The Black Death was a pandemic that swept through not just Europe, but also parts of Asia and Africa, leaving an absolutely devastating death toll in its wake. Tens of millions of people died at the very least, and the populations hit were so decimated that they didn’t recover to previous levels for centuries.

During the time period of the Black Death, written records weren’t kept nearly as well as they are now (if they were at all), and the huge and constant loss of life meant that much knowledge of exactly how things happened is lost. This means that many rumors have spread about how it occurred, and many popular accounts are greatly exaggerated. Many of the common claims about the Black Death are either false or not entirely true.

10 The Catholic Church Has Been Blamed For The Black Death

The Catholic Church has been one of the most powerful organizations in the world for quite some time, so it is perhaps not too surprising that there are a lot of conspiracy theories about it, and it has become a popular scapegoat for many situations. In terms of the Black Death, no one is suggesting that the church tried specifically to cause it, but they do suggest that the church’s alleged backward thinking and practices helped it spread more effectively and cause more deaths overall. The claims say that the disease came mostly to humans from fleas and that these fleas came from rats. At this point, the popular theory does seem to unravel a bit, as fleas could travel along with many other animals besides rats.

Regardless, some like to claim that due to Catholic superstitions, cats were originally blamed for the Black Death. This led to a mass culling of cats, which caused the rats to spread and populate far quicker than they normally would have. According to popular mythology, this massive destruction of felines directly helped the Black Death get off the ground as a major pandemic, and it was all the church’s fault.

The problem with this theory—apart from many historians not believing that rats had as big a role as people claim—is that there is really no evidence of this mass cat culling due to Catholic superstition. It’s an oft-repeated story by cat lovers on the Internet to promote the virtues of their beloved choice of pet, but none of it appears to be sourced on anything solid.

9 Terrible Hygiene And Sanitation Practices Were A Huge Factor

Some people don’t like to picture it because it’s not a very romantic part of medieval history, but many researchers believe that one of the biggest reasons the plague spread so easily and with such deadly purpose was not just lack of advanced medical knowledge and preponderance of rats, but the fact that the hygiene habits of the time period were absolutely vile.

Now, we don’t mean that people didn’t bathe or try to stay clean, but rather that the infrastructure was lacking to a point that would be horrifying to most modern people today. Modern sewers and other sanitation didn’t exist, modern trash pickup was not a thing, and refrigeration along with proper knowledge of food safety was also something that people of the time seriously lacked.

Take, for example, the conditions in Bristol, the second-biggest city in Britain when plague hit Europe. It is said that the city was overpopulated and that there were open ditches with people’s waste and other filth running through them, without anything covering them at all. The outhouses were absolutely disgusting, and meat and fish were left out in the open, with flies all over them. And not only was the well water contaminated, but the booze also wasn’t safe to drink much of the time, either. According to historians, these were normal conditions that even the rich had to endure during this time period. With these conditions, it’s not too surprising that an pandemic was able to quickly spread.

8 The Role Of Rats Is Greatly Exaggerated

For many people, the cause of the Black Death is a combination of medieval people being disgusting and way too many rats around. However, researchers who have been studying the evidence for a long time smelled a rat, and after a lot of sniffing around, they came up with a completely different conclusion. Yersinia pestis, the bacterium usually considered responsible for the outbreak of the plague, isn’t usually native to Europe but actually comes from Asia.

After the first outbreak of the plague that killed millions across the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa, the plague was still taking mass victims. It would pop up occasionally across Europe and do damage again before disappearing for a bit. Many people attributed this to rises and falls in the rodent population increasing the incidence of plague.

However, researchers have discovered that the real culprit was likely climate shifts in Asia. As their climate fluctuated throughout the years, it created conditions more likely for carriers, especially fleas, to breed like crazy and to potentially find their way to Europe again. While this doesn’t mean that rats hold no responsibility at all, they are not nearly as dangerous a carrier as the flea itself, which can bother humans directly if its normal sources of sustenance are somehow interrupted, or if there are too many fleas for them to all eat from nearby smaller animals.

7 Some May Have Ended Up With HIV Resistance Genes

The plague swept through Europe and killed millions of people. Afterward, there were multiple repeated outbreaks over the years that continued to occasionally cause devastation until we finally figured out a way to keep the deadly disease under control. During that time, people from some regions of Europe had to either get extremely lucky or hope for an evolutionary genetic mutation to help their progeny survive the constant onslaught of deadly disease. While some people likely did simply get lucky by practicing extremely good hygiene and staying away from sick people, it seems that some people may have evolved in order to fight against it.

Researches have long been trying to find ways to beat HIV, and recently, they found out that some people seem to be entirely or almost completely immune. They have a rare mutation that stops the bad cells from ever entering their white blood cells. Scientists have been unsure how or why they have this mutation, but it certainly does seem to be advantageous in that situation. One researcher studying the issue has looked at the history and believes that the mutation likely came about due to struggles against the plague epidemics in Europe.

While understanding the mechanism behind this rare mutation could certainly help treat or prevent HIV in the future, it is hard to say for certain if there is actually a link to the plague. While there is interesting reason to believe it’s possible, the mutation only seems to occur in some Europeans. Despite Africa and Asia also having been hit incredibly hard by the Black Death, they do not seem to have the mutation in any quantifiable numbers.

6 ‘Ring Around The Rosie’ Has Nothing To Do With The Black Death

Just about everyone has heard the nursery rhyme “Ring Around the Rosie” at least a few times in their life. It’s a nearly ubiquitous little song that has always been a kid favorite. After singing, they get to all fall down and be silly at the end. While it may just be an innocent song to the kids who enjoy it, some adults are convinced that it is much more serious. A great number of people are certain that “Ring Around the Rosie” is actually a song talking about the Black Death in Europe.

The claims usually suggest that the posies are either to honor the dead or to somehow cover up the bad smell. The ashes are a fairly self-explanatory reference to dead people, and “we all fall down” is supposed to be a reference to the fact that such an insane amount of people died. However, there is no evidence at all that the poem had anything to do with the plague.

There are multiple variations of it, the earliest of which showed up in the 1800s. That’s hundreds of years after we pretty much had the plague under control, so it’s quite unlikely that the two ever had anything to do with each other. There is no evidence of what the real meaning for the song was, but we know that it was written much more recently, so it couldn’t be about the plague and was probably just supposed to be fun.

5 It Completely Changed the Economy Of Europe And Hastened The Renaissance

While the Black Death was an incredible tragedy in human history, when millions of people who could have gone on to do great things were lost, no tragedy usually vanishes without some good coming out of it. At the time, as we mentioned earlier, some parts of Europe were extremely overpopulated. This not only made it easier for the plague to proliferate, but it also ensured that labor was not really worth all that much in terms of value, because there were far more laborers than were really needed.

After the plague killed millions, things suddenly changed. With so few workers compared to before, regular farmers and other peasants were now earning much more money. Merchants were also able to make a better living, and any craftsmen of skill became quite important, as there was now a shortage of living skilled and unskilled laborers.

While this can’t be said to be the only factor that led to the Renaissance, it can easily be said that it at least greatly hastened it. With regular citizens having way more economic power and being more on the level of those of noble birth, the old societal system quickly started to give way to something entirely new. While it may have been very bad for Europe and the world in a lot of ways, humanity showed its ability to flourish instead of flounder when hit by a serious crisis.

4 The Plague Still Kills A Handful Of People Every Year

Some people think of the Black Death as something long gone like smallpox, but unfortunately, as many people have learned with the absurd anti-vaxxer, movement, it can be very hard to permanently eliminate a disease, and it may decide to come raging back to cause trouble again when you least expect it. Yersinia pestis was never considered a truly extinct disease, but it still crops up every now and then even in North America, a continent not traditionally known for the plague.

Some trace the existence of Yersinia pestis in North America to the port of San Francisco many years ago. Supposedly, in order to make as much money as possible, the city was allowing people through without properly checking them. This allowed the plague into the city, and since then, it has made its way to the US Southwest, where it has been occasionally causing trouble ever since.

It may still be surprising that some people die of the plague, or even contract it, in this day and age, but it is an extremely deadly disease. It can easily kill in a few days if not properly treated, and because it’s such an old disease that most people are unfamiliar with, they may wait too long to get the medicine and help they need.

The plague may be mostly vanquished, but it still exists, and it still kills every year. If we are not prepared, it could still attempt to strike back and cause yet another massive pandemic of deadly disease.

3 The Miasma Theory And Scientific Ignorance Greatly Helped Its Spread

For those who haven’t heard of it, miasma is an old scientific theory in regards to how people get sick and or ill. As of today, germ theory is pretty well-accepted, and people generally know how to avoid catching something from someone else. However, back in the day, science wasn’t as well-understood, and many experts of the time believed that disease and illness spread through “bad air” that was allowed to accumulate and slowly led to people’s deaths. Considering all of the decomposing filth surrounding them at all time, it’s not too surprising that they considered the foul-smelling air itself to be a vector for disease.

This miasma theory led the people of the time, in desperation, to turn to the best contagion measures they could muster to fight off the disease. They believed that by removing filth from the streets, they could avoid bad air and greatly help to prevent disease. They also emphasized burials far from the city, so that the bodies couldn’t contribute to making the miasma even worse. In a way, these were actually good measures, and it shows that they were starting to understand how to fight off disease, but their knowledge was incomplete, which caused them not to address other, more important issues. Luckily, many humans lived through it with hard-earned knowledge on how to better stave off pandemics.

2 The Origin Of ‘Quarantine’ Is Rooted In The Plague Years

The idea of quarantine didn’t come with the Black Death; the practice of sequestering sick people from healthy people has existed for a long time. Many cultures throughout the world realized long ago that putting healthy people with sick people often led to more sick people. In fact, even the Bible suggests keeping those with leprosy away from healthy people so that they do not get leprosy as well.

However, the actual term “quarantine” is much newer and actually does indirectly have to do with the plague. During the repeated outbreaks of the Black Death throughout Europe, some leaders either sent those who were sick out to live in a field until they were better, sent them to a small area for sick people, or just made them stay at home and stay inside. At first, the period for which people were kept isolated was usually about 30 days. This may seem rather excessive, but with how little they knew about germs at the time, it may have actually been a good idea.

Eventually, for unknown reasons, the amount of time for sequestering a sick person became 40 days, and this is where the name comes from. The original name had actually been trentino, for 30, but became quarantino for 40 once the amount of time changed. Over the years, this evolved into the word “quarantine,” which we now use for any situation where a sick individual is sequestered from healthy people until they are better.

1 Some Researchers Argue That The Culprit Was Not Yersinia Pestis

Most people are certain that the Black Death was caused by a bacterium called Yersinia pestis, which infects people with the bubonic plague. It is so named because of the awful buboes that grow on you and the swollen lymph nodes that appear before you quickly die and succumb to the deadly disease. However, some researchers have suggested that it may not actually be the culprit behind the major pandemic that swept three continents so many centuries ago.

Plenty of scientists are still convinced that it was Yersinia pestis, but others who have looked closer are not so sure. Some have spent years exhuming those who died of the plague and researching it minutely, and they feel that the plague moved far too fast to fit with the modern strains of the plague that exist today.

Some scientists are convinced that it was an entirely different disease, perhaps even one that we are familiar with today, that actually caused so many people to die so very quickly. They have suggested that it behaved more like a virus and that it was perhaps something more similar to Ebola than the modern version of Yersinia pestis. Scientists have also recently discovered the existence of two unknown strains of Yersinia pestis that had been present in those who had died of the plague. This has led to the compromise theory between the two that perhaps it was Yersinia pestis, but not a strain that we are currently familiar with.

Some call them conspiracy theories. Loony or not, many hypotheses about history contain more than just a glimmer of truth. From secret societies to unrecorded interactions, the possibilities of alternative history are many. These 10 are just some of the more fascinating examples.

10The Knights Templar And The Mandaeans

The Mandaeans are an enthno-religious people native to southern Iraq and southwestwern Iran. Their religion, Mandaeanism, closely resembles the Gnostic faith of Manichaeism. According to some scholars, the Mandaeans first appeared either before or during the arrival of Christianity.

During the time of the Crusades, the Mandaeans were known as skilled goldsmiths. This trade may have brought them into close contact with the Knights Templar, the legendary warrior-monks who frequently relied on local trade to survive. The Mandaeans worship John the Baptist as the world’s true savior. In the Gospels, St. John the Baptist is decapitated and is presented to the vicious Salome, the step-daughter of Herod Antipas. Interestingly, after they were rounded up by the French King Philip IV, the Templars were accused of worshiping a severed and embalmed head.

Could this be a relic of St. John the Baptist? Did the Templars adopt some Gnostic traditions after their long residence in the Middle East?

9The Ismailis And The ‘Islamic Golden Age’

Unlike the largest sect of Islam, Sunni Islam, the Ismailis belong to the Shia branch. However, unlike orthodox Shias, Ismailis are not “Twelvers,” so they do not subscribe to the belief in the Twelve Imams as the true spiritual successors of Muhammad. Furthermore, the Ismaili community openly accepts certain non-Muslim traditions, including Christian ethics and Greek philosophy. Because of this, the Ismailis are frequently persecuted in many fundamentalist countries.

During the Fatimid Caliphate (909–1171), Ismaili caliphs ruled the empire while Ismaili da’is (scholars) produced a wealth of Ismaili texts that incorporated Western and Eastern esotericism, Gnosticism, and classical learning. Because of this, it has been suggested that open-minded Ismailism brought about Islam’s Golden Age and facilitated the Arabic and Persian translations of Jewish, Greek, and Roman texts. Unfortunately, thanks to the Abbasid Caliphate and the entrenched power of Sunni Islam, the Ismailis were suppressed and forced to go underground for many centuries.

8The Bear Cult Hypothesis

Historians have theorized that the ancient Indo-Europeans had two primary cults that all tribes shared. These two cults recognized wolves and bears as sacred animals. Whereas the wolf symbolized masculinity, virility, and the power of the tribe, the bear represented motherhood and fertility. By the time of Sanskrit “Rigveda,” the power of the bear cult had noticeably declined.

However, in looking through other ancient texts, echoes of the bear cult remain. The Anglo-Saxon Beowulf is similar to the Icelandic saga of Bodvar Bjarki, whose name translates to “Battle Bear.” The Nordic “berserker” warriors also highlight this ancient European appreciation of the bear.

7The Original Koreans Of Japan

Currently, almost a million “Zainichi Koreans” live in Japan. Many are the descendants of workers who moved to Japan following World War II, while others came earlier after the Japanese conquest of Korea in 1910. Most speak Japanese as their first language. According to a genetic survey produced by the Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan, modern Japanese people may in fact be the descendants of Koreans themselves.

Specifically, researchers believe that the Japanese language and culture developed after the native settlers of the archipelago (the Jomon people) intermarried with the Yayoi people who crossed the strait from what is today Korea. Obviously, given the sometimes contentious relations between Japan and South Korea, this theory is not accepted by everyone in Japan.

6The Baltic Origins Of The Ancient Greeks

The notion that the ancient Greeks may have had some deep connections to the Baltic is mostly supported by certain readings of The Iliad and The Odyssey. According to believers, Homer’s epic poems recount faded memories of Greece’s Baltic ancestors coming down through the Danube and other rivers to settle in Greece. Furthermore, these scholars claim the geography of The Odyssey only makes sense in the Baltic or North Sea, not the Mediterranean.

Because this theory reminds many of “Nordicism,” or the theory that the ancient Greeks were racially “Nordic,” it is not generally popular or widely accepted. The main proponent of this theory, Italian engineer and amateur historian Felice Vinci, has presented some evidence to back up this theory.

5The Masonic Conspiracies Of France

The Freemasons have always been the targets of numerous conspiracy theorists throughout the ages. Because of their secrecy, their slightly disturbing rituals, and their popularity among the wealthy and powerful, the Freemasons are easy targets. In France during the 19th century, right-wing nationalists and Catholic conservatives latched onto certain Freemason conspiracies to explain France’s martial and political decline following the Franco-Prussian War. One of the more outlandish theories was put forth by Leo Taxil, a known hoaxer and a convert to Catholicism who wrote a book that claimed that Freemasons worship the devil.

Interestingly, all of this attention on the Freemasons revealed serious connections between Masonic rituals and Gnostic Christianity. Therefore, French and other writers have openly wondered whether the Freemasons are somehow connected to the same esoteric lineage as the Knights Templar or the Ismailis.

4The Lost Jews And Muslims Of The New World

Beginning in the 1980s, word spread that many longtime residents of New Mexico believed they were descendants of Spanish Conversos. During the Spanish Inquisition, many Jews were forced to convert to Catholicism or face severe persecution. Many of these Conversos continued to practice their ancient Jewish faith in secret, however. Therefore, many believe that these Conversos continued to practice Judaism in the Spanish colony of New Mexico. DNA tests released in the early 2000s confirmed that many modern Latinos have Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

Jews were not the only religious group who may have landed in the New World. Spanish Muslims, known as “moriscos,” also likely intermarried with native tribes and Spanish Catholics, Thus, many Latinos may also have DNA that links them to Morocco and Algeria.

3Are Modern Lebanese The True Descendants Of Phoenicia?

In 2016, a team representing the University of Otago and the Lebanese American University found for the first time ever a complete mitochondrial genome of a Phoenician individual. This 2,500-year-old man known as the “Young Man of Byrsa” was found in the hillsides of Carthage, Tunisia. According to the two primary scientists, the Phoenicians, who were native to what is now coastal Lebanon, contained the European U5b2cl haplogroup, so Phoenicians may have been both the descendants of European hunter-gatherers and the first people to introduce European DNA to North Africa.

This interesting find unleashed another question—how much Phoenician DNA is left among the Lebanese? According to certain researchers, today’s Christian and Muslim populations of Lebanon still have traces of Phoenician DNA. In the political realm, this finding has underscored the fairly common belief among Lebanese people that they are not Arabic and do not share a cultural affinity with the Arab world.

2William Shakespeare, Spy

The idea that famous playwright William Shakespeare worked for Her Majesty is part of the wider theory that Shakespeare was not the true author of his plays. One theory, which claims that William Stanley, the sixth Earl of Derby, wrote the Bard’s plays, bases itself on the pen of a Jesuit spy named George Fenner. In a letter dated from 1599, Fenner claims bluntly that Stanley was the true author.

This connection to espionage is interesting, for many believe that Shakespeare was himself a spy. One camp believes he was a secret Catholic who spied on English Protestants, while others believe that he worked directly for London as a “gentleman agent.” Most of the evidence for these suppositions are based on some of Shakespeare’s letters, which read like intelligence reports about the wealthy gentry in the English countryside.

1Aleister Crowley, Spy And Occult Interrogator

The “Wickedest Man in the World” is generally considered one of the Western world’s foremost occultists. “The Great Beast” was a great proponent of sex magick, which, to modern eyes, looks like perversion dressed up in mumbo-jumbo. Some historians have claimed that this was part of Crowley’s cover, for the chubby man from Warwickshire was a secret agent for the British Empire. Richard B. Spence’s “Secret Agent 666” points out that Crowley’s ability to always travel well without a clear source of income, plus his connections to the pro-German element in America during World War I, are clear indications that he was a spy.

One of the more popular beliefs is that during World War II, Crowley was tapped by Naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming (the author of James Bond) to interrogate Rudolf Hess in Scotland. Hess, Hitler’s deputy and a known occultist, was supposedly grilled by Crowley for hours and subjected to Crowley’s extremely spicy curry. Years later, Crowley would appear in the first James Bond novel as the villain Le Chiffre.

Firstly I wish to announce my return since the death of my father. I have been visibly absent but I have been keeping my eye on things behind the scenes, though no where as much as I would have liked to. I am now present full time.

If you have been reading the comments on the lists recently you will have noticed a number of readers asking for some changes and improvements around the place. This post is an opportunity for you to tell us exactly what sort of content you most want to see on the front page each day and what sort of content you don’t want to see.

Pull no punches—this is a chance for me to get a better understanding of what I need to do to keep the site thriving and restore the golden days of LV prior to my departure.

Feel free to use the up-votes if you agree with someone so I can get a good measure of what you are all wanting. This is also your chance to tell me if you have any issues with the site in general—issues around advertising, page load times, etc.

Readers who have been here since our inception nine years ago will remember a regular feature we used to have called “Your View”. Basically we propose a question, answer it ourselves, and then ask you to tell us what you think.

I have decided this week that we will bring this feature back to help us all get to know each other better, and, perhaps most importantly, to share our knowledge with others here.

So, this week’s Your View question is: “What Is The Worst Movie That Everyone Loves?”

My answer is: “Crash” from 2004, directed by Paul Haggis and starring Sandra Bullock, Ryan Phillippe, and Matt Dillon. It scores a whopping 7.8 on IMDB and won the Oscar for the best picture at the 78th Academy Awards.

I have watched this film numerous times hoping I might have been wrong about it the last time. While I totally get the premise of showing how harmful racism can be, each scene of racism depicted comes across as completely farcical. It is like someone who has never seen actual racism said “this is what racism must look like!” and then put it in the script.

Some of the acting was good (as you would expect with the likes of Ryan Phillippe who can be excellent at times) but the story line and scripting was so clearly trying to send a message that the actual message got lost.

This film is to racism, what Disney’s magic castle is to Hohenzollern Castle.

The Chinese coronavirus (COVID-19) is now impacting virtually everyone on earth in some way, whether it be for medical reasons or economic. In times past we have done occasional “Your View” posts in which our awesome readers share their opinions with each other. This has typically enriched us all. Our readers are typically smarter than average and have a very broad and interesting perspective on life.

So this is your chance to tell us: how is the Wuhan flu affecting you or your family? What impact is it having on you and what changes in your daily life has it brought about?

This is a time of great concern for all of us. No matter how well the governments we have chosen respond to this event on our behalf, the world is changed and will be changed for good. The economic impact of this pandemic is extraordinary and far reaching, and many of the effects of the massive worldwide bailouts and currency inflation are still to be seen.

What do you think the world is going to look like once this is all over? Will things seek to return to the “norm” as we have known it or is this “the turning”? Are we about to enter a new age of man?

Top 10 Essential Facts About The Coronavirus, The Only Article You’ll Ever Need About COVID-19

Daily the rate of infections from the coronavirus are reducing in number and more information is emerging about the true statistical dangers and benefits (or not) of lockdowns. Today, New Zealand’s government will drop the severity of the current lockdown to allow a much greater number of businesses to re-open and to allow the restoration of more freedom for those it serves: the people.

As a consequence of both of these things, I am removing the primary focus from the front page away from Coronavirus and back to regular editor’s picks of lists (this really only affects readers of the desktop site). As I was looking over the various lists for today’s editor’s picks I thought it might be a nice idea for us to all share with each the things we most miss and the first thing we will do when our own freedom is restored.

I’ll go first: the thing I have missed the most is morning coffee at my local Café Chocolate Dayz in Days Bay, Wellington. I make excellent coffee at home so I am not entirely without the stuff, but I miss the chats and the coffee skills of the baristas at my local. So the first thing I will do when I am finally out of lockdown is go to the café and have two long blacks with pouring cream and a plate of Bacon Hash, poached eggs on a hash brown with maple syrup drizzled bacon, mushrooms, and hollandaise sauce. It’s nearly keto and it’s awesome.

Now your turn: what are you going to do once this is all over?

A lot of work goes into the creation of a movie or television program such as writing the screen- or teleplay, pitching the idea to a production company, casting, and all the technical tasks which include cinematography, lighting and film editing—all coming together harmoniously to produce a masterpiece which will hopefully be appreciated for generations. And often such presentations do leave a long-lasting legacy, with movies such as The Wizard of Oz and It’s a Wonderful Life entertaining people for decades and decades. But sometimes movies simply disappear forever, falling from public view and memory due to age, mishap or scandal. Television programs often follow suit in entirety or by individual episode. There have also been actors whose entire careers have disappeared due to the ravages of time or political correctness. Here are a few examples of productions that have fallen into oblivion, and a couple that have miraculously made it back!

10 Books That Have Been Lost To History

10 Remembering Valeska Suratt

One shining example of an entire career gone missing is the story of Valeska Suratt (1882-1962), an early twentieth-century actress who rose from a risque career in vaudeville to embrace a successful career on Broadway. She was known for her glamour and style, and she went on to star in eleven silent flicks by Fox studios from 1915 through 1917, recreating herself in vampish roles along the lines of the great Theda Bara.

Suratt was truly an actress that should be held in high esteem but most people these days, with the exception of film historians, do not remember her due to two significant events. First, in 1928 she sued Cecil B. Demille, claiming he stole the scenario for a movie from her, and she was unofficially blacklisted in Hollywood where she never worked again. Then, years later in 1937, all eleven of her movies were destroyed in a fire at the building where they’d been stored in Little Ferry, New Jersey, wiping out all cinematic footage of her lively and highly-fashionable career. She was soon forgotten by the general public.

In 1962 Valeska Suratt died at 80 in a nursing home, having for the most part vanished from public visibility, though in those bygone, post-WWI days of yore all eyes were upon her…

9 Forgetting Charlie Chan

The aforementioned fire in 1937 at that New Jersey storage facility also took a bite out of the extensive Charlie Chan legacy, an empire that started in 1925 with the novel The House without a Key by Earl Derr Biggers, and would go on to include five more books, a comic strip, a 50’s tv show and a 70’s cartoon series. Four early movies from Fox studios were lost forever in that fire: Charlie Chan Carries On (1931), Charlie Chan’s Chance (1932), Charlie Chan’s Greatest Case (1933) and Charlie Chan’s Courage (1934). Each of these movies starred Warner Oland as Chan, and their absence is an unfortunate gap in the series of forty-four films featuring the wise and honorable detective.

But Charlie Chan is not held as favorably in American society as he once was, at least amongst the populace who can still remember who he was. There has not been a theatrical release with Chan since 1981 (Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen), which prompted demonstrations from Chinese-American activists at filming locations and theaters due to his acquired ‘Uncle Tom’ status. The character of Chan has been notoriously played on the big screen by white actors in yellowface with their eyes taped to look Asian, and the chop suey accent combined with his wizened aphorisms are just a bit too un-PC for the public these days. This sentiment may actually be the bigger catalyst deciding the cultural perseverance of Charlie Chan than an old fire at a Fox storage facility.

As the sleuth himself once said: All forgotten, like last year’s bird’s nest…

8 4 Devils Lost At Sea

Another golden oldie lost forever is the film 4 Devils (1928), a melodramatic circus movie directed by the iconic F. W. Murnau for Fox Studios. It was originally released as a silent movie, then re-released with a partial soundtrack, which gave the film a certain progressive distinction up until one of the actresses, a beautiful, Broadway crossover named Mary Duncan, borrowed it for a party in Florida with her friends where she threw it into the ocean. But why in blazes would she do such a thing?

Mary Duncan led a long and elegant life before passing in 1993 at the age of 98. Her escapades included a successful streak on Broadway, a short-lived but sexy career in Hollywood, and a marriage in 1933 to international polo star and businessman, Stephen Sanford. After marrying she retired from acting and became a seasoned philanthropist, ruling as the queen of Palm Beach society and walking amongst the ranks of Rose Kennedy and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, so we can only speculate who her friends might have been at that party in Florida where she lost the film. Actually most of the story is hearsay possibly based on solid fact but retold so many times it has different versions. Duncan probably borrowed the film in the ’40’s sometime after WWII, which means it survived the Fox storage facility fire in 1937 only to sleep with the fishes a decade later. And all of the many accounts of this story are by word of mouth with conflicting details, some having her casting the film into the Pacific, some into the Atlantic, some into a swimming pool, and some have her destroying the film by fire. According to her own attestation she became concerned with the combustible nitrate in the film, and fearing it might explode she threw it into the ocean, unaware she’d been holding the only copy. But that itself adds to the mystery because 4 Devils was released twice, as a silent flick and then a talkie, and since it’s assumed Duncan only borrowed one version of the film historians are still hopeful that the other might turn up somewhere.

Until that happens, perhaps another detail worth speculating upon is what they were drinking at that party, and how much.

7 Disney Ditches A Dark Legacy

Most people consider Disney movies to be wholesome and entertaining, but The Walt Disney Company has a long history of including negative racial cliches in their features that many people have come to find objectionable. Probably number one on that list would be Song of the South (1946), which portrays blacks as being indifferent to the unequal society in which they live, and depicts racial stereotypes with such insensitivity that the term ‘tar baby’ is used in one of the animated scenes. By a modern-day perspective the characters’ cheerful acceptance of the social structuring of the Old South is disturbing, and many find it unsettling to watch a smiling, elderly Uncle Remus take a pleasantly-psychedelic stroll while singing Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah! This movie has not shown in theaters since 1986 and is not included in the Disney Plus streaming membership.

Another major embarrassment for Disney was an explicitly racist scene from Fantasia (1940) in which black centaurettes with donkey legs are subservient to lighter-skinned centaurettes with horse legs, right down to shining their hooves. The scene was cut when the movie was released again in 1969. And the movie Dumbo (1941) certainly carries controversy when the young elephant meets a group of mocking black crows acting out in stereotypical Negro behavior, one of whom is actually called Jim Crow, named after a system of Southern laws which mandated racial segregation! Perhaps the worst example of racism in the film is the “Song of the Roustabouts”, which features faceless, black circus laborers in a very demeaning manner, even using the lyrics, “Grab that rope, you hairy ape.” Consequently, Disney Plus has removed this movie from subscribers whose profiles are under age 7.

Other movies unavailable to young children on Disney Plus are Peter Pan (1953) for derogatory portrayal of ‘redskins’, and The Aristocats (1970) for a negative depiction of Asians through a singing Siamese cat with buck teeth and a cliched accent.

6 Jack Paar Twice Removed

It’s not just movies that are often forever lost; the small screen has it’s share of casualties also…

Jack Paar took over the reins of The Tonight Show in July of 1957 as permanent host up until 1962, by which time, due to his popularity, the show had been officially renamed The Jack Parr Show. Paar had a unique approach with guests that was often very emotional, even to the point of weeping, and he helped make household names of Zsa Zsa Gabor, Liza Minnelli and Carol Burnett.

But the episode which best displayed Paar’s emotionalism probably would be the one that aired on February 11, 1960. Very early into the show Paar learned that a joke he had made the previous evening had been censored by the network for using the abbreviation ‘W.C.’, short for water closet, which by the standards of the day was considered to be, literally, bathroom humor. Before walking off the show he told the audience, “I am leaving The Tonight Show. There must be a better way of making a living than this.” Hugh Downs filled in for him, but on March 7 of the same year Paar walked back on stage and told everyone, “As I was saying before I was interrupted…” After the audience’s laughter died down he went on, “I believe my last words were that there must be a better way of making a living than this. Well, I’ve looked…and there isn’t.”

Jack Paar threw in the towel and left The Tonight Show in March of ’62, with Johnny Carson stepping in to replace him. Unfortunately, due to the high cost of broadcast videotape, most of the footage shot between 1957 through 1971 was lost when the tapes were reused, a process called ‘wiping’ which destroys the original content. Only a few Tonight Show episodes before ’72 have been reclaimed, some only partially, and mostly due to kinescopes, audiotracks or home movies with the camera aimed at the television.

So…in 1960 Paar may have removed himself from The Tonight Show for almost a full month to make a point, but NBC studios removed visual evidence of his absence, and most of his tenure as host on the show as well, by ‘wiping’ it away. Oooh…the irony…

5 Loss Of An Empire

It’s a shame when movies or tv shows are lost forever, but how about an entire network! The DuMont Television Network aired approximately two-hundred tv series from 1946 through 1956, so only individuals beyond the age of retirement might actually remember viewing them. All of their programs aired live and weren’t filmed for future viewing due to a tight budget, and even though kinescopes (recordings of monitors playing the program) were occasionally made, most of them have not survived the decades.

Unlike NBC and CBS, broadcast competitors whose television endeavors both sprang from successful radio networks, DuMont’s parent company, DuMont Laboratories, was a television equipment manufacturer. And it was genius of them to start creating programming content which would require televisions to watch! It worked well for a decade, and DuMont pioneered many insightful shows and formats, but they never achieved the financial freedom of their rival networks to keep up with their levels of quality production. ABC popped into the competition in 1948, and after merging with United Paramount Theaters in 1953 DuMont was pushed behind the other three networks in ratings. Things fell apart fast for DuMont at this point, and their last program, Boxing from St. Nicholas Arena, was aired in 1956.

During its heyday, however, the DuMont Television Network was very innovative in developing new formats for programming. The very first American soap opera, Faraway Hill, appeared in 1946 on DuMont starring Flora Campbell. Unfortunately all episodes have been lost, and no stills, scripts or press materials from the show have ever been found, so not much is known about the serial except for the fact Ms. Campbell is credited with twelve episodes. Another example of breakthrough programming was the Hazel Scott Show (1950) hosted by pianist Hazel Scott, the first black individual in America to have her own tv show. Unfortunately her program lost its sponsorship after an accusation of communism was made about her, and it was cancelled almost three months after its premiere with no recorded evidence of its existence. And then there was Cash and Carry (1946-1947), and even though no footage of the show remains it still has the double distinction of being both the first game show and the first reality show.

But traces of this mighty network’s short lifespan escaped obscurity, one fine example being Cavalcade of Stars (1949-1952), a variety show starring Jackie Gleason which performed comedic skits. A sketch called “The Honeymooners” aired in October of 1951, and characters were created that survived the death of the network to thrive on CBS as the Kramdens and the Nortons…extendedly the Flintstones and the Rubbles.

4 The Lost 1960 World Series—On DVD

MLB.com has been quoted as calling the final game of the 1960 World Series “maybe the greatest game seven in World Series Championship history.” And the late great Mickey Mantle of the New York Yankees has been known to say that the biggest disappointment in his baseball career was losing that series. But it was a high point for Bill Mazeroski of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who, in the ninth inning hit a walk-off home run out of the park, winning the game and concluding that year’s Fall Classic. This was a major disappointment for the Yankees, who had dominated the series, and for their fans. This was also a game worth rewatching, especially by Pirates fans, but that’s not how things worked back in 1960…

Up until the 70’s television stations either reused or discarded the games they filmed, and while that was certainly cost effective it didn’t show a lot of foresight for NBC to not preserve the 1960 World Series, especially since Game 7 would come to be considered one of the most noteworthy games in the history of Major League Baseball. For almost fifty years the only coverage remaining from the game was the existence of old photos, newspaper stories and radio broadcasts, but that all changed in 2009 when Robert Bader, VP of Bing Crosby Entertainment, found two canisters of 16-millimeter film marked ‘1960 World Series’ in the wine cellar of the late Crosby’s home outside San Francisco!

It seems Bing Crosby was a major fan and part owner of the Pirates until he died in ’77, but he chose to remove himself during the 1960 games due to being much too nervous to watch them play the Yankees, so he and his wife instead listened to the games on the radio while in Paris. But he paid a company to make a kinescope of Game 7 with the intention to watch if his team won after returning to the States. Oh what great luck for sports enthusiasts and collectors that the reels were stored in a cool, dry wine cellar where they were found nearly good as new! And after being doctored up and reformatted for DVD, with new, nostalgic content added, the 1960 World Series Game 7, once lost forever, is now available on Amazon.

3 Scandal!

Traditionally a good scandal could help boost a performer’s career, such as a torrid affair or a much-publicized visit to rehab. Though bump the nature of the scandal up a notch and one might have become blackballed or, as they called it, run out of Hollywood! Today that concept unfolds in programs being dropped and content being removed from streaming services. Bill Cosby is a perfect example of modern-day banishment from public view, though ironically the scandal which brought him down propelled his name and reputation exponentially unto public scrutiny, mainly in news coverage and on social media. After the initial investigation into Cosby’s misconduct with women networks started dumping his much-beloved program, The Cosby Show (1984-1992), as far back as 2014. But after his guilty verdict in 2018 even Bounce TV, a digital broadcast network targeting black Americans, has pulled the plug on Cosby. Amazon Prime still offers the show, however.

Hollywood scandals go way back, and the very first would probably be the three rape and manslaughter trials of comedian Fatty Arbuckle in November 1921 through April 1922. Arbuckle was also the first actor to reel in a million dollars per year, and he was at the height of his movie career with Paramount when the unthinkable occurred. Arbuckle and two friends threw a party in a San Francisco hotel which a young actress named Virginia Rappe crashed, and after growing ill she died four days later from a ruptured bladder after accusing the comic of rape. Even though doctors could not find evidence of assault, Arbuckle was arrested and tried for manslaughter three times, and the newspapers went wild with the allure of scandal! He was depicted as a brutish fiend whose excessive weight fatally injured the deceased during the alleged rape, and despite the fact he was acquitted the trials instantly ended his career when the motion picture industry officially banned his movies from theaters. The ban was lifted some months later but his movies still weren’t being shown, though ten years later he did make a comeback with Warner Brothers, signing a contract to make feature films in June of 1933. That very night he died of a heart attack in his sleep at the age of 46.

Perhaps a classic example of scandal wiping away an actor’s work would be the ‘airbrushing’ of Kevin Spacey from the film All the Money in the World (2017) after accusations by several men of sexual misconduct. His replacement was Christopher Plummer, and the procedure gives renewed meaning to the term ‘wiping footage’!

2 BLM Packs A Wallop!

The Black Lives Matter movement has been around since 2013, founded after the acquittal of the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. But protests peaked anew in 2020 with unprecedented participation and visibility after the deaths of several individuals by the police, the most noteworthy and inflammatory being that of George Floyd. There has never beforehand been such a movement in terms of both numbers and volition in the history of the United States, and all across the country heads are turning and ears are listening—including Hollywood!

One of the most controversial types of derogatory content on television has been the comedic practice of blackface, when a white person wears dark makeup or paint to resemble a black person usually to garner a laugh or two. Blackface song and dance, which arose in post-Civil War minstrel shows, generally attributed negative stereotypes such as ignorance, cowardice and laziness to African Americans. With the BLM protests of 2020 such imagery is quickly being purged from television, but are the expunged episodes equal in derision and ridicule to the old minstrel shows?

Tina Fey, the creator and co-star of NBC’s 30 Rock, voluntarily removed four episodes from syndication in 2020 due to blackface humor, although one of the episodes simply involved the transplant of a set of hands from a black man onto a white guy. Other shows with episodes pulled from streaming by Hulu for blackface humor in 2020 are The Golden Girls and Scrubs, and that same year Adult Swim, the Cartoon Network’s evening block for mature audiences, started pulling episodes from three of its shows, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Shivering Truth, and The Boondocks, for containing racially-insensitive humor.

And reality police shows are also taking quite a hit, the most notable being COPS, which Paramount Network took down after 32 seasons in June of 2020 following the death of George Floyd. Interestingly enough, as far back as 1989 a New York Times reviewer said of the show, “the overwhelmingly white troop of police are the good guys; the bad guys are overwhelmingly black.” They did start filming again in September, however, in Spokane County, Washington, though the new footage is intended only for foreign viewers and will not be aired in the US. Two similar shows that were cancelled are A&E’s Live PD and Investigation Discovery’s Body Cam, neither of which has resumed filming.

1 Digital Dilemmas

Classic examples of how old film footage can be destroyed include fire, environment, and wiping or recycling, but technology has gone digital and so has Hollywood. Not only does digital content keep better and a lot longer, it’s also much more cost-effective to use while filming and later for storage. Plus the editing process, both video and audio, is light-years ahead of working with analog footage. That doesn’t mean the industry is free from problems, however—for instance, be careful with the delete button! The movie Toy Story 2 (1999) was almost completely deleted during the process of its creation back in ’98 when one of the animators over at Pixar Animation Studios accidentally executed the wrong command, and right before everyone’s eyes files began disappearing from the main server. By the time they pulled the plug on the server and took a toll of the damage they ascertained that the command had deleted 90% of their movie!

It’s all about backup. During the production of Pixar’s A Bug’s Life (1998) the majority of ants were accidentally deleted, which was certainly an annoyance but not a tragedy as all their files were properly backed up. But with the Toy Story 2 accident that wasn’t the case. Unbeknownst to them their backup drive could only hold 4GB of data, compared to 10GB of movie, and new data saved was taking the place of older files. It’s quite a testament to the ingenuity of the studio and the long hours put in by staff members that Toy Story 2 met its release date in November of 1999.

And this type of disaster can happen at home. A professional videographer in California initiated a lawsuit against Adobe for the loss of $250,000 of data, which includes files that were deleted both from his Premiere Pro Media Cache and from an external drive onto which he was attempting to back up content. It seems that a bug, which Adobe has both acknowledged and claimed to have fixed in 2017, wiped out 100,000 video clips holding 500 hours of digital footage, and the plaintiff has requested a jury trial to be awarded damages. This is actually a class action lawsuit, since many other Premiere Pro users in 2017 reported similar file losses. It seems digital content, haunted by the DEL key and the commands and bugs that can strike it, sometimes goes up in flames even quicker than the old-time analog film!

10 Of The Most Sought-after Lost Films

About The Author: I am a freelance writer exploring fiction, nonfiction and the occasional poem. Originally born and raised in Connecticut, I’ve made a slow westward trek, living for thirty years in Colorado before moving to Southern California right in time for the pandemic.