While the internet is often seen as a global resource, not all websites are available to users worldwide. Due to cultural, political, or regulatory reasons, several well-known U.S. websites are restricted or banned in certain countries, blocking millions from accessing content that many Americans take for granted. From social media platforms to major news outlets, these websites have been shut out in regions where governments are wary of their influence or content.

This list delves into ten popular U.S. websites that have faced bans or heavy restrictions around the world.

Related: 10 Pop Songs Banned by Governments

10 Facebook

Facebook, one of the world’s largest social media platforms, has been banned in several countries, most notably China and Iran, and is partially restricted in North Korea. In China, Facebook was blocked in 2009 following the Urumqi riots, with the government claiming that the platform was being used to organize anti-government activities and spread unrest. The Chinese government maintains a high degree of control over its citizens’ access to information, fearing that platforms like Facebook could be used to criticize the government or organize protests.

Instead of Facebook, Chinese users have access to local alternatives like WeChat and Weibo, both of which are monitored and regulated by Chinese authorities. WeChat serves as an all-encompassing app for communication, payments, and social networking, allowing the government tighter control over digital activities. For the Chinese government, restricting Facebook and encouraging the use of homegrown apps helps maintain social stability and allows for greater oversight of citizens’ online interactions.^[1]

9 YouTube

YouTube, the go-to platform for video content, has faced bans and heavy restrictions in countries such as China, North Korea, and, at times, Pakistan. Pakistan initially banned YouTube in 2012 after the release of the controversial video Innocence of Muslims, which was deemed offensive to Islam and led to violent protests across the country. Pakistan eventually lifted the ban in 2016 after Google assured the government it would remove certain offensive content. In China, YouTube is banned entirely as part of the government’s broader censorship efforts, which aim to control politically sensitive information. Recently, even Russia has begun efforts to ban YouTube.

In countries where YouTube is restricted, local alternatives often take its place. For example, in Pakistan, the government actively monitors video content, and apps like Dailymotion or Vimeo serve as popular substitutes. In China, domestic platforms like Youku and Bilibili provide similar content, albeit with heavy censorship. These local platforms allow governments to filter and regulate video content more effectively, which is essential in regions where online media is tightly controlled to maintain government narratives.^[2]

8 Twitter/X

Twitter… uh, X, known for its fast-paced, open platform, is banned or heavily restricted in several countries, including China, North Korea, and, until recently, Nigeria. In China, Twitter has been banned since 2009, with the government citing the platform’s potential to incite social unrest. China’s authorities are wary of Twitter’s ability to rapidly spread information and its appeal for organizing protests. North Korea, on the other hand, blocks Twitter entirely as part of its policy of isolating citizens from outside influences. Brazil has also recently banned X in a feud with Elon Musk over political content on the platform.

During Nigeria’s ban on Twitter in 2021, the government cited the platform’s alleged interference in Nigerian domestic issues after Twitter removed a controversial tweet by President Muhammadu Buhari. Nigeria eventually lifted the ban after Twitter agreed to certain conditions. In China, Sina Weibo functions as the country’s answer to Twitter, but with stringent monitoring and censorship. This reliance on domestic alternatives allows governments to offer a similar service while ensuring that posts align with national interests and narratives.^[3]

7 Google Search

Google Search is one of the most widely used search engines globally, but it has been banned in China since 2010. The Chinese government initially allowed Google to operate in a heavily censored form, but Google decided to withdraw after refusing to comply with demands to censor search results further. This move followed a series of cyber-attacks allegedly targeting human rights activists’ Gmail accounts, which led to increased tensions between Google and the Chinese government. China’s decision to ban Google Search is part of its strategy to control the flow of information within the country.

Since then, Baidu has become China’s most popular search engine, offering a similar service but within the government’s strict regulatory framework. Baidu censors’ results were related to sensitive topics, such as the Tiananmen Square protests and the Tibetan and Taiwan independence movements. The ban on Google Search underscores China’s commitment to keeping information flows in check and promoting domestic platforms that are more compliant with government interests, showing how censorship shapes even the most basic internet functions. ^[4]

6 Wikipedia

Wikipedia, the world’s largest open-source encyclopedia, has been banned or restricted in countries like Turkey (until recently) and China. Turkey banned Wikipedia in 2017, accusing it of hosting articles suggesting that Turkey supported terrorist groups, an accusation that the government vehemently denied. This ban lasted nearly three years until Turkey’s highest court ruled that it violated freedom of expression. In China, Wikipedia remains banned due to its articles on politically sensitive topics, including human rights abuses, Tibet, and the history of the Communist Party.

The decentralized nature of Wikipedia, where contributors from around the world can edit and publish information, makes it difficult for governments to control content. In China, people turn to Baidu Baike, a government-approved online encyclopedia that offers similar information but with state oversight. This censorship approach allows governments to limit access to unregulated information, controlling narratives and preventing citizens from accessing perspectives that might challenge official state positions.^[5]

5 Reddit

Reddit, often called “the front page of the internet,” is banned in China and has faced temporary restrictions in countries like Indonesia. China blocks Reddit due to its decentralized, user-driven content, which can easily delve into controversial topics that challenge government narratives [LINK 6]. Indonesia also briefly restricted Reddit due to its allowance of explicit content and discussions that contradict local cultural norms, but later lifted the ban with certain content filtering requirements in place.

In China, popular forums like Baidu Tieba offer similar functions but are tightly monitored by government censors. These forums avoid politically sensitive or culturally taboo topics, maintaining an environment consistent with the government’s internet regulations. Reddit’s ban reflects how governments prioritize control over online discourse and aim to restrict platforms that offer unrestricted freedom of expression.^[6]

4 The New York Times

The New York Times, a globally respected newspaper, is banned in China, where authorities object to its investigative reporting on sensitive topics, such as Chinese leadership, political corruption, and human rights issues. The ban began in 2012 after the Times published an exposé detailing the wealth of former Premier Wen Jiabao’s family, a story that embarrassed the Chinese government and prompted swift retaliation. Since then, the Times has faced ongoing restrictions as Chinese authorities aim to limit access to foreign journalism that may criticize or scrutinize government actions.

Chinese readers seeking global news often turn to government-approved publications like the Xinhua News Agency or Global Times, which provide news through a state-approved lens. The Chinese government’s crackdown on foreign media outlets highlights its desire to shape public perception and ensure that journalism aligns with national interests. The restriction on the New York Times demonstrates the challenges that independent news organizations face in countries with strict media control.^[7]

3 Dropbox

Dropbox, a popular cloud storage service, has been banned in China since 2014 due to concerns over data privacy and government control. Chinese authorities worry that Dropbox’s encryption makes it impossible to monitor, potentially allowing citizens to store or share information the government deems inappropriate or dangerous. Unlike other tech companies, Dropbox has not created a censored version for the Chinese market, choosing instead to maintain its commitment to user privacy.

China’s answer to Dropbox is Baidu Cloud, which offers similar services but complies with local data regulations that allow government access to stored data when needed. The Dropbox ban illustrates the clash between international tech companies’ data protection policies and governments’ demand for surveillance, especially in countries where control over online content is strict.^[8]

2 PayPal

PayPal, the global online payment system, was not outright banned but faced suspension in Turkey in 2016 after failing to comply with local data storage laws. Turkish regulators required all payment processing companies to store customer data locally, a rule that PayPal was unable to meet with its existing infrastructure. As a result, PayPal ceased its operations in Turkey, leaving Turkish users without one of the most popular digital payment platforms in the world.

Since then, local alternatives like Iyzico and Papara have filled the gap left by PayPal’s exit. Turkey’s insistence on data localization reflects a broader trend among countries looking to assert control over digital financial transactions and customer data. PayPal’s struggle in Turkey underscores the challenge for international companies trying to comply with varying regulatory standards while maintaining operational efficiency.^[9]

1 WhatsApp

WhatsApp, the popular messaging app known for its end-to-end encryption, has been banned or heavily restricted in countries like China, North Korea, and parts of the Middle East. China, in particular, has restricted WhatsApp since 2017, claiming the app’s encryption poses a national security threat by preventing the government from monitoring messages. End-to-end encryption is also frowned upon in countries where government surveillance is prioritized.

In China, WeChat, a government-approved messaging app, serves as the primary alternative. WeChat offers messaging, social media, and payment services, all of which the government can monitor more easily. The WhatsApp ban is a clear example of how encryption technologies can clash with national security policies, especially in countries where the government seeks full control over communication channels.^[10]

It’s always interesting to see how American states led the way in various categories. Michigan can lay claim to being the first in automobile development and the car culture that is everywhere today. In that same vein, give California credit for being the first state to really go all-in on the freeway system that dominates American transportation nowadays. Colorado can lay claim to its pioneering marijuana legislation—and Washington, too. And, of course, no state can beat Delaware for being the first state to, well, become a state when it was first to ratify the Constitution!

But while there are plenty of notable and well-known state “firsts,” there are also a million strange ones. Recently, we looked over a series of strange and unexpected “firsts” on this very website, and that seemed to be a big hit with many of you. So, why not do it again? Below, you can read all about ten MORE strange, random, and even funny state “firsts” from American history.

Related: Ten Intriguing Facts about America’s First Murder Trial

10 California: Good Fortune!

There is one thing we know for sure: California can lay undoubted claim to the proud title of being the first state to invent and produce the fortune cookie. The question gets a bit thicker than that, though, when it comes to figuring out exactly where it happened within the Golden State.

Many historians believe that a man named Makoto Hagiwara created the very first modern fortune cookie when he was at the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park as early as 1914. After he came up with the idea and sketched out the plan, the cookies themselves were reportedly made by a local San Francisco bakery called Benkyodo.

But there’s drama! Down in Los Angeles, a man named David Jung claimed that he actually invented the fortune cookie in 1918 when he was the owner and operator of LA’s Hong Kong Noodle Company. He said that he was the one who came up with the concept and popularized it and that his San Francisco fortune foes simply took the cookie idea and then tried to retroactively claim they’d come up with it first.

For decades after that, it looked like there would be two competing fortune cookie origin myths. If you were from NorCal, you sided with Hagiwara, and if you were from SoCal, you sided with Jung. Perhaps that was the first great NorCal-SoCal debate that now gets carried out in sports rivalries and the like!

Fortune cookies are evidently some serious business, though. In 1983, the San Francisco Court of Historical Review took up the case to investigate. Their judgment came back in favor of Hagiwara, pointing to evidence that he was indeed first to market with the cookie. The city of Los Angeles cried foul, but it all sort of fizzled out from there.

Regardless, for the purposes of this list, California can undoubtedly lay claim to being the first state that made and dished out fortune cookies, even if the city of origin has been up for debate.^[1]

9 Washington, D.C.: TV Time

The oldest regularly broadcasting television station in American history belongs not to a state but to Washington, D.C.! Back on July 2, 1928, a television station known as W3XK began broadcasting from a studio in the nation’s capital. Its broadcast didn’t carry very far—the signal could barely get into the outskirts of Maryland’s then-small-town suburbs just outside of northern D.C.—but it didn’t matter. It was a history-making affair all the same!

While earlier radio broadcasting companies had fiddled around with television a bit, including the network we now know as NBC, W3XK was the very first television station to broadcast a regular schedule. And so its inventor and owner Charles Jenkins and his hometown of Washington, D.C., get the “first” nod on this one!

If you’re looking for an actual state, though, we might be able to give this one to Maryland, too. After a couple years of broadcasting within Washington, Jenkins eventually moved the W3XK television studios to a small town in Maryland called Wheaton. The station pioneered the broadcast of a 48-line picture there, and then in 1930, it also pioneered the move to a 60-line picture.

The Great Depression hit Jenkins and his Charles Jenkins Laboratories company hard, though, and by March 1932, his television firm was liquidated. A radio broadcasting company acquired all the assets and then went bankrupt a few months later. RCA eventually bought out everything from W3XK in the ensuing mad rush, but they turned full-time to radio, and television moved fully to the backburner for another couple of decades.^[2]

8 Hawaii: Bye Bye, Bags!

In May 2012, Hawaii became the first state in the U.S. to ban the use of plastic bags at grocery stores. The ban was taken on by leaders in various city councils around Hawaii for a few years before that. Maui officials, Kauai leaders, and others opted independently to ban the use and spread of single-use plastic grocery bags in establishments on their islands leading up to 2012.

Then, in late April 2012, the city council of Honolulu voted to put forth a ban on single-use plastic grocery bags all across Oahu. That motion carried through with ease at the council’s meeting that month, and on May 11, 2012, the plastic grocery bag ban was signed into law. All four of Hawaii’s County Councils fully followed suit, and the state thus underwent a complete plastic bag ban.

Now, it took a while for the ban to go into effect. In Honolulu’s case, the ban wasn’t officially enforced until 2015. In those three years, they intended to allow time for stores to get rid of their supply of plastic bags and major corporate grocery chains to redirect their plastic bag supply chains to other places. Plus, they wanted Hawaiians to get acclimated to shopping with reusable bags and give them time to adjust to the new normal with the ban on plastic single-use bags.

In turn, the anti-plastic pollution push quickly spread out from Hawaii to the rest of the country. Cities, municipalities, and states all over the nation ban plastic bags now. As of early 2024, eight states had plastic bag bans of various levels, along with many cities nationwide. But the Hawaiians did it first!^[3]

7 North Carolina: Airplane Passengers!

North Carolina can lay claim to being the “First in Flight” thanks to the Wright Brothers’ successful attempts at flying out on Kitty Hawk in the state’s Outer Banks region in December 1903. But did you know that North Carolina is also the first state to ever record a flight with an airplane passenger? And it didn’t happen in 1903 when the Wright Brothers first got out to Kitty Hawk! It actually happened a full five years later when they returned with the express purpose of figuring out if they could fly a plane with a full-weight adult human passenger going along for the ride!

At the time, the U.S. government (and specifically the Army) was very interested in the flight technology that the Wright brothers were developing. However, they were decidedly less interested in it unless the planes they were making could carry a passenger to go along with the pilot.

So, the Wright brothers became consumed with trying to figure out how to add weight to their machines while still allowing the airplanes to take off. After all, they’d been trying to make the planes as light as possible to fly in those early days. So having to add a lot of poundage in short order wasn’t the easiest thing in the world! For a while, they experimented with sandbags, but before too long, they needed the real thing.

That’s where a man named Charley Furnas comes into play. In the spring of 1908, he was a 28-year-old mechanic living and working in Dayton, Ohio. His job was as a machinist, and his working floor was only a couple blocks away from the Wright Cycle Company in Dayton. He had previously done odd jobs for the brothers as a younger man, too. And through the previous five years, he’d been pestering them to teach him how to fly.

Well, in early April 1908, he got his chance. Furnas turned up at Kitty Hawk, and the Wright brothers decided to put him on a plane. On May 14, Charley flew for about 800 feet (243 meters) as Wilbur’s passenger, becoming the first-ever airplane passenger in history. Later that day, he and Orville made it more than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) in the plane together. Charley (and North Carolina) made history. But were there any in-flight drinks served?!^[4]

6 Connecticut: Are They in the Book?

After telephone technology began to take hold in the United States in the latter half of the 19th century, it took a little while before documentation caught on. Today, we all know about the phone book, of course. (Well, maybe the youngest readers among us don’t, with everything having gone digital…)

But back in the day, the phone book had to be a thing that was invented! And in November 1878, the state of Connecticut was the place where that happened. Late that month, a company then known as the Connecticut District Telephone Company released the world’s very first phone book in the city of New Haven. In the book were the names and addresses of 391 subscribers who paid $22 per year to be listed in that service. But weirdly, there were no phone numbers! So it was a phone book produced by a phone company… with no numbers in it at all.

Regardless, it was very much a precursor to the “yellow pages” that came out en masse decades later. In addition to the names listed of New Haven residents, there were a ton of advertisements printed at the back of the book. Phone book technology very quickly took a leap forward from there in several ways.

For one, future phone books actually contained the phone numbers of the people listed within. And a year later, an enterprising Massachusetts man got the idea to alphabetize the names in the phone book so it’d be easier to find the person for whom you were searching. What an idea! Regardless, Connecticut can firmly lay claim to being the state to produce the first phone book.^[5]

5 Arkansas: Senate History

The state of Arkansas can lay claim to a very bold and important distinction: they are the first state to ever send a woman to the U.S. Senate in a full-term election. See, before Arkansas residents voted for a woman to go into the Senate in 1932, women who had served in that federal governing body had been sent there as special appointments after the sudden deaths of their husbands in office.

For Hattie Caraway, that’s initially what happened, too. On November 6, 1931, U.S. Senator Thaddeus Caraway, who represented Arkansas, died in office. With no one else to fill his shoes, the feds turned to Hattie to fill the vacancy of his seat in the Senate until a full election could be called. Just like it was always done, right?

Well, Hattie filled the seat for a few months after being appointed by the governor of Arkansas, Harvey Parnell, to do so. In January 1932, a special election was held to determine who would fill the seat for the rest of Thaddeus’s term—and Hattie won that election. Then, almost exactly a year after Thaddeus’s death, on November 8, 1932, a full and regularly scheduled Senate election took place—and Hattie won that one as well!

In running through those electoral victories, Arkansas made history by voting in the first-ever woman elected to the U.S. Senate beyond special appointments and decrees from governors. By the way, Hattie herself also later made history as the first woman ever to preside over the U.S. Senate. Not bad!^[6]

4 Alaska: The Time Zone Shuffle

Alaska can officially be known as the first state in the Union to change time zones in the modern age. Time wasn’t working for them, so they just up and flipped their clocks to make things better. Just like that! See, right now, Alaska is officially covered by two time zones: the Alaska Time Zone, which covers the vast majority of the state, and the Hawaii-Aleutian Time Zone, which covers lots of Alaska’s far western reaches, including the Aleutian Islands (and, yes, Hawaii way far south of that).

That hasn’t always been the case, though. In fact, up until the 1980s, Alaska was covered by FOUR time zones, and doing business from region to region within that area made things very frustrating at times. On September 15, 1983, Secretary Elizabeth Dole signed a statewide change to cut the number of time zones that snaked through Alaska in half. It was no longer a four-time zone state, and just two weeks later, the change became official.

Today, more than 90% of Alaska residents, including all those who live in the state’s major cities like Juneau and Fairbanks, are on Alaska Standard Time. That’s only one hour behind Pacific Time and places like Los Angeles and Seattle. And it makes sense, right? Alaska participates in Daylight Savings, too, which links them with the rest of the nation in that way.

But wait! It gets crazier! In 2016, Alaska lawmakers seriously began considering the passage of a bill that would put Alaska into Pacific Time and completely eliminate the Alaska Time Zone. That bill would have also eliminated Daylight Savings Time in Alaska, which most states still follow, and would have set them apart in that way.

The 2016 proposals went nowhere, though, and currently, most Alaskans remain within the Alaska Time Zone. Still, Alaska was the first state to time travel, as it were, by cutting its time zone allotment in half forty years ago. And maybe they’ll be the first state to do that twice should any new bill like the 2016 proposal ever come to pass!^[7]

3 Illinois: Look UP!

There is some debate about what technically constitutes the “first skyscraper” and where it was built. Still, most historians and architects today have come to a consensus: It happened in Chicago, and it was the Home Insurance Building.

It is true that New York City buildings were being built high up into the sky in the late 19th century. The New York Equitable Life building constructed in 1870 was the first office building to use an elevator, for example. NYC’s Produce Exchange building also made noteworthy architectural advancements when it was built in 1884. However, the 1885 creation and construction of the Home Insurance Building in Chicago is widely regarded as the first skyscraper ever truly built.

That’s because the Home Insurance Building was the first building to use a then brand-new lattice of structural steel. It was woven into its innovative metal frame design, and the pioneering combination allowed the Home Insurance Building to stand extremely sturdy and extremely tall. Okay, so it wasn’t that tall—at least not by our modern standards. The building, designed by William Le Baron Jenney, only stood 138 feet (42 meters) tall at its highest point. And it only contained ten stories!

Compared to the skyscrapers of today, that’s absolutely nothing at all! But at the time, it was a pioneering achievement in architecture. And the building’s ingenious internal metal framing combined with traditional wrought iron meant it could withstand anything that came its way. Thus, Illinois gets to take home the trophy as the state with the first skyscraper. Sorry, New York!^[8]

2 Illinois: Repealing Hate

Illinois—a state so nice, we listed it twice! Not only does Illinois have the distinction of being the state that housed the very first skyscraper, but they were also the first state to get rid of its sodomy law. In turn, that meant Illinois was the first state in the Union to decriminalize homosexuality. That happened during the legislative session held by state lawmakers there in 1961.

Then, when the calendar turned to January 1, 1962, the law went into effect. Or we should say the sodomy law was repealed. And homosexuality suddenly became something that was no longer criminalized all across Illinois! Sadly, gay rights had a very long way to go even after that, but at least the wheels were finally in motion in Chicago and elsewhere in the Land of Lincoln.

Interestingly, even though Illinois may have led the way in repealing sodomy laws, it took other states a very long time to follow. Idaho initially repealed a bunch of “bedroom policing” laws, too, at the recommendation of the American Law Institute. However, upon learning that they’d actually repealed the sodomy laws and decriminalized homosexuality, conservative Idaho lawmakers immediately walked back their bill.

Other states didn’t get in on the act until way past then, in 1971, when Connecticut repealed its anti-sodomy laws. Then, nineteen other states followed up throughout the 1970s, including California, Hawaii, Maine, Nebraska, Vermont, South Dakota, and more. But Illinois was first!^[9]

1 Kentucky: All in for Beethoven

Beethoven’s name is known the world over when it comes to classical music. However, in the United States, he was mostly ignored during his lifetime. In fact, he was only first heard by American ears just ten years before his 1827 death! The state of Kentucky got the unlikely distinction of being first in the U.S., where a Beethoven concert was performed by a symphony orchestra.

You might think that would have happened in New York City, Washington D.C., or perhaps Philadelphia, or really, anywhere else more traditionally “cultured” than the relative backwoods of Kentucky. But don’t knock the Bluegrass State! They came through for Beethoven before anybody else in America did when a performance was held there in 1817.

The story of Beethoven being brought to Kentucky is itself an interesting one. The man behind the move to make Beethoven heard in Louisville was a fellow by the name of Anthony Philip Heinrich. Born in Bohemia, in present-day Czechoslovakia, in 1781, Heinrich visited the United States several times as a boy and young adult. He loved it so much that in 1817, he emigrated there full-time. But again, instead of settling in a big city, he chose to strike out for himself in a log cabin in tiny Bardstown, Kentucky. Strange, right?

Well, it gets stranger. Heinrich was an absolutely prolific composer of classical music, piano tunes, and vocal compositions. He composed music, and so much of it was of such a high quality that later in life, he came to be known as “the Beethoven of America.” So it makes sense that he was the driving force behind having a Beethoven symphony performed live in Kentucky. And he helped the state make history in that way!^[10]

The United States is the land of firsts. States all across the great country love to claim that they were the first place to do this or that. Aviation is a great example of this. North Carolina claims they were the “first in flight” because that’s where the Wright brothers successfully set off in their primitive plane way back at the very beginning of the 20th century. Yet Ohio also claims to be the “first in flight” because that is where the Wright brothers lived full time and owned the bicycle shop and other businesses in which they first tinkered with the idea for an airplane. And so on and so forth—every state lays claim to being the first at something (or many things).

But what about weird and wacky firsts? Not every state “first” is one to be proud of or one to lord over other states. Some are just plain random—and bizarre! In this list, we’ll take a look at ten state “firsts” that you almost certainly have never heard of before. They are funny, quirky, and original—and while these states may not use them to boast in promotional materials and tourism brochures, they are definitely memorable all the same!

Related: 10 Strange Facts About KFC And Its One and Only Colonel

10 Alabama: The First 911 Call

In 1968, the very first 911 call ever made was made in the small town of Haleyville, Alabama. Before 1968, “0” was actually the emergency number all across the United States. You’d call the operator, and the operator would patch you through to the police, fire department, or whatever you needed.

But by 1968, officials realized that they needed a standalone dispatch office and a specific number that people could call with emergencies in order to streamline the process. Trained dispatchers could take the calls, they could send out fire, police, and EMS, and the whole process could happen a good bit quicker than it had been going for a while. And in Haleyville, city officials wanted to be the first-ever spot in America to implement the new system. So, on February 16, 1968, that’s exactly what they did.

That morning, the Alabama speaker of the house picked up a red telephone and made the very first 911 call. Tom Bevill, a Congressman from the state, was on the other end of the line and waiting for the 911 dial-in from his fellow politician. The duo exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, determining that the line was working and the dispatchers would be able to hear people loud and clear.

It had only been a couple weeks earlier that Congress had mandated 911 become the nationwide emergency phone number, so Haleyville’s turnaround to get it up and running was very quick. Soon after that, plenty of other municipalities followed suit. And today, well, the act of dialing 911 is ingrained in Americans’ heads pretty much from childhood. So the system worked!^[1]

9 Florida: The First Sunscreen

In 1944, the sunny sights in Miami, Florida, were a must-visit for intrepid tourists and a mainstay for beach-loving locals. World War II was soon to wind down, of course, and Americans were hopeful to one day get back to their lives in peacetime. With that came a rush of outdoor fun that began for stateside locals even before the war ended. And that’s where Benjamin Green comes in.

See, Green had been serving in the war as an airman, just like many of his fellow young men across the United States. But in his personal life, Green had some real medical knowledge; he was a pharmacist, and he knew quite a bit about the human body. He also loved to surf and spend time outside. And he was sick of getting sunburned!

The combination of all those facts made Green a natural to tinker with lotions and lathers until he came up with an appropriate product. That year, Green perfected and then marketed a lotion that would darken tans and leave skin bronzed without having the wearer get so brutally sunburned. Suntan lotion was born, and the idea that a lather could work as a sunscreen immediately took hold.

Miami residents started using Green’s invention, and they loved how it bronzed their skin but left them without the awful red burns caused by the sun’s most intense rays. In turn, Green’s business blew up. Today, you know the brand that came from his 1944 idea as Coppertone. And it all started in Miami!^[2]

8 Iowa: The First Computer

You may think of Silicon Valley in northern California as the tech hub to end all tech hubs, but way back in the day, that wasn’t the case. In fact, the first “tech” hub was… in Ames, Iowa! What? In 1937, a professor of physics at Iowa State University named John Vincent Atanasoff began to tinker with what ended up being the world’s first electronic computer.

Along with a physics graduate student named Clifford Berry, Atanasoff spent the next five years perfecting the massive, unwieldy device. Finally, by 1942, it was ready to be shown off for what it was: the world’s first-ever electronic computer! Appropriately named the Atanasoff-Berry Computer in honor of the two gentlemen, or the ABC Computer, it made history as the first device created to electronically compute, read, and write.

As with all old technologies like that, the ABC Computer wouldn’t have been recognizable to us today as a computer. It was as big as a desk, and it weighed more than 750 pounds (340 kg). But it had quite a few important functions that were consistently and successfully working by 1942: rotating drums for memory, a read/write system that recorded numbers, glowing vacuum tubes, separate memory and computing functions, electronic amplifiers used as on-off switches, circuits that specialized in addition and subtraction, and a now-standard binary system for arithmetic, counting, and more. Of course, technology surged far beyond the ABC Computer soon enough. But it all started way back when at Iowa State University!^[3]

7 New York: The First Brewery

The great state of New York can lay claim to what some will consider the most important item on this list: the first public brewery. And it was established long (long, LONG!) before you might suspect—all the way back in 1632! In those days, the Dutch were the ones who built up and controlled the city. This was long before the United States was an independent nation, of course, and back then, the Dutch called their colony “New Amsterdam.”

At the time, for the first decade or so of the Dutch running the show in what would later become New York, beer was mostly brewed at home. But that all changed in 1632 when an enterprising group decided to publicly brew beer and sell it to their neighbors for a profit. And with that, the massive and wildly profitable alcohol industry was born in the U.S.!

The commercial brewery itself was built early in 1632 on lower Manhattan’s appropriately named Brewery Street (which is now known as Stone Street). Grain, malt, and hops all grew in the vicinity of New Amsterdam, so from a logistical perspective, it was very easy for brewers to get what they needed to make beer. In just a few years, the idea proved so popular that beer-making grew to be New Amsterdam’s biggest industry.

Dutch brewers soon sprung up all over the city and started competing with each other to sell suds to the locals and get them all good and soused. It wasn’t quite the same as the craft beer competitions of the last few decades, but it was a wild land grab in the alcoholic beverage industry all the same. Cheers!^[4]

6 South Carolina: The First Opera

On February 8, 1735, an opera called Flora first premiered in a makeshift theater constructed in Charleston, South Carolina. It was a very popular opera in England for several years running, and theater producers were hopeful that its popularity would catch on in America, too. They were right.

Flora nearly instantly became a hit as what was known then as a “ballad opera,” and soon, Americans were demanding more from the very same genre. In that way, South Carolina then unwittingly made some history: They became the very first-ever state to house an opera. And they weren’t even a state yet! Obviously, all this happened before the American Revolution and the country’s fight for independence.

All this opera stuff might seem like small potatoes, but it was actually a very big deal for American theater. See, this “ballad opera” proved so popular in Charleston that future theater producers and playwrights altered how they told stories in order to attract American audiences. This meant that more than ever before, the songs performed in operas had to be central to moving the storyline of the entire play along.

In turn, that meant that American musicals became a very popular, long-lasting genre. And it should go without saying that today, musicals are still incredibly popular and sought-after. From Broadway shows and the rise in popularity of Hamilton, musical theater is everywhere. And we all have South Carolina and its pioneering performance of Flora to thank for that.^[5]

5 Maryland: The First Dental School

The state of Maryland holds the distinction of opening up the first-ever dental school in the United States nearly two full centuries ago. And in fact, it was the first-ever dental school opened anywhere in the world at the time! See, during America’s colonial era, dentistry was very much a hit-or-miss practice.

Some doctors picked up dentistry on the side and were reasonably good at it (you know, for the time period). Other people picked up the practice and mostly butchered their clients without really understanding what they were doing. The whole thing was unregulated and a mess, and it caused a lot of pain for a lot of people who were trying to find some relief from toothaches and jaw pain.

Enter the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery. First founded in 1840, it became the first-ever regulated dental school anywhere in the United States. It was so far ahead of its time that it was a pioneer worldwide as far as dental medicine was concerned. Practitioners who went to that school turned out to be more capable at dentistry than any fly-by-night self-taught dentist who had come before them.

As the school churned out more students who were better skilled and more adept at careful and actually successful dental procedures, the country’s oral health slowly but surely improved. Eventually, the college was absorbed by Maryland’s public university system, and today, it is known as the University of Maryland School of Dentistry.^[6]

4 Maine: The First City

The city of York, Maine, became the first-ever officially chartered city in the history of the New World when the English made that designation way back in 1641. The area was first settled long before that, in 1624, by Captain John Smith. He had explored the area as early as 1614 but didn’t put down any roots there for a decade. But in 1624, thinking that the York area would be a good site for a town, he opted to settle the area and start building.

At first, the city was known as Agamenticus. Then, in 1641, another explorer of the American continent named Sir Ferdinando Gorges came through the area and officially endowed the city with a charter. Under the name Gorgeana (nothing like naming a city for yourself, right?), Sir Gorges quite literally put the city on the map. And with that, the first official city in America was born.

Eleven years after Gorges’s move to charter things, the Massachusetts Bay Company took over the explorer’s property there. They revoked the Gorgeana charter and re-upped it with a new one of their own. In their designation, they gave the city the name which is still in use today: York.

The name was given in honor of Yorkshire, England—and it stuck! It grew slowly for a while from there. Then forty years later, in 1692, it was nearly completely destroyed in a raid by the local Abenaki Indians. But it persisted! Today, York is a popular tourist attraction for history buffs seeking an old-time colonial feel. It boasts a small but comfortable population of under 15,000 full-time residents.^[7]

3 Michigan: The First Paved Road

Henry Ford’s Model T cars were sweeping Detroit and the rest of Michigan by storm at the very beginning of the 20th century. Local government officials realized they needed to build out public works to take care of them. So, in 1909, the very first paved road was built and smoothed over in the United States along a mile of Woodward Avenue in the city of Detroit. It wasn’t a highway as we know the term today, but back then, it was a groundbreaking (literally) move, and fans of the process called it “the world’s first concrete highway.”

See, brick pavers were already a thing long before that. Many streets in Detroit had them, and in cities elsewhere around the country and in other places across the world, too. But pavement that was concrete and smooth was non-existent. Unfortunately, early car models really struggled to navigate over bricks that were often remarkably uneven within blocks of road. So pavement was quickly seen as a better solution, and Detroit jumped on board to get that process started.

Throughout the spring of 1909, construction crews labored hard, and on April 20 of that year, the set-up was complete. For a one-mile stretch between Six Mile Road and Seven Mile Road, Woodward Avenue became paved for car traffic. The whole thing cost about $1,400—with roughly $1,000 in state funds contributing to the budget.^[8]

2 Minnesota: The First Mall

Minnesota leads the way in malls in the modern age with the notorious and incredibly massive Mall of America. The thing is truly huge—bigger and wider and longer than many small towns, and with more people, employees, restaurants, and in-mall amusements to boot. So it should maybe make perfect sense that Minnesota is where mall culture first really exploded in the first few decades after the end of World War II.

Soldiers returned home in and then after 1945, and over the next decade, they all got busy starting families, working jobs, buying homes, and making money. That, in turn, pushed enterprising business executives to create massive and immersive shopping experiences where you could buy nearly everything you could possibly need in one place.

On October 8, 1956, that idea debuted in full in the form of Southdale Center. Set off in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, Minnesota, Southdale Center was the world’s first-ever fully enclosed, climate-controlled shopping center. What we know today as the mall made its notorious debut there in Edina for all to visit and shop within its walls.

Of course, Minnesota winters are very harsh. So the fact that the mall was climate-controlled and totally enclosed meant that people could come there all year round and get whatever they needed. And show up, they did! They showed up in such high numbers that the idea of building a mall soon spread to every other major metropolis across the United States.^[9]

1 Arizona: The First Drive-Thru

The first-ever idea of a fast food drive-thru may have been thought about at various restaurants all across the nation, but Arizona catches the distinction of pioneering the practice. See, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, McDonald’s started thinking about how to better serve a driving-happy population in many markets. First, in Los Angeles and San Diego, franchisees started asking the corporate office about the possibility of putting in drive-thru windows so customers wouldn’t have to get out of their cars.

Executives liked the idea and tinkered with it some. Then, a franchisee in Oklahoma City came to them with the desire to put in the first drive-thru there. That McDonald’s had a perfect drive-up location and plenty of space for a line of cars. There was just one problem: the OKC restaurant badly needed to undergo renovations, so its drive-thru development was put on hold.

But the company still wanted to do the drive-thru idea ASAP. So into that space came a McDonald’s in Sierra Vista, Arizona. That restaurant was just down the road from the Fort Huachuca Army Base. At the time, the restaurant was seeing declining sales because of a then-new Army rule. The base had instituted a policy that soldiers had to stay in their vehicles while off-base when wearing fatigues or Army uniforms.

Because of that, they were not allowed to stop at McDonald’s, get out of their car, and pick up some food. The company realized that would be the perfect set-up to build out a drive-thru window, and so they did. Soon after that, other drive-thru windows popped up all over the United States. And now, it’s so commonplace that we think it’s weird when a McDonald’s doesn’t have a drive-thru window attached!^[10]

On June 25, 2021, just in time for Washington’s usual “when nobody’s looking” Friday information dumps, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released its assessment of “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena” or UAP (that’s government-speak for UFOs). The assessment was a disappointing 6 pages (not counting title page and appendices). It, nevertheless, had a few surprising revelations.

First, the study limited its scope to UAP reports between November 2004 and March 2021 from military aviators – mostly naval pilots – whom the ODNI considered reliable witnesses. Surprisingly, they found 144 such reports and only 1 of them they could explain (but added they could eliminate more sightings with more data). Eighty of these reports were supported by electronic sensors (i.e. radar, infrared), giving credence not just to the reports, but that the UAPs were real, solid objects (as opposed to illusions or storm clouds). And 18 of the UAPs demonstrated speeds or movements that could not be explained by existing technologies.

Perhaps more disquieting is that most of these sightings were around military installations or training and testing grounds. This is what we’d expect if the witnesses were military personnel. But is that the only reason? Eleven of these UAPs had near collisions with the military aircraft. Could they have been attacks? Warnings? Testing of the aircraft’s capabilities? The ODNI must have wondered that too. They warned that these UAPs were potential hazards to national security. Here are 10 reasons the government is now concerned.

10 Truly Unbelievable Claims Of UFO And Alien Encounters

10 The Los Alamos Green Balls of Light (December, 1948)

Sightings of UFOs stretch all the way back to antiquity, but these strange encounters increased exponentially during World War II, the most violent conflict in human history. Sightings were so common, U.S. aviators began to call them “Foo Fighters.” Coined by Donald Meiers, a radar operator for the 415th Night Fighter Squadron, Foo Fighters described mysterious glowing objects seen in the skies over Europe during missions. There are several accounts of Foo Fighters following or shadowing military aircraft for several minutes before peeling away, changing direction and speed on a dime. The fear was that Hitler had developed a superweapon, but aviation historians have since denied that possibility. The Nazis had neither aircraft nor rockets advanced enough for such maneuvers. Nor are there any known instances of these UFOs engaging these aircraft in combat, something the Nazis would definitely do. So what would be the purpose of shadowing and observing aircraft on combat missions?

Perhaps more disconcerting was the appearance of these lights after the war around the top secret Los Alamos and Sandia atomic weapons laboratories in New Mexico where the world’s first atomic bomb was assembled and tested. By 1948, the labs – specifically Los Alamos—were developing the thermonuclear or hydrogen bomb that was 1,000 times more powerful than the atomic bomb. For nine days in December, 1948, green orbs of light – sometimes called balls of fire – flew above or near the labs. On December 5th , one of the orbs played chicken with an aircraft, forcing the pilot to veer off at the last second. On December 20th, a green orb descended at 45 degrees, then abruptly leveled off – something a meteorite wouldn’t do. Nor did anyone find evidence a meteorite reached the ground. The government was so disconcerted that they sent an expert to investigate and he determined the lights were man-made, either secret U.S. “defensive devices” or Soviet spying apparatus. Another expert posited it was ball lightning, but ball lightning is so rare we know very little about it. What are the odds something so rare would happen in the same area on nine separate nights in the same month? The lights continued to visit the area until the early 1950’s.

9 The Washington D.C. Sightings (July, 1952)

If Washington was concerned about the green orbs over Los Alamos, imagine how they’d feel with UFOs whizzing over their heads. Shortly before midnight on July 19th, 1952, an air-traffic controller at Washington National Airport found 7 slow-moving unidentified objects on his radar. Two more controllers at National Airport reported an odd light in the distance that hovered, then zipped away. Controllers at Andrews Air Force Base also saw a cluster of blips on their radar, racing away at speeds exceeding 7,000 mph. A commercial pilot for Capital Airlines saw six streaking lights over Washington “like falling stars without tails.” He added: “In my years of flying I’ve seen a lot of falling stars… But these were much faster… They couldn’t have been aircraft.” Two F-94 jets were sent to investigate, but the lights disappeared. The lights reappeared a week later on July 26 and this time an F-94 acquired a visual on the lights. But his jet had a top speed of 640 mph and he never caught up to it.

The next day the press was screaming for answers. President Truman was demanding them. So the Air Force did the obvious thing: it lied. A press conference was called and the press was told it was a temperature inversion, which, they explained, happens when warm air traps cooler air low in the atmosphere and radar signals bounce off it, making ground objects appear to be flying. It’s fairly common in the muggy summer months in Washington D.C., so common that all the radar operators were familiar with it and insisted temperature inversions were not what they saw on radar. Nor would an F-94 pilot chase a temperature inversion. And yet the Air Force explanation worked: the public outcry fell to a whisper.

But in true government form, they assigned a group to study the phenomena (but were not interested in properly funding it). The U.S. government entity that put out the June 25, 2021, report was the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). It was just the most recent entity in a long history of such entities. The first three were Project Sign (1948), Project Grudge (1949 – 1951) and Project Blue Book (1952 – 1969) all headed by the U.S. Air Force. The latter – Project Blue Book – was established in March 1952 and probably would have continued to investigate a handful of sightings a year if it weren’t for the April 7, 1952, issue of Life magazine. Just to the left of a sultry picture of Marilyn Monroe was the caption “There is a Case For Interplanetary Saucers.” UFOlogy was suddenly mainstream and Project Blue was inundated with UFO sightings, jumping from 23 in March to 148 in June. But after the Air Force’s temperature inversion theory was released, sightings to Project Blue Book dropped again, from 50 a day to 10. Years later when the relevant government papers were declassified, they showed that the administration wasn’t trying to cover-up secrets, unless you consider their inability to find their own butt inside their pants a secret.

8 Operation Mainbrace Sightings (September, 1952)

But 1952 wasn’t done yet. That September the U.S. and 7 other NATO nations along with New Zealand conducted a massive war-games exercise in the North Sea off Denmark and Norway. With 200 ships, 80,000 personnel, and 1,000 planes, Operation Mainbrace was the largest combined sea, land and air operation since World War II. Someone at the Pentagon joked that they should expect UFOs to show up as well. By the end of the 12 day operation, no one was laughing.

On the operation’s first day – September 13 – a Danish destroyer was just north of Borhnholm Island when Lieutenant Commander Schmidt Jensen and several fellow crewmembers observed a triangular bluish UFO as it flew by at a speed Jensen estimated to be 900 mph. A week later a British aircraft was landing at the Topcliffe airfield at Yorkshire, England, when air and ground crews observed a silver, disk-shaped object following it, swinging to and fro like a pendulum. When the aircraft circled the airfield, the object hovered, rotating on its axis. It then shot away at a speed greater than a shooting star.

On September 20, a metallic disk flew over Karup Field in Denmark at high speed. That same day the U.S. carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt was buzzed by a silver, spherical object that was photographed by reporter Wallace Litwin. His 4 photographs of what he described as a “white ping-pong ball” have never been released to the public. The next day, 6 British RAF pilots chased a shiny sphere, but could not catch it. On September 27 and 28, there were widespread UFO sightings in Germany, Denmark and Sweden. None of the sightings have been explained by anything other than the usual “it was a weather balloon.”

In his 1956 memoir The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects, later to be the director of Project Blue Book, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt wrote he initially thought the governments “brush-offs” were meant to keep the public from panicking. Instead he found a combination of a lack of interest, disbelief and aversion to admitting wrong blocked his investigative efforts. Even in the face of mounting, compelling evidence, the government just wanted it to go away.

7 Malmstrom AFB UFO Incident (March, 1967)

Perhaps the most disquieting UFO incident on this list is not a single incident at all, but the first of a decades-long harassment of the personnel manning and maintaining the missile silos at Malmstrom Air Force Base in central Montana. On a crisp March morning in 1967, Deputy Missile Combat Crew Commander (DMCCC) Robert Salas was 60 feet underground at the Oscar-Flight Launch Control Center (LCC) where he and his commander monitored and – if so ordered – launched 10 ICBM missiles, each with an 800 kiloton nuclear warhead. That’s when Salas got a bizarre call from his LCC’s head of security upstairs: they had a UFO just above the LLC, making strange zig-zag movements. Salas hung up, annoyed at what he perceived to be a joke. A few minutes later the security head called again. The UFO – an orange and red pulsating oval-shaped object—was now hovering at the front gate. Salas hung up and woke his sleeping commander just as all hell broke loose.

A Klaxon alarm sounded and on the control panel “A ‘No-Go’ light and two red security lights were lit indicating problems at one of our missile sites…Another alarm went off at another site, then another and another simultaneously. Within the next few seconds, we had lost six to eight missiles to a ‘No-Go’ (inoperable) condition,” Salas would later relate. Eventually all 10 missiles were inoperable, would not launch, would not respond to commands. Repair crews were quickly dispatched, but it took a full day for the missiles to be brought back online.

Just a week before, a similar event happened at the Echo-Flight LLC under the same command but 20 miles from Oscar-Flight. Security and maintenance personnel contacted the Echo-Flight LLC to tell them there were UFOs hovering over two missile silos. Shortly afterward, ‘No-Go’ alarms began to wail as their 10 missiles became inoperable. Echo-Flight’s missiles, too, were down for a day. A full-scale investigation of both incidents failed to find a cause and Boeing conducted laboratory tests. “There were no significant failures, engineering data or findings that would explain how ten missiles were knocked off alert,” wrote Boeing. “…there was no technical explanation that could explain the event.” They did theorize an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) might have caused the missiles to go off-line, but the equipment was shielded from an EMP up to a certain level. An EMP above that level required technology that didn’t exist in 1967.

Nor were these two incidents isolated. In November 1975, Malmstrom reported multiple disk or saucer-shaped UFOs with various colored lights hovered over the Weapons Storage Area where the nuclear warheads were kept. A pair of F-106s were dispatched but the lights disappeared. UFOs appeared again over Malmstrom in 1992, 1995 and 1996.

Nor was Malmstrom alone in these visitations. Between 1963 and 1996 there are dozens of UFO sightings over missile facilities or Weapons Storage Areas at Minot (North Dakota), Francis E. Warren (Wyoming), Ellsworth (South Dakota), Vandenburg (California), and Walker (New Mexico) Air Force Bases. UFOs were also reported at Wurtsmith (Michigan) and Loring (Maine) AFBs where B-52 nuclear bombers were stationed during the Cold War. At one of the Warren AFB silos, a missile’s targeting “tape” had been erased after a UFO hovered above it in the fall of 1973.

Perhaps one of the most well documented incidents also occurred over an ICBM site at Minot AFB on October 24, 1968. Sixteen Air Force personnel on the ground and 7 more in a B-52 overhead testified to seeing a large brilliantly lit object that changed colors from white to amber to green and at one point split into two objects. The government claimed it was a combination of two stars – Sirius and Vega – and some kind of plasma.

In September of 2010, a number of the Air Force officers who’d witnessed these UFO incursions gathered in Washington to highlight a scary pattern: UFOs are monitoring – and it some cases sabotaging—America’s nuclear arsenal. Where these UFOs malevolent or benevolent?

6 Cua Viet River Fire Fight (June, 1968)

The pattern of UFO interest in war continued after World War II. During the 3-year Korean War, there were dozens of UFO sightings, 42 of which were corroborated by secondary witnesses. One incident stands out. In May of 1951, American troops were at Chorwon, Korea, watching as artillery bombarded the enemy. Suddenly an orange-glowing object – like a “jack-o-lantern”—appeared atop a nearby mountain and quickly descended, flying without damage through the artillery bursts toward the American line. The UFO began pulsating a blue-green light. One private, Francis P. Wall, asked for and received permission to fire his M-1 rifle at the UFO and his bullets made metallic “dings” against the UFO’s hull. Its response was to attack. “We were… swept by some form of ray that was emitted in pulses, in waves that you could visually see only when it was aiming at you.” Wall remembered he experienced a tingling, burning throughout his body. The object hovered for a moment, then shot away at high speed. Three days later Wall’s entire company came down with dysentery and very high white-blood-cell count, similar to radiation poisoning.

Seventeen years later America was in another war, this time in Vietnam. Captain George Filer was an intelligence officer who daily briefed General George S. Brown, deputy commander of air operations in Vietnam. Frequently Filer’s briefings included UFO sightings and way too often they went from sightings to armed conflict.

Just after midnight on June 16, 1968, the patrol boat designated PCF-12 was on a routine night patrol on Cua Viet River not far from where it empties into the South China Sea, when it received a distress call from another patrol boat. PCF-19 said it was under attack from unidentified lights it called “enemy helicopters.” The North Vietnamese had a few Soviet MI-4 Hound helicopters at the time, but they were usually deployed along the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. Why would an attacking enemy helicopter have its lights on, making it easier for the Americans to hit it? PCF-12 was captained by Lieutenant Pete Snyder and as his swift boat approached PCF-19, he said he could see two bright lights with a “strange glow” hovering above PCF-19. One of the lights flashed brightly and PCF-19 exploded. The pair of lights then sped away. Two wounded survivors were picked up later by a Coast Guard Cutter and the survivors reported the pair of lights had stalked the PCF-19 for miles before the crew began firing at them. The lighted object then destroyed PCF-19.

PCF-12 motored up the Cua Viet River and encountered the pair of lights again. Snyder ordered his men to open fire, but the UFO was unphased. PCF-12 retreated as it fired, the object following. Eventually the lights were chased off by a pair F-4 Phantoms. This action so unnerved the American forces, it may have contributed to friendly fire the next night when F-4 Phantoms allegedly fired on the cruiser USS Boston and the Australian destroyer HMAS Hobart, killing two sailors and wounding 8. Extensive searches found no “enemy helicopter” wreckage anywhere in the area. Investigators determined that both incidents were the result of friendly fire, but, in the case of the destruction of PCF-19, no aircraft – friendly or enemy – were in the vicinity at the time. Interestingly, years later General George Brown admitted that the phrase “enemy helicopters” was a euphemism for UFOs. Is that what PCF-19 meant when they said they were under attack?

5 Campeche, Mexico sightings (March 5, 2004)

In the early evening of March 5, 2004, the Mexican Air Force was hunting drug smugglers along the east coast state of Campeche. The C-26A aircraft was flying at 11,500 feet when the crew turned on its infrared camera and noticed multiple bogeys – at one point 11 of them – on the monitor. ”We are not alone! This is so weird,” one crewmember can be heard saying. Since the camera only senses heat signatures, it doesn’t show the object’s exact outlines, its details or structure. The C-26A followed the blobs for a short time and some crewman claimed the objects actually surrounded their aircraft before breaking off.

When the Mexican air force released the video in May, it created quite a stir. Skeptics claimed the images were electrical flashes, ball lightning and even plasma sparks. A more plausible skeptical explanation was that the lights were flares from oil wells out in the Bay of Campeche. The area is the heart of Mexico’s petroleum industry with more than 200 wells in the bay, and they light flares on the tops of the rigs to burn off excess natural gas. UFOlogists proclaimed these images were far superior to the typical grainy pictures of UFOs the world was used to. Not really. It was cloudy, hot and humid that March 5, the images taken at sunset when temperatures were fluctuating, causing havoc not just with the human eye, but the infrared camera.

4 USS Nimitz Incident (November 14, 2004)

Just under two weeks before Thanksgiving, 2004, Carrier Strike Group 11 was training off the coast of southern California when the radar on the missile cruiser USS Princeton detected some 14 anomalous aerial vehicles (AAV) – yet another term for UFOs – uniformly spread out over 100 miles and was deemed a threat to the exercise. Two F/A-18F Super Hornet fighters from the carrier USS Nimitz – who had also picked up the AAVs on radar—were dispatched to the nearest object, guided by an E-2 Hawkeye airborne radar.

Once they had reached the intercept point, the F/A-18’s radar could not detect the AAV. Nor were they electronically jammed. That’s when the F/A-18 crews noticed a disturbance on the surface of the ocean below them, and flying just above the frothing disturbance was a white oblong object shaped like a “Tic-Tac” mint. Under its belly were what looked like two appendages. It was 40-50 feet long, 10-15 feet wide. There were no wings or engine heat or exhaust. It was moving erratically, instantaneously changing directions like, as one F/A-18 crewmember described, a ping pong ball bouncing off invisible walls. One of the F/A-18s descended to get a better look, but the object anticipated that and kept its distance. When the F/A-18 tried to intercept, the AAV shot away. The pilot, CDR David Favor, said: “And it takes off like nothing I’ve ever seen. It literally is one minute it’s there and the next minute it’s like -poof – and it’s gone.” Favor points out that an aircraft flying at Mach 3 will still be visible for 10-15 seconds. “This thing disappeared in a second, it was just gone.”

Shortly afterward the object returned and was videotaped. It was later determined that there was no submarine at the location of the water disturbance or any other known cause. From the video and radar information, it was calculated the object was moving 282,000 mph with a g-force of 12,823. No human could survive such g-forces, nor any aircraft survive the air friction at that speed. At that velocity there should have been noise when the object broke the sound barrier and the friction should have created a fireball. And yet the object was tracked by 3 highly sophisticated radar systems (from the Princeton, Nimitz and the E-2 Hawkeye) at different radar frequencies supporting the contention that this was a physical object and not a weather phenomena such as temperature inversion.

Shortly after the incident, the recordings of the radar, ship logs and other electronic proof was confiscated and it wasn’t until 2017 when a small portion of the evidence was declassified and released to the public. A careful analysis came to the conclusion that the “Tic-Tac” was not an “aircraft of any known type,” had “no aerodynamic air-frame, no obvious means of reactive propulsion, [and had] acceleration characteristics beyond human endurance and air-frame structural capability.”

Mike West, a former video-game designer and UFO skeptic, said the “Tic-Tac” is simply glare on the camera lens. The movements it makes? Simply the sweeping motions of the camera as it tries to keep a visual lock on the “glare.” West also said it could be due to the parallax effect, where stationary objects appear to move when it is actually the viewer moving. The problem is that the video is supported by reliable eyewitnesses who saw it with their own eyeballs. David Fravor, one of the pilots who saw the “Tic-Tac,” said it was not an illusion, and not glare. “It’s funny how people can extrapolate stuff who’ve never operated the system,” he said. Even the Navy, who has every reason to accept West’s theory, say the images are real and simply characterize the “Tic-Tac” as “unidentified.”

3 USS Theodore Roosevelt Sightings (2015)

Along with the Nimitz footage, two other F/A-18 Super Hornet videos were declassified in 2017 and released to the public. Both were shot by the same pilot from the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt while training off the eastern coast from Virginia to Florida before deployment to the Persian Gulf. A total of 6 seasoned pilots and weapons system operators (WSO) experienced multiple encounters.

The first encounter was in the summer of 2014 when Lieutenant Danny Accoin and his WSO picked up a UFO on radar and Accoin positioned his F/A-18 1,000 feet below the object. He should have been able to spot it with his helmet camera thru his canopy, but was unable to. A few days later, Accoin again encountered the object. This time Accoin got a missile lock on the object, but still could not visually see it. Accoin thought these UFOs were advanced military drones, until another Roosevelt pilot had a near collision.

In late 2014, the Roosevelt was training off Virginia Beach and a pilot – who wished to remain anonymous – was flying with his wingman, 100 feet between them. Then something flew between them that looked like a sphere encased in a cube. It flew so close, an aviation flight safety report had to be filed. If these UFOs were drones operated by the military, Accoin reasoned, they wouldn’t have endangered the pilots with a near-collision. “It turned from a potentially classified drone program to safety issue,” Lieutenant Ryan Graves said.

Then in 2015, the so-called “go-fast” and “gimbal” videos were taken. The objects have “no distinct wing, no distinct tail, no distinct exhaust plume,” Accoin said of the videos. It also shows the UFOs accelerating to hypersonic speed, making abrupt stops and instantaneous turns, something a human wouldn’t survive. “Speed doesn’t kill you,” Lieutenant Graves said. “Stopping does. Or acceleration.”

2 USS Russell’s Pyramid UFO (July 15, 2019)

In July, 2019, the Navy held military exercises in restricted waters off the San Diego coastline. Beginning July 14, at least three ships were harassed by – what is described in their logs – as “drones.” Often there were multiple unidentified objects and in one case a “white light” paced the speed and direction of a destroyer – the USS Rafael Peralta—and performed “brazen” maneuvers for 90 minutes, far beyond the flight duration of most drones. On July 15, three pyramid-shaped UFOs trailed the destroyer USS Russell at 700 feet. The ship’s log described the “drones” changing elevation and moving erratically in all directions. The Pentagon confirmed that an anonymous sailor on the Russell filmed the UFO using night-vision goggles, and said they have verified the video’s authenticity.

This video was part of a classified briefing the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) had on May 1, 2020 in an effort to “destigmatize” the reporting of these incidents and encourage the military to relate their experiences without the fear of ruining their careers or reputations. It was acknowledged that something is going on, and uncovering what it is will not happen with denials and secrecy. As remarkable as that announcement is, what came out of the Pentagon was shocking.

Luis Elizondo is a former U.S. Counterintelligence Special Agent and worked for nine years in the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence (USD[I]). While at USD(I) , Elizondo headed the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) that, from 2007 to 2012, studied UFO experiences. Even after funding lapsed in 2012, Elizondo said AATIP continued, funded by the military. Elizondo said that by 2017, AATIP had collected compelling evidence that UFOs posed a significant threat to national security. But he was frustrated by continued government secrecy and resigned. He has since been instrumental in releasing the Nimitz, Roosevelt and Russell videos to the public.

Elizondo also released the remarkable news that the Pentagon has three theories about what these UFOs are. The first is that the UFOs are U.S. military or civilian technology the Pentagon is unaware of, something Elizondo considers “highly unlikely.” The second is that the UFOs are “foreign adversarial” tech that the Pentagon is also unaware of. “This would be a huge intelligence failure of [the United States] because we’ve been technologically leapfrogged,” Elizondo said. He summarized the third theory: “If it’s not ours and it’s not [another country] well, then it’s someone or something else.”

1 USS Omaha’s Trans Medium UFO (July 15, 2019)

On the same night (July 15) the USS Russell was swarmed by UFOs, another ship – the littoral combat ship USS Omaha – videoed a UFO doing something not often witnessed: it traveled thru the sky and the water. Called a trans medium UFO, it further distanced itself from existing human technology. At approximately 11 p.m. a dark blob appeared near the Omaha. The radar plot said the object was spherical, measuring 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter, and traveling at speeds as much as 158 mph (254 km/h). A crewmember began to film the object displayed on a monitor in the Omaha’s Command Information Center (CIC) and the clip clearly has multiple edits. It stayed in place for nearly an hour before splashing into the water. A submarine investigated soon afterward and neither the object or wreckage was found.

The Omaha video was released with the Russell video at the same May 1, 2020, ONI briefing and the Pentagon has confirmed that the Omaha footage is authentic, that it was filmed by naval personnel and that it, along with the Nimitz, Roosevelt and Russell videos were among the 144 UFO sightings it investigated for the June 25, 2021 report.

From all of this, Luis Elizondo has identified five “unique” technological characteristics these UFOs have that are not evident in existing human technology: they have the tech for instantaneous acceleration, hypersonic speeds (greater than 3,000 mph or Mach 5), low visibility (they easily disappear and reappear), trans medium travel (thru space, atmosphere and water), and positive lift (can fly without wings, ailerons, rudders, or even engine exhausts). For the intelligence community to be unaware a foreign power had “leapfrogged” in developing any one of these characteristics would be unlikely. For the intelligence community to be unaware a foreign power developed all five characteristics would be incomprehensible. “We are seeing these — let’s call them vehicles, if you will — that are incurring [incursions?] into controlled U.S. airspace that are displaying performance characteristics that are frankly well beyond anything we can either replicate or in some cases really even understand,” Elizondo said. And for UFOs to have been displaying these technological advancements as far back as World War II? It stretched believability.

So where does that leave us? Cue “Twilight Zone” theme song.

Top 10 UFOs Caught On Video In Recent Years

About The Author: Steve is the New York Times Bestselling author of “366 Days in Abraham Lincoln’s Presidency” and a frequent contributor to .

When the terms “troubling social trends” and “U.S. colleges” are used in tandem, the first things that come to mind are young-adult vices like binge drinking, fraternity hazing, and a heaping dose of HPV.

But alas, other worrisome habits have crept into many American colleges, and the consequences could be far more serious than a hangover, a few bruises, or an itching sensation down under. Welcome to higher learning in the era of all-things politically correct.

Related: 10 Most Absurd Things Banned On Politically Correct College Campuses

10 Self-Segregation

In a giant, progressive leap either forward or backward, Western Washington University recently debuted Black-only housing. Located about 90 miles south of Seattle, the small liberal arts school has designated the fourth floor of one of its largest dormitories for something called its “Black Affinity Program.”

Per the program’s website, the goal is to “explore and celebrate the diversity of Black and African American people and culture, with historical and contemporary context.” Oddly, the website also states that “Black Affinity Housing residents represent all diverse identities”—even though, by definition, they don’t. It intends to foster “a sense of belonging for all residents by creating a safe environment for open, honest, and sometimes challenging dialogue.” Exactly how “safe environments” invite “challenging dialogue” is up for debate.

Instances of self-segregation are becoming increasingly common at American colleges. The National Association of Scholars recently launched an initiative called “Separate But Equal, Again: Neo-Segregation in American Higher Education.”. Of the 173 universities it surveyed, 42% offer segregated residences, 46% offer segregated orientation programs, and a whopping 72% host segregated graduation ceremonies.

Granted, many colleges have historically been dominated by white students (and, more recently, Asian-Americans), leaving some Black students struggling to connect to their own culture at a pivotal time of self-exploration. Still, many student and education advocacy groups have disparaged the uptick in self-segregation, wondering aloud if it’s something that Martin Luther King, Jr. would have endorsed.^[1]

9 Anti-Meritocracy

In October 2021, Dorian Abbott, Associate Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, was disinvited by MIT for a guest lecture he’d been scheduled to give. He must have been some whack-job arguing that the Earth was flat or that climate change doesn’t exist, right?

Wrong. The lecture was called “Climate and the Potential for Life on Other Planets,” a dissertation exploring how scientists factor in a planet’s likely climate when considering its potential for hosting organic life. It also details how astronomical observations indicate the possibility of new climatic regimes not found on modern Earth. Again, not exactly fodder for widespread protest.

Still, he must have done something terribly offensive outside the classroom for a science-driven institution like MIT to pull the plug. Maybe he’s a white supremacist? A serial sexual harasser? Rabidly anti-LGBTQ, perhaps?

Nope. Abbott’s horrific offense stemmed from an opinion piece he wrote for the non-partisan magazine Newsweek, in which he dared criticize current diversity, equity, and inclusion higher-education standards. In short, Abbott argues that these standards are anti-meritocracy. He suggests a new framework called “Merit, Fairness, and Equality” where students would be “treated as individuals” and “evaluated through rigorous and unbiased” processes based on qualifications. How unforgivable of him.

Fortunately for both Abbott and sanity, Princeton University subsequently invited him to give his lecture, which was so well-received that it required a cyber-conference expansion after its Zoom quota was reached.^[2]

8 Treating Moderates Like Radicals

Conservative speakers being disallowed or disinvited at American colleges is nothing new. Here’s a list dating back two decades, courtesy of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE).

Fortunately, the more overt attempts to suppress speech on campuses have diminished in recent years; in 2019, Commentary Magazine optimistically noted that, concerning free speech, things were “looking up.” And according to FIRE, university disinvitations peaked in 2016 and have slowly declined since.

In their stead, however, has been more insidious forms of gatekeeping—ones standing on the shoulders of decades of anti-conservative bias to cloak further favoritism in the veil of democracy. In January 2021, the National Review published a piece by the president of the right-leaning party of Princeton University’s bipartisan American Whig-Cliosophic Society, the nation’s oldest collegiate literary, political, and debate organization. The centuries-old institution foments the free exchange of ideas—the essence of higher learning.

Guest lecture invitations are decided by the Speakers Council via vote. Per the piece’s author, the left-leaning party had their speakers list rubberstamped with ease. Meanwhile, his party’s speaker list had two rejections deemed too controversial.

Among them—and this is truly nuts—was George Will, a Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Washington Post columnist. He is among the most respected, reasonable journalists on either side of the political aisle—oh, and he’s also a Princeton ALUMNUS.^[3]

When an eloquent moderate conservative alumnus is treated as an ideological threat, there’s a big, big problem.

7 Banning Conservative Student Organizations

Perhaps even more worrisome than the disallowance of conservative guest speakers is the banning of conservative organizations comprised of paying customers: namely, students.

In 2017, the student senate at California’s Santa Clara University voted to reject the formation of a chapter of Turning Point USA, a conservative organization whose stated mission is to “identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of fiscal responsibility, free markets, and limited government.” So basically, mainstream American conservatism.

The final tally was 10 votes in favor, 16 against. According to student senate chair Neil Datar, “the final decision was a product of a rigorous, fair, and democratic process”—a reminder that undemocratic notions can be enabled by democracy itself. One senator who voted in favor of Turning Point USA, Ahmer Israr, echoed this sentiment: “It is a shame that 16 of my peers saw it fit to trample upon the rights of an intellectual minority group on campus by engaging in a tyranny of the majority.”

During deliberations, Israr and fellow senator David Warne emphasized the importance of intellectual freedom and diversity. Instead, an organization espousing views typical of one of the country’s two mainstream political parties was treated like an existential threat to a liberal-majority student body. One dissenter ascribed this to a “false sense of danger…that anyone who is vaguely conservative is a Nazi or a white supremacist.”^[4]

6 Illiberal Liberalism

It isn’t just conservative voices being silenced at American colleges. Similar treatment extends to many left-leaning educators deemed not sufficiently progressive. Such was the case with tenured Portland State University professor Peter Boghossian—who describes himself as a classical liberal who’s never voted for a Republican candidate.

As a philosophy professor, Boghossian exposed his students to a broad range of viewpoints. He regularly invited speakers on various topics—even if he didn’t share their opinions. “I invited those speakers not because I agreed with their worldviews,” he writes, “but primarily because I didn’t. From those messy and difficult conversations, I’ve seen the best of what our students can achieve: questioning beliefs while respecting believers, staying even-tempered in challenging circumstances, and even changing their minds.”

That sounds…well, like a philosophy professor doing his job.

Unfortunately, the persistent pushback he received is as unsurprising as it is unsettling. University officials, he continues, have “transformed a bastion of free inquiry into a Social Justice factory whose only inputs were race, gender, and victimhood and whose only outputs were grievance and division. Students at Portland State are not being taught to think. Rather, they are being trained to mimic the moral certainty of ideologues.”

Boghossian’s resignation letter reads like everything wrong with progressive collegiate groupthink. Not coincidentally, it was posted to the Substack page of Bari Weiss, a left-leaning opinion writer who claims she was drummed out of her role at The New York Times because she wasn’t progressive enough.^[5]

5 Abdicating Their Primary Purpose: Education

The Boghossian resignation letter (see previous entry) lays out, in eloquent fashion, personal experiences with broader trends on campuses across the U.S. Among these failures is what Borgossian sees as a diminished dedication to exposing students to new or unconventional ideas.

Per Boghossian: “Faculty and administrators have abdicated the university’s truth-seeking mission and instead drive intolerance of divergent beliefs and opinions.” Such actions, he points out, not only prevent opposing ideas from entering healthy academic dialogue but also train differently opinioned students to keep mum. “This,” he continues, “has created a culture of offense where students are now afraid to speak openly and honestly.”

The overarching theme was clear: conform, or else. Boghossian: “Questions from faculty at diversity trainings that challenged approved narratives were instantly dismissed. Those who asked for evidence to justify new institutional policies were accused of microaggressions. And professors were accused of bigotry for assigning canonical texts written by philosophers who happened to have been European and male.”

Or fired for showing critically-acclaimed films, for that matter.

This environment of virtue signaling, PC thought policing, and engagement hesitation (for fear of being shunned or canceled) sounds strikingly familiar. Specifically, it sounds like social media, only with IRL replacing URLs.

Worse, in not only allowing but encouraging this tepid tabooism, colleges are teaching those paying to be educated to limit their thoughts to rigidly accepted, strictly monitored limits. This groupthink, stay-inside-the-box mentality seems destined to churn out far more sheep than shepherds.^[6]

4 Deciding What’s Funny (and What Isn’t)

When I think “great sense of humor,” I think Woke college students. Not.

The pervasiveness of political correctness at American colleges has made them a no-go for an ever-growing list of comedians who have this crazy idea in their heads that stand-up comedy should be, well, funny. And irreverent.

This is not, let’s be clear, limited to conservative comedians. We’re not talking Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy on the Blue Collar Comedy Tour or even the rabidly anti-liberal Dennis Miller. Ultra-liberal Bill Maher has largely steered clear of campuses since 2014 when University of California Berkeley activists opposed his speaking at winter commencement because of past remarks criticizing Muslims during a stand-up act.

We’re not even talking about the most outlandish comedians. Jerry Seinfeld—who doesn’t do political material and rarely even swears—avoids playing colleges due to the hypersensitivity of students. “When you think about Jerry Seinfeld not being willing to do college campuses because of political correctness,” said former Seinfeld writer Peter Mehlman, “I think you got a real problem.”

And edgier comics? Forget it. Louis C.K., Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Pete Davidson—all sacrifice college gigs for their insistence that comedy presses buttons and pushes boundaries. Looking back, many of the best stand-up acts ever—Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Joan Rivers, Lenny Bruce—likely would have had similar misgivings.^[7]

3 Denying Due Process

The relatively newfound right of women subjected to sexual harassment, assault, or rape to have their voices heard is long overdue. Unfortunately, there’s a fine line between empowering women and leaving men completely defenseless—and many colleges cross that line.

Writing for the left-leaning magazine The Atlantic, Emily Yoffe penned a 2017 article discussing the loss of due process for men accused of inappropriate sexual conduct. “At many schools,” she writes, “the rules intended to protect victims of sexual assault mean students have lost their right to due process—and an accusation of wrongdoing can derail a person’s entire college education.”

This phenomenon, Yoffe explains, isn’t just straightforward accusations of “he forced himself on me.” Rather, these potentially life-ruining accusations often result from mutual encounters that ended with one party feeling slightly—and subjectively—uncomfortable.

Yoffe describes an incident where a woman performed oral sex on a man, who then cajoled her into sticking around a few minutes longer with a playful grab and kissing. She was fully clothed the whole time. Per her formal written accusation, it was only later that she “realized I’d been sexually assaulted.”

This led to cascading events that, ultimately, saw the man suspended, banned from campus housing, and suffering stress-related health problems so severe he needed to drop two classes. For Yoffe, the incident showcases how “many remedies that have been pushed on campus are unjust to men, and ultimately undermine the legitimacy of the fight against sexual violence.”^[8]

2 A Growing Gender Imbalance

The days of women playing catch-up in higher education are over—and then some. In fact, Googling the term “why aren’t men” and glancing at the autocomplete options, the very first one is “going to college.”

For the 2021-22 academic year, nearly 60% of college students are women—a gap that has been gradually widening for decades. This represents millions of fewer men at both two- and four-year colleges. (A half-century ago, those figures were almost exactly the opposite.) The trend seems to be accelerating: Over the past five years, overall U.S. college enrollment has declined by about one million students, with men accounting for more than 70% of this drop-off.

No consensus exists as to why men are now a marked minority at American colleges. Some experts point out that, in elementary and high schools, boys are more likely to be held back, drop out, or have trouble learning to read. Some economists suggest that men are likelier to feel the lure of a job immediately following high school, especially since the types of decent-paying jobs that don’t require college degrees—construction, law enforcement, etc.—skew male.

Regardless of the reason, there will likely be consequences. College graduates earn, on average, 56% more than high school graduates—a difference that amounts to over a million dollars of lifetime earnings. College grads are also far less likely to lose jobs during economic downturns and, socially, are generally happier, healthier, and enjoy more successful marriages.^[9]

1 Prompting a “Radical Centrist” Education Backlash

Though this final entry may eventually be seen as a positive trend, the fact that it’s even necessary is troubling. Quite simply, enough moderates on both sides of the ideological spectrum have had enough of this nonsense that they’ve gone ahead and founded their own college.

In early November 2021, news broke that several current and former Harvard University professors are helping establish the University of Austin, a Texas-based liberal arts school created to counter what its founders see as a culture of censorship in higher education.

In addition to politically centrist former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss—whose Substack page published the resignation letter referenced in two entries above—U of A founders include former Harvard President Lawrence H. Summers, Kennedy School professor Arthur C. Brooks, Psychology professor Steven A. Pinker, and Brown University economics professor Glenn C. Loury.

In an interview, Pinker said that “too many of the country’s universities are stuck in the same rut, and that rut includes exorbitant tuition, a mushrooming bureaucracy, a bizarre set of admissions criteria, and increasing political homogeneity, including repression of speech and ideas.”

Another co-founder, former St. John’s University president Panayiotis Kanelos, recalled Harvard’s motto—Veritas—before wondering aloud if “in these top schools, and in so many others, can we actually claim that the pursuit of truth—once the central purpose of a university—remains the highest virtue?”^[10]

Local legends have a certain charm. They’re part of a town’s flavor, along with local businesses and food. They add a bit of spice to the area, a spooky undertone to an otherwise unassuming area. In this list, we look at ten urban legends that are localized in U.S. towns. Please enjoy, and if you have the urge to travel to any of these towns in the pursuit of local legends, please remember to do so safely.

Related: Top 10 Horrifying Urban Legends From Around The Globe

10 The Char-Man of Ojai, California

The story of the Char-Man has been passed down for decades in Ojai, California. In 1948, a large brush fire swept through the Ojai Valley, destroying most of the valley, including the homes. It took several days after the flames died down for anyone to enter the valley and assess the damage.

According to legend, a man and his son lived in a small house outside of town. The father was killed in the fire, and his son survived, badly burned. When someone finally reached their home in the aftermath of the fire, the son had gone insane from the ordeal. He’d hung the body of his father by his feet from the remains of a nearby tree and flayed the burned skin from the corpse. He then fled into the hills of Creek Road, where he continued to live, mad and charred.

Police have allegedly been called to investigate disturbances related to the Char-Man on Creek Road. Some versions of the story say that he haunts the Creek Road Bridge (locally dubbed “Char-Man Bridge”) and occasionally attacks those who walk across it at night.

A comedy-horror film was made in 2019 if you want to “experience” this urban legend.^[1]

9 The Blink Man of Ellicott City, Maryland

The entity that haunts the Ilchester Tunnel in Ellicott City goes by many names, including the Blink Man, Peeping Tom, the Fickergeist, and the Tunnel Man. Though for those of you worried about catching a glimpse of the Blink Man on a casual Saturday night, you’re probably safe, as summoning him requires one to accomplish the near-impossible task of staring directly down the Ilchester Tunnel for an entire hour, from midnight to 1 am, without blinking.

Should you accomplish this somehow, Peeping Tom will constantly be in your vision from that moment on, slowly growing closer to you every time you blink.

The Blink Man has also inspired a fairly decent found footage horror film called Butterfly Kisses.^[2]

8 The Black Angel of Iowa City, Iowa

This giant grave marker was constructed in 1913 and stands 2.7 meters (9 feet) tall, excluding the 1.2-meter (4-foot) pedestal that it sits on. It’s difficult not to be unnerved by the presence of a hulking 4-meter (13-foot) tall, jet-black hooded figure with a bowed head and one wing raised as if to beckon the viewer to shelter underneath it.

There are several versions of the myth, none of which tend to end well for those involved. One says that kissing or touching the statue will bring death and misfortune upon you. Another says that kissing someone beneath the statue will cause your death. One woman stated that her husband contracted a rare disease after kissing the statue’s foot.

The most interesting thing about Iowa City’s angel, however, is that we can trace its history back to a source. The statue was commissioned by a Bohemian (now the Czech Republic) immigrant named Terezie Karásek for the grave of her son, Eddie. After its completion, the statue did not at all resemble what she’d envisioned, and she fought the artist over payment but was eventually forced to settle. Less than a decade after its construction, the statue began to turn black due to the oxidization of the copper. Unfortunately, the stories of the curse began shortly after, while Terezie was still alive.^[3]

7 The Hex House of Tulsa, Oklahoma

This is not to be confused with the haunted attraction of the same name. The story of the Tulsa Hex House is based on a police report from 1944. Initially investigating ration book fraud during the WWII era, officers discovered two women confined to the basement of a house belonging to a woman named Carolann Smith. The two women, Virginia Evans and Willetta Horner, were allegedly “hexed” into giving their paychecks to Carolann and forced to live in horrid conditions in the basement while Carolann lived in excess upstairs.

Carolann was also known to have extorted $17,000 from Virginia Evans’ father, stating that it was going toward caring for his daughter. Carolann Smith was also shrouded by the mysterious deaths of those who were close to her and claimed life insurance policies left by her father, husband, and housemaid. For her crimes, Smith served only one year in prison (Link 7).

The original Tulsa Hex House was demolished in 1975, and the site was converted into a parking lot. However, there are still stories that the basement of the Tulsa Hex House still exists underneath the pavement.^[4]

6 The Beast of Bladenboro, North Carolina

The Beast of Bladenboro is one of North Carolina’s most famous urban legends. Reports of this local cryptid date back to the 1950s, when for nearly a week, the small community was held hostage by a large, cat-like, vampiric creature. This caused mass hysteria and an influx of vigilantes with guns searching for the elusive creature.

The first victims of the beast were animals totaling eight dogs, a family of kittens, and one lamb. Eventually, the creature moved on to human victims, attacking a woman on a night in January, who was reported to be startled but not harmed.

The hunt for the creature was a well-known affair, attracting hunters from as far as Tennessee to come to try their luck at killing the beast. At one point, the small town of 790 people had reportedly attracted anywhere from 800 to 1000 hunters at the height of the panic.

By the end of the month, a hunter had produced the corpse of an 11.5-kilogram (25-pound) bobcat, which seemed to appease the people of Bladenboro, who were content to assume that this had been the source of the problem.

Today, sentiments toward the Beast of Bladenboro have seemingly done an about-face, and the creature is annually celebrated at the town’s “Beast Fest.” The story was also the subject of a documentary as recently as late December of 2021.^[5]

5 The Stairway to Hell in Tagus, North Dakota

Tagus (originally called Wallace), North Dakota, is a ghost town founded in 1900, reaching a peak population of only 140 in 1900 and then slowly but surely drying up into a desert of abandoned buildings and only a few lingering residents. Unfortunately, the state of the town makes it a hot spot for vandalism.

The mostly abandoned locale has also made it a factory for local legends about satanic rituals and spirits. One of the main focal points of these stories is St. Olaf’s Lutheran Church. The church itself is no longer standing, as a fire consumed it in 2001, something that the remaining residents attribute to the previously mentioned instances of vandalism. A square brick memorial to the church stands in its place with the name of the church inscribed on it
.
According to legend, devil worshipers attended the church, and it was a place where sacrifices and rituals were carried out. The stairway to hell was said to be housed inside, a spiral staircase descending into the earth. Along with the rest of the foundation, any descending stairway has since been plowed over.

Anyone interested in visiting Tagus should keep in mind to respect the town and its locals. They’re reportedly very protective of their town and wary of outsiders due to the rampant vandalism cases.^[6]

4 The Haunted Kuhn Cinema in Lebanon, Oregon

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

The Kuhn Cinema in Lebanon is a still-operational historic theater. First opened in 1935, it was renovated and reopened in 2005. In 2013, Lebanon began the “Keep the Kuhn” project, which has provided the theater with funds to update its equipment and continue to provide Lebanon with the latest movie releases in the digital age.

Despite its renovation, remnants of the cinema’s past still remain, including one allegedly very active spirit. The spirit of a young girl who fell from a balcony inside the Kuhn is alleged to haunt the theater. Staff and visitors have reportedly heard her laughing, as well as seeing doors open and close on their own. She’s been known to enter the projectionist booth, with several staff members working the booth reporting to have been hugged from behind while alone.^[7]

3 Cumberland, Rhode Island’s Fingernail Freddy

As with most urban legends, there are several versions of how Fingernail Freddy came to be. In one version of the story, Freddy was a recluse who lived in the woods near Camp Ker-Anna, who grew his nails out long and sharp and would enter the campgrounds to claw at noisy campers late at night.

In other versions, the story of Fingernail Freddy has merged with another local figure called “Hot-Shot Charlie.” Depending on who is telling the story, a homesteader (either Freddy or Charlie) lived in a log cabin near Camp Ker-Anna and was tormented by rowdy campers who would harass his livestock and destroy his crops.

One night, at the end of his rope, Freddy fired at the kids with rock salt, chasing them away from his property. The kids returned later and set his house on fire, disfiguring him and killing his wife and children. His injuries were so extensive that he stopped going into town and became a recluse, living in the woods where his home used to be and growing his nails out long and sharp to kill those who trespass on his land.

As with most urban legends, there is a small kernel of truth hidden in the heart of the story. Near the local reservoir, there are pieces of a foundation that people claim to be his home.^[8]

8 The Well in Sabattus, Maine

Stairways to hell are supposedly found all over the world, but in Sabattus, getting to hell requires a much more treacherous method of descent. The story goes that a pre-teen boy was dared to explore a supposedly haunted well located in a derelict cemetery. He was lowered into the well on a rope by a group of his friends. After an uncomfortably long period of silence with no tugging on the rope, the boys decided to pull their friend up and check on him. When they hoisted him out of the darkness, his hair had gone pure white, and his eyes were wide and mad. For the rest of his life, the boy was confined to the county mental institution, never speaking another word, only screaming incomprehensibly.

As with most urban legends, there are many missing details. No names associated with the boys have been released, nor can an approximate date be pinpointed. The ’90s have been proposed as the decade of origin. The location of the well is also a mystery. There are ten listed cemeteries in Sabattus, though there may be smaller family cemeteries not accounted for.^[9]

1 The Curse of the Petrified Forest in Northeast Arizona

The Petrified Forest State Park is a beautiful expanse of nature, offering many activities for those looking to enjoy the great outdoors, including hiking, biking, camping, and fishing. Visitors are certain to have a lovely time and leave feeling refreshed, so long as they remember one of the cardinal rules of visiting historical sites: take nothing but pictures.

It’s illegal to remove any samples of petrified wood from the park, but visitors often find themselves on the receiving end of more than a fine upon doing so. As far back as the 1930s, visitors reported steady streams of bad luck after taking pieces of the forest home with them. The park receives a steady stream of mail every year that includes fragments of petrified wood being shipped back to where it belongs, often accompanied by letters that ask park officials to put the pieces back where they came from.

These rocks have been dubbed “conscience rocks” by the park staff. The park has maintained a 1,200-page archive of the letters accompanying these conscience rocks, dating back to the 1930s. The urban legend-induced penalty for stealing from the park has been cited to be anything from divorce to medical issues and the occasional death.^[10]

Sometimes you’re out on the open road, and something catches your eye. You’re not sure what it is, but it’s piqued your curiosity, and you need a break anyway. This is how a lot of roadside attractions are born. Predominantly wacky or niche, roadside attractions, particularly in the U.S., have become a huge part of the road-tripping experience. However, sometimes they’re just downright creepy. So here are our top 10 creepiest roadside attractions in the U.S.

Grab your map, find a decent road-tripping buddy, and let’s dive in!

10 The Fremont Troll—Seattle, Washington

In so many old folktales and fairytales, we hear of mysterious, troublesome, or mischievous trolls who live under bridges. Often asking for a toll or price for passage, they cause a nuisance and, in some cases, can be quite frightening and creepy.

Well, luckily, they’re a work of fiction. That is unless you’re wandering through underpasses in the Fremont area of Seattle. Here you’ll find a huge stone troll holding up the underpass on their broad shoulders. If you’re not expecting it or are walking in bad lighting, it’s a creepy and surprising sight to behold.

The result of a local art competition in 1989 to revamp the area that had become an unsafe and dirty place, the Fremont Troll towers 18 feet (5.5 meters) and even has a shining metal eye that glints in the light. It’s not uncommon to see a horde of tourists standing around and even climbing up onto the troll’s shoulders for the perfect photo op. Keep an eye out for the Volkswagen Beetle that’s been crunched up in the troll’s hand…^[1]

9 Oregon Vortex—Gold Hill, Oregon

If you’ve ever visited a fairground with a hall of mirrors or a funhouse, you know how easy it is for you to lose perspective and see things in an altogether eerier way. Well, how about out in the wild? If you happen to visit Gold Hill, Oregon, you might find yourself questioning what you actually see.

The so-called Oregon Vortex is home to a series of paranormal buildings and a few gravity hill illusions that can leave visitors enchanted, confused, or perplexed. The story goes that the Old Grey Eagle Mining Company used this Native American land to build their outpost in 1904—something that the local tribespeople had forbidden. Consequently, the house slid off its foundations at a precarious angle.

So the legend was born that a large magnetic field had control over this area, causing weird and wonderful things to happen. Visitors come from all around to put this theory to the test and see if they can come up with a logical conclusion—so far, the mystery of the Oregon Vortex remains.^[2]

8 Arkansas Alligator Farm & Petting Zoo—Hot Springs, Arkansas

Are you into all things reptilian? Well, if you’re heading through Arkansas, stop off in Hot Springs with a visit to the Arkansas Alligator Farm & Petting Zoo. What’s so creepy about a petting zoo? Well, some of the alligators are more alive than others. There’s also a series of exhibits, including the skeletal remains of a merman and more intriguing and weird oddities.

Founded in 1902 as an alternative tourist attraction for those visiting the town’s titular hot springs, the Arkansas Alligator Farm & Petting Zoo welcomes visitors from all over to get up close and personal with these prehistoric and native creatures. Feed baby alligators, watch the pros interact with the animals, or head to the museum-style exhibits full of history and biological mysteries. Chances are you’ll leave the Arkansas Alligator Farm & Petting Zoo with more questions than answers, but that’s all part of the fun.^[3]

7 Oddporium—Arden, Delaware

Sometimes you just want to wander around somewhere downright weird with a friend or loved one, pointing out old dolls, vintage medical equipment, or pig remains in a jar, cringing back and laughing. Whether you get grossed out easily or have a dark sense of humor when it comes to curios, consider checking out the Oddiporium on your next trip through Arden, Delaware.

If you’re traveling through in the evening, the Oddporium also screens horror films in the outdoor portion of the venue. Especially if you’re checking out the place around Halloween, you can expect plenty of spooky goings on. The perfect creepy combo: nighttime horror films and weird paranormal things in jars!^[4]

6 Goldwell Open Air Museum—Beatty, Nevada

When you’re on the road for a while, especially in the desert landscape of Nevada, your eyes can play tricks on you. Suddenly, you see white figures floating in the distance. No, it’s not your eyes misleading you. You’re journeying toward the Goldwell Open Air Museum in Beatty, Nevada. Bring your curiosity and your artistic temperament when you visit!

Characterized by its lead attraction—a series of ghoulish white cloaked figures set up in the position of the Last Supper—the Goldwell Open Air Museum is home to a ton of interesting and thought-provoking sculptures out in the middle of Death Valley. Many of them aren’t creepy at all; however, the sight of the cloaked Last Supper against the empty landscape of the desert will send chills up and down your spine.^[5]

5 Winchester Mystery House—San Jose, California

With a name like the Winchester Mystery House, you know you’re in for an interesting and bizarre visit. Built for the Winchester Repeating Arms heiress Sarah Pardee Winchester, the Winchester Mystery House started construction in 1884 with a whole host of weird and creepy features. Doors to nowhere, stairwells with no end, and much more. It’s definitely not your average design and is part of the Winchester Mystery House’s unique and quirky charm.

It’s rumored that Sarah went mad with guilt over all those killed by Winchester guns and ammunition over the years, leading to the peculiar design. Are you a fan of all things paranormal and a little bit spooky? Some say that the spirit of Sarah still haunts the Winchester Mystery House that opened to the public just a year after her death in 1922, when construction finally halted.^[6]

4 Mystery Hole—Fayetteville, West Virginia

Nothing quite piques interest quite like the phrase “mystery hole.” Located in Fayetteville, West Virginia, it is a roadside attraction that doesn’t have a whole lot of information detailing the ins and outs of it. That’s what adds to the mystery of it all. You can’t even catch a glimpse without a ticket and passing through the initial building.

Behind the blocked-off entry building lies a gravity-reflipping mystery hole, turning everything on its head and making visitors question everything. Some people wander off in the completely wrong direction. Some people get confused. Some people return again and again, trying to solve the mystery of this particular hole. It’ll keep you guessing the whole time.^[7]

3 The World’s Largest Elk Horn Arch—Afton, Wyoming

Depending on your beliefs about hunting, this next roadside attraction is either going to be super impressive or super creepy. Either way, it’s still a little bit morbid. Spanning all four lanes of the highway, The World’s Largest Elk Horn Arch is an imposing sight as you cruise down Route 89 into Afton, Wyoming.

How many elk horns does it take to form the supposed world’s largest elk horn arch? According to official figures, 3,011 intertwined horns come together to form this unique structure. Pull over for a photo opportunity, get up close and personal to see how the arch is put together, or drive underneath it, slightly baffled at how 15 tons of elk horns stay sturdy enough for the archway while still being predominantly in the air.^[8]

2 Doll’s Head Trail—Atlanta, Georgia

If there’s one thing we can agree is super creepy, it’s a doll’s head. So it’s no wonder Atlanta, GA’s Doll’s Head Trail is on this list. Yes, if one or two doll heads aren’t enough for you, you can spend your time wandering around the Constitution Lakes area looking out for these highly creepy trail markers.

Take some time to stretch your legs after a long road trip, and tick off an extra creepy roadside attraction while you’re at it. Even better, don’t tell your travel companion about the bizarre oddities littered along the trail. Then watch as they realize in abject horror the sheer creepiness of this particular Georgia tourist attraction.^[9]

1 Jimmy Carter Peanut—Plains, Georgia

Sticking with the great state of Georgia, we’re skewing presidential with our final roadside attraction. Since he grew up on a peanut farm in Plains, Georgia, as a part of his presidential campaign, Jimmy Carter’s backing in Indiana decided to build a 13-foot (4-meter) tall statue to drive excitement and get people to the polls. The statue itself? A giant peanut with a toothy grin that could be seen from miles around.

It’s since been relocated from Indiana to outside President Carter’s hometown, complete with a refurbishment after a driver crashed into it in 2000. Stop by for a photo op before grabbing some peanuts for the road in the town of Plains itself. They make for great road trip snacks!^[10]

Addiction is a psychological disorder that causes a persistent urge to engage in a specific behavior. In most cases, an addiction has detrimental consequences that alter brain function through constant cravings and lack of self-control. Even though many people associate addiction with drugs, everyday things and harmless indulgences can also become addictions.

The prevalence of addictions in the U.S. has seen a dramatic rise and led to increased unhappiness and even more cases of depression than was reported a decade ago.

Let’s review the top 10 addictions in the U.S.

10 Internet

It’s hard for any regular person to imagine going a day without logging into their computer or smartphone because these devices currently define our lives. Much of our daily activities are now dependent on the internet, from moving around conveniently to medical services and food delivery.

The benefits of the internet are obvious, but we hardly consider the addiction risks everyday internet use exposes us to. In 2021, the Pew Research Center reported that approximately 77% of Americans use the internet daily.

While binge-watching TikTok videos and streaming movies are relatively harmless activities, some people’s constant need to browse the internet interferes with their regular life. Some don’t go out for days, sacrifice personal relationships, and neglect their hygiene because of the internet. It becomes an addiction when you prioritize browsing the internet over critical aspects of your life, like work and relationships.

Internet addiction is a broad term for various impulse control issues involving a smartphone or computer. Examples include cyber relationship addiction, net compulsions, obsessive information seeking, and online gaming.

9 Food

Food is one of the most surprising addictions anyone can have because, unlike drugs, it’s impossible to abstain from food. But, if you’re struggling with grasping food addiction, you only need to look at obesity statistics in the U.S. to understand it.

Some reports indicate that at least 5% of the U.S. population has a food addiction. Generally, food addiction affects more women than men, where the global average is 7% and 3%, respectively.

Like drug addiction, food addiction can lead to cravings and tolerance. Cravings are displayed in the obsessive need to eat despite the negative consequences. Food addicts build tolerance by requiring more food to maintain the same dopamine levels.

The causes of food addiction are unclear, but some research indicates that genetics, brain chemistry, and stress eating are among the top possible causes.

8 Gambling

The internet has also contributed to widespread gambling due to accessibility to betting sites and apps. Gambling is legal and, in most cases, unproblematic. But the fun and social connotation attached to gambling activities prevent many with a problem from admitting it. Only 20% of people who reported a gambling addiction accepted that their gambling might actually be a problem.

Recent reports indicate that approximately six million Americans live with a gambling problem. Unfortunately, many might not recognize the signs until it’s too late. Even though a gambling addiction doesn’t pose any immediate health risks, it can lead to diminished quality of life and compound to substance abuse and depression.

Additionally, gambling is linked to increased relationship friction that results in domestic violence. Children raised by parents with gambling problems are at a higher risk of developing mental health and drug abuse problems. Gambling is also linked to increased crime rates as people frequently commit fraud, forgery, shoplifting, and petty theft to obtain money for their gambling activities.

7 Sex and Pornography

The internet may be the best invention yet, but with it came myriad addictions, including pornography. Sex and pornography addiction are controversial, with some researchers and therapists arguing that it doesn’t exist. The lack of agreement between experts on decisive factors that classify sex and pornography addiction also makes it difficult to recognize when someone is struggling with an addiction to adult content.

Still, it’s critical to note that approximately 3% to 6% of the U.S. population struggle with sex or porn addiction. Additionally, about 35% of all internet downloads are related to pornographic material. Many people who access and view pornography don’t have an addiction.

Addiction begins when someone has an obsessive compulsion to view adult content, forcing them to take irresponsible risks. Other factors that point to porn addiction include:

• Dissatisfaction with an otherwise healthy sex life
• Relationship issues because of dissatisfaction with your partner
• Engaging in risky behavior like viewing the content at work

Part of why pornography and sex addiction are rampant is the ease of internet access. This also increases the risk of exposure to minors and teenagers who may develop unhealthy views of sexual relationships.

6 Heroin

Heroin, also referred to as opioid, is a drug made from the opioid poppy plant seed pods. This plant grows mostly in Southeast and West Asia, Colombia, and Mexico. It comes in the form of a black or white powder or a sticky substance known as black tar heroin.

Heroin is addictive, but sometimes people mix it with cocaine to elevate its effects. This practice is referred to as speed-balling. This drug binds to brain receptors responsible for pain, pleasure, and sleep. It alters these functions by creating an “intense rush of serotonin.”

A heroin rush is usually accompanied by a mixture of feelings, a dry mouth, and a warm feeling on the skin. After the initial sensation wears off, users can experience nausea, vomiting, or intense itching. Depending on the dosage, if the mental function is impaired for too long, it can result in slow breathing and heart rate, which can sometimes be life-threatening.

One of the reasons why heroin is highly addictive is because users develop tolerance quickly. After using it regularly for a few weeks, you will need a higher dosage to maintain the same intensity. This leads to addiction.

Health risks of heroin addiction include increased exposure to infections like HIV, heart and liver diseases, collapsed veins, and overdoses.

Beating a heroin addiction can also be extremely challenging, with some users experiencing intense cravings years after stopping heroin use. Cravings can be triggered by stress, people, events, and other things you might associate with the drug.

5 Cocaine

Cocaine is the second most popular illegal recreational drug in the U.S. after marijuana. Significant use of cocaine in the U.S. began in the mid-1980s and early ’90s and is still one of the most abused drugs today. According to a 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health report, regular cocaine users stood at 0.8% or 1.9 million people. Only a quarter of these reported cocaine users consume crack cocaine, meaning that most use it in powder form.

Cocaine is a highly addictive drug with the potential for physical and psychological dependence. It also poses several health risks, which include high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, weight loss, mood disorders, strokes, and seizures.

The Drug Enforcement Administration classifies cocaine as a Schedule II controlled drug despite its potential for addiction because it has few medicinal uses. Hospitals use it to stimulate vital bodily functions like heart rate, blood pressure, and temperature.

4 Prescription Drugs

The U.S. has seen a sharp rise in prescription drug abuse and addiction cases in the last five years compared to the previous decade. Prescription drug abuse has risen significantly over the years because of accessibility, affordability, and the misconception that they are less detrimental to your health.

Sadly, prescription drug abuse has several long-term health consequences that can quickly turn chronic when left unattended. For example, opioid abuse, the leading prescription drug addiction, mimics heroin addiction. It can lead to nausea, constipation, shallow breath, and drowsiness.

Side effects of stimulants, such as drugs prescribed for conditions like ADHD, are similar to cocaine withdrawal. They include high temperature, paranoia, weight loss, and irregular heartbeat.

The most prevalent cases of prescription drug addiction fall under painkillers, stimulants like Ritalin, and sedatives used to treat tension and sleeping disorders.

3 Marijuana

Marijuana is widely considered a recreational drug in the U.S., currently legal in 21 states and Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, long-term use of marijuana can lead to addiction and a risk of developing psychosis and schizophrenia.

Users associate marijuana with creativity boost and relaxation. This is because it affects parts of the brain responsible for attention, learning, coordination, and decision-making, giving the user an illusion of creativity and an energy boost.

Approximately 18% of Americans, or 42 million people, reported regular marijuana use in 2020. Research also indicates that three of 10 regular marijuana users have a marijuana abuse problem making it the third-highest addiction in the U.S.

Even though the safety and effects of marijuana are highly politicized, studies indicate that it can indeed be addictive and have detrimental withdrawal symptoms after long-term abuse. Enthusiasts might argue that the medical benefits of marijuana far outweigh its negatives, but it’s not the case for everyone.

Studies show that teenagers who start using marijuana before 18 are likely to get addicted and abuse the drug. Additionally, the use of marijuana during pregnancy or breastfeeding can lead to various health risks. Before buying into the popular ‘weed culture,’ ensure you have the right information about marijuana abuse and its risks.

2 Alcohol

Despite its significant consequences, alcohol addiction has been underestimated for many years. This is because alcohol is a legal and socially acceptable drug. These facts make it harder to detect when someone is succumbing to addiction, only to notice when it’s too late.

There are many facts that you may not know about alcohol. First, at least 26% of American adults reportedly indulged in regular binge drinking as of 2019. Of course, many people who drink, even regularly, are not likely to develop an alcohol addiction problem. But this is largely dependent on how well they adhere to daily limits.

In many cases, alcohol addiction begins as a harmless social habit that evolves into full-blown dependence that can lead to serious health issues like depression. For example, most typical beverage servings in bars and restaurants have a higher alcohol percentage than a standard drink.

Another alcohol fact that many people conflate is alcoholism and alcohol abuse. Alcoholism is a brain change that causes a constant obsession with drinking. Alcoholism will lead to drinking even when you didn’t intend to. Alcohol abuse, on the other hand, is taking alcohol in a manner that leads to neglect and irresponsible behavior like drunk driving or failing to go to work. Alcohol abuse leads to alcoholism.

1 Nicotine

Approximately 30 million Americans are addicted to nicotine products, including cigarettes, cigars, patches, nicotine gums, or snuff. Nicotine is the most abused drug in the U.S., with reports showing that teens as young as 13 are dependent on the drug.

Many people addicted to nicotine mistakenly think that cigarette smoking or other nicotine use helps them relax. Nothing could be further from the truth. Recent studies show that nicotine use leads to increased stress levels. After the effects of nicotine use wear off, users start to crave another dose, and this causes them to be cranky and tense.

The shocking thing is that despite the widely reported side effects of nicotine use, the U.S. has not seen a significant drop in nicotine users in recent years. Research shows that nicotine users die 10 to 13 years earlier than non-users, but it is still not motivating enough to stop, perhaps because nicotine is among the most addictive drugs.

It’s essential to note that most teenagers who start smoking or using some form of nicotine remain users for the rest of their lives. What makes nicotine more dangerous is many users result to unhelpful alternatives like e-cigarettes or cigars, thinking they are healthier.

One would think that in this day and age where health and looks are a priority for most, the threat of stained teeth, red gums, and mouth odor would help people keep off nicotine use, but it seems like health campaigns have to take a different approach.