Instagram can be a sordid place. It may appear to be all avocado toast and #duckfaceselfies on the surface, but scrape away that digital veneer and you reveal a much dingier side to the social media platform. As well as pink-haired pre-teens and flash-in-the-pan celebrities, Instagram is home to all manner of shady characters—from violent Taser-wielding cyberbullies to militant terrorists. And while the site claims to be “simple, fun & creative”, the darker fringes of Instagram are having a huge impact on its users. A recent study by the Mental Health Foundation found that almost half of young adults have suffered some anxiety linked to the pressures of social media.

SEE ALSO: 10 Creepy Things Social Media Does To Control Your Mind

9 The Human Skull Market

In recent years, a niche circle of people has emerged online with a passion for collecting human remains. The macabre hobby has gained something of a cult following on social media. Since 2016, when eBay banned users from selling human body parts, the avid network of traders has used Instagram to buy and sell human skulls. Henry Scragg, one of the kingpins of the Instagram skull market, boasts over 33,000 followers. In the past, artifacts have been known to retail for the best part of $20,000 (£16,000).

Instagram is home to a number of illegal black markets—weapons, stolen artifacts, and rare animals to name a few. But unlike those illicit trades, the people who sell human remains online aren’t actually violating any laws. For the most part, bones are covered by the “no property rule” and therefore have no legal provenance. While some US states do technically place legal restrictions on the skull market, traders have found that in the majority of cases these laws go unenforced.

The collectors claim to be part of a respectful, if rather morbid, community; one that is often misunderstood by outsiders. However some historians are concerned by the “dark echoes of colonialism” that haunt this supposedly eccentric pastime. Some traders have received further criticism from historians and archaeologists for falsely decorating their skulls to resemble “tribal” aesthetics. ^[1]

8 Baby Adoption Scammers

An increasing number of couples in the US are turning to Instagram to adopt a baby. Long waiting lists are driving wannabe parents away from traditional agencies and onto social media. And while many do find success, others end up as victims of a cruel and emotionally traumatic scam.

Imposters pose as pregnant women to convince couples that they are being offered their babies, then disappear leaving the aspiring parents devastated. In some cases the scammers have strung couples along for months, letting them believe they are on the cusp of adopting a gorgeous newborn baby, only to pull the rug from underneath them at the last minute.

Earlier this year, the BBC reported on Samantha and Dave Stewart from Michigan who were left in tears after the pregnant teenager they were hoping to adopt from turned out to be a fake account. “They don’t ask for money,” Samantha posted on Instagram shortly after the supposed mother cut off communication. “They don’t ask for material things like a lot of scams do. They want your time, emotional investment and quite frankly someone to talk to while promising you what you are desperate to find: your future child.”

And there lies one of the issues in clamping down on this scam. Because the victims are defrauded emotionally, but not financially, most US states do not have the legal power to hold the scammers to justice.^[2]

7 Exploitation of Grief

On Saturday July 13 2019, Bianca Devins, aged seventeen, traveled hundreds of miles from her home in New York to attend a concert with 21-year-old Brandon Clark. She never returned home. In the early hours of Sunday morning, Devins was killed by a knife to the throat.

Soon afterwards, images of Devins’ bloodied corpse began to emerge online, which were then shared across Instagram. The images, which came from Clark’s account, included a photograph of her torso with the caption, “I’m sorry Bianca.” Another was a selfie that Clark had taken lying on a tarpaulin that was allegedly covering Devins’ body.

It took the site several hours to remove the disturbing images, by which point they had been shared hundreds of times. Some social media users capitalized on the events in hope of gaining more followers and increasing their popularity, posting comments like, “FOLLOW ME!!!& DM !! me for full video and picture”. Clark, who was subsequently charged with Devins’ murder, saw his social media following surge. According to one BBC report, some twisted individuals even edited images of Devins’ body into vile memes. Users who attempted to flag up the distressing images to Instagram’s moderators claim their reports were rejected.

In the aftermath, Instagram was heavily criticized for not addressing the images sooner and allowing users to exploit Devins’ traumatic death for personal gain. The response to Devins’ murder—which happened months after Australian gunman Brenton Tarrant live-streamed the notorious Christchurch mosque shootings on Facebook—poses a number of questions about the ethics of moderation of social media.^[3]

6 Terrorist Propaganda

Instagram is the latest social media site to be targeted by terrorist propaganda. In 2017, The Times reported that more than 50,000 accounts had some links to ISIL militants. Supporters of Islamic State are able to spread their extremist message to a wide audience through posts and stories on the image-sharing site.

With traditional sites like Facebook and YouTube cracking down on terrorist content, organizations are migrating onto the newer platforms for publicity. As well as Instagram, militants in Syria are said to be using Snapchat to communicate amongst themselves and search for new recruits.

The content of their online propaganda tends to vary. At times it includes videos of public executions or images decapitated “kafirs”, a term that refers to non-believers. But besides the violent imagery, Islamic State also broadcast scenes of locals completing regular upkeep such as repairing roads and harvesting crops. As Neil Doyle, a journalist specializing in Islamic terrorist, told reporters, ISIS is attempting to “paint areas it controls as paradise on earth.”^[4]

5 Unattainable Weight Loss Claims

Social media is notorious for wreaking havoc with users’ body image. There is a widely documented history of people, especially young women, feeling ashamed and disgusted when they compare their own bodies to images of highly airbrushed models. A recent study by the Mental Health Foundation revealed that one in eight adults has thought about taking their own life for reasons linked to body image anxiety.

Now a new market has emerged on Instagram to profit from users’ insecurity and negative body image. Exploitative companies have popped up on the platform peddling supposedly “miraculous” weight loss products, often with celebrity endorsements. Famous faces like the Kardashians and Cardi B have come under fire from body positivity campaigners for promoting detox teas and slimming lollipops. Several of these products are known to have a damaging impact on people’s mental and physical health.

Instagram is taking some steps to clamp down on these unscrupulous businesses. But, with almost half of young adults reporting some body anxiety due to social media, the advocates of body positivity have definitely got their work cut out.^[5]

4 Black Market Verification Ticks

Instagram’s blue tick is one of the internet’s biggest status symbols. The verification check is bestowed upon an elite club of celebrities, influencers and brands. In a sense it is Instagram’s seal of approval, a sign of certification and credibility. Blue-ticked accounts are given pride of place at the top of searches and are able to access exclusive features on the platform.

The hunger for social media credibility has spawned an entire underground market centered on the blue tick. Although Instagram insists that the symbol is not for sale, the digital black market is described as an “open secret” among users desperate for attention online. A number of shady sources claim to be able to provide one for a fee. That tiny blue icon can retail for as much as $15,000 (£12,000).

It may seem like a ridiculous thing to spend money on, but the blue tick is a highly coveted symbol, and a growing number of people have good reason to want one. Influencers—people who promote brands and products to their vast audience of followers—rely on verification to secure sponsorship deals. Brands are more likely to favor blue-ticked accounts, and these sponsorship deals can correspond to huge money. A study by Mediakix suggests that advertisers are shelling out over $1 billion each year on Instagram influencers. That little blue checkmark is a giant boost up the social media pecking order.^[6]

3 Toxic Siberian Lake

Nestled in the rolling hills of Siberia, an exquisite turquoise lake seems like an idyllic setting for a selfie. Over the summer, swarms of socialites have flocked to the city of Novosibirsk to be photographed against the backdrop of the glimmering waters. Nicknamed the “Maldives of Novosibirsk”, the lake has become such an attraction that it now has its own Instagram page, complete with photos of people kitted out in beachwear, practicing yoga and generally lapping up the view.

But all is not as it seems. Rather than an aquamarine paradise, the lake is actually a toxic dump. What appears to be a freshwater pool is in fact a waste site filled with refuse from a nearby power station. Years of depositing waste ash has made the water highly alkaline, and that alluring shade of blue is actually caused by calcium salts and metal oxides. At the base, the slurry is said to be so thick that it is near impossible to free yourself. And who knows what chemicals linger in the air?^[7]

2 Cyberbullying Gets Out of Hand

Cyberbullying is never pleasant. But for one Australian teenager, the digital torment spiraled wildly out of control.

It all began when 19-year-old Yasemin Ercan was called a “dog” on Instagram by a former schoolmate, aged 18. Ercan was livid. To extract her revenge, she arranged to meet up with her old school friend at a shopping centre near Melbourne. But when the 18-year-old pulled into the carpark, Ercan and another man climbed into her vehicle armed with a Taser. The victim was forced to drive around for 20 minutes, until Ercan and her accomplice decided to stop the car and get out. Ercan then slapped and spat on the teenager, a court heard, before attacking her with the Taser.

She had now been charged with various offences including kidnapping and intentionally causing injury. Ercan is also facing trial for threatening to inflict serious injury, after messaging her ex-schoolmate that she would stab her in the throat, shoot her in the head, and “smash the f——” out of her. Ercan was banned from all social media platforms following her arrest in 2018.^[8]

1 Blackfishing

Over the past few years, a new trend has emerged on social media. Users, particularly young white women, are altering their appearance to make themselves look black or mixed race. Users have been known to take melanin hormones, inject their lips and even pay for nose jobs to resemble a black woman.

Nineteen-year-old model Emma Hallberg was one of the first to be taken to task for imitating black women. Although the social media star was born in Sweden, she presents herself online as having dark skin, thick lips and frizzy permed hair. And while she has never overtly claimed to be black, she has never denied it either.

Accounts like Hallberg’s with an avid following are often sponsored to promote brands and products. Black rights activists claim this creates a racist digital culture in which influencers are able to profit by stealing from a culture that they do not naturally belong to.

This mimicking of black identity has even been given a more extreme name by the Black Twitter community: ‘niggerfishing’. The term comes from ‘catfish’, a word for someone who takes on a deceptive alter ego online, usually to dupe others into relationships.^[9]

A person blackfishing should not be confused with a trans-black person such as Rachel Dolezal, the difference being that a trans-black is one who believes he or she is the racial form of a transgender: a black woman or man born in a white body.

Birthdays are often a highlight of the year—a day reserved for joy, laughter, and celebration with those closest to us. Whether it’s a themed party for a child that’s filled with colorful balloons, decorations, and games or a simple adult gathering of friends and family, birthday parties are a way to create special memories, celebrate life, and bring people together. Blowing out candles, opening presents, and being surrounded by loved ones not only adds to the magic of the occasion but also reminds us that sometimes, it’s the simple joy of being celebrated that makes all the difference.

While most parties end in smiles, piles of wrapping paper, and cake crumbs left behind, unfortunately, sometimes even the best-laid plans can go awry. However, rather than a minor hiccup, cake mishap, or forgotten present, these celebrations went from joyous to jaw-dropping in an instant. They turned what should have been a festive event into something much more unforgettable.

In this list, we’ll explore ten stories of birthday parties that took an absolutely bizarre walk on the wild side, where celebrations were overshadowed by chaos, wild animal encounters, freak accidents, and, in some cases, outrageous human behavior. These stories prove that even the most carefully planned parties can take a surprising and untamed twist.

Related: 10 Milestone Moments That Turned into Tragedy

10 Birthday Bash Turns into Gator Dash

On August 14, 2021, Donnie Wiseman, his wife Theresa, and his six-year-old stepson attended a five-year-old’s birthday party at Scales and Tails in West Valley, Utah. Wiseman initially contemplated not attending the party, given that working long hours at his construction job had left him feeling worn out. However, as “a reptile enthusiast,” Wiseman decided to go at the last minute and was especially looking forward to seeing the petting zoo’s 11-year-old, 8.5-foot long (2.5 meters), 150-pound (68 kg) alligator named “Darth Gator.” Little did Wiseman know just how close he would be to the reptile or that he would become part of the show.

As the gator’s handler, Lindsay Bull, opened the door to feed the gator, he “got a little extra spunky.” When Darth Gator then tried to climb onto the platform in his enclosure, Bull gave the reptile a command to back up. However, the alligator did not obey and, instead, latched onto Bull’s hand.

Realizing that the alligator was about to do the infamous “death roll”—a maneuver where alligators spin rapidly to subdue their prey—Bull allowed herself to be pulled into the pool in an attempt to avoid any further injury or losing her arm. Within seconds, Wiseman began shouting for help, but when no one came, he decided to take matters into his own hands.

Wiseman leaped into the enclosure, wrestled the alligator with his bare hands, and jumped onto the gator’s back, pinning him down. As Wiseman used all of his 180-pound (81 kg) body weight to press down on the alligator, Bull instructed Wiseman to push his fists into the top of Darth Gator’s snout. Doing this shifted the power dynamic, taking the alligator from a position as a predator to that of prey. The pair made small talk and remained calm. After close to a minute, the alligator finally let go of Bull’s hand.

From there, another guest, Todd Christopher, was able to grab Bull under her arms and pull her out of the enclosure, but Wiseman was still inside, straddling the gator. However, thanks to Bull’s instruction, Wiseman was then able to climb off the alligator’s back and get away safely. Christopher’s wife, Amy, who has a nursing background, was able to treat Bull’s wounds until first responders arrived.

Bull was taken to a local hospital with injuries to her hand that required surgery. Despite the terrifying encounter, which was all captured on video by Wiseman’s wife, Bull was expected to make a full recovery, and she said she “can’t wait to get back to work.”^[1]

9 Party Pooper… Literally!

A 16th birthday is often seen as a milestone and, as such, celebrated with grandeur. However, whether it’s a “sweet sixteen” filled with fancy dresses and an elaborate cake or a more laid-back gathering of close friends, turning sixteen marks a coming-of-age moment—one that represents freedom, new beginnings, and the much-anticipated driver’s license. It’s also a day many teenagers dream about as the celebration allows them to be the center of attention and make memories that will last a lifetime.

However, for one unlucky birthday girl, the memories of her 16th birthday came in a form that no one could have predicted or wanted.

On May 17, 2015, Jacinda Cambray was enjoying her “sweet sixteen” party with around 40 guests at her home in Levittown, Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, what started as a perfectly planned backyard pool party quickly descended into chaos when “something brown started falling from the sky.” Rather than confetti raining down on the celebration, it was something much, much worse—feces! Yes, you read that right, feces!

Thankfully, the guests had finished with the cake, and it had been taken back inside before the unsanitary surprise. A specially erected canopy took most of the impact, sparing most of the partygoers from being blasted with human excrement. It was then that a relative, Kristie Rogy, used a smartphone app to discover that five planes were flying overhead at the time of the incident.

The family went on to file a complaint with the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA stated that the incident was being investigated as all planes are legally required to dispose of waste at the airport.

Unfortunately for Cambray, this birthday party will surely be memorable for all the wrong reasons, and she will certainly never forget the day an airplane took her party to a whole new level of crappy.^[2]

8 Bear Crashes Birthday Picnic and Enjoys Mexican Feast

On September 25, 2023, Silvia Macías of Mexico City, her son Santiago, and family friends Nathalia Fuentes and Angela Chapa visited the Chinique Ecological Park in San Pedro Garza García to celebrate Santiago’s 15th birthday. However, shortly after the group sat down to eat, a black bear decided to join the party and jumped onto their picnic table, devouring the tacos, enchiladas, french fries, and salsa meant for Santiago’s birthday dinner.

While they certainly never expected the four-legged intruder to crash their party, thankfully, Macías and Chapa had previously devised a plan should they come across a bear, given that Santiago, who has Down syndrome, is “very afraid of animals.” The plan was to “play a game” in which they would cover Santiago’s eyes and act like statues, and that’s exactly what they did.

Sitting just inches away from the bear’s mouth, Macías covered Santiago’s eyes, held him close to her chest, and remained stoic, keeping her eyes downward to avoid anything the bear might consider a challenge.

It was then that Chapa, who was recording the terrifying encounter, noticed a plate of enchiladas that the bear had not eaten. Chapa was able to get the bear’s attention by showing it the food and then tossing the container far away from the table. Just as Chapa expected, the bear followed the food, and she was able to stand in front of it, giving Macías and Santiago an opportunity to slowly back away.

The bear eventually went on its merry way. Still, the family did not let the scary encounter ruin or end their celebration. Santiago got his birthday tacos replaced, and everything ended well.^[3]

7 Cake and Chaos: Four-Year-Old’s Party Ruined in Police Fiasco

Stephanie Bures and her family were celebrating her four-year-old son T.J.’s birthday in their basement apartment in Chicago, Illinois, on February 10, 2019. However, as the children played a game of “Duck, Duck, Goose,” chaos descended on the party.

It was then that approximately 17 Chicago police officers, all dressed in plain clothes, entered the apartment with their weapons drawn and shouted, “Get your (expletive) hands up! We are doing an (expletive) raid.” Naturally in shock at the situation, an adult relative, Kiqiana Jackson, proceeded to ask the group who they were and why they were there and also requested to see a search warrant. Despite the fact that no one disobeyed orders, Jackson and several other adults were handcuffed in front of the children and taken outside into the cold.

To make matters worse, the family stated that the officers ransacked the home and took a door off its hinges, pried open wall panels, flipped mattresses, threw a big-screen TV to the floor, poured vodka over clothes, poured peroxide on T.J.’s presents, and smashed his cake. They also stated that the police officers “screamed profanity and insults,” “unlawfully questioned” T.J. and his seven-year-old sister Samari, and “joked and laughed throughout the raid.” However, no arrests were made.

So, what exactly was the reason for such a barbaric raid? Unfortunately, the family didn’t discover the reason or the huge mistake that was made until just before the officers left, when they placed a copy of the search warrant on the dining room table. The warrant was for a 46-year-old man who was allegedly dealing ecstasy. Not only did the family have no connection to the suspect, but the man in question had not lived in the apartment building for more than 5 years!

The family went on to file a federal lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department and the officers involved. On September 3, 2020, the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee agreed to a $350,000 settlement in the case.^[4]

6 Birthday Dinner Ends in Flames

Samantha Myers of Greene County, Arkansas, said that her 26th birthday began on a positive note—her husband and children woke her up with a “happy birthday” greeting, the family went to church, and they later surprised her with a card and some candy. However, Myers’s husband, children, and in-laws had one more surprise for the birthday girl—a family dinner at Kimono Japanese Steakhouse in Paragould, Arkansas.

Unfortunately, the surprise birthday dinner on February 9, 2020, came to a fiery finish and ended with a trip to the hospital.

Once at the restaurant, the family sat around a Hibachi grill and enjoyed the experience of watching the chef prepare their meal. Sadly, the celebration then took a tragic turn. Myers stated that after the chef finished cooking their food, he made a heart shape on the grill and lit it on fire. The chef then went to draw a second heart—while the first heart was still on fire—but it was then that a “fireball burst off the grill” and “exploded,” setting both Myers and the chef on fire.

In a panic and screaming in pain, Myers ran to the bathroom to get water and put out the fire. Myers’s mother-in-law ran after her in an attempt to help and also repeatedly asked one of the employees if they had any burn cream. However, Myers claimed that the restaurant did nothing to help at the time, so the two women left the restaurant to go to the hospital. Myers, however, insisted that the rest of the family stay behind and finish their meal.

Myers sustained first- and second-degree burns to her face, neck, and chest, an infection in both eyes, and singed eyebrows and eyelashes. The details of the chef’s injuries were unknown.

While they were not charged for the meal and the restaurant offered to pay her medical bills, Myers stated that she intended to sue Kimono.^[5]

5 Elderly Woman’s Birthday Dinner Party Interrupted by Masked Intruders

Wendy Melvin was hosting a small dinner party at her home in Squamish, British Columbia, to celebrate her mother’s 77th birthday on December 17, 2022. However, just as the partygoers were finishing the cake, two uninvited, masked guests decided to crash the party—raccoons.

Despite the unexpected intrusion, thankfully, the two raccoons were quite polite and caused no trouble. Melvin stated, “They tried out every chair, posed for many photos, and then curled up in two furry balls and fell asleep.”^[6]

4 Birthday Celebration Turns Brutal with a Nose-Biting Twist

On April 5, 2019, Shane Groves went to the Progressive Club—a private members’ club—in Alexandra Terrace, Sutton-in-Ashfield, to celebrate his birthday. However, during the party, Groves began verbally abusing his brother’s friend, hurling homophobic comments.

When Groves’s brother stepped in and tried to intervene between the men, Groves responded by throwing a chair at his brother’s friend. Unfortunately, the dispute didn’t end there. Groves later tried to headbutt his brother, but instead, “clamped” his teeth onto his brother’s nose, and the pair ended up grappling. Several people attempted to separate the siblings, but when they were pulled apart, the tip of Groves’s brother’s nose was severed, causing the appendage to “end up on the club floor.”

Groves’s brother was taken to Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, where his nose was sewn back on, but unfortunately, it did not take. Additionally, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Groves’s brother was forced to wait for the first of three reconstructive operations to try and repair the damage.

Groves pleaded guilty to grievous bodily harm, and on November 5, 2020, he was sentenced to 25 months in prison.^[7]

3 Family Birthday Party Ends in Heartbreak After Freak Accident

A family birthday party is usually a time for joy, laughter, and celebration- a chance for loved ones to come together and create cherished memories. For one family, however, a freak accident replaced the joy of celebration with shock and sorrow as they found themselves mourning the loss of a beloved child in a tragedy that no one could have foreseen.

On July 11, 2021, two-year-old Delilah Hunt was sitting on a four-wheeler, surrounded by her family, at a birthday party in Gordonville, Texas, when the unthinkable happened. Family members were in the process of moving a truck—only a few feet away from where Hunt was—but when they started the vehicle, the truck’s AC compressor plate popped off, striking the toddler in the head.

Hunt was flown to Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, Texas, in critical condition. Sadly, Hunt, who was described as “the smartest and the spunkiest little two-year-old who just loved the world,” was later taken off life support and pronounced dead on July 14, 2021.^[8]

2 Tragedy at the Adventure Center

The Kong Adventure Centre in Keswick, England, features a state-of-the-art climbing wall, bouldering room, artificial caving system, a children’s hard play area, as well as a cafe ́ and a shop that sells specialty clothing and equipment for outdoor climbing. While this seems like a perfect place for the whole family, what began as a playful adventure at the facility took a devastating turn.

On April 22, 2023, 49-year-old Carl O’Keeffe went to Kong Adventure Centre to attend a celebration for his niece’s birthday. During their time there, O’Keeffe and four children went on an indoor caving experience. Unfortunately, at some point after entering the indoor cave, O’Keeffe attempted to turn around in the narrow tunnel but wound up getting stuck inside the center’s 229-foot (70-meter) long caving network.

The staff at Kong Adventure Centre was unfortunately not able to rescue O’Keeffe, so emergency services were called. Six crews from Cumbria Fire and Rescue, police, Keswick Mountain Rescue, Cumbria Ore Mines Rescue Unit, Great North Air Ambulance, and the Northwest Ambulance Service’s Hazardous Area Response Team worked with staff and visiting climbers. After over four hours, O’Keeffe was finally freed. O’Keeffe was then rushed to the Cumberland Infirmary’s intensive care unit in Carlisle with “crush injuries.”

Sadly, on April 30, 2023, O’Keeffe passed away. O’Keeffe’s older sister, Olivia Short, stated his death was the result of multiple organ failure.^[9]

1 Drunk Driver Crashes Into Party and Kills 2, Injures 15 Guests

On April 20, 2024, a child’s birthday party was being held at the Swan Boat Club in Berlin Charter Township, Michigan. However, as guests were sitting, eating, and enjoying the festivities, a car plunged 25 feet (7.6 meters) into the building, killing four-year-old Zayn Phillips and his sister, eight-year-old Alanah Phillips, and injuring 15 others.

The driver, 66-year-old Marshella Marie Chidester, was taken to the Monroe County Jail and charged with two counts of second-degree homicide, two counts of operating while intoxicated causing death, and four counts of operating while intoxicated causing serious injury.

Chidester, who was supposed to be meeting her husband at the birthday party at the boat club, claimed that all of a sudden, she “blacked out” and had no recollection of entering the parking lot of the boat club or anything leading up to the crash. Chidester has a history of epileptic-type seizures in her legs that result in paralysis, leading her attorney to believe she had a seizure behind the wheel.

Monroe County Prosecutor Jeffrey Yorkey, however, claimed that there was no evidence that Chidester had a seizure on the day of the crash, stating that a breath test indicated “she was significantly over the legal limit of 0.08.” Yorkie also stated that Chidester was not supposed to be drinking with the medication she was taking for her seizures, but Chidester admitted to drinking that day.

Attorneys representing the victims have also filed a lawsuit against the boat club, alleging that the building hosting the party on the end of a dirt road wasn’t designed to protect the people inside. (Link 51) They are also suing Verna’s Tavern, the bar that Chidester allegedly visited before the crash.^[10]

History rewrites the past. It doesn’t just record what happened—it changes it. With a sweep of the pen, it labels whole nations of people as monsters and villains. It reduces soldiers on the other side to nothing more than mindless cogs in an evil machine.

But every army was made up of people. The soldiers who carried out every atrocity throughout history were just individuals with minds and lives of their own, people who thought they were doing the right thing. It can be hard to wrap your mind around how these people must have seen the world, but the letters they left yield clues.

10 The Last Letter Of A Japanese Kamikaze Pilot

Before the Japanese kamikazes went off to their deaths, many wrote letters home to their families. It was their last chance to say goodbye to the ones they loved.

Most tried to show their bravery in their letters home. They would try to convince their families that they were unafraid of the death that awaited them, that they thought only of the glory of the empire. But in one touching letter, a new father named Furukawa Takao let that mask of bravery fall.^[1]

“I find my thoughts returning continually to you and our soon-to-be-born child,” Furukawa wrote to his wife. “Every day, as I wait for my first, and last, attack, I reread the letter you wrote the day you made the jelly and gazed at the photos of you and Sister Etchan.”

He had already been sent out on kamikaze missions, but he hadn’t sacrificed himself yet. As he put it to his wife, he made it back “without doing anything especially heroic.” There were still more missions on the horizon, though, and the pressure to sacrifice his own life for the glory of Japan was mounting.

Furukawa didn’t want to die. “Now, more than ever, the fleetingness of human life astonishes me,” he wrote home. “Wait for me. I will return without fail. Until you’ve safely given birth to our child, I have no intention of dying easily.”

He didn’t go through with his promise. On April 21, 1945, Furukawa Takao sacrificed his own life in a kamikaze mission. World War II would end just a few months later, but his wife and son would have to face it alone.

9 A Letter From A Black Slaveowner

William Ellison is hard man to understand. He was born a slave and worked his whole life to win his freedom. When he finally won it, though, he didn’t share it. Instead, Ellison copied what his former master had done to him. He bought his own plantation and a team of 63 slaves.

It’s difficult to imagine how a man like Ellison could have justified owning slaves, but a letter he wrote to his son gives a little hint.^[2]

In the letter, he doesn’t try to justify his lifestyle. Instead, he just talks business. He updates his son on his finances and in particular the frustrating struggle he was having getting his clients to pay. Mr. Ledinham has insisted he “has not the money” right now, Mr. Turner admitted “it was his fault that the account was not paid,” and Mr. Van Buren wouldn’t pay unless a third party would certify the purchase. Beyond that, he listed a few tools he wanted his son to buy—tools his slaves would use to till the farm.

It doesn’t seem like much, but it reveals volumes about the man in his life. Even as a slaveowner, Ellison struggled to be treated as an equal. His clients did everything they could to make sure he didn’t get a dime. But Ellison didn’t complain once. With infinite patience, he would go through anything to earn his wealth.

For him, it seems, there was no point in fighting the inequality around him. What mattered was what a man could get for himself.

8 An Auschwitz Guard’s Letter To His Wife

“From the very beginning I was completely absorbed, in fact obsessed, by my work,” Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoss told his wife in a letter home in 1940. “All I thought about was my work.”

It’s a theme that carries through almost every SS officer’s account of life in the Nazi concentration camps. For them, it was work, a repeated, focused task that left them desensitized to the horrors around them.

A letter from a guard named Hugo Behncke to his wife shows just how desensitized he’d become. For him, all that mattered was making it through his long shifts without getting exhausted.^[3]

“I’ll be able to cut a few corners,” he told his wife. “I can sit down and that makes the work fairly easy.” He was relieved, too, because it was winter. “In the winter time the prisoners are disinclined to ‘travel,’ ” he told her. The word “travel” here meant “escape.” To him, a fleeing Jewish prisoner was just a pain.

He didn’t have much sympathy for his victims. “The prisoners were all sick, dirty and thin as skeletons,” he told her. “Many of them are stupid, primitive people. [ . . . ] All they were good for was to be burned in the Neuengamme crematorium.”

More than hate, though, the emotion that permeates throughout the letter is nothing more than exhaustion. “The war situation is still gloomy,” it ends. “I want to get home to you and my children.”

7 The Diary Of A Viet Cong Doctor

Dr. Dang Thuy Tram met her end in a blaze of glory and fury. The American army had reached the hospital where she treated the wounded men of the Viet Cong. They ordered her to surrender, but she refused. Dr. Dang, in a final blast of fury, grabbed an old rifle and opened fire on the troops, not stopping until they’d put a bullet through her brain.

On her body, the soldiers found a diary and, within, a disturbingly humanizing insight into the minds on the other side of the battlefield.

“How hateful it is!” she’d written in an entry reflecting on America’s presence in Vietnam. “We are all humans, but some are so cruel as to want the blood of other to water their gold tree.”

In another, she described how she’d watched a young soldier die. “A badly wounded soldier 21 years old called out my name, hoping I could help him,” she wrote. “I could not, and my tears fell as I watched him die in my useless hands.”

Her last entry might be the most tragic of all.^[4] In her last moments on Earth, she’d been overwhelmed with a crushing sense of loneliness. “Why do I want so much a mother’s hand to care for me?” she’d written. “Please come to me and hold my hand when I am so lonely, love me and give me strength to travel all the hard sections of the road ahead.”

6 A Letter Home From A Confederate Soldier

The Confederate Army had their reasons for fighting. It might seem ironic to us today, but Confederate officer and slaveowner James Griffin wrote home to his wife that he would fight “until he dies, rather than, be a Slave, Yea worse than a Slave to Yankee Masters.”

Not everyone shared Griffin’s enthusiasm, though. One of the most touching letters from the Civil War was written by a Confederate soldier named O.D. Chester to his sister in 1864.^[5] By then, many on both sides were tired of fighting.

“We go down to the edge of the river on our side and the Yankees come down on their side and talk to each other,” he told her. “The men on picket opposite are from Ohio, and seem very tired of the war.”

Though they’d been warned against it by their superiors, the Confederate and Union soldiers would sneak across the river and trade rations and supplies. And after a while, they would just sit and chew the fat.

“I asked some of them who they were going to vote for President,” Chester told his sister, recounting a riverside chat with the men he’d been hired to kill. “One of them said ‘Old Abe’ but most of them said they were for McLellan.”

It was as casual a conversation as could be. But as they talked, they all must have known that the order to fight could come at any moment. And when it did, their guns would pointed at one another once more, aimed to kill.

5 The Diary Of A Gulag Guard

“Minus 45 degrees,” Ivan Chistyakov wrote in his diary on December 10, 1935. “The train runs slowly. Only the moon, with a superior air, glides serenely through the sky. I stay indoors all day, wearing outer clothing.”

It could be any diary written on a cold winter day, but this one comes from a Soviet gulag guard.^[6] He was a man in charge of forcing political prisoners to work, part of the crushing machine of Stalin’s reign of terror.

Throughout the diary, Chistyakov never quite gives sympathy to his captives. He comes close, though. He expresses something like pity through his troubled reflections on the cold, detached man that his years in the gulag have made him.

“My heart is desolate, it alarms me,” Chistyakov wrote. “I’m beginning to have that mark on my face, the stamp of stupidity, narrowness, a kind of moronic expression.”

That was the extent of the sympathy he could offer, though. Day after day of trying to keep these people in line turned Chistyakov as cold as the world around him. After calming down a knife fight and an escape plan, Chistyakov made a quick note on what he’d done before angrily jotting down his thoughts on the prisoners:

“To hell with the lot of them!”

4 A Brit During The American Revolutionary War

“I have read somewhere, and I begin to think it possible, that a whole country as well as an individual may be struck with lunacy,” Henry Strachey wrote.^[7]

He was talking about the United States of America. To Strachey, the American War for Independence was nothing more than an act of sheer madness.

“The people are beyond nature as well as reason,” Strachey wrote about the American revolutionaries. “They might at this moment have peace and happiness, but they insist upon having their brains knocked out first.”

That peace and happiness, as far as Strachey concerned, would come from acknowledging King George as the rightful ruler of America. To the Americans, of course, that idea would have seemed disgusting—but as far as Strachey was concerned, that was just a trick the American government had pulled on them, convincing them of what he called the “imaginary oppressions” of England.

“Alas!” Strachey complained, after the Americans refused to surrender. “They still continue obstinate.”

3 Black Police Officers During South African Apartheid

While Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress were rising up and fighting for equal rights in South Africa, thousands of black-skinned men and women stood against him. They were the police officers of apartheid-era South Africa, the armed muscle of a government that was actively suppressing their own rights.

A New York Times reporter named Christopher Wren interviewed some of them in 1990, trying to understand why they would actively fight against their own rights.

“I thought in order to help society, I should become a policeman,” a police officer named Franz Nikelo told him. Crime, he said, was the biggest problem in Africa, especially in black communities. That was what South Africa needed to focus on, he felt.

They didn’t see themselves as supporters of the government, even if most of the people they were trying to protect viewed them that way. “It’s stupid to think that black policemen are collaborators,” another officer named Col. Zwane said. “I don’t think we can be a police force if only whites are policemen. We need blacks to investigate. We understand our own people better so it’s important that we be there.”

Nikelo agreed. They weren’t supporting the system, he said; they were just focused on the immediate problem. “When the rate of crime has been lessened, we can look at apartheid.”

2 An Abolitionist Who Learned To Embrace Slavery

Sarah Hicks Williams had her reservations about her new husband Benjamin. Sarah was a Northerner and a strict abolitionist, but the man who had swept her off her feet was a Southern slaveowner.

“There are but two things I know of to dislike in the man,” she wrote home. “One is his owning slaves. [ . . . ] The other is not being a professing Christian.”

To her family, it must have seemed like a terrible match. Nobody could have imagined that this young idealist would ever become a brutal slavemaster, but her letters over the next few years show a young advocate for freedom slowly declining into cruelty.^[8]

Within a few months, she was starting to write about slavery as something that wasn’t so terrible. Whether it was a few calm weeks or just the rose tint her love for her husband filmed over her eyes, she wrote home that the slaves weren’t treated too badly. “Indeed,” she said, “I think they are treated with more familiarity than many northern servants.”

The slaves clearly disagreed. Several tried to run away or to steal their freedom, and within a few years, Sarah was as brutal as any other slavemaster in the South.

“Three have run away during the last few months,” she ranted in a letter written after years on the plantation. “They are an ungrateful race, they drive me to be tight and ‘stingy’ with them.”

1 A Wounded Knee War Criminal’s Letters To His Lover

Sergeant Michael Conners was court-martialed and imprisoned for his role in the Wounded Knee Massacre. He was part of a cavalry that gunned down 300 members of the Lakota tribe, many of whom were helpless women and children. He would go down in history as a monster.

In his letters to his wife Lillie, though, Sgt. Conners spoke like nothing worse than a doting husband worried for his young bride’s heart. “Don’t be alarmed,” he promised her in a letter before the massacre, “as there are enough soldiers here to do up all the Indians here.”

When the massacre was over, he felt he’d done something great. “The men behaved very good and done splendid,” he told her, for having run down the Lakota tribe. “They made a break, and we shot them down. We followed them for miles and killed them all quick.” They would call in more troops tomorrow, he assured her. “We will exterminate all the Indians in the country.”^[9]

To the modern reader, Conners’s letters are the signed confession of a mass murderer. For Conners, though, it was nothing more than justice served.

“Some of the eastern papers give us the Devil for killing the poor Indians,” he told his wife. “I wish they were out here for a while. I think they would change their opinion.”

It’s common to expect that medications are going to cause side effects. Some are barely noticeable and some may be worse than the condition the medication treats. We understand that’s a risk associated with medicine, though. 

Sometimes people seem to forget that side effects aren’t limited to the realm of medications. Many things we eat can have their own effects, and some of them are far more surprising than you’d imagine.

10. The Scottish Health Pea Suppresses Hunger But Provides Energy

The Scottish health pea, also called bitter vetch, was a crop once cultivated in medieval times. The tuberous plant is said to taste like leather licorice and was used as an appetite suppressant before potatoes became a staple crop. Those who eat it lose the urge to eat and drink. 

There’s evidence that the plant does more than just stave off hunger. Stories tell of Highlanders using it to perform impressive feats of strength and Roman soldiers using it to sustain themselves during long battles against their enemies.

Performance enhancing abilities aside, the potential use as a diet aid has been the focus in the modern age, as a plant that can convince you to stop eating and therefore lose weight would be worth a lot of money. 

One of the big hindrances to cultivating it on a mass scale is that it’s hard to grow and harvest, but a plant that gives you extensive energy and allows you to forget your hunger is worth trying to cultivate, at least for some.

9. Miracle Berries Block the Taste of Sour

For a few years, many sites on the internet sold something called Miracle Berries as a novelty. You can still find them for sale in many retailers but they’re not as well known as they were. The fruit, also called miracle fruit or Synsepalum dulcificum, hails from West Africa and has the unique ability to alter your ability to taste other foods.

The selling point of miracle fruit is that it eliminates your ability to taste sour foods. Thus, anything you eat that is normally sour will taste sweet. This is owing to something called miraculin, a glycoprotein found in the fruit. It binds to taste receptors on your tongue and will activate in the presence of acid found in sour foods. For maybe up to an hour or two, you can perceive sour as sweet.

There were attempts in the past to use the fruit as a replacement for sweeteners so diabetics and others on restrictive diets could enjoy the taste of sweet things without adding sugar, but those efforts were stumped by the need for further testing. The plan was abandoned and now the multi-billion dollar sugar and sweetener industries continue as they ever did.

8. Salema Porgy is a Hallucinogenic Fish

There are over 32,000 kinds of fish in the world but when it comes to food, there are only a few dozen that humans regularly consume. Some fish are inedible or unpleasant tasting, some exist in small numbers, and some are impractical to catch. The ones we make use of often have fairly mild flesh and are easy to cook or prepare in ways most seafood lovers enjoy. 

There are also a small subsection of fish out there that aren’t often eaten because of what they do to people who consume them. Consider the pufferfish which is potentially toxic and, even when well prepared, can cause your lips to tingle with that hint of poison. Or the Salema porgy, which makes you trip out and hallucinate.

They call it “the fish that makes dreams” in Arabic and these little fellows can be found in the eastern waters around Europe and Africa. Some people can safely eat the fish and nothing at all happens while others may be plagued with hallucinations for up to three days.

Before you think it sounds like a great time, be aware that the hallucinations aren’t fun. One person reported hearing the screams of humans and birds while another was surrounded by giant arthropods which, to you and me, are giant centipedes.

Something called ichthyoallyeinotoxism is what sets off the hallucinations, but science is still unclear how the porgy causes it and why only some parts of the fish do it.

7. Ice Cream Can Cause Breathalyzer False Positives  

A breathalyzer test measures alcohol in your breath to determine if you’re legally fit to drive a vehicle. Some foods contain alcohol which might cause a false positive. There’s a whole cottage industry of law firms that want you to believe bread can cause a false positive since they’re hoping to snag you as a client to fight unfair tickets. The science doesn’t really back them up. 

One item that has been shown to trigger breathalyzers is ice cream. A man who had a history of drinking and driver was on trial after registering what he insisted was a false positive. He claimed he’d just had some Bubble O’Bill ice cream and the breathalyzer device on his vehicle refused to unlock for him. Prosecutors demanded proof so the man’s level was tested by police in court and registered at 0.00. He ate the ice cream and was tested again, registering a 0.18. The judge allowed the device on his car to be removed. 

6. Persimmons Can Form a Tannin Brick in Your Gut

Persimmons are bright yellow or orange fruits that taste a bit like a mild, sweet tomato. If you get one that’s not ripe it can be very bitter, however. That’s thanks to the high amount of tannins in the fruit, and that’s also the part that can be dangerous. 

Tons of different plants have tannins in them from tea to wine to spices. They’re a chemical compound that binds to certain components in plants and mostly their job is to make a food taste unpleasant. The tannins will fade as some fruits or plants age or ripens because the plant needs to be eaten to spread its seeds at that point.

Humans have developed a lot of uses for tannins, like tanning hides for instance, but in foods we rarely want them and try to wait them out whenever possible. But some foods, like persimmons, have a lot and they build up. 

If you eat a lot of persimmons, those tannins can bind with your gastric juices, cellulose and other compounds to make a phytobezoar. In simple terms, this is like a brick made of bark in your gut. 

These bricks cannot be digested, and they can become painful blockages over time. They may require surgery to remove or, a much more pleasant option, you can potentially dissolve them by drinking Coca-Cola, a treatment which doctors will prescribe before resorting to surgery.. 

5. Beef Jerky Seems to Cause Mania

Bad news if you’re a beef jerky fan, that salty, chewy meat may cause psychiatric conditions. It’s not the jerky specifically, rather the nitrates in it you may need to worry about. That means other cured meats like salami or Slim Jims could have the same effect.

In a study of over 1,000 people hospitalized for various conditions, the numbers showed those who had been in for psychiatric conditions were 3.5 more likely to have been admitted for mania than the control group if they’d eaten jerky or cured meats.

Experiments on rats have shown that, after a few weeks on a diet high in nitrates, they exhibit manic behavior. 

4. Margarine Can Make You Aggressive

The history of margarine dates back to Napoleon’s time when the French emperor wanted a cheap alternative to butter. Back then it was beef tallow churned with milk and probably got pretty ripe if it was left out in the heat for too long.

These days most margarine is made from various vegetable oils and lasts for around two to three months after it’s opened which is on par with butter, but it’s still cheaper overall. One thing they don’t advertise about margarine is how it can affect your mood.

To be specific, it’s dietary trans fatty acids that have been showed to lead to aggression. In the UK, research on the diets of prisoners showed that supplementing vitamins, minerals and especially omega-3 fatty acids showed a 37% drop in violent offenses. The research also pointed out that omega-3 fatty acids were consumed far less in modern times than decades passed, having been supplanted chiefly by omega-6 fatty acids like the kinds found in fast foods and products like margarine. 

Today, trans fats are considered “bad fats” but the reason for this is usually related to heart health and cancer rather than how they affect your mind. Artificial trans fats are banned in the US but not naturally occurring ones. 

3. Looking at Red Meat Calms Men Down

Men and their love of red meat has been a long-standing joke. Men love steak and burgers and BBQ and testosterone. It turns out there is more science behind this old stereotype than you might think. Meat has a calming effect on men.

Slightly weirder than meat calming men down is that this has nothing to do with eating. This is a side effect of just looking at meat. In what is arguably a very odd experiment, a group of men were asked to both look at an assortment of photos while listening to an actor recite lines. If the actor messed up a line, the men being studied could inflict loud noises on them meant to be a punishment. 

Results showed the men were less inclined to inflict harsh punishments while they were looking at pictures of red meat. This ended up being a counterintuitive result since the expectation was that blood and meat and death would rile up aggression. 

2. A Toxin in Some Shellfish Can Cause Amnesia

Shellfish can be dicey at the best of times. Some people have very serious shellfish allergies that can be deadly. Everyone else needs to be wary of poorly prepared or stored shellfish as it’s notorious for causing food poisoning if it hasn’t been safely handled. And we all need to worry about a potential shellfish toxic that can cause amnesia.

The particular toxin infects bivalves like clams and mussels. They can be steamed and seem safe but the steaming is not always enough to kill the toxin. Though the condition, called amnesic shellfish poisoning, doesn’t sound exceptionally dangerous at first, that’s only because it focuses on that one symptom.

A 1987 outbreak, when the toxin was first identified, led to three deaths and over 100 cases of infection. Besides memory loss, victims may suffer vomiting and diarrhea, disorientation, dizziness and muscle weakness. Some patients developed long term cognitive issues. 

The cause is not the shellfish themselves but domoic acid which can contaminate the shellfish. Domoic acid is created by diatoms, a kind of algae, and they are not killed by heat.

1. Ciguatera Toxicity From Fish Reverse Hot and Cold Sensation In Your Mind

Ciguatera toxicity is one of the most bizarre conditions you can contract after eating food and you don’t want to experience it. It comes from certain reef fish, things like grouper, eel, or red snapper, infected with microorganisms that produce ciguatoxin.

The condition causes many of the symptoms you’d expect, such as cramping and diarrhea. The thing that sets ciguatera toxicity apart from most conditions is sensation reversal. Cold things feel hot and hot things feel cold. Ice cream would feel like it’s burning your mouth while a hot coffee would be cool and refreshing. 

Aside from being confusing, there’s also danger in not being able to tell hot from cold. In addition, victims can suffer burning itch all over their bodies and the sensation that their teeth are falling out. Just to be clear, their teeth are not falling out but it feels like they are.

There are two sides to every story. The version of history we hear is the one told by the country that comes out on top, and these days, American media is so ubiquitous that the American side of the story is usually the only one we know. But for every moment in American history, there’s another side to the story we rarely get to hear.

Every enemy that the United States faced saw themselves as the heroes. They have their own versions of these stories, and they’re full of details that the American history books leave out.

10 The American Revolution Started Because American Settlers Illegally Moved Onto Native Land

All those weird taxes that brought on the American Revolution weren’t just thrown at America for no reason. From the British point of view, the Americans brought those taxes upon themselves—because they just couldn’t stop killing Native Americans.

The British army had just finished swooping in to protect its American colonists from the French and Indian War, a conflict that the British firmly believed was America’s fault.^[1] The Americans kept moving their properties into territories that legally belonged to France and were being used by Native Americans, and it caused so many fights that they ended up pulling Britain into an expensive war.

They had repeatedly warned the colonists not to move into French territories, and since the Americans had ignored them, they decided that the Americans could pay for the massive debt their war had caused by themselves. That’s where the taxes the Americans called “intolerable” began—they were supposed to be a way to make America pay back the debt they’d created.

From the British point of view, the ensuing protests across America were nothing more than a childish refusal to own up to their own actions.

None of the complaints made sense to the British. Their demands for “representation” seemed like a demand for special privileges, as several cities in parts of England didn’t have representation, either. And their demand to be allowed to expand further westward just made it seem that they hadn’t learned anything from their last mistake.

As far as the British were concerned, they weren’t stopping a revolution. They were just trying to protect a naive, headstrong colony from destroying itself.

9 The War Of 1812 Was The US Siding With Napoleon

Officially, the United States declared war on Britain in 1812 because of “impressment.” The British were kidnapping American citizens and forcing them into the British Navy, and the Americans weren’t going to stand for it anymore.

Impressment, though, didn’t really become a major issue until 1811, and as far as the British were concerned, the war had started long before then. For them, it began in 1803, when Napoleon Bonaparte tried to take over the world—and the United States helped.

The Napoleonic Wars, in many ways, started with the Louisiana Purchase. Napoleon sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States because he needed the money to fund his invasion of Europe, and the US agreed, knowing full well what he was trying to do. In fact, part of the reason Thomas Jefferson signed off on the purchase was to get Napoleon out of the New World so that they wouldn’t have to deal with his warmongering madness.

Tensions grew when the British started stopping American trade ships from making their way to France, but those vessels were on their way to supply an army that was trying to conquer Europe. The British did start capturing sailors, but they insisted that they really were runaways from the British Navy.

From the British perspective, the War of 1812 was just an “annoying sideshow” in the middle of Napoleonic Wars.^[2] They only spent seven percent of their military budget on it while dedicating the rest to fighting off Napoleon. And they weren’t going to put up a fight against the United States at all until the US started trying to take over Canadian territory.

8 The Texas Revolution Was Land Theft By Illegal Immigrants And Slavers

Texas’s battle for independence, from the American point of view, was a fight for freedom against a corrupt Mexican government. But the Mexicans saw it a little differently. As far they were concerned, the only people who wanted Texas to separate were Americans who’d never lived there and a handful of die-hard slaveowners.

Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, but Texas put up such a fight over it that they ended up having to let them keep their slaves just to stop them from revolting. Mexico had been slowly trying to introduce new anti-slavery laws to get rid of it once and for all, but Texas got furious every time.

It was actually one of the major complaints the Texans listed for the revolution. The Mexican government had offended them, they wrote, by “advising and procuring servants to quit the service of their masters.”

The other people protesting just plain weren’t from Texas. Most of the Texans protesting, they believed, were Americans who had lived there for a year or less, including the estimated 20,000 Americans who’d hopped the border into Texas illegally.^[3]

There are some facts that back up the Mexican perspective. The man who wrote the Texas Declaration of Independence had barely lived there for a year, and as soon as the war was over, Texas brought slavery back in full force.

7 The Mexican-American War Was An Unjustifiable Invasion

As far as Mexico is concerned, there’s no question who the “bad guy” was in the war they called the “US Invasion.” As one Mexican writer bluntly put it, “The Americans know that it was an unjust war.”

At the time, President James K. Polk defended his war with Mexico as a defense against a foreign attack. Mexico had attacked an American fort along the Rio Grande, which he heavily implied was part of an attempt to take back Texas.

The fort at the Rio Grande, though, was just bait. It’s generally accepted—not just in Mexico but by most historians—that Polk deliberately had the fort on the Rio Grande built on territory that Mexico believed to be their own, hoping that the Mexicans would attack it and give him an excuse to invade their country.

Polk had already been trying to convince Congress to go to war with Mexico for some time, and the Rio Grande skirmish was just an excuse. He swooped in, attacked, and claimed Mexican territory all the way to California as his own.

One Mexican newspaper, at the time, condemned Polk by saying: “The American government acted like a bandit who came upon a traveler.”^[4]

A lot of Americans agreed. “That was a thing for every right-minded American to be ashamed of,” said Nicholas Trist, the man who negotiated the treaty that forced Mexico to give up its territory to the US. “I was ashamed of it, most cordially and intensely ashamed.”

6 The Union Wasn’t Really Fighting The Civil War To Abolish Slavery

Most people will laugh at you if you try to suggest that the Confederate Army wasn’t really fighting the US Civil War so that they could keep their slaves. But even if the Confederates were fighting to keep slaves locked up, it doesn’t mean the Union was fighting to save them.

Abraham Lincoln repeatedly and explicitly said that the US Civil War wasn’t about freeing the slaves. He was fighting to keep the Union together, regardless of what happened to the slaves.

In a letter to Charles Lester, Abraham Lincoln wrote: “We didn’t go into the war to put down slavery, but to put the flag back.”^[5] And, according to Jessie Fremont, he openly complained that slavery had ever even become part of the issue, saying that they “should never have dragged the negro into the war. It is a war for a great national object and the negro has nothing to do with it.”

To some Confederates, all that talk about abolition reeked of hypocrisy. And as the war raged on, some of them were willing to give up slavery altogether if it would help them win their independence.

“Slavery is one of the principles that we started to fight for,” one Confederate paper said, “[but] if it proves an insurmountable obstacle to the achievement of our liberty and separate nationality, away with it!”

5 The Emancipation Proclamation Was Meant To Militarize Slaves

The Emancipation Proclamation is generally viewed as the great act of a heroic leader. It’s treated as the moment that slavery in the US came to an end, the moment when Lincoln proved the Confederates wrong and showed that he really was fighting for freedom and equality.

The Confederates, though, didn’t buy it. To them, the Emancipation Proclamation seemed more like a trick than a declaration of freedom.

Lincoln’s proclamation didn’t actually free slaves across America—in fact, it didn’t free anyone at all. It only affected slaves in states that were in open rebellion.^[6] The slaveowning states that were fighting on Lincoln’s side were exempt from the rule. Lincoln was issuing an order that only affected people who didn’t take orders from him in the first place.

Jefferson Davis was convinced that the whole thing was a dirty trick, meant to encourage Confederate slaves to riot. He pointed to a part of Lincoln’s order that told slaves “to abstain from violence unless in necessary self-defense.” This, he said, was a subtle call to African slaves to start killing their Confederate slaveowners.

As far as he was concerned, the Emancipation Proclamation wasn’t a declaration of freedom. It was a call for blood.

4 The Gunfight At The O.K. Corral Was A Police Massacre

The Wild West has become a story of good against evil. In our imaginations, it’s a place where lawmen stood up against lawlessness, where the good guys wore white and the bad guys wore black. And there’s no bigger symbol of the struggle to bring peace and order to the untamed frontier than Wyatt Earp and the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

According to Earp, the shoot-out at the O.K. Corral started when a gang of criminals who had been threatening him and his family were caught illegally carrying guns inside city limits. The Earp brothers told them to put their guns down, the gang opened fire, and the law was left with no choice but to put them down.

But a witness to the gunfight, Billy Allen, told the story a bit differently. The fight started, he claimed, when the Earp brothers pulled out their guns and yelled out, “You sons-of-b—ches, you have been looking for a fight!”

Here’s how the gang reacted, in his words:

Tom McLaury threw his coat open and said, “I ain’t got no arms!” He caught hold of the lapels of his coat and threw it open. William Clanton said, “I do not want to fight!” and held his hands out in front of him. [ . . . ] The firing commenced by the Earp party.^[7]

The judge ended up siding with the Earps, but if Allen was telling the truth, it wasn’t a gunfight—it was a massacre.

3 The Philippine-American War Started Because Of Blatant Racism

The United States was given control of the Philippines after the Spanish-American War of 1898 and, at the time, weren’t quite sure what to do with it. Their minds were made up, though, when the country broke out into open rebellion.

The Americans believed that they’d been misunderstood. They weren’t like the other colonial countries, they insisted. All they wanted to do was help the Philippines get ready for independence. The Philippines just didn’t give them the chance to show how nice they were.

The Filipinos, though, didn’t just start rebelling for no reason. They say that their rebellion started when American soldiers started showing up on their streets, and they got to see firsthand just how brutally racist they were.

Filipino civilians complained that the first Americans who showed up in their country called them “n—rs” and regularly robbed, raped, and beat them. That’s why they rebelled—not because they were impatient savages but because the Americans made it perfectly clear how they saw them.

There’s a lot of evidence to back up their story, too. Theodore Roosevelt publicly described the Philippines as a “black chaos of savagery and barbarism,” and one soldier stationed in the Philippines wrote home that the war would never have broken out “if the army of occupation would have treated [Filipinos] as people.”^[8]

2 The Vietnam War Was Part Of The Vietnamese Battle For Independence

In Vietnam, the war goes by a different name. They call it the “Resistance War against the American Empire to Save the Nation”—and as far they’re concerned, the good guys won.

Their version of the war is pretty simple. As one Vietnamese professor explained it: “Our country was invaded, and we had to fight to protect our country.”^[9]

The North Vietnamese viewed the war as a continuation of an ongoing battle for independence that had started with their fight against France in the 1940s. From their point of view, they were simply trying to reunite Vietnam when—for reasons they didn’t fully understand—the Americans started attacking them.

“We were really confused why the Americans tried to invade our homeland,” one resident of Vietnam has said. He recalled his first glimpse of the war: seeing a plane flying overhead and trying to figure out why little metal objects were falling out of it. It wasn’t until they crashed down on his city that he realized he was being bombed.

To the average Vietnamese person, the war was just an unprovoked attack on a country on the verge of reunification. They didn’t understand that Communism had any role in it. As one Vietnamese man has said: “People didn’t even know what Communism was.”

1 The Gulf War Was A Planned Conspiracy That Ruined Iraq

Saddam Hussein insisted that he was baited into attacking Kuwait. The whole Gulf War, as far as he was concerned, was a deliberate conspiracy to crush the Iraqi economy.

The Gulf War came on the heels of a war between Iraq and Iran. Hussein was convinced that he’d saved the Arab world from being conquered by Iran. He insisted that Kuwait and other countries send him money to help fund his fight against Iran, and now that he’d won, he was sure he would come out of the war a hero.

Instead, Kuwait wanted him to pay back the money he’d assumed was a gift. Iraq was too financially drained to pay it, but instead of trying to help, Kuwait manipulated the price of oil, the backbone of the Iraqi economy, to make their recovery impossible.^[10]

Hussein insists his intelligence officers intercepted documents showing that the US was behind everything Kuwait was doing and that it was all part of a conspiracy to economically crush Iraq. He insists that he only attacked Kuwait when he ran out of choices—and that, instead of being brutal, he ordered his men to use nonlethal approaches whenever possible.

Whether that’s true or not, like every perspective in this article, is open to debate. But whether the war was an American conspiracy or simply a fair response to Hussein’s cruelty, Iraq ended up getting economically crushed.

As one news correspondent stationed in Iraq put it: “Iraq was a land with the same level of education and healthcare as Greece. [ . . . ] Iraq may be the first country in history to have been forced, by the international community, back down the developmental ladder.”

Medicine has come a long way from the “good old days” of garlic-filled masks and astringent herbal teas. Even in relatively recent times, drugs have been used which have horrific effects on the human body. But—and this is a big but—they can and often do work. At the time, they were the best we had, despite the bizarre ways that they could kill you.

Today’s “Big Pharma” has much more stringent regulations than in the early to mid-1900s. All the items on this list are taken from Grollman and Slaughter’s 12th revision of Cushny’s Pharmacology and Therapeutics, an amazing pharmacopoeia of unusual and bizarre old-world drugs.

10 Metrazol

In 1926, F. Hildebrandt tested a new drug on animals and found two primary clinically significant effects. In high doses, it caused epileptic-like convulsions. In more reasonable doses, it merely stimulated the heart and increased respiration in cases of depressant poisoning (i.e., too much chloroform).

Guess what physicians used it for primarily?

If you said “as an antidote to poisoning,” you would be wrong. (After all, we had pure stimulants for that.) Instead, in 1934, scientist Ladislas J. Meduna pioneered its use in humans to induce convulsions to treat mental illness.

His primary interest was in schizophrenia, for which Metrazol was the first officially recognized treatment. But its use in convulsive therapy expanded to other psychiatric disorders such as depression. In general, patients were sent to a hospital, received Metrazol, and waited for its rapid action to begin. Typically, patients could be discharged within a few hours.

It was considered to be an effective treatment for those diagnosed with psychoses lasting less than three years. At the time, the side effects of this treatment were limited but potentially horrendous. They included spinal fractures, tuberculosis, and brain damage. Luckily, Metrazol quickly fell out of fashion. It was replaced by the “much more efficient” electroconvulsive therapy, which has reduced physical side effects.

Despite its horror, Metrazol is still in use today, just not in hospitals. In labs, it is used to induce convulsions or anxiety in rodents to test treatments for similar disorders. There has also been a recent spike in interest surrounding its potential use in the treatment of Down syndrome, although it wouldn’t be curative.^[1]

9 Tribromoethanol

As you might guess by the “ethanol” in the name, tribromoethanol is related to the wonder drink, alcohol. Tribromoethanol has very similar properties, but it is stronger and has a broader range of potential side effects. Cushny’s revised work states that Willstatter first synthesized it in 1923. Later, in 1926, Duisberg used it as an anesthetic.

Rectal administration is remarkably effective. Half the dose is absorbed within 10 minutes and 95 percent within 25 minutes. The effect is predictable: a deep sleep—typically lasting about two and a half hours.

However, there was just one tiny problem: It was almost impossible to alter the hypnotic state. Once you were under, no known drug at the time could wake you. For this reason, tribromoethanol was seldom used. It was just too difficult to control.

Other side effects included injury to the circulatory system, degeneration of the liver and kidneys, slowed metabolism (by around 15 percent), depleted glycogen stores, increased blood sugar levels, and even death.

These days, there are no clinically significant uses for the drug. Instead, it is used to sedate mice in laboratories.^[2]

8 Bulbocapnine

This lovely drug was known to be used in the infamous MKUltra program. Similar in structure to apomorphine, bulbocapnine is found in Corydalis cava. It is one of those exciting drugs with a different effect on different animals. In cold-blooded species, it acts in a similar way to morphine by reducing sensitivity to pain and causing sedation.

In warm-blooded animals, however, bulbocapnine induces catalepsy, which is a stiffening of muscles within a given posture that is unable to be moved. The users are frozen in place.

The more highly developed the animal (humans, apes, dogs, etc.), the more pronounced this condition becomes. Also, the higher the dose, the higher the likelihood that narcolepsy will occur. In many cases, bulbocapnine stimulates the bowels, leading to defecation, and invokes the secretion of saliva. Strangely enough, this only occurs in neutered animals.

Luckily, low doses of around 0.1 mg can be tolerated without ill effect, but bulbocapnine has almost no positive clinical uses. Instead, it is used in laboratories and wicked government torture programs. Nowadays, it is being investigated for its potential use in the treatment of Alzheimer’s disease.^[3]

7 Picrotoxin

You know a drug is going to be fun when it has “toxin” in the name. Picrotoxin is found in the Anamirta cocculus plant. The symptoms from its use were well-known but delayed.

The first signs of poisoning included vomiting, increased salivation, rapid breathing, and a slowed heart rate with palpitations. Following this was unconsciousness and then violent seizures with periods of respiratory paralysis, which only ceased a few moments later. Well, most of the time. There were instances where patients had died of asphyxia when they failed to restart breathing.

Nevertheless, picrotoxin does have its uses. Traditionally, it was used to treat barbiturate poisoning as it was found to have a stimulating effect on anesthetized patients. It is believed that picrotoxin has a competitive action against the neurotransmitters upon which barbiturates act.

Strangely enough, however, comatose patients can tolerate many times the lethal dose without ill effect. In most patients, picrotoxin is given in 1–3 mg doses at regular intervals. The lethal dose can be as low as 0.357 mg/kg, or 28 mg for an 80-kilogram (176 lb) person.

Even so, some comatose patients have been given doses as high as 300 mg within a day or two with no ill effects. In one reported case, 2.134 grams administered over eight days proved nonfatal.^[4]

6 Thymol

Derived from the herb thyme, thymol is one drug that you may recognize as it is one of the constituents in the toothpaste product Euthymol. Traditionally, however, it was used to treat tinea, ringworm, and hookworm infections in humans.

Unfortunately, it has some disturbing side effects when ingested for the treatment of ringworm. Of course, there are the usual poisoning symptoms: nausea, vomiting, and headaches. More unpleasant side effects include a deep depression, paradoxical giddiness, eventual collapse, and possibly death. As always, the key is the dosage: 1–2 grams every couple of hours, followed by a saline purge and emptying of the bowels, is often sufficient and safe.

For the previous skin conditions (tinea and ringworm), a 1:10 preparation of thymol and typically alcohol is applied directly to the skin which eventually rids the patient of the disease. This is primarily because thymol possesses antimicrobial properties. (Thus, it is used in toothpaste.)^[5]

However, of all the spices, thyme isn’t the most effective. In order of their power to kill microbes, some favorite herbs with such properties are oregano, clove, coriander, cinnamon, and then thyme. So if you’re thinking of spicing up your lunch when you have a cold, you’d be better off with a carrot and coriander soup than a cinnamon latte.

5 Isonipecaine

In the search for opioid-like painkillers, isonipecaine was developed by and introduced by Eisted and Schaumann in 1939. It is perhaps better known under its other name, pethidine, as a common painkiller used in modern maternity wards for women in labor.

Although isonipecaine is an excellent painkiller known for its mild respiratory depression (compared with morphine) and suppressed vomiting reflex, it is also known for its high rates of euphoria (up to 90 percent) and potential addiction liability when used chronically.

In general, however, its side effects profile is far superior to those of morphine and similar natural opiates. Isonipecaine has little to no effect on respiration, circulation, or metabolic processes.

It is just a shame that it is short-acting (peaking in 45 minutes and lasting around two hours) and less effective than a standard starting dose of morphine. We have also discovered today that isonipecaine is just as addictive despite earlier claims of its lower addiction liability.

It is also grossly toxic in cases of overdoses. If dosed highly multiple times in a short period (3-4 hours), isonipecaine can cause disorientation, rapid heartbeat, and severe respiratory depression.

Its use in labor is well established. However, as it has a less depressive effect on respiration than morphine or diamorphine, isonipecaine is thus comparatively safer for the infant as well as the mother.^[6]

Given that it also acts on the smooth muscles within the body, isonipecaine possesses muscle relaxant properties, which can be advantageous in reducing tension and pain during contractions. However, the drug does prolong labor and have an effect on the baby.

4 Intocostrin

Alongside the use of Metrazol in electroconvulsive therapy was another critical drug: introcostrin.

It’s worth noting that introcostrin is derived from curare, which was used by native South Americans in a poison concoction to lace the tips of their arrows when hunting. Curare stops all voluntary movement.

As it was put by Cushny et al.: “The muscles give way one after another until the animal lies helpless on the ground . . . and becomes totally paralyzed.”

Eventually, it suffocates the victim when the respiratory system ceases to function. In essence, this is a fatal form of locked-in syndrome. So yeah, deadly stuff. Fun fact: Oral ingestion is practically harmless. So you can suck the poison out of a wound and have a chance of survival.

Curare has minimal therapeutic use. It is entirely dependent on getting a dose high enough to relax muscles but not freeze breathing. This is a tricky process, so it is often avoided in favor of intocostrin.

As it was much easier to control and dose, intocostrin was chiefly used to relax patients undergoing convulsive or electroconvulsive therapy. The drug reduced the severity of the violent convulsions. This was generally thought to lower the prevalence of spinal fractures, a significant issue for such patients. Intocostrin also reduces spasms and is used as an adjunct agent for anesthesia.^[7]

3 Dinitrophenol

This is one of those drugs that seemed like a great idea at the time. However, it soon became apparent that there were significant issues with its use. Dinitrophenol was first discovered during World War I in munitions workers who died from contact with the chemical. You’d think that would be the end of the matter, but the drug was quickly investigated to see if there were any therapeutic uses.

Applied at a dose of 3–5 mg per kilogram of body weight, dinitrophenol was found to increase metabolism by 20–30 percent for days on end as a result of increased oxygen consumption. This seemed to be a tremendous potential treatment for obesity.

However, as the dose slowly crept up, it could begin to induce profuse sweating and an increase in body temperature by up to 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 °F). In toxic doses, this was followed by numerous symptoms including rapid breathing.

This latter problem and the increased oxygen requirement eventually meant that the patient’s breathing couldn’t possibly keep up with and supply the body’s oxygen needs. Hypoxia could develop along with a fever of 43 degrees Celsius (109 °F) or more—and that’s just the start. Common side effects at standard doses included a range of internal and external illnesses which could easily result in death.^[8]

Although used for a time to treat obesity, dinitrophenol quickly fell out of favor due to its highly toxic chronic effects and potential for fatal syndromes. In fact, its primary use these days is as a pesticide or as part of an explosive mixture called shellite.

2 Ergot

Ergot is an infamous fungus that grows on rye and other grasses such as wheat. This fungus is known to cause the notorious gangrenous condition of ergotism (aka “St. Anthony’s Fire”). This may be partially responsible for the witch hunts in the Middle Ages as symptoms can include psychoses and delirium.

Despite this, it did and still does have its therapeutic uses.^[9] Ergot is powerful at inducing contractions of the uterus, inducing labor, or causing abortions.

However, it is preferable that it only be used after the second stage of labor, after the placenta has been delivered, to ensure that the child does not suffocate. When applied at this stage, ergot reduces bleeding and prevents postpartum hemorrhaging.

Indeed, it was believed to be useful in all cases of internal hemorrhaging since it contracts the walls of blood vessels and reduces bleeding. However, prolonged treatment can quickly lead to the development of gangrene. Even so, ergot or a derivative may be useful in the treatment of parkinsonism.

1 Santonin

Bitter to the taste, santonin, a drug developed in the early 1800s, used to be the primary treatment for roundworms and pinworms before being replaced by safer compounds. It continued for a while longer as a treatment for whipworm. However, the drug was completely ineffective against tapeworm.

The side effects were nasty but bizarre and somewhat humorous.^[10] For example, patients reported that their vision was altered. Not in any particularly bad way, but everything took on a blue tint.

This was very brief before another visual disturbance took effect. Bright objects appeared to have illustrious yellow auras, blues turned to greens, and the previous blues would get darker and darker until they were indistinguishable from black. The more santonin that was ingested, the more vivid and intense these perceptions were.

In addition, patients experienced nausea, vomiting, and some confusion. In higher doses, convulsions occurred with the potential for asphyxia. The drug is also excreted in almost every way possible: in the feces with the worms, in the urine which is turned neon yellow, and even in sweat which takes on a yellow tinge.

The theory of how santonin kills the parasites can be summarized simply: It kills them before it kills you.

Freelance researcher and writer on a range of topics. I’m always looking for new work, so feel free to contact me at [email protected] with any ideas!

Every drug can have side effects, but we don’t usually pay attention to the labels on the bottles, probably because generally, only a minority will experience the side effects. And they’re not usually that terrible—maybe a rash or a bad bout of diarrhea.

However, some drugs have some weird and often nasty side effects, like those that can make people violent and suicidal. Sometimes, the unintended consequences are good, such as making people less racist. Here we go.

10 Propanolol Makes Users Less Racist

Propanolol is used to treat heart disease, high blood pressure, the physical effects of anxiety, and migraines. But in 2012, researchers at Oxford University found that it can also reduce racism.

Researchers made this discovery after a study revealed that the drug made users less racist. The experiment involved 36 white people who were divided into two equal groups. One group received doses of propanolol, while the others received a placebo. Then both groups were given a test used to detect subconscious racism.^[1]

Results showed the group that took propanolol was less racist than the group that took the placebo. Researchers believe this happens because propanolol works on the amygdalae, the areas of the brain that control emotional responses like fear.

9 Lariam Makes Users Murderous And Suicidal

Lariam is used to treat malaria, but it has the terrible side effect of making users murderous and suicidal. The severity of this is worsened when we realize that the drug used to be the top choice of several militaries deploying soldiers overseas.

In 2009, the US military stopped giving the drug to its special forces after it was linked to several killings and suicides. In one incident, a US soldier killed 16 people in Afghanistan after taking the drug. Today, it is considered a severe offense to administer Lariam to serving US military officers.

Several Irish soldiers have also fingered Lariam for causing a range of symptoms, including memory loss, anxiety, depression, sleeplessness, restlessness, and permanent brain injury. The terrible side effects have caused several militaries to ban Lariam. Others, like the German military, only administer it if other drugs do not work.

In 2013, the FDA had Roche add a black box warning to the drug. A black box is the most severe warning the FDA can have a manufacturer add to their product. The warning states, “Neurologic side effects can occur at any time during drug use, and can last for months to years after the drug is stopped or can be permanent.”^[2]

8 Aripiprazole Makes Users Gamble

Aripiprazole, (aka Abilify, Aristada, etc.) has been blamed for causing weird side effects like excessive shopping, gambling, sex, and eating in users. Aripiprazole is used to treat autism symptoms, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and Tourrette’s syndrome.

Most users complain of the excessive urge to gamble. Strangely, even non-gamblers started gambling after taking the drug. One former user said he gambled so hard that his parents kicked him out of their home.

A Las Vegas woman who was prescribed Abilify to treat her depression said she gambled so much that she lost her home and kids. She’d never had a gambling problem before. The woman claimed she spent between $1 and $2 million on gambling in five years. Once, she was so engrossed in gambling that she missed her flight. She rescheduled the flight and continued gambling but also missed the rescheduled flight.

Researchers believe this happens because aripiprazole affects the dopamine receptors of the brain. Dopamine is released from the brain during pleasure.^[3] The weird side effects stopped when users were taken off the drug.

7 Ambien Makes Users Cook And Eat While Sleeping

Ambien is used to treat insomnia. While the drug works at getting people to sleep, its side effects can see users getting up from their bed, cooking, and eating—all while sleeping. They remain in the kitchen or return to their bed, where they eat and doze off again.

Users have no memory of cooking or eating and will usually be surprised when they find messes in their kitchens and beds the next morning. The weird cooking habit often leads to obesity because for some unknown reasons, users tend to choose high-calorie foods.^[4]

If the sleep-cooking side effect isn’t scary enough, Ambien has also been linked to sleep-driving. However, those arrested for sleeping while driving under the influence of Ambien had taken the drug just before driving, a gross misuse of the medication. There is no recorded instance of a driver waking up from sleep to drive after taking the drug.

6 Capecitabine Can Make Users Lose Their Fingerprints

In 2009, a 62-year-old man was denied entry into the US because he was suspected of being a threat. The reason? He did not have fingerprints. As it turned out, the man lost his fingerprints because he was on capecitabine, which he took as part of his cancer treatment.

Some researchers think the loss of fingerprints could be linked to hand-foot syndrome and hand-foot skin reaction, two other side effects of the drug. Both side effects cause the fingers to swell and peel. However, this is inconclusive.

In one study, 14 percent of capecitabine users lost their fingerprints after eight weeks on the drug. However, a third of those who’d lost their fingerprints regained them within four weeks of stopping treatment.^[5]

5 Mirapex And ReQuip Cause Sudden Sleep

Mirapex and ReQuip are used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Their major side effect is sudden sleep, as in the user just dozes off without warning. Patients have reported falling asleep while driving, sometimes leading to disastrous consequences.

In one incident, a 72-year-old woman crashed her vehicle and killed a pedestrian after falling asleep at the wheel. Beforehand, her physician had prescribed some drugs, including Mirapex and Ultram, a pain reliever she took for her back pain. She noticed she often fell asleep without warning, prompting her to return to her physician.

The unnamed physician blamed her sudden sleep pattern on Ultram (instead of Mirapex) and replaced it with Vicodin. A week later, she was involved in the accident. She fell asleep at the wheel and ran over a pedestrian, causing serious brain injuries that led to death. She’d taken Mirapex, Ultram (despite the prescription change), and Sinemet with a bit of alcohol before the accident.

The sleep-related incidents linked to Mirapex and ReQuip were such that Health Canada asked the drugs’ makers, Boehringer and GlaxoSmithKline, respectively, to inform physicians to advise patients not to drive or engage in activities that require alertness because the drugs can cause sudden sleep.

Some physicians in some cities were also advised to inform local vehicle departments whenever they administered the drugs to a patient. Younger Parkinson’s patients who need to drive regularly often will not take the drugs.^[6]

4 Chantix Makes Users Violent And Suicidal

Chantix is used to help smokers quit smoking. It can also make people suicidal and violent. Users become suicidal and aggressive within two days of taking the drugs and less aggressive when they stop taking the drug. They are also more likely to become more aggressive if they’re taking other drugs with Chantix.

In one incident, a 24-year-old woman beat her boyfriend and attempted killing herself. A 21-year-old woman threatened to shoot her mother, a 42-year-old man punched another person for no reason, and a 46-year-old man thought of committing suicide.

The incidents have sometimes turned deadly, like in 2007, when a musician turned aggressive after taking the drug. He was shot and killed while trying to break into the home of his girlfriend’s neighbor.

Today, the FDA requires Chantix’s manufacturer, Pfizer, to include a warning that the drug can cause violence and suicide. Pfizer disagrees. While the drug company probably agrees that Chantix could be dangerous, they say its benefits are more important than its side effects.^[7]

3 Thalidomide Caused Severe Birth Defects

Thalidomide used to be the go-to drug for depression, insomnia, and morning sickness. It was approved in the UK in 1958 but was banned in 1961, after it was discovered to cause deformities in babies, especially in the limbs.

Within three years, thousands of women who took thalidomide during pregnancy birthed over 10,000 children with shortened or even absent limbs. Its manufacturer, Distillers, quickly found itself in trouble and was forced to pay millions of pounds in settlement. This includes the £200 million it is still paying to 455 limbless children affected by the drug. Payment will be completed in 2037.^[8]

While children in Canada, Europe, and the Middle East suffered from the effects of the drug, American children were less affected because the drug was never approved for widespread use in the United States. This was because of Dr. Frances Oldham Kelsey of the FDA, who insisted that the William S. Merrell Company of Cincinnati (which was trying to get the drug approved in the US) provide more information about thalidomide.

The company could not provide more information and was so distraught with the refusal that they ringed Dr. Kelsey’s supervisors and told them she was a “petty bureaucrat.” By 1961, the effects of the drugs were already clear.

Dr. Kelsey received a medal for service to humanity from Congress and the highest federal civilian service award from President Kennedy. Decades later, she received the Order of Canada from the Canadian government. Congress also passed laws to ensure that drugs were safe before they could be approved for sale in the US.

2 Viagra Can Cause Prolonged Erection

Viagra is used to treat erectile dysfunction. So it should be no surprise that its side effects include priapism: prolonged erection.

Normally, the penis becomes erect because of blood flowing into the spongy tissue inside. The blood leaves after ejaculation. However, in rare instances, something stops blood from leaving the penis, causing priapism.

Priapism affects one in every 1,000 Viagra users and is more common among leukemia and sickle cell anemia patients. It is also more likely in people who’ve been administered Caverject, an injection used to treat erectile dysfunction. Because users may find it difficult to differentiate between a regular erection and an adverse reaction to Vigara, doctors categorize any erection that lasts for over four hours after taking Viagra as reason to seek medical attention.^[9]

1 A Number Of Drugs Can Make Users Blind

One of the worst drug side effects might be Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS). Stevens-Johnson syndrome causes the top layer of the skin and mucous membranes to peel off. This includes in sensitive areas like the eyes and the lungs. Having the top layer of the eyes peeled off is one of the easiest ways to go blind.

In one notable incident, 13-year-old Veronica Zenkner ended up with Stevens-Johnson syndrome after taking mere ibuprofen for a headache in 2004. It started with a fever and rash that spread from her neck and face to her back, arms, and throat within days. She ended up with toxic epidermal necrolysis, the worst form of SJS.

Zenkner had to be admitted to a burn facility and placed in a coma during treatment. She later went blind in her left eye, while the right eye remains red, itchy, and light-sensitive. She has to wear sunglasses all the time.

As terrible as this side effect sounds, it is not unique to ibuprofen. In fact, SJS can be caused by almost any drug. However, it is more common among users of drugs like penicillin, sulfonamides, naproxen, ibuprofen, and Lamictal (lamotrigine). In fact, the label on Lamictal warns that Stevens-Johnson syndrome is a possible side effect.^[10]

Roughhousing leads to tears, and let’s be honest, so do pranks. The internet and early-2000s television have given us the notion that pranks are lighthearted, always silly, and even when it backfires, hilarious.

The truth is that pranks are more like that April Fools’ episode of SpongeBob SquarePants where Squidward viciously pranks SpongeBob, dragging him by a rope around the Krusty Krab where he eventually lands inside a garbage can. Anyone who likes to be pranked only allows it to take their revenge, and oh, how do they love revenge.

Wow, turn down the drama, will you? Sometimes pranks are dark for other reasons outside of torture and vindictive natures. Sometimes the backstory is sad. You know, one of those “if only you knew what happened before this” sort of thing.

That said, here are ten wholesome pranks with a dark side.

Related: 10 April Fools’ Pranks That Completely Backfired

10 The Lame Christmas Present Prank

There’s a viral prank out there. It consists of gifting young children with completely underwhelming gifts: pickled beets, an avocado, some batteries…pretty much the complete opposite of what a child gets excited about for Christmas.

You’ve probably seen it on Jimmy Kimmel Live! already—they open the gift with anticipation and then are met with confusion as they handle the object. Most kids are pretty gracious, saying thank you and acting excited and grateful. Good for them! That’s the kind of wholesome content we want to see from toddlers and young people. But…then there are the entirely unhappy kids.

Though we appreciate the mild-mannered reactions, it’s the temper tantrums we watch the videos for. How bogus is it that a prank that showcases how well children can handle disappointment is really watched to scoff at how spoiled kids in the U.S. are?

9 “Boiling Points” Driving School

Boiling Points was an MTV gem. The show revolves around the premise that people are pranked with poor service, bad manners, or an all-around irritating situation to see how quickly they’ll snap. If they manage to keep their cool long enough, they win money.

In this episode of Boiling Points, a driving instructor, Mr. Merit, puts driving students in the worst lemon you’ve ever seen (the seatbelts are made from bungee cords and tape, or maybe a piece of rope?) and proceeds to be the worst driving instructor you’ve ever seen. One girl even says, “Wait, I don’t know how to drive this yet.” to which he responds, “Well, the only way to learn how to drive a car is what?” She timidly says, “To drive it?”

It’s a pretty hilarious episode, but, in retrospect, it is fairly dangerous. Prank aside, these kids are in a questionable situation, learning poor driving habits, and probably scared out of their minds. I mean, this car is trash. And Mr. Merit makes me entirely uncomfortable, especially when he mentions that the brakes don’t work too well.

8 A Prom Date

It’s prom night, and Sarah is taking her gym teacher, Christian Gray, as her date. Except not really, since it’s just a prank. Radio host Elvis Duran and his co-hosts regularly pull phone taps. Someone calls in and arranges for one of the hosts to call up a loved one or friend (in this case, Sarah is calling her dad) and pranks them with a situation they know would piss them off.

For this one, the prank plays upon an inappropriate relationship with a minor. The gym teacher calls Sarah’s father intending to speak to her. Instead, he talks to the dad and explains that he’s taking Sarah to the prom. The dad is understandably livid. Twenty-seven-year-old Christian tries to defend himself, saying that he didn’t ask her. She asked him.

To make matters worse, Sarah chimes in and starts saying how nice he is, that she’s been poking him on Facebook, really elevating the inappropriate nature of the relationship.

Of course, they all reveal that it’s a phone tap in the end. The father laughs it off, but boy, I’d still be angry as hell.

7 Post Malone Prank

Most over Ashton, it’s Post Malone’s time to prank. Post Malone “dresses up” as a record store sales associate and does what he does best: sells records, I guess. It’s a mildly successful prank. I mean, how can you not recognize him? No one else has those tattoos. But he does get some people going. He tries to sell one of his albums by saying that it sucks and wants to get rid of it, recommends artists way out of someone’s tastes, has someone read ridiculous lyrics, and explains that he wants to be an accountant.

So why did he do this? Is it because he’s one of the nicest celebrities you could meet nowadays? Kind of, yes.

Post Malone was raising money for Folds of Honor, which provides educational scholarships to the families of fallen and disabled veterans. The prank was cute and fun, but such a serious cause brings a somber overtone to the entire thing.

6 A Prank Not Worth Dying Over

People have been pranking each other since way back when, and there are so many tales of these early pranks going horribly wrong. On April Fool’s Day, 1896, a Tennessee man decided to prank his new bride. Unfortunately, it didn’t go as planned. He thought that maybe she would appreciate the joke since she knew he was a bit of a class clown and liked to play jokes on people.

Unfortunately, the costume he dressed up in was pretty scary. After knocking on the door disguised as a homeless man, he asked her to make him a meal. She fainted and was rushed to the hospital. And then she died. He scared her to death.

5 The Oldest Fart Joke

The earliest recorded prank is a fart joke. If that’s not wholesome, then I don’t know what is. (Double checks definition of wholesome.) Roman Emperor Elagabalus ruled from 218 to 222 and was a known tyrant. However, he was also a known partier and prankster. For instance, he placed leather pillows on seats during a dinner party, and when people sat down, it would leak air and make a fart noise. This was pretty funny to his dinner guests.

Still, this is all coming from the man who murdered tons of people (including his cousin), spent money on lavish décor instead of on improvements to Rome, and apparently sacrificed his children to the gods.

4 “The Office” Bully

If you love The Office (U.S. version), then you know that Jim’s pranks against Dwight are golden. Jim was successful about 99% of the time, despite Dwight’s undying uncertainty of the situation. And even though Dwight knew that Jim would prank him, he kept falling for it. Let’s list some of the more notable Jim pranks:

• “Bears eat beets, Battlestar Galactica.”
• Dwight from the future sends a message to himself via the fax machine. “Do not drink the coffee.”
• Tear away Velcro suit.
• The loud voice mock sales call with Bill Budlichter.

The list goes on.

Okay, so how is this hilarity dark? The fact that Jim endlessly and mercilessly pranks Dwight. These aren’t wholesome pranks, yet an entirely wholesome show disguises them as such. Yes, Dwight is insufferable, but what Jim does is straight-up bullying. I guess it’s only acceptable in fiction.

3 Sal Does Not Like Cats

Impractical Jokers cat member, I mean cast member Sal Volcano is terrified of cats. Yes, even those cute little meowing fluffy kittens. But, as per show rules, when you lose an episode, you must undergo extreme punishment. In this case, the guys prank Sal with his worst nightmare: they cover him in kittens.

So though Q, Murr, and Joe are laughing their butts off behind the scenes, and we’re crying with laughter over Sal’s reactions over the innocent cats, Sal is a bundle of nerves. It’s like watching funny torture, which I guess isn’t funny at all.

2 Pregnancy Payback

Let’s bring MTV back, shall we? In another prank show, Revenge Prank, two sisters get back at their mother for posting a viral, over-the-top video by pretending one of them is pregnant. As the sisters and their mother are in the ambulance, one on a gurney “screaming” in “pain,” the mother is not only confused, but her worry is borderline anger since no one is telling her what’s going on. A few minutes later, it’s revealed that she is “pregnant” but not with her current boyfriend’s baby. The medic explains that her water wouldn’t break at four months.

Enter Momma Bear. The mother starts to firmly advocate for her daughter as the ambulance stops at a red light. “Get a police escort. I want her there now!” Her demand that they hurry up and get her daughter to a hospital only escalates in temper. It is an incredible showcase of family sticking up for family, even though it’s a prank. Go, mom! You start to forget it’s a prank in the first place and start cheering her on.

It would be funnier if the mother didn’t get so worked up, though. As the host explains why her daughters pranked her, it all of a sudden sounds so stupid. Poor mom.

1 Racist Senior Prank

We may graduate high school, but that doesn’t mean we’re always smart. A group of Glenelg High School seniors geared up for a simple senior prank, as is custom, and decided to graffiti the sidewalks, parking lot, and other parts of the building. Now, this had the potential to be wholesome fun. But, as I said before, some educated people aren’t that smart.

Instead of graffitiing cartoons or “seniors 4ever,” they decided to go full-blown white supremacy Nazis. They graffitied the N-word, swastikas, homophobic comments, and other undesirable slurs and phrases. A senior prank turned into a hate crime.

The four students were caught, arrested, and probably won’t be too popular in college.

Dolphins are not only the sweet-natured, lovable mammals we have all been led to believe. They also have a darker side—with some disturbing tendencies that may just surprise you! When you hear the word “dolphin,” you might picture a cute, silvery mammal frolicking happily in the ocean with his dolphin friends. Or perhaps you imagine a well-behaved trained dolphin at Sea World who is ever so happy to perform tricks for nothing other than a bit of a fish reward.

Since the 1964 TV show Flipper, the dolphin has been seen as a smart, sweet, and playful creature. I mean, at one point in our lives, didn’t we all want to grow up and be marine biologists so that our job could be to “play with the dolphins?”

While it’s true they are extremely intelligent (so much in fact that the U.S. Navy uses them), and they can be kind and playful at times, these beloved creatures have a darker side you might not be aware of. Here are ten reasons you may be happy you decided on another career.

Related: 10 People Killed By Animals You Wouldn’t Expect

10 They Can (and Do) Bite Humans

With 80 to 100 teeth, bottlenose dolphins have ample force to bite and tear their prey. But sometimes, they use those teeth to bite humans.

In 2012, an eight-year-old girl was bitten on the hand by a captive dolphin at Sea World in Orlando, Florida. The young girl was tossing fish into the dolphin’s mouth when she ran out and raised the paper plate up in the air. This is when the dolphin leaped out of the water and grabbed the little girl’s hand in its mouth. It then pulled her toward the water before letting go.

Wild dolphins also bite. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, dozens of bites have been reported, with people even being pulled underwater by wild dolphins.

One report includes a woman who started out by feeding a pair of wild dolphins. She then decided to jump in the water to swim with them. This proved to be a bad decision as one of the dolphins bit her leg and clamped down. The dolphin was not letting go, making the woman use force to rip her leg out of its mouth. Her actions caused injuries that landed her in the hospital for a week-long stay.^[1]

9 They Attack (and the Attacks Can Be Fatal)

Dolphins are not afraid to attack humans, and when they do, the attacks can sometimes prove fatal. An example is an attack from San Paulo, Brazil, in 1994.

Two men were on the beach and noticed a dolphin in the water swimming close to the shore. The men decided to walk into the water and approach the wild dolphin. At first, things seemed fine; the dolphin was floating on the surface and letting the men pet it. But then the dolphin turned and rammed both men. One of the men sustained internal injuries so damaging he sadly passed away. The most likely reason the dolphin attacked was that it was under stress. ^[2]

8 They Are Coordinated Assassins

Dolphins coordinate their attacks with one another, with each dolphin having a purpose in the hunt. One of the most popular methods dolphins use to trap fish is to corral them into a “bait ball.” The dolphins will act together and swim around the fish, closing in more and more so that the bait ball forms. As the fish swim in the small, tight area, the dolphins will take turns bombarding through the swarm, grabbing up prey as they go along.

If the dolphins live in shallower waters, the dolphins will work as a team and push the fish toward the shore. Once the fish are in place, the dolphins will thrust themselves on the shore. The force of their bodies forces the water (and the fish) to get pushed up with them. The dolphins simply open their mouths, and the fish slide right in.^[3]

7 They Hunt in Packs

While dolphin groups, or “pods” as they are called, are typically comprised of 10–15 dolphins, there may be more to the group when they hunt…a lot more. Hunting packs have been recorded to have 1,000 or more members. These are called “super pods” and would put fear into any prey they decide to pursue! ^[4]

6 They Beat Up Their Food

Remember your mom telling you not to play with your food? Yeah, dolphins didn’t get that message. And when they play with their food, things get downright violent.

One of the ways dolphins “play” with their food is called fish-kicking or fish-whacking. The name really says it all. In this method, the dolphins use their tail flippers much like a baseball bat to smack the fish. This sends the fish flying high into the air, leaving them stunned when they fall back down into the water. A stunned fish makes an easy meal. The dolphin simply swims over and swallows him whole.

Another meal they enjoy “playing” with is the octopus. Because the tendrils of an octopus can still be active even after death, the dolphins must make sure all the tendrils are inactive before consuming. They do this in a few violent ways.

The first way is to hold the octopus in its mouth, rise to the surface, and then slam the octopus down onto the water. They do this with such force that it breaks the octopus’s body apart. If that doesn’t work, with the octopus in its mouth, the dolphin will thrash its head side-to-side on top of the water, which also rips the octopus’s body apart. They will also toss the octopus across the water, thus breaking them into pieces.^[5]

5 They Murder Other Animals for Fun

Dolphins, unlike most other animals, seem to murder for reasons unrelated to food. Most of their aggression is directed to porpoises, although there is no known reason as porpoises are not a food source or rival dolphins in any way.

Emerging evidence shows that dolphins are “wielding their beaks as clubs and slashing away with rows of sharp teeth. They have been found to bludgeon porpoises to death by the hundreds.” With no known reason for the deaths, it might seem the dolphins might just enjoy the process, and that is dark!^[6]

4 They Kill Each Other’s Babies

In 2013, scientists from Savannah State University made history by being the first to record a wild bottlenose dolphin giving birth. Sadly, immediately after the birth, they also recorded two male dolphins attacking the newborn calf. Luckily this calf survived the half-hour attack due to its mom fighting so hard to defend it.

But other calves have not been so lucky. There have been reported cases of bottlenose dolphin calves being found that died from blunt force trauma and bite marks that match those of adult bottlenose dolphins.^[7]

3 Males Physically Assault Females During Mating

When male dolphins want to mate, things get ugly. And since the males work together and gang up, the females don’t stand much of a chance of warding off these attacks.

It starts when two or three (or more) males work as a team to chase one female and isolate her from the rest of the pod. In the process, the males will show aggression toward her by hitting her with their tails, charging, biting, or even slamming their bodies into hers.

The male dolphin will then make a sound calling the female over to him. If she ignores the call, the males will again threaten or attack her. These sessions can last for hours or even days. This whole mating ritual shows dolphins are not the sweet-mannered mammals we thought they were!^[8]

2 Dolphins Share the Way They Kill

Dolphins are great hunters, whether they are hunting in coordinated attacks or solo. They have an arsenal of varied techniques to choose from for different prey. What makes them freaky is that they can constantly add new methods to their arsenal. How? By learning from one another.

One technique that has been passed on from one to another is referred to as “shelling.” This process consists of chasing a small fish into a shell. The dolphin will then insert their beak into the shell and bring the whole thing out of the water. They will shake the shell, and as the water drains out, the fish falls right into their mouth.

With being able to learn from one another, dolphins are always able to evolve and hone their hunting skills, making them better predators.^[9]

1 They Can Be Jerks Just for Fun

When you are in the ocean and see dolphins jumping in the waves, you may want to go over and get a closer look. Think again.

On April 27, 2018, in Western Australia, Andrew Hill was on a paddleboard when a pod of dolphins appeared behind him in the surf. Hill tells the news, “Eight or nine of them decided to catch that wave and surf straight at me, which has happened lots of times in the past to me, and generally they just take off to one side left or right.”

Hill was a little winded but was able to get back on his board and did not sustain any injuries. He added, “It’s good to see dolphins. Surfers like seeing dolphins, but obviously, I’d prefer them to stay a little bit further away than they did yesterday.”^[10]

+ It’s Not All Dark and Dangerous

And it’s not just humans they like to have fun with. Sometimes, a dolphin will do something that is harmful to itself—but all in the name of a bit of fun. Dolphins like to find pufferfish, making a game out of “playing catch” and getting a little high from the toxins as well.^[11]

Efforts to slow the impact of the coronavirus have been compared to rations and restrictions WWII-style and people are getting more anxious every day. This is evident in the panic-buying incidents taking place world-wide and in the fear you see in people’s eyes when you pass too close to them in a shopping center. However, there is much to be said for the positive side of this pandemic (pardon the pun). People are uniting worldwide to fight ‘a common enemy’ and even political parties are setting aside their differences and putting the needs of the people first.

Heroes are popping up everywhere and heartwarming tales are beginning to saturate the internet as much as the tales of panic and mayhem have. On this list are just 10 examples of uplifting things that have the potential to keep people somewhat sane in these crazy times.

10 Clear canals in Venice

While Italy is engaged in a fierce battle with the coronavirus, natural order has returned to Venice in the form of swans and dolphins swimming freely in the now-clear water of the canals.

With the canals usually bustling with boats, the water is always cloudy. But soon after Venice implemented lockdown measures, the water started clearing as sediment remains at the bottom of the canals. And while the mayor’s spokesperson has said the clearer water doesn’t necessarily mean higher quality water, it remains a sight for sore and fearful eyes during this uncertain time.^[1]

9 Penguin field trip

Around the world institutions are closing in an effort to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus. These include zoos, libraries, museums, aquariums etc. Shedd Aquarium in Chicago is also closed to the public, but the staff are determined to keep the animals entertained. This led to a spontaneous penguin ‘field trip’ through the museum.

The penguins met some of the other animals in the aquarium. Wellington the penguin couldn’t get enough of the fish while Monte headed to the dolphins. The aquarium is planning on keeping people updated on animal adventures via social media for as long as the building remains closed.^[2]

8 Singing from balconies

As Italy officially reached the highest death toll from coronavirus, those under lockdown refused to have their spirits broken. In scenes reminiscent of a war-time musical, Italians have come together to inspire and uplift one another by singing aloud and playing musical instruments from their balconies.

The idea spilled over to Spain where people have also taken to singing and clapping together while self-isolating or quarantined in their homes. There was also a call on social media platforms for everyone to stand on their balconies and at their open windows and give a standing ovation to overworked medical personnel. The call was heeded with gusto and the sound of cheering could be heard for miles.^[3]

7 SA supermarket chain accommodates pensioners

In South Africa the news that the Covid-19 pandemic had reached the country’s shores sent hundreds of people into a state of panic. Bulk buying and chaos ensued. Multiple statements and pleas from the SA government seems to have calmed the situation slightly, but the tension still can be felt in the air.

Pick n Pay, a South African supermarket chain, decided to intervene and try to calm the panic. They have introduced a system whereby they open 1 hour earlier each Wednesday for pensioners and people over 65 to do their shopping in peace and limit the time they spend in crowded spaces. As older people are more susceptible to complications of the coronavirus, this plan has been lauded as forward thinking in a time of extreme stress.^[4]

6 Mega stars offering free streaming concerts

People around the world are wondering how they are going to pass the time while in quarantine or self-isolation. Chris Martin live-streamed a mini concert from his home on 16 March which was extremely well received by fans and many other stars have since joined in the effort to keep people entertained while they get used to this strange new reality.

These stars include John Legend, Indigo Girls, Death Cab For Cutie, Pink, Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello and Katharine McPhee.^[5]

5 Pollution lifts as quarantines are implemented

In just one month the cloud of toxic pollution hanging over major Chinese cities has nearly dissipated in the wake of quarantines and self-isolation. NASA air quality researcher, Fei Liu, has said that this was the first time he had seen such a dramatic reduction of polluted air over such a large area due to one specific event.

CO2 emissions were down by at least 25% between 3 February and 1 March as China’s coal usage is plummeting. While it is likely that the pollution levels will increase again once the pandemic is contained, it is great to see blue skies again where the smog was potent enough to kill. ^[6]

4 Christmas in March

When social distancing was introduced in March 2020 as one of the efforts to contain the coronavirus, people started looking for ways to entertain themselves but also others and keep them from becoming despondent. Sports broadcaster, Lane Grindle, suggested on Twitter that people could put up their Christmas lights again in order to create a safe activity for families; the favorite pass time of driving around to look at the beautiful lights.

This idea quickly caught on and many people joined in, turning their Christmas lights back on, and spreading cheer around their neighborhoods. The Hallmark Channel also jumped on the festive bandwagon and announced they would air a holiday movie marathon titled We Need A Little Christmas between 20 and 22 March 2020.^[7]

3 Support signs

Becky Wass from Cornwall thought up a fantastic idea to help others who need assistance during their self-isolation period. She came up with a postcard template that could be shared on social media. The postcard simply says “Hello! If you are self-isolating, I can help”, with space below for people to fill out their contact numbers and requests.

Other people are putting huge banners outside their houses that say they support their neighbors and are willing to help with tasks they need assistance with.^[8]

2 Jennifer Haller takes one for the world

On 18 March Jennifer Haller, one of 45 volunteers, became the first person in the world to be injected with a potential vaccine against the coronavirus. She says of the experience that she felt happy and excited to be able to do something to help, considering how helpless people are feeling at the moment.

Volunteers are each given 2 injections 28 days apart to test the safety of the vaccine. The race is well and truly on to find a vaccine that works, and 35 institutions are involved in testing and trialing potential vaccines.^[9]

1 Christ the Redeemer statue lights up in solidarity

On Wednesday, 18 March, the Christ the Redeemer statue in Brazil was lit up in solidarity with countries fighting the coronavirus pandemic. Affected countries’ flags flitted over the massive structure and messages of hope were displayed. Below the statue, the Holy Sacrifice Of The Mass was held to pray for everyone infected by the virus while #praytogether was projected on it in different languages.^[10]

+ Spanish Soldiers Helping An Old Lady

Spain pic.twitter.com/Ks9UsDuk59

— R?MIN N?SIBOV (@RaminNasibov) March 20, 2020

As we can see in this heartwarming video taken in the last twenty-four hours, Spanish soldiers are helping out the old and infirm where needed. As the virus progresses and nations find themselves calling upon the military to provide assistance, we are all more likely than usual to have dealings with the police, medical officers, soldiers, and the like. This is a good time to remind us all that these men and women have been putting their own lives on the line for our sake for many years, and they are stepping up right now against an invisible enemy to do the same in a more visible and direct manner. Give them a big thank you and a smile if you do have to interact with them. They are as worried about loved ones as we all are and a little kindness will go a long way to make their difficult task a little easier.

[From JFrater: For my part I would like to thank all of the readers here who are, or have been, involved in the military, health, religious, or emergency services. Your sacrifices do not go unnoticed. I think I can say, on behalf of everyone here: while we may not be able to be with you in person, we are all with you in spirit.]