Are we alone in the universe? Ever since humankind discovered the existence of other planets and solar systems, we have been wondering if we might be contacted by another intelligent species one day. International SETI science projects and amateur backyard astronomers alike have directed their telescopes to deep space to find transmissions that might have been sent by alien civilizations. The quest to find evidence of extraterrestrial life is so profoundly ingrained into our minds that it has sparked countless supposed eyewitness stories about unidentified flying objects and other weird phenomena.

There have been multiple occasions when scientists believed they might have discovered signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, only to notice that the findings were something else, ranging from a pulsar to a leaking microwave. Some electromagnetic wave transmissions and weird sightings have never gotten a definitive explanation. From actual scientific hypotheses to the most famous weird UFO theories, here are ten signs of extraterrestrial life that either turned out to be false alarms or still have no official explanation.

10 Martian Canals

One of the big astronomical misconceptions of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the idea that canals existed on the surface of Mars.^[1] Some astronomers concluded that the only explanation for these canals was that they were built by an intelligent species for irrigation. American astronomer Percival Lowell published a trilogy of books explaining his theory about the intelligent design of the canals, and the press circulated the idea into public knowledge.

Debate about the existence of the structures and Martian life raged on until the early 20th century, when advancing technology proved the whole concept of the canals to be false. The canals were merely an optical illusion caused by the blurry telescopes of the time and the mind’s tendency to connect dots into lines.

9 The HD 164595 Signal

HD 164595, a star very similar to our Sun, rose to the headlines in 2016 when it came to knowledge that in 2015, a possible alien signal had been broadcast from its direction.^[2] The star is orbited by one planet that cannot sustain life, but it was hypothesized that the star might have more undetected planets orbiting it. The signal lasted for two seconds and was caught only once. Since it was so brief, its source was hard to pinpoint.

Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) investigated the signal to evaluate its possible alien origin. SETI concluded that it was probably caused by terrestrial interference, since it was only caught by one telescope. Its exact origin was never found out, but it most likely came from a satellite.

8 Kenneth Arnold

The world is full of unreliable eyewitness stories about flying saucers, but aviator and businessman Kenneth Arnolds’s UFO story was the first one to be widely reported in the media. In 1947, Arnold claimed that he had seen nine weird flying objects while he had been flying over Washington state. He described them moving like a saucer skipping on the surface of water, and the press quickly came up with the terms “flying saucer” and “flying disc,” as they misunderstood Arnold’s words and thought the flying objects were shaped like saucers.

The Air Force stated that Arnold had seen a mirage,^[3] but many people, including Arnold himself, were unsatisfied with this explanation and never let go of the idea that he had witnessed alien spacecraft. Later, Arnold claimed to see more flying saucers and wrote a book about his experiences, becoming almost a legendary figure among ufologists.

7 Perytons

For decades, the Bleien Radio Observatory in Switzerland and the Parkes radio telescope in Australia had been catching bursts of short signals that nobody could explain. They were named perytons after the mythological hybrid creature Peryton. Their frequency and habit of appearing in clusters resembled the behavior of fast radio bursts (FRBs), which are extragalactic signals of unknown origin. Fast radio bursts had been theorized to be artificial messages sent by extraterrestrial intelligence, so the perytons also created some speculation. It turned out the signals were coming from near Earth, which debunked the alien theory, but their exact origin was still a mystery for years.

The enigma was finally solved in 2015, when scientists at the Parkes telescope discovered the rather mundane origin of the signals: their leaking kitchen microwave. Every time the microwave door was opened prematurely, it released a radio pulse that resembled FRBs. Sometimes, great mysteries have underwhelming explanations.^[4]

6 Fast Radio Bursts Coming From Alien Starships

The unexplained fast radio bursts caught by telescopes around the world have been theorized to be messages from extraterrestrial species, but in 2017, a pair of scientists proposed they could have another kind of alien origin. Manasvi Lingam and Abraham Loeb hypothesized that the radio bursts could be used to propel highly advanced alien spaceships forward in the vastness of outer space.^[5] In this theory, the FRBs we have detected are not messages to us but a byproduct of the spaceships needing to be powered by something more powerful than regular fuel.

Lingam and Loeb have done the mathematics to support their idea, but recent findings of FRBs that repeat themselves and come from a certain place in the sky make this theory seem less plausible. The bursts might actually be caused by neutron stars or be related to black holes.

5 Crop Circles

Crop circles, also known as crop formations, are large patterns created on crop fields by pressing down the plants. In the last four decades, more and more of these formations have been appearing, even though the idea itself is nothing new. Their overnight appearance and huge scale make them seem mysterious, and some people investigating the patterns have claimed that there is no way they have been created by humans.

The theory of aliens creating the circles as messages was never supported by scientists but was brought to public consciousness after the phenomenon got wide media coverage. In reality, crop circles are man-made. Some are artwork; others are just pranks meant to confuse the public.^[6] Nevertheless, the theory of UFOs having created the crop formations still lives on in some pseudoscientific belief systems despite having been refuted.

4 Alien Megastructures Around Tabby’s Star

The now-retired Kepler space observatory is famous for its search for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars. In 2015, citizen scientists going through the data collected by Kepler noticed something unusual about one star. Tabby’s star, formally known as KIC 8462852, had some very unusual changes in its brightness. The star seemed to have irregular light fluctuations, dimming substantially.

There have been various theories about the origin of the phenomenon. Some astronomers proposed there could be alien megastructures around the star.^[7] Energy-harvesting megastructures encompassing an entire star, such as Dyson swarms, were originally introduced in sci-fi but made their way to actual scientific thought experiments. Tabby’s star was of great interest to SETI, but recent studies say the dimming is most likely caused by dust and not any opaque object, intelligently designed or natural.

3 Roswell UFO Incident

The Roswell incident is probably the most famous UFO tale ever, with the US military and politicians having had to comment on the incident multiple times even decades later. In the summer of 1947, a United States Army Air Forces balloon crashed at a ranch located in New Mexico. A man named William Brazel found the debris, and having heard stories about flying saucers, he told the local sheriff he might have found the remains of one. The sheriff called the local Air Force base, which issued a press release about the event.^[8] It got a lot of interest until a new press statement was made to explain the terrestrial origin of the balloon.

Decades later, the incident got new attention when UFO researches started interviewing the supposed witnesses and going through documents. The new theory was that alien bodies had been removed from the crash site, and the US government had covered up the truth about the Roswell events. This might sound far-fetched, but in a 2013 US poll, a fifth of the respondents still believed the Roswell incident really was an UFO crash, making it one of the most widely believed alien theories.

2 The Little Green Men Signal

In 1967, graduate student Jocelyn Bell detected a curious signal at the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory in the UK. The signal was so consistent and fast that it seemed artificial, but it was not man-made. Bell and her advisor Antony Hewish famously dubbed it LGM-1 for “Little Green Men.”^[9] Extraterrestrial messaging was not the scientists’ main suspect, but they had to consider the possibility and how they would announce it to the public in case it turned out to be aliens. When they discovered a similar signal, they ruled out the possibility of extraterrestrials, since it was unlikely that two separate alien species would be trying to communicate with them simultaneously.

In reality, Bell and Hewish had discovered pulsars, rotating neutron stars that that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation. The beams from such rotating stars are pointed toward Earth at regular intervals, making them seem like intelligently designed transmissions. Even though it was a false alarm in terms of aliens, the discovery of pulsars was a very useful finding for astronomers.

1 Wow! Signal

In 1977, SETI astronomer Jerry R. Ehman was reviewing data collected the previous day by Ohio State University’s “Big Ear” telescope. He noticed the telescope had picked up 72 seconds of a noteworthy, strong signal. What made the signal so notable was its frequency. The frequency range of the signal is protected, meaning nobody on Earth can broadcast on it, so the signal did not come from Earth.

At the same time, that specific frequency could very plausibly be used for communication. It would make sense for an intelligent species to pick a “channel” that is easy to listen to, as opposed to the frequencies of Big Bang background radiation or quantum noise. It also closely mimicked the electromagnetic wavelength of hydrogen, the most common and easily recognizable element in the universe.

The signal was named “Wow!” after the excited comment Ehman wrote on the computer printout. The source of Wow! has never been determined,^[10] making it the strongest candidate for alien messaging ever discovered.

The ancient world gave mankind some of its most brilliant thinkers and philosophers. From Socrates and Aristotle to Master Kung-sun Lung, they forever changed the way we looked at the world. Some of them posed thought problems and paradoxical situations that we’re still musing over more than 2,000 years later.

10 The Floating Man

Islamic physician and philosopher Ibn Sina (also known as Avicenna) wrote extensively about the soul and intellect, among other topics. His work formed the basis for European philosophy for centuries after his death in the 11th century. In Sina’s work on the concept of self and self-identity, he posed a question that has become known as The Flying Man or The Floating Man:

A man is created floating in the air or in a substance that completely isolates him from physical feeling. His arms and legs do not touch each other or anything else. His eyes are always closed, it is completely silent, and he receives no sensory input whatsoever. Does he still recognize his existence and the concept of the self without being aware of the existence of a physical form? What does that mean for the idea of an independent, immortal soul?

9 Meno’s Paradox

Meno’s Paradox is named for a student of Socrates. Socrates was famous for his exploration into the ideas of ignorance and inquiry, but it was Meno who developed the paradox that defined the problem between the two.

The paradox states that nothing can be learned by asking questions. If a person already knows the answer, then there’s no point in asking. If they don’t know the answer or what they’re looking for, then there’s no point in asking because they wouldn’t be able to recognize a correct answer or even the information they’re searching for. The very nature of inquiry makes it pointless and unnecessary, if not outright impossible.

The paradox falls apart when you consider most people exist in varying states of partial ignorance and know just enough information to be guided in the right direction, e.g. looking up words in a dictionary.

8 The Cosmic Edge

In the fifth century BC, philosopher and soldier Archytas posed a seemingly simple question. He asked, “What happens to a spear when it is hurled across the outer boundary of the universe? Does the spear rebound, or vanish from this world?”

Later philosophers, including Lucretius the Epicurean, would cite Archytas’s question as they formulated their own arguments for an endless, infinite universe. Lucretius states that there could only be two possible answers—an infinite universe or some sort of boundary. Others have weighed in on the riddle, saying that as unthinkable as an infinite universe is, it is more unthinkable to imagine standing on the edge of it and reaching into nonexistence.

Since it made no sense for the spear to rebound off the edge of the cosmos, there must be no edge.

7 The Chicken Or The Egg?

A riddle that has stumped philosophers and scientists for centuries, the question of whether the chicken or the egg came first was recorded by the Greek historian Mestrius Plutarchus. When he devoted an entire section to the question in his book of essays, it was already a well-known dilemma, and he posed the idea that it was far from being a question simply about eggs and chickens. The dilemma could be put to all of creation.

Aristotle took a very practical approach to trying to determine the answer. Embryology had been studied for centuries by that point, but he examined chicken eggs in various stages of development to help map the growth of embryos. In the end, he decided that neither came first, as the egg couldn’t exist without the chicken, and the chicken couldn’t exist without the egg.

6 The Plank Of Carneades

Carneades was a Greek scholar born in Cyrene around 214 BC. By the time he was representing the interests of Athens in Rome, he was also writing extensively on the ideas of justice. He is the one usually credited with developing the plank riddle (although it might have originally been formulated by one of his contemporaries).

The scenario describes two shipwrecked men, lost at sea. The only thing left of their ship is a single wooden plank. They both swim for it, knowing it is their only chance for survival. In one version, they reach the plank at the same time. One man shoves the other away and saves himself. In the other version, one man is on the plank, while the other pushes him off and drowns him to save himself.

Either way, the person on the plank is ultimately rescued. Can he be tried for taking another human life to save his own, or is necessity a valid excuse?

5 Chrysippus’s Paradox

The Stoic philosopher Chrysippus wrote extensively on the existence of virtues and characteristics in a single body to make up the self. He posed the bizarre case of Dion and Theon to illustrate the idea of what constitutes the self:

Take a person, the puzzle says, and name him Dion. Take the same person and assign the name Theon to every part of him save one foot. Cut the foot off to make them identical. Since two people cannot inhabit the same space at the same time, one of them must die with the removal of the foot. Chrysippus argues that Theon dies while Dion lives, because Theon cannot lose something he never had and ceases to exist.

Although the Stoic school generally agreed with this analysis, the Academic Philo argued that it was Theon who would survive. His argument was that since Theon would have nothing to lose, he would escape the incident unharmed, and Dion would perish.

4 The Debtor’s Paradox

In the fifth century BC, Epicharmus of Syracuse was penning some of the early Greek comedies. In one, he posed a scene that was meant to be humorous but ultimately spawned an entire debate about the nature of the self:

A character has borrowed money from another and cannot pay him back. The borrower asks the lender if he has a number of pebbles and adds another rock or takes one away, if he has the same number. When the lender says, “No,” the borrower states that since mankind is always growing and changing, he is no longer the same person who borrowed money, and he doesn’t have to repay it.

The story continues with the lender giving the borrower a good thrashing and then claiming that he is no longer the same person who beat up the borrower and shouldn’t be held responsible.

Metaphysics still grapples with the relationship between our physical forms, intrinsic change, and whether or not we can ever be considered a completely new or different person.

3 A White Horse Is Not A Horse

This not-so-straightforward observation comes from Chinese philosopher Master Kung-sun Lung and his Treatise on the White Horse, written around 250 BC. The argument simply states that a white horse is not a horse, and it has spawned countless arguments on the nature of language and logic.

People have been debating the logic of the statement for more than 2,000 years, but one of the basic arguments is that since “horse” defines the shape of the beast and “white” refers to a color, “horse” is color-neutra,l and it cannot be the same as a “white horse.” No one would say that a “white horse” and a “yellow horse” are the same, and since “horse” and “white horse” do not always refer to the exact same things, they are not equal.

Therefore, a white horse is not a horse.

2 The Paradox Of A Grain Of Millet

Zeno of Elea was a philosopher from fifth-century BC Greece, and he was known for his paradoxes. He developed the paradox of the grain of millet but never gave his own thoughts on it, simply leaving the observation out there for the rest of the world to argue about:

When a bushel of millet falls, it very clearly makes a sound. But when a single grain of millet falls, there is no sound. How can a bushel of millet make a sound, when none of its individual parts do?

The paradox has been interpreted in a couple of different ways. One simply states that there’s nothing wrong with parts having different properties from the whole, while another states that the single grain does make a sound; we just can’t hear it. With this interpretation, it becomes a lesson in how we shouldn’t necessarily trust our own hearing.

1 Epicurean Paradox

Epicureanism is a school of thought that teaches the pursuit of tranquility and freedom from pain and discomfort, but its foremost thinkers delved into the problems they saw with religion, too. Epicurus and his students depicted their idea of God (or gods) as having a sort of hands-off stance on human affairs, and they also developed the Epicurean Paradox.

The paradox is also known as the problem of evil, and it says that if God is all-powerful, He should be able to defeat all evil in the world. Since evil exists in the world, He either has chosen not to defeat it or cannot defeat it. That either makes God not as powerful as claimed or a malevolent being that is absolutely fine with the presence of evil in the world.

For Epicurus, the only rational explanation is that there is no such thing as an all-powerful, ever-present, benevolent God.

Have you ever gotten something confused in your head, or maybe you just didn’t care, and called one thing by the wrong name for far too long because you consider them the same? The way some people seem to call any brown soda Coke even if it’s a Pepsi or a root beer or whatever? It can happen for any number of reasons but it also probably happens more than you’d think. We’re willing to bet that you thought at least one of these things was the same as something else when it absolutely isn’t. 

10. Crevice and Crevasse Are Not the Same

Okay, imagine you’re out for a walk. It’s a warm day, and the air is fresh and clean and you’re having a great time. Life is good! But then, oh no, the earth splits asunder beneath your feet and you fall to your doom. Did you just fall into a crevice or a crevasse? There is a right and wrong answer here.

While both words mean a crack in something they don’t refer to a crack in the same thing. The root of each comes from Anglo-French crevace, to break, the way they’re used is different for a reason. 

A crevasse is a bigger break, a deeper break, and is typically reserved only for referring to ice. So if your walk was on a glacier and it split, you fell into a crevasse. If the break was a little smaller and happened out on the earth itself, you fell into a crevice. In proper usage, a crevice is far less impressive, it may only be a surface crack, in fact. But a crevasse is going to seriously ruin your day. 

9. TNT is Not Even Close Dynamite 

In the song TNT by AC/DC, the chorus assures listeners that the singer is TNT, he’s dynamite. With all due respect to Bon Scott, that just wasn’t correct. Unless he was speaking to his own diversity, TNT and dynamite are not the same thing.

TNT is trinitrotoluene, and it’s a yellow, crystalline substance. It was discovered in 1863 and while it is explosive, it’s not as explosive as dynamite but the tradeoff is that it’s more stable. 

Dynamite dates to 1867 and was discovered by Alfred Nobel of Nobel Prize fame. It’s made from nitroglycerine stabilized with diatomaceous earth and sodium carbonate. He made a safe(r) explosive than plain old nitro.

A stick of dynamite has a holding tube that is filled with an absorbent material covered in nitroglycerin and packed with other substances to stabilize it. It’s incredibly far removed from TNT and, aside from the intended purpose, is pretty much completely different from it in every way, especially chemically. 

When they were first discovered, it was so hard to make TNT explode that it wasn’t even listed as an explosive compound, unlike dynamite. 

8. Chrysalis and a Cocoon are Different 

One of the most remarkable transformations in nature is when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Because it’s not a quick change magic act, the caterpillar needs to prepare to become a fancy new life form that flies and how does it do that? Does it form a cocoon or a chrysalis?  The answer is chrysalis. No butterfly comes out of a cocoon because they are not the same thing.

Moths are a good example of cocoon makers and the difference between a moth cocoon and a butterfly chrysalis is how they are made. Like many creatures, a caterpillar grows by molting. That means it sheds its old skin as it grows larger beneath that skin. But when a caterpillar is set to become a butterfly, it never sheds that final skin. Instead, thanks to fun biology, that skin hardens into the outer chrysalis that allows the butterfly to form inside. 

When a caterpillar becomes a moth, it uses silk that it produces itself, and maybe sometimes leaves and other bits of natural stuff to form a cocoon around itself. A cocoon is constructed by the caterpillar and then, once safely hidden away, it begins its transformation. Not all moths do this, but the majority do. No butterflies produce silk at all, however.

7. A Heart Attack is Not Cardiac Arrest 

Let’s say you’re at a restaurant and a person at the next table clutches their chest and falls to the ground. They’re having a heart attack! Or are they suffering from cardiac arrest? As much as the two terms seem to be bandied about casually in pop culture, they are not synonyms and do not refer to the same condition. 

A heart attack can trigger cardiac arrest, but two different things occur. A heart attack involves a blockage in an artery. Oxygenated blood can’t get to your heart and that part of the heart, now cut off from oxygen and blood, begins to die. That can be a quick process or a long one depending on several factors. You need to get medical help right away if this occurs because it can and likely will get much worse. 

Cardiac arrest, which, again, can be triggered by a heart attack, is when the heart shuts down and stops pumping blood. It doesn’t have to be caused by a heart attack, though, and any disruption to the rhythm of your heart prevents it from pumping blood through the body. Your heart stops and you effectively die. CPR or other medical intervention will be needed to restart the heart or you could die quickly. 

6. Pounds and Kilograms Measure Different Things 

Here’s a confusing one. Pounds versus kilograms obviously refers to different measures but do they measure the same thing? A person who weighs 200 pounds can also be said to weigh 90.72 kilograms. So it’s two ways of saying the same thing, essentially. Or so it would seem, but that’s not technically correct.

Pounds are actually a measure of force or weight and kilograms are a measure of mass. In order for 200 pounds to equal 90.72 you have to agree that mass equals force and that’s not the cleanest science but it works for most of us so we let it slide.

On earth, none of this matters much. But if you went to the moon, your mass would still be 90.72 kilograms while your weight would be much less than 200 pounds. You’d weigh about six times less, in fact, because pounds measure that force of gravity on you and there’s less gravity on the moon. 

Mass is a more reliable measure because it’s very hard to change but weight, in the right circumstances, can change. 

5. Snow Leopards are Not Leopards

Snow leopards are some of the most beautiful and rare cats in the world. The WWF estimates there are 4,000 to 6,500 of them out there. They’re perfectly designed to live in harsh, snowy mountains where natural camouflage makes them nearly impossible to spot. Also of note is that they’re not actually leopards, but members of the panther family. 

From a genetic standpoint, while they have spots you might expect of a leopard, they’re more closely related to tigers. In general, we recognize five kinds of big cats in the world and those are lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, and snow leopards which are off on their own. 

4. Concrete and Cement are Closely Related But Not the Same

This is one people tend to get wrong a lot. When you’re out walking the dog down the sidewalk, is it cement underfoot or concrete? If you wanted to be a bit of a semantic and technical weenie, you could argue that both work, but we’re not doing that. You’re walking on concrete. But there is cement in it. 

You need a few things to make concrete. The first thing you want is cement. Cement is made from limestone, silica, and a few other ingredients that are baked and ground down into a super fine powder. When you add water to that super fine powder you get cement paste. It’s halfway to being concrete!

All you need to do now is mix in something like rocks or gravel and you’re making concrete. You need to keep the stones down to a diameter of one inch or less to make proper concrete. Of course, if you just mix in sand then you’re making mortar. 

Fun fact! Because cement needs to be fired in a kiln to make it, the chemical reaction produces a lot of CO2. Concrete is the most widely used substance in the world and as much as 8% of the world’s CO2 emissions come from cement production. 

3. Strangulation is Not the Same as Choking 

It’s late at night, you’re walking around Camp Crystal Lake with Hannibal Lecter trying to avoid a guy in a Scream mask and you haven’t slept in days because of Freddy Krueger. Suddenly someone attacks you from behind and pulls a cord around your neck. Are you being choked or strangled?

Choking and strangulation are distinctly different things. In simple terms, choking is something that happens internally while strangulation happens externally. You can choke on a delicious burrito but you’d get strangled by a rope. 

More specifically, choking happens when something blocks your trachea and prevents air from flowing to your lungs. Strangulation is when something presses on your neck and compresses your trachea preventing that airflow. It can also happen by accident, of course, but it can be intentional far more often than choking can. 

2. Macarons and Macaroons Come From the Same Origin But Are Very Different

For a long time, the average person probably had no idea what a macaron was. But then foodie culture exploded, everyone and their uncle was watching Iron Chef, and the discerning dessert enthusiast in all of us was just dying to try a delicious macaron. Or was it a macaroon?

A macaroon differs from a macaron in several ways. A typical macaroon is a drop cookie, meaning you scoop up the mix, splat it down off of your spoon, and bam, there it is. They’re made with coconut and whipped egg whites and baked and chocolate-covered. Some folks make them with oatmeal and a few other choice ingredients and do a no-bake version sometimes called a haystack that doesn’t include egg.

Macarons are a sandwich cookie where the sandwich part is an egg white meringue cookie that you bake. It should have a slightly crispy exterior but a chewy interior and be pretty thin. Then you fill the sandwich with some kind of cream or ganache or whatever. 

The name is so similar because they have the same origin way back in Italy when both were made with ground almonds and then evolved in separate ways to become distinctly different treats.

1. Captions and Subtitles Are Not the Same

In 2022, a survey of 1,200 people determined that 50% of us are watching TV with the captions on, which is pretty significant. So what makes subtitles so appealing? There could be several things from poor sound mixing to bad speaker placement. But it’s also worth remembering that subtitles and captions are different things even though people use the words interchangeably.

Subtitles are added to movies by the filmmakers many times and sometimes later by distributors if they’re being made available in other language markets. They are designed to translate dialogue from one language to another so you know what the characters are saying.

Captions, on the other hand, are designed for people who are hard of hearing so they can read the dialogue regardless of language. These are what most people are turning on now to follow along because it’s just too hard to understand what people are saying on TV and no one seems keen on fixing it.

It’s been said that far too many of us, especially today, live in our own bubbles. If you only limit your experience to one media source, one kind of cuisine, or one genre of movie, then you’re missing out on so much. It also skews your understanding of anything outside your bubble and makes you think maybe those things are less prominent or less popular than they really are. Sometimes you can be convinced something is very rare and obscure when the exact opposite is true. 

10. Bioluminescence May Be The Most Common Kind of Communication on Earth.

As humans, we tend to be a little biased towards our own species when it comes to something like communication. We’re the only species that has language, after all, clearly, we’re masters of communication. But language and communication are not the exact same thing. 

As much as speech or the written word may seem like the most common form of communication in the world, there’s compelling evidence that it’s not the case. Thanks to the deepest, darkest depths of the ocean and all the life that exists down where the sun never reaches, there is a more commonly used tool to communicate – bioluminescence. While it seems weird and obscure to us on the surface, that’s just because it exists in a world we don’t spend a lot of time in.

Research has shown that “76% of creatures in the water column and 45% of those living on the bottom” have found a way to make their light shine in a way that communicates meaning to others. 

Light signals generated by creatures that have never even seen the sun can be used to hunt prey and let others know about prey. Some fish will even produce light on the spectrum that is invisible to their prey fish so they can hunt while literally keeping their dinner in the dark. 

Luminescence can also identify potential mates, warn off predators, and most anything that non-light displays might do for creatures that live where natural light is available. Numbers are always a little bit sketchy when you’re dealing with things that live so far removed from us but it’s been deemed potentially the most common form of communication in the world. 

9. Sweethearting Is One of the Most Common Kinds of Retail Theft

Retail theft losses were $112 billion in 2022. That’s a lot of loot missing from Walmart shelves. But retail losses do come in more forms than just someone smuggling Goldfish crackers out of the self-checkout. Shoplifting accounts for a lot of retail theft, but almost equally popular is sweethearting.

In 2018, the National Retail Federation determined that employee theft was responsible for 33.2% of retail losses annually. A sizeable chunk of that is what’s called sweethearting. So the employee doesn’t actually steal the item from work. Instead, a friend or family member comes in to buy it and the employee either discounts it without permission or gives it to their friend for free. 

According to a survey on the practice, 67% of employees admitted to doing it in the two months before the survey and the cost has been estimated to reach as high as $80 million.  

8. Walking is the Most Common Leisure Activity 

Do you like to go for walks? There’s a sort of reputation that walking, one of the most simple and mundane things a person can do, is the realm of old and boring people. There’s a stereotype about senior citizen mall walkers, for instance. And many seniors indeed enjoy walking malls for the ease, amenities, and safety of doing so. But walking is a lot more popular than all that.

Walking is literally the most common physical activity for adults in America. In some ways, it’s so obvious that it seems easy to overlook. If you think about your favorite physical activities, you might be inclined to overlook walking as, for many it’s as commonplace as breathing or blinking, but that’s kinda the point. People who do nothing else are still walking. 

While transportation makes up 29% of the purpose behind walking, 50% of people reported doing it as a leisure activity in 2010. The CDC stats claimed it as high as 65% for women and 62% for men by 2015.

7. The $100 Bill is the Most Common Form of US Currency

If you still use cash to go shopping, you know that a lot of stores won’t accept one hundred dollar bills. This has been an issue for years and one reason is that hundred-dollar bills are popular with counterfeiters so stores don’t want the risk. 

For most people, this isn’t a problem because, when you do have cash, how often are you carrying hundreds? Well, statistically, they’re the bills you should carry because they’re the most common form of currency in the US.

In 2017, the $100 bill surpassed the $1 bill as the most widely circulated note. If you’re not seeing a correlation in your wallet, fear not. The second half of this fact is that most of the $100 bills are circulating outside of America. American hundreds are huge in other countries, especially for use in black market deals and other criminal enterprises. They’re small, super light, easy to transport, and easy to hide while also being high value. They’re perfect for all your legitimate and illegitimate cash needs.

6. The Most Common Form of Entertainment for School Shooters is Written

School shootings have been a nightmare in the United States for far too long. Each time one occurs the potential reasons and solutions will be discussed by pundits and talking heads and surely most of us would agree nothing effective ever gets done.

In researching the people who commit these horrible crimes there is a firm belief in the public at large, thanks to media reporting and statements made by those same talking heads that certain media is to blame. In particular, video games often take the rap. Music and movies also have been getting the blame since Columbine in 1999. 

According to the FBI, about 27% of shooters exhibit interest in violent movies which is remarkably low. A more common interest? Writing. The largest group, 37%, showed interest in violence through their own writing including poetry and essays. So if you were looking for warning signs, you’d do well to worry less about Call of Duty and horror movies and more about journals and short stories.

5. Faro Was the Most Common Kind of Gambling in the Old West

If you’re a fan of Wild West movies and shows, then you’ve probably sat through more than your fair share of poker scenes. Even video games like Red Dead Redemption have poker as part of the storyline. Kenny Rogers famously gave us the song and movie combo of The Gambler. As such, the poker/Western thing has been linked in pop culture for decades now.

Ironically, poker was not all that popular in the Old West. The most popular game of the time was called faro, and in the modern world, it’s all but extinct. Faro was in every single gambling house and no other game, including poker and craps, has managed to match the popularity it once had.

According to the good folks at Bicycle cards, the game dates back to the court of Louis XIV. By the time of the Civil War, there were 150 gambling houses in Washington DC and Faro was the big draw at every single one. 

The game involves a banker against whom all other players play. Players bet on a card from ace up to king. The banker is then dealt a card and all players, as a whole, are dealt a card. If you bet on the banker card, you just lost. If you bet on the player card, you won. There’s a little more to it than that but, in a nutshell, that’s how it worked. It was fast, easy, and everyone loved it. 

4. An Herb Called Laser Was One of the Most Valuable and Common in Ancient Rome

Back before lasers meant “pew pew” they were an herb in ancient Rome. It may not even be a living thing anymore as it seems to have been harvested to extinction. But once upon a time, laser was everywhere and in everything. 

Also called silphium, the plant was a wild crop that grew near modern-day Libya. For years it was the region’s biggest export and made the city that harvested it one of the wealthiest in the Mediterranean.

Caesar kept 1,500 pounds of resin from the plant in Rome’s treasury and it was worth its weight in silver. It was apparently used as medicine, as a seasoning for food, for perfume, and basically anything you could think of doing with a plant. And because of that widespread use with no consideration for sustainability, it was harvested right into extinction.

3. Plasma is the Most Common Form of Matter

If you’re of a certain age, you were taught that matter comes in three forms; solid, liquid, and gas. Later, science classes taught that there’s a fourth form called plasma. So, there are four kinds of matter. Unless you took more advanced science, then there’s degenerate matter, Bose-Einstein condensate, and quark-gluon plasma. But that’s it—seven kinds of matter. Okay, there may be closer to 30, but never mind those. Let’s stick with the top four.

If you have to decide which state of matter is most common, you might want to guess liquid. Lots of water on earth, right? But there’s also lots of solid and probably lots of gas it’s just hard to see. Lucky for you we’re not making you guess. The most common form of matter is plasma. You rarely see it sitting on the lawn, but there’s a lot of it out there. In fact, 99% of matter is believed to be plasma. 

Plasma is very similar to a gas, but it’s so hot that it strips away the bulk of the electrons and the rest is an ionized gas. It’s the stuff of stars and nebulas and all that bright, shiny space stuff we love in Star Trek and Star Wars. If you can see it in space, it’s probably plasma. Also, if you can’t see, it’s still probably plasma. 

2. Opus Number One Is the Most Common Hold Music

Have you ever heard that crazy, synthy hold music on the phone that has a soft percussive beat in the background? If you’ve ever been on hold, you absolutely have because that’s one of the most-heard pieces of music in the world. That hold music, the most common hold music in the world, is used by over 65 million Cisco corporate phones around the world. 

The music, called Opus No. 1, was written by a 16-year-old named Tim Carleton in his parent’s garage back in 1989. Some years later a friend of his was working at Cisco and remembered the track. He called Carleton up and asked if he’d be cool with letting the company use it as their hold music, and he was. Odds are he had no idea it would spread across the world and still be used decades later, but here we are. 

1. Lysol Was Once the Most Common Form of Suicide in Australia 

Suicide is a very serious issue and if you’re dealing with depression or other issues that make you want to self-harm then we absolutely encourage you to find someone you can trust to talk to and get help. 

Historically, there have been many ways people have gone about taking their own lives, and in the current world firearms are still the most popular method. About 52% of people use a gun to take their own life. But, as we said, methods have changed over time.

In Australia back in 1911, Lysol inexplicably became the most common choice for people looking to take their own lives. It was cheap, easy to obtain, and extremely toxic, all of which made it a simple option for anyone who wanted to follow through on the act.

We’ve done a list on mental illness in other animals, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. As it turns out, we’re nowhere near as unique as greedy religious nutjobs had your ancestors believe; we’re not even the only ones with religion.

10. Knowledge-sharing

Knowledge-sharing, especially from one generation to the next, put humans at the top of the food chain. It’s basically the definition of culture. It’s also found in other species. For example, baboons teach each other the best foraging routes; fledgling birds learn how to fly by watching their parents; and rats learn safe foods by smelling each other’s breath. There are countless other examples. Even fish have their “schools,” which, as it turns out, do better with experienced teachers. But it’s not just sociable species; solitary animals also show a basis for culture. Young tortoises, for instance, learn to navigate around new obstacles by watching others do it first.

Needless to say, as species go extinct, so do their cultures. The last surviving North Atlantic right whales—all but wiped out by human whalers—now lack the knowledge of their old ancestral feeding grounds, further endangering the species. That’s not to say culture is always a good thing, though. Sometimes, established ways of life fall out of kilter with the environment and a non-adaptive culture can lead a species to oblivion. Humans are finding this out the hard way.

9. Weird trends

In the age of TikTok, human trends are getting weirder all the time. But so are other animals’. White-faced capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica exhibit a number of unusual traditions, such as smelling each other’s fingers and, as a kind of game, biting off a clump of another monkey’s fur and holding it in the mouth while the other tries to get it back. Importantly, these traditions tend to be fleeting—usually lasting roughly a decade (similar to our own decade-long fads and fashions). They’re also pretty localized, so trends seen in one group may not be in the next.

Typically, these trends have no clear survival advantage. In fact, a new trend seen in one group of the Costa Rican capuchins actually posed a threat to their survival: inserting a long, dirty finger, right up to the first knuckle, into another monkey’s eye socket just above the eyeball. Those on the receiving end are clearly uncomfortable, wincing and batting their eyelids—but they don’t try to stop it. Actually, they encourage it and the behavior can last up to an hour. You might compare it to getting a tattoo or a piercing, but with nothing to show for the pain—except, perhaps, as one theorist thinks, a strengthening of social bonds.

8. Fashion

In addition to weird behavioral trends, we also find fashion in animals. Bearded vultures, whose feathers are white, apply make-up in the form of iron-rich soil. Like human fashions, this signifies status—with the older, more dominant birds wearing the most color.

There’s even evidence for fashion in fruit flies. One study found that virgin female fruit flies preferred green-dusted males after seeing other females mate with them.

Then there are the chimps who wear a single blade of grass in their ears. It started in 2010, when a chimpanzee in Zambia spontaneously stuck one in her ear and left it there. Despite it serving no obvious purpose—certainly no direct survival purpose—other chimps followed, then others, until four different groups were doing it.

7. Drug use

Drug use is everywhere in the animal kingdom. Jaguars in the Amazon independently seek out the DMT-containing yage vine used by humans to make ayahuasca; lemurs chew on narcotic millipedes; and dolphins get high on pufferfish before floating upside down in a daze staring at their own reflections.

In fact, non-human animals like drugs so much they’re willing to put up with the downsides. Bighorn sheep addicted to lichen, for instance, grind their teeth right down to the gums scraping their drug of choice from the rocks. Spider monkeys, drunk on fermented fruit, throw up and fall out of trees. And one intoxicated moose in Sweden had the opposite problem, getting stuck in a tree instead.

Animals also use drugs to cope with bad moods. In one famous study, rats kept in small cages with nothing to engage their curious minds were more likely to choose a sweetened morphine solution over water—and they drank themselves to death on the stuff. Even fruit flies turn to booze if they don’t find a mate.

6. Facial expressions

What could be more uniquely human than a smile or a frown, or any of the emotions we display? As it turns out, facial expressions are found in many other animals. Sheep, for example, not only show facial expressions, they recognize them too. Studies have shown their ability to distinguish between calm, startled, and fearful expressions in photos of other sheep. They can even tell humans apart by looking at their faces.

Domesticated dogs are also able to produce facial expressions. Wolves in the wild don’t have the same range of movement in their eyebrows, eyes, lips, and ears, which suggests an evolutionary (or selective breeding) pressure for interspecies (human-dog) communication.

5. Sense of humor

Did humans come up with laughter? It seems unlikely. According to some researchers, it evolved from the panting of play-fighting apes. The panting/laughing sound, as in humans, reassured others that the fight wasn’t serious. Tickle any great ape today and you’ll hear the same noise (assuming they’re in a good mood).

Some apes even show signs of a more complex sense of humor. The late Koko the Gorilla, who could use American Sign Language, once tied her trainer’s shoelaces together and made the sign for “chase.” Some researchers think a sense of humor is something all mammals have, while others think it’s inherent to all animals—even insects. After all, they say, we’re continually finding out they’re more intelligent than we thought and, as Darwin observed, animal intelligence varies mainly in degree, not in kind. So far most research into non-human humor has focused on the great apes, but it’ll be interesting to see where it leads.

4. Complex language

Koko the Gorilla’s humorous use of language also shows a grasp of complexity. For example, when asked to list things that are hard, she said both “rock” and “work.” In other words, she understood the word had two meanings.

Surprisingly, though, the most complex language besides our own isn’t to be found in great apes—or even the mammals of the sea—but in prairie dogs. These highly social animals have different noises, or “words,” for different predators. Their warning call for coyotes, for example, is different to their warning call for hawks, humans, and so on. But that’s not all. They also have “describing words” for a predator’s characteristics, allowing them to say how big they are and what color and so on. This means they can form sentences. And in captivity, under laboratory conditions, they can also describe things they’ve never seen before.

So far we’ve only scratched the surface of prairie dog language. It’s one thing to match the sounds and behavior with predators, but prairie dogs are continually chatting. When their behavior doesn’t change significantly (e.g. running and hiding) in response to these noises (like ours generally doesn’t when we’re talking), it’s practically impossible to know what they’re saying.

3. Storytelling

Surely storytelling sets us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom? Stories are to humans as honey is to bees, right? From history books to video games, science to religion, telling stories is our sole occupation. As it turns out, though, many other animals do the same—including bees. The bees’ famous waggle dance, in which they use physical movements to communicate the location of food, includes information about distance, direction, difficulty of route, and the value of the prize. However you look at it, they’re sharing a narrative. And if insects can do it, why not mammals? 

It has been argued that dogs are constructing a narrative when they paw at their food bowl or scratch at the door to go out. They’re referring to problems and solutions and, in the case of wanting to go for a walk, to other locations as well.

There’s no reason to think of non-human storytelling as inferior to our own. It’s doubtful the average joe could do the waggle dance, for instance. In fact, some animals may be much better at storytelling than we could ever dream of: According to some, dolphins may use their sonar capabilities to tell stories in 3D by projecting sono-pictorial holograms for each other.

2. Spirituality

According to Jane Goodall, chimps appear to feel awe. In the course of her research she saw them swaying rhythmically to a waterfall then sitting down to watch it. This of course has features of human spirituality, but it’s impossible to say it’s the same. Other chimpanzee behaviors, for example, such as throwing gathered stones to leave markings on trees almost suggest a religion… or they might just enjoy it.

What we do know, however, is that other animals ceremonialize death. Elephants perform parades when an elephant dies, with the corpse drawing not only its own herd but members of other herds too. Interestingly, they stay close to their fallen even when a corpse attracts predators. It calls to mind the kind of courage that humans often draw from their faith, or convictions.

Dolphins do it too. In the year 2000, the corpse of a female found on a seabed near Japan was accompanied at all times by two males. Her guardians surfaced only for air. And when divers tried to remove the corpse, the males fought them off on two separate days. By the third day, the corpse had disappeared. In another case, dolphins were observed guarding the corpse of an infant and chasing off seabirds even as it rotted.

Chimps show the same kind of reverence. When a baby dies, its mother will continue to care for it, carrying and grooming it for days, weeks, or even months afterward. She’ll only stop once the corpse has decayed beyond all recognition. Other apes, including gorillas, baboons, macaques, and lemurs, also have death rituals. So do birds; crows, jays, and others often gather in trees around their fallen, apparently to mourn.

1. Cooking

Fire helped humans to dominate the Earth. As well as allowing us to live in freezing environments, it opened up our food options and sped up digestion. No other animal cooks food with fire—at least as far as we know. But some are definitely capable of it. One bonobo learned how to start a fire using fuel and matches provided by humans, which it then used to cook burgers and marshmallows—before teaching this skill to his son. Admittedly, the bonobo was repeatedly shown the film Quest for Fire to put the idea in his mind, but he still picked up the skill for himself. And, in any case, many humans today can’t start a fire even in the most favorable conditions.

Of course, there’s a lot more to cooking than fire. But humans aren’t alone in food preparation—whether for taste or digestion. Some Japanese macaques wash sweet potatoes before they eat them, and prefer to use salt water for flavor. Pigs wash their food too; they’ve been seen washing dirty apple chunks in a stream. Shrikes, meanwhile, impale their prey on thorns or barbed wire and allow them to degrade before eating. Capuchin monkeys leave palm nuts in the sun to make them easier to crack. Interestingly, bigheaded ants have a more advanced form of cooking: putting food on their larvae’s bellies, for them to spit enzymes onto it and thereby make it easier to digest.

Do you think cancel culture is a real thing? Have you gone out of your way to either protest a ban or take part in one? Sometimes it’s good to exercise your right to free speech and share your thoughts on something you think is an injustice. That could mean protesting or just no longer supporting a person or business. Whatever works for you. That said, there have also been some pretty bizarre bans over the years that seem, if not egregious, at least pretty hard to justify. 

10. A Teen Boy Was Banned From Saying the Word “Grass”

Free speech is a concept that not everyone fully understands. Spend any time in an online forum and you’ll realize some people don’t understand that free speech doesn’t mean you can’t suffer the consequences for what you say, especially in the private or business world.

Free speech means you may express yourself without censorship. But in more specific terms it usually means “from the government.” That means if you support horrible causes and your boss fires you for it, then that’s your fault for not keeping your mouth shut. But at least the government didn’t do it, because that would be wrong. And yet it happens.

In 2014, a teenager was ordered, in court, to never say the word grass again, at least in England or Wales. Go on, take a second with that one. 

The boy was accused of a laundry list of offenses which include the serial harassment of his neighbors. He accused them of being police informers, he’d curse out people using foul language, cause property damage, steal, and carry weapons such as knives and bats in an intimidating way. This went on for over two years, apparently.

The word grass apparently has an alternate meaning, which is police informant. So we have to assume the kid was yelling this at his neighbors so much that, above and beyond the intimidation, the swearing, the threats, the vandalism and so on, his use of the word “grass” was so over the top the court had to order him to stop. If he was caught saying it again, he could be arrested and sent to a facility.

9. The Stanford Marching Band Has Been Banned From Dozens of Places

You can thank the American Pie movies for changing everyone’s opinion on band kids back in the 1990s but real school bands have been stirring the pot longer than you think and being far more offensive than Alyson Hannigan ever imagined.

The Stanford marching band is the most banned marching band in sports history. That sounds both impressive and confusing and, rest assured, it’s both. The band has a long-standing tradition of playing pranks, and much worse, to where many schools have banned them from attending sporting events. Stanford is one of those schools.

The story dates back to the 1960s when a beloved band leader was fired. The students took it poorly and his replacement ended up giving control to the students themselves. Thus, as they say, the inmates got control of the asylum. Performances have focused on things like Jimmy Carter’s hemorrhoids and flying genitalia among so many other controversial ideas.

The band was booed repeatedly at the Rose Bowl for things as simple as playing kitchen sinks instead of instruments or parading a cow around for no apparent reason.  They were barred from away games for 2015-2016 thanks to violations of sexual harassment policies, drug violations, hazing and more. They’ve been banned from Notre Dame since 1930 and from Disneyland since 1972. The Governor of Oregon tried to ban them from the state once. The list just goes on and on.

8. Sesame Street Was Once Banned in Mississippi for Showing Black & White Kids Together

Sesame Street should be, arguably, one of the least controversial things ever. For decades the show has been dedicated to helping children understand letters, numbers, the concept of sharing and other basic, wholesome things. And yet that was too much for the people of Mississippi back in the year 1970, shortly after its debut.

What horrible thing could have happened on everyone’s favorite puppet-filled street that caused the State Commission for Educational Television to actually ban the program? Racial integration. 

In a 3-2 vote, the commission voted to kick the show off of TV because it showed black children and white children playing together. According to one member “the state has enough problems to face without adding to them,” whatever the hell that means in this context. The father-in-law of one of the commission members was the founder of an organization devoted to maintaining segregation in schools. 

You may be surprised to learn none of the commission members spoke on record about the ban. However, once it became a national headline, the state was embarrassed by the backlash over the choice and quickly changed their mind, suddenly finding all kinds of reasons to love the show. 

7. All Quiet on the Western Front Was Banned For Opposing Reasons

Movies and books get banned far more often than they should. This is usually because a group of random people let their own biases determine what they want other people to see and know. The attitude is much like a toddler who demands candy and refuses to acknowledge the idea that their whims are not what controls the universe.

One of the most remarkable bans ever was faced by Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. It may be the only film banned for diametrically opposed reasons in completely separate bannings. Germany banned it for being anti-Germany while Poland ended up banning it for being pro-Germany. If that doesn’t show you people read their own biases into a narrative, nothing will. 

The truth was that it’s just a staunchly anti-war film; it has nothing to do with the countries represented, but wartime audiences, and in particular governments, weren’t open to that interpretation.

6. An Episode of Peppa Pig Was Banned in Australia

If you know nothing about Australia, you know you need to be careful with the wildlife there. It seems like nearly everything in Australia will happily kill you. That may be an exaggeration, and of Australia’s 10,000 spider species, only a handful are truly dangerous with just two being deadly to adults. But kids are another matter, and some of the less venomous ones can be more dangerous to children. 

Because of the potential risk to children, Peppa Pig ended up being on the receiving end of a nationwide ban thanks to a spider-themed episode. The episode was meant to teach kids that spiders aren’t really dangerous and can’t hurt you, which is a bad message to send in a place where the opposite is true.

The show, which is British, involved the little cartoon pig befriending a spider called Mr. Skinny Legs. And in Britain the message was probably fine as Liverpool has never been a hot spot for bird-eating tarantulas and black widows. But since Australia can’t offer the same safe assurances, the episode had to go.

5. Australian Parliament Tried to Ban the Word “Mate” 

Speaking of Australia, one of the other well-known stereotypes from the land down under focuses on their charming turns of phrase. In particular, the prevalence of the word “mate” in everyday Aussie conversation. 

Back in 2005, the Australian government banned the use of the word mate in Parliament, at least by staff in the building. Even the Prime Minister thought this was a bad idea but some unnamed “senior civil servant” who was in charge of Parliamentary staff issued an order that the word be stricken from the workplace. Specifically “G’day mate,” the most Australian phrase ever, was ousted. 

The ban was apparently the result of two complaints that staff were not as polite as they could have been which seems to show the people didn’t feel “g’day mate” was a polite thing to say despite it being a literal greeting. The ban was lifted in less than a day.

4. Myanmar/Burma Banned The Simpsons Over The Colors

At this point it seems like The Simpsons has been on TV since the Dark Ages. It’s courted its fair share of controversy over the years, in particular back at the beginning when “eat my shorts” was offensive to some more sensitive types. 

The most unusual reaction to The Simpsons, which resulted in the movie being banned outright, came from Myanmar/Burma. When the movie was released in 2007, Burma was in the midst of a conflict with the National League of Democracy, whose flag was red and yellow. To avoid conflict and not be mistaken for showing support or inciting violence, the country banned The Simpsons because of their similar color palette. 

3. Dunking was Banned in College Ball for 10 Years 

College sports have a long and wild history of rules and regulations that sound a lot like the whims or organized crime bosses, but that’s neither here nor there. We’re just going to focus on how Kareem Abdul-Jabbar got slam dunking banned for a decade.

The ban dated back to 1967 when Lew Alcindor, who later became Kareem, was dominating the court. The man stood an impressive 7-foot-2 and could dunk like it was his job, which it sort of was. In his first game he broke the UCLA scoring record and people immediately hated him for changing the game, likely in no small part because of his race.

Dunking was a newish phenomenon, despite dating back to the 30s, and not everyone liked it, either. The feeling was that this was cheating and putting shorter or less skilled players at a disadvantage. That’s like saying if you hit a ball too far in baseball you’re ruining it for the crappy hitters, but whatever. The league banned it altogether.

The ban came on the heels of Jabbar and the UCLA Bruins dominating the league tournament. Two days after he dunked his way to the top, the move was forbidden,. 

2. Marlon Brando was Frequently Banned From Chat Rooms

Marlon Brando is still considered one of the greatest actors of all time but he was also known to be wildly eccentric, especially in his later years. Just look into the behind the scenes stories about him on the set of The Island of Dr. Moreau. 

In his later years, Brando apparently discovered online chat rooms and was a big fan. And, just like the rest of the people in the world, he flamed the hell out of strangers. This was in the infancy of the online chat phenomenon, in AOL chat rooms. He logged in anonymously and engaged strangers in conversations about politics, a mistake people still make on the internet to this very day.

When people got on his nerves, Brando would curse them out, resulting in him getting banned. Apparently this would be the culmination of hours of conversation. This was something that happened on a regular basis and there are people who can attest to meeting and befriending Brando in these rooms. 

1. The UK Banned a Man From Having Sex Because His IQ Was Too Low

How do you feel about human rights violations? This one’s a doozy and it comes out of left field. In the year 2011, a court in the UK ruled that a man could not legally have sex because his IQ was too low. The 41-year-old man wasn’t a criminal, he wasn’t being banned because he’d done terrible things. Instead, he has a learning disability, and an IQ measured at 48, which is considered quite low. 

The concern came from the man’s local council who referred to him as having a “vigorous sex drive.” His housing is provided through some sort of government program and he had a boyfriend who lived with him so they were aware he was having sex. It was ruled that he could not understand the potential consequences of his actions, in particular health risks, and so he was no longer allowed to have sex. 

In Britain, a Court of Protection may decide for people deemed to lack the intelligence to do so for themselves. This can even include forced abortions or being taken off of life support.

Who hasn’t at some point dreamed of being able to fly? It would certainly beat having to sit in economy on a plane. But flying is a very complex thing for an animal to do especially if, like humans, they lack wings. Perhaps we should temper our dreams and settle for something simpler like levitation.

Many people throughout history have claimed to have been able to levitate. Here are ten of the greatest floaters around.

Top 10 Astonishing Miracles

10 Saint Joseph of Cupertino

Guiseppe Desa, born in a stable in 1603, did not seem to have the natural makings of a saint. Poor and notably uneducated he was rejected by the Franciscan Friars when he attempted to become a monk. Eventually the Capuchins took him in but Desa continued to experience visions and moments of ecstasy that had happened from childhood. These moments of mystical wonder saw him drop plates he was carrying and fail to do even the simplest of tasks. Thought unfit for work he was ejected and only later found a place in another monastery taking the name of Joseph.

His visions continued. He would “stand fixed as a statue, insensible as a stone, but nothing could move him.” Sticking him with pins or burning him could not make him move. But Joseph’s miracles really began in 1630 when, during a procession, he “suddenly soared into the sky where he remained hovering over the crowd.” At other times he floated in the air during Mass and during an audience with the Pope.

A century after his death Joseph was made a saint by the Catholic church and became Saint Joseph of Cupertino – patron saint of aviation and astronauts.

9 Colin Evans

Not all people who claim to be able to levitate enjoy a stellar reputation. In the 19th and early 20th century there was a craze for psychics. These people claimed to have many supernatural powers. They could speak to the dead, summon ectoplasm, and even levitate. Colin Evans was one of these psychics.

His claim to fame was his ability to float out of his chair. This claim was somewhat dubious because he mostly performed his feats of flight in a room so dark that the audience could not see him. The existing photos of Evans in flight were taken by flash photography and do indeed show Evans rising out of his chair.

Unfortunately Evans was outed as a fraud. In the photos of Evans levitating you can see that he is holding on to a wire. To make his audience believe he was levitating Evans simply leapt out of his chair and triggered the flash on his camera. In the brief flash of light his audience would see Evans apparently hovering in mid-air. Not everyone who saw his act was impressed. One audience was so underwhelmed that they asked for their money back.

8 St Gerard Majella

Levitation is a surprisingly common ability for Catholic saints. When a person asked St Padre Pio (the 20th century priest with stigmata) what it was like to walk on air the holy man replied “I can assure you, my child, it’s just like walking on the floor.”

St Gerard Majella packed a lot of miracles into his 29 years on Earth. He is said to have raised a boy from the dead, been able to read people’s souls, and made bread and wheat multiply by blessing it. But his most impressive miracles were his levitations.

People who stopped by to visit Majella often found him several feet off the ground. The holy man was nothing if not polite about his floating however. Once when he was holding up a dinner because of his levitation he told a priest “Please do not wait for me. I do not wish to inconvenience you.” The priest wished to remember how high Majella had been levitating so he marked the spot on the wall.

Sometimes Majella could be seen travelling nearly a mile by levitation or floating up like a feather caught in the wind.

7 Levitation as a Protest

For the hippies of the 1960s the Pentagon in Arlington was one of the most evil sites in the world as it was the place from which wars were planned and carried out around the world. As well as being symbolically evil there were those that thought it was also literally evil. In 1967 a group decided that the best way to demonstrate their beliefs was to surround the building, perform an exorcism, and “raise the Pentagon 300 feet in the air.”

On the day of the protest many gods ancient and modern were called on to drive out the evil that infested the building. Bands started playing and encouraged the crowd to shout “Out, demons, out!” Abbie Hoffman, the man behind the idea of floating the Pentagon, got couples to perform acts of love around the building in hopes of cancelling out the hate. Flowers handed out to the attendees ended up in the barrels of the guns held by the soldiers protecting the building and became iconic images of protest.

And then the moment came – and nothing happened. The physical building failed to lift off but for some the ritual was a success. Poet Allen Ginsberg said “The Pentagon was symbolically levitated in people’s minds in the sense that it lost its authority which had been unquestioned and unchallenged until then.”

6 Yogi Pullavar

Hindu gurus have for centuries claimed to have the ability to levitate. In Sanskrit this is known as ‘dardura-siddhi’ – ‘frog-power’ – or ‘laghiman’ – ‘lightness.’ Some like Sai Baba are said to have routinely levitated while they were sleeping, but for many it is a power that only manifests with deep meditation or prayer.

This is not a supernatural power that only occurred in the deep past. Some Hindu mystics have demonstrated levitation in front of cameras, though not to everyone’s satisfaction. In 1936 Subbayah Pullavar is said to have levitated for four minutes in front of a large crowd and the photos of the event were published in London.

Pullavar arrived at the site and entered into a tent. When the time came for the levitation his disciples removed the tent and revealed Pullavar hovering horizontally in the air with one hand resting lightly on a staff. After four minutes Pullavar decided to come down, but to do so he had the tent put over him again before emerging back on the ground.

For some this has all the marks of a hoax. Indeed if you visit any major city you might see street performers appearing to float – but all of them have their hand on a staff or other item. A concealed support is really holding them up.

5 David Blaine

In 1996 the magician David Blaine was introduced to the world with his first TV special called ‘Street Magic.’ His act involved strangers on the street being amazed by his trickery. The one that seemed to blow his audiences minds the most was when Blaine spontaneously raised himself into the air.

The people who saw Blaine hovering an inch or two above the ground seem truly baffled about how he could have done it. But a quick view of the trick gives some hints. Blaine always moves away from the audience and turns to the side. This puts the camera at an odd angle but we see his body move up and the astounded reaction of the crowd. How has Blaine floated?

The answer lies in the Balducci trick. By turning to the side one of the magician’s feet is hidden from view. This allows the magician to use the hidden foot to raise their body and appear to levitate. Or Blaine really might be able to levitate and just doesn’t like cameras being pointed at his feet.

4 Daniel Dunglas Home

The Victorians were pretty obsessed with the dead. Spiritual mediums were all the rage and seances where the dead were contacted could make mystics a fortune. One of the most successful and famous was Daniel Dunglas Home. Born in 1833 he claimed to have uncanny powers from a young age. Travelling to America Home won many admirers and turned many sceptics into believers when they saw his performances – which sometimes included him levitating up the ceiling.

Not everyone was impressed. The writer William Makepeace Thackeray thought Home’s act was “dire humbug.” Harry Houdini called him “the forerunner of the mediums whose forte is fleecing by presuming on the credulity of the public.” Despite these opinions many people continued to believe in Home’s abilities and he was never publicly debunked.

In one famous event Home was seen to float out of a third-floor window during a trance only for him to come hovering back into the building by another window.

3 World peace by levitation

Many people find a natural peace by pursuing meditation. A group known as the Transcendental Meditation movement, founded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, believe that they can achieve not only world peace but they can do it while levitating.

“In the silent, self-referral level of their consciousness, they introduce the technique for Yogic Flying, according to the specific procedure they’ve learned, and their bodies spontaneously lift up. At the same time, they experience great clarity of consciousness, energy, exhilaration, and unboundedness.” So says The Yogic Flying Club. Other people have described the act of Yogic Flying as “bouncing on your butt.”

Indeed to outsiders it may look as if practitioners are hopping about on their buttocks but to the meditators they really are levitating – and helping to bring about universal peace. Even the Maharishi knows his limits however. In 2005 after the invasion of Iraq he told his followers to stop flying in the United Kingdom. “The maharishi explained to us that the poison in this country was so concentrated that he felt it was no use our continuing to nurture creativity and intelligence here.”

2 Buddha

Levitation really has stopped a war however, at least if you believe the tale of Buddha floating in the air across the Rohini river. At the time the river was dammed and shared by the Sakiya and Koliya peoples. However when a drought threatened both sides wanted to claim the entire river to irrigate their crops and leave the other side’s to rot in the field. Neither side would budge and abuse soon turned to threats, which soon turned to violence. Armies lined up on either side of the Rohini.

The Buddha was meditating at this time and psychically saw that there would be much bloodshed if he did not go to them. He levitated from his quiet spot and travelled to the Rohini where he floated cross-legged above the water. The Buddha asked both sides how much water was worth. When they said “Very little,” he asked them how much human blood was worth. “It is beyond price,” they replied. Realising they were about to kill each other over a bit of water both sides backed down and shared the river.

One another occasion the Buddha needed to cross the Ganges. When the ferryman asked for a fee to carry him across Buddha remarked that he had no money – and so levitated across the river.

1 Simon Magus

Miracles abounded in the ancient world but there was a problem with them. How could you tell which ones were miracles sent by God and which ones were powered by Demons? One case from the Book of Acts shows that resolving this issue could be fatal.

Simon Magus, or Simon the Sorcerer, is said to have had a large following because of the many amazing feats he performed in front of crowds. When he saw the followers of Jesus, Peter and John, Simon wanted to receive the Holy Ghost and its powers for himself. He offered to pay money for them but was rebuffed. That’s as far as the Bible goes on Simon but later texts give more explicit accounts of his miracles.

In the apocryphal Acts of Peter, Simon and St Peter (then already the first Pope) go head-to-head in a miracle-off. We are told “when Simon entered into Rome, he amazed the multitudes by flying.” Saint Peter then worries that Simon will lead people away from faith in Jesus if he keeps levitating so he prays “O Lord, and let him fall from the height and be disabled; and let him not die but be brought to nought, and break his leg in three places. And he fell from the height and brake his leg in three places.”

Simon immediately falls from the sky and breaks his leg in three places. Despite Peter’s prayer that Simon not die however some doctors come and cut Simon to try and treat his wounds, killing the sorcerer. “And so Simon the angel of Satan came to his end.”

10 Amazing Feats Performed By Saints

You’ve probably heard of many different kinds of allergies that plague people internationally. More than 50 million people suffer from them in the United States alone.^[1] From tree nut to shellfish allergies, these afflictions can become incredibly dangerous if not handled with care. It’s more than likely someone in your family or friend group has had to see an allergy doctor. Usually, they’re made to carry about an Epi-Pen, or the more recent Auvi-Q, just in case of a severe allergic reaction. The worst allergic reactions can send people into anaphylactic shock, involving shortness of breath, vomiting, fainting, low blood pressure, and even the possibility of death.

Yet, there are still many allergies that are not among the ones you always hear about—ones that seem so random that it makes you wonder where they came from. Maybe you personally have dealt with one of these or know someone with one. While food allergies tend to be more common, a lot of these uncommon ones are known as physical urticarias, which is a fancy way of saying the allergen causes itchy, red hives and rashes on the skin. Physical urticarias tend to have to do with physical stimulants—heat, cold, exercise, and many others. Beyond that, there are other allergies to everyday objects that seem like they’d impede one’s ability to live normally. This is a list of ten of those allergies—ones you never even thought could exist.

10 Cold Urticaria

Commonly known as an allergy to the cold, this affliction causes those allergic to it to break out in hives due to temperature drops. For some, all it takes is diving into a freezing-cold pool to set them off into anaphylaxis. This allergy can become quite dangerous really quickly. Cold exposure leads to the development of itchy rashes and hives.^[2] The reactions to the cold can vary, from very minor hives-based reactions to full-on fainting and shock. Swelling of the tongue or throat is also possible in this allergy.

Usually, this allergy occurs more often in young adults and can be the result of an underlying health condition. It also can be genetic, so multiple people in the same family might have it. Despite this, it still can be treated with over-the-counter allergy medication.

9 Dermographism

A reaction which only affects around four percent of the population is dermographism, which can be seen as being allergic to touch. That sounds wild, but you’ve probably seen the effects of this one before if you’re active on the Internet. It allows those afflicted to pretty much write words on their skin with their fingernail and have them stay visible.

The word “dermographism” essentially means “skin writing.”^[3] In reality, it’s a rash that appears due to touch and that eventually will go away within a half-hour. Dermographism can also be controlled with antihistamines, which can help deal with the irritation of the hives.

8 Solar Urticaria

Another physical urticaria, this allergy causes people to develop hives when exposed to natural sunlight.^[4] This definitely would be tough for summer people, as it’d make going out in the sun quite difficult. A reaction can also develop from an artificial light source that’s emitting UV rays. This affliction is very rare as a whole but does seem to start most commonly in one’s mid-thirties.

Mostly, people with this issue can avoid allergic reactions by using sun protection strategies or by taking antihistamines. The goal should be to minimize sun exposure and prevent rashes from appearing. In addition, patients can sometimes undergo phototherapy or photochemotherapy, which can help them become used to sun exposure, especially if their allergy is really severe and makes life extremely difficult.

7 Exercise Allergy

Exercising is hard enough without having to worry about going into anaphylaxis. Unfortunately, some people can have severe allergic reactions simply from exercising too much. In these situations, they can go into anaphylaxis after going to the gym or partaking in other types of physical activity. Interestingly enough, there are different factors that can play into this reaction, including food, medications, and weather conditions. Sometimes, eating certain foods before going out to exercise can lead to anaphylaxis, which is known as food-dependent exercise-induced anaphylaxis.^[5]

This condition can come on unexpectedly and can become so severe as to be lethal. Even so, it’s still possible to treat it with epinephrine.

6 Aquagenic Urticaria

Some people wonder if water’s wet, while others question whether water allergies are a legitimate thing. There’s still no solid answer to the first question, but it’s been shown that water allergies are real. Scientifically known as aquagenic urticaria, this allergy can cause a hives reaction when someone afflicted goes into water.^[6] This sounds unbelievable, since we are constantly surrounded and mainly made up of water.

Doctors still aren’t sure how exactly this allergy came about, but similar to the other physical urticarias, it can be treated with antihistamines.

5 Cockroach Allergy

Cockroaches are gross enough without also being allergens. For an unfortunate few, however, being allergic to them is a real thing to deal with. Usually, it leads to asthmatic symptoms due to the proteins that come off the cockroaches’ bodies.^[7] A way to deal with such an allergy is by keeping one’s home clean and getting rid of any dead cockroaches because even they can cause an allergic reaction. Surprisingly, people who are allergic to shellfish can sometimes also be allergic to cockroaches, as they give off a similar protein.

People with a cockroach allergy can even find themselves with hives simply from touching a place where a cockroach walked or pooped. On the upside, it gives people with this allergy even more reason to avoid cockroaches at all costs.

4 Artificial Nail Allergy

Artificial nails are quite popular and trendy. They look cute and come in all different shapes, sizes, and colors. Getting your nails done is something fun to do, but for some people, it can lead to complications. For some, the adhesives cause swelling, redness, and pain at the nail beds.^[8]

The cause of these symptoms is an allergy to the chemical ethyl methacrylate monomer. It’s often used in acrylic nails and is FDA-approved. It’s better for people with this allergy to stick to easier, simple nail polish or even go bare rather than suffer the effects of such an allergy.

3 Nickel Allergy

Change, in general, tends to be annoying for most people—what can you even do with a bunch of coins? For some, it goes farther than just that. In particular, people with nickel allergies cannot hold coins high in nickel content without getting a bad rash and itching. Sometimes, blisters can even appear and last for weeks.^[9] This goes for more than just simple coins—people with nickel allergies might have trouble wearing jewelry containing the metal. It can become problematic, especially when trying to buy something cute to wear with an outfit.

This condition is a lot more common in females and in people with other sensitivities to metals. The best way to deal with it is by simply avoiding prolonged exposure to the metal, so as to not have such a negative reaction. Fortunately, hypoallergenic jewelry is made just for these types of situations.

2 Raw Fruit And Vegetable Allergy

While food allergies are common, raw fruit and vegetable allergies are a bit different. People afflicted cannot eat either raw fruits or veggies without having their throat begin to swell up. The allergic reaction can actually be quite severe. This allergy is also known as oral allergy syndrome, and some of the negatively impacting fruits can include pears, peaches, apricots, apples, kiwis, and many others. On the vegetable spectrum, the most common allergies are to celery, carrots, parsley, coriander, and more.^[10]

The reason for such an allergy is related to hay fever and people who have trouble with pollen. It’s actually estimated that 70 percent of people with pollen allergies are susceptible to a raw fruit or vegetable allergy. The body recognizes a protein in certain raw fruits and vegetables as being similar to pollen molecules, causing the severe allergic reaction.

1 Sweat Allergy

Yes, you read that right. There are people in the world who genuinely are allergic to their own sweat. This condition, known as cholinergic urticaria, is due to an increase in body temperature, which usually results in sweating. People with this allergy can even suffer a reaction from a simple hot bath or spicy foods. Sufferers tend to only experience hives but can also feel fever-like symptoms and have trouble breathing when exposed to the allergen.

Similar to cold urticaria, the main cause for the allergic reaction is a change of temperature, this time from cold to hot. This would lead to a feeling of a heat rash and other negative symptoms.^[11]

+ Allergy Medicine Allergy

Ironically, there are people who happen to be allergic to allergy medication. This can become extremely bothersome, especially when you’re attempting to treat another allergy, only to find yourself faced with twice as many issues as before. In reality, people aren’t allergic to the medication as a whole, just certain dyes and chemicals used in it. While the reaction to allergy medication can be so severe that it’s life-threatening, there are ways to treat this allergy by going to a professional. One way consists of being treated with allergy shots without any preservatives or dyes.^[12] Still, this is probably the most annoying of all the allergies on the list and also the most frustrating.

There are still plenty of other allergies that are more or less common and create a lot of issues for people affected by them. This list only covered a few intriguing ones. So many people are affected by allergies, most of which can merely be treated, not cured. It’s important for people with allergies to stay safe—to keep their Epi-Pens on them and avoid exposing themselves to whatever might cause an allergic reaction. Although it sometimes sucks to have to deal with such irritating allergies, it’s the only way to keep everyone safe and healthy. Hopefully, with our current rate of technological advancement, research will reveal a way to cure allergies that have plagued the human race for centuries. In the meantime, all we can do is wait.

Julia is a college student inspired to write this because of her personal affliction of cold urticaria.

The world is noisy, so noisy in fact that even things you thought were silent make all kinds of boisterous noises. Some are strange, others terrifying. Here are 10 of the most unexpected.

10. You, when you think you’re being silent

Even master meditators and expert ninjas can’t quite silence the body — at least according to science. It’s always making a racket. You just can’t hear it because, similar to noise-canceling headphones, the brain tunes it out to keep self and other distinct.

Neuroscientists studied this mechanism in electric fish, most species of which have an electrosensory lobe that receives electrical signals both from inside the fish and from its surroundings. It’s able to tell them apart by subtracting electrical signals matching inputs relating to the fish’s behavior, such as motor signals. A swish of its own tail as it swims, for instance, will not register in the same way as something else swishing its tail right by it. There’s a similar mechanism in mammalian brains too, called the dorsal cochlear nucleus (DCN), which subtracts sounds matching our movements from the total auditory input.

9. Ants

Ants typically communicate by chemical signal, but that’s not the only way. They also chirp. And it’s a little like maniacal laughter.

The sounds are produced by what’s known as ‘stridulation’, scraping an abdominal appendage against ridges on the backside — a lot like a spoon against a washboard. Workers sound different to queens; their chirps are of a slightly lower pitch. So when the workers hear the queen, they become more attentive. Researchers have actually found they’ll stand guard around a speaker playing sounds from a queen — maintaining “a hunched-over posture with antennae out and jaws slightly open” for hours.

Maculinea rebeli caterpillars exploit this vulnerability, mimicking queen sounds, as well as smells, to infiltrate colonies and steal the royal treatment — including both feeding and grooming. Beetles also mimic ant sounds for admission to the nests.

8. Giraffes

OK, so maybe you didn’t think giraffes were silent but think about it: what sound did you think giraffes made? Until recently, biologists assumed giraffes made sounds impossible for humans to hear — similar to the infrasonic “secret language” of elephants. More recently, however, research has revealed that giraffes make perfectly audible (92Hz) humming sounds. But they only make them at night.

This humming is believed to be how giraffes keep in contact in the dark. But there is an alternative explanation: it’s the sound of giraffes snoring or talking in their sleep.

7. Fish

Although fish lack vocal cords, they do make sound — and we don’t just mean by swimming and splashing around. In fact, far from being mute, thousands of the estimated 34,000 fish species worldwide are thought to make noise. Just under 1,000 of these have been documented. You can listen to them here.

Sounds come from rubbing or clicking together bony structures, or from beating the swim bladder like a drum, among other mechanisms. Two species of stingray, for instance, previously thought to be silent, both produce clicks. Just like other animals, these “vocalizations” are used to communicate reproductive and territorial information. And, because sound travels much faster in water, fish are relatively much louder than animals of the land and air; their signals travel much further.

Perhaps the strangest, most terrifying fish noise of all belongs to the three-spined toadfish, which “cries like a baby”. 

6. Marine worms

It’s probably fair to say you don’t think much about marine worms at all; but if you do, you probably don’t think they make noise. But they do. And, actually, it’s one of the loudest sounds of any sea-dwelling creature. 

Polychaetes, or bristle worms, which are less than 3 centimeters in length, are usually silent — hiding themselves away in sea sponge holes. When threatened, however, they open their pharyngeal muscles to create a bubble, then release the pressure with a shockingly loud, 157-decibel “battle pop.” 

By way of comparison, the blue whale’s call — the loudest of any on Earth — is 180 decibels. The sound of a jet plane taking off is 140 decibels. And the human ear drum breaks when exposed to sounds of 160 decibels. But the marine worm’s pop is nothing compared to that of the snapping shrimp’s snap, which at 189 decibels, is capable of breaking glass.

5. Plants

Science has taken a while to catch up to what the intuitive have said for millennia: plants can talk. A 2019 study actually recorded their vocalizations, the “ultrasonic squeals” of plants being cut. The 20-150 kHz sounds, which lay outside the range of human hearing, came from tobacco and tomato plants and were recorded over the course of an hour of cutting. The tobacco produced 15 sounds, while the tomato produced 25. But they don’t just make sound when they’re injured. The researchers noted that “even happy, healthy plants made the occasional noise.”

So the next question is: can they hear? According to a paper in 2013, there needs to be more research in this area — because evidence suggests the answer is yes. Beyond anecdotal reports of singing to plants to encourage strong growth, there exist numerous (albeit now dated) scientific reports that plants germinate and grow at different rates in response to different frequency sounds. 

4. Bacteria

Though 10 billion times softer than a fist connecting with a punch bag, the nanoscale beats of bacteria’s flagella (tails) can be amplified and listened to as sound. And these sounds may help scientists determine whether certain bacteria are resistant to antibiotics — a major concern in a global population increasingly resistant to the treatment.

Bacterial beats are recorded on a graphene-skinned drum, a membrane just one layer of carbon atoms thick. In this way, even the infinitesimally soft sound of a single bacterium’s flagellum can be recorded. When exposed to antibiotics, the beating either stops in a couple of hours or it doesn’t, telling us whether such treatments will work.

Viruses can also be converted to sound, but in a different way and for nothing more than fun. The DNA sequence of COVID-19, for example, has been translated into music that sounds like synth-pop or classical.

3. Cells

Not only do cells make noises, or “songs,” there’s a whole branch of science devoted to their study. Sonocytology is the study and application of cells’ nanoscale oscillations, which, because each different type of cell sings a different song that changes when they’re stressed, can be used to spot diseases early on.

Researchers at the University of Manchester, for example, have differentiated between healthy and cancerous prostate cells by blasting them with infrared light and recording the “squeals.” Like comparing two large orchestras, one of which has an out-of-tune tuba, the difference is there but it’s not easy listening. In fact, the sound of cells is more like a “high-pitched scream.” According to Andrew Pelling of University College London, “if you listened to it for too long, you would go mad.”

Fortunately, they can’t be heard by the naked ear. Sonocytologists record the sounds using an atomic force microscope, which touches cells with a small tip to record oscillations — similar to the way a record player’s needle responds to the bumps in a record.

2. The vacuum of space

It’s a common misconception that outer space is silent. While it’s true that in space no one can hear you scream, scientists have captured some frightening extraterrestrial sounds. And we don’t just mean those eerie planetary radio waves converted by into sound. We mean actual sounds (or proof of them anyway).

Space is mostly a vacuum, of course, which is why sound waves can’t cross it. But there’s enough hot gas and plasma surrounding the supermassive black hole in the Perseus galaxy cluster that sound waves have something to traverse. Needless to say, we don’t have microphones powerful or close enough to pick them up, but the sound waves are unmistakeable. 

Extracted from the data, the harrowing baritone of the Perseus black hole was 57 octaves below middle C — so deep that to make it audible, its frequency had to be increased quadrillions (millions of billions) of times.

1. Silence

Even silence isn’t silent — at least to the human brain. Anechoic chambers, with walls designed not only to keep noise out but also to capture and mute any noise within the room, are the quietest places on Earth. The quietest of them all belongs to Microsoft, holding the world record at -20.6 decibels (whereas a silent house is around +40).

However, people who sit in these places for any length of time report not a tranquil silence, or even a disturbing silence, but a lot of strange and terrifying noises. The normally inaudible sounds of the body, for example, are suddenly amplified: “spontaneous firings of the auditory nerve can cause a high-pitched hiss”; people hear their blood pumping; “their digestive system’s symphony of gurgles and blurbs,”; their breath, and so on. 

But that’s just the beginning. Sit in true silence for an hour or more and you start hearing all sorts of disembodied noises as well: swarms of bees; old pop songs; wind in the trees; sirens…

Methods of preserving food have been present since ancient times. From fermentation to salt, our ancestors used everything available to them to preserve the flavor and longevity of their food. However, as time went on, the desire to preserve the color, flavor, and “shelf life” of food intensified. Soon, dozens of food additives and preservatives were created and put into meats, butters, breads, and more.

There’s no doubt that some food additives are questionable. In fact, some deemed safe in the United States are banned in other countries. Nevertheless, as these substances multiplied, several misconceptions evolved about the effects that food additives and preservatives have on our bodies. Even so, large doses of some substances on this list can lead to serious damage.

10 Aspartame

If you have eaten or drunk anything that’s sugar-free, you’ve probably had aspartame, which is 200 times sweeter than sugar. As a result, less of the additive is needed, which ultimately means fewer calories.

Considering aspartame’s presence in puddings, diet soda, mints, sugar-free ice cream, and more, no one was surprised to hear claims that diabetes, ADHD, depression, and even cancer could result from consuming it. To find out if these claims were true, researchers tested aspartame in the lab and on people.

When the studies were done on rats, researchers concluded that large doses of aspartame have no link to health issues. When the experiments were conducted on humans, cancer did not appear to be associated with aspartame and all the links that were found were possibly coincidences. As for whether some people might have sensitivities to aspartame, that has also been disproved by recent studies.

Now there’s no doubt that ingesting more than the approved amount of aspartame in a day will cause serious health problems. So far, it seems okay to drink a diet soda once or twice a day or maybe pop a few mints in your mouth. However, opinions vary and the studies continue.^[1]

9 Saccharin

Saccharin is another food additive used to sweeten things up. Similar to aspartame, this product is far sweeter than sugar (300 times). So, less of it needs to be used, resulting in fewer calories.

However, saccharin has been under fire for being a carcinogen. In the 1970s, one study linked saccharin to bladder cancer in lab rats. Even though this finding was quite frightening, it was quickly stated that the bladder tumors in rats were not relevant to humans. Now saccharin is considered safe to consume by most health authorities.^[2]

8 Calcium Propionate

Seeing the name calcium propionate in the ingredients of your bread would make anyone raise an eyebrow. But, in fact, this substance is considered very safe. In case you’re wondering, calcium propionate is used as a preservative in bread to prevent mold and microorganisms. This means that the bread will last longer.

In one study, rats were fed this preservative for a year and showed no negative signs. Naturally, calcium propionate is FDA approved and is even used by home bakers.^[3]

7 Tartrazine (Yellow No. 5)

Sweeteners aren’t the only food additives that have been under fire for potentially causing all sorts of diseases. Dyes have been, too. In fact, several dyes that are used in our food have been banned in many other countries.

One of these dyes is tartrazine (Yellow No. 5). It has been considered one of those colors that we should all avoid. In fact, Yellow No. 5 has been said to cause allergies, behavioral issues, insomnia, hyperactivity, and cancer.

Even though there are many claims about the potential dangers of Yellow No. 5, a lot of the research was filled with errors. As for allergies to this dye, the FDA has tried to address this by requiring the identification of Yellow No. 5 on the listing of food ingredients. The agency also states that allergic reactions to the additive are rare.^[4]

When it comes to asthma attacks, the FDA found no evidence that Yellow No. 5 could be the cause.

6 Erythrosine (Red No. 3)

It’s possible that you might have ingested some erythrosine if you’ve eaten cherries or jam. But don’t worry. It’s not as bad as we think. Erythrosine, commonly known as Red No. 3, is a beautiful red color that is used to make things a little brighter. Yet, some of the claims about the possible impact of Red No. 3—that it can interfere with the pituitary gland and affect the development of sperm—put a damper on things.^[5]

Even though these claims are quite discouraging, the FDA states that Red No. 3 is safe. After testing the additive, it has been concluded that Red No. 3 has no adverse impact on the health of humans or animals. However, there is a limit as to how much can be ingested.

5 Soy Lecithin

Soy lecithin has been teetering on the line of safety for years. However, unlike so many other additives, the possibility of dangerous diseases aren’t attached to its name.

Soy lecithin is a food additive that is used as an emulsifier, antioxidant, and flavor protector. Many claim that this substance can lead to allergies (due to the soy from which it is derived).

It is also a genetically modified product that uses toxic chemicals for its extraction. Even though this can be an issue, it is easily avoided by buying a product that uses organic soy lecithin instead.

As for allergies, when soy lecithin is extracted, the process should remove all of the soy particles, although some may be left. If you are allergic to soy, it would be better to avoid it entirely.^[6]

Other than that, some people believe that there are potential benefits to consuming soy lecithin. So if you happen to see it on the ingredients list, there’s probably no need to worry.

4 Sodium Nitrite

Sodium nitrite is a preservative used to cure meat. Even though this substance is the reason we have bacon and ham, there are several claims that sodium nitrite causes cancer. There’s no doubt that this could be true. However, the cancer can only form when massive amounts of sodium nitrite are consumed. Not just five strips of bacon, pounds of it.^[7]

Overall, sodium nitrite is a safe food additive. Some research even claims that there are health benefits, which include but are not limited to treatment for sickle cell disease and leg vascular problems.

3 Sodium Nitrate

Sodium nitrate is another preservative used to cure meats. There have been claims that sodium nitrate can cause heart disease and cancer. However, as with sodium nitrite, heart disease and cancer can be avoided with sodium nitrate. By eating small portions of these cured meats, the benefits associated with sodium nitrate—such as lower blood pressure—can occur.

Even with the potential negative effects, sodium nitrate is considered safe in meats.^[8]

2 Butylated Hydroxytoluene (BHT)

Butylated hydroxytoluene is known as a preservative that promotes freshness in foods. In fact, if you’ve looked at the ingredients on a cereal box, you might have seen it there.

Even though BHT does its job well, there are many claims of potential health issues attached to it—including cancer, asthma, and even behavioral issues in children. Due to the uproar about the potential dangers of BHT, many cereal companies have removed it from their ingredients to appease the masses.

But is it really that bad?

Well, not quite. There has been no evidence that BHT leads to cancer, at least not for humans. When BHT was tested on rats, cancer appeared in the forestomach, an organ that humans don’t even have.^[9]

Ironically, BHT has been considered to be anticarcinogenic. However, like most food additives, BHT can have negative effects in large amounts.

1 Monosodium Glutamate (MSG)

You’ve probably heard of monosodium glutamate (MSG). You’ve likely eaten it, too. But MSG on its own was created by scientist Kikunae Ikeda. He extracted glutamate from a broth so that the taste of that rich broth could be present in all sorts of foods.

However, consumers complained about MSG causing headaches, nausea, chest pain, numbness, and several other symptoms. To see what was really going on, research was conducted to determine if there was a correlation between MSG and these symptoms.

In the end, there was no evidence that the symptoms were correlated to MSG. Even so, if an individual consumes more than three grams of MSG on an empty stomach and they are sensitive to this substance, it is possible that these symptoms can occur. Consuming three grams of MSG in this manner would be highly unusual, though.^[10]

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