If the happenings of the past week have got you down, perhaps this list can cheer you up a bit. Here we only talk about stories that are positive, amusing, or inspirational. Meanwhile, you can also check the Saturday offbeat list for a glimpse at some of the most bizarre news items that made the headlines.

This week, we look at a few commendable stories regarding children who impressed with their skills or heroics. There are also a few touching reunions. A boy in the hospital is comforted by the arrival of his canine best friend, while a musician reunites with his long-lost guitar after almost 50 years apart.

10 Reunited And It Feels So Good

Canadian rocker Myles Goodwyn was reunited with his beloved Gibson Melody Maker guitar. He thought it had been destroyed 46 years ago.

Back in the early ’70s, Goodwyn was still an unknown musician trying to make it big. His career took a turn when he got his hands on a new Gibson guitar. He customized it and then used it to write and perform most of the songs for April Wine’s first two albums.

The Melody Maker was the only guitar Goodwyn used, but he thought it was lost forever in 1973. While touring in Montreal, the truck that carried all the gear crashed. The guitarist was not able to inspect the wreckage but was told that his beloved Melody Maker had suffered a broken neck.^[1]

Obviously, Goodwyn has played other guitars since then. But he still inquired online about the Gibson every once in a while, hoping that perhaps someone took it from the crash. His persistence paid off. Last year, on the day before Christmas, he received a message saying that the Melody Maker was at an address in Victoria, British Columbia.

After 46 years apart, Goodwyn was reunited with his cherished guitar. The artist is still piecing together the history of the instrument, but it has changed hands multiple times over the last five decades. Fortunately, most owners treated it as a collectible or a showpiece and never actually played it. Therefore, the Melody Maker sounds like it did the day Goodwyn lost it.

9 The World’s Youngest Go Pro

Nine-year-old Japanese girl Sumire Nakamura is set to become the world’s youngest professional Go player.

In recent times, Japan has instituted a program that encourages new generations to start playing Go to compete with Chinese and Korean challengers in international competitions. Sumire will become the youngest person to play Go professionally when she debuts in her first tournament on April 1.

The girl from Osaka started playing the ancient board game when she was three years old. She was inspired by her father, Shinya, who also plays Go professionally and won a national title in 1998. Japanese Go officials are hopeful that Sumire’s involvement will help boost the popularity of the strategic game, mirroring how the success of Sota Fujii brought renewed interest to the game of shogi, popularly known as Japanese chess.^[2]

8 How Friendly Are Canadians?

As far as national stereotypes go, Canadians have it pretty good. They are known for being exceedingly friendly and apologetic. One person from Saskatchewan decided to put this to the test and spent most of 2018 walking from one corner of Canada to the other.

Zayell Johnston is a 27-year-old man from Yorkton, Saskatchewan. For years, he fantasized about trekking through the great outdoors. He wanted to see for himself if Canada was truly “the best country in the world with the friendliest people.”

In February 2018, Zayell set off on his gargantuan quest. He started in Victoria, British Columbia, where he splashed his face with water from the Pacific Ocean. Nine months later, Johnston ended his journey by splashing ocean water from the Atlantic. During that time, he walked 9,000 kilometers (5,590 mi) or, according to his Fitbit, 11.8 million steps.

The people he met along the way did not disappoint. Zayell set out with only $7,000 for food, equipment, and other necessities. And yet he hardly ever found himself in need of a place to sleep or extra supplies.

An elderly couple in Calgary was the first to offer him a place to stay. As Zayell documented his entire journey on social media, more and more people came forward wanting to help. He found it strange that everybody in Newfoundland offered him coffee.^[3]

Weather was Johnston’s biggest foe as several blizzards forced him to hunker down and wait for them to pass. He was stuck for a whole month near the Coquihalla Highway, but a stranger helped him get a job at a ski resort.

7 Netflix And Heat

A young boy from Delaware saved his mom from a fire after staying up late to watch Netflix against her orders.

Thirteen-year-old Damir Border did what all of us did at one point or another during our childhoods. He stayed up past his bedtime. In Damir’s case, it was to watch The Flash on Netflix. At around 1:00 AM, a faulty breaker box outside the Border mobile home caused a spark in an outlet which soon caught fire.

The boy’s mother, Angela, was sleeping while his father, Rich, was at work. If Damir hadn’t still been awake, the home and everybody in it would have gone up in flames. As it happened, Damir spotted the fire, was able to wake up his mom, and then called 911.

The two escaped the inferno in time, and people in the community are already collecting donations to help them replace necessary items lost in the blaze.^[4]

6 Iguanas In The Galapagos Again

For the first time since Charles Darwin visited in 1835, Santiago Island in the Galapagos has iguanas on it again following a mass reintroduction.

Over 1,400 Galapagos land iguanas have been released on the island after being wiped out almost 200 years ago. Once an important member of the island’s ecosystem, the reptile was killed off by predators introduced by humans, particularly the feral pig. The last recorded mention of the iguana was made by Charles Darwin during the iconic voyage of the HMS Beagle.

Since then, those unnatural predators have been eradicated. So the iguana should be able to thrive again and help the environment by dispersing seeds and clearing open spaces of vegetation.^[5]

Furthermore, the initiative should also protect the iguana population on nearby North Seymour Island where the reptiles came from. That island has the opposite problem: There are too many iguanas and not enough food to feed them all.

5 A Boy And His Dog

A man drove 3,700 kilometers (2,300 mi) to reunite a sickly boy he’d never met with the child’s beloved puppy.

The holidays have not been particularly joyous for eight-year-old Perryn Miller or his family. While visiting relatives in Utah, he started suffering from painful headaches. During a visit to the hospital, doctors found that Perryn had a brain tumor and required emergency surgery.^[6]

The operation went well, and various people have tried cheering up the boy during his convalescence. His favorite soccer player, Justen Glad, paid him a visit, and the West Valley Police Department named Perryn an officer for the day. But what the kid really wanted was to play with his best friend, an eight-month-old German shepherd named Frank.

There was just one problem. Frank was at the Miller home, 3,700 kilometers (2,300 mi) away in Wilmington, North Carolina. Fortunately, former trucker Bob Reynolds heard about Perryn’s story and drove 52 hours to bring Frank to him. Reynolds had never met the Millers but decided that this was something that he could and wanted to do. Reynolds has already volunteered to make the trip again to bring the dog back home.

4 The Truth About Female Scribes

The discovery of a rare pigment on a medieval set of female teeth provides evidence that nuns and other women monastics of that time were not only literate but also responsible for writing and illustrating manuscripts.

Monks from a thousand years ago get a lot of credit for writing many texts of that era and also providing masterful illustrations. However, most of them didn’t sign their work so we do not really know who did what.

In recent times, new research has suggested that nuns and other female scribes were also actively involved in book production. Tiny flecks of a blue pigment found on 1,000-year-old dental tartar indicate that we know of at least one woman who worked on medieval manuscripts.

The teeth belonged to a woman who lived in Germany between the 10th and 12th centuries and was buried in an all-female monastery. Monica Tromp, one of the paper’s authors, speculates that the staining happened when the woman licked the end of her brush while painting. Alternatively, she could have inhaled powder while preparing the pigment.^[7]

Also notable is the type of pigment found. The blue ink was called ultramarine. It was made from lapis lazuli found in a single region in Afghanistan. It was a luxury good worth its weight in gold. Only the most talented and prized illustrators would have been allowed to work with it.

3 A Doodle Earns A College Scholarship

A second grader won the 10th annual Doodle 4 Google contest with a drawing of dinosaurs shaped to resemble the company’s logo.

Google is known to create special versions of their logo which are displayed on their home page to commemorate holidays, unique events, and people. Once a year, the organization also hosts a competition open to students from kindergarten to the 12th grade to design one of their unique doodles. The winner is decided by a panel of judges. This year, it included guests such as Jimmy Fallon and Kermit the Frog.

Sarah Gomez-Lane from Falls Church, Virginia, came in first place with her dino doodle. The theme for the competition was “What Inspires Me.” Sarah’s drawing reflected her ambitions of becoming a paleontologist.

Fortunately for her, the prize for the contest is a $30,000 college scholarship. In addition, Sarah spent the day with Google’s Doodle Team to transform her drawing into an animated doodle which was featured on the search engine’s home page.^[8]

2 The Happiest Bus Driver In The World

In just 18 months, Patrick Lawson went from being a homeless drug addict with a criminal record to winning an award for being the happiest bus driver in London.

The beginning of Pat’s story is familiar—childhood abuse led to problems with drugs and violence. These led to jail time and homelessness. He lived like this for almost 50 years before hitting rock bottom and deciding that it was time to make a change.

The important part is that Pat actually followed through on his decision. First, he went to the hospital and got treated for his drug addiction. Then he received job training using London’s Single Homeless Project program.

On Pat’s first day as a bus driver, he greeted every passenger. His instructor didn’t think it was going to last. But here we are 18 months later and Pat is still doing it. He loves interacting with his passengers. He particularly enjoys when he has a reason to use the PA system and talk to the entire bus.

As it turns out, Lawson’s passengers appreciate that their driver goes the extra mile. In his first year on the job, 45 people called up the bus company to compliment Pat. This earned him a spot as a finalist for the Top London Bus Driver prize at the UK Bus Awards last year. More time has passed, more people have called up, and now Lawson has won the Hello London Award for Outstanding Customer Service at Transport.^[9]

1 Congratulations! It’s A Baby Black Hole

Scientists exploring the night sky might have serendipitously detected for the first time ever a black hole or a neutron star being born.

Back in June 2018, astronomers saw a bright glow in the sky. They called the unidentified object AT2018cow, better known simply as “The Cow.” They thought it was a nearby event of medium intensity, most likely a white dwarf. However, analyzing its light spectrum revealed that The Cow was much farther away in a galaxy about 200 million light-years away from us. It was certainly not a white dwarf.

The next sensible idea indicated a supernova, but The Cow kept doing “super weird” things that supernovae just don’t do. It was also 10–100 times brighter than your typical supernova and surprisingly brief.

Study lead author Raffaella Margutti, assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Northwestern University in Illinois, believes their observations indicate that The Cow represents the accretion stage of a black hole or a neutron star. This would be the first time that humans have observed this phase as we typically see these cosmic behemoths millions or even billions of years after they are formed.^[10]

The results were published in The Astrophysical Journal and presented at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week. Others have shared their own findings relating to The Cow, and not all of them are in agreement. It remains to be seen in the weeks and months to come if we can conclusively find out the identity of The Cow.

To help you end the week on a positive note, we have gathered into one list all the news that might lift your spirits. This is where you’ll find a nice mix of feel-good stories combined with significant achievements and tales of true togetherness. If you prefer something weird and wacky, check out the offbeat list.

This week, we learn that the world’s loneliest frog has found a girlfriend. A puppy has a miraculous survival, and a man’s life is saved by beer. There are a few potentially “game-changing” medical breakthroughs, an extreme feat of endurance, and a humbling act of forgiveness.

10 Courtroom Clemency

The victim of a DUI hit stunned the courtroom when she not only forgave her attacker but also asked for his help.

Three and a half years ago, Montreal woman Tina Adams went out for a jog and was hit by 22-year-old Jordan Taylor, who was drunk behind the wheel. Nineteen surgeries later, Tina was able to overcome the fractured spine, cracked skull, brain injury, and blood clots she suffered in the crash.

She may have survived, but Adams will deal with pain for the rest of her life. She can no longer become a police officer because of her injuries and may not be able to have children. In the years since the crash, Tina has traveled to schools to talk about her experience and to warn students of the dangers of drunk driving.

She surprised everyone when she asked Taylor to join her on these school talks during his sentencing hearing.^[1] Tina believes that having the guy who hit her there will have a huge impact on the students. She had thought about doing this for a while but wanted to wait until meeting him in court to see if he showed genuine remorse.

9 Romeo Finds His Juliet

A lonely male frog once thought to be the last of his kind finally has a partner after a decade of solitude.

Romeo is a Sehuencas water frog. Ten years ago, conservationists realized that the species was in trouble so they collected him from the wild to place him into a breeding program. However, they couldn’t find a female suitable for him. Romeo was left in isolation in a Bolivian aquarium.

Now he is no longer alone. A recent expedition into the wilderness of Bolivia turned up five new Sehuencas water frogs—three males and two females. One of them, named Juliet, will be placed with Romeo in the hopes that they will breed together. At the moment, all the new amphibians are still in quarantine.

Herpetologists are hoping that opposites will attract when the two finally meet. Their personalities seem to be antithetical to each other. While Romeo is calm, slow, and doesn’t move around a lot, Juliet is very active, swims constantly, and eats everything in sight.^[2]

8 The Chief And The Good Samaritan

Last Saturday, the Kansas City Chiefs scored a playoff victory over the Indianapolis Colts and made their way to the AFC Championship Game later today. However, things might have turned out differently were it not for a Good Samaritan who stopped to lend a helping hand.

Hours before the game was set to start at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, Chiefs offensive lineman Jeff Allen was stuck in the snow. He probably would have missed the match if Dave Cochran hadn’t pulled over in his truck and helped Allen move his vehicle.

As it later turned out, Cochran was homeless and living in his truck. However, that did not stop him from aiding other people, which he considered his “natural habit.” When he pulled over, he didn’t know he was dealing with a Kansas City Chiefs player. He saw someone with Texas plates on his car and figured that he probably wasn’t used to driving in snowy conditions.

Allen was keen to return the favor and took to Twitter the next day to reach out to Cochran. Within a few hours, he was able to contact his snowy savior and give him a couple of tickets to the AFC Championship Game. Cochran admitted that he was only expecting a “thank you” but that Allen’s gesture is “like a dream come true.”^[3]

7 A New Therapy

According to a new study published in the journal Cancer Cell, Swiss researchers from the University of Basel are working on a revolutionary new therapy which can change breast cancer cells into harmless fat cells.

Cancer cells can undergo a process called epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Normally, this is something that makes them incredibly dangerous as it allows them to spread to other types of cells in the body. However, scientists believe that the same mechanism can be used against them.^[4]

During an experiment, researchers injected female mice with an aggressive form of female breast cancer. When the cells started undergoing EMT, the scientists also injected an antidiabetic drug called rosiglitazone and a cancer inhibitor named trametinib.

The combined therapy not only turned the cancer cells into fat cells but also stopped them from proliferating. Moreover, lead author Gerhard Christofori believes that the treatment will have a shorter, easier path to human trials because the drugs involved are already approved.

6 50,000 Cures For Loneliness

With his birthday approaching, World War II navy veteran Duane Sherman was feeling a bit lonely. His daughter asked friends on Facebook if they could send him some well-wishes. He received over 50,000 letters.

At the moment, there are birthday cards, thank you notes, small gifts, and mementos filling postal bins stacked one on top of another all throughout Sherman’s home in Fullerton, California. And that only represents a fraction of the total. He had to store thousands of letters at a friend’s house, and many more bins are still waiting to be picked up at the post office.^[5]

He has received letters from all 50 states and 10 different countries. Some of the senders included the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Secretary of the Navy. The commander of the USS Cowpens even took the vet out to lunch while officers from the San Diego US Navy Sonar School paid him a visit to listen to his stories.

Sherman’s birthday was on December 30, and so far, he has gone through fewer than 2,000 letters. He is legally blind, so his daughter, Sue Morse, has to read them to him. It’s pretty safe to say that they will be busy for the foreseeable future.

5 How To Get Over A Case Of The Mondays

Tomorrow is Blue Monday, considered to be the most miserable day of the year. But is there any truth to this, and are there ways of getting through the day with a smile on your face?

Right off the bat, if you live in the southern hemisphere, you’re off the hook. The cold weather is one of the main factors which contribute to the misery.

The concept of “Blue Monday” came from UK psychologist Cliff Arnall in 2005. It usually falls on the third Monday of the year. Arnall claims to have developed an equation to determine the saddest day using factors such as weather, debt level, time passed since the holidays, and time passed since people broke their New Year’s resolutions.^[6]

The whole thing was actually devised for an ad campaign for vacation company Sky Travel. It has been regularly dismissed as pseudoscience. Even Arnall admitted that he never intended to make the day sound negative but to inspire people to take action.

Let’s say you are feeling down in the dumps. Even if Blue Monday is a myth, seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is real. If you want to lift your spirits, psychologists recommend a bit of exercise, a nice walk outside, and fun, challenging indoor activities.

A healthier diet rich in good fats and antioxidants can also help to prevent depression. There is even light therapy using special SAD lamps to make up for all that sunlight you’re missing during winter.

4 Puppy Drop Has Happy Ending

A tiny puppy miraculously survived a drop from the sky with no serious injuries after being abducted by a hawk.

Last Saturday, construction workers in Austin, Texas, responded to cries belonging to a Chihuahua pooch which weighed less than 0.5 kilograms (1 lb). Wondering how the dog got there in the first place, they looked up and spotted a hawk circling above. They realized that the raptor had picked up the puppy and dropped it from the air.

The workers took the dog to the Austin Animal Center where vets were surprised to discover that the animal had only mild injuries and no broken bones. The worst of the bunch were the puncture wounds caused by the hawk’s talons, but even those will heal up completely in due time. The puppy, now called Tony Hawk, is resting with his foster family and will find a permanent home in a few weeks.^[7]

3 A Game-Changing Transplant

Medical experts are hailing a new procedure for liver transplants as a “game-changer” which will halve the waiting list.

Right now, about a third of all donated livers never make it into a patient. At the same time, 20 percent of people in need of a new liver die on the waiting list. This is due to the normal storage method which uses ice. It causes the organ to deteriorate, and there is only a limited time to transplant it before it becomes unusable.

A new treatment uses normothermic perfusion machines to preserve the liver. They constantly pump the organ with oxygenated blood and nutrients at body temperature so that it can be stored for longer periods of time with no ill effects.^[8]

Moreover, the blood treatment can actually be used to repair livers which have been damaged during removal or have come from elderly or ill donors. Therefore, they allow doctors to use organs which otherwise would have been discarded.

2 A Shattering Performance

New mother Jasmin Paris won the Montane Spine Race along the Pennine Way in the UK, smashing the previous record by over 12 hours.

The 431-kilometer (268 mi) race is one of the most grueling endurance challenges in Europe. Runners go from Derbyshire to the Scottish border, spending around two-thirds of their trek in the dark.

They cover a lot of hilly terrain and have to climb over 13,000 meters (43,000 ft) in total. They have to carry their own kit and supplies and can’t have a support team or runner join them on the course. Competitors carry an emergency button in case they are no longer able to walk.

With a time of 83 hours, 12 minutes, and 23 seconds, Paris became the first woman to win the race and had the fastest time ever—by far. The previous record of 95 hours and 17 minutes was set in 2016 by Eoin Keith.

Just a few checkpoints are allowed during the race, and Paris slept for only three hours during the whole thing. She admitted that she had begun hallucinating by the last day. She saw animals appear out of nowhere and trees doing morning stretches.^[9]

1 Beer Saves Life

Beer can be good for you, and 48-year-old Vietnamese man Nguyen Van Nhat is proof of that. When he came into the hospital unconscious, suffering from methanol poisoning, doctors pumped him with 15 cans of beer and saved his life.

Methanol is a form of alcohol. But it is a very toxic one which is typically found in paints, thinners, cleaning products, and antifreeze rather than beverages. Commercial spirit manufacturers take extra steps to remove methanol from their products, although it can still be found in dangerous quantities in bootleg liquor.

The source of the methanol consumed by Nguyen Van Nhat is unknown, but he had over 1,000 times the recommended limit. Doctors knew that he would die if his liver processed all the methanol in his system. The liver converts the alcohol into formaldehyde which is then broken down into formic acid. Doctors were looking for a way to slow down the process, and they found it with beer.

Beer contains another type of alcohol called ethanol. It is the alcohol found in most consumer drinks in the world. Although it is still toxic, its effects are far milder. As it happens, the liver first processes ethanol and only afterward moves up to methanol.

Therefore, as long as there was beer in Nguyen Van Nhat’s system, his body would not be damaged by the methanol. Doctors transfused 15 cans worth of beer into the patient at a rate of a can per hour, thus giving the dialysis enough time to remove the methanol from his system.^[10]

On May 16, 1966, the Chinese Communist Party released a document expressing concern that bourgeoisie and counterrevolutionaries were trying to hijack the party. The May 16 Notification, as it became known, would spark the Cultural Revolution, an all-encompassing political movement that sought to purge the country from anti-Maoist opposition and thought.

Millions of people were arrested and terrorized by the Red Guards, the Cultural Revolution’s paramilitary youth organization. Those arrested were forced to endure brutal “struggle sessions,” where they were tortured and humiliated in public.

By the time the revolution ended in 1976, possibly as many as three million people had been killed. The violence and persecution during the revolution was catastrophic, and the decade arguably ranks as one of China’s darkest periods.

10 The Execution Of Fang Zhongmou

Fang Zhongmou, a Communist Party member and veteran of the People’s Liberation Army, felt proud when her two older children got caught up in the furor of the Cultural Revolution and became Red Guards. Fang’s enthusiasm, however, began to wane after her daughter got sick and died following a trip she made to see a Mao Tse-tung rally in Beijing.

Her husband was then accused a few months later of being a capitalist roader, a vague Maoist slur which referred to somebody who was working to betray the ideals of the Communist Party and lead China to a capitalist system.

Due to a past accusation of her father being a Nationalist spy, it wasn’t long before Fang was suspected of being a dissident as well. Like her “capitalist-roader” husband, she was put in detention multiple times and subjected to struggle sessions by the authorities. While home one day in 1970, Fang angered her husband and her son Zhang Hongbing after criticizing Mao Tse-tung.

Fang’s family duly reported her to the authorities, and she set the family portrait of Mao on fire in retaliation. She was then taken away by a soldier but not before Hongbing beat her on orders from his father. For the crime of “attacking Chairman Mao Tse-tung,” Fang was executed by firing squad on April 11, 1970. Neither Hongbing nor his father attended the execution.

In the years following his mother’s death, Hongbing realized what a terrible thing he and his father had done. With the help of his uncle Feng Meikai, Hongbing was able to influence his province’s legal system to clear his mother’s name in 1980. He has since become a lawyer, active in raising awareness of the Cultural Revolution’s victims and fighting to have his mother’s grave turned into a memorial.

9 The Paralysis Of Deng Pufang

From ordinary peasants to high-ranking party members, nobody in China was truly safe during the Cultural Revolution. Not even Deng Xiaoping, the high-ranking leader best remembered for his post-Mao capitalist reforms in China in the 1980s, was safe from the revolution’s purges.

In 1967, while serving as the Communist Party’s general secretary, Deng was denounced as a capitalist roader and removed from his position. He then spent the next two years under house arrest in Beijing, forbidden to leave or see his children.

While the worst thing that most of his children suffered was being forced to work in the countryside, Deng’s oldest son, Pufang, became paralyzed after an encounter with the Red Guards. In 1968, a group of Red Guards captured Pufang on the campus of Beijing University and tortured him for the sole reason of being his father’s son.

After clubbing him, the Red Guards locked a dazed Pufang in a fourth-story room. Pufang has never been able to remember what happened next. Either his torturers pushed him out an open window or he attempted suicide by jumping out the window himself.

Fortunately, Pufang survived the fall. But he did break his back and become paralyzed. Since the Dengs were political pariahs, Pufang was denied the treatment he needed. By the time some specialists finally examined him in 1974, Pufang was already permanently paralyzed.

While still bound to a wheelchair today, Pufang has worked tirelessly the past few decades for the rights of the handicapped in China. In 2003, he was awarded the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights for his humanitarian efforts.

8 The Murder Of Bian Zhongyun

One of the earliest victims of the Cultural Revolution was Bian Zhongyun, a 50-year-old vice principal at the prestigious Beijing Normal University Girls High School. In June 1966, some of the school’s students began to criticize school officials and organize revolutionary meetings.

Bian’s college degree and bourgeois background made her a natural target for the revolutionaries, although many of them were ironically from privileged families themselves. Over the next two months, Bian was repeatedly harassed by her students and even beaten during a meeting.

On August 4 of that summer, Bian was tortured and warned not to come to school the next day. But she decided to come in that morning anyway. It was a courageous decision that would cost Bian her life.

First, her teenage students beat and kicked her. Then they whacked her with nailed-filled table legs. The attack was so terrible that Bian soiled herself and was knocked unconscious before dying of her wounds. Nobody was ever punished for her murder, and even today, the perpetrators have yet to step forward.

In January 2014, Song Binbin, a famous Red Guard and one of Bian’s students at the time she was killed, made a public apology for her death. Although Song claimed that she had no direct part in Bian’s beating, she felt guilty for not being able to stop it.

Some critics, however, felt the apology was insincere and that Song had a larger role than she was willing to admit. Bian’s husband, Wang Jingyao, was also not impressed with the apology. In one interview, he said that Song was a “bad person,” although he believed that the Communist Party and Mao Tse-tung were also responsible.

7 The Down To The Countryside Movement

The Down to the Countryside Movement was a massive relocation program that ultimately sent over 17 million young urban Chinese into rural areas across the country between 1968 and 1980. While some of these “sent-down youth” left the cities voluntarily, the vast majority were coerced against their will.

Due to a variety of factors, including urban unemployment and the Cultural Revolution’s disruption of the education system, Mao Tse-tung proclaimed in 1968 that it was “very necessary for the educated youth to go to the countryside and undergo reeducation by the poor peasants.”

Ideally, the relocation program would cultivate the sent-down youth’s commitment to party ideology and foster economic growth in underdeveloped areas. The young urbanites, fresh from high school, university, and even elementary school, were forced to endure backbreaking labor jobs and the extreme poverty common in the countryside at the time. Although some of the youth saw the policy as a great opportunity for adventure or patriotism, others resented the harsh work and poor living conditions and yearned to return home.

Most of the sent-down youth did eventually return home, but the many years they spent in the countryside remained lost. They’ve become known as a lost generation, an immense group of people who were denied the chance to finish school and maximize their potential. As one Beijing history professor put it, “From the perspective of a historian, from the perspective of the entire nation’s development, this period must of course be negated.”

6 The Ping-Pong Spies

Rong Guotuan, Fu Qifang, and Jiang Yongning were three of the biggest names in Chinese ping-pong during the 1950s and 1960s. Rong was especially popular, and he was considered a national hero for being the first Chinese to win the World Table Tennis Championships in 1959. Despite playing for the Chinese, all three men had originally come from Hong Kong, which at that time was controlled by the British.

As foreigners, the three ping-pong greats were deemed untrustworthy by their countrymen during the Cultural Revolution, and they were all accused of being spies in 1968. Fu was subjected to struggle sessions and beatings by his own teammates, and he eventually committed suicide on April 16 of that year.

Jiang would hang himself a month later. His hobby of reading newspapers, along with a childhood picture he had of himself wearing a Japanese flag during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, was enough to convince the authorities that Jiang was a Japanese spy.

Given the humiliating accusations against him, Rong decided to follow in Fu’s and Jiang’s footsteps. Early in the morning of June 20, Rong wrapped a rope around the branch of an elm tree and hanged himself. In his pants pocket, Rong left a note that pleaded for his innocence.

“I am not a spy,” he wrote, “Please do not suspect me. I have let you down. I treasure my reputation more than my own life.” The National Sports Commission remained unconvinced, however, insisting that the three men were operating a Hong Kong spy network.

5 The Death Of Lao She

Lao She, the pen name of the Manchu writer Shu Qingchun, is widely regarded as one of the greatest authors of modern Chinese literature. His 1937 novel Rickshaw Boy, the tragic story of a poor rickshaw puller in Beijing, is so popular that there’s a statue of the main character on the city’s Wangfujing Street. Such was the admiration for the “people’s artist,” as Lao She was nicknamed, that Chou En-lai, China’s first premier, asked him in 1949 to come back to China after he had moved to New York three years earlier.

On August 23, 1966, as the Cultural Revolution began to gain steam, Lao She and 20 other writers were transported to Beijing’s Temple of Confucius, where a mob of 150 teenage girls beat them with bamboo sticks and theater props in a brutal struggle session. Later that night, after the writers were taken to the city’s Culture Bureau offices, Lao She was beaten for hours without end after he refused to wear a placard that said he was a counterrevolutionary. Finally, around midnight, the mob stopped and Lao She was allowed to go home.

The next day, after earlier leaving his house in the morning, Lao She’s body was found drowned in a lake. It’s believed that the humiliation Lao She suffered during his struggle session drove him to kill himself, although his wife Hu Jieqing suspected that he was murdered.

The exact circumstances surrounding Lao She’s struggle session are shrouded in mystery. It’s uncertain who organized the session and whether Lao She attended voluntarily or against his will. If Lao She did go freely, he might not have known what the unidentified organizers—possibly a trio of younger writers who disliked him—were plotting.

4 The Dao County Massacre

In summer 1967, a rumor began to spread around Hunan Province’s Dao County that there was going to be an invasion of mainland China by Taiwan. The Kuomintang, Taiwan’s ruling party and the former rulers of China from 1928 until 1949, was allegedly going to cooperate with antirevolutionaries to take back the mainland.

The antirevolutionaries were also planning to conduct a massive purge in the county, wiping out all the members of the Communist Party and the peasant leaders in the local government. The invasion was a completely groundless rumor, but the county government’s confirmation that it was true set off a massacre that claimed the lives of over 4,500 people in only two months.

Many of the victims were members of the Five Black Categories, a group that the Communists identified as landlords, rich farmers, counterrevolutionaries, bad influencers, and rightists. Some of the victims were killed by armed militias in their own homes, while others were given a mock trial and then killed by mobs.

Victims were variously shot, decapitated, buried alive, and in some instances, blown up with explosives. The violence got so out of hand that it spread to nearby counties, eventually resulting in another 4,000 deaths.

When all was said and done, over 14,000 people were thought to have participated in the massacre in Dao County. By the 1980s, 52 of the participants had been arrested and given prison sentences, but the vast majority were never punished.

3 The Cleansing The Class Ranks Campaign

To “cleanse the class ranks” of counterrevolutionaries and capitalists, the Communist Party operated revolutionary committees nationwide to root out its perceived enemies. From 1968 until 1971, the committees launched a campaign of terror across the country. One area especially hit hard was Inner Mongolia, where an alleged secret Mongolian separatist party was said to be carrying out counterrevolutionary activities. Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Mongolians, were arrested, maimed, or tortured. Another 22,900 people were killed.

Other provinces, such as Hebei and Zhejiang, also experienced huge purges. As part of a crackdown on an alleged Kuomintang spy ring, 84,000 people were arrested in Hebei. Over 2,900 suspects are recorded as having died from injuries they received from being tortured. In Yunnan, as estimated by the province’s Cleansing the Class Ranks Office, almost 7,000 people suffered “death from enforced suicide.”

The Cleansing the Class Ranks Campaign began to fizzle after only a year in 1969, although it lasted in some areas until 1971. The large-scale arrests and executions eventually unnerved Mao Tse-tung, who feared that the purges had gone too far and could hurt his public image.

2 Project 571

During the 1960s, the great general Lin Biao was one of Mao Tse-tung’s most trusted men. He was vice chairman of the Communist Party and Mao’s designated successor. While Lin survived the early purges of the Cultural Revolution unscathed, Mao became increasingly worried about his influence in the party. By 1971, Lin and his supporters had fallen out of favor with the Maoists, and Lin found himself isolated from the party leadership.

On September 13, 1971, Lin, his wife, and his son Liguo boarded a plane and tried to flee to the Soviet Union. The plane’s fuel was low, and the Lins were in such a hurry that they didn’t bother to bring a copilot or navigator with them. As government officials followed the plane on radar, it passed over Mongolia and then crashed. There were no survivors, and while the nine corpses that were aboard were scorched, autopsies conducted by the Soviet Union were later able to identify the remains of the Lins.

In the days before the crash, the Chinese government had uncovered a conspiracy by Lin Biao to launch a coup. The plot, code-named Project 571, also intended to assassinate Mao Tse-tung. According to the party’s account, the Lins attempted to escape China after the coup failed. Their plane crashed, however, after running into technical difficulties.

Despite what the Communist Party maintains, there is still a great deal of controversy over Project 571. Critics believe that it was Lin Liguo, not his father, who was probably the head of the conspiracy. In fact, Lin Biao might have been entirely innocent.

The cause of the plane crash has also been disputed. Some skeptics have suggested that the plane was sabotaged or shot down. Strangely, the plane’s pilot Pan Jingyin was posthumously given the honorary title of “Revolutionary Martyr.”

1 Cannibalism In Guangxi Province

According to the research of Zheng Yi, a Chinese dissident and writer, hundreds or possibly thousands of people were cannibalized in the province of Guangxi during the Cultural Revolution. During his time as a Red Guard in Guangxi, Zheng heard stories about the cannibalism, but he never witnessed any incidents himself. In the mid-1980s, Zheng returned to Guangxi to see if the stories had any truth to them. Shockingly, he found and interviewed many participants, and few of them spoke with any remorse or fear of reprisal.

Zheng found that the participants ate their victims not out of starvation but as a commitment to political ideology. Simply killing the revolution’s enemies wasn’t enough. They believed it was necessary to eat and completely destroy them.

Participants ate brains, feet, livers, hearts, and even genitals. They held human flesh barbecues and banquets with their friends and families. In Wuxuan County, where the cannibalism was most prevalent, victims would be stalked by crowds and then pounced upon. Some of the victims were cut and skinned while they were still alive.

In one incident in 1968, a man was beaten on the head, castrated, and then skinned and cut open alive by a mob. Children and elderly people also took part in the cannibalism. One old woman was infamous for cutting out and eating victims’ eyeballs. In another incident, a female teacher was killed by her students and barbecued at their school.

The incidents of cannibalism in Guangxi remained unknown outside of China until Zheng left the country and publicized the episode in his book Scarlet Memorial in 1993. The Chinese government has banned Zheng’s book, and even today, officials are reluctant to talk about what happened in Guangxi.

Tristan Shaw is an American blogger interested in crime, literature, and history. His first two books, Mexico’s Unsolved Mysteries and 20 Unsolved Mysteries of Japan, are now available on Amazon for Kindle.

Every song arises from a unique inspiration. Some are instant classics, while others find unexpected success or must overcome critics to reach an audience. Whether the song was written by someone else or the singer themselves, the inspiration is usually something personal. And many of us seek to learn what inspired the lyrics to some of our favorite songs.

Each of these ten songs has a story as distinctive as its tune.

Related: 10 James Bond Theme Songs That Never Were

10 “Over the Rainbow”

MGM executives initially cut “Over the Rainbow” from The Wizard of Oz (1939) because they felt the opening Kansas scenes made the film too long and the song’s themes were too complex for its target audience: children. They also didn’t like Judy Garland singing in a barnyard. Generations of moviegoers can thank associate producer Arthur Freed for telling studio head Louis B. Mayer, “The song stays—or I go.” Mayer backed down, saying, “Let the boys have the damn song. Put it back in the picture. It can’t hurt.”

The melody came to composer Harold Arlen while driving down Sunset Boulevard. Later, when he and lyricist E.Y. Harburg were stuck for an ending, Ira Gershwin suggested the line, “Why, oh, why can’t I?” Why a question? Gershwin later explained, “Well, it was getting to be a long evening.”

“Over the Rainbow” won an Academy Award for Best Music, Original Song and became Garland’s signature number. Today, it tops the American Film Institute’s list of the 100 Greatest American Movie Music and was voted Song of the Century in 2000 by the National Endowment for the Arts.^[1]

9 “As Time Goes By”

Honored as #2 on AFI’s movie music list, “As Time Goes By” could have ended on the cutting room floor as well, despite its established popularity. Herman Hupfeld wrote it for a 1931 Broadway play, and Murray Burnett and Joan Alison featured it again in their 1940 anti-Nazi play Everybody Comes to Rick’s. Shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Warner Bros. bought the rights to that play for the movie Casablanca (1942).

Filming was already completed when composer Max Steiner asked to replace “As Time Goes By” with a composition of his own that would earn him royalties. Producer Hal Wallis refused for his own financial reasons: Ilsa’s “Play it, Sam” scene could not be reshot because Ingrid Bergman was away on location and had cut her hair short for her next film, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943).

Drummer Dooley Wilson did his own singing but faked Sam’s piano playing to match the live, off-camera performance of Jean-Vincent Plummer. When a musician’s strike prevented Wilson from recording a single in time for the film’s release, the studio re-issued Rudy Vallee’s 1931 version, which was again a hit. Steiner’s score was nominated for an Oscar, but the film’s unforgettable musical highlight was ineligible because it had not been composed directly for the screen.^[2]

8 “White Christmas”

As much as “White Christmas” resonated with the longing of American GIs and their loved ones during World War II, its own backstory is equally poignant. The song’s inspiration dates back to December 1937, when composer Irving Berlin, a Russian-born Jewish immigrant, was in Hollywood scoring films for 20th Century Fox while his wife, a devout Catholic, was home in New York City. Their separation over the holidays was particularly hard for Berlin because he was unable to accompany his wife on their annual visit to the grave of the couple’s infant son, who had died on Christmas Day in 1928.

Berlin tapped his personal pain to craft a secular holiday classic that touched anyone yearning for days that are “merry and bright.” Bing Crosby introduced “White Christmas” on a radio broadcast of the Kraft Music Hall on December 25, 1941. This Oscar-winning hit became the anchor of the movie Holiday Inn (1942) and inspired its own story in White Christmas (1954).^[3]

7 “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” demonstrates the value of a good rewrite. For the MGM musical Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), the team of Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane needed a song for Judy Garland’s character to comfort her little sister, played by Margaret O’Brien. According to Martin, he had a melody he liked but could not make it work, “so I played with it for two or three days and then threw it in the wastebasket.” Blane retrieved it and later recalled, “Thank the Lord we found it.”

But the song still needed serious help. The original lyrics began, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas. It may be your last. Next year, we may all be living in the past.” The verse became gloomier still. Garland protested, “‘If I sing that, little Margaret will cry, and they’ll think I’m a monster.” The revision used in the film struck a perfect balance between wistful and hopeful.

Garland’s single was a hit, and the song would be covered repeatedly, including by Frank Sinatra in 1947. For a second release ten years later, Sinatra asked the composers to make yet another change, saying, “The name of my album is A Jolly Christmas. Do you think you could jolly up that line for me?” So, in the Sinatra version, “From now on, we’ll have to muddle through somehow” became “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough.”^[4]

6 “Moon River”

Henry Mancini composed this haunting ballad for Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) with Audrey Hepburn’s limited vocal range in mind. Its simple, one-octave tune in the key of C was titled “Blue River” until lyricist Johnny Mercer recalled an earlier song by that name. To preserve the rhythm, he swapped “moon” for “blue,” both one-syllable words with the same vowel sound.

After a preview screening of the film, a Paramount studio executive reportedly said, “I love the picture, fellas, but the f***ing song has to go.” To which Hepburn replied, “Over my dead body!” The song stayed, won an Oscar, and today ranks #4 on the AFI list. Of its hundreds of covers, Hepburn’s version remained Mancini’s favorite.^[5]

5 Theme from Star Trek

In 1953, Gene Roddenberry left his job with the Los Angeles Police Department to become a freelance TV writer. He sold scripts to shows including Highway Patrol, Dr. Kildare, and Have Gun, Will Travel before developing his own project, Star Trek (1966–1969). He also wrote words to the series’ theme song that were never intended to be sung.

Seven weeks after composer Alexander Courage sent an instrumental version of the theme to the Library of Congress, Roddenberry submitted a second score with his own sappy lyrics handwritten underneath the notes. By exploiting a clause buried in the composer’s contract, Roddenberry guaranteed himself 50% of the royalties whenever the theme was used, even as an instrumental. Outraged at having his own payoff cut in half, Courage never worked on the show again as long as Roddenberry remained its executive producer.

In the book Inside Star Trek, Roddenberry is quoted as admitting that he thought at the time, “I have to get money somewhere. I’m sure not going to get it out of the profits of Star Trek.” He had no way of knowing at the time that Star Trek and its theme would live on for generations in syndication and movie adaptations.^[6]

4 “People”

Composer Jule Styne and lyricist Bob Merrill wrote more than fifty songs during the development of a Broadway musical about comedian Fanny Brice to be called A Very Special Person. Their first try at a title song evolved into “People,” and the show became Funny Girl. Styne wanted the little-known Barbra Streisand for the lead, even though she was not the star the producers had in mind. Looking back in 1977, Styne explained, “I wondered how I was going to get this little girl who was singing down in the Village in the show when they already had Anne Bancroft. So I wrote the toughest score. Only Barbra could sing it.” After Bancroft heard the music, she agreed.

During out-of-town tryouts, then-director Garson Kanin thought “People” wasn’t right for the character or the moment and wanted it cut. Then, Columbia’s release of it as a promotional single in January 1964 gave Streisand her first Top 40 hit. Before Funny Girl’s triumphant Broadway debut two months later, other songs and directors would come and go, but “People” remained and became a showstopper.^[7]

3 “Sympathy for the Devil”

The Rolling Stones’ 1968 album Beggars Banquet opens with “Sympathy for the Devil,” a blazing catalog of humankind’s record of inhumanity. Mick Jagger wrote both the words and music, inspired by a Soviet-era satirical novel and the political and social turmoil of the 1960s. As he stated in its music video, he had to “figure out if it was a samba or a goddam folk song.” Over the course of thirty takes, the tempo increased, African percussion instruments were added, and Keith Richards introduced the driving rhythm.

During the album’s recording session in the summer of 1968, a more historically significant change occurred. Jagger’s original version had the line, “I shouted out, ‘Who killed Kennedy?’” After Senator Robert F. Kennedy was also assassinated on June 6, Jagger magnified the song’s power by updating “Kennedy” to the plural.

At least as far back as 2006, the Stones dropped the entire “Kennedys” verse at a benefit concert for Bill Clinton’s 60th birthday, as captured in Martin Scorsese’s documentary Shine a Light (2008). When Jagger was asked about the omission after the film’s premiere, he replied coyly, “Did I leave that out? That song is so long, I always cut a verse. I guess it must’ve been that one.” The verse was also missing during the Stones 2024 tour.^[8]

2 “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head”

When director George Roy Hill wanted a contemporary sound for his offbeat western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), he hired pop music duo Burt Bacharach and Hal David, known for hits like “Walk on By,” “What the World Needs Now is Love,” and “The Look of Love.” As a guide for scoring the playful Paul Newman-Katharine Ross bicycle sequence, Hill told them he had edited it to Simon and Garfunkel’s bouncy “The Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy).” Bacharach contributed the tune and the title, saying later, “Even though [lyricist] Hal tried to change it, we never came up with a thing that felt as good.”

After Ray Stevens, best known for comedy songs, declined due to a project conflict, the song was offered to another client of Stevens’ agent, B.J. Thomas. The day the soundtrack was cut, Thomas had just come off tour with a bad case of laryngitis and struggled through five takes. Bacharach found Thomas’s raspy voice to be “authentic,” but studio executives deemed the song “too risky and unconventional.”

Two weeks later, in full voice, Thomas recorded the song for release. The single topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for four weeks. Bacharach and David took home an Oscar for Best Music, Original Song.^[9]

1 Theme from M*A*S*H

For his dark comedy film M*A*S*H (1970), director Robert Altman insisted that the background song during the fake suicide of despondent dentist “Painless” Waldowski be called “Suicide Is Painless” and that it be the “stupidest song ever written.” Noted movie composer Johnny Mandel recounted later that when he came up empty on the stupid requirement, Altman told him, “All is not lost. I’ve got a fifteen-year-old kid who’s a total idiot.” Young Mike Altman quickly cranked out four verses and a chorus, which Mandel set to music.

Altman liked the melody so much that he used it over the movie’s opening credits as well, and the instrumental version was also featured on the long-running TV series. The song hit #1 on the UK singles chart and was covered by artists as different as Marilyn Manson and the late jazz pianist Ahmad Jamal. During an appearance on The Tonight Show in 1981, the senior Altman told Johnny Carson he had been paid $70,000 to direct the film, but as of that time, his son had earned more than one million dollars for his half of the music royalties.^[10]

Keeping up with all the news in the world can be a difficult task for anyone. That’s why we are here to help with a few weekly lists that look at some of the most notable events that occurred recently. Click here to find out about the crucial stories that made the headlines, or read on to find out about some bizarre and unique tales.

We have a few architectural stories this week about the world’s largest 3-D-printed bridge and an ancient stone circle that wasn’t so ancient. Two World War mysteries get answers, and we explore a budding rivalry between Canada and Norway over which country has the largest moose. In the world of cosmology, we have two new ideas to explore—one is about an alternative to the elusive Planet Nine and the other about the origins of black holes.

10 Enter The Moose Wars

A war is brewing between Canada and Norway over which country has the world’s tallest moose statue.

The city of Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan is home to Mac the Moose, a 9.8-meter-tall (32 ft) sculpture which was the largest moose in the world for over 30 years. It lost that title in 2015 when Norwegians from Stor-Elvdal built Storelgen (“The Big Elk”)—a shiny, stainless steel bull built 30 centimeters (12 in) higher with the express purpose of becoming the new tallest moose in the world.

It seems that the Canadians have had enough. Two comedians, Justin Reves and Greg Moore, have pleaded with the people of Moose Jaw to fight back and reclaim the record. They have set up an online fundraiser in the hopes of raising $50,000 to hire an engineer to increase the size of Mac. They have the support of the city’s mayor, Fraser Tolmie, who revealed that the fight is personal for him as the moose was named after his wife’s great-uncle.^[1]

The Scandinavians say there is no chance that they will let this one go. Stor-Elvdal’s deputy mayor, Linda Henriksen, said that they will do whatever they can to ensure that Storelgen keeps the title. They are prepared to double the size of their moose, if need be, but are waiting on the Canadians to act first.

9 The Not-So-Ancient Stone Circle

Scottish archaeologists were shocked to find out that an “ancient” stone circle they had been studying was actually built in the 1990s.

The “recumbent stone circle” in Leochel-Cushnie, Aberdeenshire, was hailed as a unique landmark because it was smaller in size than other similar monuments. Archaeologists discovered it on a farm last year and initially believed it to be 3,500–4,500 years old because that is the time period in which most stone circles were built throughout the northeast of Scotland.

Earlier this month, researchers from Historic Environment Scotland received a disheartening call from the former owner of the farm. He told them that the “ancient” monument was just a replica that he built in the mid-1990s.

Aberdeenshire council spokesman Neil Ackerman described the revelation as “disappointing” but still considers the circle a great addition to the local landscape. The modern replica will be included in official records going forward to prevent any future misidentifications.^[2]

8 The Shepherding Disk Hypothesis

A new study published in The Astronomical Journal proposes an alternative to the mysterious Planet Nine which would account for the bizarre observations made in the Kuiper Belt.

The idea of an undiscovered planet hiding somewhere in the outer solar system appeared when Caltech astronomers discovered icy bodies which were moving together in a doughnut shape as if they were gravitationally tethered to a large object. Later, other researchers found more trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) with eccentric orbits which showed that there was something interfering with their rotation. Scientists speculated that Planet Nine was responsible.

A team from the University of Cambridge and the American University of Beirut opined that, instead of one giant object, the culprit was a massive ice disk comprised of numerous small bodies spread out over a large area. They call this the “shepherding disk hypothesis” and claim that the collective attractions of all those objects would be enough to interfere with the orbits of other TNOs.^[3]

While this is more feasible than an undetected planet, there is yet no observational evidence to support the claim.

7 Like A Prayer

Pope Francis has launched an app which allows Catholics around the world to join him in prayer.

The application is called “Click to Pray” and was launched ahead of World Youth Day 2019. It is currently available in six languages. With the app, users will know exactly when the pope is praying and what he is praying for.^[4]

During a demo from an upstairs window of the Apostolic Palace, the pontiff prayed for Colombia and the Mediterranean Sea, referring to a car bomb that claimed the lives of 20 police cadets and shipwrecks that killed hundreds of migrants in the Mediterranean, respectively.

Catholics can check the pope’s profile on “Click to Pray” to find out his intentions and even click on an icon to indicate that they joined him in prayer.

6 Who Was Spandau #7?

A recent DNA study put to bed an old World War II conspiracy theory which claimed that inmate Spandau #7 was not the real Rudolf Hess but a doppelganger.

One of the leading members of the Nazi Party, Rudolf Hess went to Scotland alone in May 1941. He was arrested, put on trial, and sent to Spandau Prison in 1947. He spent the rest of his life as inmate Spandau #7 until he was found hanged in his cell in 1987.

Some people believe that the prisoner was not the real Hess. They have claimed that there were some physical discrepancies such as the lack of chest scars consistent with his World War I injuries or the lack of a gap in his front teeth.^[5]

Spandau #7 also refused to see relatives until 1969 and, at one point, claimed to have amnesia. There were prominent people who believed Hess had been replaced with a look-alike, including his doctor at Spandau and US President Franklin Roosevelt.

This conspiracy seemed destined to remain a mystery. There were no physical remains to analyze. Hess’s body was cremated and his grave site destroyed when it became a pilgrimage for neo-Nazis.

However, scientists found a blood sample taken from the inmate in 1982. It had been placed on a microscope slide and hermetically sealed for decades. They tracked down a male relative of Hess and compared their DNA. There was a 99.99 percent chance that they were related. Spandau #7 was Rudolf Hess.

5 For Whom The Bell Tolls

From a solved World War II mystery, we travel further back to World War I. Two historians believe that they have identified the Italian soldier who bore the brunt of a mortar attack and inadvertently saved the life of a young Ernest Hemingway.

An 18-year-old Hemingway was serving as a Red Cross volunteer on the battleground along the Piave River on the Austro-Italian front. He was hit by a mortar shell which gravely wounded the young American. Nevertheless, he survived because most of the impact was taken by an Italian soldier who was standing next to him.

American author James McGrath Morris and Italian historian Marino Perissinotto think they have identified the infantryman through the process of elimination. Eighteen Italian soldiers died that night. Fifteen of them were deployed in different parts of the front. Two of the remaining three were with the 152nd regiment a few kilometers behind the front line. That only left a 26-year-old private from Montalcino named Fedele Temperini.^[6]

As further evidence, the two researchers found a military report from an officer at a Red Cross station in the Republic of San Marino. It said that Hemingway was treated alongside an Italian soldier who succumbed to his wounds. The Italian was from the 69th infantry regiment which was Temperini’s unit. The historians are currently lobbying to have Temperini’s name included on a memorial along the Piave River where Hemingway was injured.

4 Monty Strikes Again

Melbourne’s infamous Montague Street Bridge has claimed its first victim of 2019 after 224 days of peace.

The bridge colorfully referred to as “Monty” has a low clearance of just 3 meters (10 ft). Ever since its construction over 100 years ago, it has been the bane of unaware truck drivers who plow into it and get their vehicles stuck under the bridge.

It is hard to say exactly how many collisions have taken place. A website keeps track of how many days have passed since the last crash, but it only goes back to 2016. Even so, it still has 20 entries. That does not count the most recent hit which took place this Tuesday.^[7]

In an effort to put an end to these collisions, Victorian traffic authority VicRoads installed height detection gantries on the main approaches to the bridge with black and yellow paddles. If the top of the truck hits the paddles, that means it will also hit Monty.

In total, 26 different warning signs advise drivers of the bridge’s low clearance. Even so, 14 crashes still occurred since the gantries have been installed. But a VicRoads spokesman feels that “stacks of accidents” have been prevented.

Some accidents are more serious than others. Last month, a bus driver received a five-year sentence after crashing a bus into the bridge and severely injuring six passengers.

3 Toilet Snake

Australia is currently experiencing blistering hot weather, and animals are taking refuge wherever they can. One snake sneaked into the toilet of a home in Brisbane and then bit a woman when she sat on the toilet.

Helen Richards was visiting relatives. In the night, she went to the bathroom without turning on the lights and did not see the 1.5-meter (5 ft) carpet python cooling off in the toilet.

As soon as she sat down, Helen felt a “sharp tap” which made her jump off the seat with her pants around her ankles. When she turned around, she saw something which resembled a “longneck turtle receding back into the bowl.”^[8]

Fortunately for Helen, the snake was nonvenomous and the bites were relatively harmless. She was fine after being treated with an antiseptic, and the snake was removed by a reptile handler.

2 Bridge Over The Small Canal

The longest 3-D-printed bridge in the world is now open to the people of Shanghai.

The concrete bridge is 26 meters (86 ft) long and was constructed by a team from the Tsinghua University School of Architecture in Beijing entirely using 3-D-printing technology. It is located in Shanghai’s Baoshan District and was modeled on the ancient Zhaozhou (Anji) Bridge, which is the oldest standing bridge in China.

The crossing consists of 112 separate concrete units—44 for the body and 68 for the two flowing sides. It also contains monitoring systems which keep track of the internal stress placed on the bridge in real time. According to designer Professor Xu Weiguo, they were all produced in just 450 hours and cost only a third of what a regular bridge of similar size would cost.^[9]

1 Dark Matter Halos Create Black Holes

Given how elusive and mysterious black holes are supposed to be, scientists seem to be discovering new things about these celestial objects every week. This recent finding, however, has the potential to completely rewrite our understanding of the cosmic phenomenon as it suggests that the first massive black holes of the primordial universe were made in halos of dark matter.

The study was published in Nature with backing from NASA, the EU, and the National Science Foundation and is the result of an international effort from researchers from the United States and Ireland. It shows that when galaxies formed very rapidly and very violently, they disrupted the normal formation of stars and triggered the creation of black holes.

This newly discovered mechanism would have been particularly prevalent in halos of dark matter due to their rapid growth. According to one of the paper’s authors, Georgia Tech astrophysics professor John Wise, forming massive black holes requires “being in a rare region with an intense convergence of matter.”^[10]

If this new model is correct, then it shifts away from the previously accepted thinking that massive black holes could only appear when exposed to huge levels of radiation powerful enough to inhibit star formation. It also suggests that they are far more common than we previously thought.

May is the month which offers the best chances for the hundreds of people who attempt each year to reach the top of the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. And every climbing season on Everest, people die trying to reach the summit. You have to go all the way back to 1977 to find a year where no climbers have perished on Mount Everest. And this year has been no exception as eight people have died. This list will look at some of the lesser known fatalities and the amazing and harrowing stories behind their attempts to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

The urge to be “the first” on Mount Everest is powerful. The biggest “first” was accomplished in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay when they became the first to reach the summit and stand at the top of the world. Everything since then has been, well, second. Not to be deterred at the thought of being second, there have been all manner of attempts since 1953 at other “Everest firsts”. The first to paraglide off Everest, the first to ski down Everest, the first blind person to climb Everest, etc. The other route to “Everest fame” is to be the oldest person (or youngest) to reach the summit and as such there have been multiple people to achieve that goal and hold the title of “oldest” (“youngest”) to climb to the top of Mount Everest. That is, they hold the title until someone older or younger comes along and tops it.

In 2011, the former Nepalese foreign minister, Shailendra Kumar Upadhyay, set out to be the latest oldest man to climb to the top of Everest. He was 82 years old. He made it as far as Camp I when he became ill. He was descending back to Base Camp for medical care when he collapsed and died. His body was airlifted to the capital of Nepal, Kathmandu. He was trying to break the record held by a 76 year old Nepalese man.

In 2013, in fact, just a few days ago, Japanese climber Yuichiro Miura at the age of 80 beat that record and became the oldest person to reach the top of Mount Everest. Not only has Miura, for now, claimed the “oldest to climb and reach the top of Everest” title, he also summited Everest twice before. Even more remarkable than his age is the fact he has had four heart operations and in 2009 he broke his pelvis while skiing.

Even casual observers of the history of climbing Mount Everest know of the dangers faced by climbers. Lack of oxygen, falls, and of course the cold, the ice, the wind and the storms. Lesser known is the threat posed by the landscape the climbers must pass through to reach the summit. The Khumbu Icefall is located at the head of the Khumbu Glacier just above Base Camp on the popular South Col route to the top of Everest. As such, to reach Camp I, all climbers attempting this route to the summit must pass through the Khumbu Ice Fall after leaving Base Camp.

The glacier is moving at a rapid pace and thus crevasses open up to swallow climbers with little warning. But the real danger are the seracs – huge, house-sized, towering blocks of ice, precariously balanced and ready to tumble over at any time, with no warning what so ever. Any climber caught in the wrong place when a serac decides to give way is out of luck. With no time to jump out of the way and nowhere to go, the climber is crushed. Many times the body cannot be recovered. The glacier moves down the face of the mountain at 3-4 feet per year. Sometimes the bodies emerge, years later, deposited back at Base Camp by the glacier.

One unlucky climber who was in the wrong place was Canadian Blair Griffiths. Griffiths was a Canadian Broadcasting Company cameraman documenting the Canadian Mount Everest Expedition in 1982. Griffiths and others were securing one of the many ladders used by climbers to cross over crevasses when the glacier decided to move. A six-story serac crushed Griffiths between two gigantic blocks of ice. After several attempts his climbing partners retrieved his body which was cremated on the mountain.

Many know of the tragic 1924 British Expedition that aimed to climb Mount Everest for the first time. This expedition led to the disappearance and death of climbing legend George Mallory and his partner Andrew Irvine. Mallory’s body would be discovered in 1999 and his death appears to have been as a result of a fall. No sign of Irvine has ever been found and it remains unclear if they were the first to summit Everest and died on their descent, or if they died trying to reach the top.

Lesser know is the story of another Englishman, Maurice Wilson who ten years later, on his own, in either a fit of English eccentricity or madness (perhaps both) attempted a solo ascent of Everest. Where huge British climbing expeditions had failed before him, Wilson thought he could “do it alone”.

Believing the problems of the planet could be solved through fasting and faith in God, Wilson set out to climb Everest so as to promote his beliefs. Injured in WWI, Wilson overcame his suffering through 35 days of prayer and fasting. Wilson convinced himself that his beliefs could allow him to succeed where Mallory had failed. His plan was to fly a plane close to the summit and crash it, then walk the rest of the way (eccentric, yes, but a plan none the less). Not being able to fly an airplane and knowing nothing of climbing mountains, Wilson set out to teach himself both. He bought a used Gipsy Moth plane (which he called “Ever Wrest”) and set off for Asia by air. His mountaineering experience and training was even worse than his flying. He took off in 1933, crashed his plane, was grounded by the British Air Ministry, ignored the ban, and took off again.

Somehow, in two weeks, he made it to India. He wintered over near Tibet; by chance meeting three of the Sherpa’s who had worked previous British Everest expeditions. They joined Wilson and slipped into Tibet. He made his first attempt and was beaten back by the weather and his inexperience. After a time to recover his strength he set off again, this time with two of the Sherpa’s to guide him. He made it to an altitude of 22,700 feet where he encountered a forty foot ice wall. Defeated again, he and the Sherpa’s turned back. The Sherpa’s begged him to come down the mountain with them but he refused and in a gesture of British stubbornness that would make Robert Falcon Scott happy, he made one more attempt. This too failed. He died days later in his tent, just like Scott.

Although recovering bodies from the Death Zone on Everest is extremely dangerous, it has been done. One such example was the recovery of the body of Canadian climber Shriya Shah-Klorfine. Born in Nepal, climbing Everest had always been a dream for the 33 year old Canadian when, on May 19, 2012, she died trying to descend the mountain. Three other climbers would die that same day. The dangers of dying and having your body left behind on the mountain are not unknown to climbers, in fact, some Everest guide services have climbers sign a form asking them to choose to remain on the mountain should they die, or have an attempt made to recover their body (which can cost upwards of $30,000).

Ms. Shriya Shah-Klorfine died very near the summit, at an altitude of over 8,000 meters (nearly 27,000 feet). This would make her recovery very challenging. First a team of 6-8 Sherpa’s must climb the mountain to reach her body – dangerous enough on its own. Then the real danger begins. The only way to bring down a body from that altitude is to place it in a sled while the Sherpa’s, slowly, carefully, lower it (in a controlled slide) down the mountain at angles as steep as 60 degrees. They also need to pick up the body and lift it by hand over any crevasses encountered along the way. The trip down the mountain can take an entire day. It is very dangerous work on the steep icy mountain face. One slip and everyone on the ropes could fall to their own deaths. The goal is to lower the body to the elevation of Camp II (6,500 meters) which is the highest point on the mountain reachable by helicopter (to land, take on a load, and take off again). On May 29, 2012, the body of Ms. Shriya Shah-Klorfine was safely recovered.

The goal of Marco Siffredi was simple – become the first person to snowboard down Mount Everest. At the age of 22 in May of 2001 Marco summited Mount Everest with the plan to snowboard the Hornbein Couloir. But there was not enough snow that spring for him to snowboard that route. Instead he went to plan B and set off on his snowboard down the North Col Route. On the way down one of the bindings on his snowboard broke but he and a Sherpa were able to repair it. He eventually snowboarded all the way down to Advanced Base Camp, becoming the first person to successfully snowboard, continuously, down Everest. It took him four hours to do it.

However, his true goal has eluded him. He returns to Everest the following year, but fatefully, he forgets to bring the lucky cross he always wears around his neck. Marco has come in August this time hoping the snow will be deep enough to snowboard down the “true face” of Everest, the Hornbein Couloir. The Hornbein Couloir is the most steep and most continuous descent possible from the summit. This time there is plenty of snow, too much and he needs to wait for avalanches to subside. He and his team begin their ascent, establishing base camp and higher camps as they climb, sometimes in waist deep snow. Along the way Marco’s radio breaks. A new one is on its way back up to Marco to aid him in communicating with Sherpa’s and those below as he snowboards down the mountain, but he receives a good weather forecast and jumps at the chance to summit and snowboard. He sets off without the radio.

At 2:00 PM he and his Sherpa helper’s reach the summit after a 12 hour climb through chest deep snow. Marco tells his Sherpa he is “tired”. His Sherpa is elated at reaching the summit, but then his Sherpa doesn’t have a 3,000 foot of descent by snowboard at 45-55 degree angles yet to do. It is late in the day, 3:00 PM and his Sherpa’s urge him not to go, but Marco has come too far to not give his dream a try. So he tells his Sherpa he will ‘see him tomorrow” and pushes off down the face of the Hornbein Couloir. The last the Sherpa’s see of him is when he hangs the left away from their descent route to snowboard down the Hornbein Couloir. Later they believe they see a figure sliding down the face of the North Col. But there is nobody else climbing Everest at this time of the year, they have the mountain to themselves. Who could it be? The Sherpa’s descend to the bottom of the Hornbein Couloir.

Marco should be there as it would only take him two hours to snowboard the route. The Sherpa’s reach the point on the North Col. where they are certain they saw the man. There are no snowboard tracks. It appears Marco has fallen to his death. With no radio to even try to contact him, Marco has disappeared. A search party finds his snowboard tracks end about 1,500 feet down the Hornbein Couloir from the summit where he set off. His body has still not been found.

As if climbing Mount Everest is, in and of itself, not difficult or “extreme” enough, some extreme sports people need to take it even farther. Such was the case of Swedish skier Tomas Olsson and his partner Tormod Granheim who in 2006 wanted to be the first to descend the North Col (North Face) Route by ski. That’s right, ski down from the summit of Everest via one of the most difficult of all the difficult routes to the top of the mountain.

On May 16, 2006, after a full day of climbing, the two met up on the mountain and reached the summit. Exhausted, they wondered if they had the strength to ski down. Undeterred by their fatigue, they set off on skis down the North Face via the Norton Couloir at angles as steep as 60 degrees and a shear 3,000 meter drop. Unfortunately, just as they set off, and after only skiing down the North Face approximately 1,500 feet, one of Olsson’s skis broke. They tried to repair the ski with tape but at 27,900 feet, they reached a 150 foot rock cliff on the couloir. This they could not ski even with undamaged equipment so they tried to rappel down.

They set a snow anchor because they could find no good rock to set screws. Olsson went first, rappelling down the cliff still wearing his skis, when the snow anchor they were using failed and Olson fell 2,500 meters to his death. Granheim continued on alone by ski and by climbing and made it down the mountain alive. Several days later Olsson’s body was found by Sherpa’s at 22,000 feet.

The popular South East Ridge Route to the top of Mount Everest was at one time called by climbers “The Rainbow Valley” because of the sheer number of bodies that littered the route to the summit, all dressed in various colorful climbing gear. It was impossible to summit by this route without coming close to and seeing many of these dead climbers. Over the years, climbers have cut ropes and pushed some of these bodies over the side while snow and ice have covered others. But even today, multiple bodies are visible along the South Ridge Route.

One infamous example was that of German climber Hannelore Schmatz. In 1979 she died on her descent after summiting. At the time she was the first woman to die on the upper slopes of Everest. Exhausted and caught at 8,300 meters (27,200 feet) just below the summit, Ms. Schmatz and another climber made the decision to bivouac as darkness fell. The Sherpa’s urged her and American climber Ray Gennet to descend, but they laid down to rest and never got up. Genet’s body disappeared and has never been seen, but for years, climbers would pass the frozen remains of Ms. Schmatz, still sitting and leaning against her pack, eyes wide open and long hair blowing in the constant wind. A climber who had to pass her body to reach the summit described the experience: “It’s not far now. I cannot escape the sinister guard. Approximately 100 meters above Camp IV she sits leaning against her pack, as if taking a short break. A woman with her eyes wide open and her hair waving in each gust of wind…..it feels as if she follows me with her eyes as I pass by. Her presence reminds me that we are here on the conditions of the mountain.”

Five years after she died, two climbers attempted to recover her body. Yogendra Bahadur Thapa and Sherpa Ang Dorje somehow became tangled in their ropes and both fell to their deaths while trying to recover the body. Years later the wind finally blew her body over the edge of the mountain.

Perhaps the most infamous of all the dead bodies climbers must pass along the Northeast ridge route to the summit of Everest is a body known as “Green Boots”, believed to be the body of Indian climber Tsewang Paljor. The name comes from the green mountaineering boots he is still wearing and which stick out from the entrance to the small cave where his body can be found lying on its side. The body and cave are located at 27,890 feet (8,500 meters). It is thought “Green Boots’ crawled into the cave in a desperate effort to survive.

In the same year (1996) as the ill-fated Everest climbing season told in the book “Into Thin Air”, a six man team from India was also trying to reach the top of Everest by the northeast route. Close to the top they were hit by the blizzard that would kill so many in the Rob Hall and Scott Fisher mountaineering parties going for the summit on the more popular southeast route. Three of the Indian climbers turned back but Paljor and two others tried for the summit and disappeared. They radioed that they had reached the summit (though there is some doubt that they did) and no further radio contact was heard from the three.

Later, a Japanese team headed for the summit may have passed the three Indian climbers but were unsure because of the conditions. When the Japanese climbers found out from one of the three Indian climbers who had turned back that their climbing companions were missing, the Japanese offered to help with the search. But the ferocious storm prevented them from searching until the next day. It is thought that “Green Boots” is one of the missing Indian climbers because he was wearing such boots on that day.

In 2006, British climber David Sharp would crawl into “Green Boots cave”. Many climbers walked right past the dying Sharp, believing him to be Green Boots. By the time aid was rendered, Sharp died.

In 2007 British climber Ian Woodall, who was on the mountain in 1996, and had been haunted by the memory ever since, attempted to climb to the cave and give “Green Boots” a proper burial. But he was unable to dig the body out of the ice due to bad weather. He was planning on making another attempt if he could raise the funds.

On May 22, 1998, climber Francys Arsentiev accomplished one of the “Everest Firsts”, by becoming the first woman from the USA to summit without bottled oxygen. Unfortunately, she never lived to celebrate this accomplishment. Arsentiev and her husband climbing partner Sergei Arsentiev were in position to reach the summit on May 20 and May 21 but had to turn around both times. On May 22nd on their third attempt they made it. But they had been in the “Death Zone” above 8,000 meters for almost three days. Because they were exhausted from spending so much time above 8,000 meters they summited late in the day and had to camp and spend another night above 8,000 meters. The next morning they descended but somehow got separated. Sergei reached camp and found she was not there. He immediately went back up to find her carrying oxygen and medicine.

Late that morning an Uzbek team found Arsentiev frozen and struggling to survive. They attempted to help her and brought her down as far as they could before they became too exhausted to do more. They saw Sergei on his way back up the mountain as they descended. That was the last anyone would ever see of Sergei Arsentiev alive.

The next morning a team of climbers including Ian Woodall and Cathy O’Dowd found Francys Arsentiev where the Uzbek team had left her, amazingly, still alive, but barely. Sergei had left his ice axe and rope but there was no sign of him. There was nothing Woodall, O’Dowd and their party could do to save her and she died that morning. For a true account of what happened as told by O’Dowd, read this article.

Woodall and O’Dowd gave up their own chance at summiting to stay with her and care for her as much as they could. But they had to leave her where she died, and her body remained as one of the “landmarks” along the path from high camp to the summit for all subsequent climbers to see as they passed her on their way to the top. Sergie’s body was found a year later down the mountain face. He apparently fell to his death trying to save his wife.

For almost ten years the memory of her death haunted Ian Woodall and he set out in 2007 to try to reach her body and give her some manner of dignified burial. Although he was unable to free the body of “Green Boots” on this mission back to Mount Everest he called “The Tao of Everest”, Woodall did reach the body of Francys Arsentiev. After a brief ritual, Woodall lowered her body to a lower section of the mountain where she would no longer be visible to climbers passing by on their way to the top of Mount Everest.

One of the tragedies of Mount Everest is climbing it has become such an obsession for thousands of people that the mountain is now littered with junk left behind by the hundreds of expeditions who have come and gone over the decades. The liter includes used oxygen cylinders, trash, as well as human bodies. By the 2000s the trash problem had become so bad that expeditions were formed to try to remove some of it (as well as the bodies). But it was not until 2010 and the “Extreme Everest Expedition”, organized and lead by mountaineer Namgyal Sherpa, that bodies and trash were removed from the higher elevations of the mountain where it is most difficult to reach. The expedition was composed of all Sherpa’s.

Its goal was to clean the slopes of Everest above 8‚000 meters. The expedition removed 2,000kg (4,000 pounds) of waste and two dead bodies. One of the bodies they did not recover and bring down was that of climbing expedition leader Rob Hall who died on Everest during the infamous 1996 Everest disaster. Hall’s widow requested that his body remain on the mountain.

Namgyal Sherpa was a legend among Sherpa’s and the clients and climbers he guided on Everest. He worked his way up from porter, to cook, to starting his own company and leading Sherpa teams on some of the biggest Everest expeditions. He himself summited Everest an amazing ten times. But his tenth summit would be his last. On May 16, 2013 at 8,000 meters, he collapsed. He had complained of feeling ill and then pointed to his chest before he passed away.

There are many mysteries surrounding people who have tried to climb Mount Everest and died in the attempt. Did Mallory and Irvine reach the summit and die on the descent, thus beating Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay by 29 years? What really happened during the tragic 1996 Everest climbing disaster made famous in the bestselling book “Into Thin Air”?

There is no mystery about what happened to Irish businessman John Delaney. He died on May 21, 2011 at the age of 42 only 50 meters from reaching a lifelong goal of summiting Everest. He died from a common cause of death on Everest – altitude sickness. While climbing, his wife gave birth to a baby daughter he would never live to see.

What is mysterious about Delaney is not his death, but what happened afterward. Delany was the CEO and founder of the Internet trading website Intrade. Intrade received popularity during the 2012 US Presidential election as people wagered whether Mitt Romney would defeat Barack Obama and later, for bets people placed on who would be made the next Pope.

However, in 2013 Intrade shut down and it was announced that in the last two years of his life, Delaney’s personal account had received un-authorized transfers of money from the company totaling $2,600,000. A March 2013 audit confirmed the lack of documentation to account for this money, but there still is no firm resolution as to how Delaney pocketed this company money or if anything improper was even done. Apparently uncovering possible financial fraud is now more difficult than climbing Mount Everest.

Patrick Weidinger is a frequent contributor to Listverse.

The thought of impalement probably brings to mind Vlad the Impaler or some other medieval torturer. But impalement isn’t just the stuff of textbooks or nightmares. It is a reality—and for the 10 people on this list, an especially brutal one.

Being impaled on rods, spikes, fences, or branches is a truly horrific experience. Humans are fragile beings, and there is really nothing preventing you from becoming a human shish kebab. So prepare yourself to be faced with the stomach-churning reality.

10 Phineas Gage

At 25 years old, Phineas Gage was working as a US railroad construction foreman when something tragic happened while making way for a new railway. He was using a tamping iron to push down explosives into a rock in which a hole had been drilled. The rod scraped against the side of the rock, causing sparks to ignite the explosives and launch the iron rod completely through Gage’s head.

After lying unconscious for several minutes, Gage awoke and was able to speak coherently. Although he survived, his personality fundamentally changed. People who had previously thought of Gage as personable and responsible came to find him crass and unpleasant. His friends and family said that he was “no longer Gage.”^[1]

It’s difficult to say exactly how profound these changes were because we know little about what Gage was like before the accident. There are also differing opinions in the scientific community over how long these personality changes lasted.

The case of Phineas Gage has been studied for many years by neuroscientists trying to more fully grasp the intricacies of the brain and all its functions. Gage died 12 years after his accident. His skull and the pipe that impaled him are held at the Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard Medical School.

9 Unnamed Woman

In Saran district in Bihar, a 17-year-old girl fell from a roof of a building that was under construction and landed on three iron rods attached to a cement pillar. All three rods went straight through the young woman’s lower torso and remained there for another 10–12 hours. Emergency services had to cut the bars from the building’s foundation while supporting the girl to prevent them from moving and harming her further.^[2]

The girl was detached from the cement pillar and rushed to the Ruban Patliputra Hospital where she was operated on for five hours. Amazingly, the bars missed every major organ. The girl survived the surgery and spent some time in the hospital recovering.

8 Li Jen

Li Jen, a 37-year-old builder working in China, was trying to enter his apartment when he realized that he must have left his keys inside. Instead of calling a locksmith, he climbed up the side of his apartment building toward his balcony. But he slipped and fell 15 meters (50 ft).

After landing on a lamppost that pierced him through the shoulder, he was suspended in the air. Firefighters had to cut the lamppost and transport it with him to the hospital. It took three hours to remove the pole, but it somehow managed to miss all of Li Jen’s essential organs.

His injuries could have been far worse had the pole not prevented him from slamming into the concrete. Doctors said that Li Jen was likely to make a full recovery.^[3]

7 Unnamed Man In Sweden

At the height of the Pokemon Go craze, an unnamed man broke into Stockholm Olympic Stadium to catch a Pokemon. The man wasn’t paying attention when he fell and was impaled through the thigh on a metal fence.

Police were called and had to hold the man in position while medical professionals gave him a morphine injection so he could be safely lifted off the fence. It was several meters high, so this was no easy task.

The man was then taken to the local hospital. “We had to lift him off, and the medical team took over and drove him to hospital. It’s a few meters high. High enough that you have to climb anyway,” said Goran Norman, an emergency control room officer.^[4]

6 Josh Hassan

Twelve-year-old Josh Hassan was impaled through the chest when he leaned over a fence to look for his football. His mother heard Josh screaming and rushed to his aid. She and two other people held him in place so that the fence spike didn’t do any more damage.

After a fire department crew cut the railing away from the rest of the fence, Josh was rushed to the hospital and operated on. The doctors told the family that the spike had missed his heart by less than 8 centimeters (3 in).

“The spike went through my jacket and through me, and I was hanging. I looked down and saw the skin flapping. I shouted for my neighbor, and he came and held me up so the injury did not get worse,” the boy said. Josh was released after spending two days in the hospital. He decided to keep the spike as a souvenir.^[5]

5 Stephen Schultz

Stephen Schultz, an American man visiting Panama, was fishing with his family and fighting to capture a monster fish for 25 minutes when the creature jumped onto the boat and impaled Stephen through the face. It was a 270-kilogram (600 lb) marlin, and the snout of the beast pierced Stephen through the cheek and nasal cavity.

He later said: “[The fish] jumped once, facing away from the boat and turned around in midair; he was about [5 meters (15 ft)] away; went back into the water, made one more jump toward the back of the boat and his bill struck me on the left side of the face and knocked me onto the ground.”^[6]

Stephen was rushed to the hospital and managed to escape the incident with only minor injuries and, surprisingly, no scars. The entire event was captured on video by Stephen’s sister, who said: “I wasn’t too sure what happens when you go deep-sea fishing. I wasn’t sure if they were supposed to be that close. So I was like, I’ll get this on film. Then it was in the boat. Before I could react, it was already at us. So I just kept rolling.”

After impaling Stephen, the marlin escaped back into the sea.

4 Lucia Perez

Sixteen-year-old Lucia Perez had just finished school when she was abducted by a gang. Then she was drugged, raped, and viciously assaulted before being impaled. Her attackers washed her and put her clothes back on before dropping her off at a drug rehabilitation clinic. She later died of her injuries.^[7]

The Argentinian community was devastated by Lucia’s death as was her heartbroken family. A group of people organized a sit-in and women wore black to protest the high rate of murders of women in the country. Two men were arrested in connection with Lucia’s murder and rape, but a third man was also thought to be involved with covering up the crime. He was also held by police.

3 Justin Firth

In Idaho, Justin Firth was working normally, setting up a fence, when he suddenly saw a flash and felt a pressure in his back. He looked down and saw a spike sticking out of his stomach. Justin had been impaled.

His coworkers started screaming and immediately called 911. Justin didn’t feel any pain except that pressure in his back. When the paramedics arrived, they didn’t have the proper tools to cut the spike from the front loader to which it was attached.

So his colleagues used a torch to sever the spike and industrial putty to keep Justin from getting burned by the torch. He was taken to the hospital by an air ambulance and spent three-and-a-half hours in surgery.

The spike had missed Justin’s bladder, kidneys, and spine by only a few centimeters. The trauma doctor said, “It’s one of the best things I’ve ever seen because it was a potentially catastrophic injury that’s going to have a really great outcome.”^[8]

2 Margaret Reynolds

Margaret Reynolds, a 67-year-old British woman, was visiting a New Jersey beach while on vacation. Unfortunately, a gust of wind blew an umbrella that impaled Margaret through the ankle. “It was a beautiful day, and a gust of wind blew the umbrella,” Reynolds said. “It was just an accident.”^[9]

As soon as it happened, bystanders heard her scream, “My leg!” A bolt cutter was used to free her, and part of the umbrella had to be cut off. Her friend held Margaret’s hand the entire time. She was then escorted to a hospital. She had surgery to remove the bit of umbrella in her ankle, and according to authorities, she was doing very well.

1 Sean Rontrea

In Brooklyn, New York, 29-year-old Sean Rontrea was impaled when he fell five stories from his apartment building. He landed on a spiked fence that pierced his chest. The scene was apparently quite gruesome, with copious amounts of blood everywhere.

While dangling 1 meter (3 ft) off the ground, Sean screamed, “Get this thing out of me.” The spike was rusty and blunt and came very close to Sean’s heart and other vital organs. “It’s not every day you see a guy impaled on a fence like he was suspended in space,” said paramedic William Ritter.^[10]

Sean had to be cut down using a portable saw. To avoid further damage, the paramedics used a garbage can to support his weight. Sean was rushed to the hospital with a 1.2-meter (4 ft) section of fence still attached to him. There, surgeons undertook the delicate task of removing the spike.

A new week is on the way, and we want to help you start it off on a happy note. That’s why this list has some of the most inspiring and positive stories that have happened over the last few days. If you would like to read about bizarre and outlandish occurrences instead, check out these offbeat stories.

This week is full of stories of people doing nice things for strangers. There’s a man who gave a ride to a doctor carrying a transplant organ, a kid who shared his peanut butter, and a barber who specialized in customers with dementia. There is also a touching reunion, a man who is an “octopus whisperer,” and a gator that acts as an emotional support animal.

10 See You Later, Wally Gator

A recent visit from Joie Henney to the Glatfelter Community Center in York, Pennsylvania, went viral because he brought along his faithful companion, an emotional support animal named Wally. There’s one catch: Wally is a 1.4-meter-long (4.5 ft) alligator.

Henney rescued Wally about three years ago when he was just a pup. Since then, his upbringing has been more like a dog than a reptile. At first, Wally was scared of everything and everyone, but he slowly became more domesticated.

He likes to follow people around the house, root through the kitchen cupboards, and watch TV. According to Henney, Wally’s favorite movie is The Lion King. He always watches it through to the end and even refuses to eat while the film is on.^[1]

Wally helped Henney deal with his depression, so he thought that the “big teddy bear” would make for a good support companion. Henney brings the gator to schools and senior centers where both young and old have lots of questions and take a lot of pictures.

9 Write A Letter, Win A House

A woman from Canada is awarding her million-dollar home to the winner of a writing contest.

Alla Wagner has a beautiful mansion about 65 kilometers (40 mi) south of Calgary, Alberta. She describes it as a “writer’s or artist’s paradise” with breathtaking, panoramic views of the Rockies. However, her poor health has left her confined to the upper floor. Unable to enjoy the house to its fullest, Wagner decided to sell it. She put it up for C$1.7 million, but there were no buyers. Instead, she decided to award it to a contest winner.^[2]

The competition will go on for at least three months. All participants must write an essay on the topic “Why would moving to this lakefront dream home change your life?” and submit it with a C$25 entry fee. Five hundred finalists will be selected through public voting, and an independent panel of judges will select a winner.

Wagner says she was inspired by similar contests held in recent years, but these raffles don’t always go smoothly. Some were under investigation to determine if they were illegal or rigged, while others were canceled due to lack of entries.

This competition may also be extended or even canceled if it doesn’t gain 60,000 entries to cover the house’s minimum listing amount.

8 Indiana Jones And The Garden Decorations

Just a few months ago, we talked about Arthur Brand, the Dutch art detective billed as the “Indiana Jones of the art world.” Back then, he recovered a sixth-century Byzantine mosaic. Brand is again in the news after finding a pair of seventh-century Visigoth reliefs which have been sitting in someone’s garden for 15 years.

In 2004, the carvings were stolen from the Santa Maria de Lara church near Burgos in northern Spain. The structure is one of the last-surviving Visigoth churches on the Iberian Peninsula, and the reliefs were at least 1,000 years old. They ended up in the hands of a French dealer who sold them as garden ornaments worth £50,000 each to an English noble family living in North London.

After nine years of searching, Brand received a tip from an informant about the artworks. He confronted the unidentified owners, who were shocked to find out the true origins of their garden decorations.^[3]

The nobleman willingly handed the reliefs to Brand. In turn, he gave them back to Spanish officials at their London embassy during a private ceremony on Monday.

7 Transplant Taxi

Somewhere in Pennsylvania, there is a person who received a second chance at life because Brad Dostlik likes to listen to his police radio and felt like doing a good deed.

Dostlik heard an unusual call over the radio—a doctor’s car had broken down while carrying sensitive cargo. That cargo was an organ which was due to be transplanted in just a few hours into 63-year-old Tom Loree at the UPMC Hamot Medical Center in Erie. Knowing that he was close, Dostlik jumped in his car and went to find the stranded surgeon.^[4]

Dr. Martin Wijkstrom was grateful for the assistance as a hospital response team was a long distance away and probably would not have arrived on time. Fortunately, Dostlik had a full tank of gas and was willing to drive the doctor 177 kilometers (110 mi) to reach Loree, who was suffering from kidney failure.

At 1:45 AM, Dostlik received a text that Loree was out of surgery and the transplant had been a success.

6 New Diagnostic Test For Alzheimer’s

Researchers from the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases in Tubingen have developed a blood test which could detect the presence of Alzheimer’s disease over a decade before symptoms start to appear.

The test examines the levels of a protein called neurofilament light chain (NfL) in the blood and spinal fluid. Previous studies suggested a link between increased levels of NfL and brain damage and that the protein could be used as a marker for the progression of neurological conditions such as Alzheimer’s.

In a study with over 400 test subjects, the German team found that differences between people genetically predisposed to Alzheimer’s and those without a mutation of interest become apparent 16 years before the onset of symptoms.

Study coauthor Professor Mathias Jucker believes that the test will be useful not only in treating patients as early as possible but also in helping to determine the efficacy of future drugs to treat Alzheimer’s.

Dr. James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimer’s Society, described the new development as helpful but also pointed out that it had limitations. It only looked at people with a genetic predisposition for the disease and didn’t account for the fact that other health problems such as multiple sclerosis could also increase NfL levels.^[5]

5 Peanut Butter Giveaway

A 15-year-old autistic boy from Virginia is sharing his lifetime supply of peanut butter with government workers affected by the shutdown.

The United States federal government shut down on December 22, 2018, with hundreds of thousands of people required to work without pay while others have been furloughed. Since then, many organizations and private citizens have offered assistance in various ways. (The shutdown officially ended on January 25, 2019.)

One notable helper is Eric McKay from Woodbridge, Virginia. Also known as “Bean,” McKay absolutely loves peanut butter and eats it every day. Therefore, when Lidl had a sale, his mom, Tracy, stocked up on 72 jars.

Inevitably, Bean went through the entire supply. He numbered each jar, took a picture with them, and tweeted it at Lidl. The company was so impressed with Eric’s love for its product that it not only sent him another 72 jars but also promised him a lifetime supply of peanut butter if he garnered 72,000 retweets.^[6]

Last week, Eric reached his goal, partly thanks to author Neil Gaiman who shared the original tweet with his 2.5 million followers. Eric also announced plans to share his winnings with federal workers affected by the shutdown. (That included his father.) They can claim up to three jars of peanut butter from Eric’s “stash” for free by showing their government ID at the Lidl in Dumfries, Virginia.

4 The Octopus Whisperer

An 84-year-old man has spent over 7,800 hours volunteering at the New England Aquarium in Boston and has become known as the “octopus whisperer.”

Twenty-five years ago, Wilson Menashi retired from his career as a chemical engineer. To pass the days, he began visiting the aquarium and started spending time with the cephalopods. He quickly realized that he had a knack for it.^[7]

Even decades later, Menashi admits that he can’t quite explain how he connects so strongly with the octopuses. Senior aquarist Bill Murphy believes that Menashi’s secret involves understanding that each octopus is different and using patience and experimentation to get on its good side.

At the moment, Menashi enjoys interacting with two cephalopods—a three-year-old female named Freya and a younger male called Professor Ludwig Von Drake. The octopus whisperer might go home with suction cup hickeys every day but never with serious injuries. Menashi describes the time spent with the octopuses as “a lifesaver” which gave him purpose after retirement.

3 Barber Services For Dementia Patients

Lenny White has developed a reputation as a dementia-friendly barber who offers his customers the traditional hot towel shave-and-a-haircut and “a bit of dignity.”

White’s career started recently following his divorce. He remembered fondly the time he spent when he was 17 working in a care facility and the knack he had for interacting with dementia patients.

He took a barbering course and volunteered at a senior facility in his hometown of Bangor, Northern Ireland. Lenny created the right atmosphere, complete with traditional barber pole and apron, lemon-scented cologne, and Dean Martin and Elvis Presley playing in the background.^[8]

The staff noticed a huge difference in their patients as even the most agitated men became more easygoing and relaxed. Word of Lenny’s services spread, and now he travels all over the United Kingdom to snip the hair of men with dementia. He even journeyed to New Jersey.

Lenny has added a portable jukebox and a robotic dog to his arsenal and is constantly improving at the “man-banter” he has with his customers. Men come in groups to recreate the camaraderie they felt in their younger days while in line at the barbershop.

Research suggests that what Lenny does is not only uplifting but also therapeutic for people with dementia as they respond well to stimuli which hark back to their younger days.

2 The Medic Meets Baby George

A former Navy medic reunited with the baby he helped to save over six decades ago during the Korean War.

Norm Van Sloun was born in Chaska, Minnesota, and enlisted when he was 21. In 1953, he served aboard the USS Point Cruz as one of only two hospital corpsmen caring for 1,000 soldiers. They became 1,001 after sailors walking through Seoul found a baby dumped in an ash can. He was half-Korean and half-Caucasian with blue eyes and blond hair, so the orphanages turned him away.

The baby was brought aboard ship and placed in the care of the two medics. They named him George Ascom Cruz. A Japanese newspaper first told the story of Baby George which eventually spread to the United States. An iconic photo of Van Sloun feeding the infant made the front pages across the world and was used for morale-boosting promotional material.

Norm cared for George for three months but never knew exactly what had happened to him until recently. His daughters took to social media in an effort to find George, and 66 years later, the two saw each other again.

Vice President Richard Nixon got a visa for Baby George. He was adopted by a Navy surgeon in Spokane, Washington, and became Dan Keenen.^[9]

1 Life Beneath The Ice

For the first time, scientists have explored Lake Mercer, a subglacial body of water in Antarctica covered by a sheet of ice over 1,100 meters (3,500 ft) thick. They thought they might find microbes, but they actually discovered ancient carcasses of tiny animals such as crustaceans and tardigrades.

Mercer is part of a network of hundreds of underground lakes buried beneath the Antarctic ice. It has been undisturbed for thousands of years, even hundreds of thousands of years, depending on when the last warm period occurred where the glaciers receded.

An expedition called Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) has brought together researchers from over a dozen universities to study these untouched environments. Lake Whillans was the first in 2013, and now Mercer is the second.^[10]

To their surprise, scientists found Whillans to be teeming with microbes far more than they expected from a place so isolated from the Sun’s energy. Even so, the findings in Lake Mercer were so staggering that project leader John Priscu had the equipment cleaned and used again because he thought it had been contaminated.

Researchers recovered shells and other bits from crustaceans, one tardigrade, and pieces of fungi. Some of them still had little hairs on them. These are in addition to the countless microbes that live in the lake. While unlikely, SALSA scientists are not completely ruling out the possibility that small animals could still be alive in the lake, feeding off bacteria. Priscu believes that this would be a “real wow moment.”

There is a lot more information to be gleaned from Lake Mercer in the weeks and months to come. Scientists also look at it as an analogous habitat for subglacial biospheres on other worlds such as Mars or Europa. They believe it could provide insight into what kind of life could survive in such conditions.

Most people view snails and slugs as pests. But these slimy streakers are far removed from one-dimensional garden destroyers. They amaze scientists with their abilities, and certain individuals have become the darlings of mass media.

The slow creatures can also get a little creepy. They hide inside humans and, thanks to the military, have evolved into things that include cyborg spy snails.

10 Strange Survival Mystery

Hahajima Island of Japan is home to a fragile snail. All right, “fragile” in the sense that it is really tiny—around 0.25 centimeters (0.1 in). A thumb can easily crush Tornatellides boeningi.

When researchers recently collected bird feces on the island, they found that it contained snail shells. Oddly, some of the snails appeared to be alive. Curious, the team fed over 100 mollusks to a captive population of the two bird species known to snack on the snails.

Remarkably, around 15 percent were expelled unharmed. One snail even gave birth shortly after being pooped out. The digestive system is not a Disney ride. The snails endure a harsh journey lasting 30 minutes to two hours. Why such a good percentage appear to suffer no ill effect is a mystery.^[1]

The best theories at this point?

Small equals survival. Tinier shells might be less prone to cracks and digestive juices seeping in. Tornatellides could also seal themselves away behind a mucous film that safeguards the shell’s opening.

9 Why Snail Sex Is Slow

One might be forgiven for thinking, “It is slow, because they are snails.” As garden snails are hermaphrodites, they can technically reproduce by themselves. However, they seem to prefer a partner. Each snail has eggs and sperm, seeking to both fertilize another and get fertilized at the same time.

The real reason why snails mate for up to three hours, which looks more like a cautious game than a passionate embrace, could be for their health. Researchers feel that snails do not really mind off-loading sperm but are careful about the quality of sperm they receive. Thus, they investigate the situation carefully.

If the partner is not desirable, the other might attempt to impregnate it while avoiding the unhealthy snail’s own attempts to do so. The whole dance is wrought with concentration and frustration. The complexities of snail courtship take precedence over everything, even safety. This is why mating snails are often out in the open and oblivious to their own vulnerability.^[2]

8 Snails Inside People

In 2018, an 11-year-old boy played inside a tide pool in California. During this time, he scraped his elbow. His parents made sure that the injury was disinfected and cleaned. However, a week after their trip to the beach, the wound still festered. They took their son to the doctor and explained that there was a tenacious blister that kept growing. The child was otherwise normal and healthy.

The medical staff decided to drain the blister, which was red and full of pus. After the abscess was opened, it sprang a tiny surprise on everyone—a minute sea snail. The checkered periwinkle was still alive despite being covered in human flesh and wound ooze for over a week.

Luckily, it never nibbled on the boy. Periwinkles are herbivores, and this one survived thanks to its usual habitat. They browse shoreline rocks, and since air is not always good for sea snails, the species can seal off its shell with thick mucus. This prevented the periwinkle from suffocating inside the wound.^[3]

7 Stepfather Snails

During a 2012 study, researchers found another great dad in the animal kingdom. The male marine whelk cares for his offspring, while the female leaves after mating and gluing egg sacks to his back. Each capsule contains about 250 eggs. The male must carry dozens of these bags for about a month, during which he loses a lot of weight.

However, the whelk is a dedicated dad. The species slithers about in California’s mudflats making sure that the eggs stay hydrated and cool. As if being a single dad is not hard enough, his kids are violent. Upon hatching, the baby snails massacre each other. The few siblings that survive are well-fed.

Worse, DNA analysis showed that, on average, a male cares for a mere 24 percent of his own progeny. The rest are fathered by up to 25 other males with which the mother was involved. Researchers believe that the dads accept the burden to show females that they are good parents and thus to earn more mating rights.^[4]

6 Mutant Love Drama

The common garden snail is a familiar sight. Normally, their shells swirl only to the right. A rare genetic mutation must occur for the sides to switch. In 2016, one was found in London and named Jeremy.

A year later, scientists wanted to learn more about “lefty” genetics and decided they wanted to have his babies. Since his condition prevented him from a successful mating with normal snails, they had to find another mutant.

In 2017, the call went out to find Jeremy a wife-husband. (They are hermaphrodites.) The world’s largest broadcasting organization decided to help. The BBC made the lonely snail’s plight public, and two mates were found. Enter Lefty, donated by a snail enthusiast from Ipswich, and Tomeu, who was spared after a BBC-watching restaurant owner from Catalan noticed one appetizer was a match.

With the whole world watching, Jeremy was rejected. The other two got together and made 170 baby snails. At least, shortly before Jeremy died that same year, he managed a fling with Tomeu that produced 56 babies.^[5]

5 They Get Kidnapped

Antarctic pteropods are tiny, glass-like snails. As they are delicate and live in the vast, dangerous ocean, pteropods have evolved to be highly toxic. This survival strategy comes with an unusual risk of getting kidnapped.

At one point, crustaceans called amphipods realized that the snails are so poisonous that predators avoid them. Not only are the amphipods immune to the mollusks’ deadly zap but they also abduct the pteropods to use as shields.

The crustaceans use two pairs of legs to keep the snails hostage, wearing the unlucky victims like backpacks. It takes a few snails to build the living armor, but they can cover up to half of the host’s back. This criminal behavior suits the amphipods well because it convinces predators to go look for lunch elsewhere.^[6]

The snails get a raw deal. Once kidnapped, they cannot feed and eventually starve to death. To add insult to injury, their corpses are often kept by the amphipods that abducted them.

4 Lonely George

There was once a Hawaiian tree snail that lived an unusual life. Never did this slimy creature sail up a tree in the wilderness because Lonely George was born and raised in the laboratory.

His ancestors—the last 10 Achatinella apexfulva—were captured for a breeding program in 1997. The attempt at snail romance was a disaster. For unknown reasons, all the babies died except for one. George lived for 14 years at the University of Hawaii, becoming a local celebrity and doing tours to educate schoolchildren about the environment.

George was the last of his kind. The mysterious maladies that wiped out his peers also killed off the original 10 adult snails. Hawaiian tree snails were once so plentiful that 19th-century records describe how Europeans collected 10,000 a day.

This harvest was half of the problem that ended up killing the species. At one point, the rosy wolfsnail was brought to Hawaii. The idea was to use this foreign species to eat another invasive snail, the African land snail. Except the rosy wildly feasted on native species, too. George died in 2019.^[7]

3 The Pink Slug

Australia is home to some of the strangest species on Earth. This fact echoed in the recent discovery of a new slug. The species (Triboniophorus aff. graeffei) is big and neon pink.

Measuring 20 centimeters (8 in) long, it crawls along a single mountaintop. For a long time, scientists knew the creatures were on Mount Kaputar but thought they belonged to the red triangle variety. The latter is a common sight along Australia’s east coast. A new study identified the separate species as one that evolved on Kaputar.

The slugs often live among red eucalyptus leaves, a clue as to why they turn hot pink. But camouflage does not explain why the slugs spend a lot of time out in the open. Their unusual shade might be an evolutionary quirk.

Mount Kaputar was an isolated oasis in a desert for millions of years, and such havens can produce odd creatures. Apart from giant pink slugs, the mountain also spawned unique species like the Kaputar cannibal snail and the Kaputar hairy snail.^[8]

2 Solar-Powered Slugs

As the name suggests, Elysia chlorotica is stuffed with chloroplasts. This allows the sea slugs to do something amazing—they photosynthesize like plants. Similar to plants, the slugs are green and leaf-shaped.

Found off the United States’ East Coast, this ability does not come naturally. They poach the chloroplasts from algae. After absorbing enough, they do not eat for more than nine months. They merely bask in the sun and make their own sustenance.

It remains unclear how the chloroplasts live so long and remain unharmed by the slug’s gut or immune system. In turn, the slug mysteriously survives deadly amounts of free oxygen radicals produced by photosynthesis.^[9]

How do the plant parts and the animal parts even interact?

Only a thorough analysis could clarify the symbiosis. Unfortunately, this unique animal-plant hybrid is almost impossible to find in the wild and does not live long in the laboratory.

1 Future Spies

Snails do not care for human politics. But the intelligence community cares about snails. The research arm of the United States military (DARPA) wants mollusks as batteries and listening devices.

In 2012, a project successfully turned a snail into a living battery. The experiment used the animal’s blood sugar to recharge a battery-like implant, which generated a sustainable amount of energy for months.

Although the snail equals just below the charge of an AAA battery, researchers have big dreams. They plan on tweaking the technology-biology link until snails can generate enough power to run microelectronics. This would allow the creatures to slide up and down enemy walls as living sensors and detectors. They could even get saddled with miniature cameras.^[10]

Although turning snails into cyborgs sounds weird and hurtful, the mollusks live close to normal lives. The success of their energy capacity depends on resting and eating during which glucose levels recharge the battery.

Another week is in the history books, which means we have another week’s worth of bizarre and unique stories to go through. Be sure to also check out the mind-blowing list to get fully up-to-date regarding the important happenings of the last few days.

We cover a few enigmas this week. There is something really strange happening in a tiny Canadian town, while Spanish authorities are trying to determine the mystery owner of a plane sitting in the Madrid airport. A third conundrum is put to rest as archaeologists rediscover the burial ground of an English explorer lost 150 years ago.

In science news, researchers planned one of the most ambitious experiments in history, developed a laser that whispers in your ear, and saw if Spock is wiser than Yoda.

10 Fortunate Folk Find Flinders, Finally

Archaeologists excavating for England’s new High Speed 2 (HS2) railway uncovered the final resting place of Captain Matthew Flinders, an explorer whose burial location was lost to history roughly 150 years ago.

At the start of the 19th century, Flinders led the first European circumnavigation of Australia. In total, he made three trips to the continent and recorded his adventures in a popular book called A Voyage to Terra Australis. He died in 1814 and was buried at St James’s Church in the center of London. Over the following decades, the cemetery saw extensive alterations and was finally turned into St James’s Gardens in 1878. Later, parts of the gardens were built over for the Euston railway station.

By then, people had long forgotten where Flinders was buried, although there was always a myth that the captain was interred below platform 15. That didn’t turn out to be the case, though, as his remains were found while digging for a new high-speed railway. Fortunately, Flinders was buried with a lead breastplate which had not corroded and still had his named engraved on it.^[10]

The remains will, most likely, be reburied at a new location yet to be determined. This spot was just one of 60 archaeological sites along the route of the future HS2 which will be explored before construction can begin.

9 The Ghost Plane Of Madrid

Officials from the Madrid-Barajas Airport in Spain are trying to find out who parked and abandoned a jetliner on their tarmac.

The Madrid airport might be among the largest in Europe, but even for a place of this size, it is unusual to leave an airplane untouched for years. And the aircraft is a McDonnell Douglas MD-87, a jetliner that seats over 100 passengers, so it isn’t exactly tiny.^[2] And yet it has been parked in the same place so long that airport authorities don’t know who owns it anymore.

Airport director Elena Mayoral placed a notice in the official Spanish bulletin regarding the abandoned plane. In accordance with Spanish law, officials must publish these notices for three straight months and then wait a year for the owner to come forward before being able to auction off the plane. So it looks like the aircraft will stay right where it is for the foreseeable future.

8 Vanilla Inebriation

A woman from Connecticut was arrested for driving under the influence of vanilla extract.

If there is one thing to learn from history, it’s that humans have always enjoyed getting wasted. No matter how unusual or unpleasant a substance might be, if it gets you blotto, then there will be someone somewhere willing to try it.

Our latest example is Stefanie Warner-Grise, a 50-year-old woman from New Canaan, Connecticut. Officers investigated a report that she had stopped her car in an intersection and was sitting in the driver’s seat with her eyes closed. A quick chat revealed that she was clearly inebriated, and after a failed sobriety test, she was taken into custody.

As it turned out, Warner-Grise had gotten drunk off vanilla extract.^[3] Officers found several bottles in her car and could smell the scent of vanilla on her breath. Vanilla extract is surprisingly potent. Per US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, the solution must be 35-percent alcohol by volume, at least. The alcohol typically evaporates during cooking, but if you drink it straight up, it is slightly less intoxicating than whiskey.

7 The Whisper Laser

Researchers from MIT have created lasers that can whisper sounds directly into a person’s ear.

The system works based on a phenomenon called the photoacoustic effect, which causes sound waves to form when a material absorbs light. In this case, the material is the water vapor naturally found in air. A 1.9-micrometer thulium laser is pointed at someone’s ear, excites the moisture surrounding it, and is able to quietly transmit a message to that person.

The MIT team experimented with different wavelengths and found the ones which are best absorbed by water. They also developed two techniques of transmitting the signal. One is through traditional modulation, while the other one sweeps the beam back and forth by bouncing it off a mirror. The former method provides higher audio fidelity, while the latter creates a louder message.^[4]

The scientists behind the technology claim the laser is perfectly safe and believe it will have numerous commercial applications in the future. At the moment, the “whisper” beams work at a distance of 2.5 meters (8 ft), so the next goal will be to move up to longer distances.

6 Yoda vs. Spock

Star Wars vs. Star Trek is a decades-old rivalry. Fans of the two iconic sci-fi franchises are always butting heads, but Canadian researchers from the University of Waterloo have stepped in to settle one debate: Who is wiser? Spock or Yoda?

The tiny ancient Jedi and the Vulcan second-in-command are generally considered to be the smartest characters in their respective franchises and have become archetypes of sage wisdom, but is there a way to determine if one is superior to the other?

There is one trait which distinguishes the two—emotion. Spock dismisses anything he considers illogical and refrains from showing almost any emotion, while Yoda teaches his pupils to embrace their feelings and does so himself. Researchers ascertain that a rich emotional life would be beneficial to wisdom, which is why the Jedi master is the wiser of the two.

Psychologist Igor Grossman and his team ran various experiments over four years involving almost 3,700 participants to see how emotional states impacted the reasoning process. They concluded that experiencing a diverse and balanced range of emotions leads to wise reasoning—a state defined by intellectual humility, recognition of different perspectives, and willingness to integrate and compromise.^[5]

5 Enter The Hellevator

A group of Welsh shoppers experienced an ordeal out of a horror movie as they were trapped for 40 minutes in an elevator which repeatedly climbed to the top and then plunged back down again.

Last Saturday, over a dozen people became stuck in a lift at the St David’s Shopping Center in Cardiff. Being trapped in an elevator is nerve-wracking on its own, but this machine kept going to the top of the mall and then forcefully going back down as it jolted all of its occupants. It did this for 40 minutes before a fire brigade was able to get everyone out.^[6] To make matters worse, the helpline was not working for the first ten minutes, so the people stuck inside had no idea what was going on.

Physically, everybody was fine, although they did all receive the fright of their life, and one young girl suffered a panic attack. A spokeswoman for the shopping center didn’t give any reason for the malfunction, simply stating that there were no previous reports of faults with the elevator. For their ordeal, the shoppers were given free parking passes.

4 The 500-Year Experiment

Scientists from the University of Edinburgh have published the initial results from an experiment which is designed to run for the next 495 years.

Back in 2014, a group of researchers from Scotland, Germany, and the United States banded together to study the longevity of bacteria. Charles Cockell, one of the collaborators, once forgot about a petri dish with Chroococcidiopsis, only to find that the cells were still viable ten years later. Other scientists were able to revive bacteria much older than that. So how long do bacteria last for, anyway? And is there a predictable way to calculate the rate of loss of viability?

These are the questions that the research team wants to answer, but even if the experiment succeeds, none of them will be around to enjoy it. That is because the test is scheduled to end in 2514.^[7] They have only just published the initial results following the first two years of waiting.

The experiment consists of 800 glass vials hermetically sealed and filled with Chroococcidiopsis or Bacillus subtilis. Half of them are shielded from radiation using lead. Performing the evaluation is easy. All the tester has to do is take a few vials periodically, open them, add water, and check the number of bacteria colonies. The tricky part is finding people to keep the experiment running hundreds of years from now.

3 Burglars Burrow Beneath Bank

Police officers from Florida investigated a sinkhole and discovered that it was actually an unfinished tunnel leading underneath a bank.

Wednesday morning, Pembroke Pines PD got a call about a possible sinkhole near a shopping center. Upon closer inspection, officers realized that the hole was a narrow tunnel that someone had dug from a nearby wooded area to reach the Chase Bank inside the plaza. In the tunnel, police recovered a small generator and a power cord. They also found a winch, a ladder, a stool, a pair of muddy boots, and a small wagon outside the entrance, which was covered with a wooden pallet.

FBI special agent Michael D. Leverock described the situation as “truly a unique case.” He said the tunnel was “very claustrophobic” and was 45 meters (150 ft) long and around 90 centimeters (3 ft) in diameter.^[8] Scent dogs have determined that there aren’t any bodies inside the tunnel. Authorities aren’t sure yet if the tunnel was abandoned or if the recent rainfall caused it to collapse. They have posted photos of the wagon and the generator, hoping that someone might be able to identify the would-be bank robbers.

2 The Carstairs Conundrum

Something strange is happening in a small town in Alberta, Canada, and nobody is able to figure out why. Cars are acting bizarrely when they are parked outside the Westview Co-op grocery store in Carstairs.

The most common issue seems to be key fobs that stop working, but there have also been alarms that go off for no reason and cars that simply won’t start.^[9] The problems seem to have been going on for weeks and are concentrated in the parking lot of the co-op. The store managers have called in electricians, but they have not been able to solve the mystery. At the very least, they shut down the power source from the co-op to confirm that it isn’t the cause of the interference.

The RCMP confirmed that they have received multiple reports regarding the parking lot and, ultimately, plan to look into it, but they admit that it is not a high priority.

With no official answer, people have begun to speculate regarding the cause of the interference. They think it could be anything from LED bulbs or a radio antenna to train tracks and nearby security systems. And, of course, aliens.

Update: The mystery has since been solved. A remote car starter in the vicinity was stuck in transmit mode, causing the interference. Neither the co-op nor aliens were to blame.

1 Burger And Coke

A new fast food restaurant in Melbourne, Australia, called Pablo’s Escoburgers has garnered a lot of attention recently because it is themed around infamous Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar.

The centerpiece of the controversy seems to be the restaurant’s signature “Patron Burger,” which is served with a line of white powder and a rolled-up American $100 bill.^[10] Of course, the money is fake, and the powder is actually white garlic, but people still found it in poor taste.

Critics are saying that the restaurant is profiting off the misery of the drug trade by glorifying one of the world’s most ruthless criminals and making light of drug use. The backlash to the burger joint prompted one of the co-owners to release a statement saying that they have no intention to offend and are simply “taking the piss” out of Escobar while enjoying a good play on words. At the moment, the restaurant has no plans to change the name or the menu.