Most people these days accept that mermaids are a charming myth, symbolizing the power of nature over man or a cautionary reminder that things are not always as they seem at first sight. Of course, there’s also the old metaphor of women as temptresses, luring helpless men to their destruction with their devilishly feminine wiles. Or maybe the mermaid is a singing cartoon character with alarming hair and the voice of an angel.

However, there was a time when perfectly rational people not only believed in mermaids but sometimes also convinced themselves that they had seen one in the scaly flesh. Here are ten such reports.

10 Christopher Columbus

In 1492, Christopher Columbus set off to find a new trade route to Asia and famously “discovered” the “New World” of the Americas by mistake. Not only did he find a new continent, but he also observed a few mythological creatures. He recorded in his journal that he was sailing in waters close to the Dominican Republic when he saw three mermaids, which he described as “not half as beautiful as they are painted” and as having “some masculine traits.”^[1]

It is now generally accepted that what Columbus actually saw was likely a manatee or dugong. Both creatures are able to do “tail stands,” which would lift their heads and torsos out of the water. Their forelimbs look vaguely like arms, and they are able to turn their heads from side to side. So, in the dusk, after having been at sea for six months and possibly having had too much rum, it is perhaps understandable that an experienced sailor would mistake a sea cow for a Siren. Though it must have been pretty strong rum.

Columbus wasn’t alone, however. The supposed skeleton of a mermaid was presented to the Portsmouth Philosophical Society in 1826, but it turned out to be a dugong, which was no doubt disappointing, as a mermaid would have livened up their meetings considerably.

9 Taro Horiba

In 1943, at the height of World War II, a group of Japanese soldiers were stationed on one of Indonesia’s Kei Islands. They began to report seeing strange creatures in the waters around the island. The creatures were said to have a humanlike face but a mouth like a carp’s, with needle-sharp teeth. They were also about 0.9 meters (3 ft) tall, with pink skin and spikes on their heads. The creatures were seen around the edges of the many lagoons or cavorting along the beaches. If approached, they would dive into the water and not resurface.

When the soldiers asked the locals about the creatures, they were told that the mermaids were known as Orang Ikan, which translates from Malay as “fish people,” and were fairly common in the area. Reportedly, local fishermen sometimes found them caught up in their nets and promised to keep one for the soldiers.

Sergeant Taro Horiba claims to have been shown a creature that looked half-human/half-ape/half-fish (yes, that is three halves) and had webbed fingers and toes like some kind of amphibian. Horiba did not think to take a photo of this creature, which was unfortunate, but he did spend a great deal of time trying to persuade zoologists to investigate the creature after the war. So it must be true.^[2]

8 The Chief Of A Scottish Clan

In 1830, crofters in the Outer Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland, were cutting seaweed on the shore when they spotted the figure of a small woman in the water. Some of the men tried to catch her, and as she was escaping, a boy threw a rock at her. The crofters said that they heard her cry out in pain as she disappeared beneath the waves.

A few days later, her body was found washed up on the shore. Crowds gathered, and they sent for the most important person around, the chief of MacDonald of Clanranald, part of the great Scottish MacDonald Clan, who also happened to be the local sheriff. The upper half of the mermaid was said to be the size of a four-year-old child, albeit with abnormally large breasts. Her skin was soft and white, and she had long, dark hair. The lower half was like a salmon without scales.

The clan chief ordered a shroud and a coffin be brought to the beach, and the mermaid was buried in the nearby churchyard. Her funeral was said to be the best-attended funeral they had ever had. Unfortunately, they didn’t think to take a collection for the headstone, and the exact location of the mermaid’s grave is unknown.

This is not the only mermaid to have found its way to Scotland. In 1833, a professor of natural history at Edinburgh University reported that Scottish fishermen had captured a live mermaid and held it captive for three hours while they studied it. The creature apparently had a face like a monkey, the torso of a woman, and a tail like a dogfish.^[3]

7 The Shaman Of Hakata

Japan has a long association with mermaids, although the mermaids of Japanese legend are significantly more fishlike than the buxom European ones we might be used to. They usually have razor-sharp teeth and occasionally horns as well and are said to have magic powers, though these are usually unspecified.

The purported remains of one such Japanese mermaid can be seen in Fukuoka at the Ryuguji Temple. In 1222, a mermaid is said to have washed ashore at Hakata Bay. The local shaman declared that the mermaid was a good omen, and its remains were buried in the Ryuguji Temple, whose name means “the undersea palace of the dragon god.” Fitting.

For many years, visitors to the temple were offered water to drink, in which the mermaid bones had been soaked. The water was said to be a prophylactic against numerous epidemics. Six of the bones still remain in the temple, rubbed smooth by their time in the water.^[4]

Many visitors still find their way to the mermaid’s tomb, which may or may not explain why the guardians of the temple have decided not to DNA-test the bones. Some scientists who have studied the bones, however, believe that they may well come from more than one animal and probably not from any known aquatic creature. Some scientists even believe that the mermaid’s bones may, in fact, be those of an ordinary landlubbing cow.

6 Henry Hudson

Henry Hudson was an English explorer in the early 17th century. He is best known for his explorations in North America and for the bay, strait, and river that are named in his honor. He made four expeditions looking for the fabled Northwestern Passage to the Far East. When his passage through the Arctic was blocked by ice during his second voyage, he changed course and sailed northeast toward the Russian region of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Ocean. Again, his passage was blocked by ice, and he was forced to retreat. While in the Russian waters, however, he had an encounter with a mermaid.

Hudson described his mermaid as being, from the navel up, the size of a full-grown woman with white skin and long, black hair. “Going downe,” he saw a tail the shape of a porpoise, with a speckled Mackerel pattern.^[5] Or perhaps it was a porpoise, with the tail of a porpoise.

5 Prince Shotoku

Prince Shotoku, one of the most important figures in Japanese history, was a powerful and sober man. In the seventh century, he introduced the Seventeen Article Constitution, which set the expected ethical behaviors for officials. The prince was not the kind of man to believe in fairy tales.

However, a merman was said to have appeared to Prince Shotoku at Lake Biwa. The merman was dying and so, as dying people always do, found time to tell his story to a stranger. The merman said that he had once been a fisherman who had sailed into forbidden waters. As a punishment, he was turned into a hideous, fishy creature. The merman, or ningyo, clearly felt that this was a just punishment because he asked the prince to build a temple to display his body after his death, as a warning to other fishermen to stay inside the lines.

This temple, known as the Tenshou-Kyousha Shrine, can be found near Mount Fiji, where the mummified remains of the mermaid are watched over by Shinto Buddhist monks.^[6]

4 Captain Richard Whitbourne

Richard Whitbourne was an explorer, writer, and colonizer of other people’s land in the 16th and 17th centuries. He led ships in battle against the Spanish Armada and organized the supply of fish from Newfoundland to the Mediterranean. So, he was a man of wide experience, one might think—not one for fanciful imaginings.

In 1610, off the coast of Newfoundland, he described his encounter with a mermaid that swam “cheerfully” toward the small boats he and his crew were sailing offshore. He stated that the mermaid swam swiftly, diving under the water at times and then rising out of the water high enough for him to “behold” her bare shoulders and back. He claims not to have looked at the front of her.

Whitbourne described how she came up to their boat and tried to climb in, but the sailors were afraid, and one of them hit her over the head with his oar, whereupon she let go and swam toward another boat. All the men, then, being frightened, made for the shore as quickly as they could.^[7]

Whitbourne’s account appears to be very detailed and is written in his usual neat handwriting, which must have been particularly difficult after all that rum.

3 Captain John Smith

The explorer Captain John Smith may or may not have rescued/been rescued by Pocahontas (not). He was elected leader of the Jamestown colony and traded largely peacefully with the Native American Powhatan tribes around them. He seemed to be a levelheaded kind of guy. Thomas Jefferson once described him as “honest, sensible, and well informed.”

Surely, then, his account of seeing a mermaid can be taken at face value? It is claimed that in 1614, he saw a green-haired woman, “by no means unattractive,” swimming in the water. When she turned to dive, Smith was apparently shocked to see her mermaid’s tail.

Manatees are often sighted in the bay where Smith had his Sirenian encounter, so it may be tempting to believe that he, like others, saw the manatee from behind and thought he had seen a mermaid. However, it has been suggested that not only might Smith have not seen a mermaid, but he might not even have claimed to have seen a mermaid.

Some scholars believe that the account of the mermaid sighting was written not by John Smith but by Alexander Dumas, author of such novels as The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask. The account was purportedly written contemporaneously by Smith in 1614, whereas, in fact, Smith had not been in that area since 1607. No evidence of the mermaid entry can be found in Smith’s original notes, most of which are still available. The first mention of Smith’s encounter with a mermaid is in a tale by Dumas, in which he cited Smith’s account. Smith’s supposed adventure lent credence to Dumas’ own story about a man who sired four children with a mermaid.^[8]

2 Blackbeard

Edward Teach, the legendary pirate known as Blackbeard, served first as a privateer during Queen Anne’s War. He became a pirate after the war ended. He named his ship the Queen Anne’s Revenge in honor of his former employer. Blackbeard and his crew cruised the Caribbean, plundering ships and adding them to their fleet. His pirate crew of 300 was the largest ever to trouble shipping on the high seas. At one point, he brazenly blockaded the port of Charlestown, seizing any ships that attempted to enter or leave and demanding ransoms for the release of captured sailors.

In 1718, the Queen Anne’s Revenge was run aground. Some scholars maintain that Edward Teach deliberately scuppered his own ship in order to break up the crew, who were fast becoming a liability. Blackbeard was soon caught and killed, and his severed head was mounted at the front of his captor’s ship as a warning to others.

Before he met his grisly end, however, Blackbeard had an encounter that was altogether more ethereal. It is recorded in his logbooks that he ordered his crew to steer away from certain “enchanted” waters because they were populated by merfolk. He was said to have seen the merfolk with his own eyes and to have been wary of vexing them.^[9]

1 Henry Loucks

Henry Loucks was a fisherman working the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. He was said to have been “as reliable as any fisherman on the river,” which may or may not be a testimonial.

In 1881, Loucks reported five separate sightings of a mermaid on the Susquehanna River. He claimed that the mermaid came out at sunrise and at dusk, rising to the surface of the water, whereupon it had a good look around, floated on top of the water for a while, and then slowly sank beneath the surface, leaving its hair floating on the surface for a moment before finally diving to the depths below.

Loucks said that he had considered shooting it but was worried about being charged with murder, so he let it go. When asked if, as in the fairy tales, the mermaid carried a comb and a mirror, he replied, “It might have had, but I didn’t see it.” When asked where he thought it went, he supposed that it had a cave somewhere at the bottom of the river.

Newspaper reports appealed for the mermaid to be captured, alive if possible, and reassured potential mermaid hunters that they would be immune from prosecution if they brought it in dead. To date, no one has taken advantage of the offer.^[10]

Ward Hazell is a writer who travels, and an occasional travel writer.

The process of filmmaking is often as interesting to fans as the movie itself. Many potential blockbusters now have a second crew filming the first crew for their “Making Of” movies because fans love to discover how the sets, props, and costumes were constructed.

Some enthusiasts spend hours studying the sound effects of a light saber swishing through the air (a cross between the hum of an old-style film projector and the feedback from a TV). Others try to track down the numerous “One Rings” from The Lord of The Rings. (Many were stolen from the set as souvenirs.)

Sometimes, though, you just want to impress your friends with a cool piece of movie trivia that no one else knows. If that’s what you’re after, we’ve got you covered. Keep reading.

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10 The Good, The Bad And The Ugly Blew Up A Bridge Twice

In the climactic scenes of Sergio Leone’s classic 1966 Western, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach are trying to reach the cemetery at Sad Hill where a fortune in gold has been buried.

Regrettably for them, their path is blocked by two warring armies on each side of a bridge. To reach the gold, they must cross the bridge. Or blow it up.

Obviously, they went for the second option.

Leone was famous for his multilingual pictures. Not only did his actors speak a number of languages, so did the crew. The bridge had been built by engineers in the Spanish army, who were standing by to blow it up.

When the Italian cameraman called “Action” on the shot, the Spanish captain misunderstood and detonated his explosives before the cameras rolled. Being engineers, however, the Spanish army got to work and built another bridge. Ultimately, Eastwood and Wallach were able to reach the cemetery. ^[1]

9 Alan Rickman Fell Hard In Die Hard

Everyone loves Die Hard, and Alan Rickman certainly makes a great villain. His final scene as Hans Gruber, the terrorist-turned-thief, was a difficult one in both the finished film and the shoot.

Rickman is seen hanging onto Bruce Willis and Bonnie Bedelia as he dangles from a window near the top of the Nakatomi building, which was 20th Century Fox’s corporate headquarters in real life. Gruber’s watch is entangled with that of Mrs. McClane, and he is about to drag her down with him.

In fact, Rickman was held by a rope 12 meters (40 ft) above a crash pad with a camera trained directly on his face. Director John McTiernan wanted to capture every emotion in Rickman’s face as the villain fell to his death in slow motion.^[2]

The look of shock was definitely real. McTiernan had told Rickman that they would count down before the release. But the sneaky director instructed his stunt coordinator to release the rope early. Yippee-ki-yay.

8 The Matrix Code Is Made Of Sushi

The Wachowskis’ 1999 movie, The Matrix, is memorable for a lot of reasons.

First, there was bullet time. The Wachowskis may not have invented it, but they certainly made it popular. With bullet time, the action becomes slow enough that you can dodge bullets. In fact, you can even pick the bullets out of the air in mid-flight, examine them, and drop them on the floor before they kill you.

Then there are the awesome fight scenes, the costumes, and Keanu Reeves’s weirdly long, thin body.

This is a lot to process—and that’s before you try to get your head around the plot. So, if you didn’t give the Matrix code more than a glance, that’s understandable. But it’s a mistake because the Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us.

But what exactly is the Matrix?

It might be the source code which creates temporary constructs to satisfy our feeble human intellect. Or it could be a recipe for sushi.^[3]

Simon Whiteley, the production designer, was tasked with producing convincing-looking code that also appeared organic and Japanese. He found what he needed while leafing through his wife’s Japanese cookbooks. However, Whiteley will not reveal what the recipe makes.

But the answer is out there. It’s looking for us, and it will find us if we are hungry enough.

7 The Usual Suspects Were Gone With The Wind

Some scenes turn out exactly the way the director intends. Other scenes turn out better. When Bryan Singer directed The Usual Suspects, he intended the lineup scene to be a serious dramatic moment.

And then Benicio del Toro farted.

Kevin Spacey, Stephen Baldwin, Gabriel Byrne, and Kevin Pollak fought to keep straight faces as they took turns stepping forward and reading the line on the card, “Hand me the keys, you f—king c—ksucker.”

Trying to hide his giggles, Gabriel Byrne had his hand over his face for the entire scene. When del Toro stepped forward to read his line in his mumbling voice, he farted again. The actors could barely contain themselves.

Luckily, Singer liked it. He felt that it showed that the usual suspects had “a shared past and a sense of camaraderie” as well as a healthy disrespect for the police.^[4]

The scene was used in both the poster and the trailer and became one of the most imitated movie scenes ever.

6 Judy Garland Ingested Dangerous Substances In The Wizard Of Oz

Remember when Dorothy and her friends had to walk across a poppy field to get to Oz? The poppies drugged her and her little dog, Toto. Who knew that poppies could do that?

To wake up Dorothy, the Good Witch of the North sent the snow, which did the trick and snapped Dorothy out of it. Maybe that’s because the fake snow used on the set was made from “industrial-grade” white asbestos fibers. This asbestos fake snow was sold under the brand names White Magic, Snow Drift, and Pure White.^[5]

It’s enough to make you question your faith in wholesome family entertainment.

Hollywood wasn’t entirely to blame, however. Fire-retardant fake snow was commonly used for Christmas decorations until the beginning of World War II. Production only ceased then because asbestos was needed for military use.

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5 Michael Myers’s Halloween Mask Is Truly Horrifying

If you are making a horror movie on a budget and you need a scary mask, what are you going to do?

Well, if you are working on the Halloween movie, you could take a quick trip to your local costume shop and buy a mask of William Shatner as his Star Trek character, Captain Kirk. That will do.

The designers simply had to widen the eyeholes, remove the sideburns, and spray-paint the mask white.^[6]

4 William Friedkin Was A Demon On The Set Of The Exorcist

Following up his success with 1971’s The French Connection, William Friedkin made the terrifying film classic The Exorcist in 1973. The film proved to be even more successful than his previous work. The Exorcist was nominated for 10 Academy Awards and won two.

Most of the performances in the final product weren’t achieved without help from Friedkin. Taking after D.W. Griffith’s directing style, Friedkin did various things to influence the actors’ emotions for particular scenes. He fired real guns behind them to mimic the effects of being startled and slapped Father William O’Malley (a real priest and adviser on the set) right before filming to get a sincere reaction. (The result of this is still seen in the film at the end when he gives the dying Father Karras the last rites.)

The Exorcist was made before the days of CG. For the effect of Regan’s cold room, the stage was chilled below freezing, causing the crew members’ perspiration to freeze. Linda Blair, the actress who played Regan, wore only a nightgown for the duration of the shoot and says she still can’t bear being cold.

But perhaps the worst on-set occurrence at the hands of Friedkin was in the scene where Ellen Burstyn’s character gets thrown back by a demonic force. The effect was achieved via a rope harness, which violently pulled the actress backward, resulting in a permanent spinal injury.^[7]

3 Velociraptors Are Sexy Beasts

Sound effects can be difficult, especially when you are trying to recreate the noise from an extinct dinosaur. The sound effects department on Jurassic Park experimented repeatedly but soon discovered that it was best to record modern animals when they are at their most primal.

In other words, when they are mating.

The Gallimimus herds were voiced by female horses in heat, and the T. rex was a combination of a dog and an elephant.

The Velociraptors may not have been the largest dinosaurs at Jurassic Park, but they were intelligent hunters. They stalked their prey through kitchens and communicated with each other through the language of tortoise love.^[8]

Male tortoises, it seems, are raucous lovers. The noise is terrifying, especially when amplified and accompanied by images of a pair of Velociraptors rampaging through a kitchen after a couple of kids. Additional sound effects came from hissing geese.

The tortoises were a good resource because they mated for hours at a time. This provided plenty of material for the sound engineers. It is not known why the male tortoise is so vocal. Maybe it helps him to concentrate so that he doesn’t fall off the back of the female’s shell, which happens frequently.

Female tortoises don’t seem to enjoy the mating much. Maybe it’s the racket. Then again, the prolonged mating and the weight of the male on top of her can permanently damage her shell. Now that is something to screech about.

2 Stanley Kubrick Is Eye-Wateringly Difficult To Please

Stanley Kubrick is known to be an uncompromising director. A Clockwork Orange was always going to be a difficult film to make. Adapted from Anthony Burgess’s classic novel of the same name, the film was surreal and disturbing.

Malcolm McDowell starred as Alex, leader of his gang of “droogs” who elevated violence to art and used Beethoven as an inspiration for mayhem. But McDowell did not have an easy time of it.

He cracked some of his ribs. Worst of all, he had to endure the “Ludovico technique.” In an incredibly disturbing scene of fictional aversion therapy, McDowell’s eyes were pinned open so that he couldn’t blink as he watched films to the accompaniment of Beethoven.

Kubrick promised McDowell that the scene would take no more than 10 minutes. Of course, Kubrick is a noted perfectionist so filming took much longer. McDowell ended up with a scratch on one of his corneas and was left temporarily blind.^[9]

1 Vitamins Are Not Always Good Things

The Wolf of Wall Street is a film about excess. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Jordan Belfort, an amoral Wall Street stockbroker. When he is fired after Black Monday, the stock market crash of almost 22 percent in the Dow Jones Industrial Average on October 19, 1987, he charts a new path.

Belfort discovers that he can make as much money from conning people out of their life savings in a backstreet boiler room as from any of the fine offices along Wall Street. Along with his new business strategy, Belfort develops a huge appetite for alcohol and drugs. Donnie Azoff (Jonah Hill) is the right-hand man who aids and abets Belfort.

Based on the memoirs of the real Jordan Belfort, the script called for both men to drink a lot and take a huge amount of drugs. When filming a movie, this usually means drinking iced tea and eating sugar pills. But for the cocaine snorting, which they did a lot, DiCaprio and Hill had to snort crushed vitamin D.^[10]

Although Vitamin D is good for you, snorting it is not the usual method of delivery. Both actors found that the continual snorting affected their lungs. In fact, Jonah Hill became so ill that he was eventually hospitalized for severe bronchitis.

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About The Author: Ward Hazell is a freelance writer and travel writer. Currently, he is also studying for a PhD in English Literature.

Creepy stories are always a hit, unless you are the star of one. There are hundreds of internet discussions about ghost sightings, weird sounds, unexplained incidents etc. And it’s always those personal experiences that get the most interaction.

See Also: 10 Creepy Things Bodies Can Do After Death

10 Warning note

A hotel guest found more than she bargained for when she discovered an unnerving handwritten note in a drawer, thought to have been left there by a previous guest. In December 2014, Amy Jones was staying in an Edinburgh hotel when she discovered the creepy note that said: “Don’t open the locked door! Don’t trust its whispers. Leave, just lea…”

Instead of being freaked out, Jones took a picture of the note and uploaded it to Twitter. She then proceeded to go to sleep with the door in question facing her from the opposite end of the room. The next morning, she let her Twitter followers know that she was still alive and that she hadn’t heard any whispers coming from the door.

9Satanic panic

In November 2019, an unnamed source reported the killing of a sheep in the New Forest in Hampshire. The sheep corpse had pentagrams, an inverted cross and the number 666 painted on it. It had been stabbed to death. Furthermore, a heifer and two calves were found with stab wounds in Bramshaw and Linwood.

When police investigated the incident, they found that an inverted cross and 666 had also been painted on the door of St Peter’s Church in Bramshaw. The New Forest has a historical connection to witchcraft, but the locals had never experienced anything “occult-like” before the sheep incident. Residents are said to be very disturbed by what has happened and hope that police will bring the perpetrators of the ‘satanic graffiti’ crime to book.

8Sucked into a grave

The sun had just about set on 19 December 2016 when 64-year old Joanne Cullen arrived at the Long Island cemetery to visit her parents’ burial plot. She spotted a bent-out-of-shape bow on the wreath over the plot’s headstone and bent over to fix it. As she did so, the ground beneath her feet gave way and she sank into the grave right up to her hips.

The unexpected event caused her to lose her balance and tip over, hitting her head on the tombstone and cracking a tooth. She grabbed hold of the sides of the tombstone in desperation and shouted for help, but no one heard her.

After she finally managed to crawl out of the grave, she immediately left the cemetery and refused to go back. Cullen also enlisted the help of a lawyer to sue the property owners of the cemetery citing emotional problems and nightmares stemming from the horrific incident.

7 Trapped

Earlier in 2019, a woman fell asleep on a plane en route to Toronto. When she awoke, the plane was empty, dark and it was almost midnight. Luckily, she managed to open the plane door and was rescued by crew on the ground.

Another woman in Xi’an, China found herself trapped in an elevator at the end of January 2016 after repairmen shut it off and let it rest on the first floor of the residential building she lived in.

Unfortunately, the men only returned a month later and found the decomposing remains of the woman inside; her hands disfigured from trying to escape her steel prison. It is alleged that the men never opened the elevator to check for passengers, but simply called out and upon receiving no answer, they shut the elevator off and left to celebrate the Chinese New Year.

The victim is said to have been mentally disabled and was only identified by her surname, Wu. Her family reported her disappearance but did not undertake a search for her inside or outside the building.

6 Ghost couple

On 10 November 2019, 60-year old Soong Rui-xiong left his home and set off on a hike in the Pingtung mountains. He didn’t return home and his family spent an anxious 10 days searching for him before a villager spotted and accompanied Soong to the nearest police station.

Soong had apparently climbed up a rock wall during his hike and lost his glasses in the process, leading to confusion. He then found a cave in which he stayed for a few days but left after realizing he would die there if he didn’t make some kind of plan to be rescued. He told his family afterwards that he drank water from a stream and ate plants after his food ran out the same day he left for the mountains.

When interviewed about his ordeal, Soong also claimed that a ghost couple met up with him outside the cave and walked with him for two hours. He believed them to be the ancient ghosts of indigenous Taiwanese and he further claimed that they disappeared from his side without a sound as soon as he reached the path leading down the mountain.

5 Healed by a ghost

Diane Berthlot suffered a spell of illness after a gall bladder removal operation. She was sick for several months and on a lot of medication, including antibiotics for an infection. Despite this, she determined that she would take a trip to Norfolk during the holidays. During her time there in 1975, she went into the Worstead village church to sit down for a bit and rest.

While sitting on a pew, her husband and son walked around the church taking pictures of the interior. Diane, feeling very ill, bowed her head and prayed for healing. She suddenly felt a tingling sensation all over her body as well as a feeling of comforting warmth.

Six months later, Diane was feeling on top of the world. Her husband decided to develop the pictures they had taken on their trip and while looking through them, they both gasped in unison. On one of the pictures, a woman wearing old-fashioned clothes and a bonnet could be seen sitting directly behind Diane inside the Worstead church. Diane immediately knew this woman had healed her.

The couple returned to the church and showed the picture to the vicar who told them that he believed the woman in the picture was the ‘White Lady’ who was a healer hundreds of years ago. Legend says that a man climbed inside the church belfry on Christmas Eve 1830, shouting that he was not afraid of the White Lady and would kiss her if she appeared. When his friends came looking for him hours later, he was sitting in a corner alone whispering “I’ve seen her” to himself. He died shortly afterwards.

4 A disputed gift

Most people didn’t take Helen Duncan seriously as a medium after it became obvious that her predictions and communication with spirits was all a big fat lie. During the 20s she held seances and ‘produced’ ectoplasm, but she and her spirit guide named ‘Peggy’ soon became objects of ridicule and very few made use of her services.

Then, in November 1941, Duncan held a séance and claimed to have contacted the spirit of a sailor that was aboard the HMS Barham. This meant that she knew the ship had sunk before it was announced.

However, not everyone was convinced that this strange claim was the real deal, with one researcher believing she had simply used rampant gossip to make some extra money for her fledgling business. This conclusion didn’t stop British authorities from arresting and prosecuting Duncan under the Witchcraft Act. She was convicted and sentenced to 9 months in prison.

As time went by, other mediums became convinced that Duncan was indeed one of them and had a real gift. Some are even trying to clear her name, but Helen Duncan remains a very controversial topic in discussions about the paranormal and supernatural.

3 Bleeding walls

When 77-year old Minnie Winston stood up to get out of the bath on 8 September 1987, she noticed a pool of red liquid on the floor. She took a closer look and realized it was blood. When she looked around the bathroom, she saw blood pouring out of the walls and running over the floor into the adjacent hallway.

Frightened that something might have happened to her husband, she called out to him. When he showed up in the corridor, he showed no signs of bleeding. Terrified now, Minnie called the police. Officers scoured the couple’s home but found nothing that could have produced that amount of blood. They took some of it to be tested and later concluded it was human Type O blood. Neither Minnie nor her husband had this blood type.

To date the cause of the ‘bleeding walls’ remains unknown.

2 Bone in sock

On 10 December 2018 an unnamed customer bought a pair of socks at a Primark store in Colchester. What was a very mundane purchase turned out to be quite disturbing when the customer arrived home, took the socks out of their packaging and discovered a human bone inside one of them.

The incident was reported to police on 2 January 2019 and Essex officers started an investigation. Unfortunately, the only thing they could establish was that the bone used to be part of a human finger. Police could not find any link to a criminal act and believed the incident to be a hoax. However, no apparent DNA testing was done on the bone and therefore the identity of the person it belonged to remains a mystery.

1 Real life Pennywise

A not-so-merry prankster has been scaring the pants off people in the Ukraine since early December 2019. A person dressed up as Pennywise from IT decided to hide behind bridges and in trash cans, popping up when unsuspecting passers-by amble past. The clown also pretended to pour gas over cars at a gas station while people are inside paying. Some patrons became so terrified that they ran away, leaving their vehicles behind.

Videos of these pranks have gone viral, but also caught the attention of local law enforcement. A criminal case has been opened against Pennywise under Part 2 of Art.300 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine as it is suspected that the brains behind the clown operation are trying to promote violence.

However, Pennywise is fighting back. He stated on social media that since his pranks are not affecting children or the elderly, he will not stop and that he has merely gotten started.

When it comes to the media we create or consume, the formats we utilize to do so are just as important as the content itself. As the decades have passed we’ve seen video technology evolve time and time again to better suit the needs of the current consumer. This does mean that, as time passes, formats that were once thought to be cutting edge have become defunct and thrust into the scrap heap of history. These are some examples of video formats that, for one reason or another, are now obsolete. 

10. VHS (Video Home System)

When you think of antiquated video formats, among the first that people immediately think of are VHS tapes. When the format first hit the scene in the 1970s, few could’ve imagined how it would change people’s media consumption and even filmmaking. At one time, the concept of watching a full movie in your own home, let alone a copy you could own, was unthinkable but it was now a concrete reality. 

In the 1980s, the home video market exploded, with video stores of all types and sizes springing up all over the place. This only continued into the 1990s, with many films seeing a second wind of revenue from their home video release on VHS. The format also allowed many filmmakers on the independent level to circumvent major studios and self-distribute their work. 

However, as is the case for all the formats on this list, the reign of VHS would eventually come to an end. It wasn’t long before Digital Compact Discs, AKA DVDs, and On-Demand streaming replaced VHS tapes as the dominant home media format. Nowadays, VHS is remembered fondly by those nostalgic for a simpler time when all you had to worry about was rewinding your video rental before returning it.

9. Betamax

Whenever something becomes popular, there will usually be something hot on its heels with the intent of dethroning it. Apple has Samsung, Coca-Cola has Pepsi, and for a decent window of time, VHS tapes and Betamax were lunging for each other’s throats. 

Launching in 1975 by Sony, Betamax hit the market just a year before VHS did, even boasting superior video and audio quality. By the early 1980s, Betamax had carved out a sizable market share for itself, dominating an impressive percentage of the then-booming videocassette market. However, before too long it became clear that, despite their superior audio-visual quality, there was one area in which VHS soundly defeated Betamax. That was the ability to record more content on a single videotape, making it more desirable for home consumers and amateur filmmakers. 

Additionally, while Betamax was solely owned by Sony, VHS had a more open licensing model, meaning that other companies to make their own VHS tapes and players. Compounding matters was the fact that major film studios were shifting their focus to solely distributing their movies on VHS. This all eventually led to Sony shuttering the Betamax format in 1993, officially waving the white flag in their war against VHS. 

8. Video8/Hi8

Keeping with Sony for another entry, let’s talk about another one of their defunct video formats, specifically Video8, later known as Hi8. Over the last few decades, the advent of home movies has only developed in terms of their technology and user convenience. However, long before you could record your child’s first day of school or a family reunion on your iPhone, you needed a consumer-grade camcorder. 

This is where Video8 enters the picture, billed as a compact and affordable option for the average consumer to capture life events on video. Video8 was promoted for having a convenient size, as well as its impressive video quality, both of which were superior to other formats at the time. The format stuck around for a good while following its introduction in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but eventually began a steady decline. Sadly, Video8, as well as its successor Hi8, just couldn’t keep up with the rise of MiniDV and other digital recording formats. 

The switch from analog to digital simply made things easier for video consumers, offering far more convenience and overall quality. Unsurprisingly, by the early 2000s, Sony had discontinued the production of Video8/Hi8 camcorders, making the format officially defunct.

7. LaserDisc

When it comes to disc-based video formats, the first ones people think of are DVDs with many forgetting their original predecessor. That would be LaserDisc, originally released in 1978 and advertised as the next leap forward in home media technology. 

The format resembled a DVD but was the size of a vinyl record and required a special LaserDisc player for people to watch them. This larger size allowed for not only immensely superior video and audio quality when compared to VHS but also additional bonus features and director’s commentary tracks. These factors made LaserDisc a favorite of avid collectors and cinephiles of the 1990s who wanted the best possible version of their favorite films. However, while the format had many advantages, its shortcomings were simply too great to ignore, resulting in its downfall. 

Unlike VHS tapes, the cumbersome size of the LaserDiscs made them rather awkward to store and easy to damage. Additionally, much like a vinyl record, if you were watching a particularly long movie, you’d need to take the disc out and flip it. All of this, plus the heftier price tag attached to them, resulted in the LaserDisc remaining as a niche product, never able to replace VHS. Nowadays, LaserDiscs are remembered only by hardcore video format collectors and by those entranced by the oddities of past decades. 

6. MiniDV

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the video market was dominated by home camcorders that made use of MiniDV tapes. They were the compact tapes that one would load into a camcorder to record footage, making the video equivalent of audio cassette tapes. A favorite of amateur videographers, filmmakers, and journalists, MiniDV was popular due to its image quality and affordability. 

The early 2000s was by far the peak of MiniDV, with the format being the go-to choice for independent filmmakers and filming family events. It was also one of the first formats that allowed for easy footage transfer to most home computers, making digital editing a breeze. If you dig through your attic or basement long enough, you’re bound to find a couple of dusty MiniDV tapes lying around. 

However, technological progression eventually came for MiniDV, with their major death blow being camera capabilities being built into modern phones. With the like of the iPhone hitting the scene, spending additional money on tapes to film a family event was no longer necessary. Additionally, more modern cameras were pivoting over to using SD cards which could store far more footage than MiniDV. By the mid-2000s, the format’s popularity had declined immensely with the format going fully obsolete by the 2010s. 

5. VCD (Video CD)

It should be clear by now that the 1990s was a pivotal time for the home video market, especially with digital formats quickly replacing analog ones. Various companies were racing to develop the format that would eventually unseat VHS tapes as the dominant format, resulting in some fascinating developments. We already mentioned the rise and fall of LaserDiscs, but around the same time, there was another disc-based format looking to break through known as VCD.

Video CD AKA VCD debuted in the early 1990s and could hold up to 74 minutes of video and audio. The format attained solid success in Asia mostly due to its affordability and compatibility with most CD players. The VCD format also proved to be a perfect way to distribute the music videos of various solo and group performers. 

Sadly, when DVDs made their debut, the days of the VCD quickly became numbers for a litany of reasons. Whereas VCDs could only fit 74 minutes of content, DVDs could hold far more content, as well as boasting vastly superior audio-visual quality. While the format stuck around for a while, particularly in Asia, the advent of DVDs, Blu-Ray discs, and online streaming proved to be the final nail in the coffin of VCDs.

4. D-VHS (Digital VHS)

A big trend on this list has been formats that failed in the pursuit of defeating and dethroning VHS tapes as the dominant video format. Another example of one of these failed formats was Digital VHS AKA D-VHS, which was built to capitalize on the growing HDTV market. The product was predicated on its ability to record HDTV broadcasts, as well as showcase movies, in their desired high quality. Unfortunately, this trait proved insufficient as soon as DVDs, and later Blu-rays, hit the scene and revolutionized the home video market.

Despite the best efforts of those behind it, D-VHS wasn’t able to keep up with the trajectory of the business and the ever-evolving tastes of consumers. DVDs simply offered better video and sound quality, as well as the ability to store more content like commentary tracks and special bonus features. 

Add to that, the lack of movies available on D-VHS greatly limited the format’s appeal to consumers. There was also the high cost of the D-VHS tapes, as well as the video player itself, which made it difficult for the format to break through. Had DVDs not emerged at the end of the 90s, then the format might’ve had more of a fighting chance for prolonged mainstream success. 

3. U-matic

We now turn our attention to professional and broadcast venues to discuss an oft-forgotten video format known as U-Matic. U-Matic tapes were introduced by Sony in the early 1970s and served as the next major step forward in professional video production. Due to its high video quality and portable size, the format quickly became the standard for the television industry. It also helps that the format was extremely user-friendly, as well as compatible with the editing systems of the time which greatly assisted production workflow. U-Matic tapes were also used for dallies on various films, including the first rough cut of Apocalypse Now, with the film’s raw version surviving on U-Matic tapes.

Unfortunately, once Betacam and VHS came around during the mid-1980s, U-matic tapes began their rapid descent into obsoletion. Between Betacam’s superior picture quality, as well as the affordability of VHS, the writing was pretty much on the wall for U-Matic. By the time the 1990s came around, the format had finally fizzled out, no longer the industry standard regarding television production. The U-Matic stands as yet another prime example of a video format that was eventually phased out in favor of a then-superior technology. 

2. DVCPRO

Panasonic, best known for its various electronic consumer products, unleashed DVCPRO back in the mid-1990s. The format offered both high-quality video and audio recording in a sturdy tape format, making it a desirable format for those in professional video production. 

Following its debut, broadcasters, filmmakers, and many others quickly adopted DVCPRO, making it the industry standard for quite a while. A major advantage of the format was how when recording audio it would prevent audio drifting, meaning the sound and viduals would be perfectly synced. Additionally, its durable quality made it perfect for outdoor filming, especially field production when it came to sports like football. 

However, DVCPRO soon had competition in the form of digital recording technologies like P2 and XDCAM, both of which offered very enticing features of their own. They both benefitted from the advent of solid-state media, which is a type of computer storage media that stores data electronically and has no moving parts. This technological leap forward led to both formats boasting faster workflows, and higher capacities, making them perfect for fast-paced video production. By the time the mid-2000s came around, countless broadcasters and video production outlets had pivoted away from tape-based formats like DVCPRO, cementing its obsolete status. 

1. 8mm Film

Our dive into the realm of obsolete video formats concludes by going back to the 1930s and the creation of 8mm film. Introduced by Eastman Kodak, the format’s compact size and user-friendly quality made it the definitive choice for small productions and capturing family events on film. From there, 8mm film became the gold standard, even developing new and improved versions along the way, like Super 8mm.

Subsequent updates like this offered improved sound quality and enhanced image quality, promising only the best for capturing birthdays, vacations, and everyday moments. Bear in mind, this was long before the average person had a camera phone or even a disposable camera in their pocket. However, as we’ve learned throughout the list, no format can remain on top forever, especially as technology evolves and consumer demands change. 

Case in point, when VHS and consumer camcorders came around in the 1980s and 1990s, formats like 8mm were quickly becoming obsolete. It’s not hard to see why, as VHS and other formats simply offered more convenience for users and higher audio-visual quality. When the early 2000s arrived, 8mm was largely defunct, only utilized in niche markets by filmmakers and artists looking to capture an old-school aesthetic.

The saying goes that history is written by the winners, but what happens when none of the winners can agree on what to write? Over the centuries, our modern world has been shaped by conflicts, international treaties, and sporting events that have left a mark on the nations they’ve involved. While you’d expect two enemies (like, say, Iran and Israel) to have different interpretations of such events, you might be surprised by how many friendly nations have totally different takes on shared moments in their pasts. Moments like . . .

10 The British Barely Remember The Revolutionary War

If you went to school in the US, you were taught about the Revolutionary War. The 18th-century punch-up between plucky team USA and the might of the British Empire is America’s founding myth, the inferno from which the United States was born. George III is the villain, up there with the Kaiser as American history’s Big Bad, and independence is the grand finale. In the years since, the British may have gone from enemies to friends, but surely no one’s doubting it was a big deal for both nations.

Actually, the British are. Despite it being the moment they lost one of their major colonies, Brits today barely remember the Revolutionary War at all.^[1]

The trouble is, losing the war actually wasn’t much of a setback for the British. Their empire kept on growing, and the Industrial Revolution kept on happening, so history classes today barely bother to mention it. Where it is taught, it is usually as a prelude to the French Revolution, a much closer event that affected the whole of Europe way more than some argument about taxes on another continent.

9 Both Canadians And Americans Think They Kicked Butt In 1812

The US and Canada are basically siblings, with America the adventure-minded older brother and Canada the laid-back one still chilling in college. Not so in 1812. That was the year the US and Canada (then a British colony) decided to go toe-to-toe. The resulting war was messy and pointless and didn’t really result in a victory for anyone. Somehow, this dumb draw wound up becoming a founding myth for both nations.^[2]

As Smithsonian details in the link above, both Canada and the US today celebrate the War of 1812 as a time they kicked butt. Americans remember the Star-Spangled Banner still fluttering after a heavy night’s bombardment and are taught that the war was the moment the US showed the British they were a serious nation. Canadians, meanwhile, are taught it was the time they successfully beat up their older brother after team USA tried to invade them.

But what about the British, the guys who ruled Canada and helped them burn down the White House? Once again, they barely remember it. They were too busy kicking Napoleon’s backside to pay much attention. Speaking of which . . .

8 The British Think They Defeated Napoleon; The Russians Beg To Differ

It may be a bit of a stretch to call the UK and Russia friends, but they’re certainly not enemies. Nonetheless, their official histories disagree over the story of Napoleon. Depending on what country you were schooled in, Napoleon’s defeat was either thanks to Wellington’s genius or the sacrifice of thousands of Russian soldiers.^[3]

Before Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo in 1815, he’d been defeated at Leipzig in 1813. This earlier defeat was entirely down to two things: Napoleon’s hubris and Russia. Only a year earlier, Napoleon had been de facto ruler of Europe. Then he decided to attack Russia, and everything went to Hell.

Over half a grueling year, his Grande Armee went from 650,000 men to under 100,000, as Russian winter and soldiers did their worst. The French soon went into retreat, only to be chased across the whole of Europe by vengeful Russians. It was this relentless pressure that caused the Emperor’s 1813 defeat and exile to Elba. While the Brits would say his second defeat was the one that sealed it, the Russians see Waterloo as the unnecessary sequel to their original smackdown.

7 The Americans Think They Defeated The Japanese; The Russians Beg To Differ

While there’s a good argument to be had over who really stomped Nazi Germany, the Allies or Soviets, we tend not to think that such questions exist over Imperial Japan. The endgame of World War II saw the Allied forces flatten Japan, culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Japan’s top brass met the day of the Nagasaki bombing to discuss surrender. Surely this was a true American victory?

Well, there’s another school of thought that doesn’t get aired much in the States—one that says the real reason Japan surrendered was less because of A-bombs and more because the Soviet Union had decided to get involved.^[4]Stalin declared war on Japan on August 8, 1945. By the morning of August 9, Russian troops had stomped the Japanese in Manchuria and invaded Sakhalin Island. Within ten days, they would have been ready to swarm over Hokkaido before hitting mainland Japan itself. Hence the Japanese surrender. While not taught in mainstream Russian schools, this view certainly has its adherents in the Russophile world.

6 Both The British And The Germans Claimed Victory At Dunkirk

With Chris Nolan’s Dunkirk currently in cinemas, plenty of attention is being paid to this pivotal moment in World War II. The British have long seen it as an excellent example of snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, and the facts bear this out. Churchill expected only 30,000 British soldiers to be saved; 330,000 was the actual figure. While nearly 70,000 British troops were killed, nearly 30,000 Germans died with them. What should have been Britain’s humiliation wound up being the moment the war began to turn against Germany.

Yet things weren’t so clear-cut at the time. Incredibly, both the Allies and the Axis claimed Dunkirk not only as a victory but as one that would go down in history as a shining example of their side’s glory.^[5]Hitler himself described Dunkirk as “the greatest German victory ever.” At the same time, The New York Times was proclaiming “It [Dunkirk] is victory.” This goes beyond mere propaganda. Both the Axis and the Allies genuinely thought this evacuation was their greatest victory. While the German view has understandably died out, it’s still interesting to hear such conflicting hot takes.

5 The Vietnamese Don’t See The Vietnam War As Especially Significant

America’s involvement in Vietnam was an epoch-shaking catastrophe. Nearly 60,000 Americans died, along with uncountable millions of Vietnamese. In the US, it ignited the counterculture and spawned a period of soul-searching that lasted decades. Even now, with friendly relations reestablished with Vietnam and the Iraq War the new holder of the “least popular war” title, it still casts a long shadow.

So, given all that, what do you think the Vietnamese make of it? The answer is: “Not much.”^[6]

The American War, as it’s called in Hanoi, was devastating, but it’s just one of many wars Vietnam became embroiled in during the 20th century. They were invaded by the Japanese in World War II. They battled the French almost as soon as the Japanese left. No sooner had the American War ended than they had to invade Cambodia. They even got into a war with China in 1979. Amid all this carnage, what we call “the Vietnam War” was just another chapter in a long-running saga called “Vietnam getting super-killed.”

On top of that, there’s a culture of ignoring the war among Vietnamese who didn’t live through it. Many under-30s today are almost militantly uninterested in the topic.

4 Germans Don’t Care About The 1966 World Cup

Moving away from war for a moment, let’s look at Britain and Germany’s third most famous battle: the 1966 soccer World Cup. If you’ve ever set foot in Britain, you’ll know what a big deal this is. England’s 4–2 defeat of West Germany is the stuff of legend. Every four years, clips of it are trotted out on British TV. A 1996 song about it, “Three Lions,” routinely hits the charts every time England enters a soccer tournament. As parts of the national psyche go, it’s up there with Dunkirk and the Blitz.

There’s only one problem. The Germans barely remember it.^[7]

While the British still celebrate defeating their bitter soccer rivals, the Germans aren’t even aware they have a rivalry. German soccer fans traditionally hate the Dutch and even look on the English as almost friends. As for the 1966 final itself, it pales in Teutonic memory against West Germany’s 1954 World Cup win, seen today as a defining moment in Germany’s stepping out from under the black cloud of Nazism.

3 Britain Sees Exiting India As A Success; India Sees It As A Prelude To Catastrophe

When the time came for the old European powers to give up their colonies, they had two choices. Go peacefully, or go out in a bloody war. The French, as we saw with Vietnam, generally chose the latter. The British, to their credit, generally chose the former. When the Empire pulled out of India, it was with barely a shot fired and only seven casualties. Compared against the dismal records of other European powers, decolonization of India is generally seen as a British success.

In India and Pakistan, some see it a little differently. They hold Britain’s swift exit accountable for the bloody horrors of Partition.^[8]

The British drew up the new borders separating Hindu India from Muslim Pakistan, but they didn’t publish them until a day after independence. Some think mistakes like this fanned the flames of sectarian violence that gripped the subcontinent. And you better believe Partition was brutal. 15 million were displaced, and up to two million were killed in levels of violence not seen again until Rwanda. Even Indians who don’t blame the British can find it difficult to think about the Empire’s exit without the black cloud of Partition hovering over it.

2 Turkey’s Take On The Armenian Genocide Is Very Different From Its Allies’

Photo credit: Bain News Service

In 1915, the collapsing Ottoman Empire used the cover of World War I to launch the 20th century’s first extermination campaign. Using tactics similar to Nazi Germany, the Empire systematically slaughtered 1.5 million Armenians.

Known as the Armenian Genocide to historians, it probably comes as no surprise to learn that modern Turkey has a different view of it than its allies in Europe and the Americas. But it may surprise you to learn in what exact way that view differs. In 2014, Turkish journalist Bayraktar Bora summed up the Turkish position in an article for Euronews. He argued that while Turks believe the large-scale slaughter of Armenians happened, they don’t believe it was any worse than what was happening to them at the same time.^[9]

Between 1864 and 1922, this view goes, 4.5 million Ottoman Muslims were killed. During World War I, many more died as Russia conquered their territories, while another five million became refugees. In the Turkish telling, their campaign against the Armenians was shameful but has to be viewed in the context of a war where many sides were committing equally shameful acts, often against Turks.

1 Britain And France Think They Took A Principled Stand For Poland; Poland Thinks They Betrayed Them

On September 3, 1939, France and Britain jointly declared war on Germany. The two countries had a pact with Poland, which Axis forces had invaded two days earlier. After letting lesser nations like Czechoslovakia get gobbled up, the invasion of Poland is when the Allies finally put their feet down and stood up to Hitler. If either Brits or French think about that moment today, they probably assume Poland was grateful they joined in.

They’re wrong. Many in Poland think the two countries betrayed them.^[10]

This is a view that crops up uncomfortably often in Poland, including in respectable places like Warsaw’s Uprising Museum. Rather than seeing France and Britain’s stands as principled, it sees them as fair-weather friends who were happy to make some noises but didn’t supply arms, actually attack Germany, or do anything to stop Poland from getting conquered and over 65,000 Poles from getting killed (not to mention the millions who later died under Nazi and Soviet occupation). While it’s certainly not the only view in Poland—many still consider the Brits heroes—it does highlight what a pesky business interpreting history can be, even among friends.

We all know that alcohol affects our ability to think straight and that means embarrassing drunken stories are common. That said, while we might all cringe at things we have done when under the influence, some people take it that bit further and end up becoming headline news stories.

These are the tales of people who set a standard for drunken disasters that the rest of us can only dream of reaching.

10 Quenching Legends, Myths, And Stories Involving Alcohol

10 Got stuck in a photo stand

Most of us who like a drink tend to go a bit over the top on our birthdays, so perhaps we should not judge Danny Melody too harshly. His mad moment also happened in Dublin, a city that is renowned for being party hearty. Danny is from Cheshire, in England, but was visiting Dublin to mark his 21st and decided to pose for a cheesy souvenir picture with his head in the hole of a photo board of a leprechaun. Unfortunately for him, it seems as if alcohol causes his skull to inflate, because once he had stuck his head inside the board he could not get it out again. His friends did what all true buddies would do at a time like that: filmed it on their mobile phones and uploaded it onto YouTube. He also became a magnet for people passing by, who started snapping photos of him.

Speaking to the newspapers once someone had finally freed him, Danny said: “I was quite drunk at the time so I wasn’t that embarrassed, but I am now looking back at it”.^[1]

9 Sold their car to buy more booze

People often buy useless things when they have had too much to drink – the boozy Amazon shopping spree could be used by temperance campaigners – but selling something you actually need is a lot less common. That is what happened to a man from New Zealand, who somehow managed to keep his name from hitting the headlines. The man from Rotorua was in the middle of a truly epic binge when he ran out of money and decided to sell his car to a stranger for $800, to give him the cash to keep going.

Waking up the next day, he completely forgot that he had done this and went to his local police station to report that it had been stolen. The mess was only sorted out because the man who had bought it from him started to suspect he might have bought a stolen vehicle and decided to do some checking into the car registration number. With the police believing it to be stolen, they were alerted when the man entered the number into the website. The car buyer then brought the vehicle back to the embarrassed seller. Still, it is better than drinking and driving.^[2]

8 Gone fishing

Fishing is a popular hobby, but not many people attempt it while they are under the influence. That was not the case for one man from Boston, who must have had the worst craving for fish in human history. This led him to take his boat out onto one of the city canals after a night of spectacularly heavy drinking. Unfortunately for him he was seen by the Massachusetts Environmental Police, who were on patrol in that canal at the time, and he ended up with a criminal record.

His conviction was not for drunk boating, but for being too good at fishing. By the time the police caught him, he had netted roughly 122 sea bass, which is about 121 more than most fishing fans manage when they are sober! Apparently, the city has a rule that people are not allowed to catch more than eight sea bass at a time and the man was forced to give his fishy cargo to charity. Which lucky charity received over a hundred dead fish was not made clear.^[3]

7 Forgotten to finish a burglary

In what might be the most French story ever, a burglar in that country was captured by police after being tempted by a bottle of champagne in the middle of his crime. This bizarre incident took place in Provins, a historic town just outside of Paris, in 2014. The couple who owned the property that he had broken into came home after a night out and their suspicions were sparked by the sight of closed blinds, as they remembered that these were open when they went out.

Instead of going inside, they called the police, who went into the house and found the burglar watching television while drunk out of his mind. He was stealing money, passports and (for some reason) a pair of sunglasses, as well as a bicycle that he was apparently intending to use for his getaway. While ransacking the house he must have stumbled across the bottle of champagne and what Frenchman worthy of his country could possibly resist? According to a spokesman for the police department he was “very relaxed, completely intoxicated and had apparently forgotten where he was.” Hopefully they let him keep the sunglasses to help with his hangover the following morning.^[4]

6 Climbed a mountain

Making your way back home after having a bit too much to drink can sometimes feel like climbing a mountain, but one man from Estonia really did turn into Edmund Hillary under the influence of alcohol. The man, who was just called ‘Pavel’ in news reports, was on a holiday trip to the Cervinia resort in the Alps at the time. Apparently he had opted to hit the bars of this resort after a day on the ski slopes before wandering home to his hotel for the night.

He headed down a road, but apparently it was the wrong choice and it took him onto one of the ski runs that led directly to the Ventina Mountain. Now most people would probably have realized that they had taken a wrong turn when they suddenly found their walk home becoming a lot more of an uphill trek than usual, but Pavel was so drunk he managed to scale 2,400 meters, where he found a restaurant called Igloo. By this time it was around 3 am, but he succeeded in getting inside and was discovered zonked out on a bench the next morning by the restaurant staff. This actually seems like an oddly impressive feat and some of us would have been eager to get our full names in the paper afterwards.^[5]

Top 10 Unexpected Outcomes Of Prohibition

5 Dreamed of being a time traveler

Delusions caused by drinking are pretty standard, but most of us just kid ourselves that the hot woman at the other end of the bar would date us. One man from Casper, in Wyoming, took a more imaginative approach to losing his grip on reality though, as he became convinced that he was a time traveler from the future. When Bryant Johnson was reported to the cops for disorderly behavior, he told them that he had traveled back in time from 2048 to let people in Casper know that hostile aliens were planning to hit the town the following year and that they had to get away while they still could.

He had worked up an impressively detailed story, claiming that these aliens had pumped booze into his system and put him on a transporter pad to send him back in time – although he did not say why they would want to give their victims advance warning. He also maintained that the aliens were meant to send him to 2017, but he had ended up in 2018 by accident (maybe they had been drinking too). He finished by demanding to speak to the town president, in true “take me to your leader” pulp sci-fi fashion. All in all, the breathalyzer test that showed he had a .136 blood alcohol level was surely the most redundant ever taken.^[6]

4 Had a meltdown at work

Who has not a day at work that was so bad that it has made them want to quit in the most public way possible? That is one reason why working and drinking do not mix very well, which was demonstrated by the case of Daniel Kochanski. Back in 2012 he was working as a court stenographer, typing up reports of court cases so that accurate records could be kept. It is possible that this job could be both boring and depressing, but the meltdown he had under the effects of booze was still pretty amazing.

Apparently Kochanski starting typing the words ‘I hate my job’ over and over again in his transcripts of court cases, rather than what was actually happening. News reports stated that over 30 transcripts were sabotaged by him, which meant that the people convicted in those cases could appeal and possibly get their sentences overturned. Kochanski was annoyed at the suggestion that he might have been unprofessional though, saying: “I never typed gibberish. I always did my job 100 percent. I was let go because of substance abuse.” Ironically, that might be one of the worst defenses ever.^[7]

3 Bitten a car

While all of the stories so far have been about men, women are just as capable of getting drunk and doing insane things. In 2014, Rhian Jeremiah from Aberystwyth in Wales was taken to court after a drunken night out that saw her bite a passing car and then get into a fight with the police. Apparently, the 26-year-old had been to a special event to honor the memory of her boyfriend, who drowned, but that still does not really explain her actions.

After leaving this event, she came across a Fiat 500 car in the street and started yelling at the people inside it. She was so drunk that they could not work out what she was shouting about and tried to drive away, only for her bite into the frame of the car! They saw this via the sun roof and told the court that it had made a “screeching noise.” Her lethal teeth also managed to leave marks in the bodywork of the car that cost £220 – or $278 – to repair. She was sentenced to community service and cast as the daughter of Jaws in an upcoming James Bond movie (that last part may be made up).^[8]

2 Toured Scandinavia by taxi

The taxi trip home is a standard part of a night out, but it helps if you are sober enough to remember what country you live in. That was a problem for one unnamed man, who booked a taxi to get him safely home after a drunken New Year celebration in Copenhagen and ended up getting the driver to take him on a 372-mile ride through no less than three different countries. Starting in Denmark, the taxi then drove across Sweden before heading into Norway – which seems to have finally reminded him that his house was in Oslo.

That was not the end of this Scandinavian saga though, as the man did not pay his fare when he finally reached his home. For some reason, the driver let him get out of the taxi and go into the house and then sat outside for hours fuming while his car battery slowly went flat. The following morning he called the police, who found the man asleep and at that point he agreed to cough up the fare – which was $2,200 in US money.^[9]

1 Got friendly with a rubber dinghy

Drunken people often dream of performing heroic acts, but none of the Avengers could match the heroism of one intoxicated 22-year-old man from Brittany, France, who spotted what he thought to be an unconscious person lying inside a rubber dinghy in a shipyard. He decided to do what most people would do in that situation and give the person the kiss of life – except that there was no person and he was discovered by the police getting intimate with the dinghy itself. It is hard to imagine just how drunk you would have to be to see someone who is not there, but to add to the embarrassment the man had called the fire service as well as the police before he started smooching!

He was taken to the cells for the night to sleep off his binge, but none of the news reports stated whether he managed to stop the dinghy from dying. What we can safely say is though that France is just as capable of producing superheroes as the US.^[10]

Top 10 Drinking Games

About The Author: I am a freelance writer based in Dundee and also make short films under the name Wardlaw Films.

Across the history of our world, from the beginning to this day, life has not had a good run. Sure, the planet is teeming with it, but relatively speaking it’s the barest hint of what has been. 99.9% of all life that has ever existed has gone extinct. We’re holding onto a tiny sliver of what life has to offer. 

Evidence shows humans have contributed to many of those species going extinct. There are a lot of animals that died before we ever arrived, but there are also some that could and should still be here today as their extinctions wouldn’t have been too hard to prevent. 

10. A Shrimp Species Went Extinct To Make Way for Land Development

There aren’t a lot of “good” reasons for a species to go extinct but there are reasons we can at least wrap our heads around. When an animal is hunted to extinction, for instance, we can understand how that happened even if we think it’s horrendous. And maybe it’s because it’s a process, a group of people going out and killing them until there are none left, it makes sense. But a species that goes extinct overnight by accident is another matter altogether.

The Florida fairy shrimp is a little creature you have probably never seen or heard of. They are presumed extinct right now. It used to live in a single pond near Gainesville, Florida. Just the one pond, as far as anyone knew. 

Unfortunately for the fairy shrimp, someone wanted to develop that land so the pond was destroyed. The shrimp species is presumed to have died out with it.

9. We Killed Off the Condor Louse While Trying to Save Condors

Humans have developed an almost unspoken hierarchy for animal life. While it’s maybe not true for all of us as individuals, humans clearly value certain animals more than others. House pets rank highly as do horses, lions, elephants, pandas and all your cuter zoo favorites. 

Way down the list of life forms humans care about are bugs. We actively eradicate them in our homes and few people ever want them around. That’s probably why, on some level, the extinction of the condor louse wasn’t considered a big deal.

The condor louse used to feed on the California condor. The California condor, one of those more majestic animals, was nearly driven to extinction itself. In the 80s, only 22 of the birds were still in the wild. 

Conservationists captured the animals and took them into captivity to help preserve the species. Part of the process of helping the birds involved making sure they were healthy, so they were deloused and their parasites were killed. Except the lice only lived on California condors so when those last birds were deloused, the entire lice species went extinct in what turned out to be a conservationist oops. 

You could make the argument that lice are parasitic and gross and it’s no big loss, but some could say if you can make that argument for a creature you don’t like, what’s stopping someone else from making it for a creature you do like?

While the louse is gone, the California condor population has risen to nearly 600 birds. 

8. Nearly 100 Bird Species Went Extinct in Hawaii 

It’s no secret that human action, intentional or otherwise, has taken a great toll on nature. We kill off species sometimes but you usually only hear about it in the singular, like the shrimp and lice we already covered. But then, in the interests of efficiency, we can head to Hawaii where humans have killed off close to 100 different species of birds to get a better look at the breadth of the devastation. 

Hawaii was once home to 142 different species of birds that exist nowhere else on Earth. That was before the arrival of humans to the islands. After that, 95 of those species went extinct. Of the remaining bird species, 11 of them have had no confirmed sightings in decades, meaning they are likely extinct as well.

Most of the extinctions in Hawaii can be traced to just a handful of causes. Destruction of habitat is obvious, but many are also killed by invasive predators that humans brought to the island. That includes mosquitos that carry avian malaria which never existed on Hawaii before. 

7. Farming May Have Wiped Out North America’s Most Abundant Insect

It’s rare that a species goes from numbering in the tens of millions to vanishing entirely, but that’s what happened to the Rocky Mountain locust. These grasshoppers were considered a literal plague in North America. In 1874 the swarms were said to be so bad they blocked out the sun and they ate everything in sight. Imagine the sky so thick with grasshoppers you couldn’t see anything else as millions of them devour all your crops and even the clothing you’re wearing as you try to get away from them. 

The species went from swarms of billions that were over 100 miles wide and 1800 miles long to nothing at all within just a few years. For years there was no explanation to the species’ disappearance that made any sense when it was examined more closely. 

It’s since been theorized that the species went extinct thanks to the expansion of farming and homesteading across America. River valleys were all converted to farmland, irrigation was set up diverting streams and rivers, and all the habitats once used by the grasshoppers for breeding went away. Because the species is so vulnerable in those early stages of life, they didn’t stand a chance. 

6. Habitat Loss, Hunting, and Genetics Wiped Out Passenger Pigeons

People still consider pigeons a nuisance to this day. They are one of the few birds that have adapted incredibly well to living in urban areas amongst humans. But humans and pigeons have a long history of poor interaction dating back to the passenger pigeon.

Back in the 1800s the passenger pigeon population numbered around three billion. Deforestation and hunting pigeon meat eventually did the birds in while the world sat back and watched, convinced it wasn’t happening. 

In 1857, someone introduced a bill to protect the birds in Ohio. A senate committee responded by saying no protection was needed because “no ordinary destruction could lessen them,” while waxing poetic about how the world was the passenger pigeon’s playground. The last pigeon was believed to have died in 1914.

Part of the problem with the pigeons was that, despite an enormous population, there was relatively little genetic diversity. Combine hunting and habitat loss with breedings issues and you have a species going extinct in just 50 years. 

5. Carolina Parakeets Went Extinct in Part Because of the Hat Trade

What would you say is the stupidest reason a species could go extinct? If your answer doesn’t involve hats, try again. Hats are partially responsible for the demise of the Carolina parakeet.

The only parrot species that was native to the area, you could find the Carolina parakeet in the Eastern US until well through the 1800s. The last captive bird died in a zoo in 1918. 

Like many extinct species, habitat loss took a big toll as their forests were removed to make way for human cities. But more than that, the birds fell victim to human whims for colorful things. Because they were brightly colored like many parrots, people wanted them as pets. Once captured and kept in a cage they obviously weren’t breeding prodigiously anymore and that wasn’t doing the species any favors.

Some people wanted the pretty feathers without the birds and that’s where the hats come in. The birds were hunted so their feathers could be used in the manufacture of ladies’ hats. In 1866 it’s believed 5 million birds of different species were killed just for hats. Others were killed just because people found them to be a nuisance and the entire species suffered for it.

4. Turnspit Dogs Were Replaced By Machines

If you’ve never heard of a Turnspit Dog, it’s probably because they went extinct around 1900. But the dogs were fairly popular starting in the 16th century onward and their claim to fame is part of the reason the SPCA exists today.

Turnspit dogs were used to turn the spit in a kitchen. The small dogs would run on a wheel like a hamster, stuck high on a wall and connected to the cook fire, turning a spit to cook meat over the open flame. They did this every single day, except maybe Sundays. The work started in Europe when someone bred them as a replacement for boys who used to do the same job.

In America, large hotels used to use the dogs and mistreat them terribly which is how the SPCA is linked to them. The founder of the SPCA saw them in Manhattan hotels and was disgusted. When technology could replace the dog, people stopped breeding them and eventually the breed vanished completely. 

3. The Dodo Went Extinct Because It Had No Fear of Predators

For a long while the dodo bird has been synonymous with stupidity. This was an idea bolstered by old Warner Brothers cartoons that featured a stupid dodo bird. The notion stems from their discovery on Mauritius by man in the 1500s. The birds had never experienced predators before and thus had no fear of being hunted. 

Humans could herd them right onto boats with no effort at all so they could eat them while they traveled. This made the sailors mock the birds for being so stupid they wouldn’t save their own lives when, in reality, they just had never been given reason to believe some aquatic jerks were rounding them up for a slaughter.

This innate lack of fear led to the species’ extinction. It wasn’t just the humans themselves; it was the pigs that Dutch sailors brought with them, along with rats and cats. Once free on the island, the animals destroyed the nests of the earthbound birds, eating eggs and young. Along with deforestation, the birds didn’t stand a chance, and the species vanished in just 80 years from the time they were discovered. 

2. Atlas Bears Were Hunted for Roman Games

The Atlas bear used to live in parts of Europe and Africa once upon a time. It’s described as being smaller than a modern grizzly but stockier than a North American black bear. Their name came from the Atlas mountain range which they called home. 

Like many species there are a few reasons that contributed to their decline. As parts of Africa that they called home were consumed by desert they lost some of their habitat. In addition, modernized hunting techniques, such as the creation of firearms, made killing them much easier. But a significant reason for their decline can be traced back much earlier, to the time of the Roman Empire.

Atlas bears were a favorite of the gladiatorial games put on in Roman times. Hunting the bears to be used in sport has been attributed to the downfall of the species. The bears would have been captured, brought to an arena, and forced to fight against arm combatants in the ring. Their species could never recover from the losses.

In the wild, the last bear is believed to have been killed by hunters in the 1870s.

1. Cats Have Destroyed Over 60 Species

There are an estimated 58.3 million cats in America. Concrete figures on a world population are scarce but some estimates go up to 600 million. Next to dogs they’re definitely the most popular pet but that is also proving to be an issue on a global survival scale. Cats are killers, and they’ve been blamed for the extinction of over 60 species so far. This includes birds, reptiles and mammals. 

One study in Canada, which has far fewer cats than America, suggested that if owners kept their cats indoors, it could save the lives of up to 200 million wild birds every year. In the United States cats are blamed for killing 2.4 billion birds per year. 

The problem is even worse for birds that live on populated islands. Cats are invasive predators in these environments and bird populations are at a much higher risk of predation. Cats, even cats that are fed regularly, hunt because of instinct not need. Most cat owners have had their cat bring them a dead mouse or bird in the past which proves this. The cat didn’t want to eat it; it was more of a prize. Unfortunately, dozens of those prizes were the last of their kind.

It’s common to expect that medications are going to cause side effects. Some are barely noticeable and some may be worse than the condition the medication treats. We understand that’s a risk associated with medicine, though. 

Sometimes people seem to forget that side effects aren’t limited to the realm of medications. Many things we eat can have their own effects, and some of them are far more surprising than you’d imagine.

10. The Scottish Health Pea Suppresses Hunger But Provides Energy

The Scottish health pea, also called bitter vetch, was a crop once cultivated in medieval times. The tuberous plant is said to taste like leather licorice and was used as an appetite suppressant before potatoes became a staple crop. Those who eat it lose the urge to eat and drink. 

There’s evidence that the plant does more than just stave off hunger. Stories tell of Highlanders using it to perform impressive feats of strength and Roman soldiers using it to sustain themselves during long battles against their enemies.

Performance enhancing abilities aside, the potential use as a diet aid has been the focus in the modern age, as a plant that can convince you to stop eating and therefore lose weight would be worth a lot of money. 

One of the big hindrances to cultivating it on a mass scale is that it’s hard to grow and harvest, but a plant that gives you extensive energy and allows you to forget your hunger is worth trying to cultivate, at least for some.

9. Miracle Berries Block the Taste of Sour

For a few years, many sites on the internet sold something called Miracle Berries as a novelty. You can still find them for sale in many retailers but they’re not as well known as they were. The fruit, also called miracle fruit or Synsepalum dulcificum, hails from West Africa and has the unique ability to alter your ability to taste other foods.

The selling point of miracle fruit is that it eliminates your ability to taste sour foods. Thus, anything you eat that is normally sour will taste sweet. This is owing to something called miraculin, a glycoprotein found in the fruit. It binds to taste receptors on your tongue and will activate in the presence of acid found in sour foods. For maybe up to an hour or two, you can perceive sour as sweet.

There were attempts in the past to use the fruit as a replacement for sweeteners so diabetics and others on restrictive diets could enjoy the taste of sweet things without adding sugar, but those efforts were stumped by the need for further testing. The plan was abandoned and now the multi-billion dollar sugar and sweetener industries continue as they ever did.

8. Salema Porgy is a Hallucinogenic Fish

There are over 32,000 kinds of fish in the world but when it comes to food, there are only a few dozen that humans regularly consume. Some fish are inedible or unpleasant tasting, some exist in small numbers, and some are impractical to catch. The ones we make use of often have fairly mild flesh and are easy to cook or prepare in ways most seafood lovers enjoy. 

There are also a small subsection of fish out there that aren’t often eaten because of what they do to people who consume them. Consider the pufferfish which is potentially toxic and, even when well prepared, can cause your lips to tingle with that hint of poison. Or the Salema porgy, which makes you trip out and hallucinate.

They call it “the fish that makes dreams” in Arabic and these little fellows can be found in the eastern waters around Europe and Africa. Some people can safely eat the fish and nothing at all happens while others may be plagued with hallucinations for up to three days.

Before you think it sounds like a great time, be aware that the hallucinations aren’t fun. One person reported hearing the screams of humans and birds while another was surrounded by giant arthropods which, to you and me, are giant centipedes.

Something called ichthyoallyeinotoxism is what sets off the hallucinations, but science is still unclear how the porgy causes it and why only some parts of the fish do it.

7. Ice Cream Can Cause Breathalyzer False Positives  

A breathalyzer test measures alcohol in your breath to determine if you’re legally fit to drive a vehicle. Some foods contain alcohol which might cause a false positive. There’s a whole cottage industry of law firms that want you to believe bread can cause a false positive since they’re hoping to snag you as a client to fight unfair tickets. The science doesn’t really back them up. 

One item that has been shown to trigger breathalyzers is ice cream. A man who had a history of drinking and driver was on trial after registering what he insisted was a false positive. He claimed he’d just had some Bubble O’Bill ice cream and the breathalyzer device on his vehicle refused to unlock for him. Prosecutors demanded proof so the man’s level was tested by police in court and registered at 0.00. He ate the ice cream and was tested again, registering a 0.18. The judge allowed the device on his car to be removed. 

6. Persimmons Can Form a Tannin Brick in Your Gut

Persimmons are bright yellow or orange fruits that taste a bit like a mild, sweet tomato. If you get one that’s not ripe it can be very bitter, however. That’s thanks to the high amount of tannins in the fruit, and that’s also the part that can be dangerous. 

Tons of different plants have tannins in them from tea to wine to spices. They’re a chemical compound that binds to certain components in plants and mostly their job is to make a food taste unpleasant. The tannins will fade as some fruits or plants age or ripens because the plant needs to be eaten to spread its seeds at that point.

Humans have developed a lot of uses for tannins, like tanning hides for instance, but in foods we rarely want them and try to wait them out whenever possible. But some foods, like persimmons, have a lot and they build up. 

If you eat a lot of persimmons, those tannins can bind with your gastric juices, cellulose and other compounds to make a phytobezoar. In simple terms, this is like a brick made of bark in your gut. 

These bricks cannot be digested, and they can become painful blockages over time. They may require surgery to remove or, a much more pleasant option, you can potentially dissolve them by drinking Coca-Cola, a treatment which doctors will prescribe before resorting to surgery.. 

5. Beef Jerky Seems to Cause Mania

Bad news if you’re a beef jerky fan, that salty, chewy meat may cause psychiatric conditions. It’s not the jerky specifically, rather the nitrates in it you may need to worry about. That means other cured meats like salami or Slim Jims could have the same effect.

In a study of over 1,000 people hospitalized for various conditions, the numbers showed those who had been in for psychiatric conditions were 3.5 more likely to have been admitted for mania than the control group if they’d eaten jerky or cured meats.

Experiments on rats have shown that, after a few weeks on a diet high in nitrates, they exhibit manic behavior. 

4. Margarine Can Make You Aggressive

The history of margarine dates back to Napoleon’s time when the French emperor wanted a cheap alternative to butter. Back then it was beef tallow churned with milk and probably got pretty ripe if it was left out in the heat for too long.

These days most margarine is made from various vegetable oils and lasts for around two to three months after it’s opened which is on par with butter, but it’s still cheaper overall. One thing they don’t advertise about margarine is how it can affect your mood.

To be specific, it’s dietary trans fatty acids that have been showed to lead to aggression. In the UK, research on the diets of prisoners showed that supplementing vitamins, minerals and especially omega-3 fatty acids showed a 37% drop in violent offenses. The research also pointed out that omega-3 fatty acids were consumed far less in modern times than decades passed, having been supplanted chiefly by omega-6 fatty acids like the kinds found in fast foods and products like margarine. 

Today, trans fats are considered “bad fats” but the reason for this is usually related to heart health and cancer rather than how they affect your mind. Artificial trans fats are banned in the US but not naturally occurring ones. 

3. Looking at Red Meat Calms Men Down

Men and their love of red meat has been a long-standing joke. Men love steak and burgers and BBQ and testosterone. It turns out there is more science behind this old stereotype than you might think. Meat has a calming effect on men.

Slightly weirder than meat calming men down is that this has nothing to do with eating. This is a side effect of just looking at meat. In what is arguably a very odd experiment, a group of men were asked to both look at an assortment of photos while listening to an actor recite lines. If the actor messed up a line, the men being studied could inflict loud noises on them meant to be a punishment. 

Results showed the men were less inclined to inflict harsh punishments while they were looking at pictures of red meat. This ended up being a counterintuitive result since the expectation was that blood and meat and death would rile up aggression. 

2. A Toxin in Some Shellfish Can Cause Amnesia

Shellfish can be dicey at the best of times. Some people have very serious shellfish allergies that can be deadly. Everyone else needs to be wary of poorly prepared or stored shellfish as it’s notorious for causing food poisoning if it hasn’t been safely handled. And we all need to worry about a potential shellfish toxic that can cause amnesia.

The particular toxin infects bivalves like clams and mussels. They can be steamed and seem safe but the steaming is not always enough to kill the toxin. Though the condition, called amnesic shellfish poisoning, doesn’t sound exceptionally dangerous at first, that’s only because it focuses on that one symptom.

A 1987 outbreak, when the toxin was first identified, led to three deaths and over 100 cases of infection. Besides memory loss, victims may suffer vomiting and diarrhea, disorientation, dizziness and muscle weakness. Some patients developed long term cognitive issues. 

The cause is not the shellfish themselves but domoic acid which can contaminate the shellfish. Domoic acid is created by diatoms, a kind of algae, and they are not killed by heat.

1. Ciguatera Toxicity From Fish Reverse Hot and Cold Sensation In Your Mind

Ciguatera toxicity is one of the most bizarre conditions you can contract after eating food and you don’t want to experience it. It comes from certain reef fish, things like grouper, eel, or red snapper, infected with microorganisms that produce ciguatoxin.

The condition causes many of the symptoms you’d expect, such as cramping and diarrhea. The thing that sets ciguatera toxicity apart from most conditions is sensation reversal. Cold things feel hot and hot things feel cold. Ice cream would feel like it’s burning your mouth while a hot coffee would be cool and refreshing. 

Aside from being confusing, there’s also danger in not being able to tell hot from cold. In addition, victims can suffer burning itch all over their bodies and the sensation that their teeth are falling out. Just to be clear, their teeth are not falling out but it feels like they are.

The combination of adaptation and natural selection produces some beautiful, graceful creatures. It also leads to some animals with totally bizarre body parts. Did sponges lose their brains? What’s so bizarre about the mantis shrimp’s seemingly telescopic eyes? Why do the sheepshead fish’s teeth appear so uncanny? What made researchers think of origami when they encountered the puzzle of the earwig’s wings?

Yes, it is a little creepy that an arachnid’s legs function “a bit like . . . tongues, noses, and fingertips.” Of all the places tentacles could grow, why would nature select a snake’s head? Skilled combatants claim that almost anything could be used as a weapon, but, unlike an aquatic salamander, even they might draw a line at ribs. The shoebill stork is nothing if not an innovative hunter.

There’s a good reason that the male venomous platypus need not fear being cuckolded when mating season rolls around. The proboscis monkey’s nose may strike people as rather homely, but females of his species seem to admire it, while another of his appendages is—well, for now, let’s just say you were warned . . . .

10 Genetically Modified Animals Not Intended For Consumption

10 Sponge’s “Brain”

Although modern sponges are brainless animals, some scientists believe that this was not always the case. These marine invertebrates may once have had, if not true brains, something similar to them.

If so, why did the sponges dispose of their neurons? The answer from evolution is simple: if sponges have, indeed, “lost their nerves,” as BBC reporter Melissa Hogenboom puts it, it was because they didn’t need them and because the loss benefited the animals.

Frank Hirth of Kings College London believes that sponges have undergone an “evolved loss” of neural structures. This loss is similar, Hogenboom suggests, to the losses of organs in other animals, such as crustaceans, which, living in dark caves, lose the need for eyes and evolve away from having them.

The loss, if it occurred, would provide certain advantages. Without brains, sponges need a lot less energy, and, since sponges can passively acquire nutrients by filter-feeding, a nervous system wouldn’t be an asset to their survival. In fact, feeding a brain would be “a waste of energy,” Hirth says, and the maintenance of such an “energy demand” would be impossible for sponges, which “sit on the sea bed . . . just filtering food that comes along.”

The view that sponges once had something akin to brains and lost them remains controversial among scientists. Neuroscientist Leonid Moroz, of the University of Florida in St. Augustine, is one expert among others who believes that sponges never developed neurons, since such cells are unnecessary to sponges’ survival.

Hirth and Moroz presented their differences of opinion concerning the issue during a March 2015 meeting of the Royal Society in London. However, the matter remains unresolved. According to Angelika Stollewerk of Queen Mary University of London, at present, either Hirth or Moroz may be correct. Time—and evidence—may tell; until then, both of her colleagues’ views remain possibilities.

If Hirth’s view proves correct, though, one of the most bizarre animal body parts of all time would have to be the useless sponge brain that disappeared when the animal’s survival favored its simplification.

9 Mantis Shrimp’s Eyes

The mantis shrimp’s bulging compound eyes, set on stalks, are so incredible they seem unreal. Unlike human eyes (and those of most other animals, including those of other arthropods), the mantis shrimp’s eyes are not equipped with single lenses through which light funnels onto a retina. Instead, the light-sensitive receptor cells at the surface of the shrimp’s eyes enable them to detect wavelengths of light in the visible, the infrared, and the ultraviolet spectra.

This ability to see many colors allows mantis shrimp to communicate by using their brightly colored body parts. Their bright colors warn of the mantis shrimp’s lightning-fast punch, which delivers an enormous wallop. Some species also possess bioluminescence, which they can use to signal other shrimp that have invaded their space to back off.

Other color displays function as mating signals. Females prefer more colorful males, so, through natural selection, both sexes of the mantis shrimp become even more colorful generation after generation. In short, mantis shrimp are survivors because the eyes they have evolved are perfectly adapted to their environment, the colorful corals of the ocean’s depths.

8 Sheepshead Fish’s Teeth

The sheepshead fish’s teeth are so bizarre they are downright unsettling. They are not the huge, jagged teeth most fish flash. Instead, they are fairly even and similar in size to one another. The fish has teeth that look much like human incisors, canine teeth, premolars, and molars.

It wouldn’t be much of a stretch to suggest that sheepshead fish could flash a fisherman a smile. In fact, in photographs that Nathan Martin took of the specimen he caught off Nags Head, North Carolina, recently, the fish looks as though it has been prompted to say “cheese.”

Experts say that the fish uses its choppers to eat barnacles and other animals equipped with hard shells. To show off his catch, Martin says he plans to hang it on a wall. Then, visitors can check out its toothsome smile.

7 Earwig’s Wings

The wings of the earwig are marvels of natural development. The arthropod lives on the ground. A glance at the insect, of which there are over 2,000 species, would not suggest that they have wings that, together, are twice the size of their bodies.

Intricately folded beneath the much smaller “leathery forewings,” these rear wings, which, as a National Geographic video explains, are “remarkably compact,” are not visible until the insect raises the rear of its body. Then, by flapping the exposed rear wings, the earwig causes them to unfold, which requires such a vigorous and sustained effort that the insect needs to anchor itself on a leaf or twig until the wings completely unfold.

Remarkably, “the open wings lock into place and remain stable,” the video indicates, doing so “without the use of muscle power.” Instead, the insect’s “elastic, spring-like wing joint allows this stability.” Researchers hope to unlock the secret of the earwig’s wings; doing so, they believe will have many important technological applications, “including folded tents, maps, and foldable electronics.” Unfortunately, an attempt to comprehend the unfolding of the wings by “using . . . origami-like folding” procedures failed, the article relates, because the wings “do not fold . . . at a single crease,” as paper does.

The earwig is known for one other rather bizarre reason. As the Oxford English Dictionary points out, the insect’s name derives from the mistaken “belief that the earwig has a habit of crawling into the human ear.” The name of its scientific order, dermaptera, is also rather imaginative. It means “skin wing.”

6 Harvestman’s Legs

For many, the harvestman is better known by one species among them, the daddy longlegs. The harvestman has eight legs, but, although it is an arachnid, it is neither an insect nor a spider, nor, as some believe, is the harvestman venomous. The harvestman’s most astonishing, totally bizarre body parts are its legs and not only because of their length.

As an article in The Atlantic points out, these amazing appendages “perform the work of several organs at once.” Their legs “can detect heat, water, pressure, and a panoply of chemicals.” Their legs’ sensory perception capabilities are “a bit like having tongues, noses, and fingertips ‘all over your knuckles,’” says Prashant Sharma, a harvestman biologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Their many-jointed legs also enable them to curl the appendages several times around tree branches. The lower parts of their legs are so distant from the rest of their bodies that they are outfitted with holes that help the appendages stay oxygenated.

The harvestman’s legs are amazing for other reasons, too. According to Rodrigo Willemart, who studies harvestman sensory ecology at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, “The fourth pair sport seriously stabby spines, used by some harvestmen to pinch predatory flatworms in two or to joust for access to mates.”

In addition, their legs help male harvestmen compete for mates. For the females of the species, size, as measured, with regard to harvestmen, by length, is important. “Whichever male has the longest leg wins, and it’s the one that is going to mate,” explains Guilherme Gainett, a developmental biologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

5 Tentacled Snake’s Tentacles

The appendages that grow from the face of the tentacled snake are unique. No other snake on the planet is so equipped. If its tentacles also make the reptile look rather sinister, its approach to hunting, author Bec Crew says, is downright “diabolical.”

Although it breathes air, it can stay underwater for 30 minutes before resurfacing to take its next breath, so it’s right at home in its native habitat, among the lakes, streams, and rice paddies of Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.

When the snake is on the hunt, its tentacles waver about, as their nerve cells detect prey lurking about in the “muddy water” of their environment, Crew explains. The water is so “murky” that, without the aid of the tentacles, the snake would not discern the presence of its food.

When it has found its prey, the snake ambushes its victim. In the process, the predator turns a fish’s defensive posture to its own advantage. By flicking its tail, the snake prompts the fish to adopt its defensive “C” shape, which, Crew explains, normally allows the fish “to zip away from anything trying to grab or bite it.” In the process of reacting, the fish flips “right into [the snake’s] waiting mouth,” and the end of the hunt concludes “in just 15-20 milliseconds.” The prey “never had a chance,” Crew concludes.

4 Spanish Ribbed Newt’s Ribs

The Spanish ribbed newt doesn’t use its ribs just for the support of its abdomen. According to Matt Walker, an editor at Earth News, when it is under attack, the newt “pushes out its ribs until they pierce through its body, exposing a row of bones that act like poisonous barbs.” Astonishingly, the newt is none the worse for having adopted this bizarre defense maneuver.

Thanks to photographic and X-ray imaging technology, scientists have determined how the aquatic salamander accomplishes this incredible feat. By “swinging its ribs forward” so that they are at an angle of 50 degrees relative to its spine but keeping still otherwise, the newt stretches its skin until it is penetrated by the ribs, says Egon Heiss of the University of Vienna in Austria.

At the same time, the newt “secretes a poisonous milky substance,” Heiss adds. The combination of the poison and the spikes formed by the protruding ribs is “highly effective,” he declares, causing either the predator’s death or the attacker’s experience of agonizing pain. It helps considerably that the newt is immune to its own poison.

3 Shoebill Stork’s Bill

Although humans are not on the menu of the shoebill stork, baby alligators are part of the bird’s diet, as are such fare as lungfish, eels, . . . catfish, and . . . crazy stuff like Nile monitor lizards [and] snakes,” writer Nicholas Lund observes.

Its predatory ways are simple but effective. It stands and waits. When prey approaches, it lunges, scooping its next meal into its massive bill, along with whatever else happens to be in the vicinity, whether “water, mud, vegetation, [or] . . . other hapless fish.” Then, the stork shakes its head back and forth to get rid of the debris it may have collected along with its prey, before using its massive bill to decapitate its live, squirming quarry. At this point, it’s all over but the swallowing.

2 Venomous Platypus’s Feet

More animals than might be thought have really strange feet. One of the most bizarre of these body parts are those of the venomous platypus. Mindy Weisberger’s description of the platypus itself also perfectly captures the appearance of their feet in particular: they do, indeed, “look like they were stitched together by a rogue taxidermist from the [feet] of unrelated animals, as a prank.”

A wrinkled, leathery web fans out from the foot’s five claws, which emerge, seemingly abruptly, from the end of each leg. The claws lie along bifurcated folds each pair of which connect a section of web on either side of it, further complicating the look of the animal’s bizarre feet.

In males, the claws are “loaded with venom,” Weisberger says, which scientists believe may be used to dissuade competitive suitors from pursuing their romantic interest in females when mating season rolls around.

1 Proboscis Monkey’s Proboscis (and Penis)

As its name implies, the homely proboscis monkey has a strange-looking nose. Although the animal’s name doesn’t suggest that any other part of its body is in any way bizarre, the male of the species has a penis that can only be described as totally bizarre.

The Jimmy Durante of the animal world, the somehow sad-looking proboscis monkey has a nose like a banana, except that it’s orange, rather than yellow. In addition to its “big nose,” writer Brad Joseph says, the monkey is cursed with a “pot belly, crazy voice box, and several other bizarre features, [which] once discovered . . . are never forgotten.”

The belly’s size is explained by its function: the stomach serves as a “fermentation vat,” in which “gut flora” convert leaves’ “structural cellulose . . . into usable sugar” and detoxify poisonous alkaloids.

The nose is either easily explained or inexplicable. The former is true if scientists are correct in assuming that the proboscis monkey’s proboscis is “attractive to females.” The latter is likely if the scientists’ hypothesis is false. One thing is certain, though: the animal’s nose has unmistakable presence. Not only is it there, but it’s impossible to miss.

The other “unique and attention-getting characteristic of the monkey,” as Joseph calls it, is the proboscis monkey’s penis. “Always erect,” the cone-shaped scarlet member rearing aloft from a black scrotum constantly perspires as a means of releasing “excess sodium,” Joseph explains, a necessity for life in the “salty, mangrove forests” in which the monkey makes its home.

People love to see a hero fall. Perhaps it’s the shock and the thrill, or perhaps it’s the gratifying thought they are no better than the rest of us. Whatever it is, when we see a hero made to look like dirt, we applaud.

Few people make easier targets than Mahatma Gandhi. It’s not just that he’s a saint — he’s an easy target, too. He’s a man from a foreign culture that’s easy to misunderstand, and his life is full of complicated moments that, pulled out of context, can be made to sound horrible.

But there’s little to no truth to all of those stories about Gandhi’s hidden dark side. Gandhi was simply a man who believed passionately in peace – and his reward has been a whole slew of books degrading his name.

See Also: 10 Curious Controversies About Mahatma Gandhi

10 Gandhi Was A Racist

In 1893, Gandhi traveled to South Africa. He was there to fight for the rights of Indian expats, but while he was there, he made a few statements about Africans that seem incredibly shocking today.

Multiple books have been written about his time there, most calling him a “racist” – and not everything they say is a lie. Gandhi said that Africans are “troublesome, very dirty, and live like animals”; he called them “savages”, and repeatedly used the racist term “kaffirs”.

It’s true — Gandhi, as a young man, could be called “racist”. But criticizing Gandhi for his time in South Africa is like criticizing the Apostle Paul for his time as Saul. Gandhi grew up. He changed.

Later in life, Gandhi started calling for “an awakening in South Africa” – meaning a revolution for African rights. He ordered his followers, when they went to South Africa, to live under the same restrictions the black population endured to make sure they knew how they suffered. And he openly mocked the idea of the “noble savage”, saying, “They are certainly noble, but no savages.”

When the revolution Gandhi called for came to fruition, the man at its head, Nelson Mandela, specifically cited Gandhi as part of the influence behind Africa’s freedom, saying:

“Gandhi must be forgiven those prejudices and judged in the context of the time and circumstances. We are looking here at the young Gandhi, still to become Mahatma, when he was without any human prejudice save that in favor of truth and justice.”

9 Gandhi Supported The Caste System

Author Arundhati Roy wrote a whole book criticizing what she called “The Gandhi Myth”. “It is time to unveil a few truths,” she said, before accusing Gandhi of supporting the caste system.

The caste system is an ancient belief that humanity is divided into five separate castes. Priests and teachers, it says, are the top of humanity. At the bottom are the so-called “untouchables” – people like street sweepers and latrine cleaners, considered the bottom of humanity.

It’s one of the strangest things you could possibly accuse Gandhi of supporting. His stance on caste was unambiguous. In fact, in 1932, he went on hunger strike specifically to protest the caste system.

Like most of the accusations against Gandhi, there’s a tiny, out-of-context kernel of truth in this one. Gandhi was a Hindu and he believed, on religious grounds, that people were born in certain castes.

But he believed everyone had the right to move up in life and strictly opposed discrimination, saying it was “against the spirit of religion”.

“This religion, if it can be called such, stinks in my nostrils,” Gandhi said about the caste system. “This certainly cannot be the Hindu religion.”

8 Gandhi Left His Father’s Deathbed For Sex

One Gandhi story that people love to work into listicles is the moment he left his father’s deathbed to have sex.

It’s a true story – in fact, it comes from Gandhi himself. When he was 16, Gandhi left his father’s bedside, caught in what he called the “grip of lust”, and spent the night with his wife, Kasturba. While he was gone, he missed his father’s final breath.

It’s a juicy story, but only really because Gandhi tells it that way. To him, this was the life-changing moment that taught him the evils of sexual desire. He believed that sexual lust had ruined his life and, because of this moment, swore never to touch wine, meat or women again. After his father’s death, Gandhi swore to only have sex to procreate.

Like the stories about South Africa, this is part of Gandhi’s origin story. Is a moment he regretted and a part of what made him the man he would become.

But even as an origin story, this one is really just Gandhi beating himself up for nothing. If anyone less puritanical about sex told the story, it would be as bland as bland could be. All that really happened is that Gandhi sat by his father’s side while he was dying and, went nightfall came, stepped away for a moment to see his wife.

It was Gandhi himself who turned this into a story into sinister, depraved lust. If anything, his take on the story is just proof of how hard the man could be on himself.

7 Gandhi Slept Nude With His Teenaged Great-Niece

One of the hardest things to accept about Gandhi is his views on sex. Missing his father’s death took a toll on him, and he manifested that guilt into a complete and total rejection of sexuality. And, in a lot of ways, that resulted in some strange behavior.

In his later years, Gandhi started performing “purity tests”. He wanted to completely conquer his sexual desires, saying he wanted to “become a eunuch mentally”, and so he had women – including his own great-niece – sleep naked in the same bed as him to test his willpower.

Ok – admittedly, that one’s a bit weird.

It wasn’t just a part of Indian culture, it was just a weird thing that Gandhi did. A lot of people have suggested it proves he’s a pervert, and it’s pretty reasonable to assume that – at the very least, on a subconscious level – this was a subtle sign of how much Gandhi was struggling with his vow of chastity.

There’s no proof whatsoever, though, that Gandhi ever touched anyone in an inappropriate way.

Nobody has ever come forward saying Gandhi touched them. Sushila Nayar, one of the women Gandhi is most often accused of touching, has said she only slept with him “as I would with my mother”. Likewise, his great-niece Manu described it as being like put to bed “with great love”, as if by a mother.

And Gandhi never hid it. When he found out that people thought it was strange, he made it a point to talk openly about it, wanting to make sure that he wasn’t hiding anything he did.

6 Gandhi Called Hitler His “Friend”

Writer Joseph Lelyveld wrote a whole book criticizing Gandhi. He advertised it as “catalogs of Gandhi’s hypocrisy”, setting out to prove that Gandhi was a monster. Among his evidence was the juicy, often-repeated fact that Gandhi called Hitler his “friend”.

It’s a perfect example of just how twisted the facts can become when you take them out of context.

It’s true that Gandhi wrote a letter to Hitler that opened with the words “Dear friend” – but if Lelyveld had literally just read the one more word in the letter, he’d have realized there’s nothing scandalous about it at all.

The letter is a call for peace, which says:

“You are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success?”

Gandhi is polite, and he tries to flatter Hitler at every opportunity – but that’s just because he was trying to be persuasive. He only ever called Hitler a “friend” when he was trying to convince him to put an end to the Second World War.

5 Gandhi Told The Jews To Kill Themselves

“The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” Gandhi once said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.”

It’s a pretty shocking quote – and so it’s not surprising that it’s been used to defame Gandhi more than once. But in context, it’s not as crazy as it seems.

Gandhi had some strongly-held, unusual beliefs. He was happy to die for a cause. During one of his many fasts-to-death, he openly embraced his imminent death, saying: “This is a god-given opportunity that has come to me, to offer my life as a final sacrifice to the downtrodden.”

And above all, he believed in pacifism in all circumstances, even when someone was ready to kill you. In 1908, he was horribly beaten and left for dead. He didn’t defend himself – and afterward, he asked people to forgive his attackers.

And he held his followers to the same standards. When the Indian people started rioting in response to a British massacre, Gandhi declared a fast-to-death, saying that he wouldn’t eat until his countrymen stopped using violent methods.

It might sound crazy when you apply it to the Holocaust – but Gandhi believed that non-violence was a universal virtue, no matter how dire the circumstance. The only hope for a better world was to refuse to respond to violence with violence, no matter how terrible the enemy. As he put it:

“Every truth—if it really is truth—presents itself as universal, even if it is not the whole truth. If something is true, then it must be true for all people and at all times.”

4 Gandhi Told Britain To Surrender To The Nazis

In the book “Lies, Damned Lies, and History”, Graeme Donald says that our appreciation of Gandhi is a “form of self-delusion.” His sainthood, he argues, is a “myth he so cleverly wove for himself”. And then he proves it by quoting Gandhi on saying: “I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted.”

Combined with that letter where he called Hitler his “friend”, it’s all perfect fodder to make Gandhi sound like a Nazi-supporter – but that couldn’t possibly be further from the truth. Gandhi was simply against war in all forms, and this was part of his call to end World War II peacefully.

In it, he admitted that Hitler was the worst enemy the world had ever faced, saying:

“If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.”

Gandhi, however, strictly believed that no war was ever worth fighting. He wanted the Allies to “fight Nazism without arms”, saying that winning through weaponry would stop an enemy but condemn humanity. The only hope for a better future, he believed, was to show a monk-like refusal to fight.

It wasn’t exactly practical advice, but the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—while not necessarily proving Gandhi right—certainly help us understand what Gandhi was trying to say. He didn’t care who won the war. He cared about what became of humanity when the fighting was finished.

3 Gandhi Told His Own Son He Was Better Off Dead

There’s a whole movie about Gandhi’s complicated relationship with his son, Harilal. It’s called “Gandhi, My Father”, and the producers advertise it as “a story about a clash of principles.”

It’s true – Gandhi and his son didn’t always see eye-to-eye. Gandhi did kick his son out and it was, in a way, a clash of principles. This wasn’t a little squabble over nothing, though – Gandhi’s son had raped his own seven-year-old daughter.

Harilal’s violent sexual assault on his own child was so brutal that she had to be rushed to the hospital. That was why Gandhi and his son didn’t get along – because Harilal had violently, incestually raped a seven-year-old child.

Gandhi continued to write his son regardless. One of his letters begged his son to lay off alcohol, including a line that’s been repeated a few times since:

“I wish that you would rather die than resort to alcohol.”

That’s another line that used against him – and, yes, Gandhi did tell his son he was better off dead than drunk. But this was a letter written to a man who, when he got drunk, raped children.

Gandhi can probably be forgiven for getting a bit emotional.

2 Gandhi Let His Supporters Rot In Prison

Author Andrew Roberts wrote a 2,000-word essay tearing Gandhi apart, above all for leaving his supporters to rot in jail, saying:

“Between 1900 and 1922, Gandhi ­suspended his efforts no fewer than three times, leaving in the lurch more than 15,000 supporters who had gone to jail for the cause.”

It certainly makes Gandhi sound like a selfish, neglectful man driven by his own callous whims – but nothing could be further from the truth.

Every one of Gandhi’s supporters knew that they were risking prison. Gandhi openly and bluntly warned people that prison was looming, telling them: “It takes courage to resist and not strike back. It takes courage to risk going to jail.”

It was actually part of Gandhi’s plan. Every time Britain jailed an Indian, they lost a worker and lost profits. If enough people went to prison, Gandhi believed, Britain would realize they had no choice but to negotiate.

And Gandhi didn’t just suspend his protests for no reason – he did it to stop his followers from using violence. When Gandhi suspended the movement in 1922, for example, it was because his followers had burned down a police station with 22 people inside.

Gandhi wanted to liberate India – but he wasn’t willing to let people die. Every time his own followers became violent, he’d force them back on the path of peace.

1 Gandhi Refused To Let Doctors Save His Wife’s Life

“The truth about Gandhi,” says Harvard University’s paper, The Crimson, is that he let his own wife, Kasturba, die. As they explain it:

“British doctors told her husband that a shot of penicillin would heal her; nevertheless, Gandhi refused to have alien medicine injected into her body, and she died.”

They’re hardly the first people to spread this story. It’s a popular one – and one that’s completely untrue.

Yes, Gandhi didn’t let the doctors give his wife penicillin – but it wasn’t because it was foreign. It was because the penicillin used animal products, and his wife was strictly vegetarian.

It might seem trivial to a Western audience, but to Gandhi and Kasturba, it was essentially a decision between protecting her body and protecting her soul. To them, the soul was simply more important – and even then, her death tore Gandhi up. Gandhi spent the rest of his life struggling with the decision, repeatedly wrestling with the question of whether or not he’d done the right thing.

He’s also been called a hypocrite, because, later in life, he took quinine – another Western medicine – to treat his own illnesses. But the quinine he took was an orally-ingested medicine from tree bark, without any animal by-products.

His value system might be hard to understand – and that’s why it’s so easy to paint him as a villain. But Gandhi wasn’t some monster. He was just a man from a different culture, whose beliefs were different from our own.

But of all those beliefs, the one he valued the most was his belief in peace. And that made him a great man.