks which include cinematography, lighting and film editing—all coming together harmoniously to produce a masterpiece which will hopefully be appreciated for generations. And often such presentations do leave a long-lasting legacy, with movies such as The Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life entertaining people for decades and decades. But sometimes movies simply disappear forever, falling from public view and memory due to age, mishap or scandal. Television programs often follow suit in entirety or by individual episode. There have also been actors whose entire careers have disappeared due to the ravages of time or political correctness. Here are a few examples of productions that have fallen into oblivion, and a couple that have miraculously made it back!

10 Books That Have Been Lost To History

10 Remembering Valeska Suratt

One shining example of an entire career gone missing is the story of Valeska Suratt (1882-1962), an early twentieth-century actress who rose from a risque career in vaudeville to embrace a successful career on Broadway. She was known for her glamour and style, and she went on to star in eleven silent flicks by Fox studios from 1915 through 1917, recreating herself in vampish roles along the lines of the great Theda Bara.

Suratt was truly an actress that should be held in high esteem but most people these days, with the exception of film historians, do not remember her due to two significant events. First, in 1928 she sued Cecil B. Demille, claiming he stole the scenario for a movie from her, and she was unofficially blacklisted in Hollywood where she never worked again. Then, years later in 1937, all eleven of her movies were destroyed in a fire at the building where they’d been stored in Little Ferry, New Jersey, wiping out all cinematic footage of her lively and highly-fashionable career. She was soon forgotten by the general public.

In 1962 Valeska Suratt died at 80 in a nursing home, having for the most part vanished from public visibility, though in those bygone, post-WWI days of yore all eyes were upon her…

9 Forgetting Charlie Chan

The aforementioned fire in 1937 at that New Jersey storage facility also took a bite out of the extensive Charlie Chan legacy, an empire that started in 1925 with the novel The House without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers, and would go on to include five more books, a comic strip, a 50’s tv show and a 70’s cartoon series. Four early movies from Fox studios were lost forever in that fire: Charlie Chan Carries On (1931), Charlie Chan’s Chance (1932), Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case (1933) and Charlie Chan’s Courage (1934). Each of these movies starred Warner Oland as Chan, and their absence is an unfortunate gap in the series of forty-four films featuring the wise and honorable detective.

But Charlie Chan is not held as favorably in American society as he once was, at least amongst the populace who can still remember who he was. There has not been a theatrical release with Chan since 1981 (Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen), which prompted demonstrations from Chinese-American activists at filming locations and theaters due to his acquired ‘Uncle Tom’ status. The character of Chan has been notoriously played on the big screen by white actors in yellowface with their eyes taped to look Asian, and the chop suey accent combined with his wizened aphorisms are just a bit too un-PC for the public these days. This sentiment may actually be the bigger catalyst deciding the cultural perseverance of Charlie Chan than an old fire at a Fox storage facility.

As the sleuth himself once said: All forgotten, like last year’s bird’s nest…

8 4 Devils Lost At Sea

Another golden oldie lost forever is the film 4 Devils (1928), a melodramatic circus movie directed by the iconic F. W. Murnau for Fox Studios. It was originally released as a silent movie, then re-released with a partial soundtrack, which gave the film a certain progressive distinction up until one of the actresses, a beautiful, Broadway crossover named Mary Duncan, borrowed it for a party in Florida with her friends where she threw it into the ocean. But why in blazes would she do such a thing?

Mary Duncan led a long and elegant life before passing in 1993 at the age of 98. Her escapades included a successful streak on Broadway, a short-lived but sexy career in Hollywood, and a marriage in 1933 to international polo star and businessman, Stephen Sanford. After marrying she retired from acting and became a seasoned philanthropist, ruling as the queen of Palm Beach society and walking amongst the ranks of Rose Kennedy and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, so we can only speculate who her friends might have been at that party in Florida where she lost the film. Actually most of the story is hearsay possibly based on solid fact but retold so many times it has different versions. Duncan probably borrowed the film in the ’40’s sometime after WWII, which means it survived the Fox storage facility fire in 1937 only to sleep with the fishes a decade later. And all of the many accounts of this story are by word of mouth with conflicting details, some having her casting the film into the Pacific, some into the Atlantic, some into a swimming pool, and some have her destroying the film by fire. According to her own attestation she became concerned with the combustible nitrate in the film, and fearing it might explode she threw it into the ocean, unaware she’d been holding the only copy. But that itself adds to the mystery because 4 Devils was released twice, as a silent flick and then a talkie, and since it’s assumed Duncan only borrowed one version of the film historians are still hopeful that the other might turn up somewhere.

Until that happens, perhaps another detail worth speculating upon is what they were drinking at that party, and how much.

7 Disney Ditches A Dark Legacy

Most people consider Disney movies to be wholesome and entertaining, but The Walt Disney Company has a long history of including negative racial cliches in their features that many people have come to find objectionable. Probably number one on that list would be Song of the South (1946), which portrays blacks as being indifferent to the unequal society in which they live, and depicts racial stereotypes with such insensitivity that the term ‘tar baby’ is used in one of the animated scenes. By a modern-day perspective the characters’ cheerful acceptance of the social structuring of the Old South is disturbing, and many find it unsettling to watch a smiling, elderly Uncle Remus take a pleasantly-psychedelic stroll while singing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah! This movie has not shown in theaters since 1986 and is not included in the Disney Plus streaming membership.

Another major embarrassment for Disney was an explicitly racist scene from Fantasia (1940) in which black centaurettes with donkey legs are subservient to lighter-skinned centaurettes with horse legs, right down to shining their hooves. The scene was cut when the movie was released again in 1969. And the movie Dumbo (1941) certainly carries controversy when the young elephant meets a group of mocking black crows acting out in stereotypical Negro behavior, one of whom is actually called Jim Crow, named after a system of Southern laws which mandated racial segregation! Perhaps the worst example of racism in the film is the “Song of the Roustabouts”, which features faceless, black circus laborers in a very demeaning manner, even using the lyrics, “Grab that rope, you hairy ape.” Consequently, Disney Plus has removed this movie from subscribers whose profiles are under age 7.

Other movies unavailable to young children on Disney Plus are Peter Pan (1953) for derogatory portrayal of ‘redskins’, and The Aristocats (1970) for a negative depiction of Asians through a singing Siamese cat with buck teeth and a cliched accent.

6 Jack Paar Twice Removed

It’s not just movies that are often forever lost; the small screen has it’s share of casualties also…

Jack Paar took over the reins of The Tonight Show in July of 1957 as permanent host up until 1962, by which time, due to his popularity, the show had been officially renamed The Jack Parr Show. Paar had a unique approach with guests that was often very emotional, even to the point of weeping, and he helped make household names of Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liza Minnelli and Carol Burnett.

But the episode which best displayed Paar’s emotionalism probably would be the one that aired on February 11, 1960. Very early into the show Paar learned that a joke he had made the previous evening had been censored by the network for using the abbreviation ‘W.C.’, short for water closet, which by the standards of the day was considered to be, literally, bathroom humor. Before walking off the show he told the audience, “I am leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way of making a living than this.” Hugh Downs filled in for him, but on March 7 of the same year Paar walked back on stage and told everyone, “As I was saying before I was interrupted…” After the audience’s laughter died down he went on, “I believe my last words were that there must be a better way of making a living than this. Well, I’ve looked…and there isn’t.”

Jack Paar threw in the towel and left The Tonight Show in March of ’62, with Johnny Carson stepping in to replace him. Unfortunately, due to the high cost of broadcast videotape, most of the footage shot between 1957 through 1971 was lost when the tapes were reused, a process called ‘wiping’ which destroys the original content. Only a few Tonight Show episodes before ’72 have been reclaimed, some only partially, and mostly due to kinescopes, audiotracks or home movies with the camera aimed at the television.

So…in 1960 Paar may have removed himself from The Tonight Show for almost a full month to make a point, but NBC studios removed visual evidence of his absence, and most of his tenure as host on the show as well, by ‘wiping’ it away. Oooh…the irony…

5 Loss Of An Empire

It’s a shame when movies or tv shows are lost forever, but how about an entire network! The DuMont Television Network aired approximately two-hundred tv series from 1946 through 1956, so only individuals beyond the age of retirement might actually remember viewing them. All of their programs aired live and weren’t filmed for future viewing due to a tight budget, and even though kinescopes (recordings of monitors playing the program) were occasionally made, most of them have not survived the decades.

Unlike NBC and CBS, broadcast competitors whose television endeavors both sprang from successful radio networks, DuMont’s parent company, DuMont Laboratories, was a television equipment manufacturer. And it was genius of them to start creating programming content which would require televisions to watch! It worked well for a decade, and DuMont pioneered many insightful shows and formats, but they never achieved the financial freedom of their rival networks to keep up with their levels of quality production. ABC popped into the competition in 1948, and after merging with United Paramount Theaters in 1953 DuMont was pushed behind the other three networks in ratings. Things fell apart fast for DuMont at this point, and their last program, Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena, was aired in 1956.

During its heyday, however, the DuMont Television Network was very innovative in developing new formats for programming. The very first American soap opera, Faraway Hill, appeared in 1946 on DuMont starring Flora Campbell. Unfortunately all episodes have been lost, and no stills, scripts or press materials from the show have ever been found, so not much is known about the serial except for the fact Ms. Campbell is credited with twelve episodes. Another example of breakthrough programming was the Hazel Scott Show (1950) hosted by pianist Hazel Scott, the first black individual in America to have her own tv show. Unfortunately her program lost its sponsorship after an accusation of communism was made about her, and it was cancelled almost three months after its premiere with no recorded evidence of its existence. And then there was Cash and Carry (1946-1947), and even though no footage of the show remains it still has the double distinction of being both the first game show and the first reality show.

But traces of this mighty network’s short lifespan escaped obscurity, one fine example being Cavalcade of Stars (1949-1952), a variety show starring Jackie Gleason which performed comedic skits. A sketch called “The Honeymooners” aired in October of 1951, and characters were created that survived the death of the network to thrive on CBS as the Kramdens and the Nortons…extendedly the Flintstones and the Rubbles.

4 The Lost 1960 World Series—On DVD

MLB.com has been quoted as calling the final game of the 1960 World Series “maybe the greatest game seven in World Series Championship history.” And the late great Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees has been known to say that the biggest disappointment in his baseball career was losing that series. But it was a high point for Bill Mazeroski of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who, in the ninth inning hit a walk-off home run out of the park, winning the game and concluding that year’s Fall Classic. This was a major disappointment for the Yankees, who had dominated the series, and for their fans. This was also a game worth rewatching, especially by Pirates fans, but that’s not how things worked back in 1960…

Up until the 70’s television stations either reused or discarded the games they filmed, and while that was certainly cost effective it didn’t show a lot of foresight for NBC to not preserve the 1960 World Series, especially since Game 7 would come to be considered one of the most noteworthy games in the history of Major League Baseball. For almost fifty years the only coverage remaining from the game was the existence of old photos, newspaper stories and radio broadcasts, but that all changed in 2009 when Robert Bader, VP of Bing Crosby Entertainment, found two canisters of 16-millimeter film marked ‘1960 World Series’ in the wine cellar of the late Crosby’s home outside San Francisco!

It seems Bing Crosby was a major fan and part owner of the Pirates until he died in ’77, but he chose to remove himself during the 1960 games due to being much too nervous to watch them play the Yankees, so he and his wife instead listened to the games on the radio while in Paris. But he paid a company to make a kinescope of Game 7 with the intention to watch if his team won after returning to the States. Oh what great luck for sports enthusiasts and collectors that the reels were stored in a cool, dry wine cellar where they were found nearly good as new! And after being doctored up and reformatted for DVD, with new, nostalgic content added, the 1960 World Series Game 7, once lost forever, is now available on Amazon.

3 Scandal!

Traditionally a good scandal could help boost a performer’s career, such as a torrid affair or a much-publicized visit to rehab. Though bump the nature of the scandal up a notch and one might have become blackballed or, as they called it, run out of Hollywood! Today that concept unfolds in programs being dropped and content being removed from streaming services. Bill Cosby is a perfect example of modern-day banishment from public view, though ironically the scandal which brought him down propelled his name and reputation exponentially unto public scrutiny, mainly in news coverage and on social media. After the initial investigation into Cosby’s misconduct with women networks started dumping his much-beloved program, The Cosby Show (1984-1992), as far back as 2014. But after his guilty verdict in 2018 even Bounce TV, a digital broadcast network targeting black Americans, has pulled the plug on Cosby. Amazon Prime still offers the show, however.

Hollywood scandals go way back, and the very first would probably be the three rape and manslaughter trials of comedian Fatty Arbuckle in November 1921 through April 1922. Arbuckle was also the first actor to reel in a million dollars per year, and he was at the height of his movie career with Paramount when the unthinkable occurred. Arbuckle and two friends threw a party in a San Francisco hotel which a young actress named Virginia Rappe crashed, and after growing ill she died four days later from a ruptured bladder after accusing the comic of rape. Even though doctors could not find evidence of assault, Arbuckle was arrested and tried for manslaughter three times, and the newspapers went wild with the allure of scandal! He was depicted as a brutish fiend whose excessive weight fatally injured the deceased during the alleged rape, and despite the fact he was acquitted the trials instantly ended his career when the motion picture industry officially banned his movies from theaters. The ban was lifted some months later but his movies still weren’t being shown, though ten years later he did make a comeback with Warner Brothers, signing a contract to make feature films in June of 1933. That very night he died of a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 46.

Perhaps a classic example of scandal wiping away an actor’s work would be the ‘airbrushing’ of Kevin Spacey from the film All the Money in the World (2017) after accusations by several men of sexual misconduct. His replacement was Christopher Plummer, and the procedure gives renewed meaning to the term ‘wiping footage’!

2 BLM Packs A Wallop!

The Black Lives Matter movement has been around since 2013, founded after the acquittal of the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. But protests peaked anew in 2020 with unprecedented participation and visibility after the deaths of several individuals by the police, the most noteworthy and inflammatory being that of George Floyd. There has never beforehand been such a movement in terms of both numbers and volition in the history of the United States, and all across the country heads are turning and ears are listening—including Hollywood!

One of the most controversial types of derogatory content on television has been the comedic practice of blackface, when a white person wears dark makeup or paint to resemble a black person usually to garner a laugh or two. Blackface song and dance, which arose in post-Civil War minstrel shows, generally attributed negative stereotypes such as ignorance, cowardice and laziness to African Americans. With the BLM protests of 2020 such imagery is quickly being purged from television, but are the expunged episodes equal in derision and ridicule to the old minstrel shows?

Tina Fey, the creator and co-star of NBC’s 30 Rock, voluntarily removed four episodes from syndication in 2020 due to blackface humor, although one of the episodes simply involved the transplant of a set of hands from a black man onto a white guy. Other shows with episodes pulled from streaming by Hulu for blackface humor in 2020 are The Golden Girls and Scrubs, and that same year Adult Swim, the Cartoon Network’s evening block for mature audiences, started pulling episodes from three of its shows, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Shivering Truth, and The Boondocks, for containing racially-insensitive humor.

And reality police shows are also taking quite a hit, the most notable being COPS, which Paramount Network took down after 32 seasons in June of 2020 following the death of George Floyd. Interestingly enough, as far back as 1989 a New York Times reviewer said of the show, “the overwhelmingly white troop of police are the good guys; the bad guys are overwhelmingly black.” They did start filming again in September, however, in Spokane County, Washington, though the new footage is intended only for foreign viewers and will not be aired in the US. Two similar shows that were cancelled are A&E’s Live PD and Investigation Discovery’s Body Cam, neither of which has resumed filming.

1 Digital Dilemmas

Classic examples of how old film footage can be destroyed include fire, environment, and wiping or recycling, but technology has gone digital and so has Hollywood. Not only does digital content keep better and a lot longer, it’s also much more cost-effective to use while filming and later for storage. Plus the editing process, both video and audio, is light-years ahead of working with analog footage. That doesn’t mean the industry is free from problems, however—for instance, be careful with the delete button! The movie Toy Story 2 (1999) was almost completely deleted during the process of its creation back in ’98 when one of the animators over at Pixar Animation Studios accidentally executed the wrong command, and right before everyone’s eyes files began disappearing from the main server. By the time they pulled the plug on the server and took a toll of the damage they ascertained that the command had deleted 90% of their movie!

It’s all about backup. During the production of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (1998) the majority of ants were accidentally deleted, which was certainly an annoyance but not a tragedy as all their files were properly backed up. But with the Toy Story 2 accident that wasn’t the case. Unbeknownst to them their backup drive could only hold 4GB of data, compared to 10GB of movie, and new data saved was taking the place of older files. It’s quite a testament to the ingenuity of the studio and the long hours put in by staff members that Toy Story 2 met its release date in November of 1999.

And this type of disaster can happen at home. A professional videographer in California initiated a lawsuit against Adobe for the loss of $250,000 of data, which includes files that were deleted both from his Premiere Pro Media Cache and from an external drive onto which he was attempting to back up content. It seems that a bug, which Adobe has both acknowledged and claimed to have fixed in 2017, wiped out 100,000 video clips holding 500 hours of digital footage, and the plaintiff has requested a jury trial to be awarded damages. This is actually a class action lawsuit, since many other Premiere Pro users in 2017 reported similar file losses. It seems digital content, haunted by the DEL key and the commands and bugs that can strike it, sometimes goes up in flames even quicker than the old-time analog film!

10 Of The Most Sought-after Lost Films

About The Author: I am a freelance writer exploring fiction, nonfiction and the occasional poem. Originally born and raised in Connecticut, I’ve made a slow westward trek, living for thirty years in Colorado before moving to Southern California right in time for the pandemic.

People have been freaking out in public since the beginning of “people’s” existence. Millions of years ago, a tribe of early hominids watched as Ook-Ook howled and punched a tree when hunters took too long bringing him his mammoth meal, and now the whole world watches as Karen screams about her fries being too salty. Thanks to phone cameras, we get to see every tantrum every time, forcing everyone’s baggage into the open.

There are many pockets of the internet dedicated solely to capturing and cataloging these open displays of immature rage, and millions tune in every day for their daily dose of schadenfreude. With dozens more each day, it can be hard to pick, but here are ten of the best/worst public freakouts ever recorded (and only those that keep it somewhat light).

10 We’ll Do it Live!

A classic. Sometime in the early 1990s, Bill O’Reilly was having a really bad day and let it spill on film. The clip is an outtake and the footage was lost for over a decade—until May 12, 2008. One sweet, beautiful angel of a YouTuber uploaded it for the world to see.

While recording an outro segment, Bill apparently became unhappy with his teleprompter and just could not handle it. Unable to control his temper, Bill starts shouting at his coworkers. At one point he stands and starts removing his coat, but then cool, collected Bill catches himself and gets back to shouting like an angry dad. Thus was born his most famous catchphrase to date, “We’ll do it live! F— it! We’ll do it live!”

9 Lisa Nowak, the AstroNut

Lisa Nowak was a Navy Captain, fighter pilot, and NASA astronaut who crewed the space shuttle Discovery. You would think she’d be one of the calmest, controlled people alive. And she was, until the whole diaper-wearing-pepper-spray-kidnap incident that earned her the nickname “AstroNut.”

Nowak had been dumped, and her ex had then started seeing a woman named Colleen Shipman. So Nowak, unable to handle her jealousy and anger, did what any rational human would do. She stalked the couple for months before putting on a diaper, driving 900 miles, pepper-spraying Shipman, and trying to kidnap her. Shipman (also a Navy captain) resisted and Nowak’s plot utterly failed. She was arrested, fired from NASA, and discharged from the Navy, but I’m sure it was all worth it in order to become a national punchline.

8 I Have a Platinum!

This wonderful Walgreens Karen starts her meltdown innocuously enough by complaining about a line taking too long. When the woman in front of her lets her cut ahead, that’s when Karen really picks up speed.

For some reason, someone letting her go first angers her, so she starts refusing the clerk’s orders, yelling at other customers, and inexplicably bragging about her Amex platinum card. Seriously, count the number of times she says the word platinum while purchasing $8.00 champagne from a drug store. At one point the woman, unsurprisingly, asks to see the manager, when the clerk says, “I am the manager”—a moment any customer service manager will know is the best feeling on Earth.

7 Kanye West’s Whole Life

Just as it’s impossible to not think of Kanye West for a public freakout list, it’s impossible to narrow this freakout list down to just one freakout. Kanye’s whole public life is one big cycle of meltdown after meltdown. Some of his greatest, chart-topping hits include the time he told TMZ that slavery was a choice, the time he blew up at morning host Sway over “not being Ralph (Lauren),” when he infamously interrupted Taylor Swift’s MTV VMA acceptance speech, when he did the same thing to Beck for the exact same reason, his entire presidential run, most interviews ever (Ellen is a great one. Joe Rogan, too), and his frequent assertion that he is a god, as well as being Steve Jobs, Picasso, Warhol, Disney, and Jesus.

6 Naked in Outback

For some reason, Tina Kindred—age 53 mind you—decided to go to an Outback Steakhouse with “the intent to destroy the bar,” according to local police. Whether it happened before she got there or after, she ended up completely naked, standing atop the bar, and smashing everything of value she could find on the floor. Countless bottles of alcohol and dishes end up broken on the floor, and the restaurant ended up looking like a war zone.

As crazy as that is, even crazier is the fact that Kindred had no drugs or alcohol in her system. Police arrived, tasered her, and arrested her, at which point she produced a creepy smiling mugshot worthy of the Joker. You get one guess as to which U.S. state in which the incident took place.

5 I want the Manager of the Airport!

“I want the manager of the f— airport here!” is one of the hit lines of Summer 2021. In May, Terre Ann Bluse was filmed screaming at police and anyone who will listen about how airport staff had choked her and threw her to the ground. In reality, Bluse had been late to her flight, denied boarding, and tried to rush the doors. She allegedly pushed a staff member, who pushed her back, when she tripped. She had also been intoxicated throughout.

Despite her screaming demand to see the “manager of the f— airport,” Bluse only received an arrest and a round of mockery from everyone on the scene. She resisted arrest, going limp on the floor and refusing to move, at which police dragged her away as she cried and pleaded for onlookers to film the interaction. They did, though it didn’t help her in the way she intended.

4 Chicken Sandwich for a Child

Can you relate to this situation? You’re at McDonald’s at 3 am, you order a Junior Chicken sandwich, and they tell you that they are all out. So you call the clerk a b—, claim reverse-sexism, question whether sexism even exists, claim that b— is a “proper English word” and so is fine to say to anyone, start a fight with literally every person in the restaurant, claim that people asking to be treated with respect is “extra rights” (whatever that means), refuse to leave, tell the staff to call the cops, and then question why they’re calling the cops. Man, is that a tale as old as time. If I had a nickel for every time I did this, I could afford a sweet new set of extra rights.

3 The Ol’ Chinese Meat Fight

This isn’t the biggest freakout but certainly the weirdest. For reasons unknown, a fight breaks out at a meat market in Shanghai, China. And instead of using weapons or fists, the parties involved all use what is available to them: hunks of raw meat.

At first, only two women are involved, throwing cuts of beef across the display between them. Then the fight expands, the meat rage consuming everyone around the two women, and soon a half dozen people start lobbing choice cuts at each other. The video’s uploader gives neither context nor translation, so those of us who don’t speak Wu Chinese or Mandarin are left to guess why a full cow and half was wasted that day.

2 Slap-top

This video starts in media res as a couple fights while seated on an airplane, during boarding. Perhaps fight is the wrong word, since it is really just the woman screaming at the man and then assaulting him. It starts strong, with a commanding “Shut the f— up!” and picks up from there.

Apparently, the man looks at another woman. At least that’s the woman repeatedly screams, alongside some incredibly offensive slurs and telling him to shut up, even when he’s not speaking. The mother of a young child seated behind the couple asks the woman to lower her voice and keep from swearing, to which she replies “Yeah, I know. I already consult(ed) the f— child.” Which is, admittedly, hilarious. But she only builds from there until a forceful slap is heard, at which point everything changes. Staff members try to escort the man away from the scene, at which point the woman follows him down the aisle, smacks him with a laptop, and punches him. The pilot arrives to tell her that she’s off the plane and will be charged with assault, to which she replies, “Fine. Whatever.”

1 Magic Fool Bus

Wow. Just wow to this video. This is about as public and freakish as public freakouts get. It starts off with a literal bang, as a woman—later identified as Mariana Silver—uses a tire jack to repeatedly smash the driver’s side window of a D.C. city bus, while inside a passenger repeats, “Are you kidding me? She’s going to f— jail.” And it only gets worse. Within seconds, we see that a man, presumably the bus driver, is standing in front of Silver’s car, preventing her from fleeing the scene. She responds by running him over and then assaulting him.

The incident moves on and on, and the bus driver (foolishly) keeps planting himself in front of Silver’s car, to which she responds by continually accelerating and knocking him over. Despite repeated warnings, he continues until she takes off for real. She speeds off, jerking at one point to throw him off the side of her hood. Silver was later caught and charged, and apparently, the entire incident started because she “illegally passed the bus and side-swiped a car in the process” and then refused to give her information to the driver. Weird choice, Silver.

As the controversy about public statues to Confederates continues, some have said it makes no sense and serves no purpose to allow these monuments to stand. Others have said this just isn’t done and that in no other case does one allow statues of their enemies to be out in public like this. At best they should be stuck in a museum somewhere.

So the question is, are there times when such statues are allowed to remain out in the open for all to see? Statues of those one fought against and spilled blood fighting and died to defeat? And if so, why? Do these serve some purpose?

SEE ALSO: 10 Monuments More Controversial Than The Confederate Statues

10 Muslims in Spain

Spain was invaded and occupied by Muslims in 711AD. The occupiers were eventually driven back out of Spain, but only after around 800 years of on and off war and the terrible things that happen in war.

We might be surprised, then, that they not only allow statues of their once Muslim overlords. They also spend time and money maintaining them. Statues not only of the peaceful thinkers among their occupiers, like Averroes, but also of the rulers and military leaders, the people who were killing them, like Almanzor and Abd-al-Rahman-I.

So why do they do this? In part, it’s simple. Money. The history of Spain is interesting and it attracts tourists. But it might also be that this is part of a nation’s healing process. After enough time goes by, you want reminders out there of your history, of how you got to where you are, and part of that process includes putting up monuments to your enemies.^[1]

9 George Washington in England

From Olde England’s perspective, Washington was enemy number one. Not only did he lead the revolution that began the process of ending colonialism, but he had learned his military skills while serving as an officer in the King’s militia! What a traitor!

So why would anyone put a statue of George Washington up in England. Because, there he currently stands, in London, England. The heart of the capital of the country that he led a long hard war against. (A civil war, too!). Why would they do this?

Well, sometimes one’s enemy becomes one’s friend. The United States crossed the ocean to help England win WWI. Afterwards the state of Virginia offered the Washington statue to London as a gift, and England graciously accepted and set the statue up for all to see. (And perhaps they suspected they might need help from the United States again?) Also, since Washington had vowed after the American Revolution to never again step foot in England, they even honored his wish by standing the statue on some good old Virginia sod. Or—so the story goes.^[2]

8 Native Americans

The European colonies in North America fought numerous battles against the native peoples they found there in what we now call the American Indian Wars. These wars lasted for centuries.

Despite years of terrible war, statues honoring Native Americans have been put up in many public places around the United States. For example, a statue stands in Pilgrim Memorial State Park in Plymouth, Massachusetts to honor the Wampanoag chief who helped the Pilgrims when they arrived centuries ago. Utah, noting the sculptor was born in the Beehive State, put up a replica of the statue outside of their capitol building.

In 1911, a 48 foot tall, 270 ton statue was erected in Illinois. The statue, believed to be the world’s second-largest concrete monolithic statue, is informally called Black Hawk, the Native American leader in an Indian war fought in the area. Recently the statue, which stands in Lowden State Park, was showing its age, so people anted up hundreds of thousands of dollars to restore honor to their once enemy.^[3]

7 Gandhi in England

Mahatma Gandhi was another traitor to England. He was born in another English colony—India. After he studied law in London and they admitted him to the bar in the 1880s, he paid them back by leading another revolution against them. This was at least peaceful, at least on the part of those who were in revolution.

But again, in London there stands a monument to the great man who helped further the process of setting the sun on the English Empire. What a forgiving people. Maybe if you want to be honored in England you need to lead a revolt against them?^[4]

6 Mussolini in Italy

Mussolini founded Fascism in Italy. He led the Black Shirts to do terrible things to the Italian people. He even inspired Hitler who took the whole Fascist thing and really ran with it.

At the end of WWII, Mussolini wasn’t killed by the Allies, but instead by fellow Italians. And then his body was mutilated and hung naked upside down in Milan’s public square. Clearly, they really didn’t like him. Fascism was made illegal in Italy, but there was a problem. Mussolini and the Fascists had erected tons of statues to themselves during their reign.

Italy is famous for its statues. And they have a very long history. And they understood that sometimes you regret the loss of statues later on. So, what to do with the Fascist monuments?

One example of a solution is in a small Italian town where the local government for decades after the war used a fascist-era building with a massive bas-relief of Mussolini. It includes the nice fascist-y slogan (in Italian): “Believe, Obey, Combat.” In 2011, the national government ordered the town to do something about this. There were those who wanted to destroy the monument, but others who saw value in preserving the historic work. So, as a compromise, they now superimpose a quote on the monument—an LED-illuminated inscription by a German Jewish philosopher: “Nobody has the right to obey.”^[5]

5 Soviets in Bulgaria

The Soviets, like most totalitarian regimes, liked to erect statues of themselves all over the place. In Sofia, Bulgaria, for example, they put up a statue of themselves liberating Bulgaria from Nazi occupation (or was it of themselves occupying Bulgaria?!) After decades of occupation, Bulgaria threw off their Soviet overlords and joined the European Union and NATO.

You might think maintaining an old Soviet era monument in your capital would be out of the question. But they actually have left it stand. And it’s proving to be a bit of a problem since people keep vandalizing the statue, to the dismay of Russia. But this isn’t just random vandalizing, its people adding their own message. A message all the more powerful as a contrast to the underlying implicit message in the original—of Soviet domination.

The statue has been painted pink, covered in the colors of the Bulgarian flag, and perhaps most famously, the Soviet soldiers were painted as Western icons – Ronald McDonald, Santa, superheroes like Superman and Robin (Batman was apparently busy off fighting crime elsewhere).^[6]

4 Memorials in the U.S. to our World War Enemies

In 1935, Germany erected a POW memorial at the Chattanooga National Cemetery to honor German Soldiers who died in American POW camps during World War I. There are 78 German POWs buried there, including 22 German sailors who died in Hot Springs, NC, and dozens of German POWs who died in Georgia. Their remains were reburied in secret and the local papers were only told about it the next day.

There’s also a German POW monument in Utah. The German War Memorial to the Victims of War was erected in memory of the German’s who died while interred at Fort Douglas during WWI. Dedicated on Memorial Day, May 30, 1933, it includes the names of 21 German POWs who died 1917-1918. The memorial is now a monument for POWs of WWII as well – since 20 German, 12 Italian, and 1 Japanese WWII POWs were added to those buried there.^[7]

3 Italian Fascist Monument in Chicago

In Chicago stands an ancient roman column, a monument gifted to Chicago by Mussolini to honor his air commander, Italo Balbo. The gift was made in 1933, to honor a flight of 25 seaplanes that flew from Italy to Chicago (with some stops along the way). The column stands on a pedestal with words exalting fascism.

It not only remained during WWII, but stills stands today. In all the recent anti-monument fervor it was almost taken down, but then support from the local Italian community saved the monument. Some have argued that the one being honored, Italo Balbo, while yes he was a fascist, was also anti-Nazi and was against the racial laws. And, the feat the monument honors, the 1933 flight from Italy to Chicago, was still an accomplishment worth honoring.^[8]

2 Vichy France Leader Honored in NYC

What kind of enemy do people hate the most? How about someone who turns on their own country during a war? That’s what Henri Philippe Petain did. After becoming a war hero in WWI, he was honored in NYC with a ticker tape parade. During WWII, however, the hero turned traitor and collaborated with the Nazi’s, helping them to round up tens of thousands of French Jewish people for extermination.

In 2004, New York City decided to install plaques to immortalize everyone who had been honored with ticker tape parades. Since Petain had been so honored, he got a plaque. In light of all the monument destruction going on in the U.S., the Petain plaque was reviewed by a commission for possible removal. The commission found that it was clear some ticker tape parades were for people we would no longer call heroes, especially by modern standards. But “removal of the vestiges of past decisions risks leading to cultural amnesia.”^[9]

1 Communist Leader Vladimir Lenin In Seattle

For decades the United States was involved in a tense scary Cold War of brinkmanship with communist USSR, with both sides building up their militaries, including thousands of nuclear weapons, and proxy wars fought around the world.

But in a Seattle neighborhood stands a 16-foot tall bronze sculpture of one of the great icons of Communist Russia—Vladimir Lenin. The statue was rescued by an American veteran who mortgaged his house to save it from a Russian statue graveyard.

Like the Soviet statue in Bulgaria, people have had fun with the Lenin statue, decorating it in various ways. Someone painted his hands red, once he was given a tutu, and another time he was covered in Christmas lights.

Fremont’s website notes, “If art is supposed to make us feel, not just feel good, then this sculpture is a successful work of art. The challenge is to understand that this piece means different things to different people and to learn to listen to each other and respect different opinions.” Yes – that seems to sum this all up nicely.^[10]

About The Author: I’ve written a bit for Cracked.com, and have a little writing blog at jackrloun.wixsite.com/scritchandscrawl.

There are several ways to discard a body once death occurs. None of them are pleasant to contemplate, and some are downright disturbing. Before the 20th century, if a body only appeared to be dead, but the “deceased” was, in fact, still alive, premature burial was a possibility—a horrific fate, indeed.

However, even when death is indisputable, the thought of burying a loved one’s body in the earth or at sea, of reducing the corpse to ashes inside a crematorium, or of the cadaver’s lying unclaimed in an unmarked grave or in a remote area of the wilderness represents a horrible prospect.

There is another possibility, equally appalling, although unlikely: after death, a persons’ corpse, embalmed or mummified, might be put on public display, as an exhibit visitors would pay to see. For we who yet live, this list of 10 creepy corpses that were on public display at one time or another suggests just how ghastly and gruesome such a posthumous fate would be.

Related: 10 Ghoulish Deeds Done To The Resting Dead

10 Luang Pho Daeng

Born in 1894 on Thailand’s Koh Samui Island, Luang Pho Daeng, a Buddhist monk, gave up the ghost in 1973 while meditating. His mummified body, still in the attitude he had adopted at the time of his death, is now on display in a golden, glass-sided case in the Wat Khunaram temple.

According to an article concerning him, Luang Pho Daeng was originally ordained as a monk when he was a young man. However, he left the clergy to marry, fathering six children. When they reached adulthood, he devoted the rest of his life to Buddhism and was again ordained. Traveling to Bangkok, he learned more about his faith. On the island of Koh Samui, off Thailand’s east coast, he began meditating in a cave in Tham Yai (present-day Tamarind Springs) before returning to his family home behind the Wat Khunaram temple.

As he approached the age of 80, Luang Pho Daeng, having had a premonition that his death was nigh, assembled his students, making his last wishes known to them. If his body began to decompose, it was to be cremated with his ashes scattered at the famous “Saam Jaeg” or three-forked intersection in Hua Thanon. However, if his body did not decompose, it should be put on display in an upright coffin as an inspiration to “future generations to follow Buddhist teachings and be saved from suffering.”

Although his corpse lost its eyes when they moved back into his head, his remains, otherwise, are in excellent condition, and sunglasses, provided by the temple’s monks, prevent his appearance from looking too ghastly.^[1]

Another article on the monk points out that gecko eggs sometimes hatch inside his body, and some of the eggs “have been found in his eye sockets, [in his] mouth and beneath his skin during radiography scans,” heightening the exhibit’s creepy effect.

9 Speedy Atkins

After his demise, Charles Henry “Speedy” Atkins (1875–1928) was headed for a pauper’s grave. Instead, his mummified corpse was stored in a funeral home’s closet. Occasionally, locals or tourists were allowed a free look at what was left of him.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Atkins proved a popular attraction. When it came time, 66 years after his death, to bury his remains, 200 folks took pictures next to the open casket as they gathered to pay him “a rousing farewell,” along with their respects, during a funeral service at the Washington Street Baptist Church in Paducah, Kentucky. The embalmer’s widow, Velma Hamock, said, “I never saw a dead man bring so much happiness to people.”

The secret of Atkins’s longevity as a corpse was the special embalming fluid that undertaker A. Z. Hamock used. Its chemicals and ingredients enabled Hamock to preserve like the way “Egyptians preserved mummies.” Unfortunately, Hamock took the secret of his preservative with him to his own grave.

When Atkins drowned while fishing, there was no one to claim the body—no family nor friends. Hamock sought permission from the local coroner to experiment on Atkins’s remains and use his new embalming fluid. The condition of Speedy’s remains proved the merits of the preservative; over six-and-a-half decades after his death, Mrs. Hamock marveled that Speedy was “not stinking” and had not “lost all his features.” He also had the reverence and regard of his hometown if the attendance at his much-delayed funeral is an indication.^[2]

8 Elmer McCurdy

Train robber Elmer McCurdy (1880–1911) “swore he’d never be taken alive,” The Evening Independent newspaper advised its readers. He wasn’t. Elmer McCurdy was shot to death by an Oklahoma sheriff’s posse. Afterward, he started a new career as a “fun house dummy.”

McCurdy’s mummified corpse spent its time in a museum’s warehouse when it wasn’t painted to glow in the dark and hung from the gallows of an amusement park’s funhouse. The newspaper article reports that McCurdy’s corpse also appeared as a prop in an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man television series. However, no one knew as much until one of the mummy dummy’s arms “fell off” and a technician, attempting to glue the detached limb back in place, saw human bone where none should have been.

After the coroner also located a bullet in McCurdy’s stomach, the body’s identity was found by tracing the sale and purchase of the “prop” by various carnivals and exhibitions. First, the sheriff of the posse who shot him sold McCurdy’s corpse to the owner of a carnival, where it was mummified. After that, the outlaw’s cadaver was purchased by several others before it was turned over to carnival owner Louis Sonney as security for a loan that the borrower failed to repay.

McCurdy then became a star in Sonney’s traveling freak show until the end of World War II, when such attractions lost their appeal. Sold to the Hollywood Wax Museum, the mummy was later purchased by the Nu-Pike Amusement Park, which painted and hung it from its exhibit’s gallows.

The corpse’s final appearance was at its long-delayed funeral. His final resting place is in the Summit View Cemetery in Guthrie, Oklahoma, where “a laconic tombstone mentions the year of his death and burial, without explaining why the dates are 66 years apart.” ^[3]

7 Hazel Farris

Today, her hair is mostly gone. Her eyes are missing. Most of her nose has disappeared. She has lost many of her teeth. Not much flesh remains on her bones. The ring finger on her right hand is gone as well. What’s left of Hazel Farris does not have much left on its bones.

Farris (c. 1880–1906) shot five men, killing them all, before killing herself to avoid being captured. Her husband was the first to die when, drinking, he took umbrage at her intention to buy a new hat. The couple eventually came to blows. Naturally, Farris shot him. Twice.

When neighbors, hearing the gunfire, notified the police, three lawmen stormed the house. They, too, became fatalities, thanks to Farris’s “outrage, steel nerve, and deadly aim.” Neighbors spied a passing deputy sheriff and apprised him of the situation. He entered Farris’s home, and, during a struggle with the murderous housewife, he stumbled over one of the bodies. His gun went off, and the bullet shot off the ring finger of his opponent’s right hand. The mishap didn’t seem to faze Farris. Freeing herself from the lawman, she shot him, adding the fifth kill to her tally, before escaping out the back door.

In Bessemer, Alabama, the 25-year-old fugitive found herself smitten by a man. She trusted him with her story, at which point he informed the local constabulary, most likely for a reward. Farris poisoned herself to avoid being taken into custody.

After her body dehydrated at a combination furniture store/ funeral home, the local populace, roused by talk about “Hazel the Mummy,” paid a dime each to view her desiccated corpse. Her remains were subsequently bought by carnival showman Orlando C. Brooks and shown to the public “for the benefit of science”—and a hefty fee. A poster advertising the exhibition assured the public that “‘Hazel’ affords you a study worth while,” guaranteeing her to be a genuine mummy and offering to forfeit $500 to anyone, doctors included, who could prove otherwise.^[4]

6 Samuel Perry Dinsmoor

Smack-dab in the American heartland, The Garden of Eden, in Lucas, Kansas, boasts a collection of 150 sculptures, all made of concrete, which express the political and religious views of a retired schoolteacher and American Civil War veteran, sculptor Samuel Perry Dinsmoor (1843–1932).

An eccentric, Dinsmoor was a populist who, after retiring, began the art project that would carry him through the remaining 25 years of his life. First, though, he set his hand to building his limestone domicile, which resembles a log cabin and includes such flourishes as concrete porch spindles formed inside bottles that he broke after the material hardened. The amateur architect, a natural-born showman, described the cabin as “the most unique home for living or dead on Earth.”

According to the Kansas Historical Society, he next started work on his garden of sculptures over the next quarter-century using 113 tons of concrete to sculpt his take on “the Bible and modern civilization as interpreted through his populist views.”

The Garden of Eden also includes a concrete mausoleum that now contains his own remains and those of his wife. After he died, his body was mummified and laid to rest inside the concrete burial chamber, so visitors can glimpse his remains through the glass portion of the mausoleum’s concrete lid. His wife’s body reposes, unseen, in the sealed portion of the crypt below him.^[5]

5 The West Virginia Philippi Mummies

Another strange location to find mummified remains: a train station in Philippi, West Virginia. This quaint building also houses the Barbour County Historical Museum, which displays items from as far back as 1635. The wide variety of guns, knives, and cannons mingle with a historic switchboard, newspapers, ceramics, and flags. But in a small room at the back of the museum—which might have been a bathroom at one point—lies the remains of two women. And for one dollar, you can take a peek at them!

Graham Hamrick, a farmer, amateur scientist, and shopkeeper, got caught up in the late nineteenth-century Egyptomania craze and became obsessed with learning their mummification technique (Hm, sounds familiar). After experimenting with fruits and meats, as well as small animals, he wanted to try his method on a human.

He purchased two corpses from the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, also known as the West Virginia Hospital for the Insane. Unfortunately, this was not an uncommon practice at that time as unscrupulous mental health hospitals disposed of some patients, especially those with no family, in corrupt and horrendous ways. It was also reported that he secured the remains of an infant and a hand. Like Hamock above, his process is unknown as Hamrick took the formula to the grave—a normal, six-feet-under grave.

These mummies briefly toured with circus great P.T. Barnum before returning to WV. They were then displayed throughout the state, being stored at various times in a barn and “under a local man’s bed for a while.” In 1985, Philippi experienced a flood, which damaged the mummies; however, after some time “drying in the sun,” they finally made their way to their current home in the museum. The infant was too damaged after the flood, and the hand was lost at some point.^[6]

4 Sir Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz

The mummified remains of Sir Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz (1651–1702) put the town of Kampehl, Germany, population 130, on the map. The knight’s body is also a tourist draw. It seems that the corpse has shown no signs of decay during the nearly 320 years following his demise.

In 1991, though, not everyone in the village was happy to have the cadaver on hand. Mayor Edmund Bublitz, for one, opposed the presence of the preserved body, despite its ability to attract as many as 150,000 visitors each year who are eager to gawk at the town’s star attraction.

“During the Communist era,” a Los Angeles Times story explains, the decedent’s occupation of its glass-topped crypt was not a problem. The state managed the tourist attraction, charging a viewing fee and paying the local Lutheran church where the tomb is located for its use. The church’s pastor at the time, Peter Freimark, defended the attraction but admitted that its popularity was due to the fascination of people for its “macabre, obscene, cruel, grisly and…erotic” aspects, explaining that such lurid qualities were near and dear to the German heart.

The “erotic” feature of the knight’s presence apparently stems from his lifetime interest in the pursuit of the fair sex, with members of whom he fathered 30 illegitimate children in addition to his 11 legitimate heirs, the Times article suggests, as well as Sir Christian’s claim that he possessed the right to “deflower all brides in his fiefdom.” When a groom’s beloved rebuffed the knight, her fiancé was found with a split skull soon after, and Sir Christian was charged with the murder. The accused maintained his innocence, however, as he supposedly declared, “If I am the murderer, may it be God’s will that my body never decay.”

The state’s and the church’s battle over Sir Christian continued to wage until 1990, when East Germany was reunified with West Germany. However, the conflict between the church’s pastor and the town’s mayor did not end with Germany’s reunification. The mayor, determined to display Sir Christian’s remains on city property, had arranged for six out-of-work men to remove the knight’s body from the church’s crypt and transport it to the fire station. Before they began their labors, however, the mayor tried “to push through a proposal to relocate the mummy” but failed. Afterward, he told the laborers to stand down: the body-snatching had been called off.

Undisturbed in his glass-covered crypt, Christian Friedrich von Kahlbutz continues to draw paying customers. At present, the score in the conflict between church and state seems to be, Church, 2; State, 0.^[7]

3 Charles Eugene de Croy

St. Nicholas’s Church in Tallinn, Estonia, is also the home of a mummified corpse, Charles Eugene de Croy (1651–1702). The Rough Guide to the Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania tells its readers that the duke’s body occupies a “side chapel near the main entrance.”

In life, his claim to fame was that he led the Russian army at Narva in 1701; during his command, he opted to fight rather than flee, as his soldiers did. His act of courage resulted in his becoming a prisoner of Sweden’s King Charles XII. After the duke’s death the following year, no one would spring for the cost of a proper burial, so he was propped up in the chapel instead. Not long after, “protected from decay by dry weather,” his body became an attraction, until 1897, at any rate, when “authorities finally saw fit to stick it in the ground.”^[8]

The ghastly appearance of the body is apparent in a visitor’s description included in an 1883 book. Although coiffed and well-attired, the corpse is, nevertheless, frightful. He is described as having a startling-looking face with a grey complexion. With an apparently injured nose and thin lips, its body a yellowish-brown.

2 Christian Jacobsen Drakenberg

Christian Jacobsen Drakenberg (1626–1772) was a seafaring man, right up to the moment of his capture, at age 68, by Algerine pirates, during a 1694 voyage to Spain. After escaping his captors, he made his way back to Denmark, where he became a favorite at parties thrown by the aristocracy—it appears Drakenberg was a bit of a storyteller, the more outrageous, the better.

However, what is most extraordinary about him is that he is alleged to have lived to the ripe old age of 145, making the observation in the 1856 English Cyclopaedia: A New Dictionary of Universal Knowledge that Drakenberg’s lifespan represents “one of the most extraordinary instances of longevity on record,” an astounding understatement.

After his death, he was mummified and displayed at the cathedral at Aarhus. For decades, it was customary to slyly open the casket and pluck a hair from the sailor’s chin. In 1835, Drakenberg was in excellent condition, “a kind of natural mummy.” But at the command of the queen, he was given a proper burial in 1840 under the cathedral floor.^[9]

1 Xin Zhui

Also known as Marquise Dai, Xin Zhui (c. 217 BC–168 BC) was wed to the Marquis Dai of the Western Han Dynasty. As Joseph William Lewis, Jr., M.D., points out in Did They Rest in Peace?: Misadventures of Corpses That Probably Did Not, her body was unearthed in December 1971, during the excavation of an air raid shelter near an army hospital in Hunan Province.

According to Lewis, her wooden burial chamber, which itself had been buried beneath “a layer of thick white clay and 11,000 pounds of charcoal to thwart water intrusion into the tomb,” also contained the remains of her husband, a child, and more than 3,000 cultural artifacts.

The method of her entombment and burial maintained a constant temperature and humidity, creating a “deficit [of] oxygen and antisepsis,” Lewis observes. As a result, her body remained very well-preserved, while those of her companions, suffering exposure to moisture, were subject to the natural effects of decay.

Due to her body’s condition, its skin was supple, the joints flexible, and the internal organs had “escaped decay,” Lewis says, and her superior preservation allowed for her blood to be typed. They were also able to determine a likely cause of death. She suffered from heart disease, probably dying of a heart attack at about age 50, which was brought on by her fondness for “too much rich food and too little exercise.”

A secret compound, injected into her body’s circulatory system, ensured that the preservation of her corpse would continue, and her body was put on display at the Hunan Municipal Museum in Changssha.^[10]

A new annual tradition will start at the end of 2018. On New Year’s Day 2019, hundreds of thousands of movies, books, paintings, drawings, and musical scores will be stripped of their copyright and enter the public domain. For decades, American copyright laws have kept Intellectual Property (IP) from 1923 on under copyrighted, but starting in 2019 all works created in 1923 will convert from copyright protected to copyright free. The next year, on January 1, 2020, the tradition will continue with IP from 1924, and so on year after year. Online companies are taking notice too, with Google Books setting up many of its millions of scanned books, that were published in 1923, to automatically allow full-text free online viewing.

When materials are copyright free and enter the public domain that means you, or anyone, can do whatever they want with the material. For example, you can legally make copies of movies that are in the public domain and give them away, sell them, remix them, add porn scenes and sell them (but don’t do that, it’d be super weird), or anything else you want, with no restrictions. Here are 10 classic works that are about to enter the public domain in just a few months…

10. Harold Lloyd’s Safety Last!

The 1923 movie Safety Last! contains one of the most iconic scenes in silent film history, where actor Harold Lloyd desperately clings to the hands of a large clock on the side of a skyscraper. Roger Ebert called it the most famous scene in a silent comedy. Back then, film safety was pretty much non-existent and a few years earlier, in 1919, Lloyd had actually lost a thumb and forefinger doing promotional work for another film, Haunted Spooks.

His performance in Safety Last! and the movie’s box office numbers cemented his place as an A-List leading man. In honor of its lasting influence and cultural importance, the Library of Congress added Safety Last! to its National Film Registry in 1994. On January 1, 2019, it will be stripped of its copyrighted status and enter the public domain, where you can do anything you want with the film.

9. Hélice by Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay and his wife Sonia Delaunay were some of the founders of the Orphism art movement, an offshoot of Cubism (of Pablo Picasso fame). Respected art critic Guillaume Apollinaire thought that art should be like music and that Orphism, with its colors and shapes, reflected that. At 38-years-old, in 1923, Robert Delaunay painted an Orphism masterpiece when he created “Hélice.” Today the original canvas is displayed in the German Wilhelm-Hack-Museum. And on January 1, 2019, it’ll be public domain so you can print it and use it however you want.

8. “The Charleston” jazz song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ7SNTSq-9o

“The Charleston” is the jazz song that, as you can probably guess, helped spark the Charleston dance craze. The lyrics were written by Cecil Mack and the musical score was done by Jimmy Johnson. When the song was released in 1923, conservative groups were outraged, with Rev. EW Walters, vicar of St Aidan’s, Bristol saying “any lover of the beautiful will die rather than be associated with the Charleston … It is neurotic! It is rotten! It stinks! Phew, open the windows.”

Popular culture did not listen to Rev. Walters, and the song and the dance are legendary in America and around the world. Whenever the roaring twenties are brought up in movies or TV you can count on hearing “The Charleston.”

7. The Ten Commandments

Considered one of the founding fathers of American cinema, Cecil B. DeMille made over 70 films before dying of heart failure in 1959. His films span every genre and over his career he created both silent movies and talkies (or movies with a soundtrack). He started acting in and producing plays, but entered into the world of movies with his first film, The Squaw Man, in 1914. It was the first feature-length motion picture filmed in Hollywood. A 17-minute short film, In Old California, was technically the first motion picture shot in Hollywood. The Squaw Man was a huge success and cemented Hollywood as the center of movie production.

Nine years later, in May 1923, DeMille started production on an epic biblical story, The Ten Commandments (no, not the Charlton Heston version). The movie stunned Hollywood insiders when DeMille became the first producer to spend over $1,000,000 on a film. He claims the backers actually fired him due to the cost overruns but were forced to hire him back, as he was the only man who could finish the production. When the movie was released in 1923 it smashed box office records and was Paramount’s highest grossing film for 25 years.

The period drama featured huge, life-size sets of Ancient Egypt. After filming, the sets were abandoned to the elements and buried under the shifting sands of California’s Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes, the largest remaining dune system south of San Francisco. In 2012 archaeologists uncovered the forgotten Egyptian “ruins” created for the film and unearthed several monuments, including one of the 12-foot tall, 5-ton Sphinxes that were produced for the movie.

6. Several Works of Kandinsky

Russian painter and art theorist Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky is considered one of the founders of abstract art and for decades was considered to have created the first purely abstract painting. His 1923 tension series paintings including Zarte Spannung (Delicate Tension) were painted while he worked at the Bauhaus, Berlin a German art school. After they were finished the paintings were in a museum until 1937, when it was shut down under Hitler’s crackdown on art.

The paintings and their owner, Baroness Hilla Rebay, a daughter of a Prussian General, then moved to America where she became one of the founding members of New York’s Guggenheim art museum. After the Nazis closed Berlin’s Bauhaus art school in 1933, Kandinsky moved to France, where he painted until he died from complications of cerebrovascular disease in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France, on December 13, 1944.

5. Chaplin’s The Pilgrim

Charlie Chaplin had been doing films since 1914 and almost from the beginning played his iconic character, the Tramp. His movies attracted huge numbers and gave him fame and fortune. In 1919 he co-founded United Artists as a means to give him control over film production.

The Pilgrim was released on February 26, 1923. The 46-minute movie was his second shortest feature. Jeffrey Vance, in his 2003 book Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema, says that “The Pilgrim is one of Chaplin’s richest—and most neglected—films.” In 1959 Chaplin released The Pilgrim (1923) along with A Dog’s Life (1918), and Shoulder Arms (1918) as a trilogy called The Chaplin Revue in hopes of being able to reboot the Tramp character.

4. Poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”

Robert Frost is an iconic American poet who tallied four Pulitzer Prizes for his work (New Hampshire in 1924; Collected Poems in 1931; A Further Range in 1937; and A Witness Tree in 1943). His work inspires many and these poems are a trusted foundation for eulogy speeches.

His piece “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” is no exception and has been used to honor the dead, including during the funeral for assassinated President John F. Kennedy. Current Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also honored his father, former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, when he used an altered line of the poem during his father’s funeral.

Studied by students around the world, Frost’s poetry is carefully monitored by the Frost estate and when his prose is used without permission, cease and desist lawsuits are quick to fly. Famous composer Eric Whitacre found this out the hard way when he completed a commissioned piece for the funeral of the parents of a woman named Julia Armstrong. Listeners at the funeral were enamored with the piece and soon Whitacre was swamped by requests from conductors trying to get the musical score. Around the same time, Frost’s estate caught wind of the score and its use of the poem and, in a flurry of lawsuits, shut it down.

This all ends when “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” enters the public domain. It was actually set to enter the public domain in 1998, 75 years after first publication but on October 27, 1998, Congress passed the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act, which extended the copyright term to 95 years which makes the poem enter the public domain on January 1, 2019.

3. Still Life With Cat

German painter Georg Schrimpf is seen as the main founder of the art trend Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). Schrimpf also, after World War I, participated in the brief existence of the Bavarian Soviet Republic before it was crushed by the remnants of the Imperial German Army. As Hitler tightened the screws of Nazi power Schrimpf was fired from his university in 1937 and his work was banned as “Degenerate Art” because he was involved in the Bavarian Soviet and deemed a communist. On April 19, 1938, he died at age 49.

In 1923 he painted “Still Life With Cat.” Germany released a commemorative stamp of the image on January 12, 1995, but the original painting is at the Staatsgalerie Moderne Kunst Museum. 1995 was the last year that Deutsche Bundespost (German federal post office) existed and appeared on stamps, as that year it was dissolved during a government privatization push.

2. Bambi by Felix Salten

Felix Salten published Bambi: A Life in the Woods in 1923. His target audience was adults and it was first published as a serialized tale in Austria. The story was hugely popular and caught the eye of Max Schuster, co-founder of the now giant publishing company Simon & Schuster. He got the book translated, allowing the English world to follow the transformation of Bambi from a weak and powerless fawn into a mighty stag and Great Prince of the Forest.

Ohio State University professor Paul Reitter contends that Salten, a Jew that faced discrimination in Austria, wrote the story as a metaphor for the Jewish existence in Europe, arguing, “Could the deer living in a forest ever trust that human hunters would let them live in peace? That echoes a haunting question for Jews” and antisemitism in 1920s Europe.

From 1933, efforts were made to animate the story but the technical limitations of animation at the time prevented making the film, until Walt Disney was able to overcome all obstacles and in 1939 started making the now iconic cartoon, eventually spending three years on the project before releasing the movie in 1942. A close adaption of the book, Disney was able to use a loophole in copyright law to try and avoid paying Salten a dime.

1. Felix the Cat cartoons

Almost a decade before the 1928 debut of Mickey Mouse (in Steamboat Willie), animator Otto Messmer and his boss Pat Sullivan were trying to create a marketable character, toying with a cartoon black cat. After months of tweaking, two films were released: Feline Follies on November 9, 1919, and on November 16, 1919 it was Musical Mews (a film that has been lost). But the cat in these films was a prototype dubbed Master Tom. The first film with a cat named Felix was The Adventures of Felix, released on December 14, 1919. It was the first character created solely for the film industry, the first character to reach a high level of fame, and also the first character to be licensed and merchandised, bringing in huge money for Sullivan’s animation company.

One of the most popular cartoon characters, Felix the Cat has been beloved by millions for decades. His image has adorned everything from being the oldest recognized mascot in the state of Indiana to the official emblem of the United States Navy strike fighter squadron VFA-31, the second oldest Navy Fighter Attack squadron operating today. Come January 1, 2019, any Felix cartoons released in 1923 or before will be released into the public domain.

Jon Lucas covers WW1 live, 100 years ago. You can follow the action on Twitter, Tumblr or Instagram

We like to think of the non-meat eating parts of the animal kingdom as friends just waiting to happen. For some reason, the fact they don’t eat meat triggers us to think that these are super nice creatures who would never do us harm, and many times we end up giving animals reputations for kindness that they do not deserve. Animals who are herbivores may not eat meat, but that does not mean they aren’t dangerous to humans — and some of the cutest animals have disgusting secrets that may make them far less endearing to you as you once thought. 

10. Monkeys Have Overrun Delhi, India And Killed The Deputy Mayor

What We Expect: 

Monkeys are known to be mostly harmless pranksters, as far as the majority of people are concerned. They are silly and might fling poo, but for the most part they don’t really cause that much trouble. Plus, they’re fun to watch at the zoo as they get up to all kinds of hijinks. 

The Disturbing Reality: 

Monkeys can gang up on people in areas where the populations get too big and too close to humans, and this was no more apparent than in Delhi, India where monkeys are invasive and cause serious problems for the locals. In Delhi the monkeys attack people and steal their food, and in 2007 they attacked the deputy mayor and killed him by knocking him off his own balcony. 

9. Dolphins Are Believed To Be Friendly But They Are The Bullies Of The Sea

What We Expect:

Dolphins are known for being fun and playful, and there are many alleged accounts of them helping people who are lost at sea. People love to go to dolphin shows, and there are cutesy movies about them. Most people think dolphins are friendly sea buddies who love you and just want to be your friend. 

The Disturbing Reality: 

Dolphins are basically the bullies of the sea. Dolphins have been known to attack porpoises and kill them for no reason, and have committed infanticide among even their own species. To make matters worse, they have been known to capture dolphin females and hold them in a group while they have gang sex with her against her will. There was also a recent incident where a dolphin known as Nick was coming towards children in a harbor while being sexually aggressive, and the children were warned to get out of the water to avoid him. Now, while there are little — if any — records of dolphins killing people, it is a fairly common occurrence for them to bite trainers and kids while in captivity. 

8. Armadillos Are Becoming Trendy But They Can Carry Hansen’s Disease

What We Expect: 

Armadillos can be found in parts of the southern United States and are starting to become a trendy exotic pet. They are not aggressive, they are cute and playful, and they don’t shed since they don’t have fur. Some people buy them from exotic pet dealers, and the laws vary greatly from state to state as to whether you are legally allowed to own one or not. 

The Disturbing Reality:

Armadillos can carry Hansen’s Disease, which is also known as leprosy. You know, that disease from the bible that got people sequestered from the general population. Nowadays there are cures, but it can still cause nerve damage and painful lesions. While it is not super common among American armadillos, it is not a risk worth taking. It should also be noted that Amazonian armadillos are known to be much bigger carriers, at a rate of almost 50 percent. 

7. Koalas Are Cute But They Are Riddled With Chlamydia

What We Expect:

Koalas are basically living teddy bears, even if they aren’t really bears. They look like a cute stuffed animal , they only eat leaves, they are completely and utterly harmless, and it seems like they would make a great pet… at least until you get a bit further into the koala’s biggest problem. 

The Disturbing Reality:

Koalas are actually mostly useless, as they spend almost all their time sleeping, but on top of that, they are actually kind of gross. Koalas are riddled with chlamydia, an STD that can cause infertility and ectopic pregnancies in women. Nearly 100 percent of koalas have chlamydia, and it is leading to a decline in their population. 

6. The Christmas Song Is Fun But Hippos Are Incredibly Dangerous 

What We Expect: 

We have all heard the cutesy Christmas song about a girl who wants her very own hippo hero for Christmas, and it is ear-wormy and mostly fun to listen to. It makes us think hippos are fun, loveable vegetarian animals who wouldn’t hurt a fly and would make a great pet. 

The Disturbing Reality: 

The hippopotamus is the most dangerous animal in Africa and one of the most dangerous in the world, despite being a herbivore.They attack people and swamp their boats, and are known for being incredibly territorial, biting people apart with their huge jaws with little to no provocation. There are theories that King Tut was killed by a hippo while out hunting, and even Steve Irwin, the famous animal specialist, would not mess with hippos when he came near them. 

They can also quickly become an invasive species, as they are becoming in Colombia, where Pablo Escobar’s hippos got loose. Their government is now trying desperately to cull them and get the situation under control before ecological disaster occurs. 

5. Deer Cause More Deaths Than Bears, Alligators, Dogs, And Sharks Combined 

What We Expect: 

Deer are an animal most of us think as super peaceful and kind. We generally tend to like seeing them show up in our yard and eat some fruit or leaves. Some people even try to approach them. Many people have grown up seeing Bambi, making the love for deer even greater, and a lot of people think it is wrong to hunt them after watching the famous animated film. . 

The Disturbing Reality: 

Deer kill more people every year than bears, alligators, dogs, and sharks combined — between 120 and 200. While most of these deaths are due to vehicular accidents, that does not mean that deer won’t attack you. While statistics can be hard to come by, as many attacks go unreported, experts have been warning people more in recent years to keep their distance from deer and remember that these are dangerous wild animals. A deer is basically a very large wild horse, and the males have antlers that can gore you. They should not be approached at all as they are still very wild and territorial creatures that can kill you very quickly. 

4. Elephants Are Becoming Increasingly Violent to Counter Poachers 

What We Expect: 

Elephants are known for being so tame that even as big as they are, they used to be a regular presence at the circus, before the abusive practice ended. They are known for being fun and playful and even sometimes thinking that humans are cute under the right conditions. Most people just love them, and of course we have every reason to hate the poaching of elephants, as they are intelligent creatures. 

The Disturbing Reality:

That being said, you should still probably keep your distance from  elephants, especially a truly wild one, if you don’t know what you are doing. Elephants are incredibly large animals that could accidentally kill you very easily, and have become increasingly violent in recent years in order to counter poachers. In response, they’ve become more and more territorial against unknown humans, when before they were indeed more friendly. Of course, even then, they have not always been friendly beasts. In ancient days they used to be used as war animals, and even sometimes in executions. 

3. Camels Can Get Incredibly Violent and Are invasive In Australia 

What We Expect: 

While camels may not necessarily be seen as cute or pretty, most people think of them as mostly harmless and maybe kind of funny. They are seen as the horses of the desert and are known for their ability to carry people long distances while needing little water. 

The Disturbing Reality:

Camels are actually extremely dangerous, and are an invasive species in Australia, where they are causing huge problems for the environment. They’re so dangerous to approach that when they are culling them, they snipe them by helicopter. They attack people if they get too close and can be downright vicious. 

Even tame camels can be very deadly. In one case a camel bit off its owner’s head for leaving it in the sun too long. In another case, a camel smothered its owner to death and it took 25 villagers six hours to haul the camel off of the dead body. After some investigation, they believe the camel was angry that it did not get its daily Coca-Cola. 

2. German Shepherds Have A Powerful Bite Force And Are One Of The Most Dangerous Dogs 

What We Expect: 

German Shepherds are known for being one of the gentler and kinder of the bigger dog breeds, and they do make good pets overall in most people’s eyes. Many people try to get them as a starter pet, because they are a popular choice for police dogs or guide dogs due to their trainability. 

The Disturbing Reality: 

Now, we want to be clear first that German Shepherds are not known for being particularly aggressive, and neither are pitbulls, for that matter, unless they are trained for that purpose. However, German Shepherds have an incredibly strong bite force for a dog their size, kill a few people every year, and come in third or fourth yearly in that category, only being beaten out by dogs who are usually raised by dog abusers for combat.

This does not mean a German Shepherd cannot make a great pet, but larger dogs like that, with powerful jaws, are best left for dog owners with a bit more experience who also have the space for a large dog to get its energy out. German Shepherds may be very trainable dogs, but they are also large and powerful animals and must be treated with respect and skillful handling.   

1. The Cane Toad Can Kill Your Pets And Is Invasive In Florida

What We Expect: 

A lot of people may consider toads to be a bit gross, but most consider them mostly harmless even if a bit icky, and plenty of kids love to play with them. Many even try to take them home, and will mess around with them thinking it really isn’t a big deal. Kids, of course, will be kids, and since toads are not scary like snakes, children who like stuff that isn’t just furry are bound to pick them up, and most parents aren’t that worried about it. 

The Disturbing Reality: 

Those parents probably would do well to be concerned about it, because in general toads can carry salmonella, and all types of other diseases. But even worse, in Florida, the Cane Toad has become an invasive species similar to the python and could easily spread to other parts of the USA. It is particularly problematic because its poison can easily kill pets and make your kids very sick. Overall, it is best if you just keep your kids and pets far away from toads, as you never know what they might be carrying.