There is a reason most restaurants don’t let you watch them cook your food; and it goes along the lines of “what you don’t know won’t hurt you”. We eat all kinds of odd things; from those reviled by other cultures to everyday snacks with hair raising additives. Below are ten strange stories about the food we eat, from our favorite desserts to rotted elephants to the flesh of our neighbors.

Maple syrup is one of the most expensive things you can pour on your pancakes. A bottle generally retails for well over $20. Part of the expense involved in the syrup is the great inefficiency in producing it. It requires anywhere from 5 to 13 gallons of maple sap to make just one quart of syrup. To make sure that it has enough to meet the international demand, the Canadian province of Quebec maintains a Global Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve. In 2012, during an audit, it was discovered that 6 million pounds of the syrup (worth about $18 million wholesale) had been stolen in a daring heist. This was not some smash and grab theft; it would have taken dozens of trucks to move so many barrels. In the subsequent months, several arrests were made, and some two-thirds of the missing syrup was recovered.

Asked to guess the most frequently stolen food on the planet, some might guess candy or alcohol or even steak. But according to multiple studies, up to 4% of the cheese put up for sale ends up pilfered. Next time you’re in the market, pay attention to the way the store displays cheese, particularly the valuable imported kinds. Generally, it is centrally located and well lit to keep thieves from scampering off. The phenomenon is not completely understood, though researchers indicate that cheese is relatively expensive, easy to conceal, and can be resold to other stores or restaurants. Black market cheese is big business.

American and Canadian tourists traveling outside their respective countries are often astonished to see eggs sitting out at room temperature. They would probably be even more shocked to find out that in the countries of the European Union, the eggs they are getting are straight from the chicken—they have not be sanitized or washed in any fashion. A chicken actually imparts a liquid coating around its egg called a cuticle, which protects against contamination. The layer is mostly removed by cleaning, which involves washing the egg with water of at least 90 degrees and an odorless detergent. The washing actually makes the egg more porous and susceptible to contamination, so it must be kept in a refrigerator. The counter-productivity and expense of this process is astonishing, but American shoppers do not seem soon to relent.

With dozens and dozens of ice creams available on the market, a distinctive taste sets a company apart from it’s competitors. The largest producer of ice cream in the United States is Dreyer’s (which includes the Edy’s and Häagen-Dazs), due in no small part to their official taste tester, John Harrison. Harrison travels throughout the country to different Dreyer’s plants to impart his expertise. He uses a gold spoon, which does not impart any flavor to the ice cream. His tastebuds are insured for $1 million. He helped create several different popular flavors of ice cream, including the Oreo-based cookies and cream.

Other ice cream makers use different philosophies. Using fresh, local ingredients, Vermont’s Ben & Jerry’s is a crowd favorite. Their ice cream is noted for large chunks of things like brownies and fruit, added in response to co-founder Ben Cohen’s anosmia (he cannot smell and can barely taste anything). Since Cohen couldn’t really taste anything he was eating, he tended to add more stuff to satisfy a need for texture.

People are rarely ambivalent about mushrooms; they are generally a food that is either loved or despised. Regardless of one’s opinion on their taste; they are marvelously interesting organisms. Some, like the awesomely named “Western North American Destroying Angel”, can be deadly, and others, like the psilocybes “magic mushrooms”, result in profound psychedelic experiences. There are 71 known species of mushrooms that glow in the dark, and there is even a type, called the Laetiporus, that is said to taste like chicken. Most recently, scientists have discovered that running electricity through mushrooms can more than double their production, a fact that had been known to Japanese farmers for generations. Lightning hitting fields of shitake mushrooms send voltage buzzing through the soil, thus increasing the farmer’s yield. The scientists are not entirely sure what causes this phenomenon, but it is most likely a kind of defense mechanism, amping up reproductive capabilities in the face of a hazard.

Gatorade was invented in 1965 by University of Florida professor nephrologist (kidney specialist) Robert Cade and staff to help keep football players hydrated. While today’s product line features a veritable rainbow of flavors, the early stuff was pretty much water, sugar, salt, and some lemon juice for taste. When Cade unveiled his beverage to the Gators team, tackle Larry Gagner tried some, announced “This stuff tastes like piss.”, and dumped the rest of the cup onto his head. The staff was intrigued at the comparison. According to Cade, “None of us had tasted urine… We wee-weed in a cup and dabbed a finger. You know what? There’s a significant difference in flavor.”

Prior to the explosion in popularity of sushi, many fish such as the Bluefin tuna were so plentiful that they were used as cat food. Today, the Bluefin is one of the most highly valued creatures in the world, with exceptional specimens fetching hundreds of thousands of dollars. With the expense rising and the ocean’s population falling, many sushi restaurants take advantage of most peoples’ inability to distinguish between types of fish, often substituting cheaper species. In the United States, many establishments selling “tuna” are actually pushing escolar, also known as the oilfish or snake mackerel. Escolar has a staggering oil content known to have a laxative effect in many people. Many countries throughout the world consider escolar toxic; it’s sale has been banned in Japan since 1977, but many American diners still (unwittingly) consume it each day. And pay for it in the bathroom.

Woolly mammoths lived beside early man, but the vast majority became extinct around 10,000 years ago. The last isolated populations died out around the time the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. We know so much about these magnificent creatures because many of them roamed in areas like the Siberian tundra, where they were frozen and quite well preserved after death. So well preserved that modern humans have eaten thawed mammoth meat. There are many stories of feasts of these ancient elephant ancestors, and while many are dubious, some are quite well verified. Not surprisingly, descriptions of the meat range from “awful” to “rotten”. Zoology professor Dale Guthrie offers a remarkably generous explanation of the flavor; he and his team cooked some mammoth from a 36,000 year old carcass found near Fairbanks, Alaska into a stew. He wrote “the meat was well aged but still a little tough, and it gave the stew a strong Pleistocene aroma.” Whatever that means.

Despite being seen by most modern humans as “the ultimate taboo”, cannibalism has been practiced in every part of the world, and is still more frequent than most of us would like to believe. Many of the civil conflicts in central Africa, particularly in the Congo, have resulted in cannibalism, and primordial tribes like New Guinea’s Korowai sometimes indulge in the consumption of human flesh. That said, the natural although somewhat macabre question most people would ask themselves would be, “What does it taste like?”

Accounts vary somewhat, but a rather concise explanation comes from William Buehler Seabrook, a reporter who received a chunk of flesh from a hospital intern at the Sorbonne in Paris. Seabrook cooked it, later writing: “It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal.”

You would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t like the taste of ketchup, and for good reason. Unlike nearly every food on the planet, ketchup , particularly the Heinz variety, satisfies the entire palate. Simultaneously salty, sweet, sour, bitter, and umami (savory, the flavor profile created by adding MSG), Heinz is very carefully mixed so that no one part of its recipe overwhelms the tastebuds. Lesser ketchups are not so neatly balanced, and tend to have a note that you can focus on, like that of vinegar or the sweetness of the tomatoes. This is why, over a hundred years since it first hit shelves, Heinz remains so popular, selling some 650 million bottles annually. Unlike many other foods, you will rarely encounter “new and improved” ketchup. It’s already perfect.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist. If it wasn’t for frozen pizza, he’d probably starve to death.

Everybody is familiar with sleepwalking. Most of us have probably done it at some stage in our life. It’s a fairly common occurrence, one that is usually harmless and only occurs in isolated incidents. But for some people, sleepwalking can be a terrifying thing. Some people have trouble with it every night, and so fear what they might do when they fall asleep, while for others, one bad incident is enough to change their lives. Keep reading to learn more about the Freddie Krueger that could be living inside you.

We’ll start with what is perhaps the most famous case of sleepwalking crime. Kenneth Parks is a Canadian man who began suffering insomnia in his 20s, which was brought on after he lost his job and put himself in a lot of debt as a result of his gambling addiction. On May 23rd, 1987, Parks got out of bed, drove 14 miles to his in-laws’ house, killed his mother in law and injured his father with a tire iron and a knife. After the incident, he drove himself to a police station and turned himself in. Up until this point, he had a good relationship with his in-laws, and his wife vouched for his lack of motive in the crime. The following year, he was found not guilty.

A middle-aged woman in Australia, whose name has not been released for confidentiality reasons, had serious issues with sleepwalking. While there isn’t too much information on this case, it seems that neither her nor her partner had any idea initially. But the truth soon came out, and is a lot more terrifying than your average sleepwalking case. The woman would get up, sleepwalk out of her house, and engage in sex with total strangers. This took place for several months, and the couple had no idea. Condoms were found around their house, but the reality only completely came to light when her partner woke up one night and realized she wasn’t there. After searching for her, he found her having sex with a stranger, completely asleep. Such an act posed a huge threat not only to the woman, but also to her partner. Reports say that she has been successfully treated for the condition.

Timothy Brueggeman, from Northern Wisconsin, is the only person on this list who did not have a history of sleepwalking, but rather, suffered from terrible insomnia for years. One summer, he drove his pickup truck into a tree after falling asleep at the wheel. When this incident occurred, he was prescribed the number one sleep aid in the US, known as Ambien. Although this drug has been linked to hundreds of cases of sleepwalking, its manufacturers claim that it is perfectly safe if taken correctly. In January of 2009 however, Brueggeman had a sleepwalking episode where he left his house in just his underwear. He was found dead the next day, having froze to death.

James Currens has been a sleepwalker for a long time, but his most terrifying adventure occurred when he was 77. In 1998, Curren got up and sleepwalked out of his house, cane in hand, and right into a nearby pond. At this point, he woke up chest deep in water, but was unable to get out as he had become stuck in the mud. This alone would be terrifying enough for a 77 year old, but what made the incident really frightening was that he found himself surrounded by alligators. He used his cane to keep them at bay, and began shouting for help. One of his neighbors heard him yelling, and called the police. Using lights to scare off the alligators, the police managed to free Currens, who escaped with only small cuts from falling when entering the pond.

In 2003, Edward Lowe, 83, was found dead in his garden, having been severely beaten. A neighbor spotted Edward’s body in the driveway and contacted the police, who arrested the man’s son, Jules. Jules and Edward had been out on a heavy night of drinking when the incident occurred. Jules said that his family has a long history of sleepwalking, and that his bouts were brought on by drinking. His defense was that he did kill his father, but did so in his sleep. Edward was reportedly violent when drunk, so it is possible that Jules was acting in self-defense. He was found not guilty of murder.

In a similar case, Stephen Reitz was accused of killing his girlfriend of 10 months, Eva Marie Weinfurtner, while vacationing in Catalina. Eva had a fractured skull, broken elbow, wrist and shoulder, and had her jaw broken in three places, as well as a stab wound in the neck. Reitz told police that he dreamed he was fighting off intruders when he killed his girlfriend. He also admitted that he had been drinking and using cocaine that night. In this case, Reitz was found guilty and given 25 to life.

Jan Luedecke, from Toronto, was at a party in 2005. After a heavy night of drinking, he fell asleep on a sofa. A few hours later, he was woken up by another partygoer, who he did not know, shouting and pushing him. He says he only woke up when he was pushed on the floor. Luedecke, 33, was accused of raping this woman, but he says he was asleep and did not even realize he had had sex until he went to the bathroom and found that he was wearing a condom. The courts were initially skeptical about his defense, even after hearing a testimony from Dr. Colin Sharipo, who said that this is a legitimate disorder. Perhaps the deciding factor in this case was that not one, but four of Luedecke’s ex-girlfriends testified that they had all experienced his sexsomnia first hand while they were dating.

A man was walking home at 2am in Dulwich, England, when he somehow noticed something terrifying: a girl curled up on top of an inactive crane. He called the emergency services, and only after a fireman had climbed up after her did they realize that she was asleep. This made the ordeal even more frightening, as the fireman was now afraid to wake her in case she became startled and fell. He searched her, and found the girl’s mobile phone, at which point he rang her parents. They explained that the girl, who was 15, often sleepwalked, and then rang her phone back to wake her. This woke the girl up, and she was taken down safely, having climbed 130 feet (39.6 meters) up, and 40 feet (12 meters) across.

Lesley Cusack is a 55 year old woman from Chesire, England, who engages in “sleep-eating”. While this sounds harmless enough, it can be extremely dangerous for many reasons. Lesley has had to change her daytime diet and join a fitness club, because when she eats at night, she can eat up to 2,500 calories. But the amount she eats is not the only danger. She also cooks while she sleeps, using a gas oven. This obviously poses a huge risk to everyone in the house if she leaves the gas running unlit. Finally, there is a risk to her health posed not by how much she eats, or how she cooks it, but by what she eats. Lesley will sometimes eat inedible items, such as vaseline, paint and washing powder. She put alarms on her doors in the hopes that they would wake her up, but to no avail. She is now going to see a specialist she hopes can cure her condition.

Sleepwalking is more common in children than in adults. About 17% of 4-8 year olds experience sleepwalking, compared to 4 to 10% of adults. Stuart Miller was 8 years old when he had an accident while sleepwalking. One night, in September of 1993, Stuart began sleepwalking. He lived in a flat on the fourth floor of council housing, and that night, he fell from his bedroom window. The courts decided that Reading Borough Council, the owner of that block, was responsible, as they had failed to install windows that were childproof. The fall dealt severe damage to Stuart’s spine, and has left him wheelchair bound for life. After 7 years in the courts, he was awarded £1.35m ($2m) in damages.

Robert Ledru was one of France’s finest detectives in the 19th Century. Although living in Paris, he was working on a case in Le Havre when he was contacted by his Parisian office and asked to take over a murder investigation there that the local police were having difficulty with. Another man from Paris, Andre Monet, had been shot and killed on a local beach. The only clues were the bullet, which was far too common to be of any use, and the footprints left by the killer. Ledru examined the footprints and came to a horrible realization. The killer was missing the big toe on his right foot. Ledru was also missing this toe, and had awoken that day to find that his socks were wet. Furthermore, the bullet was the same type he used. He discovered that he had murdered Monet while sleepwalking, believed to be brought on by his syphilis.

Understandably, the French police were reluctant to accept this theory when Ledru turned himself in, so they decided to experiment. They placed him in a cell for overnight observation. The first night, he did in fact sleepwalk. So they then decided to place a gun in the cell with him, and the next night, he shot at the guards in his sleep. Police decided that he could not be held responsible for his actions, but that he was still a threat, so he was exiled to a farm in the countryside, where he lived the last 50 years of his life with guards and nurses.

Simon is a 22 year-old university graduate (hopefully) who likes to adhere to Irish stereotypes, such as drinking and loving the potato. You can follow him on twitter, or like his extremely long tongue on Facebook to see if he can break the world record.

Fast food is a relatively recent innovation, only about as old as the automobile, and not really taking off until the 1950s. But in that short time, it has become an ultimately pervasive part of our culture; outside the most desolate tribes, it would be difficult to find someone who has not visited a McDonald’s in his life. Fast food has established a mythos all its own; below are ten strangest marketing stunts, lawsuits, and scandals to have ever struck our drive thru world.

Burger King is no stranger to weird marketing stunts, such as the dreadful 2004 Coq Roq campaign, wherein faux nu metal rockers with chicken masks on thrashed to music filled with double entendre. Their mascot—a towering, creepy King with unmoving features, was mercifully retired in 2011. But perhaps the worst idea in company history was their 2009 Facebook “Whopper Sacrifice” campaign. The premise was simple; use the Burger King application to unfriend 10 people on Facebook, and you would get a coupon for a free Whopper. Normally, there is no notification involved in unfriending someone, but in this instance, Burger King would send the friend a message informing them that their friendship was less important to you than a free sandwich. The campaign was promptly dropped, but not before people leapt at the opportunity, abandoning almost 234,000 friends in the process (that’s more than 23,000 Whoppers).

Taco Bell is perhaps best known for its Chihuahua ad campaign, which was often derided as racist. The ads, starring Gidget, were stopped in 2000. Gidget didn’t remain unemployed for long; she found several other roles, including a spot in “Legally Blonde 2: Red, White, and Blonde”. Taco Bell didn’t fare so well… they’d stolen the Chihuahua idea from two Michigan men, Joseph Shields and Thomas Rinks. The pair pitched the idea to Taco Bell in the 1990s, but were rejected. Shortly thereafter, the restaurant chain’s new ad agency began using the concept. The men took Taco Bell to court, and in 2003, a jury awarded them $30 million. The judge promptly added on $12 million. Shields and Rinks walked away with $42 million for their troubles.

A subsidiary of Yum! Brands (which also owns KFC and Pizza Hut), Taco Bell enjoys considerable popularity worldwide, and has locations selling its Mexican fare in several countries throughout the world. A notable exception: Mexico. They made two attempts to crack the Mexican market, in 1992 and 2007, but both times folded due to lack of patronage.

Wendy’s is best known for its simple commercials starring earnest, plainspoken founder Dave Thomas. Thomas was working as a head cook in a restaurant in Fort Wayne, Indiana, when Kentucky Fried Chicken owner Colonel Harland Sanders came calling, selling franchises. Thomas, as well as the family for he worked for, bought in. In doing so, Dave worked closely with the Colonel on marketing ideas. It was Dave Thomas who suggested the idea of buckets of chicken, which help keep the product crisp. He also suggested Sanders appear in his own commercials.

The response was phenomenal, and Dave Thomas was later able to sell his share in the restaurants back to to Sanders for $1.5 million, thus giving him the capital to open Wendy’s. He’d later use this advertising formula to great effect in his own restaurants, appearing in over 800 commercials.

Despite its feel-good American dream origins, Wendy’s is not immune from the bizarre. In 2005, an employee named Steve LeMay and a co-worker were caught robbing the safe from the Manchester, NH store where they worked. The co-worker’s name? Ronald MacDonald.

In a previous list, I detailed the immense popularity of KFC on Christmas Eve in Japan, with lines snaking out the door. While business thrives in America, you aren’t likely to see that kind of rush the next time you stop in for a bucket of chicken. Unless you’d happened by in early May of 2009. None other than Oprah Winfrey advertised on her show that a coupon could be downloaded on her website for a free grilled chicken meal at KFC. According to a KFC press release, they received “unprecedented and overwhelming response”, which is the politically correct way of saying that the campaign turned into a complete circus. Millions of coupons were printed, the website couldn’t handle the traffic, and hordes of people descended on the restaurants, which quickly ran out of food. By the time KFC axed the program, an astonishing 10.5 million coupons were printed, which were eventually honored with rainchecks.

Whenever the subject of the frivolity of lawsuits comes up, the 1992 McDonald’s coffee case always pops into the conversation. While on its surface, it sounds ridiculous that someone should be able to sue a restaurant for Stella Liebeck burning herself with a beverage that by its very nature is supposed to be hot, there are several less obvious elements at play. First, McDonald’s served its coffee extremely hot—in excess of 180 degrees (your home coffeemaker will generally clock in around 140), and Liebeck suffered horrifying third degree burns right down to the bone. There are pictures available online, but I don’t suggest you look for them unless you have a strong stomach.

Second, Liebeck did not sue McDonald’s hoping to reap a fortune. Initially, the 79 year old only wanted a settlement to cover her medical expenses, which were in excess of $10,000. McDonald’s offered a mere $800.

Liebeck retained an attorney, and much legal wrangling followed. McDonald’s staunchly refused to settle despite multiple attempts to mediate the case before trial. During the court hearing, it came to light that the restaurant had fielded hundreds of complaints about burns from their coffee, and had settled many claims in the past, some for as much as $500,000. This was pretty much the kiss of death for McDonald’s; the jury awarded Stella Liebeck $2.86 million. The judge reduced the settlement, and both McDonald’s and Liebeck appealed. Before further legal proceedings occurred, both parties settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.

Tim Hortons is a Canadian donut chain, with some presence in the United States, and some scattered stores in the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Unlike a lot of restaurants, Tim Hortons was named for a real person—professional NHL defenseman Miles Gilbert “Tim” Horton, who played for several teams, including the Toronto Maple Leafs and the Buffalo Sabres. On February 21, 1974, Horton was driving home from a hockey game in Toronto in his De Tomaso Pantera sports car. When police attempted to pull him over, he fled, reaching speeds over 100mph. When rounding a curve, he lost control of the car and hit a concrete culvert. Horton, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was killed instantly. It was discovered that his blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit. Horton’s business partner promptly paid his widow $1 million for her shares in the restaurant chain. Today, the company’s revenue exceeds $2.5 billion.

Most would agree that their neighborhood pizzeria serves far better fare than Pizza Hut, whose formulaic, prepackaged recipes do very little to stimulate the palate. But the local joint will only deliver in a five mile radius. Pizza Hut delivered to space. In April of 2001, the company paid the Russian space program approximately a million dollars to take a pizza aboard a rocket sent to resupply the International Space Station orbiting earth. Rolled into the price was a photo op with cosmonaut Yuri Usachov, who offered a thumbs up after receiving his snack. Since it is difficult to taste things in zero gravity, the vacuum sealed salami pie they delivered was heavily spiced.

Rahm Emanuel isn’t exactly a household name, but he has maintained a distinguished career in American politics, serving in multiple advisory positions to Presidents Clinton and Obama, most notably as White House Chief of Staff. He is currently Mayor of Chicago. In high school, Emanuel worked part time at an Arby’s restaurant, a chain known for its roast beef sandwiches. One day, while operating the meat slicer, he severely cut his right middle finger. Being a teenager, he eschewed getting stitches and decided to go for a swim in Lake Michigan. Infection set in, and doctors were forced to amputate the top of his finger.

As an interesting aside, one of Rahm’s brothers is Hollywood superagent Ari Emanuel, the person on whom the character Ari Gold is based on in the show “Entourage”.

Mark Cuban is one of the world’s richest men, a dot com billionaire who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks and regularly features on the NBC show “Shark Tank”, investing in startup businesses. In 2002, the outspoken Cuban lashed out at Ed Rush, the NBA’s head of officiating, claiming that he wouldn’t hire Rush to manage a Dairy Queen. He was fined half a million dollars by the NBA for his big mouth. The popular ice cream chain took offense at Cuban’s insult, inviting him to manage a Dairy Queen for a day if he thought it was so easy. He accepted, good naturedly serving cones and signing autographs at a store in Coppell, Texas. The event was a media circus, with lines over an hour long. Cuban had considerable trouble mastering the swirl of a soft serve cone, telling customers “Be patient with me, please. I’m new at this. It might not be pretty, but it works.”

Subway is the world’s largest restaurant chain—as of this writing, there are 39,517 Subways operating around the globe, in 102 countries and territories. The most exclusive location? Inside 1 World Trade Center. The restaurant sits inside a trailer-like “pod” that is lifted up level by level as the construction of the skyscraper progresses, from the ground all the way up to the planned 105th floor. The restaurant was opened to cater to union workers, who only have half hour lunch breaks, and thus couldn’t leave the premises for food, since leaving required waiting for a hoist to bring them back to ground level.

There’s an old saying that pizza is like sex. When it’s good, it’s really, really good. And when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. One of the world’s most popular foods, approximately three billion fresh and one billion frozen pizzas are sold in the US every year, more than 12 pies per person. Below are ten strange tales about pizza, from maggots and bombs to war criminals and gremlins.

10Contaminants

Being one of the most popular food items in the world, you’d think the government would keep a careful eye on the pizza trade. Except that if you ever saw a list of the contamination levels the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) found acceptable, you might go on a hunger strike. Tomato paste and pizza sauce can be pretty funky, with an allowance of 30 fly eggs per 100 grams, or 15 or more fly eggs and one or more maggots per 100 grams. When you consider the crust and toppings, you’ll most certainly be tasting mold, mildew, insect fragments, aphids, rodent hair, and what the FDA politely calls “mammalian excreta”.

9The Moon

As mentioned in a previous list, Pizza Hut is no stranger to wild marketing stunts. In 1998, they had the idea to burn their logo into the surface of the moon with high-powered lasers. Luckily, common sense prevailed. Upon consulting experts, they learned that the necessary technology was still some years off. Moreover, for earthlings to be able to see the logo with the naked eye, it would have had to be the size of Texas. In the ensuing years, Pizza Hut has made several deals with the cash-strapped Russian space program, including emblazoning their logo on a rocket and delivering a pizza to the International Space Station.

8Nguyen Ngoc Loan

On February 1, 1968, perhaps the most enduring image of the Vietnam conflict was captured when photographer Eddie Adams snapped a shot of South Vietnamese national police commander Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing an unidentified Viet Cong prisoner on the streets of Saigon. The photo (which would later go on to earn Adams the Pulitzer in 1969) is an unflinching study on the horrors of war—the bullet from Loan’s pistol can actually be seen exiting the man’s skull. While the Vietnam War was hardly popular, this incident in particular helped fuel antiwar sentiments. Three months after the incident, Loan was wounded in action (he would eventually lose his right leg). Originally transported to Australia, he was so reviled there that he was moved to the US. Although there was talk of deporting Nguyen back to South Vietnam as a war criminal, he and his family were allowed to stay in the US.

After the war, he opened up a pizzeria in a Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. He operated the restaurant, called “Les Trois Continents” for some 15 years, until he was identified. Business fell off, and Loan reportedly found threatening graffiti in the bathroom. He was forced out of business in 1991. Loan died of cancer on July 14, 1998, aged 67.

7Bulletproof

In 1969, former Marine Richard Davis was delivering pizzas in Detroit when he was held up. In the ensuing shootout, he wounded two of his attackers, but he was shot twice. While recovering, Davis came up with the idea for a bulletproof vest. Bullet-resistant vests have been in use at least since the 1500s, but up until about 45 years ago, they were bulky and ineffective, composed of heavy sheets of metal. Davis sought to create a vest that could be concealed beneath clothing. He designed a vest made from nylon and called his body armor Second Chance. Davis so believed in his product that he marketed it by bringing his vests to individual police stations, putting one on, and allowing an officer to shoot him in the chest with a sidearm. By the mid ’70s, the nylon was replaced with Kevlar, a synthetic fiber originally developed for use in tires. It is estimated that bulletproof vests have saved the lives of over 2,000 police officers in the United States alone.

6Danger

Richard Davis survived his brush with muggers because he was an armed ex-Marine. Other drivers aren’t nearly as fortunate. Although it might seem like an innocuous profession, often performed by teenagers, delivering pizza can be extremely dangerous. Robberies and beatings occur on a weekly basis. Drivers are often lured with fake orders and addresses into places where they can be attacked. In the most extreme cases, drivers have even been raped and murdered. Worse still, the major pizza chains do not allow their drivers to carry concealed weapons. In 2004, when a Pizza Hut driver shot and killed a robber while on the job, he was fired.

530 Minutes or Less

Domino’s Pizza got its start in University of Michigan college town Ann Arbor in 1960. Today, this multi-billion-dollar company is controlled by the controversial Bain Capital (co-founded by ex-US Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney). Domino’s has largely stuck to more orthodox advertising strategies than its competitor Pizza Hut. In fact, the company’s greatest claim to fame was their guarantee to deliver in 30 minutes or less, or the pizza would be free.

Unfortunately, the policy put them in some pretty damning legal crosshairs when their drivers got into accidents. Lawsuits alleged that the drivers were forced to drive recklessly to meet their deadlines. In 1992, Domino’s paid $2.8 million to the family of an Illinois woman whose van was struck by a vehicle delivering pizza. But then in 1993, a court awarded $78,750,000 to a Missouri woman stemming from injuries she’d received in a 1989 crash. They settled out of court for a sum believed to have been approximately $15 million, but the policy was scrapped.

4The Noid

As advertising icons go, Domino’s Noid was particularly unappealing—a monosyllabic gremlin-like character in a red rabbit suit meant to manifest the difficulties in delivering a pizza in the 30-minute deadline. The Noid would do anything in his power to make the driver late, including shooting the pizzas with a gun that turned them ice cold. Much like the Trix rabbit, the Noid was constantly foiled. The gimmick was popular enough to roll it into its own video games for computers and the Nintendo.

The story of the Noid took a truly bizarre turn on January 30, 1989, when a deranged customer named Kenneth Lamar Noid burst into a Domino’s in Atlanta, Georgia, taking a pair of employees hostage. Kenneth Noid actually believed the ads were an attack on him. The siege lasted five hours, with Noid making outlandish demands for $100,000 and a getaway car, among other things. He forced the employees to make him pizza during the ordeal. After they escaped, Noid turned himself over to police. He was charged with a laundry list of felonies, but he was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

3Philip Workman

While binging on cocaine, Workman robbed a Wendy’s. An employee triggered a silent alarm, and Workman fled when the police arrived. What happened next remains contested to this day. Workman alleged that he fled, but when the officers caught up with him, he attempted to relinquish his firearm, but it accidentally discharged when they hit him with a flashlight. The police returned fire, wounding Workman.

In the melee, Lieutenant Ronald Oliver was killed. The trial, which many regard as a sham, eventually condemned Workman to death. There was some evidence that Lt. Oliver died from friendly fire, and Workman was briefly granted a stay of execution, but a judge ruled that the evidence did not warrant an entire new trial.

Perhaps as some kind of last-minute act of martyrdom, Workman requested that a vegetarian pizza be delivered to any homeless person living near the prison in lieu of his last meal. His request was denied. When the story went public, there was an outpouring of support for the cause, and hundreds of pizzas were delivered to homeless shelters throughout the country.

2OJ Simpson

In America, the day of the year when the most pizzas are sold is Superbowl Sunday. But remarkably enough, some other odd events have caused spikes and drops in pizza sales. One such phenomenon was the OJ Simpson saga; on June 17, 1994, the nation was glued to their television sets, watching as the former football hero fled from police with friend Al Cowlings in a low-speed chase. Domino’s reported a huge increase in sales as the white Bronco crept down the highway.

Several months later, the pizza chain would notice another bizarre trend when sales skyrocketed in the moments leading up to the verdict in the case. According to company spokesman Tim McIntyre, things slowed down considerably a little after noon, when the decision was finally read out. McIntyre said “We could barely believe it, but not a single pizza was ordered in the United States for five minutes between 1 o’clock and 1:05.”

1The Pizza Bomber

The case of the pizza bomber is one of the most bizarre crimes in American history. On August 28, 2003, pizza delivery man Brian Wells burst into a bank in Erie, Pennsylvania. He was armed with a shotgun and had a bomb attached to his neck. Wells requested $250,000, but he received only $8,702 and was intercepted by the police in the parking lot. From there, he proceeded to tell a weird story—that he was delivering pizza when some men forced him to put on the bomb. Unless he pulled off the robbery for them, it would explode and kill him. While negotiating with the police, and minutes before the bomb squad arrived to disarm the device, it detonated, killing Wells.

The case remained a mystery for years, but was solved in 2007, when several people were indicted for the conspiracy. It is believed that Wells was in on it the entire time, but did not know that a live bomb was going to be used. When he found out the bomb was real, his co-conspirators forced him to strap it on at gunpoint. The money from the robbery was to be used to hire a hitman for prostitute Marjorie Diehl-Armstrong, who wished to kill her father, whom she believed to be wealthy. Diehl-Armstrong was sentenced to life plus 30 years, and another another man involved in the plot, Kenneth Barnes, received 45 years.

The story would go on to be used as the plot point in several television shows, as well as the basis for the largely forgettable comedy 30 Minutes or Less. In his review of the film, critic Roger Ebert said “Moral of the story: If you occupy the demographic that this film is aimed at, Hollywood doesn’t have a very high opinion of you.”

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist.

Sexual relations between humans and animals is actually legal in some countries. In others, it is a gray area and is neither legal nor illegal. However, centuries ago, bestiality was considered a grievous offense and commanded the death penalty.

Lots of people have been hanged for bestiality. However, not all were guilty. Some were hanged for flimsy reasons, such as looking like a baby animal. Others were found guilty even though the evidence was clearly flawed.

10 George Spencer

In 1642, George Spencer of New Haven, Connecticut, was executed for impregnating a sow. Spencer wasn’t caught in the act; he only became a suspect because the piglet the sow birthed looked like him.

The sow was owned by John Wakeman, who complained to a magistrate that his pig had birthed an abnormal piglet. The piglet was hairless and very soft. Its head was reddish-white, just like the head of a human child. Its ears, neck, mouth, chin and nose also resembled that of a human child. It also had one single eye protruding from the middle of its forehead.

Spencer had protruding eyes, just like the piglet. He also used to work for the former owner of the sow. So he became the suspect. Spencer appeared before the local magistrate, Stephen Goodyear, and denied any illicit relationship with the sow. However, Goodyear was already convinced that Spencer was the father of the piglet and would not take no for an answer.

Spencer continued denying any illicit relationship until Goodyear quoted Proverbs 28:13: “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.”

Believing he would be freed if he accepted guilt, Spencer agreed that he fathered the piglet. He later retracted his confession when he realized that the lie was not going to set him free. However, it was too late. He was sentenced to death by hanging.

Spencer was hanged on April 8, 1642. While awaiting execution, the accused sow was brought to the gallows and slaughtered right in his presence. Interestingly, Spencer retracted his earlier denial and confessed that he truly got the sow pregnant. Spencer claimed guilt, not because he did it but because that was what people wanted to hear.^[1]

9 Thomas Hogg

Like Spencer, Thomas Hogg was accused of impregnating a sow because her piglet looked like him. However, he (barely) managed to escape the hangman’s noose. We know this list is about people that were executed, but Hogg’s story is so interesting we couldn’t leave it out.

During the winter of 1645–1646, Margaret Lamberton of New Haven, Connecticut, discovered that her sow had birthed two abnormal piglets. The first was unusually white, and the other had an abnormally bulging right eye and a humanlike head.

Lamberton went to the town’s doctor with the piglets. There, she concluded that the piglets were part human. The suspect was none other than Thomas Hogg, who helped her care for the sow. He had a bulging right eye and was pale and white, just like the piglets. Lamberton was further convinced that Hogg was the father because he was prone to walking around with his privates on display.

In truth, Hogg was innocent. His pale look was caused by Graves’ disease. He unwittingly exposed his genitals because he suffered from an inguinal hernia. He always wore a steel gadget to stop his penis from entering into his body. This device often cut through his breeches, exposing his privates.

Hogg denied impregnating the sow. To prove Hogg truly fathered the piglet, Theophilus Eaton, the governor of New Haven, took Hogg to the sty in which the sow lived. He observed that the sow quickly turned lustful the moment Hogg touched her. To confirm Hogg was guilty, he made Hogg touch another sow in another sty. The sow did not flinch.

Hogg continued to deny the paternity claims and was finally acquitted because there were no witnesses. He would have been hanged like Spencer if he had confessed that he’d fathered the piglet. Hogg was not totally free, though. He was found guilty of displaying his privates and stealing food from Lamberton. He was sentenced to whipping and hard labor.^[2]

8 Thomas Granger

In 1642, Thomas Granger was executed in Plymouth for having sex with several animals, including a turkey. Granger was having sex with a mare when he was caught by another servant, who reported him to the authorities. Granger confessed that he had been having sex with several other animals besides the mare.

Then came the problem of determining the animals Granger had been copulating with. Authorities concluded that he had done it with a cow, a turkey, two goats, two calves, and five sheep. He was sentenced to death by hanging. Just before Granger was executed, the accused animals were marched to the gallows and slaughtered while he watched.^[3]

7 Claudine De Culam

Sometime in 1601, a French court sentenced 16-year-old Claudine de Culam to death after she was found guilty of having sex with a dog. Claudine denied any sexual relation with the dog, but the court had an ingenious way of finding the truth.

Prosecutors took Claudine and the dog to a room just outside the courtroom. Inside, Claudine was ordered to undress. The dog jumped on her immediately and attempted to mate with her. Prosecutors mentioned that the dog would have had its way with her if they had not stopped it. They believed this was enough evidence that Claudine and the dog had been engaging in an illicit relationship.

Claudine and the dog were stangled before their corpses were burned. Their ashes were then sprinkled around.^[4]

6 John Taylor

On December 5, 1774, John Taylor (aka John Philip Snyder) was hanged in Burlington, New Jersey, for bestiality and murder. On October 2, 1774, Orpha Emlay, who employed Taylor as a farmhand, caught him having sex with one of her cows. Emlay shouted, attracting the attention of Taylor.

Taylor grabbed a knife and hammer and went after Emlay, who quickly fled. He caught her, crushed her head with the hammer, and cut her throat. Taylor was hanged with Peter Galwin, who either raped or attempted to rape four girls. The crowd was so angry with the men that they tried to kill them before they could be hanged.^[5]

5 Jacques Ferron

Now, we are back to France. Sometime in 1750, Frenchman Jacques Ferron was found guilty of having sex with a jenny (a female donkey). As you should have noticed from the previous entries, the animals involved in bestiality charges are usually executed along with the accused. However, only Ferron received the death sentence this time.

The citizens of Vanvres wrote to the magistrate, claiming that the jenny was of good behavior and had been an unwitting victim. In the letter, which was signed by the local parish priest, the jenny was said to be well-known for her gentle and honest behavior. Unfortunately, the same could not be said of Ferron, who was hanged.^[6]

4 Benjamin Goad

In 1674, 17-year-old Benjamin Goad (or Gourd) was hanged for bestiality in Massachusetts. He was caught having sex with a mare. Goad confessed that he’d been having sex with the horse for a year. No one could vouch for the mare’s behavior this time, and it was slaughtered while Goad watched. Goad himself was executed soon after.

However, we remember the execution for something else. It was the first time a sermon would be delivered at an execution. The sermon was given by the local parish priest, Samuel Danforth, who had known Goad since birth. Danforth said Goad’s execution was justified because sins like masturbation, prostitution, adultery, fornication, and bestiality were the reasons God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.^[7]

3 Walter Robinson

In 1654, 15-year-old Walter Robinson was hanged for bestiality in New Haven, Connecticut. Robinson worked as a shepherd. He was grazing his flock when a fisherman (some sources say a sailor) caught him having sex with his dog.^[8]

Robinson fled when he realized the fisherman had seen him. The fisherman shouted after him and promised that he would be executed. Robinson was later arrested. He initially denied the charge but later agreed that he had sex with the dog but said he did not fully penetrate her.

The fact that he only partially penetrated the dog would not save him from death, and he was sentenced to be hanged. Before his execution, he watched the dog stabbed to death. He and the dog were buried in the same grave.

2 William Potter

By now, you’ve probably noticed that New Haven, Connecticut, has a long history of hanging people for bestiality. William Potter was added to the long list in 1662, after his son caught him having sex with a sow. Ironically, Potter was among the people who founded New Haven.

Potter’s case was particularly of interest because he was thought to be morally and religiously upright. Besides helping in founding the colony, he also attended John Davenport’s church, which had the strictest rules for membership in the whole of New England.^[9]

Potter initially denied the charge of bestiality but later admitted that he really had sex with the sow. He confessed that he had been having sex with animals since he was 11. He said he tried suppressing the urge and once once hanged a dog because he almost had sex with it. But the urge took hold of him, and it continued for over 50 years before he was caught.

John Davenport’s church was so disgusted with the charges that they held a “Solemn Day of Humiliation on this Occasion” to cleanse the church of Potter’s sins. Potter cried as he was taken to the gallows for execution. Before he was hanged, several cows, sheep, and sows he was suspected to have copulated with were slaughtered while he watched.

1 John Farrell And Gideon Washburn

In 1796, John Farrell was sentenced to death by hanging in Massachusetts after he was caught having sex with an unnamed wild animal. Three years later, Gideon Washburn was sentenced to death by hanging in Connecticut for having sex with two mares and a cow.

The sentencing of both men surprised historians for two reasons. First, both men were in their eighties. People accused of bestiality were usually much younger. Also, no state in the Colonies/US had hanged anyone for bestiality for over a century. (Remember, John Taylor also murdered someone.) So what happened?

Historians Doron Ben-Atar and Richard Brown noted that the men were sentenced to death by hanging because of the uncertainty that followed the Revolutionary War. The US was a new and confused nation at the time. Religious teachings and beliefs were being questioned, and some people thought religion was under threat. The Puritans, who imposed many of the earlier bestiality sentences, continued to do so to show that they were in charge. However, solace came Farell’s way when Governor Sam Adams pardoned him. Washburn was also saved from the gallows when he died a few days before his scheduled execution.^[10]

Explorers named the countries they discovered using a little bit of legend and a dash of superstition. Many of us know the fascinating tale of how Greenland and Iceland got their names. The viking Floki Vildegarson named Iceland for its icebergs after suffering misfortune, while Erik the Red named Greenland for its lush valleys to encourage his countrymen to settle there, and yet each country’s climate now seems to contradict its deceptive name. Here are 10 other tales behind the naming of countries.

10ChinaAll Under Heaven

The most populous nation in the world has had numerous names. The word “China” itself was derived from the Qin Dynasty (pronounced “chin”), established by Qin Shi Huangdi, the First Emperor. Likewise, another name, “Cathay,” came from the famous traveler Marco Polo, who referred to northern China by such a name (and southern China as “Mangi”). Readers may know of the airline Cathay Pacific, and its Marco Polo Club, exclusive to “modern-day Marco Polos”—frequent flyers.

Another name for China is “Zhongguo,” from the words Zhong (“center”) and Guo (“country”). Literally it could be interpreted as “the central country,” but a more apt translation would be “The Middle Kingdom.”

For centuries, the people of China believed the land was at the very core of creation under heaven. The further you travel away from this center, the more barbarous and inhospitable the lands become. In a sense, they were correct. Outside their borders and their famed Great Wall lay the various steppe tribes—the Xionnu and Shan Yue raiders and the countless hordes of the Mongols and Oirats. “Zhongguo” was also used as the shortened version of “The People’s Republic of China.”

9ArmeniaThe Family Tree

Armenia, the small landlocked nation bordered by Turkey, Iran, and Georgia, has had a long-storied history with monotheistic religions. It is widely considered the first nation to have adopted Christianity as the official state religion in the year 301.

Armenia, which is derived from the Old Persian language as “Armina,” has another name for itself: “Hayk,” after a descendant of Noah said to have settled in those lands near Mount Ararat. An even more complete interpretation would cite the country as “The Land of Noah’s Great-Great-Grandson, Hayk.” In legend, Hayk left for a time to assist in building the Tower of Babel. Upon his return, his lands were encroached upon by a Babylonian king whom he killed in battle.

Later on, the country’s name was changed to Hayastan (the Persian suffix “‑stan” means “land”).

Another legend tells of Armenia being derived from “Aram” (“a great-great-grandson of Hayk’s great-great-grandson”) who is considered by some locals the ancestor of all Armenians.

8Nauru A Pleasant Welcome, A Summer Destination

On November 8, 1798, a British captain by the name of John Fearn, sailing to China via New Zealand, landed on a remote island in the Pacific. The natives made quite an impression on him; Fearn wrote that “their behavior was very courteous, and they strongly invited us to anchor on their island.” So it was that the captain named this place as “Pleasant Island.”

However, Nauru, the smallest republic in the entire world, also had an entirely different name derived from the local word Anaoero. In the native Nauruan dialect, quite significantly different from Oceanic languages, the term means an action—“I go to the beach.”

It seems justified—Nauru was indeed a travel destination known for beautiful beaches. However, as time went on, the economy took a downward plunge. The country even entered into an agreement with Australia to build a detention center for offshore processing of asylum seekers.

7ArgentinaA Mountainous Wealth Of Legends

The Spaniard Juan Diaz de Solis allegedly murdered his wife in Portugal. To escape the authorities, he fled back to his home country and took part in numerous voyages during the golden era of Spanish exploration. On October 8, 1515, Diaz de Solis sailed in command of three ships, hoping to find a westward passage to the Pacific. De Solis found an estuary and named it “Mar Dulce,” the “fresh sea,” then sailed further inland. There, the explorer met with a cruel end close to present-day Buenos Aires. Cannibals hacked him and his entourage then ate them as the rest of the ships’ crews watched in utter shock.

His brother-in-law, Francisco de Torres, took command of the expedition, which again met with unbelievably bad luck when he was shipwrecked. The natives in this new land were quite friendly—among the items they offered were glistening ornaments made with fine silver.

Observations became legends. Another explorer, Sebastian Cabot, years later found survivors who told him of the natives’ wealth and a mountain of silver (“Sierra de la Plata”). De Solis’s discovery became known as the silver river (“Rio de la Plata”). As centuries passed, explorers sought the fabled treasure to no avail. The name stuck, eventually becoming “the land of silver,” Tierra Argentina (“Argentina” is another word for “silver).

6ChileA Spicy Dispute

Thanksgiving dinners are never complete without a slice of turkey, the fowl that makes young minds wonder why it’s named after a country. (The bird was earlier known as the “Turkey coq“— everything that came from the shipping ports of Constantinople were aptly affixed with that description, from “Turkey rugs” from Persia, to “Turkey flour” from India.)

Still, there’s Chile—derived from the Mapuche word “Chilli,” or “where the land ends.” Perhaps the native Mapuche walked westward from Argentina and found out that the continent ended at the Chilean shores overlooking the Pacific Ocean? Another possible origin is “cheele-cheele,” the Mapuche imitation of a bird call.

Whatever the case, Spanish conquistadors heard of these tales from the Incas. Upon arriving back in Europe, they called themselves “The Men of Chilli.”

5SpainA History Of Erroneous Names

Spaniards coined several names for the lands they discovered, which stuck until modern times. One such case is another nation in South America. In 1499, Spanish explorer Alonso de Ojeda and a certain compatriot named Amerigo Vespucci saw natives living in houses on stilts along the coast and rivers. They named the land Venezuela—the “Little Venice.”

The Spanish tradition of naming lands for erroneous or faulty observations goes back thousands of years. The ancient seafaring peoples of Phoenicia, forerunners of modern exploration, found lands far west of the Mediterranean some 3,000 years ago. These lands had a multitude of what they thought of as hyraxes (shrew mice), so they named it “I-shapan-im“—“Island of the Hyrax.” When the Romans came to rule much of the European continent they modified the name of this land to “Hispania.”

However, the animals on the “Island of the Hyrax”/”Hispania” were not even rodents—they were actually rabbits. Thus, Spain, the empire of explorers who’ve handed down the names of cities and countries based on false legends or erroneous interpretations, was itself derived from faulty observation.

4MoldovaMan’s Best Friend

The Roman prince Dragos had been hunting a wisent, or a wild bison, for many days. His companions, including several hunting dogs, chased the animal until they were spent. Disappointed that his quarry would escape, Dragos’s spirits were uplifted when his favorite dog Molda continued on with the hunt. Molda kept tracking the bison’s scent until man and man’s best friend cornered the wild animal near the banks of a river.

A vicious fight ensued, and when it was over, the bison was dead, and so was Molda. Dragos was so saddened by the loss of his faithful companion that he named the surrounding lands after her.

Some sources mention only the bison and the story of the hunt; others add the prince’s dog as part of the tale. Still, the legend of the hunt became symbolic for the country—even its flag contains the image of the bison.

3CanadaLittle Villages And Mostly Nothing At All

When the French explorer Jacques Cartier sailed past the St. Lawrence River, his native guides remarked that this was the route to “Kanata“—a village. It was. But no native tribes called themselves the Kanata; it was simply what they called assorted villages as they migrated across the vast, snowy wilderness. Cartier probably misheard the term and called the land “Canada” instead.

Another tale, albeit less popular, involves the Spaniards once more. The story tells of how the explorers were looking for fabled riches in the Americas. When they found none, they called the place “aca nada” or “ca nada” (meaning “nothing here“). When the French arrived years later, natives shouted “aca nada!” to tell them there was nothing of importance for the colonizers. The French, thinking it was the name of the country, ended up calling it “Canada.”

Combining the two stories perhaps illustrates what modern-day Canada is like—villages (towns and cities), and a whole bunch of unpopulated wilderness in between.

2PakistanThe Country, The Acronym

“Pakistan,” in Urdu, means “Land of the Pure” (“Pak” means “pure” and “-stan,” of course, means “land”).

Modern Pakistan formed on August 14, 1947, following the partitioning of India. However, the first use of the word “Pakistan” comes a decade earlier, from Choudhy Ramat Ali, a Muslim nationalist who advocated a separate Muslim state in the subcontinent.

Ali published his “Now or Never” pamphlet on January 28, 1933 as an appeal to the British government, writing of how 30 million Muslims wished for independence. These citizens were from the following regions: Punjab, Afghan Province, Kashmir, Sind, and Baluchistan. Combining their letters gives the acronym “PAKSTAN.”

1CzechoslovakiaThe Hyphen War

A hilarious dispute arose after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe. The Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, ruled by the Communist regime for the last 30 years, had fallen in “The Velvet Revolution,” a bloodless coup. Local politicians set to work on what the new democracy should be called.

The first idea was to drop the word “Socialist.” The new nation would be known as the “Czechoslovak Republic,” which had been one of its older names. But Slovak politicians did not like the idea, feeling it diminished their importance. They wanted a hyphen added, as it would symbolize a connection.

The new proposal calling the country the “Czecho-Slovak Republic” did not sit well with the Czechs, who hated it. Even Winston Churchill himself disliked its usage, saying that “one must regard the hyphen as a blemish to be avoided whenever possible.”

The citizens returned to the drawing board, with the Czechs and Slovacs now each using their own name. In Czech, the country was the “Czeskoslovenska federativni republika,” without a hyphen. In Slovak, it was “Czesko-slovenska federativna republica,” with a hyphen. A month later, it was changed to “Czech and Slovak Federative Republic”—this, too, was not satisfactory.

This Hyphen War only truly was settled on January 1, 1993. Facing conflicts on how to run the country, politicians just gave up and decided it would be in everyone’s best interest for the two nations to split up.

Everyone was finally happy. Just as the area had peacefully become democratic due to the Velvet Revolution, this peaceful split became known as The Velvet Divorce, creating the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

+The Forgotten Welshman Who Gave America Its Name

We’ve recently discussed how various civilizations, some from Europe, might have reached the Americas hundreds of years before Columbus did. Columbus, who had landed on modern-day Haiti, was sure he was somewhere near India. One man who was part of his expeditions, the aforementioned Amerigo Vespucci, knew full well that this was a new continent, and his tales of this “new world” amazed two Germans who were reprinting an ancient treatise on geography. The Germans incorporated Vespucci’s discovery in the treatise’s preface:

“There is a fourth quarter of the world which Amerigo Vespucci has discovered and which for this reason we can call ‘America’ or the land of Americo.”

However, a second theory involves Welshman Richard Amerike (or Ap Meryk), who funded an expedition that reached Newfoundland in 1496. One piece of evidence supporting this theory is that the US flag’s “Stars and Stripes” design is similar to that of the Amerike family’s coat-of-arms.

Jo lives in “The Island of King Philip II of Spain.” How about you? Share tales of how your country got its name in the comments section, or scold him if he forgot your nation via email at [email protected].

Every culture has stories that are passed down from generation to generation. They serve many purposes. They teach us how to live, explain the world around us—and, occasionally, serve as warnings. English folklore is among the most well-known in the world: From King Arthur to garden gnomes, it has shaped the folk culture of English-speaking countries around the world and inspired globally successful works of literature like Harry Potter.

There is another side to English folklore, though. A darker side, full of unexplained mysteries and stories of the paranormal. These are the stories we’re looking at today.

10 Redcap

For hundreds of years, the continuous war between England and Scotland made the Anglo-Scottish border a lawless and dangerous place. Raiders frequently passed from one country into the other, committing crimes they knew they wouldn’t be punished for when they returned home. Over time, myths and legends about evil criminals and their horrific deeds sprang up. Alongside these, there also appeared many stories of malevolent spirits and creatures who took advantage of the hostile land to wreak havoc on the people who lived there.

One of these creatures was the Redcap, a sinister being which took the form of an old man with iron shoes.^[1] He had long, unkempt hair, red eyes, thin fingers with nails like talons, and long teeth. He wore a deep red hat.

Prowling between the abandoned castles along the border, he would hunt for bodies left behind by war or raiding and use their blood to dye his cap. If there were no bodies, he would lie in wait in the old ruins, looking for unfortunate travelers, who he would kill with a rock and exsanguinate.

While the Redcap sounds scary, there was a way of defeating him: It was said that if someone recited the scriptures in front of him or brandished a crucifix, he would scream in pain and disappear in a ball of fire, leaving one long, ragged tooth behind.

9 Cutty Dyer

Cutty Dyer was either a water sprite or an ogre who stalked the waters of the River Yeo or Ashburn, depending on who you ask.^[2] The legend is most famous in the town of Ashburton, where he was said to have slept in the darkness under the King’s Bridge. He watched for children or drunks who strayed too close to the river’s edge and then pounced on them, pulling them under the water and gorging himself on their warm blood.

The legend of Cutty Dyer stretches back to at least 1879, when it was first written about in a local publication, but even then, it was said that people’s great-grandparents also feared him when they were children. Cutty Dyer was often used as a bogeyman figure to scare children into behaving themselves and staying away from the river. Two men claimed to have seen him one night, standing waist-deep in the water, with bright red eyes like saucers and teeth like a shark’s. They were frozen to the spot in terror and only fled when he reached out and touched one of them.

Fortunately for the people of Ashburton, legend also has it that Cutty Dyer fled once the town was equipped with streetlights.

8 Drake’s Drum

Sir Francis Drake accomplished a lot during his lifetime. As well as being the first Englishman to see the Pacific and circumnavigate the world, he performed many feats of skill in his career as a privateer, particularly by defeating the Spanish Armada in 1588 and putting an end to Spain’s hopes of invading mainland England.

Drake is undoubtedly an English hero, but there are many dark tales that have followed him. For example, some believed that he elicited the support of the Devil in order to beat the Spanish. In his final days, he was said to have ranted and raved deliriously “in words that no one cared to record.” Shortly after his death, one of his friends wrote a poem in his honor, which seems to hint that, in its time of dire need, he will return to save England again and usher in a new age of glory.

This led to the rise of a popular myth surrounding “Drake’s Drum,” an artifact which was kept on display until recently in his home of Buckland Abbey.^[8] According to the legend, in times of hardship or peril, the drum can be heard beating. People are said to have heard it beating in the Napoleonic Wars as well as both World Wars. In recent times, the drum has been moved to a secure, climate-controlled location to keep it safe. A replica now sits in its original place.

7 Legend Of The Mistletoe Bough

The Legend of the Mistletoe Bough was first written in 1822, though its author, Samuel Rogers, insisted it was much older.^[4] According to him, it was already a story well-known across the country, and many old houses asserted that the tragic events of the tale happened in their halls. The story was put to verse in 1830, and by the middle of the 19th century, it was one of the most popular songs ever written in England. People frequently sang it on special occasions, and thousands across the country knew its words.

So the tale goes, a newly married couple and their guests were celebrating long into the night. After getting tired of dancing, the bride started a game of hide-and-seek. She went deep into the castle and found an old oak chest, which she crawled inside. The lid snapped shut, and she was unable to open it. As days, weeks, and years went by, they hunted for her but couldn’t find her. Eventually, in his old age, the husband found the chest and opened it, finding the skeleton of his beloved bride inside.

6 Will O’ The Wisp

The Will o’ the Wisp, also known as a Will o’ the Torch or Jack o’ Lantern, is a softly glowing light that often appears at dusk or early night in marshes and swamps, though they occasionally occur elsewhere. References to these mysterious phenomena (which are also sometimes called “orbs”) appear in folklore across the world but have a particular prevalence in cold, wet England.^[5]

According to myth, they are often found along out-of-the-way paths, trying to lure travelers who are lost along the road. Depending on how the traveler treats the wisp, they may lead them to safety or even to treasure, but most of the time, the wisp is a malevolent creature seeking to lead the unsuspecting to their doom. In Celtic myth, the wisp is a light carried by a fairy or other mischievous spirit, who will blow it out once the traveler is well and truly lost.

In some myths, the named character, Will or Jack, was an individual who led an extremely wicked life. When he died, he was cursed to roam the world forever, and the Devil gave him a single hot coal to warm himself. He used the coal to make a lantern, which he uses to lead people to their deaths. Others think they are spirits or paranormal beings. They have the power to predict the future, sometimes appearing before a local tragedy happens.

5 Black Annis

Black Annis, originally called Black Anny, is a mysterious witch who was first mentioned in a title deed in 1764, which referred to a road known as “Black Anny’s Bower Close.” According to the myth, Annis lived in a cave known as Black Anny’s Bower, which had a large tree by its entrance. The site of the cave is now lost; it is widely believed to have been built over during the housing boom that followed World War I.^[6]

Black Annis herself was a witch with a blue face and claws made of iron. She would haunt Leicestershire at night, looking for young children or animals to eat. She had long, spindly arms, which she would use to reach in through people’s windows and snatch their children. Once she had them, she would take them back to her bower, drain them of all their blood, and then drape their skins on the tree outside. Once the skins were dried, she would add them to her skirt (which she’d made from the skins of children she’d killed before). Fortunately, Annis’s howls could be heard up to 8 kilometers (5 mi) away, so people had plenty of time to secure their windows and place protective herbs above them to ward her off.

4 Spring-Heeled Jack

Spring-Heeled Jack was a mythical creature who terrorized Victorian Britain, particularly London, from the 1830s onward.^[7] The mythical creature was first mentioned in a newspaper in Sheffield, England, in the 1810s, but Spring-Heeled Jack became notorious almost overnight after a spate of stories in 1837 and 1838. At least three women reported being attacked by a strange figure with red eyes, a skin-tight black suit, long fingers, and metal claws. In some cases, he breathed blue flames in their faces, paralyzing them. Fear spread like wildfire across Victorian London. People formed vigilante groups to try to catch Spring-Heeled Jack, and the police interrogated several suspects, but no culprit was definitively identified.

In the following years, Spring-Heeled Jack became an extremely popular figure, featuring again and again in sensationalist pamphlets and penny dreadful horror stories. As his popularity increased, actual accounts of his attacks became rarer and rarer, until he essentially became a figure of folklore, used as a bogeyman character to scare children into behaving—or Spring-Heeled Jack would jump up to their windows and get them.

Nowadays, most people believe the original Spring-Heeled Jack was the creation of a prankster with a daring sense of humor. The finger is often pointed at Lord Beresford, Marquis of Waterford, who apparently enjoyed scaring unsuspecting people at night and was in London when the first stories appeared.

3 Gytrash

The countryside of Yorkshire is one of the most mysterious and least-traveled parts of Britain even today. The expansive hills are crisscrossed by ancient pathways that have been in use for hundreds of years. As a result, it is easy to get lost there, especially if the traveler is not familiar with the area. The wilds of Yorkshire are stalked by all manner of mysterious beings, from hobgoblins to wailing spirits that would lead the unsuspecting off cliffs or into marshes.

The Gytrash was one of the most dangerous spirits said to live in Yorkshire.^[8] Often appearing as a black dog, mule, or horse with fiery red eyes, it would haunt out-of-the-way paths at sunset in search of travelers who had lost their way. The traveler would follow the Gytrash, only to be led further astray and become totally lost. Once the traveler was at its mercy, the Gytrash would either attack or disappear, leaving the lost voyager alone on the dark road. Occasionally, however, the Gytrash could also be a benevolent figure, leading lost people back to civilization. Famously, the Gytrash makes an appearance in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, when she is scared by a solitary horse following her down the road.

2 Beast Of Bodmin Moor

Bodmin Moor lies in the southwest of England, a place infamous for sightings of the unusual and the paranormal. It is sparsely populated and dotted with ancient ruins from the Neolithic period onward. Many local people consider it to be haunted.

The Beast of Bodmin Moor, however, is not thought to be a ghost but a large black cat that stalks the highlands and attacks livestock.^[9] The stories first began in 1978, alongside several reports of animals being found mutilated. Some speculated that a large panther must have escaped from a private zoo—and since the panther would have been kept illegally, the owner didn’t report it missing. As time went on and the sightings continued, however, people began to look to other explanations. Some now think there might be a whole family of black cats roaming Bodmin Moor. Others say they are the descendants of ancient black cats which used to stalk Britain in the distant past.

There have been over 60 reported sightings of the Beast of Bodmin Moor over the years—enough to interest the UK government, which conducted an official investigation into the mystery in 1995. They concluded that there was no definitive evidence of an unusual beast living in the Moor, but the attacks on livestock were not adequately explained. Sightings of the beast continue to this day, and no definitive explanation has been found.

1 Boggarts

Boggarts have been made famous by J.K. Rowling, who featured them in her Harry Potter novels as evil creatures who take the form of whatever the victim fears most. In English folklore, however, a boggart was a kind of evil creature which attached itself to families or households and was a nuisance.^[10]

According to traditional fairy tales, boggarts love to hide in dark spaces, such as unused attics or cellars, cupboards, or under beds. They were sometimes described as shape-shifters. Boggarts were the source of many misfortunes in the home: They broke things, turned food sour or rotten, and made the house creak, among other things.

Boggarts were also notoriously difficult to get rid of, following families from place to place even if they moved house. People were warned not to name their boggart, because once it was named, it would become even more powerful and angry and much harder to remove. There are many similarities between the boggart and the modern idea of the poltergeist, the main difference being that a boggart wasn’t a ghost but a malevolent fairy or other mythical creature.

There was a time when Persia was the greatest empire in the world. They marched upon Greece with an army of 2.5 million fighters—but, because they lost, we have only heard the story through the words of their enemies.

Most people today know it through the story of Leonidas and his 300 Spartans—but that was just a small moment in a much bigger war. The real story revolved around the Persian King Xerxes—and it was a bit different from how you might be picturing it.

10Sparta Apologized for Throwing a Messenger down a Well

That famous moment when the Spartans kicked a Persian messenger down a well really happened—but a lot of details got left out, and they will completely change the way you see it.

Xerxes’ father sent messengers to every ruler in Greece demanding a tribute of earth and water as a show of submission to Persia. It was not just the Spartans who refused—the Athenians threw their messenger down a pit, too. They had the courtesy to give him a trial first, though. The Spartans just told him to “Dig out Sparta’s earth and water yourself!” and threw him in.

By the time Xerxes became king, he did not even bother sending messengers to Athens or Sparta. He did not have to, anyway. The Spartans came to him and said they were sorry.

After throwing the Persian in the well, the Spartans became convinced that they were cursed. The gods stopped answering their prayers, and they were pretty sure it was because they had mistreated a messenger. So, to make the gods happy, they sent two human sacrifices to Xerxes. They apologized and offered to let him execute them to even the score.

Xerxes spared them. Partly, he was trying to take the high road, but mainly he just had his mind set on revenge. “The death of two men,” he told them, would not “acquit the Spartans from the guilt they have contracted.”

9The Greeks Practically Begged Xerxes to Invade Them

Xerxes, originally, wanted to leave Greece alone. His father had led a long and painful campaign against the Greeks and lost, and Xerxes was not eager to follow in his footsteps. Some of his generals pushed for him to go to war, but he was not going to listen to them—until the Greeks asked him to.

A lot of Greeks actually loved Persia. They thought they were an incredibly diverse and progressive nation. Some of them were so eager to become a part of the empire that they actually came to Persia and asked Xerxes to be their leader.

First, the Aleuadae family came over and offered to pay Xerxes to come to Greece. Then another family, the Pisistratidae, came and offered him even more. They even brought an oracle with them, who told Xerxes he was destined to build a floating bridge and conquer Greece.

By the time they had left, Xerxes was convinced he was meant to rule Greece. He called together his people and announced that they would be going to war. “I will never rest,” he declared, “until I have taken Athens and burnt it.”

8Xerxes Made His Men Whip a River for Misbehaving

Xerxes bought into the prophecy the Greeks gave him. He wanted to play out every moment they described leading to his victory, and so he set up a floating bridge across the Hellespont River. It did not work out—as soon as the bridge went up, a storm knocked it down.

Xerxes had some issues with anger. If someone made him mad, he got revenge—even if that someone was a body of water. He ordered his men to put chains on the river and whip it for its insolence. So, they tossed some chains in the water and gave the river 300 lashes, yelling, “You are a turbid and briny river!”

It gets weirder. Xerxes, apparently, felt bad about whipping the river, because, once he got his bridge to stay up, he apologized to it. He burned incense on the bridge and threw golden bottles into the water—which, according to Herodotus, was his attempt to apologize to the sea.

7Xerxes Cut a Man in Half for Draft Dodging

Before he crossed the bridge, one of Xerxes’ men, named Pythius, came to him and asked for a favor. He’d had visions that the war would fail, and he feared his sons, who were marching off to war, would die. “Take pity on me in my advanced age,” Pythius begged, “and release one of my sons, the eldest, from service.”

Xerxes’ short fuse went off. After cursing Pythius out for a full minute, he barked, “You shall be punished by the life of the one you must desire to keep.” He sent his men out to get Pythius’ son and had him cut in half.

One half of his body was put on the right side of the road and the other half on left, so that the army had to march between his severed corpse on the road to Greece.

6Xerxes Tore Down a Mountain Just Because He Could

Before he left for Greece, Xerxes ordered his men to build a massive canal. His father’s fleet had been swept away in a storm when he invaded Greece, and Xerxes did not want to make the same mistake. He ordered his men to plow through a mountain and build a massive, artificial canal that stretched over two kilometers.

It took three years of whipping workers to make it, but they did it. They made a canal so massive that the whole Persian fleet could cross it. This was such a massive feat that, until fairly recently, people thought it was a myth. Until land surveyors found proof that it really did exist, we thought it was impossible.

The Greeks, though, did not really understand why he was doing it. “With no trouble they could have drawn their ships across the isthmus,” Herodotus wrote about it, pointing to a natural strip of land that would have kept the ships safe.

He had another theory. “Xerxes gave the command for this digging out of pride, wishing to display his power and leave a memorial.” If he is right, it worked—the canal outlived its creators.

5The Spartans Got Ready for Battle by Making Their Hair Look Pretty

Meanwhile, the Spartans were getting ready for battle in their own way. The Spartan army kept their hair long, believing that long, wild hair would strike terror in the hearts of their enemies. Before battle, they did their exercises and combed their long hair, preparing for war—but that was not exactly how the Persians saw it.

Xerxes sent a spy ahead to scope out the Spartan forces, and he was not impressed by what he saw. He reported back that the Spartans were sitting around dancing and making sure their hair looked pretty instead of getting ready for war.

A Spartan defector, Demaratus, tried to explain to him that Spartans prepare their hair before fighting. In part, it let them die with dignity, but their thick braids also worked as a type of armor. Xerxes, though, was not impressed. He made a joke about them being sissies and marched on.

4The Persian Army Had Every Bad Omen Possible

As the Persian army approached they saw things that, according to the Greeks, were bad omens everywhere they looked. First, they walked past a mare giving birth to a hare, which, according to the Greeks, symbolized that Xerxes would flee for his life.

Then they saw the birth of a hermaphroditic mule, with both male and female genitals. Our source for this is Herodotus, who saw this as such an obvious omen that it is not even worth explaining. “The meaning of it was easy to guess,” he writes, before scoffing at Xerxes because he “took no account of either sign and journeyed onward.”

Those omens have lost a lot of their meaning—but anybody would be worried about what happened next. As they marched forward, they started getting attacked by every lion that they saw. Every night, lions would come out of their homes just to kill their camels—and some started to wonder if maybe the gods just did not like them that much.

3Xerxes Defiled Leonidas’ Body

The Battle of Thermopylae followed. Leonidas and 300 Spartans met the Persian army and held out against them to the last man. But the story does not end with Leonidas’ death.

After the 300 Spartans were defeated, the Persians marched on. They rained arrows upon the Spartans until the last one was dead, and slaughtered every person they could find. They tore down the walls of Thermopylae. Every single Spartan they could find was killed.

When Leonidas was shot down, his men-at-arms tried to protect his body and get it to a safe place where it could be put to rest with dignity. Xerxes, though, would not allow it. Once his men had crushed their way through, he had Leonidas’ head chopped off and his body crucified on a spike.

2The Greeks Nearly Lost Because of a Love Spat over a Handsome Boy

Leonidas, though, was not the real hero of the war. The man who really made it possible for the Greeks to win was Themistocles.

Before Persia had even set its sights on Greece, Themistocles was building warships to get ready. It was the Navy that really beat the Persians. Themistocles tricked Xerxes into sending his ships into a narrow canal called Salamis, where he surprised him with a stronger defense than he had expected. It was the turning point in the war; the moment that made a Greek victory possible.

It nearly did not happen, though, because of Themistocles’ penchant for young boys. He and a man named Aristides had been fighting over the love of a good-looking boy named Stesilaus. Aristides was so mad about it that he fought Themistocles at every turn.

Out of spite, he nearly stopped Themistocles from building his navy. Themistocles managed to get Aristides kicked out Athens and built his ships, if he had not, the Persians would have won—all because of a spat between the jealous lovers of a young boy.

1Themistocles Joined the Persian Army

This war changed all of Western history. Had it not been for Themistocles, Greece never would have developed into the philosophic cultural cornerstone it became. He saved Greece—and then, promptly afterward, switched sides.

After the war, Themistocles worked on building up the Athenian military to get them ready to fight the Spartans. The Spartans found out and, in retaliation, spread rumors that he was planning on betraying Athens to the Persians. It worked. The Athenians kicked him out.

Frustrated, Themistocles decided that if they thought he was helping the Persians, then maybe he should just do it anyway. He sailed off to Persia and spent the rest of his life as a Persian governor. He worked for Xerxes’ son until the very end, serving the army he had once defeated.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to . He 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.

Ancient peoples often had complex and fascinating stories about food, from the legends of fabled lands with exotic spices to the tales of gods bequeathing humanity with sacred cereals or cups of mind-altering enjoyment. But even the humblest items in our fridges and pantries have a rich history in mysticism and mythology.

10 Salt

In many cultures around the world, salt is considered a symbol of purity, a substance with the ability to ward off evil spirits. In European folklore, salt is often used to keep witches at bay, while the Quebecois believed sprinkling salt at the doorstep would frighten off lutins, mischievous imps that would often spook horses.

Salt also plays an important part in the Jewish and Christian traditions, and modern advocates of spiritual warfare see it as a weapon in the fight against Satan. After all, salt is mentioned many times in the Bible in regard to cooking, rituals, and covenants with God. Buddhism and Shinto have similar views on the efficacy of salt in repelling evil spirits.

Many modern Okinawans bless new cars with salt and carry small packets of salt around with them in their vehicles for protection. Following the September 11 attacks, heightened security checks at US bases on the island saw guards questioning local workers about the mysterious bags of white powder in their vehicles. Evidently, the “mysterious” white powder was perceived as a possible threat, despite the local customs.

For the Zuni people of the American Southwest, one of the most important deities is the Salt Mother, or Ma’l Oyattsik’i, who dwells in the Zuni Sacred Lake. According to their oral tradition, she once lived much closer to the Zuni people but relocated to the lake after being offended by their behavior. This is why the Zuni and other neighboring tribes must travel there in order to obtain salt, which is an important part of religious ceremonies and traditional baptismal rituals.

9 Potatoes

The humble potato once had a difficult time finding acceptance as a foodstuff in Europe, but it was eventually adopted—rather enthusiastically—for its folk healing powers. In Scotland and Ireland, the potato was used to treat rheumatism, and in other various parts of the British Isles it was used for cramps, boils, asthma, and sore throats.

Similar folklore appeared in North America, where a potato placed under the bed was thought to assist conception and prevent night sweats. Some even believed three potatoes carried in the pockets prevented hemorrhoids. There is little evidence of such folk remedies among Native Americans, except in the case of curing warts. This suggests the potato remedies originated in Europe and spread back to the Americas.

While the potato originated in the Americas, the Muslim Hui people of China have a very different legend about its origin. They say that while Muhammad was on his holy campaign, his army was hungry and holed up in a valley, so he prayed to Allah for help. He then ordered his men to build a stone hearth, fill it with burning firewood, and place large stones inside before sealing it with clay. After two hours, the hearth was opened to reveal the stones had become potatoes. Fortified by the feast, the Islamic soldiers won the next battle and later found potato plants growing in the valley.

8 Milk

Irish folklore spoke of a great cow named Glas Ghaibhleann that wandered the country, bestowing a wonderful milk with 100 percent cream content for free to anyone who approached. Many towns were named after this cow, and some believed the animal represented Ireland itself. Various explanations for the cow include that she was a fairy beast belonging to the king of the sea or the underworld, or possibly she was a guise for the goddess Bo Find.

The disappearance of free milk in Ireland was linked in legends to various wicked individuals who tried to steal the milk, thus causing the creature to fly away or disappear. One notable story has someone milking the great cow into a bottomless cavity called Poll na Leamhnachta, or “hole of sweet milk,” causing her to leave in distress. Tales of a great milk cow were also known in other parts of the British Isles, and one story from Wales has the cow vanishing from the Earth after the greedy residents of a valley plotted to turn her into steak-and-kidney pie.

Some contend these legends are distantly related to ancient Indian myths of “cloud cows” that would rain milk from the sky. According to the stories, these bovines were ultimately captured by the demon Vritra to bring famine to the Earth. Indeed, milk has a special significance in Indian mythology, where breast milk symbolized a feminine mystical power equal to that of a man’s semen. Additionally, milk from the breasts of the goddess Parvati brought immortality. Both Indian and Irish legends also speak of evil men killed by ingestion of a fatal pseudo-milk, or “black milk.”

7 Bread

Historically, bread has played an extremely important part in the history of much of western Eurasia. Bread is also important in the Jewish tradition, where it is known as lechem, and was one of the acceptable sacrificial offerings in biblical times.

When the Jewish people wandered through the desert in biblical times, they were said to have been sustained by manna, or lechem min hashamayim—bread from heaven. It was said to have fallen from the sky and was able to recreate any possible taste, but it could only be kept for a single day. This bread was meant to teach the Jewish people how to mature from a population of slaves to an independent people.

Specific rituals involving bread included the challah, in which part of the dough was taken and burned to commemorate the portion reserved for the priest, as well as tashlich, a custom of transferring sins to a loaf of bread which was then cast over a natural water source.

The tradition of transferring sins to bread has an interesting parallel in British and American traditions. Only instead of sins, these people often transferred diseases. British folk medicine prescribed bread poultices for boils, swelling, sprains, splinters, and sore eyes. And over in East Anglia, bread baked on Good Friday was kept throughout the year to cure ailments. This folk medicine was brought to North America, where bread was thought to be a cure for whooping cough and smallpox. Similarly, water in which burned bread had been soaked was said to cure diarrhea, and children were given bread that had been nibbled by a mouse to cure toothaches.

6 Tuna

While cans of tuna fish are considered humble or even uninspiring fare in the industrialized West, for the traditionally seafaring cultures of the Maldives, the tuna is a fish with lofty origins. Maldivian folklore speaks of a legendary navigator named Bodu Niyami Takurufanu who first introduced the favored skipjack tuna to the islands.

While on a trading voyage, Bodu Niyami’s crew caught a large, fat fiyala fish. Busy making astronomical calculations on the mast, Bodu Niyami ordered them to save him the head of the fish, but when he descended in hunger, he discovered one of his crew had picked it clean and thrown it into the sea to hide the evidence. Enraged, he ordered the helmsman to sail in the direction the fish head had been thrown.

After sailing for 83 days, they came upon a gigantic black-coral tree at the end of the world. Suddenly, they were faced with raging winds and waves. The storm threatened to toss the ship off the world’s edge until the crew tied a line to a branch of the great tree. Seeing the terror of the crew, Bodu Niyami’s rage started to subside, and he agreed to leave once the winds and tides became favorable.

After spending a night, they awoke to discover the seas were not only calm but brimming with large, unknown fish. Bodu Niyami traced an image of the fish on a piece of parchment and whispered magical words to capture its soul, sealing the parchment inside a bamboo tube. As the ship sailed back home, it was followed by a school of the strange fish. The waters around the ship teemed with so many fish that they occasionally leaped unbidden onto the deck.

Problems soon arose when they sighted two great rocks rising in the sea in front of them. Bodu Niyami recognized them as the pincers of the Queen of the Hermit Crabs, attracted by all the fish. Thinking quickly, he opened the bamboo tube, attached a weight to the drawing of the fish, and dropped it into the ocean. The school of fish and the Queen of the Hermit Crabs followed it to the ocean’s depths, saving the ship. However, upon arriving home, he tossed the empty bamboo tube into the ocean, attracting the skipjack tuna which would become the favorite catch of Maldivian fishermen.

5 Cabbage

According to the ancient Greeks, the humble cabbage has its origins in a war between man and god. A prince of Thrace known as Lycurgus had annoyed the god Dionysus by destroying the deity’s sacred vineyards. As punishment, the prince was bound to some vines, and as he wept for his lost freedom, the first cabbages sprang from his tears. This legend led to the popular classical practice of eating cabbage to stave off intoxication or hangovers, under the belief that the cabbage and the vine were natural enemies. Other Greeks, such as the Ionians, considered the cabbage sacred and invoked it in their oaths.

Cabbage myths also appeared elsewhere in Europe. Cabbage stalks were said to be used as flying steeds by fairies and witches, with one Irish legend telling of a gardener falling under fairy influence and suffering from great fatigue due to being forced to fly about every night on a cabbage stump.

In the German region of Havel, there is a legend of a hungry man who decides to steal some of his neighbor’s cabbages in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. Just as he finishes filling his basket, he is caught in the act by the Christ child who happens to be riding by on a white horse. For stealing on the holy night, the Christ child sends him into exile on the moon with his stolen cabbages, and there he presumably remains to this day.

4 Butter

According to the folklore of Wexford County, Ireland, some people can make a deal with the Devil in order to steal butter from other people. A victim of the curse would churn and churn but produce no butter. Instead, they would sometimes yield a cream with an awful stench. One sign that a curse was on a house was a piece of fat or butter left on the doorstep. The cure was to take a coulter from a plow and redden it in the fire in the Devil’s name. This would impel the butter-thief to come to the house and reveal himself.

Magical butter theft was apparently a major problem in medieval Ireland as other regions have similar tales. One story tells of a priest making his morning rounds when he passed an old woman collecting dew and saying, “Come all to me, come all to me, come all to me.” Without really realizing it, the priest responded with, “And half to me, and half to me, and half to me.”

He didn’t give the matter another thought until he got home and was informed the morning’s churn had yielded three times the usual amount of butter. Soon, his neighbors arrived to complain their churns had yielded nothing, and the priest suddenly remembered that witches could steal butter by collecting dew. Realizing he must have inadvertently become wrapped up in the witch’s spell, he distributed the butter to his neighbors. Afterward, they went to the house of the old woman, where they found that despite only owning an old billy goat, she had three tubs of fresh butter.

3 Peas

The historian Walter Kelly believed that peas were a central part of Indo-European mythology, somehow related to “celestial fire.” One Norse myth says peas were originally sent to Earth by the god Thor as a punishment. He sent out dragons to pollute wells and water sources with peas, but some of them landed on the ground and sprouted. To avoid further antagonizing the deity, the Norse traditionally ate peas on Thursday (Thor’s Day).

In Germanic legends, a race of dwarves called Zwergs, who’d once forged Thor’s hammer, loved peas so much that they would go out in “caps of darkness” that rendered them invisible while they stole peas from farmers’ fields.

In British folklore, a pod of exactly nine peas had a curious association with romance, leading to a tradition called peasecod wooing. In Suffolk, a kitchen maid who found a pod with nine peas would lay it on the lintel, which meant the next young bachelor to enter would become her husband or sweetheart. Meanwhile in Cumbria, if a young woman discovered her beau was unfaithful or if a young man lost his love interest to a rival, local youths of the opposite sex would console them by rubbing them with “peas-straw.”

2 Radish

Believe it or not, the radish was esteemed by the ancient Greeks. According to the Roman author Pliny, when the Greeks made offerings to the god Apollo at Delphi, they modeled a radish in gold, a beetroot in silver, and a turnip in lead. The radish was also important to the Hindu god Ganesha, who is often depicted as holding the vegetable in one of his left hands. He’s also said to exhort his followers to grow plenty of them so they can use them regularly in offerings.

Every year in Japan, a large radish with two sections and a forked root is offered to the god Daikoku-sama. According to legend, Daikoku-sama had eaten too many rice cakes and was told by his mother to eat a radish to avoid death. He found a servant girl washing radishes and asked for one, only to be refused as the girl’s master had already counted them. Luckily, she had a two-section radish that she could break in half, thereby saving the deity’s life.

One curious piece of Russian folklore features a radish used to censure the excesses of Ivan the Terrible. In the story, the city of Novgorod offered the tsar a radish. Much to Ivan’s surprise, the radish magically appeared as a horse’s head, which was forbidden for Christians to eat. After Ivan refused the gift, the citizens of Novgorod retorted, “So it’s a sin to eat a horse’s head, but destroying people is a holy deed.” They then blessed the radish, allowing it to return to its true form.

1 Cucumber

The cucumber has shown up a surprising number of times in world folklore, and it’s often considered a symbol of fertility. An early Buddhist legend tells of King Sagara, whose wife, Sumati, bore 60,000 children. Oddly enough, the first of her children was a cucumber named Ikshvaku. Somehow, Ikshvaku eventually had a son who climbed to heaven on his own vine.

In ancient Rome, women wore cucumbers around their waists to encourage pregnancy. Strangely, the plants were disliked by herbalists in the British Isles. They considered them too cool for human stomachs, so naturally they were the cause of illness and death. In 1766, English writer Landon Carter wrote critically of his daughter, “She does bear ungovernable the whole summer through, eating extravagantly and late at night of cucumbers and all sorts of bilious trash.”

The British view was rare, as cucumbers were more often linked with sexuality. The Pennsylvania Germans believed that cucumbers were best sown in daylight by a naked man in the prime of his life. They also thought the “visible virility of the sower” would determine a cucumber’s length. The cucumber’s darker associations with sexuality can be seen in their connection to the Japanese kappa demon, a being that raped women and was only satiated by human blood or cucumbers.

One ancient Javanese legend tells of a couple who prayed daily for a child. They were overheard by an evil giant named Buto Ijo, and he gave the couple a magical cucumber seed that would yield a baby girl. But there was a catch. Buto Ijo would only give them the seed if he could eat the girl when she turned 17. The couple agreed, and the seed yielded a golden cucumber that produced a girl named Timun Mas.

When she inevitably turned 17, the hungry giant showed up. But her parents went back on their deal. They gave Timun Mas a special bag and told her to run for it. As she fled, she took salt out of the bag and threw it behind her. The salt became a sea which the giant was forced to cross. She then threw chili powder, and it became a spiky bush, entangling Buto Ijo. Next, she tossed cucumber seeds that immediately sprouted, prompting the hungry giant to pause for a snack. When he was finished, he continued pursuing the girl, so she finally threw a handful of shrimp paste. It became quicksand and swallowed the giant, and Timun Mas inexplicably returned home to her parents.

David Tormsen believes that instant ramen cures hangovers and wards off banshees. Email him at [email protected].

Qin Shi Huang was a ruler unlike any the world had ever seen. He rose his armies against every kingdom around him and conquered them all. He became the first emperor of a united China, and he left his mark on the world. He started the Great Wall, built the Terracotta Warriors, and left behind a legacy unlike any before.

No one had ever taken as much from life as Qin Shi Huang —and the thought of losing it terrified him. No matter how many armies he conquered, the specter of death still followed after him. He saw, ever in wait, the inescapability of his own mortality. He refused to accept it. After conquering China, the first Emperor waged a new war against death itself.

10He Had All Scholars Focus on Making an Elixir of Immortality

Qin Shi Huang feared that the people would rebel against him. If they learned about the past, he believed, they might long for a different time—and so he had every book of history, poetry, and philosophy gathered up and burned.

Some believe, though, that this was about more than controlling the people. Qin Shi Huang wanted every wise mind in China working on one thing: the secret of immortality. After all, he could not have strong minds wasting time on poetry when they could be helping him cheat death.

He had several alchemists put to work developing the elixir of immortality, but that, of course, was an impossible task. When two alchemists admitted they could not do it, Qin Shi Huang became furious. Every intellectual, he ordered, must suffer.

For failing to make him immortal, Qin Shi Huang had 460 scholars buried alive. These men, Qin Shi Huang declared, claimed to be sorcerers. If they really had magic powers, then they could bring themselves back to life.

9He Sent 6000 Virgins off to Find the Mountains of Heaven

As his scholars had failed him, Qin Shi Huang traveled to Zhifu Island, where he had heard that a man could find the secret to eternal life. There he met the magician Xu Fu, who assured him that it could be done.

Xu Fu promised him that the elixir of immortality was waiting for him on Penglai Mountain. This was not a real place—it was the mythical home of the Eight Immortals, and a pathway to the gods. Here, Xu Fu told the emperor, lived a 1,000-year-old magician named Anqi Sheng who would share the secret.

Qin Shi Huang was pleased. He gave Xu Fu a fleet of ships and let him sail out in search of the elixir of immortality. And, soon, Xu Fu returned, insisting that he had found it. The island of the immortals, Xu Fu said, was full of grass that would give the emperor eternal life—but the immortals demanded a sacrifice. He needed to bring 6,000 virgins to get the elixir.

Qin Shi Huang believed him, and he gave him what he needed. For the next eight years, Xu Fu did not go anywhere near the emperor—he just sailed around the sea with 6,000 virgins, while Qin Shi Huang patiently awaited an elixir that would never come.

As mystical as the story sounds, there is evidence that suggests it is true. On Zhifu Island, Qin Shi Huang etched the words, “Arrive at Fu and carved the stone”—an engraving that is still there today.

8He Forbid Anyone from Using First-Person Pronouns

Qin Shi Huang was convinced that he was going to become an immortal god. He even labeled himself one. After uniting China, he threw away the old title of “king” and took a new one: “huangdi.” It is a word we usually translate to “emperor,” but that is not quite accurate—it really means “god.”

He also made it law that, from now on, no one could use the first-person pronoun “zhen.” Now that all kings had bowed down before him, he declared, no one else could refer to themselves with a term that conferred respect. From now on, every Chinese citizen would have to refer to themselves with the word “wo,” a word that, at the time, meant, “this worthless body.”

After Xu Fu had promised him immortality, though, even Qin Shi Huang stopped using the word “zhen.” Now, he declared, he must be called “The True Man”—a title that told the world that he had become immortal.

7He Made Decoys Ride in His Carriage

To become immortal, though, Qin Shi Huang would have to stay alive until Xu Fu came back. This was not a sure thing. There had already been many attempts on his life, and he had made many enemies on the path to becoming emperor. He lived in fear of his own death at every moment—and so, when he traveled, he started putting a decoy in his royal carriage.

It ended up saving his life. A man named Zhang Liang was plotting his death. Zhang Liang was a man destined to become the chancellor to the Han king until Qin Shi Huang conquered the Han kingdom and reduced its nobles to nothing. Zhang Liang wanted revenge.

He teamed up with China’s strongest man, Gan Ba, who dragged a 160 lb (72.5 kg) hammer up to the top of a hill and waited for Qin Shi Huang to pass by. When the royal carriages came close, Gan Ba hurled the massive hammer at the royal carriage. The massive iron weight shattered it into pieces and killed everyone inside.

Qin Shi Huang, though, wasn’t inside. He was behind it, in an undecorated carriage that looked to be made for a commoner. His guards rushed into action, but Gan Ba tackled them head on, giving up his own life so that Zhang Liang could escape.

6He Travelled through a System of Tunnels to Avoid Going Outside

In his later years, Qin Shi Huang stopped going outside altogether. Unless it was absolutely necessary, he would no longer risk stepping out into the open air. Instead, he had a system of tunnels and underground pathways set up at his castle to make sure he never had to go outside.

He lived in a massive complex that was more than a third of a mile long—in its time, one of the biggest in the world. It held a massive palace surrounded by ten buildings, connected through walkways. These were majestic, heavenly things. One was an elevated walkway that crossed over a river, designed to look like the Milky Way shining in the sky.

In part, he was afraid of assassins, but it was more than that. Death itself was outside waiting for him, Qin Shi Huang believed. He stayed inside of his castles and his tunnels so that he could not be seen by the dark spirits that were searching for him.

5A Meteor Fell to the Earth Prophesising His Death

One year before the emperor died, a meteor fell to the earth. On its own, this could have been seen as an omen, but this was more than just a rock. On the rock that fell from the sky were inscribed the words: “The First August Emperor will die and his land will be divided.”

The Emperor was a superstitious man, but even he did not think the message was really engraved by the gods. He was sure that somebody had carved the rock after it landed, and he wanted to know who. He demanded that the person responsible confess, or everyone would pay.

When no one came forward, he had ever single person who lived near the place where the meteor landed rounded up, thrown in prison, and executed. He even had his men get the meteor itself and destroy it in a fire.

Even then, though, it still bothered him. Reportedly, after giving the order to kill every person there, he called in his musicians and had them play him songs about his immortality.

4He Fought a Sea Monster for Immortality

After the meteor landed, Qin Shi Huang grew impatient. He sailed off to Zhifu Island once more to find Xu Fu, the magician who had promised him an elixir of immortality.

Xu Fu assured him that he had found Penglai Mountain. Now, though, the path was blocked by a great sea monster, and he had no way to get through. This time, though, Qin Shi Huang would not wait around any longer. He would get a team of archers, he told Xu Fu, and kill the sea monster. This time, Xu Fu was not going to be trusted to go alone. The emperor was coming with them.

Qin Shi Huang and his team of archers sailed into the water, where the found a massive fish they believed to be a sea monster—which, today, is believed to have been a whale. The archers opened fire and killed it. When it was done, Qin Shi Huang returned to Zhifu Island and left a message that is still there today: “Came to Fu, saw enormous stone, and shot a fish.”

Xu Fu didn’t have any excuses left. He was to get the elixir from the immortals, Qin Shi Huang ordered, and return immediately, or else he would face the consequences.

Xu Fu assured the emperor he would do it. Then he gathered up his 6,000 virgins, put them in his ships, and sailed off—and never came back. With no way to keep the act up, he fled to Japan and spent the rest of his life in hiding.

3He Poisoned Himself with Mercury

Xu Fu never delivered the elixir of immortality, but Qin Shi Huang did not give up. He had his alchemists make him every medicine they could to keep him healthy and alive, and he drank everything they told him would work—including a bottle full of mercury.

Qin Shi Huang was making a tour around his kingdom when the mercury killed him. He had brought a vial of it with him, which his court doctors had assured him was an “immortal medicine.” Instead, though, it cut his life short, killing him when he was only 49 years old.

Qin Shi Huang was a two-month journey away from home, and his chancellors were afraid about what might happen when the people found out he was dead. His advisor, Li Si, was determined to hide that the emperor had died. For the next few months, he pretended Qin Shi Huang was still alive, sending out orders of his own that he claimed came from the emperor.

Meanwhile, the immortal emperor’s dead body was sent home, flanked by carts full of rotting fish to hide the smell of his decaying remains.

2He Tried to Become The God-Ruler Of Hell

If Qin Shi Huang could not be immortal, he was not going to accept being a peasant in hell. He was determined to become the ruler of the afterlife, and he got ready for it.

Before he even became the emperor, he had started work on his tomb. By the time he died, he had forced 700,000 enslaved laborers to work on it. His tomb was incredible. It had replicas of his palaces and towers, flowing rivers of mercury, and a ceiling full of jewels that recreate the night sky.

And it had the Terracotta Warriors. Qin Shi Huang believed that, when he died, the six states he had defeated would rise up against him in the afterlife. And so he had his army remade out of terracotta to protect him in hell and help him conquer the world of the dead.

Traps were set up to keep anyone from getting in and disturbing the emperor’s resting place. The tomb was buried and seeded with grass and trees to keep anyone from ever finding it. And, to make sure that no one would ever find it, the workers who made it were forced to seal themselves in and die with the emperor inside his tomb.

1He Did Not Choose a Successor

Qin Shi Huang had not planned on dying. He did not even like to think about it—and so he never sat down and wrote a will. He was determined, after all, to live forever, and so he saw no need.

With no will, it was not clear who was to take the throne, and the nation soon erupted into chaos. His eldest son Fusu was the obvious choice, but Qin Shi Huang’s advisor, Li Si, did not trust him. To keep Fusu out, Li Si forged a fake order declaring the second son, Huhai, the new emperor. Then he forged another, ordering Fusu to commit suicide.

The boys obeyed the orders they believed came from their father, and Huhai became the second emperor of China. His reign did not last long. Li Si and his co-conspirators soon turned against each other, and one had Li Si arrested and executed.

Li Si’s death was horrible. His nose, hands, feet, and genitals were chopped off, one-by-one, before he was finally cut in half down the waist. Then every member of his extended family, down to the third generation, was executed. Without Li Si, Huhai was unable to stop his people from rebelling, and he was soon overthrown.

In life, Qin Shi Huang had insisted that his dynasty would rule over China for 10,000 generations—but, after his death, it did not even last three years.

Mark Oliver is a regular contributor to . He 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.