For the purposes of this list, “crisis” shall refer to negative circumstances that could alter a nation’s economy. Most of the time, such a description would be fit by large-scale disasters like wars, epidemics, and famine. Sometimes, however, portents of doom might barely seem newsworthy.

Seemingly innocuous things like a low birth rate, a shortage of vultures, or just having too many cattle around are, for some countries, more dire than they appear. While the following situations seem unspectacular, they could lead to worse disasters.

10 South Korea’s Birth Crisis

South Korea’s birth crisis is so bad that the government is paying couples to have children. The nation’s fertility rate hit a record low in 2018. At the current rate, the population is expected to grow in the negative in just ten years. This means there will be more deaths than births. If the trend is allowed to continue, it is estimated that there will be nobody left in the country by 2750.

In just 13 years, the South Korean government has spent over $121 billion to encourage parents to have more children. These days, most parents are eligible to receive up to $270 a month from the government.

Starting in late 2019, parents with children below the age of eight will be allowed to work one hour less per day. The government is also building more kindergartens and day cares. Fathers will also given be a paid paternity leave of ten days—seven days more than the currently approved three days.^[1]

9 India’s Stray Cow Crisis

The Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is currently experiencing a severe stray cow crisis. Cows are not eaten in India because they are considered sacred creatures. Some people do eat cows, but the state government and cow protection groups have been clamping down on them.

This has left farmers with fewer incentives to keep male calves and cows that no longer produce milk. Most farmers abandon these unproductive cattle on the streets because having them around costs money. In 2012, there were 1,009,436 stray cattle in the state of Uttar Pradesh. This year’s Live Stock Census is expected to show a much higher number.

The stray cattle have become a nuisance because they raid farmlands and eat crops. Some cows end up in cow shelters, which have quickly become overcrowded and underfunded. These days, farmers and community members lock the stray cattle in government buildings like schools and hospitals.^[2]

8 Venezuela’s Passport Crisis

Venezuela has been in the news for all the wrong reasons over the past few years. The oil-rich Latin American nation has suffered serious hyperinflation that has almost brought its economy to a standstill. And with two people claiming to be president, its many problems won’t be ending anytime soon.

Over 2.3 million people have fled Venezuela for neighboring Latin American nations since 2014. However, many more are still stuck because they do not have passports. The passport crisis is so bad that fellow Latin American nations are allowing Venezuelans in with expired passports. But Venezuelans without passports remain stuck in the nation.

Getting a passport or any government-issued document was an uphill task before the crisis. Now it’s worse. Workers at the passport office are known to deliberately delay passports unless passport-seekers pay bribes of $1,000 to $5,000. Today’s passport-seekers don’t have that kind of money. And the government itself isn’t too keen on allowing its citizens to leave.^[3]

7 Venezuela’s Health Care Crisis

Venezuela is also experiencing a severe health care crisis. At least 22,000 doctors have fled the country since the crisis began, causing a nationwide shortage of doctors. Several hospitals have either closed or operate irregularly. Those that remain open do not have enough supplies.

These days, patients are required to bring their own drugs, syringes, gloves, and even soap. This has seen Venezuelan hospitals go from places where people are cured to places where they get killed. It is normal for patients to contract deadly diseases while admitted for other ailments.

This is worsened by a shortage of drugs, which, coupled with severely malnourished patients, is the perfect recipe for disaster. Hospitals have also seen an increase in burn victims. Most are toddlers who got burned when they strayed into wood fires and kerosene lamps that have taken the place of heaters and light bulbs.^[4]

6 China’s Food Crisis

China has been experiencing a food crisis for a few years now, and the trade war with the US made it worse. Last year, the Chinese government introduced several tariffs to much-needed food imports like soybeans, sorghum, and corn in response to Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods.

Interestingly, the Chinese government-owned Sinograin, which keeps a stockpile of grain for the government, had to pay the tariffs. President Xi Jinping later toured areas of Northeast China, where most of China’s farms are based, and said that China should become more self-sufficient in food production.

Food production has always been a problem for China. China’s arable farmland amounts to less than a tenth of the world’s farmland, even though it has one fifth of the world’s population. On top of that, lots of its farmland is either occupied by industries or contaminated with heavy metals released by those industries.^[5]

The food crisis began decades ago, when an improved standard of living caused Chinese citizens to shift from carbohydrate- to protein-rich diets, and there isn’t enough farmland to grow vegetables and rear livestock. For now, China has been able to manage by importing food and leasing or buying farmland in Africa, Australia, and the Americas.

However, the trade war with the US has shown that importation could be unreliable. Besides, most countries harboring Chinese farms are expecting a population boom in a few decades and will be needing the farmland to feed their own citizens.

5 The US Recyclable Plastic Crisis

Bad news for environmental activists: the US government cannot recycle most of its recyclable plastics. A few years ago, a huge chunk of recyclable items used in the US ended up in China. This changed in January 2018, when China banned recyclable plastics from the US.

The US turned to Canada, Turkey, Malaysia, and Thailand to recycle its plastics. In the first half of 2017, the US exported 4,000 tons of recyclable plastics to Thailand. Within six months of China’s ban, the US had exported 91,505 tons of plastic to Thailand. That’s a 1,985-percent increase.

But these countries do not want US plastics. Malaysia introduced a tax and limited the types of plastics that are acceptable. Thailand has promised to ban US plastics within two years. In response, several US states have either abandoned recycling some types of plastics or dumped recycling altogether.^[6]

4 China’s Birth Crisis

A few decades ago, China introduced a one-child policy to control its booming population. The policy was strictly enforced, with the government even conducting forced abortions and sterilization on people who flouted the policy.

In 2015, the government replaced the one-child policy with the two-child policy when it realized that the nation was experiencing a decline in population growth, just like South Korea. But it seems like most Chinese couples prefer having just one child or none at all.

The Chinese government wants parents to have more than one kid so badly that it is encouraging couples to have more children “for the country.” A government-run newspaper also informed couples that, “Having children is a family matter but also a national matter.”

The government is considering paying couples to have a second child. It is also considering tax breaks or even dumping its two-child policy to allow couples have as many children as they want.^[7]

3 India’s Vulture Crisis

India had lots of vultures in the past. Its vulture population was so high that nobody bothered to count, though an estimate put it at 40 million in the early 1990s. This changed between 1992 and 2007, during which the vulture population fell by 97 to 99.9 percent. India has only around 20,000 vultures today.

Interestingly, nobody noticed the decline in vulture population until researchers and villagers suddenly noticed that they were not seeing enough vultures. Some villagers even thought the US had stolen their vultures.

Remember we mentioned that Indians generally don’t eat cattle? This is where the vultures come in. Indian farmers fed their dead cattle to vultures. Unfortunately, diclofenac, a popular painkiller used for cattle, is lethal to vultures. It causes renal failure and death in vultures that eat the carcasses of dead cattle.

Now, there aren’t enough vultures to eat the carcasses, leaving lots of dead and decomposing cattle scattered across India. This has left the country on the brink of a disease epidemic. Rats and dogs have replaced the vultures, but they are not as effective. Besides, dogs could pass bacteria in the carcasses to humans.

India has banned diclofenac and introduced breeding programs to repopulate the wild with vultures. However, it will take time before it gets the intended results. The government could also suffer a setback because some cattle owners still use diclofenac illegally.^[8]

2 South Korea’s Suicide Crisis

South Korea has one of the highest suicide rates in the world. 13,500 South Koreans committed suicide in 2015. That’s an average of 37 in a day. Most who choose to end their own lives are senior citizens, who often live in poverty and do not want to become a burden to their living relatives. Many aged South Koreans are so poor that they depend on free meals to survive.

In response to high suicide rates, the government has criminalized suicide pacts—agreements between two or more people who promise to engage in joint suicide.^[9] In 2011, the government also reduced suicide rates by 15 percent when it banned paraquat, a pesticide often used to commit suicide.

1 Germany’s Renewable Energy Crisis

Germany is the model nation for renewable energy. On one Sunday in 2017, it generated so much power from its renewable sources that the government paid users to use the excess power. This is referred to as “negative prices” and has also happened in Belgium, Britain, France, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.

In such instances, the government pays citizens and factories to switch on equipment and machines they are not using. Imagine the US government paying you to switch on your washing machine for no reason. To be clear, the government does not give consumers money. Rather, the energy companies subtract it from their electricity bills.

Negative prices happen because green energy is unpredictable and uncontrollable. Coal and nuclear plant output can be increased or decreased to meet demands. Solar panels and wind turbines cannot. They generate electricity depending on the weather conditions.

Green energy companies keep themselves abreast of the weather with forecasts. But for anybody who has ended up in the rain when the weatherman said it would be sunny, we know weather forecasts are not always reliable.

The attempt to shift to green energy has created a crisis Germans call “energy poverty.” Energy poverty happens when people find it difficult to pay for electricity, or they spend so much on electricity that they do not have enough money to survive. This happens because Germans pay an average annual tax of $171 and high electricity prices to keep the green energy companies in business.

Besides plunging many into energy poverty, the unreliable green energy is counterproductive for Germany. While the government pays citizens to waste excess electricity, it always leaves it coal and nuclear plants working in case the green sources do not produce enough electricity. This has increased Germany’s carbon emissions and even caused the government to build more coal plants.^[10]

With the holidays wrapping up here in the Western world, many of us still have our Christmas lights up, our bellies full, and plenty of other cheerful things hanging around to remind us of our recent celebrations. Holidays in this day and age are a great way for us to share, laugh, love, and make memories with our friends and loved ones.

But how often do we stop and consider the roots of our holidays and the events from which they were born? Most people with an Internet connection know that many modern holidays are a hodgepodge of ancient pagan practices which have been augmented or adopted in various forms by the surviving religions.

But beyond just ancient paganism, many holidays stem from historical events. Sometimes, those events are quite dark and not exactly the nice, cheery tales we’d expect such holidays to spring from. Here are 10 holidays with unusually dark and strange histories.

10 The Death Of St. Patrick

Most of us in the Western world who celebrate the holiday, especially if we’re not particularly religious or even armchair historians, think of St. Patrick’s Day as a fun festival marked by the consumption of copious amounts of beer. St. Patrick’s Day has always been a religious holiday, but Irish immigrants who came to the United States in search of a better life greatly popularized it as a secular holiday, solidifying it as a representation of Irish culture.

But the holiday didn’t have a happy-go-lucky beginning. It’s actually the celebration of the death of St. Patrick. His life was hard from the beginning. When the Romans occupied Great Britain in the fifth century, St. Patrick was just a 16-year-old boy who was captured and taken to Ireland from Britain as a slave.

Somehow, in 432, St. Patrick managed to escape slavery and become a force for Christianity by converting the then-pagan Irish to the religion and establishing monasteries and places of worship. He was said to have died on March 17, 493, which would have made him over 100 years old. However, historians generally agree that he actually died in 461, which is a bit more realistic.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that St. Patrick’s Day is a celebration of the day of his death. Even more dark and unusual than that are the events that ensued after his death.

The Battle for the Body of Saint Patrick took place when two rival factions fought over who had the proper rights to the corpse. However, things get a little mythological in the account in Annals of the Four Masters, the work that describes the battle.^[1]

It concludes with a scene where the rival factions end up on a river to do glorious, bloody battle for the rights to the corpse of the beloved saint. Allegedly, the river rose up and flooded upon their arrival. Both sides walked away with what they believed to be the body of St. Patrick, and it was attributed to a divine miracle that the battle was stopped.

Odd beginnings for a holiday of green beer, fun, and leprechauns.

9 Good Friday

For a holiday with such a nice name as Good Friday, its historical origins are rather dark in nature. However, Good Friday came from the ancient Germanic culture and language and was long ago Karfreitag (“Sorrowful Friday”). Before the contemporary world got hold of it, the holiday was celebrated by fasting, by asking for forgiveness from sin, and by general sorrow-filled reflection on behalf of the practitioners.

If you think about it, this makes sense. Good Friday is a holiday that was born out of betrayal, greed, and execution. For most of its history, it wasn’t the wonderful holiday that we make it out to be, but rather the celebration of the death of Jesus Christ.

Traditionally, monks and devout religious people saw this as a day of observance and remembrance and of somber reflection—not just the prequel to Easter Sunday. Some people even hold services that last three hours in remembrance of the amount of time that Jesus was said to have suffered upon the cross.^[2]

8 The Friday Of Sorrows

The lesser-known holiday of the Friday of Sorrows takes place on the Friday before Good Friday and dates back to the medieval times of Europe. It’s like Good Friday, only for the Virgin Mary, where worshipers and the devoutly religious celebrate the suffering of the Virgin Mary as she witnessed her son dying on the cross. This remembrance takes place mainly in predominantly Catholic countries rather than Protestant Christian ones.

Also known as the Feast of the Seven Sorrows of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this holiday was not only meant to remember the suffering that Mary experienced while Jesus was on the cross but also seven of the sorrows that took place over the course of Mary’s life.

From Mary receiving the prophecy of Simeon to desperately fleeing into Egypt after Jesus’s assumed birth, losing Jesus in Jerusalem as mentioned in Luke 2:43–49, and watching Jesus be executed, taken off the cross, and buried, the Feast of the Seven Sorrows is perfectly dark in the way that only a medieval holiday could be.^[3]

7 The Night Of Broken Glass

This is a dark holiday observed in Germany in remembrance of one of the most atrocious events of all time: the Holocaust. Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, refers to the acts that led to the events that would eventually transpire at Auschwitz concentration camp.

On the night of November 9, 1938, German Nazis committed a grievous massacre in the streets, killing Jewish people and destroying their property. In response to these events, the Nazi government said that their actions and senseless violence against the Jewish people were “perfectly understandable.”

The name of the holiday refers to the broken glass left in the streets in several countries after the events unfolded. The violence wasn’t limited to just Germany. It also took place in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

It all began on November 7, 1938, when a Nazi German official named Ernst vom Rath was shot in Paris by a Polish Jew who was 17 years old at the time. Ernst vom Rath died two days later after an extremely drummed-up propaganda assault by none other than the Nazi minister of propaganda himself, Joseph Goebbels. He had said that there was a massive conspiracy of Jews behind the assassination.^[4]

Of course, the die-hard Nazi supporters ran with it, committing widespread violence against Jewish people on the night of Ernst vom Rath’s death, which was November 9, 1938. Germany now tries to keep this night burned into their memory with a holiday of remembrance for those who lost their lives on the Night of Broken Glass and all who subsequently died in the tragic events that followed.

That night marked the beginning of much of the anti-Jewish legislation that was railroaded through by the powerful Nazi Party, which legalized the Holocaust and the acts which led to it.

6 Samhain

Samhain is a holiday celebrated by the ancient Celts as a part of their religion before they were subjugated by Roman rule and eventually turned to Christianity (with the help of St. Patrick, no doubt). The Celts were loose-knit tribes known by the Romans as the Gauls. They shared a similar language and culture.

Samhain was the ancient Celtic festival of the dead. Celtic religion held that the spirits of the dead would have to wander the Earth and wait until the day of Samhain, which was November 1, to pass into the afterlife. It didn’t matter what time of year that the person died.

The Celts also believed that their gods were not only mischievous and caused trouble, but that they were also invisible—except on Samhain. During the celebration on October 31, the Celts would leave out burning candles to light the way for their dead so that they could see where they were going.

It should be noted that Samhain isn’t Halloween, though Halloween borrows a lot of Samhain’s traditions. Samhain is actually still practiced by pagans around the world, albeit in smaller numbers.^[5]

In ancient times, it was believed that this period was a time when people could communicate with not only their dead friends and relatives but also the Dark Mother and the Dark Father, entities of supernatural power that the ancient Celts believed in.

Their religion was quite intricate, and this holiday is a time when people would communicate with their darker natures, the darker supernatural, and the dead.

5 Valentine’s Day

Today, the watered-down tradition of St. Valentine’s Day is represented most often by thoughtful cards, chocolates, and romantic love, even courtly love not unlike that of the Middle Ages. And long before the famed St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the brutal Mafia execution of seven men conducted by Al Capone and his gang on February 14, 1929, there was another bloody day that actually spawned Valentine’s Day.

This was the martyrdom of St. Valentine. Yes, Valentine’s Day is the celebration of an execution.

The year was 269, and Claudius II was the emperor of mighty Rome. The growth of marriage and family life had caused a shortage of men willing to leave home and fight in foreign lands. Therefore, Claudius outlawed marriage entirely and anyone caught getting married or performing marriage rites would be condemned.^[6]

But St. Valentine refused to stop performing marriages. He was punished severely for his “crimes” and was eventually tortured, beaten with clubs, and beheaded. Yes, you read that right—St. Valentine’s Day is the celebration of a saint from ancient Rome who was tortured, beheaded, and died on February 14, 269.

4 The Feast Of Corpus Christi

Corpus Christi could be regarded as a particularly strange holiday to those who aren’t Catholic and don’t believe in transubstantiation, the idea that food and wine can turn into the body and blood of Christ for the believer consuming them. The Feast of Corpus Christi is a whole day to drink blood and eat flesh for devout believers.

“Corpus Christi” translates to “the body of Christ” in Latin, so there’s no ambiguity that the idea of eating the flesh of Christ is involved.

Heavy symbolism characterizes this holiday, which began in 1246. With chalices and bread wafers everywhere, it’s an aesthetic experience as much as a spiritual one. For most non-Catholics, a holiday where one places bread into his mouth that actually turns into flesh might raise some eyebrows. But many Catholics all over the world celebrate this holiday annually and have done so for hundreds of years.^[7]

3 Dia De Los Muertos

The reason we can’t appropriately say that Samhain was the forerunner of Halloween is that Samhain became what Catholics celebrate as All Saints’ Day on November 1. All Saints’ Day is basically the Catholic version of Samhain, complete with celebrating those who’ve gone to Heaven and the saints taking the place of the Celtic gods of old.

Dia de los Muertos is a Mexican holiday which celebrates the personification of death itself and has long roots in both European and Aztec cultures. With Spanish conquests of the Aztecs, Dia de los Muertos was moved to line up with the Catholic All Saints’ Day. The two fused into one holiday when practitioners would pay respects to their dead, which was in the origins of both holidays.

Dia de los Muertos makes no claims to be anything other than a dark holiday that’s all about death, with the name itself translating to “Day of the Dead” in Spanish. However, there are some notable differences between All Saints’ Day and Dia de los Muertos.

Santa Muerte (aka Our Lady of Holy Death), the major figure celebrated on Dia de los Muertos, is the saint of death. Dia de los Muertos takes Samhain and All Saints’ Day one step further by actually making death itself a saint. The Catholic Church rejects this saint and warns against the holiday as being dark and even satanic.^[8]

2 Passover

Passover is a Jewish holiday in which practitioners remove all leavened bread from their homes and reenact what life must have been like when the Jews fled Egypt in the Bible. For many, it’s a celebration of the liberation of the Jews from an oppressive Egypt and the foundation of the homeland for the Israelites. The holiday begins on the 15th and runs through the 21st in March or April.

But what’s the real story behind what they were fleeing? Well, it all starts with the slaughter of the firstborn. Exodus 11:5 says:

“Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well.”^[9]

According to the Bible, Jehovah killed every firstborn Egyptian child in the country to prove his point. And it gets worse. This was actually a reprisal because the pharaoh of Egypt had killed all the newborns and infants of the ancient Hebrews to prove his point. Then the 10 plagues of Egypt happened, with everything from raining frogs to bubonic plagues hitting Egypt hard according to the Bible.

This is what the holiday actually celebrates—a religious and military victory over another nation that, if you take it as gospel, is quite barbaric in nature.

1 Christmas

Christmas is both unusual and dark in its history for a few reasons. First, Christmas is an extremely modern holiday. Historically, Christians don’t celebrate birthdays as it has long been viewed as pagan to celebrate an individual’s birth on Earth rather than his dying to go to Heaven in accordance with Christian beliefs.

This is why saints are remembered for their (often macabre) deaths instead of their births because the moment of eternal judgment in Christianity is more important than life. This made Christmas a mockery for a long time, with writers advocating strongly against it. Traditionally, in Christianity, the moment of death was your actual and true “birthday” in the kingdom of God.

The second and more macabre part of the story comes with a jolly old fat guy, Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus. Thanks to Coca-Cola ads stemming from the 1930s, we now see him plastered everywhere as a fat guy with a wispy white beard, a red onesie with white fur trim, and a big grin on his face at all times.

But this isn’t the real Saint Nick, so who was he? Well, the answer is that we don’t really know because we have no surviving historical documentation. He was the bishop of Myra in the fourth century. But aside from that, we know next to nothing about the man.

However, we do have one major artifact: his dead body. Yes, the only thing we know for sure about Saint Nicholas is that we have his actual dead corpse.

Allegedly, the real Saint Nicholas wasn’t very jolly. He was present for the very first Council of Nicaea in 325. There, he punched a guy in the face whom he thought was heretical.^[10]

After he died in 343, his remains lay buried until Italian sailors stole his corpse and moved it in 1087 from Myra to a city in Italy called Bari. Before this, the original Santa Claus was a nobody. But the theft of his remains made his popularity surge in Europe, which is how he became a figure that’s still present in our cultures today.

To put this little piece of history to the test, researchers analyzed a fragment of Santa’s hip bone. Sure enough, it dated all the way back to the fourth century, confirming that it probably belonged to the original Santa Claus.

I love to write about dark stuff, horror-themed material, the unusual, murder, and death. Here’s a twisted little piece about the dark histories of holidays. This isn’t your usual holiday list, and Christmas is definitely the bizarre kicker. I haven’t seen it discussed like this anywhere.

Every day, the oceans crash upon countless beaches. More often than not, oddities arrive between the usual flotsam of shells. There is always the mandatory monster’s carcass and real species so surprising that few can recognize them.

The most bizarre shoreline finds are usually man-made. From large pieces of foreign harbors to hundreds of Garfields, beachcombing is the lucky dip of the sea.

10 Enormous Sunfish

In 2019, a couple strolled along a beach in South Australia. When they reached Murray River, something caught their eye. Near the mouth of the river was a huge object. At first, they thought that the weird-looking fish was fake. However, the creature was very real (and very dead).

One can understand why they thought it was a hoax. For anyone who has never seen one, sunfish are odd-looking. Their fins sit too close to the tail, and they have a beak and surprised-looking eyes.^[1]

Additionally, this particular fish was enormous and not a local customer. Called the oceanic sunfish, it drifts all across the world but rarely visits South Australia.

Earlier that month, another species beached in California. Known as the hoodwinker sunfish, it solidly smashed the belief that this type only lived in the southern hemisphere. Nearly all species count among the heavyweights of fish, but swimmers have nothing to fear. Sunfish nibble on zooplankton and jellyfish.

9 Ice Tsunamis

North American beaches sometimes meet with walls of ice. Despite their name, ice tsunamis do not move with the speed or devastation of real tidal waves. Technically, when heaps of ice clutter a beach, it is called an ice shove. The frosty phenomenon fringes the shorelines of large lakes, occurring when spring arrives and winds sweep the breaking ice outwards.

Some shoves are not satisfied with staying on the beach. When there is enough ice and strong winds, the stacks can overrun retaining walls and cross roads. A 2001 crush piled ice 4.9 meters (16 ft) high on the beach of Alaska’s Chukchi Sea.

The floes also have an interesting effect on large rocks at the bottom of the lake. When the frozen sheets expand and contract suddenly from temperature swings, they maneuver boulders onto the shore. This process forms what is known as ice-push ramparts, and they can measure 1.5 meters (5 ft) across.^[2]

8 Monster Driftwood

In 2010, Phillip Lachman and his daughter walked on the beach in Washington. Lachman, a retired teacher living in the nearby community of La Push, also had his camera with him. Which was a good thing as they found a pretty impressive piece of driftwood. When they come in this size, they are called drift logs.

The tree was never measured, but it dwarfed Lachman’s daughter who posed to have her picture taken next to it—and she was 183 centimeters (6’0″) tall. A park official from the surrounding Olympic National Park admitted that the size of the drift log was a rare sight even though the area is known for big forest trees.^[3]

It was probably felled by a winter storm before bobbing down a river and ending up on the shore. It was not a simple matter of floating into place. Researchers estimated that exceptionally powerful winds had to have been present to push this monster ashore. The tree’s species could not be identified, but it was probably a Douglas fir, a Sitka spruce, or a Western red cedar.

7 Rare Jellies

Holly Horner was a professional wildlife photographer. For 45 years, she walked the beach in Brigantine, New Jersey. In 2018, she encountered something that matched nothing in her experience. It was a bright turquoise creature, round and fringed with feather-like tendrils. It also resembled a jellyfish.

Several washed ashore and caused a sensation among beachgoers. However, scientists have already met the blobs. Called blue buttons, they are not jellyfish but are related to the Portuguese man-of-war instead. A single button hosts a predatory colony working together to stun prey. Luckily for swimmers, they do not have the same horrible sting as their Portuguese cousins.

The odd thing about the New Jersey buttons is that they are not native to the area. Researchers believe that they were happily bobbing about in the Gulf Stream when Hurricane Florence kidnapped them. Unfortunately, most of them likely perished in the following weeks when local temperatures dropped to a level to which they were not accustomed.^[4]

6 The Wolf Island Creature

In 2018, the sea left something on the beach. The creature washed up in Georgia at the Wolf Island National Wildlife Refuge. Jeff Warren found and photographed the remains. After he distributed the images to media outlets, it divided the scientific world in two.

Some supported the notion of an unknown species or a known animal rendered unrecognizable by decomposition. Other marine experts were not satisfied that the thing had ever lived. The “decay” was too neat. There was no flayed skin, damaged extremities, or exposed internal areas. Ergo, the Lochness-like thing was probably a hoax.^[5]

If this was someone’s idea of a joke, they chose the perfect location. The area is the haunt of a mythical creature called the Altamaha-ha Monster. The photographs matched artistic depictions of the animal, but the one thing that could have solved the case—the creature’s body—had vanished.

5 Human Urns

In 2019, a beachcomber took his 14-year-old son, Maarten, with him. They found a funeral urn, the first of three to show up on Katwijk and Noordwijk beaches in the Netherlands. The other two were discovered by a woman and a fisherman, respectively.

The teenager, Maarten, thought the urn might contain drugs. But once he opened the container, the content was clearly human remains. All three urns were marked, which allowed them to be traced back to a crematorium in Germany.

German laws surrounding human remains are very strict. Rarely will permission be given for ashes to remain in a private home or garden. Sea burials are permissible with biodegradable vessels, but the Dutch finds were made from aluminum.

The urns sparked a furious debate about how they ended up where they did. Then a Dutch shipping company came clean. The three urns had been aboard one of their ships. Had things gone according to plan, they would have scattered the ashes at sea. Instead, an employee accidentally dropped the box with the urns and it fell overboard.^[6]

4 Frozen Turtles

Every year in November, a few turtles become stranded in New England. The 2018 batch was far from normal. Hundreds washed ashore. Many were from the critically endangered Kemp’s ridley species. The reptiles had been caught in a cold snap, which was not a good thing for creatures needing warmth to function.

Cape Cod’s beaches counted 219 animals within three days. Only 46 clung to life, while the rest had already died. During one of the three days, the weirdest thing happened.^[7]

On that Thursday, 82 turtles came ashore. Except for one, they were all dead and frozen solid. One researcher noticed that their flippers were in odd positions, almost as if they had been flash-frozen while swimming. The following day, a Friday, temperatures rose slightly and more of the beached turtles were found alive.

3 The French Goop

The English Channel coastline hugs a busy shipping lane. Strange things often float to its beaches, but none matched the greasy balls that arrived in 2017. Hundreds of yellow clumps lined miles of northern France’s beaches. There was a faint whiff of paraffin wax, but paraffin melts in the sun and this goop never did.

Authorities issued a statement that the spongy-looking balls were probably not dangerous. In the same breath, they could not positively say what the objects were made of. Pollution watchdogs were more realistic and warned people not to touch the stuff.^[8]

Considering that tons littered miles of coastline, some beachgoers undoubtedly touched the gunk. Thankfully, no morgue reports were forthcoming. The only clue seemed to be that that fluff balls originated from an oil product. One theory suggested that it was some kind of boat exhaust grease that solidified once it came into contact with the cold seawater.

2 Tons Of Invasive Life

When the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in 2011, a lot of debris got sucked back into the sea. A year later, one such item floated into Oregon. The Japanese dock measured 20 meters (66 ft) long and was encrusted with 100 tons of sea life.

This may sound peachy, but scientists were horrified. There is a huge problem in the area with invasive species, some so aggressive that native creatures cannot compete. Environmentally speaking, the tsunami dock was a ticking bomb. The floating “island” had an astonishing variety of anemones, starfish, urchins, algae, crustaceans, worms, snails, mussels, and much more.

Most had already called the dock home before the tsunami hit. After it was torn from its moorings, the float picked up more hitchhikers at sea. Admirably, the dock’s teeming citizens survived traveling across the open Pacific.

However, they were destroyed to prevent the threat they posed to native species. The threat may still be realized—some could have dropped off the dock earlier and already settled into Oregon’s shores.^[9]

1 Garfield Phones

Garfield the cat is a cartoon icon. During the 1980s, a company created novelty Garfield phones that became very popular. Mysteriously, they started to appear along the coastline of France. The feline flotsam invaded French beaches for decades, long after the phone’s popularity had passed.

In 2019, environmentalists finally found the source. A local man knew the secret all along—only it was not a secret to him. After learning that the rest of humanity considered the washed-up Garfields a mystery, Rene Morvan told his story.^[10]

In the 1980s, he and his brothers had explored a seaside cave. They found a shipping container inside. Among other things, it contained an enormous number of the Garfield phones.

Morvan took the anti-litter organization Ar Viltansou to the site, where they found the plastic cats and the container. Records show that a local storm raged around the time that the Morvan brothers made the discovery. The storm probably knocked the container off a passing ship and crushed it into the cave.

A town is generally accepted as any region bigger than a village and smaller than a city. It has its own government, name, and boundary, complete with marketplaces and people spread throughout the area. However, some towns have turned out to be very unique, including those built to look like other towns, and those built and then not inhabited. Some towns have only one resident, while the residents of other towns all live under one roof.

10The Villages
Florida

The Villages is a town in Florida that was built for retired people. It covers an area larger than Manhattan, and has over 100,000 inhabitants—most of whom move around in golf carts. In fact, it holds the Guinness World Record for assembling the longest golf cart parade in the world, with 3,321 total golf carts. The town—where children are forbidden—is also home to controversies and scandals. Old men and women have been caught making out in golf carts, and the men are known to fight over women. There is also a black market for Viagra, which costs about $12 for a single pill.

Unsurprisingly, the town—which has 10 women for every man—has also seen a massive rise in sexually transmitted diseases. In 2006, a gynecologist said she encountered more cases of herpes and human papillomavirus in the town than she did when she worked in Miami. Inhabitants are also known to drive under the influence (in golf carts), use illegal drugs, and engage in bar fights.

9Busingen Am Hochrhein
Germany

Busingen am Hochrhein is a German town in Switzerland. The town is separated from mainland Germany by a narrow strip of land, which measures about 700 meters (765 yards) at its narrowest point. Considering its unusual location, Busingen am Hochrhein is more of a Swiss town than a German one. It also enjoys public services from both Switzerland and Germany. It has a Swiss postal code (8238 Busingen) and a German postal code (78266 Busingen). It also has two telephone codes: +49 7734 (for Germany) and +41 52 (for Switzerland).

In case of an emergency, the Swiss or German police can be called in, although the Swiss police usually arrive first. Everybody living in Busingen is allowed to work and own properties in Switzerland, even if they do not possess Swiss citizenship. And, if a German citizen lives in Busingen for more than 10 years, he or she receives a special status similar to Swiss citizenship. The town’s football team—FC Busingen—also plays in the Swiss football league.

But the town never started off like this. Back in the 14th century, it was ruled by Austria. After the Lord of Busingen was killed by members of a nearby Swiss town, Austria vowed not to hand over the town to Switzerland. They later handed it over to a neighboring German town, and it was eventually claimed by Germany. In 1919, 96 percent of the locals voted to leave Germany and join Switzerland, but the Swiss wouldn’t offer anything in return, so the German government threw a fit and refused to let them go.

8Whittier
Alaska

Almost all of the 200-plus inhabitants of Whittier, Alaska live inside a single 14-story building called Begich Towers. The rest live in their vehicles, boats, or another, similar building. Begich Towers was built in 1956. Back then, it served as an army barracks, but today, it is a town complete with a police station, post office, store, church, video rental shop, playground, and health center—all located inside the building.

The only way to access the town is either via sea or through a 4-kilometer (2.6 mi) one-lane tunnel which has gates that open twice every hour, allowing cars in or out of the town. The tunnels close at night and do not reopen until the next day. Before 2001, the tunnel could not accommodate vehicles, and the only way to get to the town was a 100-kilometer (60 mi) train ride. Then, trains ran only few times a week. During summer months, Whittier gets about 22 hours of sunlight, and during winter, it could get covered in over 6.35 meters (250 in) of snow.

7Colma
California

The town of Colma, California has more dead people than living people, with 1,500 living inhabitants and over 1.5 million dead inhabitants. The history of the town can be traced back to the Gold Rush of 1849 which led hundreds of thousands of people to migrate to nearby San Francisco. They brought diseases and, subsequently, death. By the 1880s, the 26 cemeteries in the town had been almost filled and, by the late 1880s, cemetery owners began constructing cemeteries in southern Colma because it was easily accessible.

In March 1900, San Francisco’s government banned new burials within the city. They said this was necessary because the land was too valuable to be used as cemeteries. Later on, in January 1914, cemetery owners were ordered to remove all bodies buried in San Francisco. Politicians said that the cemeteries spread disease, but the cemetery operators believe it was because of the rising cost of real estate. Nevertheless, the operators removed the bodies, and moved them to Colma, leaving it sprawling with graveyards. Today, over 73 percent of Colma’s land is destined to become cemeteries.

6Monowi
Nebraska

Monowi was founded by Czech migrants in northeast Nebraska, and it has only one resident: 77-year-old Elsie Eller. Population-wise, Monowi is the smallest jurisdiction in the US. Elsie runs the town’s only tavern and library, which is made up of about 5,000 books owned by her late husband, Rudy. She also serves as the town’s mayor, clerk, and treasurer. She also runs the council. In the 1930s, the town had a population of about 150 people, but by 2000, it had two: Elsie and her husband, Rudy. Elsie’s husband passed away in 2004, leaving Elsie as the town’s lone resident. Every year, Elsie pays tax to the town to maintain its four streetlights and provide other basic amenities. Several abandoned buildings in the town are covered with grass, slowly fading into obscurity, while others have collapsed.

5Ordos
China

The city of Ordos, Inner Mongolia, China, has been called the largest ghost town in China. It was built to accommodate more than a million people, but only 2 percent of it was ever occupied. The remainder is unoccupied and was left to decay. The history of the town began more than 20 years ago during the coal rush of Mongolia. Investors soon began building apartments, hoping to rent them out. However, demand didn’t keep pace with the builders, and many investors pulled out or went broke before the buildings were even completed.

Today, streets are filled with incomplete houses. Even the completed buildings are hardly occupied thanks to their high prices. Many of the residents occupying the town are also leaving for elsewhere. In just five years, price per square foot fell from $1,100 to $470. To encourage people to come to the town, investors have reduced prices. Fresh graduates who move to the town to start a business are even given office space, Internet connections, and several other utilities for free.

4Longyearbyen
Norway

Longyearbyen, Spitsbergen in Norway is the northernmost city in the world. It contains the world’s northernmost church, ATM, museum, post office, airport, and university. In Longyearbyen, dying is forbidden. Anyone found ill or dying is immediately flown by airplane or ship to another part of Norway before he or she passes away. And, if someone suddenly dies there, they would not be buried.

Dying is forbidden because bodies buried in the town’s cemetery do not decompose thanks to its extreme cold weather. Scientists recently removed tissue from a man who died years ago, and discovered that it contained traces of a deadly virus that caused an epidemic in 1917. Aside from not being allowed to die, citizens are also allowed to move around with high-powered rifles, thanks to the over 3,000 polar bears hanging around. Cats are also forbidden because they pose a threat to the bird population.

3Asymmetric Warfare Training Center (AWTC)
Virginia

The Asymmetric Warfare Training Center (AWTC) in Virginia is an uninhabited town built by the US Army to train its soldiers. The town is complete with a school, church, mosque, train station, and a five-story embassy that’s likely the tallest building in Virginia’s Caroline County, where it is located. It also has a gas station, football field, bank, subway, and bridge. The school is built to replicate schools in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the subway resembles that of Washington, D.C. The trains even have the same logo as those found on trains in Washington. Costing $90.1 million to build, it is run by the US Army Asymmetric Warfare Group.

Another similar town is called Yodaville. It was built in the middle of the Arizona desert by the US Air Force. The uninhabited town, built to look like towns in Iraq and Afghanistan, is meant to teach Air Force pilots how to carry out bombing runs.

2Marloth Park
South Africa

Marloth Park is close to the Kruger National Park, which is filled with wildlife including lions, hippopotamuses, and crocodiles. What makes the town unique is that, despite the dangers of having these wild animals close by, residents are not allowed to build fences around their houses. The only fence that separates the townspeople from the park is a small 1.2-meter (4 ft) fence that was built more to keep humans out of the park than to keep the animals in.

It is not unusual to see wild animals walking about the town. Baboons are known to enter houses through windows to steal from the refrigerators, and giraffes and elephants are known to block the road. Lion attacks on humans are also not uncommon. Eyebrows were raised when a lion attacked, killed, and ate a burglar fleeing with his loot, leaving only his head and a foot. Even after the deadly attack, most of the town’s occupants want the lions to remain. Some said the burglar was shot while escaping, and his corpse was eaten by lions. Others said the lions would serve as a form of crime control for the town, which was seeing a rise in burglary.

Cyclists are often the victims of attacks. This belies underlying race issues in the town, as most of the town’s residents are white and have cars, while the bicyclists are mostly black people who commute there for work. One cyclist managed to escape an ambush staged by four lions, abandoning his bicycle and fleeing to safety. Townsmen have nicknamed people riding bicycles at night “meals on wheels.”

1Hallstat
China

The real Hallstat is a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Austria. The Chinese Hallstat is a similar mock-up town built in Guangdong province, China. The town, which cost about $940 million to build, looks like the real Hallstat, including its roads, church tower, and wooden houses. The town’s construction was sponsored by a Chinese millionaire, and it caused quite a stir among residents of the real Hallstat who were not aware of the project.

Residents of Austria’s Hallstat (including the mayor) later visited the town. They said they were proud that their town was copied (it wasn’t like they could do anything about it), but they did not like the way the Chinese went about it. They were supposed to have met with the owners of the buildings they copied and asked if they were comfortable with the idea of replicating their buildings elsewhere, rather than just building them. The company that built the mock-up town, called Minmetals, had sent several of its workers to Austria’s Hallstat where they took pictures of places to replicate.

Elizabeth is an aspiring writer and author.

We all love a good festival. Community gatherings to celebrate everything from the coming of spring to a good harvest or religious milestones have occurred around the world since man first learned how to party. Many of these events are time-honored traditions, steeped in history and local custom. Modern festivals celebrating food, music, and culture are happening every week somewhere around the world.

However, there are also some truly bizarre festivals that make the barn dance in the hay shed look positively boring. Some are based on traditional ceremonies, others have commercial origins, and a handful are held in support of a good cause. From jumping over babies to mud fights and a parade of all things phallic, here are some of the most unusual festivals from around the world.

10 Boryeong Mud Festival
South Korea

Tourists and locals alike are happy as pigs in mud during July in the town of Boreyong in South Korea. For two weeks, the Boryeong Mud Festival draws millions of visitors from around the globe. Here, you can wallow in mud along the coastline and enjoy the cosmetic benefits of the mud’s mineral qualities.

The festival began in the late 1990s to promote the region’s mud-based cosmetic products but has developed into a major tourist event. Truckloads of mud are laid out on Daecheon Beach, where festivalgoers enjoy mud wrestling, mud skiing, mud slides, and even body painting with specially colored mud. You can also enjoy a rejuvenating mud massage.^[1]

9 Kanamara Matsuri
Japan

You wouldn’t imagine finding a penis-themed festival anywhere in the world, let alone in Japan, a culture often associated with modesty. The Kanamara Matsuri festival in honor of all things phallic arose from a local phallic shrine. According to legend, a large iron phallus was constructed to thwart a penis-eating demon and enshrined outside the village. Prostitutes would come to the Kanayama Shrine to pray for protection from certain occupational hazards, namely STDs.

In modern times, the focus has shifted to fertility for young married women, and the festival also raises funds for research into HIV. Each April, three large phallic shrines are paraded through the streets for an hour-long parade. At the end of the parade, festivalgoers can feast on local foods as well as phallic-shaped lollipops and carved fruit or even try their hand at a spot of penis-carving with fruit.^[2]

Not surprisingly, a large number of novelty souvenir items are also on sale.

8 Night Of The Radishes
Mexico

Fancy refining your pumpkin carving skills to something a little smaller? Carved radishes are the feature of a Christmas festival in the Mexican city of Oaxaca.

Noche de Los Rabanos (Night of the Radishes) began during the 19th century, when market stall holders aimed to attract Christmas churchgoers to sample their wares in the village square with intricately carved radishes to decorate the Christmas table. December 23 was officially proclaimed the Night of the Radishes in 1897.

Tourists and locals alike flock to admire carvings themed on everything from traditional nativity scenes to historic local culture. Radishes for the event were initially sourced from local farmers. However, the popularity of the contest has grown to the point where a dedicated radish plantation has been established outside the city to provide contestants with material for their artistic sculptures.

A large cash prize is up for grabs today for the best carved radish display.^[3]

7 Hair Freezing Contest
Canada

Winter in the North is so cold that you wouldn’t imagine setting foot outside without headwear in case your hair freezes. Yet in Canada, there is an entire festival dedicated to creating the most bizarre frozen hair sculptures. In February each year, the town of Whitehorse, Yukon, holds the annual International Hair Freezing Competition.^[4]

With temperatures at around minus 20, festivalgoers converge on the Takhini Hot Pools to create their icy coiffures. Simply soak your head in the water, and when you lift it out, the freezing air outside will complete the sculpture for you. The winners are announced in March.

6 Pidakala War
India

Being hit by a flying cow pie is said to bring the utmost good luck in an Indian village in the Pradesh region. Each April, villagers of Kairuppala hurl cow dung at each other at the end of their Ugadi festival.^[5] The bizarre street fight is said to bring health, prosperity, and rain to anyone fortunate enough to be hit by the smelly missiles.

Thousands gather to watch the reenactment of a mythical marriage dispute between the goddess Bhadrakali and Lord Veerabhadra Swarmy before eventually celebrating the nuptials. If you happen to be injured by a piece of flying cow dung, never fear: It is said to contain special healing qualities.

5 Monkey Buffet Festival
Thailand

Visit most animal sanctuaries around the world, and you will be asked not to feed the animals. However, in Thailand, there is an entire festival dedicated to feeding the monkeys. On the last Sunday of November each year, the residents of Lopburi, one of the oldest cities in Thailand, prepare a massive banquet specifically for their resident monkeys.

Long-tailed macaques inhabit the ancient Khmer ruins and also freely roam the streets of Lopburi, gnawing on everything from food scraps to electricity cables. However, the monkeys are considered to be descended from the Monkey King and to bring good luck, so the locals are unwilling to engage in any sort of pest control. Instead, they hold a banquet in their honor, and local residents decorate their homes with fruit sculptures to attract good fortune and prosperity from the long-tailed inhabitants.

The festival is held at the ruins, where huge banquet tables of fruit, salads, and sticky rice are set out for the monkeys to share with festivalgoers. Just don’t be surprised to find a monkey perched on your head to share your food.^[6]

4 International Worm Charming Festival
England

Catching worms might not be everyone’s idea of a fun way to spend a day, unless you are a keen fisherman looking for some fresh bait. Nevertheless, hundreds of people flock to a small town in Devon for an annual worm charming festival. The event is held each May in Blackawton.

Teams of three are allotted a small field, from which the aim is to collect the most worms in 15 minutes. Contestants can use any means to entice their worms to the surface, including tapping like a bird, using a fork, or pouring liquid on the surface. This was apparently how the idea of the worm farming festival was conceived. A couple of pub patrons relieved themselves in the sand on the way home and were amazed to see worms wriggling to the surface.

The competition itself is over in a very short time, but there are numerous other activities throughout the day to entertain festivalgoers.^[7]

3 Underwater Music Festival
United States

Singing in the shower is a popular pastime, but an entire music festival held underwater can be found off the Florida Keys. The event was established in the 1980s to raise awareness for preserving the Keys’ coral reefs.

Divers and snorkelers hit the water each July to watch musicians dressed as fish and mermaids “play” on mock nautical-themed instruments, such as the “fluke-a-lele” and “trom-bonefish.” Those in the water enjoy ocean-themed music streamed from the local radio station via underwater speakers. “Landlubbers” can still enjoy a range of festival activities on the shore.^[8]

2 Water Gun Festival
South Korea

There’s nothing like a good water fight to cool off on a hot summer day. A festival in the Sinchon district of Seoul, South Korea, has taken the fun to a whole new level. The festival originated as a bit of midsummer fun for the local college students to beat the heat and has developed into one of the most popular summer festivals in Seoul.

Festivalgoers, sometimes in fancy dress, battle it out amid the music and market stalls with water guns of all shapes and sizes. If you happen to wander into the water battle zone unarmed, you can purchase a weapon on-site and join in the fun.^[9] Included in the events on the day is a “water gun wedding,” a whole new take on the Western “shotgun” wedding.

1 Baby Jumping
Spain

There are some unusual baptism traditions around the world, but the baby jumping festival in Castrillo de Murcia, Spain, may be the most bizarre in the Western world. Since the 1600s, local villagers have brought their babies to be blessed during the Feast of Corpus Christi in June each year.

During the El Salto del Colacho (Devil’s Jump), men dressed as the Devil, wearing red and yellow suits, jump over babies laid on mattresses in the streets. The “Devil” cracks a whip and clacks castanets as he jumps to ward off evil spirits, before the babies are sprinkled with rose petals. Though it was originally only a local custom, people from around the region now bring their babies to be blessed in the somewhat bizarre ritual.^[10]

Lesley Connor is a retired Australian newspaper editor who provides articles for online publications and her own travel blog.

Sheep leap through the minds of insomniacs, and for some, that is about as interesting as these creatures get. However, sheep are not just farm animals waiting to become mutton. They are at the cutting edge of lifesaving technology and revealed a solid clue about a mysterious and devastating autoimmune disease.

Studies aside, sheep stories are often weird. There was the Auschwitz sacrifice, sheep enrolled in a French school, and a dramatic cliff rescue that got up the RSPCA’s nose.

10 The Pit Hybrids

Around 400 BC, an Iron Age group lived in southern England. In 2015, archaeologists happened upon the ruins of their homes and found several pits. In the absence of refrigerators, the villagers had cunningly dug holes in the chalky ground that kept edibles cool.

These “fridges” appeared to have had a life span of about a year. Afterward, they were ritually decommissioned by leaving a sacrifice within. Most offerings consisted of whole animals like dogs and pigs. Others were weird mixes. There was a six-legged sheep and another sheep with a cow’s skull on its behind.

Apart from the sheep-cows, there were horse-cows and a woman. Cut marks on the woman’s shoulder suggested that her throat had been cut. That was not the only thing suggesting that she was also a sacrifice. This could not have been a burial because locals never buried their dead during this era. Also, her facedown body was arranged to match the limb positions of the animals on which she rested.^[1]

9 Methuselina

According to Guinness World Records, the oldest sheep that ever lived was 28 years and 51 weeks old. During her lifetime, she produced 40 lambs. However, she passed away in Wales during 1989.

The next living oldest sheep was Lucky, an Australian ewe that was a Polwarth-Dorchester cross. After she died in 2009 at age 23, Guinness World Records searched for a new champion. As it turned out, it was a sheep called Methuselina. She lived on the Isle of Lewis and Harris, close to the coast of Scotland.

The blackface sheep’s age was recorded on her ear tag. When she died in 2012, she was 25 years and 11 months old. She never received the title of “world’s oldest sheep” because her owner never applied for recognition with the record-keeping organization.^[2]

Sadly, as her demise was not natural, Methuselina could have grown to be a lot older. The sheep fell off a cliff to her death.

8 The Auschwitz Demonstration

Auschwitz was the biggest death camp used by the Nazis during World War II (1939–1945). Located in southern Poland, over a million people were killed because they were “undesirable.” These included Jews, Poles, Romas, prisoners of war, and others. The site is now a museum.

In 2017, a group of people decided that it would be the perfect location for a demonstration. While nude, they gathered at Auschwitz’s iconic entrance and chained themselves to the gate. That was just the tail end of their tasteless act, which started with fireworks in the car park and a huge banner with “love” written on it draped over the gate.

The 12 protesters did not practice what the banner preached. In full view of everyone, they slaughtered a sheep. The demonstrators also filmed the whole thing using a drone. The museum guards eventually pried the naked people off the gate and arrested them.^[3]

In 2018, the group was convicted of desecrating the site. Their claims of protesting against the war in Ukraine did not help. Two were sent to prison for a year, and the rest were fined.

7 The Wales Rescue

In 2019, a ewe took a tumble off a cliff in Wales. She was unhurt, but the animal became trapped on the rocks. A Canadian tourist arrived at the cove in Pembrokeshire and noticed the sheep down below. The unnamed man’s decision to attempt a rescue was photographed by Andrea Williams, a walker who noticed the unfolding drama.

Remarkably, the ewe stayed calm and even allowed the man to haul her back up the cliff by the scruff of her neck. When the photos hit Williams’s Facebook account, people quickly lauded the man’s actions as kind and heroic.

The RSPCA was not so fond of the Canadian, whom they said had performed a “dangerous stunt.” The Coastguard agreed, and both organizations called for people to contact trained professionals in the future.

Williams’s husband, a retired police officer, felt that the man had put himself in minimal danger. The Canadian had climbed carefully, and had he dropped into the sea, the water was only 3 meters (10 ft) deep.^[4]

6 They Go To School

In 2019, French parents heard that a class at a local school might shut down due to dropping student numbers. They were understandably upset. After all, the “drop” was small. For some reason, the national education authority decided it would be the best move after numbers went from 266 to 261.

The primary school, located in the French Alps, served the village of Crets en Belledonne. One of the village’s farmers took his flock of sheep and went to the school. He had a plan.

After arriving at the school, he produced birth certificates for 15 sheep and enrolled them as students. In most other places, the act would have caused a legal incident, a call to the police or animal welfare, or perhaps a psychiatrist.

However, in this case, the woolly students were signed up during a ceremony watched by the school’s staff, children, and the kids’ parents. Although the sheep never sat through a history lesson or received homework, the initiative worked. The class stayed open.^[5]

5 The Dolly Clones

Dolly the sheep was born on July 5, 1996. She was the first cloned mammal. But despite making history, the ewe’s medical problems were obvious. When she was a year old, Dolly’s DNA was already aging. At five, she limped about with arthritis. A year later, she died from a virus. Her six-year-old life was usually twice as long for the rest of her breed.

As time went by, Dolly was often cited as proof of cloning’s failings. To test the rumor, the University of Nottingham cloned 10 lambs from Dolly using the same technique that created her. They were born in 2007, and only four survived longer term.

For health comparisons, the four “Nottingham Dollies” were raised with other sheep. The latter consisted of non-Dolly clones and normal sheep. They were given a peaceful life, and nine years later, the scientists announced that the four Dollies were looking healthy for their age.

Only one had developed moderate arthritis. It would appear that cloning does not accelerate aging as their cardiovascular, joint health, and metabolic levels were the same as other nine-year-old sheep.^[6]

4 World’s Oldest Sperm

In 1968, the University of Sydney froze the sperm of prize merino rams. The batch sat in liquid nitrogen for 50 years. As it was considered to be the world’s oldest sperm, scientists were curious about how time had affected its quality.

Once thawed, the semen appeared to be as active as samples frozen for only a year. To test for fertility, 56 ewes were artificially inseminated. Just 34 gave birth. However, the 61 percent pregnancy rate was higher than the 59 percent average from sperm stored for 12 months.

The lambs were healthy but more wrinkly than normal merino offspring. This trait was inherited from their sires, who lived during a time when merinos were bred to have more folds. More skin meant more wool.

The wrinkles were later erased from the breed because they made shearing difficult and increased pest problems. Having lambs with extinct characteristics was welcomed by modern geneticists. Also, their successful births meant that endangered species—and men undergoing fertility-killing cancer treatments—can have their sperm saved for decades.^[7]

3 The Blood Vessel Experiment

Children with certain heart defects sometimes need to have their blood vessels replaced—in particular, those linking the heart and lungs. The material of current reconstructed vessels cannot grow with a child. This unfortunate mismatch means that patients must receive up to seven surgeries to replace old vessels with larger ones.

In 2016, researchers tested a new technique on five-week-old lambs. They replaced the animals’ own heart-to-lung blood vessels with something grown in a tube. The graft began as sheepskin cells that grew into a sheet. After a while, the cells were flushed out and left behind a protein-based structure that was implanted in each lamb.

The first success came when their immune systems accepted the transplants. Best of all, the blood vessels grew with the maturing lambs. When they were a year old, the vessels functioned almost like normal adult arteries. Once refined to meet human standards, the procedure could reduce the operations for children to a single surgery.^[8]

2 The Multiple Sclerosis Link

Multiple sclerosis (MS) interferes with spinal cord and brain communication, often with devastating symptoms. Doctors do not know the triggers, and there is no cure.

Past research already showed that MS patients had more antibodies to a toxin called epsilon. In 2018, a study tried to gain more clarity on the matter. The University of Exeter analyzed 250 volunteers, half of whom had MS. Once again, they found a massive toxin difference between the two groups.

Around 43 percent of those who had the disease displayed antibodies for epsilon. The MS-free group’s level was at 16 percent. Interestingly, the toxin is created by the bacterium Clostridium perfringens.

The organisms mainly live inside the gut of sheep. Statistics also showed that the MS rate is usually higher in areas with large numbers of sheep. However, this does not mean that hugging a lamb will cause multiple sclerosis.

All researchers can say for sure is that a link exists between the toxin and the disease. If proven beyond a doubt, the information can help researchers to design a vaccine capable of preventing or curing the early stages of MS.^[9]

1 Artificially Born Lambs

In the United States, the leading cause of infant mortality is extremely premature births. Such babies are born before the 26th week of pregnancy. In 2017, scientists tested an artificial womb designed to save early infants. Eight lambs were chosen as test subjects. They were also premature, having only reached 100–115 days of a normal 152-day sheep pregnancy.

In terms of human babies, their lung development was the equivalent of an infant at 22–24 weeks of pregnancy. Survivors that age often have chronic lung problems for life. The aim was to keep the animals alive for long enough to ensure healthy organ development.

After the lambs were placed inside the artificial womb, they lived in and breathed a liquid like amniotic fluid and received nutrient-rich blood. Some survived as long as 28 days, opened their eyes, and developed normal organ function. Most of the lambs were euthanized for investigative reasons, but two of the sheep are still alive and living on a farm.^[10]

The artificial womb worked. However, years of additional tests are required before it can receive the first human baby.

Most of us just want to pee and flee the bathroom. Urine does have its fans, though. Scientists are coddling the warm liquid to grow vegetables on Mars and generate electricity from pee-powered batteries.

The fluid is also central to several weird moments and studies. From walls that nobody wants to urinate against to advertisements that readers can pee on, our bladder brew is far from boring.

10 The Pool Pee Test

People like to pee in swimming pools. Unfortunately, chemicals in urine react to compounds in the water and form by-products that can be harmful. There is no effective way to know how much urine visitors deposit in your pool with a straight face.

However, in 2017, toxicologists from Alberta found a way to track some of it. First, the team needed a chemical excreted by urine that did not change within the body or water. They chose an artificial sweetener called acesulfame potassium, a packaged foods mainstay.

The study scooped water from 22 swimming pools and eight hot tubs from two Canadian cities. It also collected tap water, which had been used to fill the pools and tubs.

The concentration of the sweetener was up to 571 times greater in the pools and tubs than in the tap water. Based on the levels of acesulfame potassium, the pools contained 30–75 liters (7.9–19.8 gal) of urine depending on their size.^[1]

9 The Urine Database

Pee is a chemical wonderland. In 2013, after seven years of investigating the chemical composition of urine, scientists finally had the full picture. As it turned out, human whiz holds a staggering amount of chemicals. The team logged over 3,000 compounds and published an online database for anyone interested in the unusual encyclopedia.

Bacteria brewed the least, around 72 chemicals. The body produced 1,453, but the most—around 2,282—came from outside influences. Their composition came from drugs, diet, cosmetics, and environmental exposure. Together, the compounds represented 230 different chemical classes.^[2]

The total tally and variety surprised even the scientists. The study also identified over 480 chemicals unique to urine, which dispelled the belief that blood was the better option for analyzing a patient’s chemical profile.

8 The 21-Second Rule

In 2014, researchers timed how long it took for mammals to urinate. The team stared at animals at Zoo Atlanta and watched YouTube videos. Incredibly, any mammal bigger than a rat took roughly 21 seconds to urinate. The size of the animal made no difference. Cats to elephants all peed within the same time frame even though elephants dump around 18 liters (4.8 gal) of urine while cats tinkle about a teaspoon’s worth.

The unexpected discovery made sense when researchers looked at the urethra, a tube that carries urine from the bladder to the bathroom. In another unexpected twist, the tube kept a length-to-width ratio of 18 in all mammals and this caused the strange time rule.

What fascinated engineers was that volume did not matter and that the pressure pushing the pee forward increased with a longer urethra. There is no reason why the phenomenon cannot one day be applied to large artificial water systems.^[3]

7 Full Bladders Create Better Lies

Fibs and bladders are secret friends. As it turns out, people holding in their pee make more convincing liars. During a 2015 study, 22 volunteers were either given a small or large amount of fluid to drink. They were asked to wait for almost an hour. The group then completed a survey and spoke to a panel. By then, some already longed for the bathroom.

The panel questioned the volunteers about moral and social issues. The participants had to lie and argue for viewpoints entirely different than their own. Interestingly, those with ballooning bladders told epic lies. They were more convincing, came up with more elaborate details, and appeared more truthful.

The latter, researchers believe, could be tied to the self-control we need when suppressing an overwhelming urge to pee. The theory suggests that the brain’s cognitive regions are not truly separate. The so-called “inhibitory spillover effect” (ISE) starts with intense control in one area (suppressing the bladder) which then spills over into another (better lying).^[4]

6 Pee Bales

Wimpole Hall is a National Trust property in Cambridgeshire. A group of people caring for Wimpole decided to go greener. In an effort to save water and make compost, male workers are encouraged to urinate on straw bales. Women need not feel left out. One suggestion mentioned doing business in a bottle and then tipping it out onto the straw stacks.

It might sound weird, but there is a method to the madness. The straw is destined for the compost heap, and the pee is an excellent pretreatment. Urine is a known compost “activator” that is packed with nitrogen.

The initiative also saves water because Wimpole’s loos are flushed less often. The whole thing comes with a big caveat, however. Workers only pee on the bales, which line the walled gardens, when visiting hours are over. One staff member aptly explained, “We don’t want to scare the public.”^[5]

5 Space Fertilizer

Mankind’s dream of colonizing Mars includes urine-fueled food. The Red Planet is too distant for deliveries from Earth. If Mars is going to become a successful territory, it needs its own vegetable garden.

The German Aerospace Center (DLR) is apparently having some success with tomato plants and a tank of human urine. The recycling of bodily fluids is nothing new. Astronauts already donate their sweat and urine to a recycling system on board the International Space Station.

But to sprout a Martian harvest requires an Earthlike biological system that includes fluids, microbes, and oxygen. One of the experiments saw pumice stones placed in urine. The porous volcanic rocks contain bacteria that flourished in the urine and turned the pee’s ammonia into fertilizer elements such as nitrites and nitrate salts.^[6]

Ultimately, the scientists plan on using greenhouses aboard satellites to simulate Martian gravity and see if bacteria in synthetic urine can fertilize tomatoes.

4 Urination Electrocution

In 2013, Matthew Zeno left a bar in the early hours of the morning. When nature called, he decided to find relief at the G-train subway line. He reportedly died after tinkling on the electrified rail and electrocuting himself in the process.

Years prior, Joseph Patrick O’Malley had undergone an autopsy after being struck by a train. Electrical burns on his privates, thumb, and forefinger suggested that 600 volts had traveled up O’Malley’s urine stream and electrocuted him after he peed on the rail. He was probably dead before the train arrived.

The television program MythBusters bravely decided to test the plausibility of such cases. They found that peeing on railway lines would rarely result in electrocution because the urine stream tends to separate into drops. This should prevent a current from traveling up the stream.^[7]

However, they found that peeing against an electric fence was asking for trouble. As the fence is higher up, there is no time for the urine to separate into drops.

3 Pee Power

In 2015, scientists used urine to generate electricity. The technology is called microbial fuel cells (MFCs), and it uses organisms that thrive on organic material. Urine allows the microbes to feed and grow, a process that releases a tiny amount of electricity.

This biotechnology can already charge phones and fuel lights. Additionally, specially adapted loos at fairs have successfully turned pee into power. This promises upliftment where power grids are not always functional, like in rural regions, disaster areas, and refugee camps.

The scientists also tested previous studies that suggested MFCs had disinfecting properties. They dumped the Salmonella bacteria—a pathogen responsible for food poisoning—into an MFC system. Water tested at the end of the purification process showed that the Salmonella had been reduced to levels acceptable in conventional sanitation practices.^[8]

Overall, in a world trying to move away from fossil fuels, MFCs are a prize. The batteries can now treat waste, generate power, and kill pathogens at the same time.

2 Revenge Against People Who Urinate In Public

St. Pauli sees more than its fair share of al fresco urination. It is the red-light district of Hamburg, a city in Germany. Additionally, the area is one of the city’s main party zones.

The income potential is marred only by plenty of drunk folks who consider the place a giant latrine. Those who have to live in St. Pauli often gag at the smell of soiled walls and alleyways. The cost of daily cleaning became so high that something had to be done.

In 2015, a wicked solution was devised. After identifying the walls that were the most frequented by people urinating in public, the surfaces of these walls were sprayed with hydrophobic paint, which strongly repels any liquid. Pee hard enough, and the wall instantly returns the favor, most likely on the person’s shoes.^[9]

1 Pee And Get A Discount

Advertisers are a creative bunch. However, few can beat the crew tasked by Ikea to design an ad that targeted new parents. In 2018, the Swedish chain placed the finished product in a popular magazine and invited readers to pee on the page. If you were female, that is.

If the woman was pregnant, the ad changed and revealed a sale on cribs. To achieve this effect, Ikea partnered with an agency called Akestam Holst and Mercene Labs. They chose the normal pregnancy strip test as the foundation of the project.

During the development of the page, the team focused on mirroring the pregnancy test’s ability to react to the antibodies known to grab onto hCG, a pregnancy hormone. Once the antibodies were detected, the page “knew” the woman was pregnant and offered her a discount on a crib.^[10]

Researchers are inquisitive creatures. They leave no stone unturned. Especially the weird ones. In recent times, studies were sprung on volunteers and the unsuspecting alike.

Tests to determine their neuroticism, honesty, and appreciation of bad jokes were borderline strange. The answers even more so. They also threw the common cold at cancer, considered chocolate’s extinction, and took Godzilla’s growth rate very seriously.

10 Correct Way To Pet A Cat

Some cats are confusing. One second, they love having their heads scratched. The next, they claw irritably at their owners to make them stop. A recent study blamed their ancestry.

Felines have been mewing for a saucer of milk for the past 4,000 years. While cozying up to humans, their genes stayed similar to those of their ancestor the African wildcat. As domesticated as cats are, one foot stays firmly planted in their feral past. This clashes with human nature. People touch their pets to show affection. The African wildcat is solitary and actively avoids its own kind.

The solution?

The cat must be in the driver’s seat. The study found that when kitties initiated bonding, they allowed their owners to bestow physical affection upon them for longer. They also enjoy having their chins, ears, and cheeks scratched, although not as much their backs, stomachs, or tail bases.

The owner must also watch his fuzzball’s body language for negative signs and then back off. In the end, it all comes down to respecting your cat’s wild-at-heart boundaries.^[1]

9 Canned Laughter Helps Bad Comedy

Television critics are not fond of laugh tracks. They view it as a decades-old relic that should have disappeared with the time’s bad actors and mundane story lines. However, viewers still hear laugh tracks as a cue to comedy.

In 2019, a study picked 40 jokes. They were all bad. The researchers wanted to see if canned laughing could improve their fun factor. First, 20 students were tormented with the flat lines without any prerecorded giggles. Predictably, the jokes were given low scores. On a scale of 1 to 7, none rated higher than 3.75.

Eventually, 72 adults rated the jokes without laughter, then with obviously faked laughter, and finally, with spontaneous laughs. Ratings were boosted about 10 percent with forced humor. But the best spike—between 15 and 20 percent—happened when volunteers listened to laughs that communicated real enjoyment.^[2]

The kinder ratings could have been triggered by people’s reactions to what laughter is—a primitive signal critical to human bonding. Inherently, it was more about joining the group than enjoying a bad joke.

8 Tempting People With Wallets

In 2015, a group of behavioral scientists decided to test people’s honesty. More specifically, the better side of civic workers. The scientists went all out. They traveled the world and visited 40 countries, dragging along over 17,000 wallets, a lot of cash, credit cards, and around 400 keys.

Research assistants pretended to be tourists who picked up a wallet. They handed it to staff from 355 cities’ banks, museums, police stations, and other institutions—and requested that the staff member must find the owner.

The study attempted to answer two questions. Do certain countries return more wallets, and does the amount of cash inside influence the decision?

When the outcome was published in 2019, it surprised 300 expert economists who predicted that people would swipe the wallets with more money. However, those entrusted to return the wallets were more likely to do so when they contained larger amounts of currency. The country made no difference when it came to this unexpectedly wholesome behavior.^[3]

7 Phone Movements Reveal Personality

A trusted way to determine someone’s personality is to measure that individual against the Big Five test. Originally from the 1980s, the test relies on five main traits. They include openness (curious vs. cautious), extraversion (outgoing vs. reserved), agreeableness (compassionate vs. detached), conscientiousness (organized vs. easygoing), and neuroticism (confidence vs. nervousness).

Starting in March 2010, scientists followed 52 volunteers for over a year. The group tried a different spin on the Big Five—seeing whether their personalities could be determined by the way they handled their phones.

Each phone was equipped with an accelerometer to track physical movements as well as software that logged the calls and messages. Interestingly, the method matched certain traits captured on a Big Five survey that the participants had completed.

The data was good at predicting extraversion, conscientiousness, and neuroticism. These traits produce more physical activity, which could explain why the phones failed to analyze openness and agreeableness.^[4]

6 Spiders On Drugs

In 1948, spiders annoyed H.M. Peters. The zoologist studied spiderwebs at Germany’s University of Tubingen. The orb-web spiders in his study were early birds. To watch them spin, Peters had to wake up between 2:00 AM and 5:00 AM.

He asked pharmacologist Peter Witt to dose the arachnids with something that would make them spin at later times. To delay their webbing hours, Witt fed sugar water to the spiders. The sweet drink was laced with caffeine, amphetamine, mescaline, strychnine, or LSD.

The drugged spiders happily changed the patterns and sizes of their webs, but they stuck to the ungodly hours of the morning to do so. Peters gave up, but Witt continued his study on spiked spiders.

In 1995, NASA successfully replicated Witt’s work. This time, the spiders produced certain patterns after gorging on caffeine, marijuana, speed, or chloral hydrate.^[5]

The severity of the web’s deformity hinged on how toxic the chemical was. This reaction might change how laboratories test poison. Using spiders instead of complex mammals like mice is a cheaper and more humane alternative.

5 Chocolate Extinction

Chocolate addicts reacted with horror when news outlets claimed that their favorite snack could be extinct by 2050. The reason was that cacao trees, the source of chocolate, continue to face an uphill battle against the usual evils.

Several studies tracked fungal diseases as they destroyed Central America’s cacao trees and suggested that these diseases might spread to the world’s other cacao patches. As a harbinger of epic weather events, climate change can also throttle the plantations.

Worryingly, half of the planet’s chocolate is produced by two African countries. If Ghana and the Ivory Coast experience a climate shift, it could leave the entire industry vulnerable.

Cacao trees are sensitive to temperature changes and love to roost in a rain forest environment. As predicted for 2050, an increase in temperature and dryness could spell trouble for chocolate lovers. Scientists are exploring the avenue of genetically strengthened cacao trees, but then chocolate would no longer be as natural as some might like.^[6]

4 Climate Apartheid

A scary study in 2019 suggested that climate change could divide humanity. This future hypothetical scenario is called “climate apartheid.” The United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) released a report detailing how the dark side of human nature would rise once nature goes to hell.

The consensus is that climate change would eventually affect every living thing on Earth. A frightening thought considering that the cards predict famine, widespread death, and natural disasters. As conditions worsen, people will be divided between those who can afford to protect themselves and those who cannot.

The HRC report was the concentrated opinion of over 100 studies focused on how climate change threatens the basic necessities for human life. These included housing, food, water, and health.^[7]

The conclusion warned that millions are doomed to die without a radical shift in environmental policies and immediate plans to safeguard the vulnerable. Ironically, these citizens live in the poorest countries which are least responsible for the pollution driving climate change.

3 Anxiety Makes Godzilla Grow

In 2019, scientists pondered Godzilla’s growth rate. The monster has grown considerably from the first movie in the 1950s when it stood 50 meters (164 ft) tall. In the latest 2019 release, it towered 120 meters (393 ft) high. This spurt is 30 times quicker than anything alive on Earth. Had the creature been real, it would have smashed growth and evolutionary records.

The study looked at several possibilities to explain why the creature seemed to grow bigger with every movie. It concluded that Godzilla was a metaphor for people’s existential anxiety. Politics, environmental issues, and personal problems keep stress alive and well.^[8]

Apparently, Godzilla represented major problems that humanity must unite against—like climate change and terrorists. However, Godzilla could just be competing against itself. With moviegoers demanding bigger and better, the classic creature must evolve to please.

2 An Unknown Shape

Epithelial cells form our skin, line organs, and help embryos develop their myriad structures. As important as these cells are, scientists could never pin down their shape. For lack of a better understanding, they were assumed to resemble tubelike prisms, or a frustum—a kind of bottle-shaped pyramid.

In 2018, scientists decided to conduct a study to see which one it was. They turned to computers to unravel the shape of epithelial cells. The result was weird. Not only was it neither suspect, but the shape was unknown to mathematics and science.

Bizarrely, it resembled a Y-shaped prism. The top of one branch had five surfaces, and the other had six. The new geometric shape was named the scutoid. The data suggested that the peculiar form helped epithelial cells to bend with curving tissue.^[9]

The discovery has wider applications than merely adding a new shape to science. Understanding how scutoids construct tissues could refine the production of artificial organs for transplant patients.

1 The Common Cold Beat Cancer

The idea to attack cancer cells with a virus is almost a century old. However, it was not until 2019 that the hunch proved to be correct. A study gathered 15 patients with early-stage bladder cancer. Using a catheter, each person was infected with coxsackievirus A21. This is one of the viruses that slaps people with the common cold.

They kept the catheters in for an hour before repeating the procedure. This was to pump higher concentrations of the virus into the bladder than a natural infection would normally give a person. Then the patients were carted off to surgery to remove their tumors.^[10]

Throwing a common cold at cancer sounds flimsy, but the results were stunning. In many patients, the coxsackievirus severely damaged the tumors and drew a legion of immune cells to attack them. Best of all, one patient’s tumor was completely destroyed.

Overall, beating cancer could be as simple as using a virus that occurs in nature to refine effective treatment. Interestingly, none of the study’s superinfected patients developed a cold.

You don’t need to go to a desert island and find the x on a map to discover hidden treasure these days. As it happens, hundreds of homeowners and businesses are routinely discovering things hidden in their walls. Sometimes they’re treasures, and sometimes they are decidedly not. 

10. The First Appearance of Superman

In the history of comic books, few of them are as coveted as Action Comics issue one. This is the legendary first appearance of Superman, and it dates back to 1938. At the time, no one could have imagined what a pop culture force the book and the character would become. The cover price was 10 cents.

Fast forward to 2013 when contractor David Gonzalez was renovating an old house he had bought for just over $10,000. The walls had been filled with old newspapers and, in among them, was a copy of Action Comics #1. The book was in rough shape, and the back cover had been torn off, but it was still the real deal. Gonzalez had it appraised based on its condition and it was rated a 1.5 out of 10, which means it was in close to the worst condition it could be in.

Despite the shoddy condition, the book sold at auction for a staggering $175,000. That’s a huge return on investment. If the book had been in good condition, Gonzalez could have expected a much more lucrative deal as another copy in good condition sold two years earlier for over $2 million. In 2014, a copy in excellent condition became the most expensive comic book ever sold when it took in $3.2 million at auction.

9. $500,000

Who among us hasn’t entertained the fleeting fantasy of one day running across a secret fortune in buried treasure or just a sack of money on the side of the road somewhere? That was the reality waiting for a couple in Arizona who bought a rundown house “as is” intending to perform some renovations to improve it. 

The story has more twists and turns than you might expect. While doing renovations, a contractor’s employee found ammunition cans hidden in the walls. Inside the cans was $500,000 in cash.

The worker told his boss, but the boss neglected to mention the find to the homeowners, opting to keep the cash for himself. Luckily, the honest employee informed the homeowners and the police came to take possession of the money. Now you’d think it would go to the homeowners at this point, but that was not the case.

Several lawsuits were filed. The contractor sued the homeowners, and they sued the contractor. But the daughter of the previous owner sued as well, claiming the money was rightfully hers as part of her father’s estate. The courts agreed, saying that when they sold the house as is, they did not know what they were giving up as it related to the cash, and it was still rightfully theirs. 

8. Surveillance Equipment

When it comes to creepy things in your walls, there are not many things that will set you on edge quite like discovering evidence that someone has been secretly watching you. That was the weirdness one couple in Arizona had to deal with upon buying a new home and giving it a thorough search.

The new owners had noticed that there was a mirror in the bathroom that seemed out of place, so they decided to take it off the wall. Unfortunately, someone had permanently affixed it there. So they cut the wall. What they discovered was that the mirror was actually a 2-way mirror and behind it, in the wall, wires were set up for video equipment. There was also plumbing for a sink set up and cabinetry.

Some people speculated that this was not an insidious set up for filming people in a bathroom and maybe even was a setup for something as innocent as a wall aquarium. But if that was the case, why had someone installed a two-way mirror at some point?

7. Prohibition-Era Booze

Every so often people find some unusual or exotic treasure in their walls but when it comes to the real, practical goods if you can’t find gold or money, maybe the next best thing is what a New York couple discovered hidden in the walls of their upstate home: 60 or more bottles of prohibition-era whisky.

Neighbors had told the couple that their new home had once been owned by bootleggers about 100 years ago, but it seemed like nothing more than a charming story. That was until they started renovating and discovered the illicit stash. Dozens of bottles in the walls and under the floor, many of them still unopened. 

They dated the bottles of Old Smuggler whisky to the 1920s, so the bootlegger stories seem to have been real. Experts said the full bottles could be worth between $500 and $1000 a piece at auction.

6. Bones

Imagine buying a new home and as you go through the process of moving your things in and going over the house, you discover something inside the attic wall. Something that looks suspiciously like human bones. That’s what one couple had to deal with in their new Houston area home back in 2017.

Bones had been stashed in the wall, along with a pair of glasses resembling those worn by the home’s previous owner. The same owner who had been missing for two years. She had been a quiet, pleasant woman as far as the neighbors knew. But one day she vanished and her mail began to pile up. A missing person report was filed, and eventually, firefighters came to clear the home out. At the time they noted the place smelled terrible, but it was also full of cats that hadn’t been taken care of since the owner disappeared.

Within two years, the bank foreclosed on the property and it was sold. The new owners were the first to discover the remains despite firefighters, police, animal control, and even roofers being through the house before they got to it.

The medical examiner later confirmed the remains as belonging to the previous owner, Mary Cerruti. But as to the mystery of how she died and ended up in the wall, that remains unsolved.

5. Missing Boy

Your mind can go to some dark places when you think about what could be hidden in the walls of a home. The idea of finding a body is, as we’ve seen, not impossible at all. But what you’re less likely to find is not a dead body, but a living one. 

Ricky Chekevdia was believed to have been abducted in 2007. His father had just been awarded custody and the boy’s mother disappeared with her son. For two years the father had no idea if his son was even alive or dead. And then, in a baffling twist, authorities discovered the boy had been living in a secret room behind the wall of his grandmother’s house the entire time.

The mother had claimed that the father was abusing the boy before she disappeared with him, but officials say there was no evidence to support those claims. What they did have evidence of was the boy being kept in a windowless room for two years, during which time he never even saw the sun and was not allowed out for any reason, even medical treatment.

The mother and grandmother both faced charges for their involvement, and Ricky was returned to his father’s custody.

4. 100,000 Bees

If you were to compile a ranked list of all the things you hope are never in your walls, probably somewhere near the top would be a massive population of stinging insects. And that’s why this particular story is so disturbing since it involves one Canadian homeowner discovering that their walls were home to a nest of about 100,000 bees.

After buying an old Victorian-style home in a historic part of town, homeowner Chantelle Ryan noticed a curious affectation – her walls buzzed. After realizing what the problem was, Ryan called a local beekeeper who came to help with the issue, but no one at the time appreciated the scale. A colony of bees up to 100,000 strong that was likely growing in the walls for the better part of a decade.

Along with the bees, 250 pounds of honeycomb was removed from the walls as well. And Ryan took the time to sample the honey and share it with her new neighbors as well.

3. Stolen Painting

The last thing any art gallery wants is to lose its exhibits. Whether it’s to a disaster like a fire or thieves, if a priceless painting gets destroyed or taken, that’s a piece of history lost forever. That’s exactly what one gallery in Italy thought happened to an important piece of their collection.

Known as “Portrait of a Lady,” the painting by Gustav Klimt dates back to 1917. The painting had been a part of the collection at Galleria Ricci-Oddi in Piacenza since 1925, but in 1997 the painting was stolen. They found the frame near a skylight that was too small for the actual painting to have passed through. 

In 2019, gardeners found a hidden, recessed portion of the wall outside in which a bag was stashed. Inside the bag was the missing painting. It’s not known if the painting was there the entire 23 years it was gone, or if someone returned it later, but either way, the museum is returning it to the collection for viewing.

2. Chuck Palahniuk Time Capsule

Although he’s written over a dozen fiction novels as well as non-fiction and short stories, Chuck Palahniuk’s debut novel Fight Club sealed his legacy as a quirky, visceral author whose creativity was only matched by his weirdness. So maybe it makes sense that he takes care of houses like he writes books.

A homeowner in Portland, Oregon moved into a house that the author had previously owned and, while doing renovations, discovered a gift. Palahniuk had sealed up a time capsule in the wall of his old home, complete with a signed copy of Fight Club, some old family photos, and a house history.

The time capsule had been added to the walls in 2002, while Palahniuk and his family were also doing renovations. At that time he’d published 4 novels and Fight Club had already been made into a movie, but he still signed off his time capsule letter saying he assumed whoever found it would have no idea who he was.

1. Message in a Bottle

Typically, when you hear about a message in a bottle, it’s a story that takes place at sea. And every so often a tale shows up in the news about a very old bottle coming to shore with a message inside. Maybe that was the intention of the person in this story, they just couldn’t get to the ocean in time so instead they sealed their bottle in a wall.

A Boston homeowner discovered an old whisky bottle sealed between the chimney flue and an interior wall of their home. There was a rolled-up note inside that was dated September 23, 1894. And as for the note itself, it simply said, “Tom Ford 6 on Shea.”

The note was shared on social media with people speculating on what it might have meant. Popular theories include a betting slip indicating someone had bet 6 on a horse named Shea, or something to do with 6 games at Shea Stadium. Others guessed Tom Ford lived on Shea Street at number 6. But without further evidence, it’s going to have to remain a mystery.

The giraffe ranks among the most familiar of the zoo and park animals. Even so, giraffes continue to harbor surprising facts. The creatures can turn black or white and make inexplicable noises at night. They even ogled a Chinese emperor during the 1400s.

There are funny things in their armpits and a puzzling disease creeping up their legs. Even though giraffes are endangered, it is often conservation breeding programs that decide whether they are allowed to live or die.

10 There Are Four Species

Until 2016, there was one species of giraffe. For those who cared to squint harder at subtle differences between ossicones (head “horns”), coat patterns, and different habitats, there were nine subspecies. As the classifications had been made between 1758 and 1911, modern researchers felt that the requirements were unreliable because giraffes had not been studied as deeply as other big African mammals.

Unlike lions and elephants, there is plenty that remains unknown about giraffes. To discover the truth, a five-year-long study became the first to genetically analyze all the nine subspecies.

The DNA tests proved that the “nine” were actually four distinct species—the reticulated giraffe (G. reticulata), Masai giraffe (G. tippelskirchi), northern giraffe (G. camelopardalis), and southern giraffe (G. giraffa). As they do not breed with each other, the correct identification of species is a positive step forward to ensure that all four survive.^[1]

9 The Imperial Giraffes

During the 1400s, Emperor Yongle of China wanted to explore the world. He sent a fleet of ships on seven expeditions which made it as far as South Africa, landing at the modern-day Cape of Good Hope. Yongle liked to collect exotic animals, and foreign nations gave him rhinoceroses, peacocks, elephants, and bears as gifts.

During the fourth expedition, the Chinese arrived at Bengal and met with envoys from Malindi (Kenya). The latter handed over a giraffe, which was promptly stabled aboard one of the Imperial ships. The animal’s size was not a problem. The vessels that sailed during this expedition remain the biggest wooden vessels ever constructed in history.

Despite Yongle’s vast collection of strange animals, the giraffe made such an impression on the emperor that it became the only animal he asked the court artist to draw. The image added a mythical flavor, suggesting that it was a qilin—a creature comparable with the West’s unicorn.

A year later, a second giraffe arrived at the royal court. Despite the animals’ strange story, there is no record of what became of the spotty pair.^[2]

8 They Like Carcasses

National Geographic photographer Corinne Kendall visited a reserve a few years ago. Once inside Kenya’s Masai Mara National Reserve, she took photos of a macabre incident. Two adult giraffes were busy with a dead wildebeest. Not only did they mouth the carcass, but they occasionally tossed it into the air.

This grated against the giraffe’s image as a gentle herbivore. Experts reviewed the photographs and found the behavior was not as deviant as it first appeared. It was likely a case of osteophagy. To keep their own skeletons healthy, herbivores need calcium and phosphorus.^[3]

For this reason, these mammals gnaw on bones. Recently, another giraffe was filmed licking the skull of a dead buffalo. One of the experts who assessed Kendall’s pictures also told National Geographic that he regularly witnessed the fascination giraffes have for carcasses during his fieldwork. An average of about six times a year, he would encounter giraffes nosing around bones.

7 Birds Sleep In Their Armpits

Snapshot Serengeti was a project that ran for years inside the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. It involved camera traps that automatically took photographs when an animal moved nearby. At one point, a camera documented something that had never been seen before.

Researchers have always known that a brown bird called the yellow-billed oxpecker grooms giraffes and other large African mammals. The tiny creature removes ticks and even feeds on the host’s blood, eye goop, and nose mucus. However, this activity was only observed during the day.

One night, a giraffe triggered one of the traps, which took a series of snaps. They showed that the animal’s armpits contained clusters of sleeping oxpeckers. Never before had anyone realized that the birds sometimes chose to overnight on what was basically their food source.^[4]

Although it was a surprising find, it was not hard to see why the oxpeckers did it. Apart from ensuring that they stayed with their food-providing host, the giraffe’s armpits were also safe and warm.

6 Males Turn Black

Giraffe dudes do something unusual. As they age, their blocks become black. In 2012, curious researchers studied 36 males, all from the Luangwa Valley in Zambia. They knew the precise age of 10 and estimated the ages of the rest based on how dark their patterns were.

The animals’ data had been compiled over 33 years, which provided a rich source to plumb about the color change and lives of males. A calf weans at two years old and leaves its birth environment between four and eight.

The darkening first becomes obvious when bulls turn seven or eight. The black starts in the middle of the brown patches and bleeds outward toward the edges. This process takes almost two years, and on average, males have a full set of coal-black spots by the time they are 9.4 years old.^[5]

Although the 2012 study was the first to establish a timeline, it could not find the cause. As only males experience the change, it could have something to do with testosterone levels. Bulls mature around age 10, which is around the time that their transformation is complete.

5 A Mysterious Disease

In 2014, Arthur Muneza had to pick an animal to study for his master’s at Michigan State University. Like many others, he considered the popular choices—elephants and African predators. However, the biologist chose giraffes when he heard that they suffered from a strange and understudied skin condition.

Giraffes are somewhat neglected when it comes to megafauna studies. Even the affliction, which may be a contributing factor to their dropping numbers, received a casual name—giraffe skin disease (GSD).

However, Muneza was on fire. He dug into past research and cornered veterinarians as well as zoo and park officials. He scoured old studies for the symptoms, which include lesions on the legs and neck. The areas often turn gray, bloody, and crusty.

Just eight sources mentioned anything about it. The questionnaires he sent out to those working with giraffes only garnered 63 responses. Zoos reported 14 cases of GSD in their captive specimens. Frighteningly, the Ruaha National Park in Tanzania reported that 79 percent of their giraffes had the disease.^[6]

Muneza’s collaboration with experts is ongoing to unravel what causes GSD, how it spreads, and how it can be cured.

4 Marius

In 2014, Copenhagen Zoo in Denmark considered euthanizing one of their giraffes. As Marius was a healthy 18-month-old, thousands signed a petition for his life to be spared until a new home could be arranged. The zoo’s reason was that Marius had nothing to add to their international breeding program. They also said they could not keep the growing male in case it led to fighting with others.

Despite the local and international outcry to make an effort to relocate the giraffe, Copenhagen Zoo refused to do so. On a Sunday morning, a staff member fed Marius his favorite meal of rye bread and then shot him. The giraffe was dismembered in front of visitors before his parts were distributed among the zoo’s predators and research facilities.

The demise of Marius caused such anger that the zoo’s staff received death threats against themselves and their families. Marius’s short life and public slaughter highlighted something of which few citizens are aware. It is a common practice for zoos to kill healthy animals when their genetics fail to meet breeding standards, when there is no space, or when they do not attract crowds.^[7]

3 They Hum At Night

Giraffes are quiet creatures. So quiet, in fact, that scientists became suspicious. After all, they move in herds with social structures. This strongly suggested some sort of communication beyond the occasional kick and snort.

In 2015, a strange clue was captured at three European zoos. One theory was that giraffes get chatty on frequencies that humans cannot hear. To test this, researchers left recording devices near the creatures’ enclosures. After slogging through 1,000 hours of recordings, the researchers found that giraffes do make a sound—they hum.

The noise resembled something between a swarm of bees and monastic chanting. The humming happened at a very low frequency but still fell inside the range of human hearing. Despite this, zoo staff heard it for the first time only when they listened to the tapes.

The exact purpose of the sound remains mysterious. Since it happens exclusively at night, it could be a way for giraffes to stay connected in the dark. It could also be a passive sound related to sleeping, like snoring or dreaming.^[8]

2 Kenya’s White Giraffes

In 2017, a villager in Kenya’s Garissa County saw two white giraffes. He told conservationists about the bleached pair, and soon, the animals were tracked down. They lived in the best place for such rare creatures—the Ishaqbini Hirola Conservancy.

The species was identified as the vulnerable reticulated giraffe. The two animals were also family—a mother and her calf. When the cow noticed the rangers, she calmly hid her baby in the bushes and positioned herself between the infant and the humans, who stood filming a few yards away.^[9]

Not only did the camera capture the curious beauty of white giraffes but it was also the first footage of specimens with leucism. This genetic condition prevents the normal formation of pigment inside skin cells. It differs from albinism in that dark pigment can still flourish inside soft tissues, which was why the mother and calf had dark eyes and some body coloring.

1 They Are Critically Endangered

The plight of the African elephant is well-known. There are only about half a million of the creatures left in the wild. That being said, elephant numbers look fantastic against the remaining wild giraffe population—90,000. The last 15 years saw a 40 percent die-off thanks to habitat loss and poachers. Giraffes are now extinct in seven African countries.

Despite these glaring warning signs, their official conservation status remains merely “Vulnerable” as opposed to the “Endangered” African elephants. However, there is hope in small pockets.

In 2016, conservationists learned that oil had been discovered in Uganda and that prospectors planned to move into Murchison Falls National Park. A particularly vulnerable group of giraffes lived on only one side of the Nile, and unfortunately, it was the side where the oil was.

A daring mission floored 20 of the awkward but dangerous animals, packed them onto a ferry, and released them on the other side. Not only did the small herd thrive, but as researchers followed them, they filmed an unknown behavior for the first time. At night, the animals took turns watching for predators while the rest slept with their necks folded over their backs like swans.^[10]