If anything happened in the news over the last few days that might put a smile on your face, you will probably find it on this list. For the weirder stuff that is likely to bemuse or astound you, check the offbeat list as well.

We have quite a few touching animal stories this week. There’s talk of a hero pit bull, an elusive black leopard, and the adorable pairing of a beagle and a possum. Then there’s also the oldest-known wild bird in the world which became a mom for the 30-something time.

10 Happy Little Impersonators

Texas students organized a Bob Ross flash mob to pay homage to the late art instructor and television host.

Ross started presenting The Joy of Painting in 1983. The show ran for 11 years on PBS, and its host became well-known for his Afro, his calm and soothing voice, and his overall friendly demeanor. It was a far cry from the two decades that Ross had spent in the Air Force as a mean sergeant who screamed at cadets to “scrub the latrine.”

Bob Ross died in 1995. He has experienced a resurgence in popularity over the last few years as the Internet made his show easily accessible and a new generation was exposed to his wholesomeness.

That’s how art teacher Brady Sloane from Madison Middle School in Abilene, Texas, got the idea for a Bob Ross flash mob to reward Advanced Placement students who were stressed out over grades and projects.

Around 50 kids donned wigs and button-down blue shirts and grabbed their palettes of paint to create some “happy little accidents.”^[1]

9 The Pit Bull Protector

Sadie the 11-year-old pit bull escaped her home and brought police back to her house where they detected a gas leak.

One afternoon, residents of a quiet neighborhood in Westchester County, New York, were disturbed by a commotion caused by one dog roaming the streets and barking loudly. Eventually, someone called the authorities. When police showed up, Sadie took off.

Making sure they were still following her, the dog led officers through several streets all the way back to the house where she lives with Serena Costello and her four-year-old daughter. There, police were quickly able to smell gas. They called in the fire department who detected a leak in the basement.^[2]

According to authorities, the leak could have caused an explosion. Sadie’s early detection likely saved her and her family. This was the first time in 11 years that the pit bull had run away from home, and the inside of the house showed signs of her determination. There were bloody claw marks as Sadie had to dig out a blocker under a sliding glass door to make her exit.

8 A Greener Earth

A new study from Boston University published in the journal Nature Sustainability used data from NASA to show that the planet is greener now than it was 20 years ago.

Most environmental news seems to be doom and gloom, so it’s good to learn about something positive every now and then. Research showed that the Earth has seen a 5 percent increase of green leaf areas compared to the early 2000s, or roughly 5.18 million square kilometers (2 million mi²) of added greening per year.^[3]

This insight comes to us courtesy of the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). It is a NASA instrument which has been aboard two satellites orbiting our planet since the mid-1990s. It can provide information regarding Earth’s vegetation down to a level of 500 meters (1,600 ft) on the ground.

Perhaps even more surprising are the main sources for the greening of the planet: China and India. Both countries have seen significant increases in vegetation thanks to ambitious foresting programs and intensive agriculture.

7 Back In Black

A wildlife photographer snatched a photo of the exceedingly rare wild black leopard, possibly for the first time in over 100 years.

British shutterbug Will Burrard-Lucas traveled to the Laikipia Wilderness Camp in Kenya after hearing reports of sightings of the elusive creature. Such tales are not unheard-of throughout Africa, but the last time someone managed to obtain confirmed photographic evidence was in 1909 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The chances of Burrard-Lucas being the one to obtain a new snapshot were remote, to say the least.

Nevertheless, the wildlife photographer went to Africa and set up his camera traps. The first few days yielded no results. But one morning, he was scrolling through photos taken the previous night and saw a pair of eyes surrounded by darkness.^[4] He had managed to capture multiple images of a leopard whose coat is sooty black due to a pigment adaptation called melanism.

Around the same time, a team of researchers from San Diego Zoo Global traveled to the wilderness camp and managed to capture video footage of a black leopard. Their study discusses both their findings and Burrard-Lucas’s photos.

The claims that these images are the first in over a century have been controversial. A Kenyan newspaper photographed a black leopard in 2013. But study lead author Dr. Nicholas Pilfold says that the animal was not wild and was brought from America as a cub. Another picture from 2007 has recently resurfaced in light of recent events. If genuine, it would predate them all.

6 A Dedicated Mother

The world’s oldest-known wild bird has become a mother again at age 68. Wisdom the Laysan albatross laid an egg back in December, and it hatched earlier this month.

Laysan albatrosses mate for life and only lay one egg per year at most. Since 2006, Wisdom and her partner, Akeakamai, have visited the wildlife refuge center on Midway Atoll in the North Pacific Ocean during mating season.^[5]

According to US Fish and Wildlife, she has raised at least 31 chicks and now has No. 32 to look after. The baby albatross will spend five to six more months in the care of mom and dad before flying out to sea, where it will spend most of its life.

The average life span of the Laysan albatross is 50 years, but Wisdom is at least 68 years old. She was banded in 1956 when she first came to the breeding site on Midway Atoll. As she was ready to mate, scientists estimated that Wisdom was five to six years old. But she could have been older.

5 Mobility Mucus Marks Mind-Blowing Milestone

There have been many notable discoveries in recent times, but scientists are currently excited over a trail of mucus. That’s because this trail is around 2.1 billion years old and represents the oldest-known evidence of mobility.

Researchers made the discovery in the Franceville basin in Gabon. The area is a black shale province and contains remarkably preserved fossils. A few years back, scientists found there what they believed to be the earliest signs of multicellular life informally referred to as the “Gabonionta.” Now they have uncovered fossilized tracks which show how these primitive marine life-forms moved through the mud.^[6]

The tricky part was examining the fossils without destroying them as the tracks were only a few millimeters wide. Scientists used X-rays to image them and then recreated them in 3-D.

They were surprised to find that the tracks were both horizontal and vertical. The horizontal ones were to be expected as the ancient creatures pushed themselves through sediment. However, vertical tracks suggest that the Gabonionta had a more complex system of mobility than expected.

4 Logan’s Little Library

Some kids set up lemonade stands in their yards, while others might prefer tree houses. Logan Brinson opened a library.

Logan is just five years old, but he loves to read. Unfortunately, his tiny village of Alpha, Illinois, did not have a library, so he decided to start one himself. Last summer, he and his parents met with town officials and proposed to organize a lending library.

That’s how Logan’s Little Library came to be.^[7] Installed in front of the Brinsons’ home, the library is a small, wooden, green-painted house which contains a few dozen books. They are available to readers of all ages as long as they only check out one book at a time.

Logan’s initiative proved to be quite popular with the residents of Alpha. They are now planning to open a second lending library near the gazebo in the town center.

3 Molly And Poss

An animal odd couple won over the hearts of Australians after Molly the beagle adopted a baby possum named Poss.

Molly was feeling distraught after losing her litter of puppies during birth, but a new friend jumped into her life. The little marsupial hopped onto the beagle’s back and made herself at home. Molly was a heartbroken mother without her pups, while Poss was a baby most likely abandoned by her own mom. They found each other at the perfect time and formed a symbiotic relationship.

At the moment, the pair is inseparable, which is particularly tricky as Poss is nocturnal. Whenever she feels like a midday nap, Molly stays close by, waiting patiently for her adopted baby to wake up. The beagle’s owners, Elle and Sara Moyle, announced that they have also adopted Poss and will look after the possum for as long as she wants to stay with Molly.^[8]

2 Lost Memories

Eighty-two-year-old Martha Ina Ingham was recently reunited with something she undoubtedly never expected to see again: her old handbag from high school. Among other items were letters which told the story of two boys who both wanted to take Marty to the prom.

Back in 1954, Marty was a student at Jeffersonville High School in Clark County, Indiana. The school was closed down in 1971 but was only recently marked for demolition.

Construction workers were removing cabinets from one of the science classrooms when they found the handbag. Inside were items you would expect a teenage girl to carry, such as lipstick and ID cards. There was also a letter from a boy asking Marty to the prom in case she hadn’t already said “yes” to another boy named Paul.^[9]

School officials enlisted the power of social media to see if they could track down the former student and return her handbag. Fortunately, Jeffersonville is not a big city. Two days later, they announced triumphantly that Marty had been found. Now all we’re waiting for is an update to let us know whom she took to the prom.

1 A Rose For Valentine’s Day

For the past eight years, Seth Stewart and his friends have spent Valentine’s Day delivering roses to widows, military wives, and single women around Spokane, Washington, so they wouldn’t feel lonely.

It all started when Seth and one of his brothers bought two dozen roses to give to their single friends on Valentine’s Day. The community heard of their small act of kindness, and the next year, they received requests.

The tradition got bigger and bigger over the years. In 2019, Stewart hired a group of drivers to deliver more than 550 roses. Now there is a dedicated “Rose Rush” Facebook page to send requests. All roses are free of charge, and every requested recipient gets one. People can even include a personalized message.^[10]

No matter how big the operation gets, Stewart has his own personal list of women who have had an impact on his life. He delivers flowers to them personally, and his first four customers are always the same: his mom and his sisters.

The Roman Emperor Nero is enjoying a newfound respect these days. At this point, it’s almost common knowledge that the stories of him playing a fiddle while Rome burned are almost certainly untrue.

Still, there are stories about Nero’s excess and depravity that go beyond anything imagined in the most gruesome horror stories. Although there’s no way of knowing how many stories are true, you don’t earn a reputation like this one without doing something people didn’t like.

10 He Burned Christians For A Source Of Light

Nero never had progressive policies when it came to Christians, but he got really hard on them after the Great Fire of Rome. When the people began turning against Nero, he used Christians as a scapegoat to get the heat off himself.

Christians were blamed for the fire and slaughtered en masse. But the really terrifying part was how they were killed. Slaughtering Christians was a spectacle that people would attend and cheer.

During parties, Nero would nail Christians to crosses and burn them alive as a source of light when the Sun went down. While his victims screamed and suffered, Nero would walk about in a chariot rider’s uniform making small talk with his guests.

9 He Trapped People In Theaters To Listen To His Music

The story about Nero playing music while Rome burned doesn’t just come from nowhere. Nero loved the arts—from music to the theater—and performed every chance he got.

He even locked the gates of the theater when he performed. Then he put on incredibly long performances, requiring the audience to listen attentively and clap. People would leap over the walls or even fake their own deaths to get out of these performances. According to the Roman historian Suetonius, one performance went on so long that a woman gave birth while Nero played.

8 He Regularly Cheated To Win The Olympics

Nero was an athlete, too. In fact, he still holds the world record for most Olympic wins, staking claim to 1,808 Olympic wreaths—the era’s equivalent of gold medals.

So how did he do it? By cheating, of course. In one ridiculous story about a chariot race, Nero allegedly ordered his competitors to use four-horse chariots and then showed up with a team of 10 horses.

Despite his massive advantage, Nero still didn’t make it across the finish line. He fell off his chariot and had to give up the race. Even though he didn’t make it around the track, the judges still declared their emperor the winner of the race.

7 He Built An Orgy Palace With A Gigantic Statue Of Himself

One of Nero’s greatest accomplishments was building the Domus Aurea, a golden pleasure palace the likes of which the world had never seen. It was a massive building overlaid with gold, ivory, and mother-of-pearl. It was guarded by a 37-meter-tall (120 ft) statue of himself. It even had panels in the ceiling that would let a rain of flowers and perfume fall on his guests.

So what was it used for? Orgies, of course! Reportedly, people in the palace would eat until they vomited and then couple for massive sex parties while rose petals fell on them from above.

All the decadence might have been forgivable—except that Nero built his sex palace right after the Great Fire of Rome when people needed aid. The Domus Aurea was viewed as a symbol of his selfishness and, shortly after his death, was stripped of all its gold.

6 His Sex Life Was Insane

Stories about Nero’s sex life show up in every Roman history book because as weird as Roman emperors were in the bedroom, none of them compared to Nero.

Tacitus told a story about Nero throwing a massive orgy that went on for days. At the end, Nero threw a mock wedding ceremony in which he married a freedman named Pythagoras—one of two men whom Nero married throughout his life.

According to Suetonius, whenever Nero wanted to let off a little steam, he would tie naked boys and girls to stakes, dress up like an animal, jump on them, and pretend to eat them. This was most likely a recreation of how criminals were executed in that time, with Nero pretending to be a vicious animal devouring a sentenced man in front of an audience.

5 He Sentenced A Woman To Death By Giraffe

In Nero’s time, there was a famous assassin named Locusta who specialized in poisoning people. According to some accounts, Nero’s mother, Agrippina, hired Locusta to murder Agrippina’s husband, Claudius, and then her stepson, Britannicus.

Sometime after Nero came to power, Locusta was made to pay for her crimes in a horrible way. According to a popular story, Nero had her publicly raped by a “specially trained giraffe” before she was finally torn apart by wild animals.

4 He Crucified The Apostle Peter

Nero didn’t just kill nameless Christians—he executed Peter, one of Jesus’s disciples. In AD 64, about 30 years after Jesus’s death, Peter was trying to spread Christianity throughout Rome and that put him directly in Nero’s path. Nero captured and crucified Peter—and, according to the popular story, hung him upside down.

This was far from an isolated event. Peter was killed in a circus that Nero almost exclusively used to publicly execute Christians. Those live murders were such a popular sport that the streets alongside the circus’s racetrack were filled with tombs full of the bones of his victims.

3 He Murdered His Own Mother

Nero killed a lot of people, but he didn’t stop at strangers. He murdered his family, too—including his own mother, Agrippina the Younger. Every historian gives a different account of how Nero killed her, but they all seem to agree that he was behind it.

According to historian Cassius Dio, Nero sent his mother off on a custom-designed ship. While she out at sea, a secret door under the ship opened up and sent her falling into the depths of the water. Agrippina survived and desperately swam to shore. But when she reached it, Nero had an assassin waiting for her.

When Agrippina saw her killer, she just said, “Smite my womb,” ordering the assassin to destroy the part of her body that had created such an abominable son.

2 He Kicked His Wife And Unborn Baby To Death

Most people credit Nero’s decision to murder his mother to the influence of his second wife, Poppaea Sabina. Poppaea was a manipulative woman who charmed the emperor, convincing him to get rid of his first wife, Octavia, and his own mother so that Poppaea could take their places.

For a while, Nero and Poppaea enjoyed a period of marital bliss, but it didn’t last. In time, they started to argue.

During one fight, Nero beat his wife bloody. He threw her to the ground and repeatedly kicked her directly in the stomach, where his unborn child was growing. According to some versions of the story, he may even have jumped up and down on her womb until she died.

Apparently, he regretted it. A few years later, he found a young boy named Sporus who looked like her and did what any grieving husband would do: He forcibly castrated the boy, dressed him up like his dead wife, and married him in front of all of Rome.

1 He May Literally Be The Antichrist

Calling somebody “the Antichrist” is a pretty strong accusation. But in this case, it’s not just a judgment call. According to one theory, Nero may literally be the Antichrist described in the Bible.

Most people know that “666” is the number of the beast, but you might not have read it in context. The Book of Revelation treats the number more as a puzzle for the reader to solve than a prophecy. It says: “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”

The twist is that if you count the numbers that represent the Hebrew letters in “Nero Caesar,” you get 666. On top of that, Revelation says that the beast will rule for “forty and two months”—which happens to be about the length of time that Nero ruled after the Great Fire of Rome.

This means that John might not have been just predicting some vague future evil. He may have been trying to tell the people of his time that Nero would be coming back.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to . His writing also appears on a number of other sites, including The Onion’s StarWipe and Cracked.com. His website is regularly updated with everything he writes.

With another week in the history books, it’s time to sit back and review some of the stories that made the news over the last few days. Click here if you want to learn all about the major headlines. Otherwise, read on for unexpected and outlandish stories.

This week’s list is a collection of international affairs. There is the Canadian iceberg heist, the German Smurf party, and the French lightsaber duel. We find glow-in-the-dark spider fossils in Korea and striped horses in England. The Japanese get naked to uphold a 500-year-old tradition while an Australian woman dresses up as a gorilla to catch a flasher.

10 Smurf-tastic

Thousands assembled in the German village of Lauchringen to set the new world record for the largest gathering of Smurfs.

The event was organized by a group called Da Traditionsverein. According to the group’s Facebook page, the occasion drew 2,762 people who donned pointy hats, white pants, and blue paint to resemble the characters from the beloved comic book.

The Record Institute for Germany was there to officially confirm the number of the crowd, although it is still waiting for approval from Guinness World Records. To be eligible for the record, each participant had to have their skin either painted blue or covered by clothing. The white cap was also mandatory, although red was allowed for people dressed up as Papa Smurf.

This was actually the second time that organizers attempted to break the record. They first tried it in 2016 but managed to assemble only 2,149 people. This time, their efforts overshadowed the previous record of 2,510 Smurfs set in 2009 at Swansea University in Wales.^[1]

9 Spider Glow

Scientists found fossils of spiders whose eyes still glowed in the dark even though they died 110 million years ago.

Researchers from the Korea Polar Research Institute and the University of Kansas were exploring a Mesozoic shale deposit in South Korea called the Jinju Formation. They uncovered 10 spider fossils.

This was noteworthy enough on its own. These kinds of finds are exceedingly rare because soft, squishy spiders don’t make very good fossils and are typically found only in amber. However, two of them were even more exciting because their eyes still shone in the dark even after all this time.

Most likely, the source of the glow was the tapetum. This is a reflective layer of tissue in the eye that many animals have. It helps with their night vision but also causes the eyes to shine in the dark. Researchers believe that this could be the first preservation of a spider’s tapetum in the entire fossil record.^[2]

Scientists are also curious about the circumstances that led to the arachnids being preserved in shale. Other creatures such as fish and crustaceans were also present in the rocks, so they could have all fallen victim to a disastrous event like an algal bloom.

8 A Cool Heist

One of the most bizarre heists in recent memory occurred in Newfoundland, Canada, as thieves made off with 30,000 liters (7,925 gal) of iceberg water from a vodka distillery.

The criminals targeted a warehouse in the historic community of Port Union. The victim was Iceberg Vodka. As its name suggests, the company uses real iceberg water in the manufacturing of its product.

CEO David Meyers says the stolen liquid could have been used to make 150,000 bottles of vodka. However, he does not expect the company to suffer too much after its loss. The water was insured, and it was only valued at C$9,000 to C$12,000. That being said, the biggest problem is that the giant ice blocks can only be harvested once a year when the icebergs move closer to the Newfoundland coast.^[3]

Meyers does not believe that the crime was one of simple opportunity. The thieves went through “a bit of work” to bypass the locked gate and door and brought along some kind of tanker to load and transport tens of thousands of liters of iceberg water. The original tank which contained the liquid had been drained and left behind.

7 Wickedness In Creswell Crags

There was a time when people were really, really afraid of something in Creswell Crags, a limestone gorge on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, England. That’s the conclusion of heritage experts after they found inside what could be Britain’s largest assemblage of apotropaic signs—which are intended to ward off evil.

The markings include hundreds of symbols, letters, and patterns which were likely carved from the 16th century onward when fear of witchcraft became widespread.

It is truly remarkable how long it took for people to realize the markings were there. This is especially surprising given that ice age art was found inside the cave in 2003 and attracted a lot of attention.

However, it wasn’t until last year that two keen-eyed cavers spotted a couple of symbols and alerted members of the Creswell Heritage Trust as to their meaning. The director of the trust embarrassingly confessed that they had been telling people the markings were Victorian graffiti.

This prompted a closer inspection of the cave. Researchers were shocked to discover that the walls were covered in symbols. So far, they have found a thousand and counting.^[4] Most of them are generic, such as PM for Pace Maria or a double V meaning Virgin of Virgins. It might be hard to tell exactly what it was about Creswell Crags that terrified people so much.

6 The Luckiest Men In Japan

Thousands of Japanese men in Okayama stripped down to their loincloths and crowded together to search for two sticks believed to bring them good luck in the year to come.

The tradition is called Saidaiji Eyo, and it dates back over 500 years to the Muromachi period. Last Saturday, an estimated 10,000 men gathered at the Kinryozan Saidaiji Buddhist temple in Okayama to participate.

First, they took off their clothes and put on white loincloths. Then they all bathed in the cold waters of the Yoshii River as part of a purification ritual.

At around 10:00 PM came the main event. The mass of naked men watched as the temple’s chief priest stood on a balcony. The lights were turned off, and he threw two sticks into the crowd. A mad scramble ensued to find them.^[5]

The sticks are called shingi. It is believed that the two participants who located them will be the luckiest men of the year.

5 Cop Kong Gets Her Man

A determined citizen donned a gorilla cop disguise to stake out a pervert who had been flashing women in a park in Perth, Western Australia.

According to the anonymous woman, she had fallen victim to the sex pest several times. She talked with other women in the park and discovered that they had all suffered similar experiences. Typically, the man rode his bicycle with his shorts pulled up high around his waist so that his genitals were hanging out. On occasion, he had stopped and approached women on foot.

Determined to do something about it, the crime fighter took matters into her own hands. First, she put up posters around public areas warning people of a flasher. Then she began staking out the park he liked to frequent. Fearing he might recognize her, the woman wore a costume of a gorilla dressed up as a cop.

The bizarre gambit paid off. The concealed crusader spotted the offender and was able to follow him to his home without being spotted. She then relayed the information to the police, who charged him with four counts of indecent acts in public.^[6]

4 Radiation At Grand Canyon

For almost two decades, people who visited the Grand Canyon National Park museum could have been exposed to radiation thanks to uranium ore being stored in the vicinity.

Earlier this month, park staff members received a distressing email which said, “If you were in the Museum Collections Building (bldg 2C) between the year 2000 and June 18, 2018, you were ‘exposed’ to uranium by OSHA’s (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) definition.”^[7]

It came from safety manager Elston Stephenson. He discovered that three 19-liter (5 gal) buckets of uranium ore had been stored near the taxidermy exhibit for nearly 20 years.

Things weren’t as serious as they sounded, though. The ore contained only low amounts of radiation. Levels were below those needed for concern about public safety, although they were higher than “background radiation.” Legally, this is why employees had to be notified. OSHA inspectors don’t expect any health problems and currently label the area as “no risk.”

That being said, employees could have done a better job of disposing of the uranium. They finally decided to get rid of it last June. They moved the buckets using gardening gloves and mop handles. They took the ore to the Lost Orphan uranium mine from which it had come.

3 A Joker On Mars

Most of us have a preconceived notion of what astronauts should be like. They need to be tough (both physically and mentally), smart, determined, and cool as a cucumber. In the words of Tom Wolfe, they need to have “the right stuff.” However, research suggests that, if colonization missions to Mars are to be successful, at least one of those astronauts should be more of a class clown than a class president.

It all has to do with boosting morale and diffusing tense situations. Anthropologist Jeffrey Johnson from the University of Florida has been studying overwintering crews in Antarctica for four years to identify the importance of informal roles in helping teams work smoothly together. He pinpointed multiple vital characters such as the leader, the peacemaker, the counselor, and the clown (whose role is essential in creating group cohesion).

Johnson puts it simply: Groups who have the right combination of characters do well, and those who do not do badly. He uses the famed Amundsen polar expedition as an example. Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen understood the importance of a friendly face and selected the rotund and jolly chef Adolf Lindstrom to be on his team. He later wrote that Lindstrom “rendered greater and more valuable services to the . . . expedition than any other man.”^[8]

Johnson has begun working with NASA to monitor groups of astronauts placed inside a mock space habitat in Houston, Texas. They want to see if the same informal dynamics are maintained in space environments.

2 May The Foil Be With You

In a galaxy far, far away, the French Fencing Federation has officially recognized lightsaber dueling as a competitive sport.

Fencing clubs all over the country have been equipped with lightsabers and even offer training for those looking to live out their Star Wars fantasies. According to the federation’s Secretary General Serge Aubailly, this move was an effort to get young people to exercise more. He believes that they lead sedentary lifestyles that involve sitting on the couch and only exercising their thumbs.

In the past, cape-and-sword movies have had a big impact on fencing as a sport. Popular characters like Zorro and Robin Hood helped bring in a lot of new people interested in giving it a shot. Aubailly simply sees the Star Wars franchise as the next step.^[9]

The rules are similar to regular fencing, but they have been modified slightly to give the sport more visual appeal as one would expect in the movies. The rooms are darkened so that the glowing lightsabers are easier to see.

In order for a blow to count, the tip of the saber must first have been pointed behind the fighter’s head. This is to encourage more brazen, over-the-head blows as seen in Star Wars duels instead of the lightning-quick, tip-first strikes common in fencing.

1 Why The Zebra Got Its Stripes

In a new study published in the scientific journal PLOS One, researchers from the University of Bristol concluded that the striped pattern on zebras appeared to confuse and deter flies.

According to coauthor Dr. Martin How, the stripes affect the insects’ landing. Close-up footage showed that the flies zoomed quite fast into the zebras. Some turned away completely, while others crashed into the animals instead of doing controlled landings.^[10]

The stripes only appear to work as a deterrent from close range. Researchers believe that the low-resolution vision of flies will cause the zebras to look like regular gray horses from a distance of a few meters. The sudden reveal of the stripes might surprise the insects enough to make them veer away, or it might interfere with their ability to gauge correctly how fast the object is coming at them.

To be thorough, scientists needed to be sure that it was the stripes turning away the flies and not something else, such as a scent. Therefore, they dressed up horses in zebra coats to see if they would get the same results.

They also put plain white and plain black coats on other horses to act as a control. Indeed, the flies landed noticeably fewer times on the horses wearing stripes as compared to the ones clad in the other garments.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but for some lucky and daring photographers, that picture can be worth $15,000 and some serious notoriety. The Pulitzer Prize for photography has existed in various forms since 1942, and the award has been given to photographers of some of the most important images ever recorded.

While most pictures tell a tale, the ones chosen for the award often have stories of their own that explain why or how the image was taken. These 10 stand above the rest as some of the most important Pulitzer Prize–winning pictures ever taken. (The year of the award appears below the title or description of the photo.)

10 Firing Squad In Iran
1980

Jahangir Razmi’s provocative photograph, Firing Squad in Iran, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980, but Razmi didn’t receive the credit he deserved until 2006. The picture was taken on August 27, 1979, but it was published anonymously in the Iranian daily newspaper Ettela’at. Razmi was the only photographer to receive a Pulitzer Prize anonymously, but he had good reason to keep his name out of the papers alongside his intense photograph.

The picture captures the moment when a group of Kurdish militants were executed at the Sanandaj airport. Eleven prisoners were charged with firearm trafficking, inciting riots, and murder in a 30-minute trial. Their execution was carried out immediately afterward.

Razmi followed the condemned men outside where they were quickly put in place for execution. His picture captured a moment when some in the firing squad had fired and some hadn’t. Razmi’s name was protected by the publisher to ensure the photographer’s safety from government reprisal. In 2006, Razmi finally revealed that he was the photographer in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.^[1]

9 Fire Escape Collapse
1976

The 1976 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography went to Stanley Forman for his picture titled Fire Escape Collapse. Forman captured the moment when a woman and a child fell from a collapsed fire escape in Boston on July 22, 1975. The two victims were 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her goddaughter, two-year-old Tiare Jones.

Bryant died as a result of the collapse, which occurred when a turntable ladder on a fire engine was being extended to save them at a height of approximately 15 meters (50 ft). Miraculously, Jones was saved when she landed on Bryant’s body.

When Forman arrived on the scene, he put himself in a position where he could capture what appeared to be the start of a daring rescue. Firefighter Bob O’Neil was in the process of reaching Bryant and Jones when the fire escape suddenly gave way beneath them.

Forman continued to shoot the images as the fall took place but realized that he “didn’t want to see them hit the ground.” So he turned away at the last moment. The photograph was also recognized as the World Press Photo of the Year.^[2]

8 The Murder Of Heather Heyer
2018

In 2017, Ryan Kelly was working his final day at The Daily Progress in Charlottesville, Virginia. On that day, a protest was carried out in the city over plans to remove a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

During the demonstration, a man who had ties to a white supremacist movement drove his car into a group of counterprotesters. That attack led to the death of Heather Heyer. It also won Kelly the Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography in 2018 for his untitled photograph showing the moment when Heyer and around 35 others were struck.^[3]

After heading outside, Kelly began taking long-shot photographs of the march. But as soon as a car began to barrel down the road, the journalist in him kicked in and he captured the moment that led to Heyer’s death.

The picture became emblematic of the demonstrations taking place across the country and the racial tensions spreading throughout. Kelly had already accepted a new position as the social media manager for a local brewery but opted to remain in the office to help out in case the Unite The Right rally got out of hand.

7 Lone Jewish Woman
2007

Oded Balilty was working for the Associated Press when he was told to photograph a group of Jewish settlers protesting against Israeli security forces in the West Bank. The picture was taken on February 1, 2006, and Balilty was later chosen as the 2007 Pulitzer Prize winner in Breaking News Photography for snapping the image.

As of this writing, Balilty is the only Israeli photographer to be honored with the award, although he has been nominated twice in this category. For this shot, Balilty was on the scene in the settlement of Amona, east of Ramallah, when he noticed a single woman standing up to a flood of security forces by herself.

He quickly took the photograph of the woman’s resistance against the forces advancing on her position. Although as many as 200 people were injured while resisting the Israeli security forces during the clearing of the settlement, this one woman became the defining symbol of opposition against the government in Israel. Not only did the photo capture the intensity of the moment but of the entire situation as well.^[4]

6 Burst Of Joy
1974

Slava “Sal” Veder was working for the Associated Press when he covered the return of Lieutenant Colonel Robert L. Stirm at Travis Air Force Base in California. Stirm had been held as a prisoner of war by the North Vietnamese for more than five years. He was greeted on the tarmac by his 15-year-old daughter (center) and the rest of his family. The photograph truly captured a moment of joy as his daughter rushed to see the father she had lost more than five years earlier.

When the Burst of Joy photographer was chosen to receive the Pulitzer Prize in 1974, copies of the picture were made and sent to each family member in the photograph. Now adults, the children display their copies proudly in their homes.^[5]

Unseen in the picture is the anguish felt by Stirm who had received a “Dear John” letter only three days before he arrived. He and his wife divorced within a year, but the photograph stands as a beautiful depiction of a soldier returning from war to a loving family.

5 The Terror Of War
1973

Napalm was used throughout the Vietnam War. Although intended to be a defoliant, it was often used against enemies and civilians alike. When such an event occurred on June 8, 1972, Huynh Cong Ut, professionally known as Nick Ut, was there to document one of the most harrowing stories of the war.

The picture was taken as a group of terrified children ran down Route 1 near Trang Bang village following a napalm attack against a suspected Vietcong safe haven. Featured prominently in the photograph is nine-year-old Kim Phuc whose nudity triggered Facebook’s content censor back in 2016.

Despite the eventual censorship from Facebook, The Terror of War was chosen for the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography as well as the World Press Photo of the Year. Not only did Ut take the iconic photograph, but he also rushed the young girl to the hospital. There, she was saved despite having sustained burns to more than 30 percent of her body.^[6]

4 Saigon Execution
1969

On February 1, 1968, South Vietnamese General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, who was the chief of the national police at the time, executed a Vietcong officer named Nguyen Van Lem. Loan carried out the execution on the streets of Saigon in plain view of anyone who happened to be watching. This included NBC’s television cameramen and Associated Press photographer Eddie Adams, who took this iconic photograph.

Immediately after shooting the man in the head, the general walked over to the reporters and plainly said, “These guys kill a lot of our people, and I think Buddha will forgive me.”

Adams’s photo immediately became a symbol of the brutality of the ongoing conflict. But there was far more going on before that image was taken than was widely known at the time.

The executed man was the leader of a “revenge squad” and had killed dozens of unarmed civilians earlier that day. Despite this, the imagery of his execution haunted Adams, who regretted taking the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph. “The general killed the Vietcong; I killed the general with my camera.”^[7]

3 Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima
1945

There are many photos of soldiers fighting in World War II. But the image that became the iconic representation of the American fighting spirit was taken by Joe Rosenthal at the top of Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945.

The photograph was taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima about 90 minutes after a smaller flag was raised on the mountain. The image was so popular throughout the United States that it became synonymous with American pride and the Marine Corps’ fighting spirit.

A sculpture of the event was made into the Marine Corps War Memorial located in Arlington Ridge Park. Rosenthal took photographs throughout the war, but this image is his best known. He received little money for his work but has since been honored for his contributions.

Following his death, he was posthumously awarded the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award by the United States Marine Corps. Sig Gissler, an administrator for the Pulitzer Prizes for Columbia University, once said, “Of all the images that have captured Pulitzer Prizes, none is more memorable than Joe Rosenthal’s raising of the flag on Iwo Jima.”^[8]

2 Victim Of The Oklahoma City Bombing
1996

The Oklahoma City bombing was the most devastating case of homegrown terrorism that the United States has ever seen. The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City resulted in the deaths of 168 people.

This tragedy was particularly devastating due to the presence of a day care center in the building which had 15 of the 19 child victims of the attack. Though the bombing and its aftermath were well-documented at the time, the Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph by Charles Porter IV serves as a haunting reminder of the terror caused that day.

Taken on April 19, 1995, the photograph shows a fireman holding the body of a severely wounded infant in his hands. Porter was not a photographer covering the event but happened to have a camera on him.

He worked as a credit officer at Liberty Bank when the bombing occurred. As he was an aspiring journalist who was taught to “keep a loaded camera in my car at all times,” he was ready and able to snap the photograph that earned him the 1996 Pulitzer Prize in Spot News Photography.^[9]

1 The Vulture And The Little Girl
1994

Of all the Pulitzer Prize–winning photographs, The Vulture and the Little Girl serves as the one with the most tragic story. Kevin Carter took this picture—which appeared in The New York Times on March 26, 1993—to document the situation going on in Sudan at that time.

The child, who is a boy but was believed to be a girl at the time, was struggling to reach a United Nations feeding center when he collapsed, weak from starvation. Carter took the picture of the emaciated toddler with a vulture standing nearby and received the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography in 1994.

The image immediately evoked harsh criticism of Carter, whom many condemned for taking a picture instead of helping the child. Four months after receiving the Pulitzer, Carter committed suicide. The psychological trauma he suffered from witnessing such hardship accompanied by the criticism he received for covering it pushed him to end his own life.

Bishop Desmond Tutu wrote of Carter’s suicide, “And we know a little about the cost of being traumatized that drove some to suicide, that, yes, these people were human beings operating under the most demanding of conditions.”^[10]

Jonathan is a graphic artist, illustrator, and writer. He is a retired soldier and enjoys researching and writing about history, science, theology, and many other subjects.

Far too often, the media focuses on negative events while positive news items take a back seat. That’s not the case here as this list covers only stories that inspire, amuse, and uplift. If weirdness is more your thing, you can check out the offbeat list, too.

There are several stories this week of elderly people who prove that age is nothing but a number. A neighborhood bands together to help a deaf girl while a hockey ref fights against Alzheimer’s with a little support from AC/DC.

10 The Senior Junior Ranger

A centenarian became a junior ranger of the Grand Canyon National Park to encourage newer generations to protect and learn about the great outdoors.

Rose Torphy made her first trip to the Grand Canyon back in 1985. Now, on her second visit, she heard about the junior ranger program and wanted to be a part of it. Her parents taught her to care for the land, and in turn, she desires to do the same for other kids.

Although the junior program is intended for children, it is available to everyone from ages four and up. Therefore, Rose was able to enlist even though the 103-year-old is actually older than the national park she has sworn to protect. On February 26, the Grand Canyon will be celebrating 100 years since its designation as a national park.^[1]

9 An Unlikely Savior

A Florida inmate used his criminal expertise for good to rescue a baby trapped inside a locked car.

It all started when the father of the child strapped his one-year-old daughter in the safety seat in the back of his Chevy Tahoe and threw the keys in the front seat. He then exited the SUV and instinctively closed the door. Only then did he realize that he had just locked himself out of the vehicle.

Meanwhile, a group of low-level offenders was repairing medians nearby under the supervision of Pasco County deputies. They heard the commotion and rushed to help. One of them used a coat hanger to jimmy the lock and open the door of the car. The whole thing took about five minutes, and the baby was completely safe.

Her mother, Shadow Lantry, filmed the whole thing and then posted it on social media. She was grateful to the men who had dashed to her rescue, saying that she respects them all.

Pasco County Sheriff Chris Nocco admitted that such opportunities are rare where a criminal breaks into a car for the right reasons. However, he also extended his appreciation toward the inmates by claiming that they are individuals who have made mistakes but want to “do the right thing in life.”^[2]

8 Rowing Seniors Claim World Record

Two English grandfathers in their early sixties became the oldest duo to row across the Atlantic Ocean while simultaneously raising money for veterans’ charities.

Neil Young and Peter Ketley have the combined age of 123. Despite this, the two former paratroopers were able to row 4,828 kilometers (3,000 mi) from the Canary Islands to Antigua in just 63 days. Moreover, they had no previous rowing experience apart from a year-long training regimen they underwent before departing in December 2018.

Ketley and Young took part in the Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. Started in 1997 by Sir Chay Blyth as the Atlantic Rowing Race, this endurance event touts itself as the “world’s toughest row.” The aging duo managed to raise over £30,000 to support charities such as Dreams Come True, Support Our Paras, and the Royal British Legion Industries.^[3]

7 It Takes A Village

All the people of a neighborhood in Newton, Massachusetts, have begun learning sign language so that they can communicate with their deaf two-year-old neighbor.

Samantha Savitz is just like many young kids her age: She’s happy, outgoing, and loves to chat up people. There is just one problem, though. Sam is deaf. She knows sign language, but that is not a skill many other people have. Therefore, her attempts at social engagement often go unanswered. Sam is left visibly frustrated, even sad, when she is unable to communicate.

Her neighbors have noticed this and decided to do something about it. They got together, hired a teacher, and began taking American Sign Language classes. The instructor, Rhys McGovern, has been impressed with the kinship and care shown in this community.

Rhys remarked that, in other cases, not even the parents of a deaf child bother learning sign language, let alone the neighbors. Sam’s mother, Glenda Savitz, already sees a difference in her daughter’s behavior and is still looking for a way to express her gratitude for her neighborhood’s “shocking and beautiful” gesture.^[4]

6 One Good Deed Deserves Another

An amateur Canadian hockey ref has been doing marathon skate sessions to raise money and awareness for Alzheimer’s disease. This year’s session came with a surprise donation from his favorite rocker, Angus Young from AC/DC.

Steve McNeil has been skating for charity since 2012 in honor of his mother who died from Alzheimer’s. She was born in 1926, so McNeil skates for 19 hours and 26 minutes in every Canadian city that has an NHL team. Since he started, McNeil has raised over C$40,000, which he donates to the local chapters of the Alzheimer Society.^[5]

Sometimes, it gets really cold and tiresome on the ice. When that happens, Steve has two things to keep him going. He thinks of his mother’s home cooking, and he cranks up AC/DC on his headphones. He has always been a massive fan of the band, but they’ve been on his mind more in recent years after Malcolm Young died of dementia.

Word of Steve McNeil’s efforts reached Malcolm’s brother, AC/DC lead guitarist Angus Young. To show his approval, the rocker donated C$19,260 to the Alzheimer Society of Ontario. The money will be distributed to support music programs for people with dementia across Canada.

5 Remembrance Of Things Past

An antique dealer found a letter from World War I among a stack of old papers she bought for a dollar. It was a “thank you” from Canadian soldier Earl Sorel to the sister of another fighter who had sacrificed his life to save Sorel at the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

Amanda Kehler owns a cafe and antique shop in Steinbach, Manitoba, Canada. She was going through a bunch of recently purchased documents when she found the letter from Sorel, a soldier with the 78th Battalion. It was postmarked May 1917.

The letter detailed the heroics of Sergeant Gorden. He was in charge of a platoon at the Battle of Vimy Ridge on April 9, 1917. They had pushed for about 1,100 meters (3,600 ft) when Sorel heard a loud “bang” and felt a sharp burning in his back and left arm. He had been shot, but Gorden carried him to a shell hole.

Sorel was eventually taken to a dressing station and survived his injuries. He found out the next day that Gorden had been killed in the charge. However, Sorel wanted the sergeant’s sister to know that her brother “died a hero, along with many others that day.”^[6]

4 Grateful Like Gary

Celebrities and veterans banded together this week to create a heartwarming video thanking actor Gary Sinise for all the charity work he has done to benefit military families and first responders.

Titled #GratefulLikeGary, the video was made to surprise Sinise after the release of his book Grateful American: A Journey From Self To Service. Jay Leno, Rob Lowe, Robert De Niro, and Steve Buscemi are just a few of the actors who appeared in the clip alongside many firefighters and soldiers.

Sinise became involved with charity work for veterans after starring as Lt. Dan in Forrest Gump, which is celebrating 25 years since its release later this year. He founded the Gary Sinise Foundation which raises around $30 million a year for veterans.

He also built dozens of smart homes for soldiers with disabilities and organized over 400 benefit concerts. He is even part of a cover group called the Lt. Dan Band which does USO shows.

Fittingly, the tribute video ends with his Forrest Gump costar Tom Hanks saying simply, “Thanks, Lt. Dan.”^[7]

3 Back From Extinction

It has been a good week for large species of animals thought to be extinct. The world’s biggest bee has been found alive in Indonesia, and a giant Galapagos tortoise was sighted for the first time in over 100 years.

Megachile pluto is also known as Wallace’s giant bee, named after Alfred Russel Wallace who first collected and described it in 1858. The female can reach a length of 3.8 centimeters (1.5 in) with a wingspan over 6 centimeters (2.5 in) long.

It was considered extinct in modern times until scientists found a few specimens in the Indonesian Bacan Islands in 1981. Then the species was not seen again and was feared extinct once more.

This January, however, a team of wildlife experts journeyed to the North Moluccas islands and caught sight of Wallace’s giant bee once again. They only found one female, but it was enough to give them hope that the insect is still thriving in areas left alone by man.

On the Galapagos island of Fernandina, a scientific expedition found a tortoise species not seen since 1906. According to the Ecuadorian government, researchers found an adult female Fernandina giant tortoise believed to be over a century old.

Moreover, they also discovered tracks and scents which suggest that she is not the only one of her species still around. Conservationists are hoping to find other tortoises, including males, to start a breeding program.^[8]

2 The Crochet Whiz Kid

An 11-year-old kid from La Crosse, Wisconsin, has won over the online world thanks to his mad skills at crochet.

It’s not exactly a typical pastime for young boys, but Jonah Larson’s newfound fame has turned him into an ambassador of the crochet world. He started learning when he was five years old by watching YouTube videos. Jonah quickly discovered that he had a knack for it, and now he gives his own online lessons.

The young man also started selling his creations through his own crochet business called Jonah’s Hands. His story went viral after being recently featured in a local paper, and Jonah had to temporarily stop taking requests to fulfill a backlog of over 2,500 orders. He also makes sure to give back to the community and regularly donates money and goods to the Ethiopian orphanage from which he was adopted.

Right now, Jonah is happy with his role of introducing new generations to crochet. His ambition, however, is to put his skillful hands to a different use in the future as he wants to become a surgeon.^[9]

1 Flyby For Fallen Soldiers

The story of one man’s dedication led to 10,000 people attending a flyby over Endcliffe Park, Sheffield, to honor 10 American airmen who died there in 1944.

It all began in early January when BBC presenter Dan Walker was walking his dog and ran into octogenarian Tony Foulds. The latter was tending to a memorial dedicated to the crew of US bomber Mi Amigo. On February 22, 1944, the plane was coming back from a bombing run. It crashed into the woodlands of Endcliffe Park, and all 10 men aboard died.

Foulds was there that day. He was an eight-year-old boy playing with his mates in the open field. He feels guilty about the crash because he believes the pilot wanted to land in the field but veered at the last moment to avoid smashing into the children. Since then, Foulds has spent decades looking after the memorial.

Walker told Tony’s story and began campaigning for a flyby to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the crash. Word spread on social media, and the campaign was a success. On Friday, Foulds was joined by around 10,000 people who gathered to witness American and British aircraft take off from RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk and do a flyby over the park.^[10]

These days, much of the history of the Americas before Europeans arrived has been lost or forgotten. This is a shame because the great civilizations of Central America hold stories as epic and intriguing as those of Ancient Greece and Rome. Take the cities of Tikal and Calakmul, which spent four centuries locked in a titanic struggle with twists and turns straight out of Game of Thrones.

10The Rise Of Tikal

The classic Mayan civilization stretched from the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico through Belize, Guatemala, and northern Honduras. This was difficult terrain, prone to drought and soil erosion. Yet here the Maya built one of the great civilizations of ancient America, mastering writing and mathematics. (They arguably invented zero before anyone else).

Unlike the Aztecs or Toltecs, the Maya were never united in one empire. Instead, they formed a squabbling network of city-states, not unlike ancient Greece. Warfare was limited and somewhat ceremonial. Trade was extensive.

The cities of Calakmul and Tikal grew particularly wealthy. Both dominated large areas of fertile territory and had access to chert mines. They traded in jade, obsidian, feathers, and other tropical luxuries, and their priests and merchants grew rich on the profits. During the reign of King Chak Tok Ich’aak, Tikal surpassed Calakmul and reached new heights of splendor and prestige.

Yet Chak Tok Ich’aak’s success was also at the root of his downfall. Even as Tikal’s palaces and monuments rose more splendid than ever before, the city’s wealth attracted attention from far beyond the Mayan lands. In the distant highlands of central Mexico, powers vast and cool and unsympathetic regarded Tikal with envious eyes and slowly drew up plans against it.

9The Invasion

Over 1,000 kilometers (600 mi) from Tikal in the Valley of Mexico near what is now Mexico City, an immense and mysterious city rises. We still don’t know who built it or how to read their language. We don’t even know its real name. The Aztecs, who wandered awed through the ruins a millennium later, dubbed it Teotihuacan, “the place where men become gods.”

It’s understandable that the Aztecs were impressed because Teotihuacan was huge. Its population was well over 100,000, making it easily the largest city in the Western Hemisphere at the time. Its monuments were gargantuan: The Pyramid of the Sun is one of the largest ever built, and the Pyramid of the Moon is only slightly smaller. The Street of the Dead runs for 2.5 kilometers (1.5 mi) between the main temples. Its warriors roamed far and wide, distinguished by their unusual shell goggles and the obsidian mirrors strapped to their backs.

Immigrants from all over Central America flocked to Teotihuacan, turning it into a melting pot of different cultures and languages. From atop the pyramids, a priestly class occasionally carried out human sacrifices. The city’s political structure remains subject to debate, but by the AD 370s, it seems to have been under the control of a powerful figure known as Spearthrower Owl. In 378, he watched as his army marched out of Teotihuacan and headed east for Tikal.

8‘Fire Is Born’

Spearthrower Owl didn’t accompany the army himself. Instead, it was commanded by a general the Maya called Siyaj K’ak’ (“Fire Is Born”). They also dubbed him “Ochk’in Kaloomte” (“Lord of the West”), reflecting his origins in Teotihuacan. Mayan cities quailed as his army passed, and at least four of them seem to have recorded the event in murals depicting elaborately costumed and heavily armed Teotihuacano warriors. They easily stand out compared to the Maya, who are depicted in simple breechcloths and headdresses.

In January 378, Siyaj K’ak’ appeared in Waka’, a town just west of Tikal. Exactly eight days later on January 14 (8.17.1.4.12 on the Mayan calendar), he arrived in Tikal. In their helmets and goggles, the warlike Teotihuacanos must have been a fearsome sight and Chak Tok Ich’aak was apparently unable to mount any meaningful resistance. Siyaj K’ak’ forced his way into the palace that very same day, and King Chak Tok Ich’aak “entered the water” of the Mayan afterlife. We can assume that he was either quietly murdered or encouraged to commit suicide.

Siyaj K’ak’ presumably had the dead king’s family murdered as well. (They certainly disappear from the historical record immediately afterward). His soldiers also broke or damaged all of Tikal’s preconquest monuments and inscriptions. A year after the invasion, Spearthrower Owl’s son came down from Teotihuacan and was crowned the new king of Tikal.

7Building An Empire

While Spearthrower Owl’s son sat on the throne, Siyaj K’ak’ continued to expand his new empire. Shortly after the conquest of Tikal, the city of Uaxactun seems to have been overrun and made part of the Tikal kingdom. Stelae in the city depict heavily armed Teotihuacan warriors, and historians believe these show Siyaj K’ak’ conquering the city. Archaeologists found five murdered noble women and children buried beneath one of the stelae—the slaughtered family of Uaxactun’s last king.

In 393, Siyaj K’ak’ marched into Rio Azul, a city in what is now Guatemala. Clearly, the Maya remained no match for his goggled warriors. An altar depicts the sacrifice of eight members of the city’s old ruling class, and Rio Azul became subject to Tikal. This was a huge victory since Rio Azul lay on the River Hondo, a crucial trade route to the Caribbean coast. The city’s conquest secured this route and allowed Tikal to suck trade away from rival cities like Calakmul.

At some point, Siyak K’ak’ also seems to have installed a new ruling family in the famed Mayan city of Palenque. As a new Mayan calendar cycle approached (the year 9.0.0.0.0 was in 435 AD), it seemed that Teotihuacano-Tikal was poised to dominate the entire Mayan world.

6Tikal Consolidates Power

Spearthrower Owl’s son died in AD 411, and Siyaj K’ak’ presumably passed away a few years earlier. The new king of Tikal was Spearthrower Owl’s grandson, Siyaj Chan K’awiil II, who tried to consolidate the new kingdom by appealing to his Mayan subjects. His monuments and murals depict him in Mayan dress and emphasize his Mayan mother. Even his name was taken from an earlier Mayan ruler of Tikal rather than his Teotihuacano ancestors.

But that doesn’t mean he tried to hide his central Mexican roots. While Siyaj Chan K’awiil had himself depicted in Mayan costume, he kept Spearthrower Owl’s glyph on his crown. In several monuments, Siyaj Chan K’awiil sits in Mayan dress while the spirit of his father looks on wearing full Teotihuacan military gear. This must have been an effective propaganda campaign: “I’m one of you,” the monuments declared, “but remember the power I have behind me.”

Meanwhile, “New Tikal” continued to expand. In 426, Siyaj Chan K’awiil raised a warrior known as K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ to the rank of king and sent him to seize the city of Copan in what is now Honduras. K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ also conquered the city of Quirigua, giving the Tikal-Copan entity control of the entire Motagua Valley. Under Siyaj Chan K’awiil’s immediate successors, Tikal continued to expand and consolidate its dominant position. And it seemed the other Mayan cities could only look on in fear and jealousy.

5The Star War

Today, the temples of Calakmul rise like icebergs out of the immense jungles of Campeche. But in its heyday, the city ruled one of the largest and most powerful Mayan kingdoms. It was the home of the Kaan dynasty, a particularly long-lasting and resourceful family of priest-kings who had relocated to Calakmul after their ancient power base at El Mirador went into decline.

After the Teotihuacanos arrived, the Kaan watched helplessly as they were eclipsed by the rising power of Tikal. (The conquest of Rio Azul was a clear attempt to cut Calakmul out of the rich Caribbean trade routes). But as time passed, the Maya began to master central Mexican weapons like the spear-thrower and Tikal’s warriors began to lose their mystique.

But Tikal remained too large and powerful for Calakmul to challenge head-on. So a Kaan ruler known as Sky Witness decided to outflank it instead. Doubtless appealing to Mayan solidarity and jealousy of the Teotihuacanos, Sky Witness constructed a delicate alliance of Mayan cities surrounding Tikal. The noose was complete by 556 when Tikal’s most powerful vassal, the huge city of Caracol, betrayed it to join the alliance. Between Calakmul in the north and Caracol in the south, Tikal was caught in a pincer.

After years of strangling Tikal, Sky Witness decided to finish it. In 562, Calakmul and Caracol launched a “Star War.” This was basically the Mayan equivalent of total war: The aim was to completely crush the opposing state. Their combined armies overran Tikal, defaced its monuments, and ritually sacrificed its king. It was a huge victory. But things weren’t over yet.

4The Wrath Of Kaan

The Kaan were unimaginably ancient and power-hungry. From the great city of El Mirador, they had been at the forefront of the preclassic period of Mayan history, and now Calakmul looked set to dominate the classic period. After defeating Tikal in 562, they installed a puppet king and an onerous peace agreement. For the next century, no new monuments were permitted in Tikal and much of the city’s wealth was siphoned off to Calakmul.

Shortly afterward, the Kaan destroyed Rio Azul, cementing their control of the Rio Hondo trade. They also probably attacked Copan, whose monuments were destroyed or defaced during this period. The Kaan ruler Scroll Serpent lead a huge expedition to distant Palenque where he executed the king, a descendant of the ruler put in place by Siyaj K’ak’ all those years ago. No challenge to Sky Witness’s alliance was allowed. When the city of Naranjo tried to leave the alliance to attack Caracol, the Kaan ransacked it and tortured its king to death.

But Tikal’s size and resources meant it remained a potential threat, and the Kaan watched it like a hawk for any sign of defiance. In 629, Tikal tried to found a new city at Dos Pilas. In response, the Kaan invaded and forced the ruler of Dos Pilas (the king of Tikal’s own brother) to become a vassal of Calakmul instead. But they were never able to fully destroy Tikal, which remained a sleeping giant waiting to be awakened.

3Tikal Turns The Tide

In 682, a new king rose to the throne in Tikal. Jasaw Chan K’awiil was possessed by an iron determination to restore Tikal’s power. As a child, he had seen his father humiliated by Calakmul and Dos Pilas. But he also sensed that the Calakmul alliance was weakening. As soon as he took the throne, he began work on giant monuments and inscriptions, the first in Tikal for over a century.

Tikal’s situation was precarious: The city was still surrounded by the great ring of the Calakmul alliance, including El Peru in the west, Naranjo in the east, Dos Pilas and Caracol in the south, and Masaal and Calakmul in the north. Faced with this formidable league, Jasaw Chan K’awiil decided on a bold roll of the dice. Bypassing the smaller cities, he launched a surprise attack on Calakmul itself. In 695, his army “brought down the flint and shield” of Calakmul and won a dramatic victory.

Jasaw returned to Tikal covered in glory and held a great triumph on the anniversary of Spearthrower Owl’s death. A carving of the event from Tikal’s royal palace shows Jasaw bedecked in full Teotihuacan military gear, looming triumphantly over an imprisoned Kaan lord being prepared for sacrifice.

With Calakmul on the back foot, Tikal’s rulers set about dismantling the alliance that hemmed them in. Jasaw himself subdued Masaal in the north while his son, Yik’in Chan K’awiil, defeated El Peru and Naranjo in a single year-long campaign. Yik’in Chan K’awiil also launched another attack on Calakmul itself, capturing and sacrificing the Kaan ruler.

However, Dos Pilas in the south remained stubbornly defiant, defeating a Tikal invasion force in 705. That must have particularly hurt because Dos Pilas was still run by a distant branch of Tikal’s ruling family.

2A Tropical Cold War

With the alliance broken, Calakmul watched jealously as Tikal’s wealth and power grew. But neither city was ever able to completely destroy the other. This period of Mayan history has been compared to the Cold War, with the two superpowers warily watching each other and engaging in numerous skirmishes and proxy wars.

For example, Tikal had been allied with Copan since it was conquered by K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ (see entry 6). K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ had also conquered the city of Quirigua and made it a vassal of Copan. But in 738, the Kaan encouraged Quirigua to revolt. With support from Calakmul, the Quiriguans seized and decapitated Copan’s king, severely weakening Tikal’s most important ally.

Such proxy wars became increasingly common as Tikal and Calakmul repeatedly invaded neighboring cities to put friendly rulers on the throne. Without confronting each other directly, their fortunes ebbed and flowed and the records of neighboring cities are full of nervous mentions of the two titans. Teotihuacan had long since declined, and Spearthrower Owl was forgotten in the Valley of Mexico. But in the Yucatan, his descendants fought on against the ancient snake glyph of the Kaan.

Warfare became increasingly common and frantic across the region. As Calakmul’s sphere of influence receded, Dos Pilas lost control of its vassals and the Petexbatun region descended into complete chaos. The people of Dos Pilas tore down their temples to build defensive walls while the ruling family (still distant relations of Tikal’s kings) fled to the fortress of Aguateca, guarded by a mighty ravine. At Punta de Chimino on Lake Petexbatun, the people built a formidable network of walls and moats. But the fighting was terrifyingly intense, and both Aguateca and Punta de Chimino were stormed and destroyed.

Meanwhile, both Calakmul and Tikal continued to grow. The city of Calakmul alone now housed more than 120,000, with larger numbers in its surrounding kingdom. But there were already signs of decline. As the centers struggled to hold on, things were falling apart.

1The Great Collapse

Beginning at the start of the ninth century AD, the classical Mayan civilization dramatically collapsed. The great cities of the lowlands lost most of their population or were abandoned entirely, to be swallowed up by the jungle. The great dynasties vanished, and monuments and temples fell into ruins. Mayan civilization continued in the north in trading towns like Chichen Itza, dominated by merchants rather than autocratic priest-kings. But the era of sprawling cities and huge building projects was over.

The reasons for this collapse remain one of the great mysteries of history. We now know that it coincided with a period of sustained drought, which almost certainly played a role. Probably the land could no longer sustain the huge population. Tikal, for example, built huge reservoirs to keep the city going through the four-month dry season. But years of low rainfall would have defeated even Mayan ingenuity. However, drought alone can’t explain the collapse—the cities of the north lasted far longer than those of the lowlands, even though the north was much drier.

Whatever the reason, the collapse finally ended the 400-year conflict between Tikal and Calakmul. Locked in their titanic struggle, the two cities probably never saw it coming. The war almost certainly sapped the Mayan ability to respond to the catastrophe facing them. Calakmul was one of the first cities to go, losing all cohesion by about AD 810. Tikal held on for another 50 years, but eventually, it was abandoned, too. The sons of Spearthrower Owl and the Kaan dynasty disappeared from history.

After the collapse, a small population hung on in Calakmul and occasionally erected crude monuments in imitation of their ancestors. But the writing inscribed on them was nonsensical. They no longer remembered how to write.

Fish tanks are tranquil until scientists want answers and drunk people want some fun. Then the fish stories start to get interesting . . . and more than a little weird.

Beyond the laboratory and fish-related emergency room visits, some of the best tales come from public aquariums. From lifesaving firsts to the mysterious case of a shark abandoned at a worm farm, no fishbowl will ever look the same again.

10 Infectious Fish Pedicures

A trendy way to exfoliate feet is to get a fish pedicure. Clients soak their feet in a container full of tiny fish that consume dead skin cells.

In 2018, a woman in New York allowed the fish, called Garra rufa, to feast on her toes. Months later, her toenails fractured. The bottom layer could be seen underneath the top.

Since it was painless, she did not visit a doctor for six months. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with onychomadesis. This condition occurs when something stops nails from growing and, eventually, they fall off. When all other causes of onychomadesis were ruled out (injury or a family history of nail disease), the woman became the first case linked to a fish pedicure.^[1]

In the past, Garra fish had tested positive for several bacteria that cause skin and tissue infections. Hygiene is another problem. Since the fish are in the tubs, the containers cannot be properly cleaned between customers. Sanitary risks include individuals with foot diseases who use the tub before other clients.

9 Oldest Fish In Captivity

In 2018, an Australian lungfish in San Francisco celebrated her 80th year at the California Academy of Sciences’ Steinhart Aquarium. Her age is closer to 90 as she arrived as an adult in 1938. Named Methuselah, she measures 1.2 meters (4 ft) long.

The oldest fish in captivity loves figs and prawns, belly rubs, and certain volunteers. Methuselah also prefers her own tank. When caretakers placed her in a larger aquarium with two younger lungfish, she insisted on hovering upside down until they moved her back.

Genetics play a role in her long life, but the species is extraordinary in other ways. Lungfish, which are primitive and go back 400 million years, use a swim bladder to float and breathe air. Some even walk over the ground to search for a new pond.

Methuselah seems happy to aim for a century. According to her caretakers, she eats like a pig and loves human interaction. For this reason, the aquarium’s coddled group of lungfish are often called “underwater puppies.”^[2]

8 Fish Have Personalities

Scientists tackled a tricky question in 2015. Wondering if fish had personalities, they decided to create a horror show. They scared guppies with a fake heron beak plunging into the water. On another occasion, they used “Big Al.” He was a carnivorous fish called a cichlid which would suddenly appear on the other side of the glass.

When a guppy was moved to this scare tank, the only shelter was a small plastic cover. After getting the holy sin frightened out of it, the single fish would be returned to a well-protected tank full of other guppies. After three days, it went back to the scare tank to endure five minutes of terror. This continued for a month.

After putting each of the 105 guppies through this experiment, scientists concluded that the fish had personalities. All reacted in a unique way. It was not accidental. The guppies repeated their chosen behaviors (hiding, fleeing, freezing) during the follow-up encounters with the heron and cichlid every three days.^[3]

7 Catfish Drinking Game

In 2016, a drunk man arrived in the emergency room with a bizarre injury. That evening, the unnamed 28-year-old had partied with friends in Rotterdam in the Netherlands. They had decided it would be a good idea to swallow live fish.

Several goldfish were taken from a home aquarium and gulped down without a problem. Then someone suggested another tank occupant—a small catfish. However, it was a Corydoras aeneus, a toxic creature with spines. When threatened, these catfish stiffen their venom-filled needles to avoid getting eaten.

Needless to say, the spiky creature got stuck in the man’s throat. Choking, he threw up blood and beer—but no fish. His drunk friends applied the Heimlich maneuver incorrectly. The man tried to wash the fish down with beer, ice cream, and honey. Finally, after waiting several hours, he went to the hospital.^[4]

Delicate surgery ultimately removed the dead catfish. It was preserved in the Rotterdam Natural History Museum, joining a collection that highlights dramatic encounters between humans and animals.

6 Wrasse Recognize Themselves

There is a simple test for self-awareness. A mirror shows the subject an artificial mark on their body. Any related reaction, like rubbing the spot, suggests an awareness that the image represents their real body. Animals that have passed include dolphins, chimpanzees, elephants, pigeons, and crows.

In 2018, researchers wanted a self-aware fish. They picked the cleaner wrasse. One ability made them the perfect candidate. Wrasse feed on parasites. They have evolved to notice unusual spots on other fish.

When 10 wrasse were isolated in individual mirrored tanks, things got interesting. At first, they mistook their reflections for rivals and fought with themselves. However, within days, they performed “friendly dancing” in front of the mirrors.^[5]

Wrasse are solitary and do not dance for other fish. Although hard to prove, they could have been dancing to see themselves move. When colored gel was applied to their heads (only noticeable in the mirror), seven wrasse spent more time with their reflections or rubbing their heads against things in the tank.

5 Fish Floaties

Leafy sea dragons resemble seahorses that ate too much plant fertilizer. The entire fish is covered with leaflike fronds.

In 2018, the Florida Aquarium in Tampa acquired three young sea dragons. While observing the Australian fish, the aquarium’s vet noticed something distressing. They ate badly and kept sinking to the bottom of the tank.

Leafy sea dragons float for a reason—to look like seaweed and not food. For them to hit the dirt meant something was seriously wrong. Surprisingly, it was discovered that all three suffered from the same condition—a swim bladder that never developed. The organ is responsible for buoyancy, and without it, the trio could not get off the floor.

In a genius move, the vet created floaties. He used black rings made of neoprene, a buoyant material that was both comfortable and resistant to salt water. The rings were looped around the sea dragons’ fragile midsections and sewn together at the ends. It worked. Once the fish found themselves floating, they started feeding and growing again.^[6]

4 The Stickleback C-Section

Stickleback females spray eggs for hopeful dads to fertilize. There is no hanky-panky or pregnancy with this species. In the 1950s, a pregnant stickleback was found in Scotland. No investigation was done. But in 2016, researchers trawled Scotland for more and found a heavily pregnant stickleback. Since she was dying, the fish was humanely destroyed and the eggs removed via C-section.

Although three cases are known (where egg-laying fish got pregnant), this was the only time that the embryos survived. They hatched in the laboratory and became healthy adults.

But how did a member of a species that doesn’t get pregnant carry healthy young in her belly?

DNA tests showed that she did not clone herself because the babies had two parents. The stickleback likely swam through a sperm cloud and was fertilized through her egg tube.

Beyond being a major evolutionary leap, the mother’s body also aced a crucial male role. To stimulate a healthy development, stickleback dads fan the eggs. The C-section fry were normal, meaning a mysterious internal process had replaced the father’s fanning.^[7]

3 Robot Guppies

The Trinidadian guppy does something weird with its eyes. Although the eyes are usually silver, anger turns them black within seconds. As researchers are curious creatures who go the extra mile, they decided to create robot guppies to find out if the change was voluntary and what it communicated within this fishy population.

In 2018, they took a dead specimen and made silicone replicas. The incredibly realistic fakes had either silver or black eyes. They were positioned over food and given lifelike movements thanks to a small motor. The social dynamics that followed showed that black eyes had a very specific meaning.

Smaller guppies approached the food when the robot had silver eyes. However, a dark look communicated what researchers called “honest aggression”—the guppy’s absolute readiness to fight. It also meant that the guppy was guarding a worthy resource.

When the real guppies were bigger, they beat up the robot. This was to loot the resource and thrash a smaller fish that dared to use the look. It remains unknown how guppies flood their eyes with black.^[8]

2 The Sandwich Ray

Macduff Marine Aquarium in Aberdeenshire is home to several thornback rays. Late in 2018, staff decided to clean one of the tanks. It was filled with ray eggs, known as a mermaid’s purse. In this case, they had to be removed as all the babies had hatched and the cases were empty.

However, when an employee tried to push the air out of one purse, it would not give. He peeled back one side and was surprised to find an unhatched ray. The unlucky creature had been trapped inside its egg. Since the case was destroyed and the ray was still an embryo, a surrogate shell had to be found.^[9]

The solution was as simple as it was unusual—a sandwich bag. The ray happily incubated inside the plastic for two months and eventually “hatched.” The day came when staff decided that it was ready to leave the bag. The baby thornback was removed and placed with 10 others where it thrived, seemingly unaffected by its peculiar past.

1 The Abandoned Shark

In 2012, a wildlife sanctuary was closed down outside of Melbourne, Australia. The operator was supposed to preserve a species of giant earthworm but was caught running an illegal animal park.

One of the creatures that was definitely not an earthworm was a great white shark. The enormous predator was supposed to stay there temporarily while its real home was being prepared elsewhere. However, when new owners took over the park, they kept the shark.^[10]

When the park was closed due to irregularities, the animals were handed over to the RSPCA. At this point, the shark’s story gets muddy. Not only was it left behind at the worm sanctuary, but it also somehow ended up in a tank of formaldehyde. This preserved the 4-meter-long (13 ft) great white.

The empty park could be considered spooky, but the shark tank was downright haunting. The corpse, hanging motionless in green water, recently became an Internet sensation after urban explorers encountered the beast and posted the video to YouTube.

Another week has passed, which means that it is time, once again, to look at some of the bizarre stories that made the headlines recently. If you want to read up on the more serious stuff, click here.

This week’s list has a party vibe to it as we talk about beer, cannabis, and the world’s largest glory hole. Meanwhile, a snake sneaks into Scotland, a crusader gets beheaded, and sumo wrestlers shave their beards.

10 A Tale Of Two Truths

The reputation of novelist Charles Dickens took a serious hit recently as newly surfaced letters detail the cruelty showed to his wife, Catherine.

Dickens is hailed as a literary genius and, arguably, the greatest writer of the Victorian era. However, he had a strained relationship with his spouse. He wed Catherine Hogarth in 1836, and they had ten children together. After nearly two decades of marriage, Dickens almost certainly started having an affair with a young actress named Ellen Ternan. This led to the couple separating in 1858, which was scandalous for the time.

Publicly, Dickens furiously denied rumors of an affair. He also wrote a private letter in which he claimed that the separation was Catherine’s idea because she suffered from mental illness. Although this was personal information, it eventually made its way to the public and helped shape the narrative of the disunion. Some Victorian scholars argue this was Dickens’s intention all along.

Now, previously unseen letters suggest that the novelist went a great deal further and tried to have his wife committed to an insane asylum. The documents were found and analyzed by Professor John Bowen from the University of York. They were written by Edward Dutton Cook, a friend and neighbor of the Dickens household. He says that Catherine told him, shortly before dying, that her husband unsuccessfully tried to coax a doctor to declare her mentally unstable.^[1]

Bowen believes he has identified the doctor in question. Thomas Harrington Tuke was an asylum director and a friend of Dickens, but the two had a falling out a few years after the separation.

9 Snake On A Plane

A Scottish woman brought back an unexpected souvenir from her holiday in Australia. A spotted python somehow snuck into her luggage and made the nearly 15,000-kilometer (9,300 mi) trip back to her home in Glasgow.

Moira Boxall traveled to Queensland to see her daughter. She was apprehensive about the snakes in Australia. Her son-in-law, Paul Airlie, had to reassure her that they are not really as common as people think. And yet one sneaky reptile curled up into one of Moira’s slip-on shoes and rested peacefully the whole journey back from Australia to Scotland. It even shed its skin during the trip.^[2]

Understandably, Moira was a bit spooked when she unpacked her luggage and found the snake. At first, she thought it was a toy that someone put in there as a prank. When she realized it was real, she took it outside in the garden, still in the shoe, and covered it with a box. Fortunately, it was docile and nonvenomous. The Scottish RSCPA came and collected it, and the snake is currently under quarantine.

The grandmother later revealed that the reptile may have been in her shoe for weeks. She first set eyes on a snake one morning at her daughter’s home in Queensland. By the time a snake catcher arrived, the serpent had disappeared, and they were unable to find it again.

8 Beer Is Magically Ridiculous

A brewery from Norfolk, Virginia, will be releasing a limited-edition IPA beer which will taste like a bowl of Lucky Charms cereal.

Described as “magically ridiculous,” the upcoming beverage is the creation of the Smartmouth Brewing Company and will be named Saturday Morning IPA.^[3] A spokesperson from the brewery said that they achieved the unique flavor by tossing in “pounds of marshmallows, some of which we toasted” during the brewing process, alongside Calypso hops, which are naturally fruity. The end result is supposed to be a sweet beer which will remind people of a beloved childhood cereal.

The IPA will have a 6.6-percent alcohol by volume (ABV) content and will be released on March 2. Unfortunately, it will only be available throughout the state of Virginia, so beer connoisseurs might have to make a trip.

7 Florida Man Steals Coins

A bizarre crime occurred in Florida as a thief stole rare coins worth tens of thousands of dollars and then ran most of them through change machines that replaced them with ordinary coins worth face value.

Forty-year-old Shane Anthony Mele from Riviera Beach absconded with commemorative presidential dollar coins and other valuable coinage worth an estimated $33,000.^[4] At first, he did what you might expect a criminal in his position to do. He pawned some of his loot for thousands of dollars. However, he then took the rest of the money and visited grocery stores with change machines. He passed the rare coins through the machines and got back ordinary coins, which were worth only a small fraction of the stolen goods.

Mele was eventually arrested, although it is still unclear at this time why he did what he did. Perhaps he simply wanted to get rid of the coins because he couldn’t find a buyer. On a possibly related note, he was also charged with multiple drug-related offenses when he was arrested.

6 Alacritous Evolution

As detailed in a new study published in Scientific Reports, researchers were able to observe single-celled organisms evolve into multicellular life in less than a year.

The leap from primitive single cells to more complex creatures is one of the main stages in the evolution of life on Earth. Scientists from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Montana were able to see and record this leap occurring over a period of 50 weeks, or approximately 750 generations.

The organism in question was green alga named Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. It began evolving with one simple change to its environment—the introduction of a predator.^[5]Paramecium tetraurelia is a single-cell filter-feeder which was added to the mix to see what would happen. Two out of five experimental populations of the single-celled algae evolved into multicellular life-forms as a response to this new threat. The test not only provided a unique glimpse into early life on Earth but also lent credence to the notion that predation played a key role in the evolution of primitive organisms.

5 Live In The House of Tomorrow . . . Today

The “House of Tomorrow,” presented at the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, is available to lease to anyone willing to spend a few million dollars in renovations.

Back in 1933, Chicago hosted the World’s Fair under the theme of “Century of Progress.” It was intended to celebrate the city’s centennial but also to show the way of the future to a nation still suffering from the Great Depression. Part of this strategy included many futuristic exhibits, including one visionary marvel dubbed the House of Tomorrow.

It was the brainchild of George Fred Keck and was a three-story, twelve-sided polygon. As its name implied, it was meant to showcase an avant-garde design full of features that would become common years or decades down the line. It got many things right. It had floor-to-ceiling glass walls, central air conditioning, a push-button garage door opener, and the first dishwasher designed by General Electric. There were also a few missteps, such as a personal airplane hangar.

After the fair finished, the House of Tomorrow and a few other exhibits were relocated to Indiana. In the 1970s, they became properties of the Indiana Dunes National Park. As they began falling into disrepair, Indiana Landmarks leased the exhibits from the National Park Service and then subleased them to private residents who could live in them, provided that they paid for renovations.

The House of Tomorrow is the last property to become available for a lease. The National Trust for Historic Preservation estimates that it could cost between $2.5 and 3 million to refurbish the home.^[6] However, the new tenant will receive a 50-year lease in exchange for their efforts.

4 Crusader Lost His Head

An 800-year-old crusader got beheaded, and his head was stolen from a crypt in Dublin, Ireland.^[7]

On Monday afternoon, a guide was preparing to give a tour of St. Michan Church when they made the grisly discovery. The criminals removed a solid steel gate which was meant to secure the vaults, entered the crypt, and desecrated several mummies. The remains of the crusader got the worst of it, as his head was completely removed. The site has been closed to tourists for the foreseeable future.

While church officials are concerned with recovering the head and fixing the damage done to the other bodies, the worst might still be yet to come. They are worried that the remains might begin disintegrating now that they have been exposed to open air.

In response to the desecration, Archdeacon David Pierpoint called it a “sad day for humanity.” The crypt was previously vandalized in 1996, when teenagers stole several mummies and played football with the heads.

3 Largest Glory Hole In The World

The Glory Hole at Lake Berryessa reservoir in Northern California was used for the second time in two years, even though initially, people anticipated needing it only a couple of times per century.

Its official name is the Morning Glory Spillway, although locals simply call it the Glory Hole. With a 22-meter-wide (72 ft) opening channeling water into a 75-meter (246 ft) pipe, the spillway is the largest of its kind in the world. The US Bureau of Reclamation built it over 60 years ago to take in water following powerful storms. However, they only expected the Glory Hole to be used once every 50 years or so, but this is the second time it was activated in just as many years following weeks of heavy precipitation. The Glory Hole has previously spilled over in 2006 and 1997.^[8]

The visual of the Glory Hole in action suggests a giant flushing toilet, although some with a more upbeat outlook suggested an inverted fountain. The Glory Hole flushed without incident, although that has not always been the case. As the largest body of water in Napa County, Lake Berryessa is a popular spot for all kinds of water activities. During the 1997 overspill, a 41-year-old swimmer named Emily Schwalek died after being sucked into the spillway.

2 Beardy Sumo Ban

Sumo wrestlers will have to clean up their act following a ban on beards in an effort to improve the image of the sport.

Officials with the Japan Sumo Association (JSA) said that the sumo ring (dohyo) is sacred and that spectators must be prevented from seeing anything unsightly while watching the sport. Therefore, the organization has instituted a ban on things they deem indecent, which include beards, tattoos, and long nails.^[9]

The whisker embargo is the one most likely to irk fighters. Sumo is an ancient sport steeped in tradition, and many superstitious wrestlers believe that it is bad luck to shave during competition. However, current yokozuna Kakuryu Rikisaburo has expressed his support for the new bans, saying that looking good is an important aspect and that all fighters “must absolutely adhere to it.”

This is the latest in a string of moves intended to improve a sport with a tarnished image following multiple scandals over the past few years. There have been accusations of match-fixing, and in late 2017, Yokozuna Harumafuji Kohei had to resign after admitting to assaulting another wrestler. In 2018, an official suffered a stroke in the middle of the ring. Despite a life-threatening situation, the referee was more concerned with evacuating the female medics attending to him, as women were not allowed inside the dohyo.

1 The Cannabis Brew

Scientists from the University of California Berkeley took a yeast typically used for beer and modified it so that they could brew cannabis with it.

The yeast in question is called Saccharomyces cerevisiae. According to lead author Jay Keasling, the process is “just like brewing beer.” However, they modified the yeast’s DNA with dozens of genes from the marijuana plant. Now, when you add a sugar called galactose to the mix, the yeast starts producing cannabigerolic acid instead of ethanol. In turn, this solution could be used to derive a wide range of cannabinoids.^[10]

Among the compounds obtained using this method is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis. Another noteworthy result is cannabidiol (CBD), a cannabinoid which is currently of interest to researchers for its potential therapeutic applications.

The yeast also produced compounds that are usually only found in minute amounts in marijuana. The hope is that, from now on, it will be much easier to obtain these cannabinoids for research. Using yeast could also become a cheaper, greener, and more effective method of cultivating cannabis in the future.

March is here, and we want to start you off on a happy note. That’s why this list has some of the more inspiring and amusing stories that happened over the last few days. If you would also like to read about bizarre and outlandish occurrences, check out the offbeat list right here.

This week is about extremes as we cover stories about people at the opposite ends of the age spectrum. One pensioner spends his days scouring the streets for coins to donate, and a centenarian grandmother goes skydiving.

Meanwhile, a teenager becomes the youngest person to achieve nuclear fusion, a record-breaking preemie goes home, and a 12-year-old budding reporter displays the kind of doggedness you want to see in that line of work. There are also dogs and a fat rat.

10 The Penny-Pincher

A Canadian pensioner has a unique way of spending his free time: He scours the streets of Montreal looking for spare change to collect and donate.

Young S. New has a simple philosophy taught by his father back in Korea: Respect the penny. Therefore, after he retired, he started a new hobby. He would walk the streets of his neighborhood in the west end of the city looking for discarded change. He considered it good exercise, plus it helped him do his good deed for the day.

New has been doing this for 12 years. Other people started joining in, and he even started his own club called the Montreal Hainneville Collectors (MHC). For the first several years, the collected money would be split between New’s church and the Gazette Christmas Fund. Nowadays, he prefers to give the money directly to the homeless.^[1]

9 Jackson’s Laboratory

An American teenager and nuclear engineering hobbyist might have become the youngest-known person in the world to achieve nuclear fusion.

Despite being only 14 years old, Jackson Oswalt from Memphis, Tennessee, is a regular contributor to the forum of the Open Source Fusor Research Consortium. Using about $10,000 worth of equipment bought on eBay, he converted an old playroom in his parents’ house into a nuclear laboratory.^[2]

According to posts on the forum, Jackson successfully managed to heat up deuterium gas and fuse the nuclei to release energy, thus creating a nuclear reaction. He did this in early January 2018 when he was just 12 years old.

While the hobbyist research consortium acknowledges Oswalt’s achievement, it would have to be verified by an official organization and published in an academic journal before being accepted by the scientific community. If this happens, then Jackson will become the youngest recognized individual to attain nuclear fusion, surpassing previous record holder Taylor Wilson who did it when he was 14 years old.

8 Bad Person Doing A Nice Thing?

A stranger did his good deed for the day when he walked up to a Girl Scout troop selling cookies and bought their entire supply so that they could get out of the cold.

Last Friday, Troop 1574 from Greenville, South Carolina, was dutifully selling Girl Scout cookies even though it was 1 degree Celsius (34 °F) outside. Kayla Dillard, one of the girls’ mothers, was with them to act as “cookie manager.”

A Good Samaritan walked up to their table. First, he bought seven packs of treats and paid $40, telling the girls to keep the change. He then changed his mind, came back, and purchased the rest of the cookies so the scouts could pack up and leave early. He spent another $540 on cookies.^[3]

The troop sold over 220 cookie packages that night. Most of them went to the stranger, who didn’t even give his name, although he did pose for a picture with two of the scouts.

This story took an unexpected turn this week. After his photo went viral, the man later identified as Detric McGowan was arrested in a DEA bust on multiple federal drug charges.

7 Firefighters Mount Rodent Rescue

German firefighters from the town of Bensheim received an unusual request for help this week. A chubby rat didn’t quite get rid of all her extra winter weight and got stuck in the hole of a manhole cover.

The first to spot the distressed rodent was a little girl. She contacted animal rescuer Michael Sehr. When he couldn’t get the animal out on his own, he got in touch with the fire department. Eight volunteer firefighters turned up to save the day, although truth be told, most of them sat around watching or filming the bizarre rescue operation.

The trick wasn’t really getting the rat out of the hole but doing it in such a way that neither the rat nor the firefighters were injured. One of them secured the animal in place while others lifted the manhole cover and propped it up with wedges. Sehr then popped the rotund rodent out of the hole and released her back into the sewer.^[4]

Some wondered why anyone would go to all this effort just to save a rat, although the fire department’s Facebook page also attracted hundreds of comments praising the work of the firefighters. As for Michael Sehr, he got his thanks in the form of a hand-drawn picture of the rat surrounded by hearts, courtesy of the little girl who first found the trapped animal.

6 Grandma Takes To The Skies

A new centenarian celebrated her 100th birthday by going skydiving for the first time.

Jane Haynes is not your average pensioner. Her daughter, Patricia, says that “[Jane’s] life began at 60.”^[5] That is when Jane decided to live out her remaining years to the fullest and started going on one adventure after another. She went hiking in the Grand Canyon, explored the Mayan ruins of Guatemala, and went whitewater rafting in Alaska.

Recently, Jane had her sights set on a new challenge—skydiving. She had wanted to try it ever since she saw her granddaughter do it. What better opportunity for this than her 100th birthday?

Jane visited Skydive Arizona in Eloy and did a tandem jump from 4,000 meters (13,000 ft). She landed safely and is probably already thinking of the next thing to try.

5 Sully’s New Gig

Sully, the former service dog of President George H.W. Bush, has found a new job with the US Navy helping veterans at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.

The yellow Labrador received his training and certification as a service dog from a nonprofit organization named America’s VetDogs. Following the death of Barbara Bush in April 2018, Sully became the companion of George Bush Sr. After Bush also died in November 2018, his dog gained international fame after an image of Sully resting beside his master’s coffin went viral.

Now Sully will work at the medical center alongside other service dogs. His duties will include interacting with both staff and patients to reduce stress and increase their well-being.

The Labrador was appointed to the rank of hospital corpsman second class in a ceremony where he also received his new “military uniform” in the form of a vest. His personalized oath of enlistment stated that Sully will “comfort and cure warriors and their families, active and retired” and will do so freely “without any promise of treats or tummy rubs.”^[6]

4 Open For Business

Staff from a grocery store in Canada accidentally left the supermarket completely unattended with the doors unlocked. You might think this would be a recipe for chaos, but it turned out to be a stunning display of honesty.

February 18 was Family Day in Canada. In honor of the holiday, the Food Basics supermarket in Kingston, Ontario, was supposed to be closed. No employees showed up for work, but the doors had been left unlocked. Customers soon started appearing and entered the store to do some shopping. Before long, they realized that they were completely unattended.

For dishonest people, this could have been the perfect opportunity to get a few weeks’ worth of shopping done for free. That’s not what happened here. Customers left confused, perhaps a bit annoyed, but empty-handed.

According to one eyewitness, he saw a guy exiting the supermarket and carrying two packages of cherry tomatoes. He approached the man asking if he was just planning to take the tomatoes, to which the other shopper replied that he had left $5 on the counter.^[7]

The police were called, and they contacted store management. Staffers arrived in the afternoon and did a quick inventory check. They confirmed that a few other customers had followed the lead of the aforementioned shopper. They wrote lists with the groceries they took and left money on the counters.

3 Tiny Baby Boy Goes Home

A premature baby has become the smallest boy on record to be successfully treated and leave the hospital in good health.

In August, the baby was born at only 24 weeks by emergency C-section at Keio University Hospital in Tokyo, Japan. He weighed only 268 grams (9.45 oz), 6 grams (0.2 oz) less than the previous record holder.

Survival rates for babies under 300 grams (10.6 oz) are not good, and the odds go down further for boys. Doctors are not sure why, but they believe that it has to do with slower lung development.

The boy spent the first five months of his life in the hospital, but against all odds, he survived. After being treated in the intensive care unit, the infant now weighs 3.2 kilograms (7 lbs) and is feeding normally. He was finally able to go home with his family last week.^[8]

2 Fighting For The Fourth Estate

A town in Arizona issued a formal apology to an intrepid 12-year-old reporter after a marshal violated her First Amendment rights.

Hilde Lysiak is not like most girls her age. She has great journalistic ambitions and has started pursuing her dream from a young age. She is already a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.

She has her own online newspaper called the Orange Street News where she edits and posts news items from her town of Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. In 2016, Hilde, then nine years old, made the headlines after she covered a murder in her neighborhood, getting an exclusive out hours before other media outlets.

Hilde was recently in Patagonia, Arizona, and she was running down a lead. Town marshal Joseph Patterson approached her. When the young girl identified herself as a reporter, the officer allegedly told her not to give him “any of that freedom of the press stuff.” He then threatened to arrest her and throw her in juvie.^[9]

This would scare off most kids, but Hilde just saw it as a new development. She approached the marshal again and this time caught the meeting on video. He lied to her on camera, saying that it was illegal for her to post the clip online.

The interaction caused a bit of a brouhaha. Following a town council meeting, Patagonia Mayor Andrea Wood apologized to Hilde Lysiak. The girl accepted, glad that she could move forward and get back to covering the news.

1 The Life Of Cuddles

Raised to be a vicious warrior, she was rescued from a fighting ring only to be sentenced to death. She earned a reprieve and did a stint in prison where she earned her PhD. Now she has finally found love and a forever home with a former veteran and retired firefighter. This is the story of Cuddles the pit bull.

In 2015, Cuddles and 20 other pit bulls were recovered when police busted a dog fighting ring in Ontario, Canada. However, an animal behavior expert from the SPCA recommended that all the dogs be put down because they were too aggressive to be re-homed.

The pit bulls became known as the Ontario 21. Animal rights groups protested the death sentence and took the battle to court. After two years, they got a third-party evaluator to come in and do a reassessment of the animals’ behavior. He cleared all but two dogs for retraining.

Cuddles ended up in the care of a nonprofit organization from Florida called the Pit Sisters.^[10] They placed the dog in the Teaching Animals and Inmates Life Skills (TAILS) prison program. Cuddles responded very well to the initiative and graduated with a PhD from the Association of Professional Dog Trainers (APDT) and a Canine Good Citizen certification from the American Kennel Club (AKC).

Late last year, the prison pooch finally found a forever home in New York with Billy Brauer. The 73-year-old former firefighter was looking for companionship after suffering a stroke, and the two hit it off immediately.

The body is an accumulated wonder of parts fine-tuned by nature to perform precision tasks. Venture past the usual facts, and things tend to get interesting. In recent times, unknown body parts have turned up in fossils and living creatures, ranging from cute to creepy to deadly.

Doctors have grown things in strange places and traced the bizarre origins of the most normal of features. When life goes wrong, body parts can also unveil gruesome mysteries, suffering buried in history, and medical problems that beggar belief.

10 The Yo-Yo Injury

In 2005, Dazzling Dave visited schools in North Dakota. The professional yo-yo performer entertained kids for up to 12 hours at a time. A week later, the man, whose real name was David Schulte, noticed that his right index finger warmed more slowly than the rest. In cold weather, it was also the first to freeze.

When it started shifting colors—alternating between red, purple, and blue—he sought medical help. The doctor suspected a blood clot. A scan showed something else entirely.

There was no blood flow past the second knuckle of the finger. For some reason, the blood vessels had suddenly constricted and for too long. The unusual injury was probably caused by years of hitting that particular finger with a yo-yo.

Technically, it caused a condition known as Raynaud’s syndrome which can result in nerve damage and tissue loss. Luckily, the champion yo-yo artist suffered no lasting problems. A month of popping blood thinners solved the situation.^[1]

9 Crankles

In 2017, researchers riffled through the Natural History Museum in London. They found a game-changing fossil. The bones belonged to a carnivore called Teleocrater rhadinus.

When it was discovered in the 1930s, experts failed to find its place in the evolutionary tree. As a result, it was shelved and forgotten. The modern study determined that the creature was 245 million years old. It lived 10 million years before the dinosaurs. Even better, it was one of their ancestors.

Teleocrater‘s main surprise was a body structure more reminiscent of a crocodile than a dinosaur. In particular, they had crankles. Short for crocodile ankles, they gave the animal a reptilian gait on all fours like a monitor lizard.

This was significant. An impossibly long time ago, reptiles called archosaurs split into two lineages: the bird branch (which led to the dinosaurs) while the other remained reptilian, with today’s alligators and crocodiles.^[2]

Teleocrater is the earliest-known member from the bird line, but its crankles were like a strange missing link connecting it back to the archosaurs and the reptile branch. This profoundly challenged what scholars thought they knew about early dinosaur evolution.

8 Switchblade Cheeks

The stonefish is a rare fish. It also haunts Indo-Pacific coastlines as one of the most venomous creatures in the world. In 2003, a pet stonefish died. As the owner was a researcher, the fish hit the dissection table instead of the local pet cemetery. It started 15 years of curiosity about the species.

In 2018, when a “switchblade” was found in its face, the same scientist unraveled the mechanism behind the feature. The whole thing was bizarre. In other fish, the lachrymal bone is solidly fixed underneath the eye as part of the skull. When a stonefish gets huffy, this spike shoots out in a 90-degree angle—on each cheek.

This is no mustache. The lachrymal bones are dangerously serrated. To activate the spines, the fish pulls on chewing muscles in the upper jaw. This rotates and locks the spine through a mechanism shaped like a roly-poly. One stonefish species upped the freaky factor. Centropogon australis fluoresces in two tones. While the head emits red light, the spikes have a green glow.^[3]

7 Selam’s Foot

One of mankind’s most famous ancestors is Lucy. Found in 1974, she was an adult Australopithecus afarensis from Ethiopia. In 2000, a second one was found nearby. The female toddler was quickly dubbed “Lucy’s baby.” However, the child was the older fossil, having died around three million years ago, about 100,000 years before Lucy.

The youngster, renamed Selam, had the most complete set of A. afarensis foot bones ever found. Scientists already knew the species walked upright like modern humans. Indeed, Selam’s foot and ankle anatomy was identical to those of people alive today. The unusual part was that the two species developed their feet differently.

While young (Selam died at age three), A. afarensis‘s big toe was more fingerlike. It probably helped them to cling to their parents and trees for safety. Selam’s heel was also more fragile than those of human children.^[4]

Even though young A. afarensis were less suited for walking upright, their feet were already designed for life on the ground. Only later would they grow the same strong heel bones present in humans from birth.

6 Scaly Origin Of Teeth

In the quest to find out where human teeth came from, researchers turned to skates. These fish are covered in primitive scales called dermal denticles. Sharks also have them, which is why their skin feels like sandpaper.

A 2017 study found that the scales grew from neural crest cells, a critical element in mammal tooth development. A second find also suggested that teeth evolved from fish skin. Denticles, which roughly resemble teeth, also consist of dentine. A modern tooth is packed with this hard tissue.

However, the discovery does not mean that all species got their snappers this way. Research on zebra fish showed another evolutionary path where scales and teeth evolved from different types of cells. Skate skin presents a strong case that certain species grew scales as armor plating. Somehow, through millions of years, this external skeleton became modified and moved to the mouth as teeth.^[5]

5 Hitler’s Death Confirmed

When Adolf Hitler realized in 1945 that he could no longer escape the invading Allied forces, he committed suicide in his bunker. The Russians found his remains and threw the body into a river. For decades, they kept skull fragments to which nobody had access. During that time, rumors abounded that the fuhrer had faked his own death.

The conspiracy theories had sound roots. It is a fact that many high-ranking Nazis escaped when Germany’s power was broken. But things took a weird turn in 2009. Nick Bellantoni, an archaeologist and bone specialist, handled Hitler’s skull at the Russian State Archive.

During a documentary for the History Channel, he declared that the fragments belonged to a woman under 40. The Archive responded by saying that Bellantoni had never been there or handled the remains.^[6]

In 2018, the Archive finally permitted French pathologists to study the fragments. The teeth had complex dental work that perfectly matched Hitler’s medical records. Blue stains and a bullet hole showed that the fuhrer’s suicide plan began with swallowing a cyanide capsule, followed by a shot to the head.

4 White Blood

Recently, doctors in Germany faced something they had never seen before. A 39-year-old patient’s blood was so pale and thick that it looked like milk. The medical condition was not a mystery. The nearly comatose patient suffered from extreme hypertriglyceridemia. It is caused by too much fat in the blood.

Siphoning off the offending triglyceride molecules and returning the cleaned plasma to the body usually solves the problem. However, when staff tried the normal route, his viscous blood clogged the hospital’s filtering equipment. Not once, but twice. The problem was a record amount of triglycerides. Around 500 mg/dL is considered “high.” The man’s count read an astonishing 18,000 mg/dL.

Desperate to save his life, doctors resorted to an ancient remedy abandoned by modern medicine—bloodletting. A good amount of the white gunk was drained and replaced with red blood cell concentrates and saline solution. It worked. Although the cause of the severity is unknown, the patient’s genes, obesity, and irregular consumption of his diabetes medication might have combined to cause the mother of all hypertriglyceridemia cases.^[7]

3 The Limb Pit

During the Civil War, the Second Battle of Bull Run took place north of Manassas, Virginia, in 1862. In 2018, archaeologists were investigating the battlefield when they discovered something exceptionally rare.

A shallow grave held two soldiers and the sawed-off limbs of up to 11 other men. The complete bodies, Burial 1 and 2, could not be identified other than being Union soldiers from the North.

Both died brutal deaths. Burial 1’s leg had been broken by a bullet which was still stuck in the bone when the skeleton was found. The injury was so bad that field surgeons probably left him to die. This frequently happened when there were too many injured soldiers.

Burial 2 was placed in the pit after the first man and rested slightly on top of him. His own death resulted from three bullets. One smashed his arm, another buried itself in the shin, and a third struck his groin. The bodies, with nine severed arms and legs arranged around them, were a unique find hailed as “one in a million.”^[8]

2 The Forearm Ear

When army private Shamika Burrage returned from leave in 2016, a car accident put her in rehabilitation for months. She also lost an ear. After Burrage recovered, her appearance bothered her so much that a counselor suggested plastic surgery.

In 2018, the William Beaumont Army Medical Center in Texas performed a rare procedure. They took rib cartilage from Burrage and shaped it like an ear. Afterward, it was inserted under the skin of her forearm. For the woman to experience feeling in the ear, doctors needed the new body part to develop fresh arteries, veins, and nerves—all available from the arm.

Once ready, surgeons replaced Burrage’s missing ear. Doctors also took the opportunity to reopen her hearing canal to restore the hearing she had lost. This was the first time that army plastic surgeons had performed this type of operation. However, the procedure dates to the early 20th century. Back in the day, rib cartilage ears were also grown under the skin but without the nerves and blood vessels.^[9]

1 Severed Russian Hands

Early in 2018, a fisherman decided to visit a small island near the Amur River in Siberia. Upon arrival, he noticed a hand in the snow. There was no sign of the rest of the body. Soon afterward, the man found a bag stuffed with the same grisly thing. All told, there were 54 human hands severed at the wrist. There was also medical waste nearby.

Social media cried foul after an anonymous sender circulated the photos online, showing the brutal cache in detail. The Russian government was unfazed. Investigators insisted that the amputations had a mundane explanation. Some forensic laboratories in Russia dispose of bodies without identities but keep the hands as a record.^[10]

In this case, authorities admitted that the unidentified laboratory broke the law by dumping the hands. Despite lifting fingerprints from only one pair, investigators also kept insisting that the hands were not the result of darker criminal activities.