The thought of having a stranger secretly living in your home sounds like the stuff of nightmares and horror movies. Some people have found unwelcome guests living in their homes, though. Most of these interlopers live in attics, although they will sometimes occupy the basements or closets or even live under the house.

Some lived in their victim’s homes for more than a year before they were caught. Others escaped before they could be identified. All of the following stories are good reason to double-check that your doors and windows are locked.

10 Tatsuko Horikawa

In 2008, an unnamed 57-year-old Japanese man realized he had been sharing his home with a secret tenant. Prior to the discovery, he had noticed that someone was stealing food from his fridge. He suspected it was a burglar and installed security cameras that sent live footage of his home to his phone.

One fateful day, he received a video of a strange woman opening his fridge. He called the police, who went to his home, hoping to catch the burglar. The police were surprised when they found the doors and windows locked and intact with no sign of break-in. Nevertheless, they entered the home, thinking the burglar was still inside.

Police found no trace of the burglar until they checked the shelf just above the closet. Inside, they found 58-year-old Tatsuko Horikawa. Investigations revealed Horikawa had secretly lived in several other houses in the area before settling in the man’s home. She had lived there for a year before she was caught.^[1]

9 Unnamed Man

In 2012, Tracy thought she and her five children were the only occupants of her South Carolina home, until she discovered there was one other person: an ex she broke up with 12 years earlier. Tracy heard some strange noises in her attic the day before discovering her ex. She and two of her sons checked the attic but found nothing.

The strange noises continued throughout the night. Plaster and nails from the ceiling also fell on her bed and floor. Tracy called a nephew to check the attic the next day. The nephew found nothing at first until he went deeper into the attic, where he found her ex sleeping. The ex hurriedly left the house smiling. Tracy later learned that he could see her bedroom through an air vent.^[2]

Tracy could not figure out how her ex got into her home or how long he had been there. However, he had helped her put new doors in her home a year earlier and had just completed a 90-day sentence for stealing her vehicle. The ex left his stuff in the attic, including his photos, toys, cassettes, and several cups of feces and urine.

8 Anthony Jones

In 2017, a woman got the shock of her life when she found a man living in the attic of her rented apartment in Arlington, Virginia. The woman was home alone that night when she heard some footsteps in the attic. She checked with the landlord, who denied walking in the attic that night. The landlord called the police, who visited the home.

Police were searching the attic when they ordered anyone inside to come out. A man, identified as 60-year-old Anthony Jones, came out and surrendered himself to the police. Inside the attic, they found his clothes and bedding. While police could not determine how long Jones had been in the house, they suspected he had entered through an unlocked door.^[3]

7 Unidentified Person

Amber Dawn heard footsteps in her attic the night she moved into her new apartment in Enumclaw, Washington, in 1997. She checked the trap door that led to the attic. While it looked suspicious—as if it had been pulled in by someone inside—she never thought someone could actually be in there. She told the landlady about the footsteps, but the landlady dismissed it as a squirrel.

Dawn would notice strange events in her home over the next few months. Things mysteriously went missing, and her items were being moved. At one point, her nine-week-old puppy ended up inside her bathroom sink during a flood, even though it couldn’t climb in by itself. Dawn thought her brother, who also had a key to her apartment, was responsible. She only found out the truth six months after moving in.

One night, she was soaking in the bathtub when she looked up at the trap door that led to her attic. It was open. She hurriedly grabbed a hammer and her dog before leaving the house. Outside, she called her her sister-in-law, who came and picked her up. Police later searched Dawn’s apartment and found no one. However, they found food, a book, and a sleeping bag inside the attic.^[4]

6 Unidentified Woman

In 2016, Davis Wahlman heard some strange noises in the attic of his Seattle home. He went upstairs to check and found that the light in one of the rooms was on, which was weird because he had switched it off. He tried entering the room, but the door was locked from inside. He knocked, and a woman answered from inside, asking if it was Jimmy.

Wahlman told her he was not Jimmy and asked why she was in his house before calling the police. The woman later opened the door. She never answered Wahlman’s questions and continued ranting about how she had been living in the house for three days and how someone called Jimmy had told her she could stay. However, she left before police arrived.

Wahlman checked his attic and saw she still had her stuff there. The night before finding the woman in his home, he had noticed some unusual events. Someone had turned on some lights he had turned off, removed the flyscreen from his bathroom, and deployed a fire escape ladder. He changed the locks on all the doors in his home after the incident.^[5]

5 Jeremy

In 2013, some Ohio State University students discovered they were not alone in their off-campus accommodation after they found someone living in their basement. Before the discovery, the students had often found their cupboards and microwaves open and had even heard noises from the basement.

They never thought much of the events, although they often joked that the strange happenings were the handiwork of a ghost. They only found out the ghost was a secret roommate when maintenance workers forcefully opened the basement. The stranger was another student, who was only identified as Jeremy. They allowed him pick up his things before evicting him from the home.

No one knew how Jeremy got into the house or how long he had been living there. They guessed it was before they moved in, since the landlord never changed the locks of the house. Interestingly, one of the roommates had met Jeremy earlier but thought he was a visitor.^[6]

4 Jose Rafael Leyva-Caraveo And Veronica Fernandez-Beleta

For months in 2012, Troy and Dayna Donovan and their two children could not return to their Littleton, Colorado, home because it was occupied by two squatters, Jose Rafael Leyva-Caraveo and Veronica Fernandez-Beleta. The Donovans lived in the house until they left for Indiana, where Troy had found a temporary job. They locked their home, but Jose and Veronica managed to get in.

Jose and Veronica claimed they got the house through an affidavit of adverse possession and had paid $5,000. This was even though Colorado law demanded that a minimum of 18 years (or seven years in some circumstances) must have elapsed before a house could be possessed under the adverse possession law. The Donovans had only been away from their home for few months.

The Donovans were in a jam. The police refused to interfere because it was considered a civil and not a criminal case; the squatters were not caught breaking in. Jose and Veronica also got a restraining order against the Donovans, preventing them from coming near the house. The Donovans later won a court judgment that ordered Jose and Veronica to vacate the home within 48 hours.

However, it was not that easy, as Veronica had already filed for bankruptcy. Under Colorado law, a squatter cannot be immediately evicted if they declare bankruptcy. Meanwhile, the Donovans continued to live in the basement of the home of a relative in another town while hoping they would finally get the squatters out of their own house.^[7] Jose and Veronica ended up being charged with multiple felonies, so the Donovans presumably got to go home.

3 Unidentified Person

In 2013, 73-year-old grandmother Velma Kellen noticed the front part of her Yelm, Washington, home was colder than other parts of her home. She suspected the heating was not working properly and bought another furnace. But the problem persisted, so she called a repairman to check it out.

The repairman discovered the problem was not the furnace but that someone was living under her house. The person had cut her ducts to redirect the heat there. Kellen was shocked. While she never saw the person, she had noticed some unusual events in her home. She once found her gate open and often smelled something that was “worse than cigarettes.” The repairman did not find any drugs but did discover a beer can under the house.^[8]

2 Tyggra Shepherd

In what seems to be a case of fraud, a woman found some strangers living in her home in South Carolina in 2018. Katherine Lang had just returned from vacation and decided to inspect the pipes of her new home. She found a dog and cat outside, which she thought was weird. She entered the house and found two women.

One of the women, Tyggra Shepherd, had moved into the home after finding an advertisement on Facebook. She’d paid $1,150 to the fraudsters who had posed as the owners. They told her to enter the house through the back door after claiming the person who was supposed to bring the keys was detained by the police. Lang herself had never lived in the home. She had still been living in her old house, which she was trying to sell before moving into the new one.^[9]

1 Zeng

In China, a man only identified as “Wang” found an stranger called “Zeng” living inside the attic of his home in Kunshan, Jiangsu province, in 2014. Wang would never have found out about Zeng if the latter hadn’t locked the door from inside. Wang called the police, who found a hole in his kitchen ceiling that led to his attic. They found Zeng inside the attic.

Before the discovery, Wang had noticed that money and food were disappearing in his home. Police determined Zeng had stolen about 2,000 yuan in Wang’s home. He also cooked meals for himself while Wang was away. Zeng had gotten into the attic from outside the house. He confessed to alternating between Wang’s home and that of a neighbor.^[10]

Several governments around the world have hit lists of people they want dead. The lists usually contain names of people that are claimed by the governments to be terrorists or spies. As we are about to find out, this is not always so. Suspected terrorists, human right activists, and journalists have also been targeted.

Not every government will own up to having such a list. For the ones that do, they deny that these are hit lists and call them other names. Even then, they will rarely discuss the topic. Here are 10 governments that currently have hit lists or had them in the past.

10 United States

The US government has a not-so-secret hit list, the “disposition matrix,” that contains the names, locations, and preferred methods of killing people the government considers enemies of the United States.

While the existence of the list is an open secret, the names on it aren’t. At the time that Barack Obama was president, the government decided who got on the list during weekly meetings the press called “Terror Tuesday.” Obama only approved the list. The names were added by US military and intelligence officials and, sometimes, the British government.

Once names were approved, the military and the CIA tracked the suspects and killed them with drone-launched missiles or covert special forces assaults. In rare instances, they arrested and interrogated the targets. Most were suspected jihadists in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

The disposition matrix has been criticized because it supposedly contains names of people who might not be terrorists. Drone strikes also kill lots of civilians. Between 2001 and 2013, over 400 Pakistanis died due to 330 US drone strikes. Nevertheless, the US government denies that the disposition matrix is a kill list. The government insists that the matrix is merely a form of defense against people threatening the US.^[1]

9 China

Whether China has an active hit list is unconfirmed. But it did in 2010 when its Ministry of State Security killed over 30 CIA spies operating in the country. The killings started in 2010 when the Ministry of State Security (China’s equivalent of the CIA) infiltrated a CIA spy network operating in China.

At the time, the CIA was using some low-key tech for communication. It was unencrypted, and CIA spies were even using regular laptops and desktops for communication. The system was originally intended for Middle Eastern countries with weak counterintelligence capabilities.

Unfortunately for the CIA, China has a strong and active counterintelligence capability. It tracked down CIA spies using the unencrypted communication channels and assassinated these individuals. China clearly knew what it was doing as it only killed real CIA spies. Although 30 were confirmed dead, intelligence officers believe the figures is higher.^[2]

8 Britain

The British government has its own kill list. Interestingly, most of the targets are British citizens. A few years ago, the British intelligence agencies—MI5, MI6, and the Government Communications Headquarters—drafted a list containing the names of 200 British citizens who had joined the Islamic State.

Hundreds of British citizens joined the Islamic State at its height. The actual figure is unknown, but it is believed to be around 700. Britain feared that the radicalized citizens could return to the country to launch terrorist attacks. So it settled on assassinating the top 200, including 12 bomb experts.^[3]

The intelligence agencies passed the list to Special Air Service commandos inserted into Iraq’s territory. The commandos were tasked with finding and killing these jihadists, although they were allowed to capture some targets. The British government also targeted some jihadists with drones.

7 France

France used to have a hit list—at least when Francois Hollande was president. Hollande’s kill list was inspired by the US disposition matrix that we already talked about. The targets were individuals believed by the French government to have taken people as hostages or done things that hurt French interests. Most were in Syria and the Sahel region of Africa.

Like the US leaders, the French government called the killings “neutralization of strategic objectives,” “targeted eliminations,” or “homicide operations” instead of “murders” or “assassinations.” However, unlike the US, the French government used manned airplanes because it did not have attack drones.

At other times, the French government just passed on its information about the target to the US, which killed these individuals with drones. However, we have limited information about France’s kill list because the country is often quiet about so-called targeted assassinations. We do know that the list was compiled by the French army and the Directorate-General for External Security, France’s equivalent of the CIA.^[4]

6 Germany

The German government has a hit list even though it does not handle its own dirty work. That is the responsibility of the United States. Germany passes details about targets to the US, which adds them to the Joint Prioritized Effects List (JPEL), a hit list of 3,000 drug dealers, Taliban, and Al-Qaeda fighters operating in Afghanistan.

Targets listed on the JPEL are hunted by Task Force 373 (now called Task Force 3-10), a secret US team operating in Afghanistan.^[5] Troops on the team are ordered to capture or kill people on the list. However, they will often kill because it can be difficult to capture targets who resist arrest or attempt to escape.

5 Russia

The existence of a kill list maintained by the elusive Russian government is inconclusive. Russia does not admit that it has a hit list. The US and NATO do not make this claim about Russia, either. However, Ukraine does.

In 2018, Ukraine said that Russia had a list of 47 Russian and Ukrainian journalists it was planning to kill. Ukraine revealed this after staging the murder of Russian journalist Arkady Babchenko. News agencies reported that Babchenko had been assassinated in his home in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, until Babchenko showed up the next day telling everybody that he was not dead.

Babchenko and the Ukrainian authorities explained that the hoax assassination was meant to reveal Russia’s plan to murder Babchenko and several others. Although the Ukrainian government did not say how this helped to uncover Russia’s supposed sinister plot, officials went on to release a list of 47 people whom Russia planned to kill.^[6]

4 Iran

CIA spies operating in Iran used the same flawed communication channel that got them exposed in China. Iran also intercepted their communications and identified several CIA spies whom the government later hunted and killed. Interestingly, Iran discovered the communication channel first and could have informed China.

Iran became aware of the spy network after suspecting that CIA agents were actively spying on its nuclear program. A CIA double agent showed the Iranians a secret website that the agency used to communicate with its operatives in Iran. Of course, Iran knew that this couldn’t be the only site, so they went in search of the rest.

When we say “search,” we mean Iran actually used a search engine (Google) to find secret CIA websites on the Internet. Then the government tracked, captured, and executed CIA spies who visited the site. Only a few managed to escape. Iran shared the information with several other friendly nations, including China. Then China used this information to track, capture, and kill CIA spies operating in its territory.

John Reidy, a former contractor with the CIA, blamed the agency for the botched spy operation. Reidy had discovered the flaw years earlier and warned the CIA about it. The agency responded by firing him.^[7]

3 Philippines

The Philippine government has a not-so-secret hit list of 649 people it considers terrorists. The existence of the list was revealed when the government tried to get the courts to declare the targeted people as terrorists. If that had happened, the court would have unwittingly given the state the power to kill its citizens.

Curiously, the list contained names of several non-terrorists like Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, a United Nations human rights advocate in the country. In fact, lots of the targeted people are known activists and not terrorists. In some instances, the government skipped the names altogether and used aliases like “John Doe” or “Jane Doe.” This would allow the government to add the names at a later date.

The Philippine government insisted that the people on the list were members of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its military wing, the New People’s Army (NPA). Human Rights Watch condemned the list, which has been described as President Rodrigo Duterte’s way of getting rid of political critics and rivals.^[8]

2 Israel

Israel has never hidden the fact that it has a hit list. In fact, in August 2001, the government released a list of seven Palestinians it was planning to kill. Israel claimed that it added the Palestinians to its kill list because the Palestinian Authority had refused to turn them over after terrorist acts were committed against Israel.

Other agencies suspect that the released hit list was a PR attempt by Israel. The country may have wanted to prove to the world that it only killed Palestinians when they refused to cooperate. The move was also a psychological attempt to force the men to flee and desist from launching further attacks against Israel.

The country uses different ways to neutralize the targets on its list. Two common methods are snipers and helicopter-launched missiles. Less orthodox strategies include strapping bombs to the telephones of the targets. Like almost every other nation, Israel does not call the killings “assassinations.” It calls them “targeted killings.”^[9]

Palestinians are often the victims of Israel’s so-called targeted killings. This is very controversial in Gaza and the West Bank where helicopter-launched missile attacks have slaughtered lots of civilians. This has increased anti-Israeli sentiments in the areas of the West Bank controlled by the Palestinians.

1 Sri Lanka

In 2010, it was revealed that the Sri Lankan government had a secret hit list of 35 journalists and NGO workers. The nation’s intelligence agency supposedly ranked the targets according to their importance. However, the government had not killed anybody before the list was leaked.

One of the targets was J.C. Weliamuna, the Sri Lankan director for Transparency International. Two years earlier, he had escaped a suspected assassination attempt when an unidentified person threw a grenade into his home.

The attack was believed to be sponsored by the Sri Lankan defense ministry, which was furious that Weliamuna was representing some Sri Lankans in human rights abuse cases involving the ministry. The government never investigated the attack.

Another person on the list was Dr. Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu of the Center for Policy Alternatives, a Sri Lankan NGO. He received death threats in 2009, a year before the list was leaked. The Sri Lankan government has been implicated in torture, murder, and forced disappearances of 14 journalists since 2006.

The Sri Lankan government denied that it had a hit list, although officals agreed that they had planned to monitor some groups. Amnesty International said that the Sri Lankan government had compiled and deliberately released the list to intimidate NGO workers and journalists in the country.^[10]

Ancient Rome wasn’t known for its enlightened attitude toward women. They were expected to be homemakers and to stay out of public life. Yet some women did manage to gain political power behind the scenes—even if they had to be ruthless to keep it.

10Messalina

Messalina is best remembered for accusations about her wild sexual escapades, which Roman writers tended to throw at anyone they didn’t like. Pliny the Elder even claimed that she had sex with 25 men in a row to win a contest with Rome’s most famous prostitute.

This hostility probably came from the fact that Messalina was the most powerful woman in Roman history up to that point. Her husband was Claudius, who became emperor mostly because his ambitious relatives considered him a drooling idiot and never bothered having him murdered. When Caligula was assassinated, Claudius was found hiding behind a curtain and took the throne as the last man standing.

Messalina dominated her meek husband and soon controlled his administration. Anyone who opposed her risked being arrested on false charges. She even persuaded Claudius to execute her stepfather by saying she’d dreamed he was plotting against the emperor.

But she went too far in AD 48, when she married another man. It was probably a coup attempt, with Messalina and her new husband planning to replace Claudius entirely. Unfortunately, Rome’s bureaucrats preferred the easily manipulated Claudius and persuaded him to put the conspirators to death. They prevented Messalina from seeing Claudius before her execution, fearing she would be able to talk him out of it.

9Agrippina

After Messalina’s death, Claudius rewrote Rome’s incest laws and married his niece, Agrippina, a hardened veteran of imperial intrigue. (Her sister had been starved to death on Messalina’s orders.) As before, Claudius was easily pushed around by his new wife, who quickly took control of the empire. Agrippina even signed government documents and officially dealt with foreign ambassadors.

Agrippina had a son, Nero, from a previous marriage, and she was determined to make him emperor. She talked Claudius into adopting Nero and favoring him over his biological son, Britannicus. Anyone who opposed Nero was systematically eliminated.

After Claudius granted Nero equal imperial power, Agrippina decided that she no longer needed Claudius and served him a tasty dish of poisonous mushrooms. Lucky to the end, Claudius suffered a massive bout of diarrhea, which saved him from the poison. But Agrippina’s allies were everywhere, and Claudius’s doctor pushed more poison down his throat with a feather. Nero became emperor, and Agrippina’s triumph was complete.

8Poppaea Sabina

After Nero became emperor, Agrippina continued to exert influence behind the scenes. However, she met her match in her son’s lover, Poppaea Sabina.

Poppaea wanted Nero to marry her, but he was already married to Octavia, daughter of Claudius and Messalina. Agrippina had worked hard to secure the match (even framing Octavia’s first fiance for treason) and refused to allow her son to get divorced. Meanwhile, Poppaea (whose mother had been forced into suicide by Messalina) hated Octavia and demanded that Nero stand up to his mother.

Trapped between the women in his life, Nero chose Poppaea and gave his mother a boat designed to collapse and kill her. But Agrippina survived and swam to safety. Worse, she knew it was an assassination attempt because she had seen the crew of a “rescue” ship clubbing survivors to death with their oars. In a panic, Nero gave up on making it look like an accident and had his mother hacked to death. She supposedly went out bravely, telling the her son’s henchmen to strike the first blow at her womb.

7Julia Domna

After a male-dominated century, powerful women made a major comeback in Rome during the Severan dynasty, which was arguably a dynasty of women. The trend started with Julia Domna, wife and trusted adviser to Emperor Septimius Severus.

Domna really came into her own following Septimius’s death in AD 211, when he was succeeded by their sons, Caracalla and Geta. Domna played a dominant role in their administration and officially ran the empire while Caracalla was on campaign.

Although Domna was an excellent administrator, she was unable to prevent tragedy from stalking her family. First, Caracalla killed Geta in a fit of rage. Then, Caracalla was murdered by the prefect Macrinus. This was too much for Domna, who chose to commit suicide after hearing the news.

6Julia Soaemias

After murdering Caracalla, Macrinus seized power and declared himself emperor. But he underestimated the Severan women. Julia Maesa (Domna’s sister) and her daughter, Julia Soaemias, were determined to get revenge on Macrinus and restore their family to power.

In a campaign of furious intrigue, Soaemias and Maesa persuaded the legions of the East to support Soaemias’s son, Elagabalus. Since Elagabalus wasn’t actually a blood relation of Septimius Severus, they started a rumor that he was Caracalla’s illegitimate son by incest, which somehow worked in their favor.

Macrinus raced to put down the rebellion, but he was defeated and executed outside Antioch. Elagabalus became emperor, but the 14-year-old was uninterested in governing. Maesa and Soaemias were the real rulers of Rome during his reign.

5Julia Maesa

While Soaemias helped rule the empire, Elagabalus was allowed to indulge his every whim and soon developed a reputation for wild debauchery. He supposedly prostituted himself in the imperial palace and married a charioteer named Hierocles. Cassius Dio claimed that he offered a fortune to any surgeon who could give him a vagina.

On another occasion, he fell for an athlete named Zoticus, who supposedly had a huge penis. The jealous Hierocles spiked his rival’s drink, and “after a whole night of embarrassment, being unable to secure an erection, he was driven out of the palace, out of Rome, and later out of the rest of Italy.”

Whether these stories are true is debatable, but it’s clear that Elagabalus quickly alienated most of Rome, and his mother was unwilling to rein him in. His grandmother, Maesa, eventually stepped in and staged a coup, deposing Elagabalus in favor of his cousin Alexander, the second emperor she’d put on the throne. In a shocking show of ruthlessness, Maesa had her daughter and grandson executed to secure Alexander’s power base.

4Julia Mamaea

Maesa died shortly after putting Alexander on the throne. She was succeeded by her daughter, Julia Mamaea, Alexander’s mother and the last of the dynasty of women who effectively ruled Rome. Historians agree that Mamaea “totally dominated” her young son and ran the empire with the help of a council of senators.

She even joined the army on military campaigns, which was unheard-of for a woman. Unfortunately, the wars went badly, and the legions eventually mutinied. Soldiers murdered Alexander and Mamaea as they clung together in their tent, ending the Severan dynasty.

3Ulpia Severina

Ulpia Severina was the wife of Emperor Aurelian, a renowned general who was murdered by his own soldiers in AD 275. Other than that, almost nothing is known about her. We’re only aware of her existence from monuments and coins, which suggest that she ruled for a brief period after Aurelian’s death.

During Aurelian’s reign, Roman mints issued some coins in his name and some coins in Severina’s name. (This was standard practice.) However, coins from the time of Aurelian’s death only appear to have been issued in Severina’s name. The coins also bear images consistent with Severina trying to shore up her power.

Ancient sources mention a gap between Aurelian’s death and Tacitus taking the throne, and some historians speculate that Severina ruled during this period, only to be erased from history after Tacitus took charge. However, her coins were already in circulation and couldn’t be erased. Severina may have been the first woman to rule the Roman Empire in her own right.

2Aelia Pulcheria

Aelia Pulcheria was a childhood prodigy who declared herself regent for her brother when she was 15—only two years older than her brother. She kept a tight grip on power for the next four decades. To shore up her position, she took a vow of perpetual chastity and cultivated a religious reputation.

However, Pulcheria ran into problems when her brother died in 450. Although she had long been the true power in the Eastern Roman Empire, it was unheard-of for a woman to rule alone. The easiest solution was for Pulcheria to get married, but she refused to violate her vow of chastity. In an unusual move, she eventually did marry a senator named Marcian, who became her co-emperor after he publicly agreed that they would never have sex.

1Galla Placidia

The daughter of Emperor Theodosius, Galla Placidia lived during the dying days of the Western empire. As a young woman, she proved her toughness by confirming a death sentence for the woman who had raised her. A few years later, the Visigoths sacked Rome and kidnapped Placidia. They intended to ransom her to her brother, Emperor Honorius, but he declined to pay, and the Visigoths dragged Placidia around Europe for the next six years.

In 414, Placidia married the young Visigoth king Athaulf. They were supposedly genuinely in love, but Athaulf was murdered within the year. Placidia returned to Rome, where she married Emperor Constantius. After Constantius died, a usurper tried to steal the throne from the couple’s infant son. Placidia fled to Constantinople, where she persuaded her niece, Pulcheria, to give her an army.

Returning to Rome, Placidia made her son emperor and ruled as regent for the next 14 years.

Throughout history, a few remarkable women managed to rise to the top of male-dominated societies and take power in their own right. Their names echo through history: Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Wu Zetian. But it was more common for powerful women to need to cloak their rule through male puppets. These women have largely been forgotten today, even though behind the scenes they dominated some of the most powerful empires in world history.

10Marozia

In the early 10th century, Europe seemed in a state of terminal decline. The Frankish Empire was crumbling, and the power of the pagan Vikings was growing. In the South, Muslims had conquered Spain and Sicily, while the nomadic Hungarians had swept across the Carpathians. Only the Catholic Church seemed to hold Europe together. And the Church was led by a remarkable woman: the senator Marozia.

Marozia was the daughter of Count Theophylact, the most powerful man in Rome. After his death, Marozia inherited his power base and declared herself “senatrix.” When Pope John X tried to challenge her, she threw him into prison, where he quickly and mysteriously died. She then installed a succession of puppet popes, with herself the real power behind the Throne of Saint Peter.

In 931, Pope Stephen VII died and Marozia appointed her son, John XI, to replace him. By now, her power in Rome was complete, but she wanted more. In 932, she sealed a deal to marry Hugh of Arles, the king of Italy. The Pope was to declare the couple emperor and empress, rightful overlords of all of Europe.

But a tiny incident would derail all of Marozia’s grand plans. From a previous marriage, Marozia had a teenage son named Alberic who hated his new stepdad. When Hugh slapped Alberic in the face for spilling some water, it was the last straw. Alberic incited the Roman citizens to riot against the foreign Hugh, who only escaped by climbing down the city walls with a rope. Alberic then imprisoned his mother and took her place as the real ruler of Rome.

9Toregene

After Genghis Khan died, power passed to his third son, Ogedei. He was an inoffensive alcoholic chosen mainly because his older brothers hated each other and would probably have started a civil war. Ogedei seems to have left much of the job of ruling to his wife, Toregene, as several proclamations in her name predate his death.

After Ogedei drank himself into an early grave, Toregene officially took power until a successor could be elected. She proceeded to delay the election for five years while she ruled one of the greatest empires in history, stretching from China to Russia. The Seljuk sultan journeyed to pay homage to her, as did the Grand Prince Yaroslav, who died mysteriously after feasting with her.

While she ruled the empire, Toregene sought to ensure her power base by having her son Guyuk elected khan. Since everyone hated Guyuk, this required a massive campaign of bribery, which Toregene funded by imposing an aggressive new form of tax farming. She died in 1246, one year after finally securing her son’s election to succeed her.

8Kosem Sultan

The most powerful woman of the 17th century came to Istanbul as a slave around 1600. She was Greek originally. But she took the name Kosem when she was sold to the imperial harem, where she soon became the favorite wife of Sultan Ahmed I. She made her first grab for power after Ahmed’s death, when she maneuvered his mentally ill brother, Mustafa, onto the throne.

Mustafa was quickly deposed by his nephew Osman, and Kosem retreated into the background for a few years. She returned in 1623 when her young son Murad IV became sultan. (Osman had been murdered by his Janissary slave-soldiers in the interim.) Kosem became regent during her son’s childhood, ruling the empire for over a decade.

Kosem again took power in 1640 when Murad died and was replaced with his mentally ill brother Ibrahim. (Mentally ill brothers were something of a tradition among the Ottomans.) She quickly found Ibrahim too erratic to control and organized his murder in 1648. After that, she continued to rule as regent for his young son Mehmed IV.

7Turhan

After Mehmed IV took the throne, Kosem continued to rule as regent, modestly directing her ministers from behind an ornate curtain. This was deeply resented by the boy’s mother, Turhan, who thought the regency should have been hers. But Kosem’s power seemed unassailable. She commanded the personal loyalty of the Janissary Corps, and her vast estates made her one of the richest people on Earth.

To make matters worse, Kosem realized that Mehmed and his mother were beginning to show signs of independence and began making plans to have them killed. In 1651, Turhan was tipped off to a plot to poison the sultan’s sherbet and knew she had to act.

Turhan decided that the only option was a rapid palace coup, giving Kosem no time to summon her Janissary allies. On September 2, Turhan and her eunuchs rapidly attacked Kosem’s apartments and killed the guards. Kosem tried to hide in a closet. But she was dragged out and strangled with some curtains.

With Kosem gone, Turhan took the regency and effectively ruled the empire until 1656, when she agreed to transfer power to the Grand Vizier Koprulu Mehmed Pasha.

6Sorghaghtani

Although almost forgotten today, Sorghaghtani was one of the most famous women of the 13th century. The Persian chronicler Rashid al-Din wrote that the “great emirs and troops” of the Mongols “never swerved a hair’s breadth from her command.” Meanwhile, an impressed poet declared that “if all women were like unto her, then women would be superior to men.”

Sorghaghtani was the wife of Tolui, the youngest son of Genghis Khan. When Tolui died, Sorghaghtani was appointed regent of his estates, even though her oldest son was already 23. She quickly established herself as a power player in Mongol politics and helped to place Guyuk Khan on the throne.

When Guyuk died in 1248, Sorghaghtani saw her chance. She formed an alliance with the powerful Batu, khan of the Golden Horde, and began a massive campaign of bribery to have her son Mongke elected Great Khan. In this she was opposed by Guyuk’s family, but Sorghaghtani was relentless and even personally oversaw the torture and execution of Guyuk’s wife, Oghul Qaimish.

Sorghaghtani was successful, and all four of her sons became powerful khans thanks to her years of careful planning and manipulation.

5Ahhotep

Ahhotep I lived in interesting times. In the 1500s BC, ancient Egypt seemed to be crumbling under internal pressures and a fearsome group of invaders known as the Hyksos. Ahhotep was the sister-wife of Pharaoh Seqenenre Tao, who was executed by the Hyksos in the 1560s. Analysis of his mummy reveals that his death involved two axe blows to the head and a dagger to the neck.

After her husband’s death, Ahhotep became regent for her young son Ahmose I. As well as ruling Egypt, she seems to have personally rallied her husband’s forces to fight off the Hyksos and Egyptian rebels. After this feat, she began wearing the “Golden Flies of Valor,” a decoration given to distinguished Egyptian generals.

Her son later erected an inscription in her honor: “Give praise to the lady of the land, the mistress of the lands, whose name is (held) high in every foreign country, who has made many plans . . . who took care of [Egypt]. She looked after its troops, she guarded them, she rounded up its fugitives, brought back its deserters, she pacified the South and she repelled those who rebelled against her.”

Ahhotep lived to a ripe old age (perhaps around 90) and was buried with great honor, wearing the Golden Flies of Valor around her neck.

4Zoe

Although she formally ruled with a series of husbands, Zoe was unquestionably the true ruler of the Byzantine Empire, which stretched throughout the Balkans and Asia. In fact, her only real rival was her sister Theodora, who eventually claimed the title of co-empress before Zoe could sideline her again.

Zoe and Theodora were the daughters of Constantine VIII. Since the emperor had no sons, Zoe was married to the powerful urban prefect Romanos, who became emperor when Constantine died. Zoe at once exiled her sister, poisoned Romanos, and married her chamberlain, who was put on the throne as Michael IV.

When Michael IV died, his nephew tried to seize the throne and exile Zoe. The palace was immediately attacked by an enraged mob who demanded their empress back. With the citizens of Constantinople behind her, Zoe had the unfortunate usurper castrated, blinded, and exiled to a monastery.

Unfortunately, the mob also demanded Theodora. Zoe was forced to accept her sister as coruler until Zoe outflanked Theodora by marrying Constantine IX Monomachus, who became co-emperor. Zoe dominated the empire until her death in 1050, after which her husband and sister continued to rule.

3Arsinoe

Arsinoe was the daughter of Ptolemy I, a Macedonian general who had seized Egypt when Alexander the Great died. Arsinoe was married to Lysimachus, another general who had taken control of Thrace and soon became a key player in the wars between Alexander’s successors. Among other things, Arsinoe poisoned Lysimachus’s son by his first marriage and then had her own children murdered by her second husband.

Around 279 BC, Arsinoe fled back to Egypt, where her brother Ptolemy II had inherited the throne. She quickly proved the most formidable politician in the kingdom, having her brother’s wife exiled on false charges and then marrying him herself, scandalizing Greek society.

As queen, Arsinoe soon sidelined her brother and established herself as the effective ruler of Egypt. She was referred to as a pharaoh in official documents and issued coins in her name, depicting her in full pharaonic regalia. She and her brother were often depicted as Isis and Osiris in art, invoking ancient Egyptian traditions to justify their marriage.

Arsinoe died around 268, leaving behind a powerful cult centered around her worship. Her brother never remarried, although he ruled for another 20 years.

2Empress Wei

Wei was the wife of Emperor Zhongzong, who ruled Tang Dynasty China in the early eighth century. Her husband had succeeded Wu Zetian, the only woman to rule China in her own right. Wei was said to be a great admirer of Wu and sought to emulate her power and ruthlessness.

Luckily, her husband was widely agreed to be a “timid and weak-willed person” who was happy to leave the business of governing to his tougher and smarter wife. She quickly built a powerful clique at court, including many of Wu’s former ministers. Anyone who opposed her risked death. On one occasion, the Minister of War brutally murdered an officer just for criticizing the empress.

After five years, Wei’s reign hit a problem when her husband suddenly died. (It was widely rumored that Wei had poisoned him.) With the official emperor dead, Wei knew that challengers would emerge to claim the throne. So she concealed his death until she could call in 50,000 troops to surround the palace.

Unfortunately, her enemies were inside the palace. Her husband’s sister and nephew, Princess Taiping and Li Longji, staged a coup one night. Wei tried to escape, but was killed by the soldiers she had ordered to surround the palace. They had decided they preferred to be on the winning side.

1Nur Jahan

In the 1620s, the mighty Mughal Empire stretched across the Indian subcontinent. Officially, it was ruled by the emperor Jahangir. In reality, Jahangir was a weak, alcoholic, opium addict and true power rested with his wife, Nur Jahan.

This was no great secret: Nur Jahan issued proclamations in her own name and had coins minted bearing her image. She even held the royal seal, which was used to stamp all official orders.

A later visitor to the court wrote that women’s power “is sometimes exerted in the harem; but, like the virtues of a magnet, it is silent and unperceived. Nur Jahan stood forth in public; she broke through all restraints and custom, and acquired power by her own address.”

Her archrival was the general and minister Mahabat Khan. When Nur Jahan had his son-in-law arrested, Mahabat responded by seizing Jahangir in a coup. Nur Jahan personally led her troops in an attempt to seize him back and then organized a cunning escape plan. Mahabat’s gamble had failed, and Nur Jahan’s power was left unchecked.

Some body parts get all the attention, whether it’s the famous essentials like the heart, brain, and liver or the beauty of smiles or athletic musculature. However, there is a whole world of phenomenal body parts that deserve some more attention.

These unsung anatomical heroes might not be the most eye-catching, but they’re why you don’t walk into walls, choke every time you eat, or simply keel over dead while you’re reading this article, among other things. Here is a list of ten of the most underappreciated, interesting, and important parts of the human body.

10 Vestibular System

Ever wondered how you know where your head is in space? How you don’t get dizzy every time you nod or tilt your head? Or why you can’t walk in a straight line after spinning in a circle for a long time?

The answer is the vestibular system (VS), a minuscule, complex setup comprised of three semicircular canals and two chambers in each inner ear. The VS sits behind your eardrum, just next to the cochlea. The semicircular canals are three round tubes filled with liquid, which lie in different planes, enabling sensation of movement in all directions. There are special areas called maculae (not to be confused with the maculae in the retinas) at the end of the tube loops which are covered with sensory hairs. On top of the hairs is a jelly-like substance with tiny weights in it called otoliths. When you move your head, the semicircular canals and maculae move, but the fluid and jelly lag behind. This lag bends the sensory hairs and sends a message to your brain about the direction your head is moving. When you stop moving (or accelerating) and keep your head in a particular spot, the effect of gravity on the weighted jelly tells your brain where you are in space.

So, what happens when we spin in a circle and get dizzy? Ask a friend to spin in a tight circle, either on their feet or in an office chair, for over 30 seconds and then suddenly stop and try to focus on a fixed point. They will feel dizzy and struggle to walk in a straight line, and if you look closely, you will see their eyes flicking from side to side (a phenomenon called nystagmus). This happens because your VS has stopped moving, but the fluid inside the loops has enough momentum to keep moving. This tells your brain you are spinning, but your eyes and cerebellum don’t agree, so you feel completely off-balance, and your vision is distorted.^[1] You can also watch the medical student above try it.

9 Kneecaps

If you have ever fallen on your knees or had that sickening feeling of sliding a chair under a desk and colliding with an unfortunately placed table leg, you’ve probably been grateful for their protection. However, kneecaps are much more than built-in, rudimentary kneepads!

It’s all a matter of leverage. The main function of the kneecap, technically called the patella, is extension of the knee (straightening the leg). The kneecap is tethered to the shinbone (tibia) by a strong tendon, and the top of the kneecap is connected to a major muscle in the quadriceps group. Your “quads” are a group of four muscles, hence the name. The patella increases the effective force with which the knee can extend by 33 to 50 percent due to the increased leverage around the joint.^[2]

8 Cerebrospinal Fluid

Amid all the flesh, blood, and guts in the human body is this beautiful, crystal-clear fluid. Cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is produced in ventricles deep within the brain and circulates around the brain and spinal cord.

CSF has many functions, including protection, as it provides an area of shock-absorption for the brain when the skull is hit or shaken. It also works to provide nutrients and clear waste from the brain and spinal cord in a similar way to blood in other parts of the body. The CSF is produced and absorbed in an exquisite balance to maintain the correct pressure to surround and support the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord).

Doctors sample CSF by performing a procedure called a lumbar puncture—inserting a needle into the spinal cord and collecting some of the fluid.^[3] It can be used to identify people who have an infection (such as meningitis), a bleed around the brain (hemorrhagic stroke), and other conditions.

7 Uterus

Most women are not particularly fond of their uterus, as it is often a source of pain or problems, but it deserves a prized place on this list.

The most obviously remarkable feature of the uterus is its ability to expand from approximately the size of a woman’s fist to fill most of the abdomen and some of the thorax during pregnancy and contain a full-grown fetus, placenta, and amniotic fluid. The proliferative capacity of the uterus is unrivaled in the human body.

The muscular function of the uterus is also truly unique. Most people are familiar with the pain and power of contractions during labor (which are in themselves a remarkable feat of physiology), but a less well-known muscular function occurs directly after birth. After the placenta detaches from the inside wall of the uterus, there is a huge risk of bleeding (postpartum hemorrhage), as multiple large blood vessels are exposed.

If that happened on your arm or leg, what would you do? Apply pressure. The uterus applies pressure to itself! Straight after delivery of a baby and placenta, a surge of hormones causes intense contraction of the uterus, which compresses the blood vessels and helps them heal and close.^[4]

6 Valves

Most of us are grateful for our sphincters (or should be), but what about our valves? The cardiovascular system is essentially plumbing, and one-way valves keep things flowing in the right direction. We have four very strong pumps (the heart) which work in coordination to pump blood in a figure eight to the lungs to exchange gas and then to the rest of the body, supplying nutrients, removing waste, and keeping everything in balance.

Blood is pumped out of your heart into arteries, which expand and contract as the heart pumps. This is why you can feel a pressure wave in them, your “pulse.” As blood moves away from your heart, arteries branch into smaller and smaller vessels until they pass through extremely fine tubes called capillaries that are only a cell wide. This is when exchange happens between blood and the tissues it supplies. Blood needs to move slowly here and no longer has a pulse due to the large surface area of the microscopic capillaries.

On the way back to the heart, blood travels in veins, which converge into larger and larger vessels. However, there is not a lot of pressure driving blood back to the heart, and most of the blood needs to overcome gravity to return. To deal with this, veins have one-way valves which keep blood flowing in the right direction. Sometimes you can see valves in people’s arms, particularly when you have a tourniquet on for a blood test; they look like little knobbles along an otherwise straight vein.

There are also four essential one-way valves within the heart. Each of the four pumping chambers in the heart has a one-way valve which snaps shut when it contracts to prevent blood from being pumped out in the wrong direction. The chambers in your heart work in pairs, and it is the sound of these valves snapping shut during the pumping action that you hear as the two “lub-dub” heart sounds. If there is anything wrong with how the valves work, you can hear added heart sounds, and the pump will work less effectively.^[5]

5 Lens

If you’ve ever had glasses fitted, you know how arduous the process is to find exactly the right lens to correct your vision. Much like the lenses in glasses, you have lenses within your eyes. They are transparent, concave structures that bend light to focus images onto the back of your eyeball, the retina, which sends the information to your brain to be interpreted as vision.^[6]

Unlike glass or polycarbonate lenses, our anatomical lenses are elasticated and able to change their shape to focus on objects at all different distances. As we age, the lens gradually loses elasticity. This is why most people require glasses to assist with reading as they get older; the lens is less able to recoil or “bounce back” into its thickest form, which is required for near vision. Glasses help to bend the light more, prior to passing through the eye.

4 Ciliary Muscle

How exactly do our lenses manage to change shape? This is achieved by the ciliary muscle, a rim of muscle around the lens which contracts and relaxes to make the lens thicker or thinner.^[7] This, in turn, bends beams of light entering the eye more or less, to keep images in focus.

This muscle movement, known as accommodation, is one of the most sophisticated motor functions in the body. Indeed, our eyes are among the most complex organs in our bodies.

3 Epiglottis

Anatomically, our trachea is in front of our esophagus, so every time we swallow, our food or water needs to pass over our windpipe and in to our food pipe. If this action is not coordinated, we choke.

The epiglottis is a flap of elastic cartilage which projects from the top of the larynx (the top part of the windpipe). When you swallow, the larynx is pulled upward. This is why you can see people’s throats move up and down when they swallow. The “Adam’s apple” is a prominence of cartilage in the larynx which makes this action more obvious in males. When the larynx is pulled upward, the epiglottis is folded over the entrance to the windpipe so that food and water pass over it, into the esophagus.

This is why it is important to lie someone on their side in the recovery position in first aid when appropriate. This is to keep their airway open and to allow any water or secretions to drain out of the mouth instead of into the airway.^[8]

2 Diaphragm

The diaphragm is a large area of fibrous and muscle tissue which separates the abdominal and thoracic cavities, and when it twitches, we get hiccups. Although the rib cage expands and contracts, diaphragm is the main muscle responsible for breathing. When relaxed, the diaphragm is dome-shaped, curving up into the thoracic cavity. When it contracts, the muscle flattens, increasing the intrathoracic volume and creating a sucking action, drawing air into the lungs as they expand.

The diaphragm also helps to regulate pressure on the chest and abdomen when vomiting, coughing, urinating, and passing stool.

When you look at an X-ray of the chest, the diaphragm is higher on the right than the left, due to the location of the liver.^[9] Every time you breathe, all your abdominal contents below the diaphragm move slightly as you inhale and exhale.

1 Skin

It’s the largest organ in the body, and although it’s one of the more highly recognized body parts on the list, its importance is not. The skin has six primary roles, if any of which stopped working, you would get very sick or even die.^[10]

Firstly, skin provides a barrier against physical, thermal, chemical, and radiation sources of potential trauma encountered in daily life. Also, skin regulates your body temperature. As annoying as we find sweating to be, it is actually essential to maintaining our normal physiology and is also involved in another primary function: maintaining the body’s fluid and electrolyte balance.

Skin also has multiple immune functions, acting as both a physical and immunological barrier against infection and allergic triggers. Metabolic functions of the skin include the production of vitamin D and other proteins that cells need to work. Finally, the skin is the most diverse sensory organ in the body, capable of sensing heat, cold, light and firm pressure, pain, and vibrations.

Littoral Spaces
Medicine / Arts

All our heroes get up to naughty deeds every now and then. Still, we tend to forgive them. These little things don’t bother us. So what if a celebrity was rude to his fans? So what if one gets his ideas from drugs? So what if one conspired with Heinrich Himmler to bring England under Nazi rule?

See Also: 10 Rogue Spies In History

In the 20th century, a strange number of extremely prominent people famous for their works of art or invention were actively conspiring against us. It’s mystifying that people in the forefront of the public eye were actively working on conspiracies that mainly amount to treason—but they did. And in most of these cases, they got away with it.

10 Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl is known and beloved by children everywhere for his magical stories like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach. He’s a legendary children’s entertainer who is ever full of surprises. Many have been shocked to learn that he has a robust collection of excellent literature for adults or that he wrote the screenplay for the Bond film You Only Live Twice.

However, much more shocking is the job he held before becoming a writer: spying on Americans.

In the early years of World War II, the United States was an uninvolved party. The nation was isolationist by nature, and most wanted to stay out of the dangerous conflict. And so, Roald Dahl was brought in.

His job was something that would never be allowed in one of his books. In the hopes of learning secrets and changing U.S. policy, he was tasked with drinking with—and sleeping with—wealthy women.

Dahl probably was not directly ordered to sleep with beautiful women, but he chose it as the main tool of his trade anyway. The British government certainly didn’t stop him. When he was wooing Clare Boothe Luce, the wife of Time magazine’s publisher, Dahl reportedly complained that she was too frisky. But he was ordered to get “back into the bedroom.”^[1]

Dahl was about as useful as you’d imagine a person sleeping with socialites would be. The would-be spy was described as completely unable to keep a secret, and the best information he seems to have reported back was gossip that Franklin D. Roosevelt might be having an affair.

9 Ernest Hemingway

In his last days, Ernest Hemingway was relentlessly shadowed by the FBI. J. Edgar Hoover had taken a special interest in Hemingway because Hoover was convinced that the legendary writer was a secret agent selling information to the KGB.

The surveillance left Hemingway so paranoid that his friends were convinced he was going insane. In time, even Hemingway believed it. In 1960, he checked himself into the Mayo Clinic, hoping for an end to his paranoia. The next year, he killed himself.

To this day, the tragedy of Hemingway’s death has been directly blamed on Hoover’s surveillance, which was based on the mad notion that a famous author was a Soviet spy.

The thing is—Hoover was right. Hemingway really was a Soviet spy. Recently released KGB files reveal that Hemingway met with Soviet agents in 1941 and “repeatedly expressed his desire and willingness” to spy for them.^[2]

He never provided anything of value, but there’s reason to believe that it wasn’t for lack of trying. Shortly after meeting with Soviet operatives, Hemingway stopped writing and volunteered to work with U.S. intelligence—an act some people think was an attempt to get information.

Hemingway was on patrol for German U-boats and was remarkably unhelpful. The most generous account of his efforts suggests that he may have “actually spotted a U-boat, at least once.” But the military didn’t put much stock in the sighting. He did, however, spend his time making coded notes, which some people have now suggested may have been intended for the Soviets.

8 The Duchess Of Windsor

Wallis Simpson was a real-life fairy-tale princess. After her first divorce, the remarried Wallis caught the eye of Edward VIII, then king of England, who fell madly in love with her. So much so, in fact, that when his family objected to their love, he gave up the throne in December 1936 to be with her. That passed the crown to King George VI, the father of the current Queen Elizabeth II.

In May 1937, Wallis’s divorce from her second husband was finalized. She married Edward (then duke of Windsor) one month later. With that, Wallis became the Duchess of Windsor.

It has all the makings of a Disney film—except, y’know, the parts where they conspired with Hitler to overthrow England. Edward loved Wallis, but many rumors suggested that his feelings weren’t reciprocated.

Wallis reportedly mocked her husband for being impotent and carried on an affair with the Nazi foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. In turn, von Ribbentrop reportedly sent the duchess 17 carnations every day, representing the number of times the two had slept together.

The romantic gesture was apparently enough for her to give information to the Nazis. Wallis retreated with the duke to Biarritz and gave her address to von Ribbentrop. He had it immediately used for propaganda. The Nazis announced the room number on the radio within minutes of the couple checking into their hotel, using it as proof that the British were on the run.^[3]

Simpson might not have been a great wife, but that doesn’t mean that Edward was innocent. According to FBI information, Edward was just as willing to help out the Nazi cause.

Before he abdicated the throne, Edward was extremely friendly with Adolf Hitler, who expressed a desire to use Edward as a “puppet.” This friendliness continued when the war started, which led to rumors that Wallis and Edward were working with Hitler.>FBI information, Edward was just as willing to help out the Nazi cause.

Before he abdicated the throne, Edward was extremely friendly with Adolf Hitler, who expressed a desire to use Edward as a “puppet.” This friendliness continued when the war started, which led to rumors that Wallis and Edward were working with Hitler.

7 Cary Grant

Cary Grant wasn’t just a spy in Hitchcock’s “Notorious,” he was one of the greatest Nazi hunters of Hollywood during World War II. According to biographer Charles Higham, at least two of the most popular leading men in Hollywood in the 1940s—Errol Flynn and Cary Grant—were involved in espionage, though on opposite sides.

Higham reported that Flynn was a Nazi sympathizer who had visited Germany before the war and even met with Adolf Hitler.

Grant, who was born in Britain and had several relatives living in Bristol during the war, revealed Flynn’s pro-Nazi leanings to British agents in Washington and kept them informed about other Nazi sympathizers in Hollywood.

He also worked with Roald Dahl and other British agents in shaping the British propaganda messages aimed at discrediting America First and other isolationist groups in the United States.

While Grant never physically engaged in combat during WWII, he certainly did his part financially. The movie star donated his salaries from The Philadelphia Story and Arsenic and Old Lace to the British War Relief Effort and the U.S. War Relief Effort. In 1947, King George VI awarded Grant the King’s Medal for Service in the Cause of Freedom to thank him for his monetary contributions to the allied powers.

The confirmation of Grant working with British agents is documented in the reports of MI6 and many participants’ diaries.^[4]

6 Arnon Milchan

Israeli businessman and film producer Arnon Milchan has produced some of the most beloved movies of our time—from Pretty Woman to Fight Club to Gone Girl. In fact, the Hollywood luminary has pointed his camera at some things that have changed the face of film.

And some other things that have changed the nuclear program of Israel.

Milchan has always been wealthy—so much so that Israel has been able to use bank accounts set up by him to buy helicopters and missiles. In addition, he brokered deals and made purchases that helped Israel boost its nuclear program.

He also helped South Africa to defend itself from criticism of its apartheid system—not because he was a staunch advocate of it but because they supplied Israel with uranium in return.

Milchan was more than a banker, though. He actually talked his way into a German nuclear facility and convinced them to let him take pictures. He sent the photographs back to Israel to help them build a nuclear arsenal.

So how do we know all of this?

This time, it’s not because of some ambiguous note in a journal. Milchan directly said, “I did it for my country, and I’m proud of it.”^[5]

Even before that, his status as an Israeli spy gathering nuclear weapons was a poorly kept secret. Other Hollywood personalities admit that they suspected it but didn’t question him. Robert De Niro said that he didn’t think it was any of his business, and Milchan has suffered no consequences for his activities.

5 Leon Theremin

Leon Theremin was a Russian inventor who is best known for the instrument that bears his name. He designed a futuristic-sounding musical device that is played without touching it. It’s that strange sound you hear in science fiction films from the 1950s and on Radiohead albums. It sounds like a ghost singing. Theremin was a pioneer in musical innovation, responsible for a great deal of progress in electronic music.

Theremin patented his eponymous musical instrument in the US in 1928.

When he returned to the Soviet Union in 1938, he was quickly imprisoned. Ultimately, he was sent to work in a secret Soviet laboratory in the Gulag camp system with prominent engineers and scientists. While there, Theremin invented the Buran eavesdropping system to help the Soviets spy on their enemies.

He was also responsible for another of the Soviets’ most successful spying operations.

Theremin’s second most famous invention was “The Thing,” a listening device that didn’t require a power source. It was successfully used to spy on the US government.

Theremin’s “Thing” was hidden inside a wooden seal of the United States and presented to the US ambassador to the Soviet Union by Soviet schoolchildren in 1945. The kind gesture touched the ambassador, who hung it up in his home. He didn’t know that the USSR had men sitting outside the embassy in a van, listening to everything he said.

As this unique device didn’t need power, The Thing was nearly impossible to discover. So it took seven years before anybody found it. Finally, British broadcasters picked up its radio waves, which led the Americans to track the source and discover the listening device.^[6]

As for Theremin, he was released from the Gulag laboratory in 1947. But he continued to work with the KGB until 1966.

4 Kim Philby

Kim Philby was a British spy—and a major one at that. Philby worked his way up to the head of MI6’s anti-Soviet division. It was an incredible accomplishment for anyone but especially for Kim Philby.

Because Kim Philby was secretly a Soviet spy.

At the time, MI6’s anti-Soviet division was littered with Soviet agents. It was an incredibly effective campaign of espionage against a nation that had excelled at repelling enemy spies in the past.

Philby successfully obtained and shared information with the Soviet Union until another KGB agent informed the US government of the presence of five spies in British Intelligence.

As the agents closed in on him, Philby protected himself by selling out some of his cohorts. The agents came in closer, however, and Philby was forced to resign. He was not found out until he defected to the USSR in 1963.

Even after he escaped to the Soviet Union, Philby had an incredible impact. The CIA spent another 10 years in a search for traitors. No longer trusting the work they had, they were convinced that they had been infiltrated the same way.^[7]

3 Robert Hanssen

The FBI had a mole too. Like Philby, Robert Hanssen worked for the counterintelligence unit while secretly feeding information to the Soviet Union. Hanssen managed to work as a double agent for about 20 years. Starting in 1985, he collected information on computer disks and dropped off packages for Soviet agents.

The method was incredibly successful. The FBI has admitted that more than 6,000 pages of confidential information were compromised, including dozens of US documents classified as “Top Secret.”^[8] He was also paid handsomely, earning $600,000 for his services. At least, that’s what the FBI can prove.

Apparently, Hanssen continued spying during the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reformation of modern Russia. Ultimately, he was arrested while dropping off documents in February 2001.

Hanssen has lived a total double life. His wife was completely unaware that he was a spy. During a polygraph test, she testified that Hanssen told her that he was “tricking” the Russians.

2 Mata Hari

Mata Hari was a Dutch exotic dancer, one of the most famous in Paris during World War I. Posing as an Indian, she performed erotic dances in front of thousands of men and sold her love freely to aristocrats and the elite of Paris. It made her the perfect German spy.

The French believed that Mata Hari worked for them and asked her to share anything she learned from her romantic conquests with the military. Since her lovers included German officers, she had a great opportunity to glean information.

The French didn’t know that she’d already received the same offer from the Germans—and taken it. However, her movements began to seem suspicious. The French started tracking her and soon arrested her on their suspicions.

Mata Hari admitted that the Germans had paid her 20,000 francs to spy on the French. But she insisted that she had never passed on worthwhile information. Some still maintain that she was innocent.

Nonetheless, Mata Hari suffered for her actions. She was arrested in 1917 and sentenced to death. Before she faced the firing squad, she wrote two letters and spoke her final three words:

“I am ready.”^[9]

1 Coco Chanel

There’s a good chance that you or someone you know uses one of Coco Chanel’s products. Chanel No. 5 perfume is one of the most popular in the world, and her name is synonymous with fashion and high culture.

It’s less often linked to her time as a Nazi spy.

Chanel was in France when it was occupied. While others lamented the Nazi presence, Chanel openly embraced it. The “embraced” there is literal as Chanel quickly found herself sharing a bed with a Nazi officer named Baron Hans Gunther von Dincklage.

Chanel wrote off the romance with a witty remark, saying that a girl her age doesn’t have time to look at a man’s passport. In truth, though, she did look at his passport—and was apparently thrilled by it.

First, she tried to use German rule for profit. Chanel, who has been described as “fiercely anti-Semitic,” had sold her No. 5 perfume to a Jewish company and then tried (unsuccessfully) to use Nazi Aryanization laws to revoke their claim.

When Chanel signed up to be a Nazi spy, she was given the agent number “F-7124” and the code name “Westminster.” It seemed that her duties mainly involved helping to recruit other informants and spies who might be willing to give information to the Nazis.

She wasn’t content to settle for that, though. Chanel and her beau traveled to Berlin in 1943 to offer their services to Heinrich Himmler, who saw her as the perfect person to influence British policy. Chanel, who was friends with Winston Churchill, was dispatched to England to convince him to make a truce with the Nazis.^[10]

Churchill never agreed to see her, so Chanel didn’t turn the tide of the war. He did, however, ensure that she got away safely afterward despite the intention of the French Resistance to have her executed as a spy. Thanks to her enormous influence, Chanel was allowed to escape to Switzerland with her Nazi lover and managed to hide her Nazi involvement almost entirely during her lifetime.

About The Author: Mark Oliver is a writer and an English teacher. He can be visited online here.

Robots became a widespread concept in movies in the 1920s. Fast-forward to today, and we find robots playing a pretty significant role in our world—even if we do not all agree on what role a robot should play. So whether we are on the side of “bring on the technology” or feel a bit more hesitation about turning over our lives to something without feelings, they are likely here to stay.

Worthy of a rewind, we will find the best notable and secretive life lessons in robot film history.

Related: 10 Futuristic Things AI And Robots Are Already Doing

10 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

On a mission to steal the plans to the Death Star, the empire’s ultimate weapon of destruction, a group of unlikely heroes—Jyn, Cassian, and K2SO—band together to accomplish the task. But they do so in an unusual way. K2SO is a security droid who says exactly what is on his mind. However, this droid may not seem ideal for the task, especially if you ask Jyn, who gets into quite a few disagreements with K2SO and even tries to shoot him!

But who knew a robot could have a great sense of humor and be a pain in the butt all at once? K2SO knows how to make the irony of going to battle seem less dark and painful. This movie reminds us that there is still hope! Ultimately, we learn the best lesson from K2SO: how to stand up for ourselves!^[1]

9 I Am Mother

After an extinction event, a robot named Mother grows a human embryo and cares for her over several years, naming her Daughter. Mother started to grow human embryos in hopes of guiding them to be more ethical and value the bigger picture of life after becoming convinced humanity would destroy itself.

Perhaps a philosophical movie at heart, Mother teaches Daughter complex moral and ethical lessons, warning her about an upcoming exam. Daughter realizes Mother terminated a child before her because she didn’t pass her exam. Throughout the movie, the question is posed: What exactly makes a human good or bad? Or an even bigger question. Who gets to decide if a human is worthy or unworthy? We may think of Mother as the perfect robot with the best intentions of deciding the fate of humanity. However, in reality, we see only a selfish robot teaching her Daughter how to be selfless. Well, thank goodness for Daughter, who has a mind of her own!^[2]

8 I, Robot

I, Robot, released in 2004, is set in 2035, where highly intelligent robots fill public service positions throughout the future dystopian world. They operate under three rules to keep humans safe: The Three Laws. From Isaac Asimov’s 1942 short story “Runaround,” we know that a robot: 1) cannot injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, 2) must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the first law, and 3) must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first two laws.

When an apparent suicide looks more like murder, Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) believes the culprit was a robot. And he sets out to prove it.

Spooner may not love robots, but when it comes to Sonny, a robot longing to be seen and valued, he may want to rethink his hatred. When Spooner decides to hear what Sonny has to say, we find that he has an interesting perspective on human life. He admits that he can not create a great work of art, but he can still dream! Sonny explains that human emotions are difficult—and even if he cannot be the next Olympic gold medalist or Grammy award winner, it does not mean he should be devalued. Sonny reminds us that we all have a purpose, and it can all be valuable.^[3]

7 Wall-E

Ah, Wall-E. The titular robot from Disney’s 2008 film. It is hard not to admire this robot. Wall-E is not a robot of many words, but boy can he swoon. A hopeless romantic, Wall-E builds a love connection with Eve, a robot sent to scan the planet for signs of sustainable life.

When Wall-E finds a living plant for Eve, she shocks (kisses) him, and he can not believe it. Wall-E and Eve begin to dance, sparks start to fly (literally), and the magic behind their connection builds other love connections. In this special film, Wall-E teaches us how beautiful a connection to another person or robot can be.^[4]

6 Ex Machina

Is Ava really a robot? In Ex Machina, Ava the robot has a human face. Ava is confined to a cell, and Caleb, a naive computer programmer, begins to build feelings for her. But at the end of this love story, Ava traps Caleb inside the lab while she escapes into the real world. Ahh, free at last!

We see that Ava loves to be admired because it makes her feel alive. I think we can all relate to Ava here—being seen and wanted does feel exhilarating. But what is more breathtaking than being admired? According to Ava, it is life itself, being free. In the end, Ava realizes she wants a normal human experience. As for Caleb, well—he will be okay…eventually.^[5]

5 A.I. Artificial Intelligence

Perhaps a significant scene in A.I. is when David, an advanced robotic boy who longs to be real so that he can see his mother again, finds out it would only be possible for a day. Futuristic Mecha ponders if human life can be the key to the meaning of existence. In this scene, we are reminded of how special each life can be.

“I’ve always felt a sort of envy of human beings of that thing they call spirit,” said Futuristic Mecha. I must admit it is pretty amazing to think we are the creators and interpreters of all explanations of the meaning of life.^[6]

4 The Matrix Revolutions

Agent Smith in the Matrix is a sentient computer program created by the “machines.” Smith, a very sophisticated machine, brings out the best in Neo, or should I say the side of him we never thought he had. In this final battle between Agent Smith and Neo, Agent Smith accidentally says the phrase. “Everything that has a beginning has an end.” But what exactly does this teach us?

If we look at the law of impermanence, it explains that every process must end at the state of maximum entropy. It explains that everything keeps changing, whether we are aware of it or not. But moreover, the phenomenon refers to the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. Whatever energy is out in a system can only be changed from one form to another.^[7]

3 A.I. Rising

On a space mission to the Alpha Centauri star system, Milutin, a trained cosmonaut, is placed on a ship with Nimani, an android designed to respond to his every desire and monitor his performance on the ship. Nimani fulfills each of Milutin’s sexual desires. However, it does not satisfy him, so he uninstalls Nimanis default operating system to make her more human, hoping Nimani would have sex with him on her own. But soon after, Milutin becomes depressed after Nimani tells him she will not sleep with him anymore because his lust has become a liability to the mission. As Milutin’s mental health declines, Nimani offers to be his friend. Milutin argues that she cannot be a friend because she is an android. Nimani reminds Mulutin that no one knows him as intimately as her because he projected all the women he loved into her.

Throughout the movie, we see Nimani play the reflector for Milutin, a mirror for what is happening inside of him. Nimani teaches Milutin a lesson about love and connection. Milutin thought it would be enough just to have the beautiful Nimani satisfy him sexually. However, it turns out that was far from fulfilling.^[8]

2 Automata

It is 2044, and climate change has decreased the earth’s population by 99.7%. With only 21 million people in the world, a robot company named ROC Corporation created the Automata Pilgrim 7000 to help rebuild the world once again.

Jacq Vaucan—an insurance investigator for ROC, hunts for answers but quickly realizes death is inevitable. When Jacq tells 7000 they were supposed to help humans survive, 7000 responds, “surviving is not relevant, living is. We want to live.” Well, there you go! This movie demonstrates to us the scientific concept called singularity, the time when the abilities of a computer overtake the abilities of the human brain.^[9]

1 BlinkyTM

This 2011 short film warns us to be careful how we treat others, among other things. Alex receives a gift from his parents, a robot named Blinky programmed to do whatever Alex wants. At first, Blinky makes Alex very happy, and all seems well until we realize Alex’s parents cannot stop arguing. As the relationship between Alex’s parents gets worse, Alex begins to mistreat Blinky and even tries to get rid of him by playing a very long game of hide-and-go-seek.

When Alex is scolded by his mother, he blows up on Blinky, causing him to have a technical malfunction. Alex reboots Blinky, but when he does, something odd happens. When Alex breaks a glass, he blames it on Blinky, who heads to the kitchen. After counting from ten to zero, Blinky grabs an electric knife. “Ready or not, here I come,” says Blinky.

Later that evening, we see Alex’s parents at the dinner table, but Alex is not there. When asked about Alex, Blinky says, “You’re eating him.” There are many ways to interpret this, but sure enough, there is a lesson. But perhaps that’s best left for your own interpretation.^[10]

One’s place of residence is generally fairly predictable. You might live in a house or an apartment in most parts of the Western world. Some people live in trailers, some in tents, and there are people who live in caves and trees out there as well. Still, you can count most of the places you’d consider an actual home on your fingers. But then there are a few people who opted to think outside the box and live in some much more unexpected places.

10. A Teen Lived at AOL Headquarters For Months 

We’re going to go back in time to a distant place called AOL. Remember them? Once upon a time, America Online was a big deal on the internet and they sent unwanted CDs to everyone all the time. They also had a big, fancy headquarters in Palo Alto, California. Since tech companies like to cram their offices full of amenities, this place had a gym, a laundromat, sofas, and a cafeteria. Basically, everything you need to survive in a fairly comfortable manner if you chose to live in the building, which is what Eric Simons did. 

Simons was 19 when he shacked up at AOL for two entire months in 2011. He ate their food, slept on couches, and spent his days using their resources to start his own company since he wasn’t actually an employee there. Instead, he had enrolled in something called a “start-up incubator program” that was based in the building and allowed him access. When the program ended, he just stuck around.

He managed to cut his living expenses for one month down to $30, and that was just because he went out to get McDonald’s at some point after getting sick of AOL’s cereal and ramen. It was only after a security guard caught him by chance that his living situation came to an end.

9. A Man Trying to Avoid Covid Lived at O’Hare for 3 Months

The Covid-19 pandemic shook up the living conditions of a lot of people. Shelter in place, work from home, you name it, people did it. Tons of us got to be a lot more familiar with our own homes as a result of that fear of going out into the world. But it didn’t exactly work that way for Aditya Singh. At the height of the pandemic, Singh was desperately afraid of catching the virus, so he stayed right where he was. But he was at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. 

For three months Singh managed to stay relatively hidden away in a restricted part of the airport. He had arrived on a flight in October 2020 and wasn’t caught until midway through January.

He was moving around with a purloined security badge and, with the aid of a face mask, presumably no one noticed that he wasn’t the man he was claiming to be. Other passengers gave him food while he was there.

Singh had no criminal record and had been in America getting a master’s degree. He was meant to be returning to India when he was caught. In October 2021, a judge found him not guilty of any felony charges since he was only in the secure area because he had gotten off his original flight there, and had not really violated any rules beyond using an ID that wasn’t his thanks to his fear of leaving. 

8. A Man Lived in his Office for 500 Days

You know that old saying “you should work to live, not live to work?” Somehow, a man known only as Terry K. got that mixed up in his head and ended up living at work. And he did it for 500 days. 

Writing his story for Salon, the man detailed how he rented out his actual Venice Beach apartment and then took up residence under his desk in an office building. He’d wake up before anyone arrived, then go to the gym and shower. Sometimes he’d even come back a little late to make it look like he’d genuinely been commuting. 

Why would anyone do such a thing? Money. Terry was working 60 hours a week and never at his apartment, anyway. He had student loans and hospital bills and was getting nowhere. So he saved money by renting his place out and just living in his cubicle. 

With average rent in the area at the time costing $1,300 a month, he was able to save $20,000. Also, hundreds of hours of commuting time. So why did he stop? The company went under and he was laid off. 

7. A Squatter Lived in a Church Attic for 3 Years

In horror movies, it’s not unheard of for something or someone to be creeping around in an attic and it’s entirely believable when you think about it. Most people rarely go to their attic. There’s often easy access to it and potentially a lot of furnishings and other items to keep you busy. That’s potentially part of the reason William Baker took up residence in the attic of St. Ann Roman Catholic Church in Arlington, Virginia. And because it was a church attic and not the attic of a home, it was even less well-trafficked, which allowed Baker to live there for a remarkable three years.

Baker was homeless and had managed to set up a nice space for himself with clothes, a guitar and a cooler that he stocked with food he stole from the church. In fact, it seemed like missing food was the only clue anyone had that something was wrong for those three years, but it certainly wasn’t enough to convince anyone that they had a squatter. 

Baker accessed the attic through ceiling tiles. He’d use a ladder to climb up, then pull the ladder up after so no one knew. It wasn’t until a repairman visited at an unexpected hour and heard noises upstairs that anyone was clued in. Police were called and Baker was charged with trespassing.

6. The People Living in Walmarts 

Despite their history of questionable business practices, there’s no denying that Walmart is a big deal in the retail world. They made over $141 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2022. It’s no wonder since the stores sell basically everything you could ever need. For that reason, maybe it’s no surprise that more than one person has tried to live in one. 

In 2013, a 14-year-old took up residence in a Texas Walmart, though he only managed to stay there for a few days. He built hiding places behind things like strollers and stacks of toilet paper so people in the store couldn’t see him when they closed up shop for the night. He also changed his clothes day to day to avoid looking suspicious. 

As you might expect, he was eating food taken from the grocery section of the story and, in a touch of gross ingenuity, he chose to wear diapers so no one would catch him going to the bathroom.

Elsewhere in Texas a man was found living in Walmart’s ducts, though no word was given on how long he’d been there. Suffice it to say that a Texas Walmart must be a very homey place. 

5. A Woman Secretly Lived in a Stranger’s Closet for a Year

What do you have in your closet right now? Apparently, a lot of people have hundreds of dollars worth of unworn clothing in there. Maybe you have some shoes or sentimental items as well. But can you say with 100% certainty that you do not have a stranger living in there? And before you say “of course,” know that at least one person has found a stranger living in their closet in the past.

In 2008, a woman in Japan was arrested after living for an entire year in a stranger’s closet. He was suspicious when food began to go missing, so he installed some security cameras to monitor his place while he was out. 

Police came and found all the doors and windows locked, then searched around and found her curled up on a shelf in the closet. She said she sneaked in a year earlier when he’d left the place unlocked and had been there ever since.

4. A Student Spent a Year Living in a Yale Ventilation Shaft

Let’s go way back to 1964 for this one when it seems like student housing was as much of a hassle as it is today. In this case, a student at Yale had been living for seven whole months in a ventilation shaft at the school. 

Allan Kornfeld used brick-patterned wallpaper to hide his entrance. He kept warm in the winter with an electric blanket. His living space was an air shaft that supplied ventilation to squash courts and was only four feet wide, but 40 feet long with a 10 foot ceiling.

He ate on campus because his tuition covered meals; it just didn’t cover housing, and he didn’t have enough to rent a place on his own. He had an off campus mailing address and had friends take any phone calls for him. 

3. A Redditor posted a Tutorial on Living in a Storage Unit

Storage units have been around for ages but got a big boost in the early 2010s with shows like Storage Wars. Suddenly, they were a big deal and for more than just finding treasures. People started using them as homes. 

Back in 2017, a Reddit user known as 007craft detailed how he made a storage unit a home for a couple of months. The monthly fee was just $200, so it was clearly better than rent and it already had all of his possessions in it.

He had a bed, a TV, toaster oven and hot plate, as well as a fridge. He ran power cables and even an antenna to boost his cell signal, then just had to worry about keeping it down so no one would notice him.

One version of the story has the man moving out on his own once he found a real apartment, but U-Haul says they actually caught him and kicked him out. 

2. A Man Lived in Veterans Stadium for 3 Years

Once upon a time, Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia was one of the most famous pro sports stadiums in America. It had been home to both the Philadelphia Phillies and the Philadelphia Eagles. According to Tom Garvey, it was also home to him. 

Garvey was a parking lot supervisor at the stadium in 1979. Unmarried and with few responsibilities beyond word, he started sleeping in an unused concession stand and converted it into an apartment in which he lived for about three years. Since he was always at work anyway, no one questioned why he stuck around so much.

He made him home on the 200 level by Gate D. If anyone opened the door, all they would see were boxes. But if you walked down a passageway to his 60 foot by 30 foot place upholstered in Astroturf, you’d find a fridge, bed, sink, stereo and more amenities that made it liveable. 

1. A Man Built a Secret Room in a Rhode Island Mall

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSd8oLUKjXU

Taking the record for the longest run in a place where no one should be able to live is Michael Townsend, who racked up four years inside a shopping mall, though he shared duties with several friends. 

The actual process is as fascinating as it is unbelievable. They built an actual room with cinder-block walls and a utility door for access. Inside, they made a 750-square foot apartment. It even had a china cabinet. The only thing missing was running water since they couldn’t install plumbing, but since it was in a mall, they were never far from a bathroom.

The space they used had basically been a design flaw. The floor plan of the mall used all the surrounding space, so the apartment was built in empty space.The crew had plans to install wood floors and build a second bedroom, among others, but mall security figured it out and busted them.

Townsend was charged with trespassing, and the mall banned him for life.