Human history is filled with dark, depressing stretches of misery and suffering. It should be treated with reverence and awe. Yet, most of it is hilarious.

Plenty of historical and cultural milestones only began when one joke spun out of control. The lives of millions of people were shaped just because one person wanted to try his hand at comedy. That might be the funniest joke of it all.

10 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Was Meant To Be A One-Off Parody

In the early 1980s, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird were bored. They had met a year earlier in hopes of becoming comic book cartoonists. Nothing was coming to them. While Laird was watching television, Eastman absentmindedly doodled. He drew a humorous sketch of a turtle with nunchucks and a mask. The image was so ridiculous that he showed it to Laird.

Laird thought it was so hilarious that he tried his hand at drawing one himself. The duo kept one-upping each other until they had four distinct vigilante turtles. Upon finishing the first sketches, Laird said, “This is the dumbest thing ever.” That might have been true, but Eastman and Laird wanted to turn the nonsensical idea of sword-wielding reptiles into a real thing.

The first issue of a Ninja Turtles comic book needed a plot as absurd as its characters. They settled on a parody of other popular comics in the early 1980s. It was the laziest parody they could think of.

Each of the titular adjectives of the newly dubbed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles coincided with a favorite trait from one of other popular superheroes. The “teenage” described Jack Kirby’s canon. The “mutant” was a nod to the X-Men franchise.

“Ninja” was borrowed from Frank Miller’s samurai series Ronin. But this was not the only Frank Miller property from which Eastman and Laird borrowed. Daredevil gained his powers in the same toxic spill that created the Turtles. As the Daredevil main nemesis was “The Hand,” it only made sense that the Turtles fight the Foot clan.

Eastman invested $1,000 of his uncle’s money into self-publishing this bit. They turned a simple night of goofing around into a 42-page comic. From there, the TMNT franchise of TV series, video games, movies, and toys was born.^[1]

9 The Duck That Laid The Golden Egg

In 1983, George Lucas was coming off the heels of one of the most impressive streaks in movie history. He had just made American Graffiti, the Star Wars franchise, and Raiders of the Lost Ark. It looked like he could do no wrong.

But anybody who has been alive for the past three decades knows how much wrong he can do. Given carte blanche to create his vision, Lucas wanted to make a live-action version of one of his favorite comic book characters. For the first time in his career, Lucas stumbled. And what a stumble it was. The resulting movie, Howard the Duck, is now considered one of the worst comedies of all time.

As it was the first feature film adaption of a Marvel story, Lucas was assured that the movie was going to be a huge success. To fulfill his dream, he hired Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck, the screenwriting team with whom he had worked on his big break, American Graffiti.

With the talent and intellectual property, everything looked like it was going to be great. It was not. Infamous scenes of interspecific love, endless duck puns, and rampant sexism led to a commercial and critical flop. In the US, Howard the Duck only earned back $16 million of its $37 million budget.

George Lucas had bet that the box office would fish him out of debt. With lackluster sales, he had to start selling his assets. One of those sales included the computer animation division of his production company.

His friend Steve Jobs bought the project. Jobs turned that investment into Pixar Studios. With movies as diverse as Toy Story, Up, and Finding Nemo, Pixar has produced movies that turned out far better than Howard the Duck.^[2]

8 ‘The Ostrich’ Stuck Its Head In The Underground

Lou Reed was the personification of leather-clad coolness. For a generation, he represented the epitome of New York swagger. Reed made his name on freaked-out records about taboos like heroin abuse, sadomasochism, and transsexualism. His best-selling song may have invited listeners to take a “walk on the wild side,” but his origins could not have tamer. One of rock’s great rebels started off as a pure corporate shill.

In the mid ‘60s, Reed was the in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records label. Pickwick was as minor as a record label could be. Without much success on their own, they had to try to fool people into buying their records.

Reed’s job was to write cheap knockoff singles that rode the popularity of fads of the time. When songs about hot rods were big, he invested a lot of mental power on a record called “Hot Rod Song.” “Johnny Can’t Surf No More” was a similarly obvious way to cash in on the surfing crazy.

Reed’s talent for mimicry eventually gave way to gimmicky absurdism. “I’ve Got a Tiger in My Tank” parodied car songs by adding giant cat roars on top. His attempt at a dance craze was the equally ridiculous “The Ostrich.”

This may not be Lou Reed’s best song, but it was certainly one of his most important. To record it, Pickwick hired a young Welsh musician named John Cale. Reed and Cale’s partnership began there. The duo blossomed three years later with The Velvet Underground, one of the most influential groups of all time.^[3]

7 The Novelty Record That Launched Gangsta Rap

In the 1980s, the California Raisin Advisory Board began airing a Claymation commercial for raisins. They could not have imagined how popular this was about to become. The basic plot of the commercial is that a man awakens to see a line of Claymation raisins dancing and singing to a parody of the Motown classic “I Heard It Through The Grapevine.”

The incredibly unfunny joke is that raisins come from grapes. Despite the simplicity of the punch line, the commercial became a cultural phenomenon. People could not get enough of the idea of dried fruit covering Marvin Gaye. The California Raisins released toys, a Saturday morning cartoon, a line of video games, and, of course, albums.

This inexplicable success was good news for Priority Records, a small independent LA label that hadn’t had a hit in years. All of a sudden, they were making millions off this silly fad.

Flush with this extra revenue, they could hire more interesting acts. The next artist signed by Priority was N.W.A., the opposite of the California Raisins in a lot of ways.

Weeks later, Priority became a rap powerhouse off the success of Straight Outta Compton. The album and Priority exploded gangsta rap into the public, changing music forever.^[4]

6 Susanna Salter Won An Election On A Prank

Decades before US women could vote nationally, Susanna Salter had already held public office. In 1887, the tiny Quaker town of Argonia, Kansas, elected the first woman mayor in US history. The election was a turning point in women’s suffrage.

Though she had a rather uneventful administration, Salter’s victory helped usher in a wave of other woman mayors in the West following the Civil War. However, Salter only got her position because a prank backfired.

She was a good choice for a mayoral candidate. Salter had political experience in her blood. Her father, Oliver Kinsey, had been Argonia’s first mayor. Her husband was city clerk.

With her own legal background, she prepared a local attorney for the bar. Salter wrote the ordinances of the town. She presided at the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) caucus. Under her leadership, the caucus selected men deemed worthy of office.

A group of 20 men did not like the idea that a woman had so much say in local politics. They devised a plan. They made a ticket with a set of candidates identical to the ones supported by the WCTU. The only difference is that they substituted Salter’s name in the mayor position. They assumed that no man would vote for a woman.^[5]

They also expected that Salter would be embarrassed and leave politics with presumably such few votes. When Salter voted that afternoon, she was shocked to find that she was listed as a candidate. She was even more amazed that she had received a two-thirds majority of the vote.

5 A Sexist Joke Discovered The Cosmos

Edward C. Pickering was going over the calculations from his researchers’ latest observations. When the researchers could not understand the calculations, he joked that they were so easy that his “Scotch maid could do better.”

This line may not have been meant as a joke, but it was interpreted as one. Pickering had been aware that his maid, Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming, was a mathematical genius. None of the other male researchers believed that.

The researchers called Pickering’s bluff and brought Fleming in. Very quickly, the researchers became the butt of the joke. Fleming’s calculations were incredibly precise. Impressed by her skill, Pickering started hiring only female researchers. There was also the additional incentive to save money by providing cheaper wages.

No matter the motive, that decision actually changed the universe. These women, known dismissively as “Pickering’s Harem,” conducted groundbreaking research. Fleming finally broke out of Pickering’s shadow when she discovered the Horsehead Nebula.

Other notable members included Annie Jump Cannon, whose system for identifying stars is still applied today, and Henrietta Swan Leavitt, who supplied the data that Edwin Hubble used to measure galactic distances.^[6]

4 Wristwatches Started Out As A ‘Silly-Ass Fad’

Businessmen and rappers like to flaunt their latest Rolexes as the height of class. To anybody from the turn of the 20th century, they would look ridiculous. It would be like bragging about bejeweled fidget spinners. Instead of flashy displays of wealth, wristwatches were originally chintzy novelty tricks.

Before wristwatches, men generally kept their watches in their pockets. It was seen as effeminate to wear your watch on your wrist. When men in Europe picked up on it, The New York Times called it a “silly-ass fad” in 1916.

Wristwatches then became popular among vaudeville stars as “more or less of a joke” or a “funmaker.” As far as jokes go, watching a dial spin around a clock is fairly tame. Wristwatches really took off in the US because of something not funny at all—World War I.

It was the first war to feature sophisticated aerial attacks. Soldiers on the ground needed to move as a unit. Timing was essential. When dodging gunfire and bombs, the delay from retrieving one’s watch from a pocket was an actual matter of life and death. To shave off extra seconds, soldiers wrapped their pocket watches to leather straps on their wrists.^[7]

Following the war, the soldiers brought this practice home with them. Companies like Cartier began modeling their products from these military designs. No longer a joke, they became an iconic status symbol.

3 A Prank Might Have Killed Vincent Van Gogh

Vincent van Gogh is as famous for his death as his life. His suicide perfectly fits the model of a rejected genius so shunned by the world that he would rather kill himself than go on.

Generations after his untimely death, van Gogh was recognized as a true genius, making his death all the more tragic. This narrative is poetic, but according to Pulitzer Prize–winning researchers Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, it is dead wrong. They are convinced that van Gogh was accidentally shot to death in a joke gone wrong.

Van Gogh had as much success making friends as he did wearing earmuffs. He was often the target of a gang of teenagers who liked to get drunk and mess with him. Van Gogh took particular interest in Gaston Secretan, but it was Gaston’s brother who proved to be the most consequential for van Gogh.

Whereas Gaston was quiet, Rene Secretan was a young prankster. Rene pulled harmless practical jokes on van Gogh—like putting salt in his coffee or hiding a garden snake in his paint box.

Much to van Gogh’s chagrin, Rene also had a habit of waving around a malfunctioning pistol while dressed as the pioneer Buffalo Bill. Naifeh and Smith believe that Rene’s comedy became tragic one fateful night when the gun accidentally went off. The discharged bullet lodged in van Gogh’s abdomen. He died 29 hours later.

The theory has been met with serious backlash from other historians, but there is some evidence to support the claim. Despite his mental anguish, van Gogh did not leave behind a suicide note. In 1956, following the release of the highly acclaimed van Gogh biopic Lust for Life, Rene admitted to torturing the artist.

In 2014, doctors noted that van Gogh would have held the gun in an unnatural and awkward position to shoot the bullet from the angle suggested by the entry wound. This configuration would have caused black powder burns on his hands. At the time, no doctors noted any burns.

Dr. Vincent Di Maio, a leading handgun forensic expert, concluded in 2014: “It is my opinion that, in all medical probability, the wound incurred by van Gogh was not self-inflicted. In other words, he did not shoot himself.”^[8]

2 The Butt That Killed Thousands

Mooning is asinine, particularly the first syllable. For something so stupid, it sure is a simple joke. Everything one needs to make the joke is already attached to them. Throw in a fart for good measure, and one has reached the pinnacle of bathroom humor. Jewish historian Titus Flavius Josephus recorded how one fart was not silent, but it still was deadly.

AD 66 was not the best time to be devoutly Jewish. The Roman government ostracized the religion and caused deep divides. Tensions were at their highest around religious holidays. One unnamed soldier widened this rift when he exposed a crack of his own.

The mooned Jewish pilgrims did not like being the actual butt of the joke, especially during Passover. The insulted pilgrims threw rocks at the soldiers, who deployed reinforcements. The resulting stampede left more than 10,000 people dead. The riot marked one of the more seismic events in the lead-up to the First Jewish–Roman War.^[9]

1 The Party Was Lit At Le Bal Des Ardents

For some historical events, comedy is tragedy plus time. For others, comedy plus time is tragedy. Few events capture that better than Le Bal des Ardents (“The Ball of the Burning Men”).

In the 1300s, third weddings were light affairs where pranks were common. King Charles VI of France thought it would be funny to prank the wedding of his queen’s lady-in-waiting Catherine de Fastaverin. Instead of having a fun time, Charles VI committed the ultimate party faux pas when he ruined the dance floor.

His prank was less a witticism and more a display of stupidity. The joke amounted to having some attendees dress up as wild apes while howling and shouting obscenities. To look like beasts, their costumes were covered in hair consisting of hemp, linen, and tar.^[10]

For a short while, their antics were the life of the party. That quickly changed when Charles VI’s brother showed up late and drunk. He stumbled in with a torch in hand. The embers from the torch set the men on fire.

Four of them died as their costumes burned. The heat so scalded their genitals that their testicles fell to the ground. The king barely survived by jumping into his aunt’s skirt.

Charles VI was already mentally unstable, but this event pushed him over the edge. The tragedy also revealed how fragile he was. Concerns about the stability of the throne led to sectarian violence. Charles was now perceived as a failure. His Valois bloodline was seriously defamed, eventually leading to two decades of civil war over the throne.

If you enjoyed the article, you can write to the author at [email protected]. If you want to see what the author thinks is funny, you can follow him on Twitter @NateYungman. Hopefully, his jokes don’t cause any civil wars.

Several trades and professions around today are much different than when they first appeared. In fact, many have changed so much that their origins would be hard to imagine. Who would believe that the world’s first airline did not have airplanes? That the first gas station was a pharmacy? Or that funeral homes operated the first ambulances?

Many trades and professions often have weird origins because they began as offshoots of other businesses. Others only got defined and structured long after they first appeared. At other times, advances in technology just introduced some new ways of doing things.

10 Funeral Homes Operated The First Ambulance Services

Funeral homes launched the first ambulance services when they helped to evacuate the wounded to hospitals during the US Civil War. The early ambulances only had a stretcher, a blanket, and a bottle of whiskey as anesthesia. Later alterations included oxygen. The personnel on board also learned some lifesaving medical procedures, making them the first paramedics.

The ambulances were actually hearses—the same ones used by funeral homes to transport dead people to cemeteries. The hearses worked because regular horse-drawn carriages were not long enough to allow the patients to lie down.

However, the funeral homes were not really interested in saving lives or even in the money they charged their clients. Over half of their clients never even bothered to pay. The real profit was in the death of the client because the funeral home that provided the ambulance was the likeliest to receive an offer to arrange the burial.

Funeral homes stopped providing ambulance services after Congress passed the Highway Safety Act in 1966. The act set regulations over what sort of vehicles could be used as ambulances. It also required ambulances to be staffed by trained personnel. The funeral homes could not meet the regulations and left the business for hospitals and other operators.^[1]

9 The First Gas Station Was A Pharmacy

In early August 1888, Bertha Benz (the wife of Karl Benz, who invented the first practical automobile) completed the first road trip in a motorcar when she and her two sons traveled from Mannheim to visit her mother in Pforzheim, Germany. The car was the Patent-Motorwagen No. 3, which was built by her husband.

At the time, Karl Benz had problems marketing the vehicle. When Bertha suggested that they make a road trip to publicize the car, he refused. Undeterred, Bertha and her two sons went without her husband’s permission. Karl only realized what had happened when he saw her letter informing him that she had left for her mum’s.

The vehicle broke down several times, but Bertha handled the repairs. However, her greatest challenge arose when she ran out of fuel. She walked to a local pharmacy where she purchased Ligroin, a petroleum solvent that was used as fuel at the time. The pharmacy had the stuff because it was used for cleaning surfaces.

That pharmacy in the town of Wiesloch is considered the first filling station in the world. In keeping with the tradition, other pharmacies stocked up on Ligroin and then gasoline and sold these products to car owners until the first gas stations appeared. For Bertha, her trip made the news and popularized her husband’s car as a reliable means of transportation.^[2]

8 The First Motels Were Unbelievably Luxurious

Motels are often less expensive than budget hotels even though motels were never intended to be cheap. In fact, the first motels were actually hotels with parking garages for car owners. That’s why they were called “motels” (motor hotels).

Arthur Heineman built the first one in 1925. Vehicles were becoming mainstream in the US at the time, and Heineman had observed that conventional hotels did not have enough parking spaces for traveling drivers. So he built the first motel at San Luis Obispo, which is between Los Angeles and San Francisco. He called it the Milestone Mo-Tel Inn.

It consisted of several bungalows with garages that could accommodate up to 160 people in total. Lodgers paid $1.25 to sleep in one of the rooms for a night. Car owners parked their vehicles in the garages while they slept in nearby rooms. The motel also had separate rooms for chauffeurs in case the car owner had one.

Heineman spent $80,000 to build his motel. It had central heating, showers, a bell tower, and other expensive features that are alien to today’s motels. He planned to build a chain of 18 motels in California alone. However, the Great Depression soon came along, forcing him to slow down on his plans.

By the time it was over, several competitors had sprung up to steal a share of the market. They engaged in price wars that quickly turned motels into budget lodges without luxurious facilities.^[3]

7 The World’s First Airline Used A Fleet Of Airships

Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-Aktiengesellschaft (“German Airship Transportation Corporation Ltd.”), aka DELAG, was the world’s first airline. It was founded on November 16, 1909, as a subsidiary of the Zeppelin Company, the German airship maker. Little wonder that it had a fleet of airships in place of airplanes.

However, DELAG did not provide scheduled flights until 1919 when it started to operate flights between Berlin and southern Germany. Until then, it operated tour flights for sightseers who wanted to view the Earth from high above.

The Zeppelin Company founded DELAG to create an alternate stream of income. Before then, the Zeppelin Company had focused on selling its airships to the German military. However, it was unsure whether the military would buy enough airships to keep it afloat. DELAG remained in business until 1935.^[4]

6 The World’s First Commercial Airline Used Airboats That Flew 1.5 Meters (5 Ft) Above The Water

We already mentioned that DELAG—the world’s first airline—did not offer scheduled commercial flights until 1919. This is why The St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line, which was founded in 1913, is considered the world’s first commercial airline to offer scheduled flights.

The airline offered regular flights from St. Petersburg to Tampa, Florida, using a two-seat airboat called the Lark of Duluth. An airboat is an airplane that lands and takes off from water. The Lark of Duluth had just two seats. The pilot sat in one while one or two passengers were cramped in the other. The airplane itself skirted just 1.5 meters (5 ft) above the water.

The St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line made its first flight on January 1, 1914, and the passenger was Abram C. Pheil, the former mayor of St. Petersburg. Pheil got the seat after winning a $400 auction. Later passengers paid $5 for a single trip.

The St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line was a success because it made the 29-kilometer (18 mi) flight in just 23 minutes. At the time, steamships covered that distance in two hours, trains in 4–12 hours, and cars in 20 hours. However, the airboat line could not remain in business and shut down in 1914.^[5]

5 Barbershops Doubled As Operating Rooms

Barbers doubled as surgeons until a few centuries ago. Both professions were so closely linked that they had a single association called the Company of Barber-Surgeons from the 16th to the 18th centuries. The barbers often treated medical ailments like syphilis, which physicians of the day wanted nothing to do with. Barbers also helped to remove painful teeth, which technically made them dentists.

Many barbers performed bloodletting, the now-obsolete and disproved act of draining blood from a person to expel diseases from the body. Some say that this is why barbers often have red-and-white poles outside their shops. The red represents the blood while the white is the bandage. However, this theory is disputed.

Nevertheless, we know that barbers often advertised their bloodletting services by leaving bowls of blood in their windows. Several surgeons were not comfortable with the barbers and desperately wanted to separate their trade from the barbers. The surgeons got their way in 1745 when the Company of Barber-Surgeons was split.^[6]

4 The First Newspapers Were Books

Newspapers have existed as pamphlets, corantos, and newsbooks for centuries. However, the direct predecessors of modern newspapers are newsbooks. Made of several news pamphlets bound together to create a small book, they were published like regular books and even had title pages.

Unlike modern newspapers that report a variety of news stories, the newsbooks and pamphlets often only reported single events like battles, disasters, and celebrations. However, what we consider the first newspaper was published by Johann Carolus and sold in the city of Strasbourg, Germany, in September 1605.

Carolus called his newspaper Relation aller Furnemmen und gedenckwurdigen Historien. Like its predecessors, it was also a newsbook. However, it reported a variety of news. Carolus’s weekly newspaper was 4–6 pages long.^[7]

3 The First Movie Was Only 2.11 Seconds Long

We expect our movies to run for around two hours these days. Interestingly, the first movie ran for only 2.11 seconds. Yes! That was no mistake. 2.11 seconds. The movie was titled Roundhay Garden Scene and was produced by French inventor Louis Le Prince in 1888.

Roundhay Garden Scene was a video of Louis’s son Adolphe and several friends and relatives walking around a garden. Louis Le Prince created the film while testing a new video camera he had invented.

To be clear, an earlier film titled The Horse In Motion was created in 1878—a full 10 years before Louis Le Prince made his movie. However, The Horse In Motion is not considered a real film because it was produced with several photo cameras timed to shoot as a horse galloped past. The photographs were later blended into a single video.^[8]

2 The First Psychiatric Hospitals Were Private Businesses

Early psychiatric hospitals were called lunatic asylums. They were private for-profit businesses run by cruel entrepreneurs who were more interested in profits than the health of their patients. The patients were treated with disdain and kept in terrible conditions that rivaled prisons.

Before the first lunatic asylums appeared, mad people were often kept in homes where their conditions were managed by their relatives. However, this was no easy task. Many families experienced some relief when the first private for-profit lunatic asylums sprang up in the 1600s.

The operators of these asylums used crude methods on their patients. They held them down with irons and applied the same brutal methods used on stubborn horses to keep their patients under control. Several churches operated more decent, nonprofit lunatic asylums. But they could not take enough patients. So most families just sent their mentally deranged relatives to these for-profit lunatic asylums.

These facilities went into decline when more decent lunatic asylums started to appear in the 1790s. The for-profits finally went out of business when the government started to build lunatic asylums in the 1800s. These places were later renamed psychiatric hospitals.^[9]

1 Priests And Medicine Men Were The First Barbers

Barbering dates to over 6,000 years ago when priests and medicine men started the side job of cutting hair. At the time, people believed that spirits could enter the body through the head. So getting a haircut was considered a religious rite.

People often let their hair grow long enough to allow the good spirits in. Then they held elaborate religious ceremonies where the hair was cut to lock the good spirits in and keep the bad ones out. The superstition seemed to have died off during the ancient Egyptian Empire when people regularly shaved their heads to keep clean because they sweated a lot.^[10]

They say, “Every pro was once an amateur, every expert was once a beginner…” It is true: no one can reach the top of fame and success in a day, and no one can become a millionaire in a short time. Hollywood, especially, is an industry, where even the most talented struggle a lot to leave a mark. Some of the most remarkable names of Hollywood today had to start from the basic levels. They may be multi-millionaires, but at one point of time in their career, they were just extras. So let us take a look at the inspiring stories of some of the Richest Hollywood Actors Who Started as Extras.

10. Channing Tatum

Channing Tatum has won the world with his killer dance moves, amazing physique and cute smile, and his performances so far display a promising career in Hollywood. But, before he became everyone’s favourite, he started with small acting gigs. Of his extra parts, one in which he was noticeable was the background role in the church scene of War of the Worlds. An accomplished dancer, Tatum was seen in the video of Ricky Martin’s She Bangs. His net worth is $14 millions.

9. Renee Zellweger

Everyone knows that Renee Zellweger had to struggle in her early days, fighting her way through an abusive family, as she established herself as one of the most accomplished actors in Hollywood. Her struggle in Hollywood began with bit parts. She was credited as “Girl in Blue Pickup Truck” for her role in Dazed and Confused, while her part in My Boyfriend’s Back was cut. She worked in commercials in Texas, where she obtained her SAG membership. It is commendable that she never gave up, and landed meaty roles like Bridget Jones or Roxie Hart. Her net worth is 60 million.

9. Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck is one of the heart-throbs of Hollywood, ruling over the fans with his youthfulness and great looks, combined with great acting. He began his career at the same time as his close friend since childhood, actor Matt Damon. He began his career with small roles as an extra, who appeared in Field of Dreams in 1989, seen with his friend, in the scenes at Fenway Park. With Damon, he rose to fame with Good Will Hunting, leaving behind the days of small roles. His net worth is $75 million.

7. Matt Damon

Matt Damon is quite a Hollywood sweetheart, and has built himself quite a large fan base with his youthful charm. Before he became such a heartthrob, he was worked as an extra. He began his career with his close friend Ben Affleck. He appeared as one of the extras in the film Field of Dreams in 1989, in the scenes at Fenway Park. However, he has managed to almost completely erase that from his curriculum vitae after the movie Good Will Hunting. His current net worth is $75 million.

6. Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan is one of the most popular names in the world of cinema today, and his is one of the most famous Asian actors. His actions and comic timing attract people of all ages. But before he took to the roles of a funny Kung Fu artist, he used to work as an extra in the films of another famous martial artist, Bruce Lee, taking part in the fight scenes. His first works were in Fists of Fury in 1971 and Enter the Dragon in 1973. Chan eventually established himself. His net worth his $130 million.

5. George Clooney

Everybody loves George Clooney, his panache, his salt and pepper look, and his presence. This evergreen actor had a phase in his life where he had to resort to doing background work and small parts, his earliest work being in the miniseries regarding Colorado’s economic growth in 1978, after which he got to say small lines in a cop drama. Over time, his lines increased in TV shows like Roseanne or Sisters, after which he finally landed ER. Now, this superstar’s net worth is $160 million.

4. Clint Eastwood

Clint Eastwood is one of the most respected actors and directors, and his contribution to the industry is immense. This celebrated personality began his career back in the 1950s, when he did background works in films. His work went uncredited, unnoticed and unappreciated. He used to get the work as an unknown extra through Central Casting. He then started getting speaking parts, for which he was credited. Today, he is a powerful Hollywood name, with a net worth of $375 million.

3. Brad Pitt

One of the most sought after actors of Hollywood, Brad Pitt is known for his handsome looks and great talent. He is a household name for his off-screen activities, as well. But he started at the bottom, too, with his part in the 1987 flick Less Than Zero as one of his earlier works, for which he was credited as the “Partygoer/Preppie Guy at Fight.” He managed to pick himself from there and went on to one of the most well-known names today, and his net worth is $240 million.

2. Marilyn Monroe

Marilyn Monroe, the original “Candle in the Wind” who is still considered one of the most iconic actresses of Hollywood, noted for her timeless beauty, dared to enter the industry when one needed a lot of hard work. She began as a model, which eventually led her to get small one-liners in the films. In the 1948 flick, Scudda Hoo! Scudda Hay! she said “Hi!” to a main character, as shared a canoe with the another actress. Over time, she became evergreen. Her net worth is $27 million.

1. Sylvester Stallone

The adorable hunk with an innocent face, Sylvester Stallone, has found a place in everyone’s hearts with his most notable role as Rocky Balboa. It is a film that he himself wrote, but while writing it, he had work as an extra in films to pay his bills. He played the subway mugger in Woody Allen’s Bananas in 1971, and ignorable character in 1971 film Klute for which he wasn’t even credited. With the release of Rocky, e eventually became a new brand, and his current net worth is $275 million.

All these actors and many more Hollywood celebrities took on small roles during times of need. They knew that no part is small, and chose not to waste their time spent on the sets. Instead, they established connections with producers and directors, and continued networking, while learning the nuances of working in a movie at the same time. Eventually, they became more and more memorable, until each one of them bagged the Hollywood dream that they had in their eyes.

It appears you are never too young to start killing. While most kids choose sports, art, or music as hobbies, some decided to exercise with murder. Here are ten killers and the age they started down a dark path.

10 Harvey Miguel Robinson, 17 Years Old

Harvey Miguel Robinson is from Allentown, Pennsylvania, and is one of the youngest serial killers on death row. He was 17 when he first committed murder in August 1992. Police caught Robinson on July 31st, 1993, after he raped but failed to kill Denise Cali on June 28th, 1993. Robinson returned to Cali’s house, where police were waiting. Since Cali bit Robinson’s arm during the initial attack before fleeing, police could match the bite mark to Robinson and convict him. Allentown police also connected Robinson to the rape and murder of the following three women:

• Joan Burghardt: 29-year-old nurse’s aide (August 1992)
• Charlotte Schmoyer: 15-year-old newspaper carrier for The Morning Call (June 1993)
• Jessica Jean Fortney: 47-year-old grandmother (July 1993)

The courts convicted Robinson of raping and killing Schmoyer, Burghardt, and Fortney on November 10th, 1994, and sentenced him to death for all three cases. In April 1995, the courts also convicted him of raping a 5-year-old girl and sentenced him to an additional 57 years in prison. In April 2006, Robinson got a resentence to life imprisonment for the Joan Burghardt murder because he was only 17 at the time. He also exchanged his appeal rights for a life sentence in the Schmoyer case on December 14th, 2012. As of 2020, he still has the death penalty for the Fortney murder.

9 Craig Price, 13 Years Old

Craig Chandler Price is from Warwick, Rhode Island, and currently imprisoned at the Florida State Prison in Raiford. Craig was 13 years old when he killed 27-year-old Rebecca Spencer, a neighbor who lived two doors down from his house. Price stabbed Spencer 58 times. He wasn’t a suspect for Spencer’s murder but confessed to the crime when police caught him two years later for killing three additional neighbors while high on drugs in 1989. The victims were 39-year-old Joan Heaton and her daughters Jennifer and Melissa, who were 10 and 8. He stabbed them over 30 times with wounds so deep the handles broke off the knives. He also crushed Melissa’s skull. Price did not show signs of remorse for killing the Heatons, even imitating the sounds of their death cries. 

Due to his age, Price couldn’t face trial and was committed to a juvenile correctional institution called the Rhode Island Training School. However, in 2004, Price transferred from Rhode Island to Florida because of his violent tendencies. He was also denied parole in March 2009. Although the courts set his release date for May 2020, they sentenced him to an additional 25 years on January 18th, 2019, for stabbing an inmate Joshua Davis on April 4th, 2017. 

8 Jasmine Richardson, 12 Years Old

Jasmine Richardson and her Romeo, Jeremy Steinke, flipped the classic story of forbidden love. Instead of committing suicide, they murdered anyone that got in their way. At 12 years old, Richardson started dating 27-year-old Steinke after meeting at a punk rock show in 2006. However, her parents aggressively disapproved of their relationship due to the age gap. On April 23rd, 2006, the couple decided to go on a murder spree by killing Richardson’s parents, Marc and Debra, and her 8-year-old brother Jacob. A 6-year-old neighbor found the bodies in the Richardson’s home at Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada. 

Steinke admitted to police that Richardson wanted her parents dead so she could be free from them. He even told her father, “It’s what your daughter wanted,” as Marc died from stab wounds. Jasmine Richardson was the one to stab her brother in the neck. On July 9th, 2007, the court convicted Richardson and Steinke each with three counts of first-degree murder. Richardson was one of the youngest people to be convicted of multiple first-degree murders in Canada. However, convicts under fourteen in Canada cannot receive more than a ten-year sentence. In contrast, Steinke received three life sentences on December 15th, 2008. 

Richardson started attending classes at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta, for the final years of her sentence and was released into a psychiatric hospital in 2011. With evidence of rehabilitation, Richardson completed her sentence in May 2016. 

7 Mary Bell, 10 Years Old

With an impoverished life and a mother who tried to kill her multiple times, Mary Bell decided to take a dark path before her 11th birthday. On May 25th, 1968, Bell took 4-year-old Martin Brown to a deserted house in Newcastle, England, and strangled him to death. Although she later left notes confessing to the murder, the police didn’t take her seriously. Two months later, she killed again. Bell left the body of 3-year-old Bryan Howe in the same area she left Brown’s. This time, the police arrested her.

In December 1968, the courts convicted her of manslaughter due to diminished responsibility. The court-appointed psychiatrist described her as having classic symptoms of psychopathy. Police reports indicated she had carved an “M” into Howe’s body and mutilated him, including using scissors to cut off his genitals. Bell spent 12 years in prison. She was released in 1980 when she was 23. She now lives with her daughter with a new identity. 

6 Joseph Mcvay, 10 Years Old

On January 2nd, 2011, at their home in Holmes County, Ohio, Joseph McVay, age 10, shot his mother, Deborah McVay, age 46. According to his sister, Shawna McVay, Joseph was tired of fighting with his mom and used a 22 caliber rifle to shoot her. He then went to his neighbor’s house, called 911, and told the dispatcher, “I shot my mom. I shot her with a gun.” Joseph pleaded guilty to one count of murder the same day of the incident. The court found him incompetent for trial until early 2013, when they sentenced him in juvenile court at 13. 

The official motive was Joseph was arguing with his mom over chores. To avoid bringing in firewood from outside, he fired a shot into his mother’s head instead. However, there is the question as to how long the intent to kill may have been brewing. Interviews with family members and school administrators indicated his mother physically, emotionally, and verbally abused him. Joseph also showed signs of anger and aggression before the murder, like in September 2007, when he swatted a school administrator with a dustpan. 

5 Cayetano Santos Godino, 9 Years Old

Cayetano Santos Godino, also known as El Petiso Orejudo or Macrotous Runt, was a serial killer and arsonist from Buenos Aires, Argentina that started down his killing path young. He beat a 2-year-old, left him in a ditch when he was 7, and beat another kid with a stone when he was 8. Due to his young age, the police released him from jail time. But, these beatings were just the beginning. A year later, in 1906, Godino killed 3-year-old Maria Rosa Face and got away with it.

It wasn’t until he confessed to police years later that he strangled her and buried her alive in a ditch did anyone connect him to the crime. In 1912, before he turned 16 in October, Godino started a spree of destruction. His attacks include:

• Arturo Laurona: 13-year-old, killed and left in an abandoned house (January 26th)
• Reyna Vainicoff: 5-year-old killed by setting fire to her dress (March 7th)
• Roberto Russo: 8-year-old choked but survived (November 8th)
• Carolina Neolener: 2-year-old kidnapped but rescued (November 20th)

On December 4th, 1912, police finally arrested and jailed Godino after he killed Jesualdo Giordano. Godino took Giordano to a country house, tried to choke him, beat him, and eventually killed him by hammering a nail into the side of his skull.

Following this incident, Godino entered a youth detention center on January 4th, 1913. Medical reports declared him insane after he tried to kill some inmates. The judge ended the case and ordered him to stay in the center. An appeal approved him to move back to jail on November 20th, 1915. Godino later transferred to Ushuaia Penitentiary on March 28th, 1923, where he died in 1944. 

4 Christian Romero, 8 Years Old

On November 5th, 2008, Christian Romero from St. Johns, Arizona, committed a double murder at eight years old. He was accused of killing his father, Vincent Romero, with a 22-caliber rifle before shooting a family friend who rented a room at their house, Tim Romans.

Romero pleaded guilty to one count of negligent homicide in 2009 for killing Romans, but the court never charged him with his father’s death, despite the suspicion that it was premeditated. Prosecution attorney Michael Whiting explained that his father’s killing was dropped because it was in Romero’s best interest the court didn’t force him to acknowledge the killing. 

Romero lived under the supervision of the Apache County Superior Court in a secure, supervised group home. His probation terms included receiving treatment and mental health evaluations instead of punishment. In 2015, 15-year-old Romero was recommended by an Apache County probation officer, Julie Nicholson, to attend public school. 

3 Carroll Cole, 8 Years Old

Born on May 9th, 1938, in Sioux City, Iowa, Carroll Cole was a serial killer who started killing at the young age of 8. After his family moved to Richmond, California, Cole was emotionally abused by his younger sister at home and often teased at school. In 1947, he retaliated against a classmate, 8-year-old Duane, by drowning him in a lake. Although at the time, authorities ruled it as an accident, Cole confessed years later in an autobiography that it was intentional.

As a teenager, Cole committed several petty crimes, was discharged from the Army for bad conduct, and in 1960 attacked two couples in parked cars on lover’s lane. He attempted to strangle numerous women in the years following, including an 11-year-old girl in Missouri. This crime led him to a five-year prison sentence. 

Since his first murder at 8, Cole didn’t successfully kill again until May 7th, 1971, when he strangled Essie L. Buck to death. However, it wasn’t until November 1980 that police arrested Cole for fatally strangling three women in Texas. The courts convicted Cole of the three murders on April 9th, 1981, and he was executed by lethal injection on December 6th, 1985. Before his death, Cole claimed he had gotten away with the murders of at least fourteen other women in the nine years prior to 1980.

2 Amarjeet Sada, 7 Years Old

Amardeep Sada, also known as Amarjeet, not only started killing young but had some of the youngest victims. His three murders in Bihar, India, were all babies under one year old. When he was 7, he killed his 8-month-old sister and 6-month-old cousin but got away because his parents helped cover up the crime. Some villagers also knew of the killings but did not report it because they considered it a family matter. A year later, in January 2007, he killed Kushboo, a neighbor’s 6-month-old daughter. Police finally caught him. Sada happily confessed to taking Kushboo from daycare, strangling her, and hitting her on the head with a stone. He became known as India’s youngest serial killer. 

The Bhagwanpur police in the Musahari village said Sada smiled a lot and spoke very little when being questioned about his crimes. Psychoanalyst, Shamshad Hussain, said Sada was a sadist who derives pleasure from inflicting injuries. However, a former psychology professor of Patna University said he did not have a sense of right or wrong. Superintendent Amit Lodha declared the case a psychiatric one, and Sada needed to be evaluated by professionals. Finding he had a chemical imbalance and needed help, Sada ended up staying in a children’s home until he turned 18. 

1 Carl Newton Mahan, 6 Years Old

While there could be younger murderers that got away with their crimes, Carl Newton Mahan has claimed the title of the youngest known killer in American history. He became Kentucky’s youngest murder defendant after using a 12-gauge shotgun to kill a friend on May 18th, 1929. Mahan fought with 8-year-old Cecil Van Hoose in their impoverished coal-mine town over who could sell a scrap of iron. Hoose ended up slapping Mahan in the face with the iron scrap.

Mahan ran home to retrieve his father’s shotgun before declaring to Hoose, “I’m going to shoot you!” and pulled the trigger. Less than a week later, Mahan was on trial for the murder, where he often lay on the defense counsel’s table or slept. A jury convicted Mahan of manslaughter, and the judge sentenced him to 15 years of reform school. 

There was contradicting public opinion on whether manslaughter was too harsh or not enough as a conviction. A Circuit Court judge overturned the conviction, saying a county judge should decide juvenile cases. Finally, Kentucky’s attorney general became responsible for making the final decision and announced he would take no action against Mahan. Mahan was allowed to remain with his parents.

Australians are well-known for their sense of humor. We like to poke fun at everyone. We laugh at each other, we laugh at ourselves, and we love to poke fun at bureaucracy. So it’s no surprise that some of our quirkiest tourist attractions actually started out as a bit of a joke.

From teddy bears and garden gnomes planted in fun, which have turned into thriving colonies, to a submarine in an inland park, our Aussie sense of humor shines through in some of our funniest tourist attractions.

10 Submarine In An Inland Park

A rural Australian park is the last place you would expect to find a submarine. Yet the HMAS Otway is a major tourist attraction in the New South Wales town of Holbrook. The town was renamed in 1915 after their resident war hero, Lieutenant Norman Holbrook, who was the first submariner to receive the Victoria Cross (VC) during World War I.

Like residents of many rural towns bypassed by the highway during the 1990s, Holbrook residents were looking for a unique tourist attraction to bring passing visitors to their town. When the mayor suggested acquiring a submarine, the townspeople initially thought he was joking. However, the idea of establishing a memorial to submariners in honor of their own VC recipient soon caught on.

After much community fundraising and a generous bequest from the Holbrook family, the upper parts of the outer casings and the fins of the decommissioned HMAS Otway were purchased.

The submarine was moved to Germanton Park in Holbrook, where it has become a popular tourist attraction. The complex has a submarine museum including a mock interior where visitors can gain an insight into what life was like on a submarine.^[1]

9 Mad Max 2 Museum

We all have our favorite movies. Some us can even become a little over-passionate, collecting memorabilia and watching reruns. However, one man’s passion saw him move halfway around the world to open a museum in the most unlikely place.

Scenes from the earlier Mad Max movies were shot in the remote New South Wales outback near the sparsely populated town of Silverton. (The 2016 Australian census showed that the town had a population of just 50.) Yet it was to Silverton that an Englishman named Adrian Bennett came in 2009 to fuel his obsession with the movie Mad Max 2.

He spent his time collecting actual props, relics, and memorabilia from his favorite movie. The collection has grown into a full-scale museum, where Mad Max fans can not only view his collection but also learn more about the filming of the movie on the location in which it was set.^[2]

8 Utes In The Paddock

The Holden Ute is a true Australian icon. The work vehicle can be found all over rural Australia. The outback town of Condobolin has a unique outdoor art gallery depicting well-known Australian icons, all using the Holden Ute as its medium.

A number of years ago, a local landholder decided to turn a rusty old Ute into an artwork. Artists were then invited to repurpose rusty car bodies into art forms, which attract many tourists to the district each year. Twenty cars are upended or suspended at precarious angles to depict the life and characters of the Australian bush.

Here, you will see Australian identities such as Clancy of the Overflow and Dame Edna Everage sitting on a traditional Australian “dunny.” Aussie icons represented include a larger-than-life bottle of Bundaberg Rum and a mammoth jar of vegemite.

The display was originally installed on a remote property 30 kilometers (19 mi) from Condobolin but has since been moved to the outskirts of the town, where it is more accessible to tourists.^[3]

7 The Principality Of Hutt River

Every town has its eccentric residents, but one West Australian farmer’s persistence in seceding from the Commonwealth of Australia has become a quirky tourist attraction. A bureaucratic row over agricultural taxes in 1970 saw the farmer take things into his own hands. Leonard Casley (pictured above) simply established his own country, the Principality Of Hutt River, on his 75-square-kilometer (29 mi²) property near the town of Geraldton.

The Australian government has never recognized the sovereignty of the principality, but “Prince Leonard” still maintained his own postage stamps and currency until his death in 2019. Queen Elizabeth II, however, obviously enjoyed the joke, sending Leonard a letter of congratulation on the principality’s 46th anniversary. Prince Leonard abdicated in 2017 in favor of his son, Graeme, who continues to rule over the micronation.

The town of Nain has been established as the main administrative center of the principality. Here, tourists who want an extra passport stamp can collect one from the Principality of Hutt River while they view the historic displays.^[4]

6 Gnomesville

A cheeky community protest over proposed council roadworks has snowballed into a quirky tourist attraction for the West Australian town of Wellington Mill.

When the council announced controversial plans to construct a roundabout in 1995, a couple of cheeky residents “claimed the plot” by placing a couple of garden gnomes on the proposed site as a bit of a joke. The joke soon spread, and the gnomes quickly multiplied. Today, there are an estimated 5,000 gnomes residing in “Gnomesville,” which has become an unlikely tourist attraction.

Here, you will find gnomes enjoying just about every recreational activity, from fishing to music to sporting matches. Visitors are invited to add their own gnome to the growing collection, as long it is marked with where it came from.^[5]

5 Tantanoola Tiger

A stuffed tiger in a glass case, believed to be responsible for a livestock killing spree, is an unlikely tourist attraction in the small South Australian town of Tantanoola.

During the 1890s, an unknown creature was terrorizing livestock in the small rural town. Tales of sheep being eaten whole and a creature leaving footprints 10 centimeters (4 in) in diameter were widely circulated in the national media. Locals became fearful that the unknown predator might begin to prey on humans. The creature was dubbed the “Tantanoola Tiger” following reported sightings of a striped feline in bushes surrounding the village.

A large reward was posted for its capture, and unsuccessful shooting parties set out to hunt and kill the creature. Casts of the pawprints suggested it was a wild dog, not a tiger.

Eventually, in 1895, the large creature was shot and killed. There was much speculation about the animal’s exact species. It appeared to be a dog, but not of any known breed. It wasn’t a dingo, and it looked remarkably like a wolf. It was later determined to be an Arabian wolf. No one knows how it came to be in Tantanoola.

A taxidermist was called in to stuff the infamous creature, which was enclosed in a glass case and paraded around for viewing at the price of a few shillings. The famous “tiger” even became the mascot for the local football team early in the 20th century. Today, it is a somewhat morbid tourist attraction in the Tantanoola Tiger Hotel near Mount Gambier.^[6]

4 There’s A Bear In There!

A bend in the long, winding highway linking inland New South Wales with the South Coast is perhaps the last place you would expect to find a children’s tourist attraction.

Like many of Australia’s quirkier attractions, Pooh Bear’s Corner was established through one individual’s imagination and eventually took off. A local family from Crookwell spotted a disused cave halfway down Clyde Mountain on their frequent trips to the coast in the early 1970s. The parents concocted the story that the cave was, in fact, home to A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh for the amusement of their children.

They soon began leaving stuffed bears and handwritten signs at the spot on their journey down the mountain. The idea soon caught on, and others began leaving bears at the site, which became known as Pooh Bear’s Corner. Eventually, the local council caught onto the idea, erecting a permanent sign at the attraction.

Children and kids at heart still look out for the teddy bears congregating in Pooh’s cave on their way down Clyde Mountain today.^[7]

3 Bungendore Teddy Bear Colony

Along the highway from the rural town of Bungendore to Queanbeyan, just outside Canberra, teddy bears once again provide a unique tourist attraction. For several kilometers along the roadside, tourists can stop to see the proliferation of teddy bears hanging from trees. Some are relatively new, others are looking somewhat sand- and weather-worn.

The first teddy bears appeared in the late 1980s. Since then, their numbers appear to be growing at a significantly higher rate than the native koalas that inhabit the area. Visitors to the colony regularly make their own additions to the Bungendore teddy bear colony.

How the teddy bear colony began is somewhat of a mystery. Theories suggest the first bears arrived to protest the removal of trees, threatening the local koala habitat. Another theory is that the first bears were a memorial shrine to a young person tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.

The true origins of the teddy bear colony may be lost in time. However, like many quirky Australian tourist attractions, the trend caught on and has continued to grow to amuse passing motorists.^[8]

2 Coila Prawn Girl

Driving along the Princes Highway between the Southern NSW coastal towns of Moruya and Tuross, motorists probably never gave the tiny fuel stop at Coila a second glance. At least, that was the case until 2013, when the new owner came up with an eye-catching idea to encourage passing drivers to stop and maybe buy some local prawns.

The “Coila Prawn Girl” has become somewhat of a local icon. The bikini-clad mannequin is tied to a roadside advertising sign and has been successful in encouraging motorists to stop. The mannequin has also made the news for being the victim of a couple of abductions over the past couple of years.

Tourists frequently stop to pose for a photo with the bizarre attraction. The eccentric owner has recently added a pink Cessna plane nose-diving into the tarmac as an added incentive for an unusual photo stop.^[9]

1 The Dunny At Humpty-Doo

The mere name of the Northern Territory outback town of Humpty-Doo raises a bit of a giggle with visitors. One local larrikin has taken the humor to a new level.

Waldo Bayley, the local gift shop owner, also writes Australian bush poetry, funny little pieces that poke fun at everyone and everything. Not content with simply reciting his ditties to visitors to the shop, he devised an hilarious way to deliver his prose.

Within the shop, he has set up a traditional “bush dunny,” the small, wooden outhouse which once housed the lavatory in the backyard of every Australian home. Waldo actually sits on the dunny to deliver his poetry from the depths of the “thunderbox.” Once again, something that started out as a bit of a joke has turned into a tourist attraction which draws tourists to enjoy a little Aussie humor.^[10]

Lesley Connor is a retired newspaper editor who provides travel articles to online publications and through her travel blog.

For many of us, the holiday season is a time of family gatherings and a celebration of the good things that life has to offer. We may reminisce about the past year and begin to dream of the year to come. As you decorate your house, purchase gifts, and roast your holiday ham, let’s explore ten holiday traditions that started because of poverty. 

Related: 10 Strange Christmas Traditions From The Victorian Era

10 The Original Nativity Scene

In the King James Bible, Luke chapters two through seven depict the story of the birth of Jesus Christ. One section reads, “…she brought forth her firstborn son and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger; because there was no room in the inn.”

The fact that Jesus was born in a stable and had an animal’s manger as a crib comes down to the fact that Bethlehem was crowded with people coming to pay their taxes. It had nothing to do with the poverty of his family. They simply could not find accommodations in the town.

The birth of the Christ child is remembered each holiday season in nativity scenes. Nativity scenes typically include shepherds, sheep, an angel, a donkey, an ox, three wise men, the mother Mary, the father Joseph, baby Jesus, and the star of Bethlehem. Some nativities are simple, while others are elaborate. Many individuals even collect nativity scenes and adorn their homes with displays. 

Saint Francis of Assisi is credited with creating the first nativity scene display that used real people and animals in 1223 to encourage Christian worship. Families across the globe still uphold the tradition of dressing up and reenacting the birth of Christ each Christmas season. 

9 From Saint Nicholas to Santa Claus

While ole Saint Nick shimmies down chimneys to drop off presents to good boys and girls worldwide, the real Saint Nicholas was a fourth-century Christian bishop who lived in Myra; now modern-day Turkey.

After the death of his parents, Saint Nicholas inherited a fortune from them but was a kind and generous man who donated all he had to those in need. He was renowned for helping the poor and giving life-changing gifts to those in need. Saint Nicholas is well known for being the patron saint of children and sailors, with a yearly celebration to honor the man on December 6th. 

After the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, saints became somewhat unpopular, yet Saint Nicholas retained his allure and grandeur. Dutch families brought “Sinter Klaas” to America, and the rest is well—history. 

8 Hang Your Stockings by the Chimney with Care

If I were to take a guess, I would guess that you have stockings well-hung somewhere in your home. Are they hung up on or near your fireplace? Have you ever wondered why the fireplace? 

Well, the story goes that three poor sisters washed their stockings and hung them out to dry by the fireplace overnight. Knowing that the girls were living in poverty, Saint Nicholas (the same Saint Nicholas in number nine above) threw three bags of gold down the chimney, with each bag falling into each of the sister’s stockings. Now you know why you traditionally hang stockings on the fireplace and why Santa Claus delivers gifts via the chimney!

We still hang up Christmas stockings each year, but unfortunately, few get filled with bags of gold. Now, many stockings are filled with candy, small toys, or even the ever-famous socks and underwear combo. Thanks, Mom!

7 “Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly”

Holly, also known as Ilex, is the traditional Christmas flowering plant with which individuals decorate their homes. Its glossy leaves and bright red berries bring a touch of color to drab winter days. Because holly was a common plant in the woodlands of Europe, it was a cheap way for the poor to brighten their homes, and it soon became synonymous with the Christmas season. 

The Romans used holly in their Saturnalia festival around our current Christmas season for the same reasons that we use it today—it’s pretty! On the day of Saturnalia, masters served their slaves.

Nowadays, in the United States, commercial nurseries cultivate European holly for Christmas use. Unfortunately, Ilex likes conditions in America and has become an invasive species that causes considerable damage to native woodlands.

In traditional medicine, holly berries were used as a diuretic, fever relief, and a laxative. We certainly wouldn’t recommend this, as the berries can be toxic to humans. The colorful berries are enticing to small children and pets, but their effects can be sickly. So if you choose to decorate with real holly, please hang it out of reach of your pets and small children.

6 You Say “Panto,” I Say “Mime”

Many families enjoy going to the movies on Christmas day, but did you know similar practices have been going on for centuries? Pantos or pantomimes are not as important in the United States as they are, for example, in Britain. Nevertheless, various theaters across the country put on pantos during the holiday season.

Pantos generally follow the same general theme, whatever the subject. They usually showcase a tussle between bad and good, with clear plot lines, songs, and audience participation. Although pantos often reflect contemporary themes, pantos have a long tradition.

Pantos tradition traces its roots to medieval morality plays. These plays presented Christian themes and Bible stories in a way that was easily understood by the poor, illiterate townspeople who watched them. Services in the church were in Latin, a language that the uneducated didn’t understand. Morality plays were well-received by the public and continue to influence modern-day entertainment practices. 

5 Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

Mistletoe is a parasitic plant. Its use as a holiday decoration shares, with holly, the virtues of being easy to find and decorative at a time of year when few other plants look their best. Like holly, it was a natural choice for the poor due to its easy access. 

The Greeks used mistletoe as a cure-all, but the Druids saw it as a symbol of vivacity in the first century. Mistletoe thrived when everything else seemed dead; this small step led people to see the plant as a fertility symbol—hence our tradition of kissing under the mistletoe.

This tradition of snatching a kiss seems to have gained popularity in eighteenth-century England, amongst the servants in the great houses, mainly through the literature of the day—Washington Irving’s “Christmas Eve” comes to mind.

4 Winner Winner, Turkey Dinner

There is a story that Turkish merchants brought a tasty African fowl to Europe. In Britain, this bird quickly became known as a “turkey.” Long before Britain established colonies in America, a trader named William Strickland got hold of some American fowl that he sold in Bristol in 1526. These new birds were also named, somewhat unscientifically, as “turkeys.”

Henry VIII decided that the English should eat turkey at Christmas. Although he often seemed to act on a whim, this was a question of the domestic economy. Mid-winter was a terrible season for farmers. Most farmers were poor with small plots of land that could support only a few animals. 

The farmers could kill a chicken or slaughter a cow to celebrate the Christmas feast, but these animals were productive. Farmers could sell the eggs and milk, so they could not afford to lose them. Hence, turkey became an ideal substitute.

3 Yule Logs: From Wood to Cake

Originally, a Yule log was, well, a large log. In poor households, the fireplace was a source of heat and light. It was the center of the home where the whole family gathered. The family would cook their meals and chat in the dark winter evenings. 

In the cold and dark days as the year turned toward spring, a huge Yule log would burn throughout the twelve days of Christmas, from December 25th to January 5th. “Yule” is from the Norse word, hweol, meaning wheel. The Norse believed that the Yule log would usher in the sun, leading to warmth and longer days. 

Today, many only know a Yule log as a tasty holiday dessert. A Yule log cake is a chocolate sponge cake rolled with a cream filling. The cake is then covered with chocolate ganache to resemble an actual wood log. A delicious treat—without the splinters and fiber!

2 Milk and Cookies for Santa

Leaving milk and cookies for Santa is a large part of the United States holiday tradition, so it might be difficult to believe that it is quite a recent addition to Christmas.

In America, leaving snacks out for Santa seems to have started during the Great Depression. With so many people out of work, poverty was a real fear. No one could be certain they would have a job the following week; everyone knew someone who had fallen on hard times. 

In the households that were lucky enough to celebrate Christmas, some parents tried to teach their children the importance of giving and showing solidarity with those less fortunate than themselves. The leaving out of cookies and milk was symbolic, true, but an important lesson.

However, the tradition had long been popular in other parts of the world. Like several other holiday customs, it originated in northern Europe. The holiday tradition stems from the god Odin riding around the skies on his eight-legged horse, Sleipnir. During the Yule season, children would leave out food for Sleipnir, hoping that a grateful Odin would bring them a present in return. Rudolph and Santa’s reindeer are an echo of Odin and Sleipnir

1 Salvation Army Bell Ringers

Salvation Army bell ringers are perhaps the holiday tradition most obviously connected to poverty and need. The holiday season sees bell-ringers in virtually every shopping area in the country; I can hear the bells, even now.

The Salvation Army began when William and Catherine Booth organized a mission on military principles to help the needy in London, England. The Salvation Army is now an international institution that offers help to all who need it, regardless of faith or circumstance. However, the tradition of Salvation Army bell ringers is purely American and began in San Francisco, CA, in 1891.

The United States had recently come out of a short but damaging recession. Many people had moved west in search of new opportunities, but not all were successful. Salvation Army Captain Joseph McFee had the worthy but relatively modest aim to bring some cheer to the unfortunate.

That Christmas, Captain McFee decided that he would like to host a Christmas dinner for 1,000 of the city’s destitute and set out a red pot at the Oakland Ferry Landing with a sign that asked people to “Keep the Pot Boiling!” to draw attention to the event and raise the necessary funds. This was the origin of the red kettles that the Salvation Army still use, and bell-ringing advertises their presence.

In 2019, the Salvation Army raised $126 million through its bell-ringing campaign. Their presence on our streets during the holiday season is a reminder of the true spirit of Christmas.