As any insider knows, Hollywood is a dog-eat-dog place. With financiers and bullish studios twisting artistry into cold hard dollars, the dreams—and careers—of many an actor are regularly chewed up and spat out. But the few big-screen performers who make it don’t always have the full picture, even at the top of their game. Friends, agents, writers, directors, producers, and studios all go out of their way to pull the wool over actors’ eyes, landing the glitterati in performances they didn’t realize they had signed up for and often would love to get out of…

Related: 10 Films That Were Rescued by the Editor

10 Tyler Perry—Gone Girl (2014)

A master craftsman of the novel adaptation, director David Fincher aimed his lens at Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl in 2014 and delivered an icy-cold psychological thriller for the ages. While pretty much everyone involved was thrilled to be on the project, not least because of the impact it had on their respective careers, there was one cast member who wasn’t pleased when he found out what he’d signed up for.

A minor yet crucial role in the movie, Tyler Perry plays Tanner Bolt, a lawyer known for representing men suspected of killing their wives and who represents Ben Affleck’s Nick Dunne. Despite being involved in the industry as a filmmaker in his own right, Perry was unaware of the kinds of films Fincher is in the business of making. If he had known, he would have turned the part down.

But Perry’s agent knew this and so spun him a line, keeping his client in the dark about the kind of movie it would be—and that it was an adaptation, something Perry was equally perturbed about making—long enough to get him over the line.^[1]

9 Linda Blair—Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

While The Exorcist (1973) is recognized as one of the greatest horror movies of all time on pretty much every front, the undeniable star of the show is Linda Blair, the young actor who played possessed child Regan MacNeil. Nonetheless, after being overexposed at a young age, she wasn’t keen to hop back on board with a sequel.

Despite this, Exorcist II: The Heretic plowed ahead just a few years later, using an impressive, exciting, well-written script to get Blair signed on. Excited to work with Richard Burton and a host of Academy Award-nominated actors (all of whom also thought the movie was going to be a big deal), Blair was willing to return to a movie franchise that had taken over much of her life.

Unfortunately, the script she was given at the beginning of production was not the one they shot. Blair and all her castmates just had to roll with the blows, adapting to the new material as it got progressively worse. It was rewritten five times in total, and the movie they made was a disaster, leaving all the cast’s hopes in ruin.^[2]

8 Chris Rock—Bee Movie (2007)

The subject of a near-infinite number of memes, Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee Movie has lived far beyond its original premise as a family-friendly animation in the years since its release. And while its voice cast—which includes Seinfeld himself, Renee Zellweger, Matthew Broderick, John Goodman, and Chris Rock—is stacked with enough talent to have made it immortal, it wasn’t easy getting all of them on board.

Indeed, Seinfeld himself had to make the case directly to Rock to get him on the cast. He had a tough time of it, with Rock initially being resistant about joining what he saw as the next Shrek. But Jerry had one ace up his sleeve: Steven Spielberg.

Seinfeld talked up the apparent involvement of the legendary filmmaker to get Rock to sign on the dotted line. However, when Rock turned up to record his part, there wasn’t a trace of Spielberg to be found. While the Jurassic Park director had helped Seinfeld get his foot in the door with Dreamworks and featured in a couple of live-action trailers to promote the film, that is where his involvement ended.^[3]

7 Paula Abdul—Bruno (2009)

Despite having enjoyed a successful career as a singer, dancer, and actress in her own right, Paula Abdul was better known in the 2000s for judging American Idol. This is what put her in the crosshairs of prankster Sacha Baron Cohen, who followed up his hit mockumentary Borat (2006) with another, less successful outing in the genre.

Starring as gay Austrian fashion journalist Bruno, Cohen travels to the U.S. in the hopes of becoming a Hollywood celebrity. Along the way, he interviews and irritates a host of famous faces—Abdul included. The only thing is, Paula didn’t know she was starring in the movie until after the fact.

Having been told she was receiving the International Artist of the Year award, the American Idol judge arrived for an interview with Bruno. Cohen’s team kept all of Abdul’s stylists and entourage out to maintain secrecy and put the star in an interview that included sitting on and being served sushi from the bodies of live men. Abdul didn’t realize the full extent of what had happened—or the German-language agreement her publicist had signed—until the media called asking what it was like to work with Cohen…^[4]

6 Bill Murray—Garfield: The Movie (2004)

The first major Garfield feature arrived two decades before the most recent one, inserting a CGI fat cat into the real world, with Bill Murray providing a sardonic voice to match the comic strips. Despite this ingenious casting, Garfield has been the bane of Bill Murray’s career ever since he agreed to do it—but it’s his own fault.

When Murray received the script for the movie, he mistook writer Joel Cohen for Joel Coen of Fargo (1996) and Big Lebowski (1998) fame. Thus, the actor signed up on name recognition alone, figuring the guy who made some of the smartest, funniest films of the past decade would steer him right.

Nobody was quick to correct his mistake, not least because it meant they got to keep one of Hollywood’s funniest men on an otherwise run-of-the-mill production. It wasn’t until Murray turned up to record his lines that he realized something was wrong—namely, a lack of gags and good writing. He watched the film to get a feel for what had gone awry, and this was when they told him who was behind it, but by that point, it was too late.^[5]

5 Bill Murray—Ghostbusters II (1989)

Garfield was not the first time Murray had been stung on the run-up to a film. While some would say he should have known better, somehow, his experience with Ghostbusters II didn’t leave him with any lasting vigilance.

After the success of the first movie—itself essentially a series of skits by SNL cast members that nobody expected to be so big—Murray was reluctant to do a sequel. But given not just the nine-figure box office numbers but the infinite merchandise and branding potential, nobody else involved was going to let this stand. Someone (possibly director Ivan Reitman) rounded up the cast, got them laughing and having fun again, and pitched a sequel story idea that made Murray think it might just work.

As these things go, however, the film that was pitched, and even the one that was written, was not the film they shot. Murray figured that as the ink was dry and they were already shooting it, there was nothing to do but grin, bear it, and try to make the most of things.^[6]

4 Halle Berry—X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)

X-Men: The Last Stand is nobody’s favorite X-Men movie, having brought the franchise to its knees. This fate would last five years before Matthew Vaughn set it back on its feet with prequel/reboot X-Men: First Class (2011). But for all the film’s more obvious failings, its worst ones happened behind the scenes.

Vaughn was originally in 20th Century Fox’s sights as the director for The Last Stand. However, one fateful meeting, in which he uncovered the studio’s plan to trick Halle Berry into returning, made him walk away.

Berry was lured back to the franchise with a padded, false script that put her character—Storm—front and center rather than (as things turned out) a much smaller part of a large ensemble. While Berry never found out about this before the contract was signed, Vaughn did. While visiting an executive’s office in Tinseltown, he saw the fake script. When he discovered what they were doing with it, he washed his hands with the project altogether. Thus, the studio went with Brett Ratner, and the rest is history.^[7]

3 Sylvester Stallone—Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot (1992)

The 1990s saw a lot of ’80s action stars turn to comedy, pivoting with a new decade and trying to broaden their appeal. And while results varied wildly, Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot—in which Sylvester Stallone stars as a police sergeant whose mother (Estelle Getty) tags along on a brutal murder case—is a certified dud.

Why, then, did Stallone put himself up for it? It has everything to do with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who had been Sly’s cinematic rival during the ’80s action era and was gunning for him in the ’90s.

Schwarzenegger was offered the script first and recognized it as a flop. Still, knowing the part was being offered to Stallone, he decided to lay a trap. Certain Stallone would want the role if he heard Arnie was interested, Schwarzenegger called his agent and director Roger Spottiswoode feigning interest. They reported back to the Rocky star, and true to form, Stallone jumped at the opportunity. It wasn’t until years later, after the film had bombed and the two stars had become friends, that Sly found out he had been duped.^[8]

2 Ryan Reynolds—X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)

When Fox was trying to breathe life back into the X-Men franchise with their Origins series, they presented Ryan Reynolds with an ultimatum. If he wanted to play Deadpool, he’d have to be in this one.

He wrote and ad-libbed every line of his own dialogue, as the script had nothing prepared for him. Still, even this couldn’t save him, as Fox decided to destroy the character, sewing his mouth shut and making him unrecognizable. Despite promising that if Reynolds didn’t play the character, they would have someone else play him, this is what happened anyway. When Reynolds’s shooting time was up, they had Scott Adkins play the transformed version of the character in the film’s final sequence.

Despite this ostensibly being the first step on Reynolds’s path to a standalone Deadpool movie, the studio then shelved this idea. Had it not been for test footage being leaked five years later—confirmed via lie detector to have been assisted by Reynolds himself—it might never have been made at all.^[9]

1 The Entire Cast—Movie 43 (2013)

An anthology comedy that everyone would rather forget, Movie 43 took all the excesses of gross-out filmmaking from the preceding decades and wrote them across an excruciating 94 minutes. Featuring an ensemble cast of, among others, Hugh Jackman, Kate Winslet, Halle Berry, Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, and Emma Stone, this is a rare occasion where the entire cast was duped into starring.

Halle Berry dumps her breasts in a bowl of guacamole; Hugh Jackman has a pair of testicles on his chin; and Gerard Butler is a foul-mouthed leprechaun—these are just a few of the scenarios these Hollywood A-listers found themselves in throughout Movie 43. However, they didn’t realize it would be like this.

Most of the cast were convinced in small, casual pitches at parties and weddings by producer-director Peter Farrelly and his producing partner Charlie Wessler. Few of the stars knew what they would be shooting—and neither did the filmmakers, clobbering the movie together as they went. When the time came, Farrelly knew the actors wanted out of the project, and while a few slipped the net, he wouldn’t let most of them go.^[10]

Isn’t food the best? Not only is it delicious, we literally have to eat it to stay alive. Still, there’s a catch: If our dinner is spoiled, the very thing keeping us alive could end up killing us. To prevent this, we have developed a number of creative ways to keep food in prime condition as long as possible. Here are ten of the strangest ones:

Irradiation is not a new thing in cooking. After all, microwave ovens (which work by bombarding the food with electromagnetic radiation) have been around for decades. But when it comes to food preservation, “radiation” suddenly becomes a worrying word. Preserved foods and radiation together tend to conjure images of nuclear shelters, things that glow in the dark and even agonizing death.

The last one of those is actually a very accurate image. The thing is, it’s not about your death—it’s the death of pests and germs in your food. Food irradiation is a technique where the food is exposed to ionizing radiation (for instance X-rays) in order to kill or incapacitate germs and microbes. Done correctly, the process can slow or even completely stop spoilage.

Have you ever wondered how some products claim they have no additives, yet have a suspiciously long shelf life? There is a trick to that. It’s called High Pressure Processing (also known as pascalization and bridgmanization, for the scientists who helped develop the technique). The food is subjected to a massive pressure of around 50,000 pounds per square inch for up to fifteen minutes. This sheer pressure is enough to inactivate microbes, preserving the food up to ten times to its usual shelf life (for instance, guacamole normally lasts around 3 days, but the high pressure treatment increases this to a month). And it gets better: Pascalization can even vastly improve the food. Research suggests that it can double the levels of certain healthy natural antioxidants in fruit. The method sounds like something straight out of a Science Fiction story. Even so, the basic principles of the process were invented back in the 17th Century by Blaise Pascal, a French scientist.

It’s difficult to imagine burials and cuisine together, except as an unfortunate aftermath to eating really bad salmon. But although most people assume burial just leads to decomposition (everyone knows buried corpses become skeletons), it is actually a fairly effective preservation technique. Burying food can shelter it from many spoiling agents, such as light and oxygen. The soil should preferably be dry and salty, or even frozen. Just remember to use a good container—otherwise your meal might easily become worm food. Burial is also used in cooking. For instance, the Korean national dish Kimchi is prepared by burying vats of seasoned vegetables for months.

Jugging is a peculiar technique of cooking and canning meat at the same time. It is similar to the time-honored vagabond tradition of heating a can of beans over a fire using the tin as a makeshift cooking pot. Jugging is a more hardcore version of the technique: The tin is a large earthenware jug and the beans are replaced with meat. The jug is tightly closed and the food is slowly cooked inside it. The process results in a tasty, stew-like meal that is preserved in the tightly shut jug.

Jugging was a common practice in both English and French kitchens until the 20th Century, which means it’s pretty much the only thing the two cuisines have ever agreed about. Some recipes that use the technique are “Jugged Hare” (rabbit cooked in wine and juniper berries) and kippers (because the tightly shut jug helps contain their smell).

Some foods, such as fruits and vegetables have a very delicate surface texture. This makes them very difficult to preserve with conventional methods (such as heat or chemicals) so that their taste and texture doesn’t chance.

However, scientists have found a way around this problem. They bombard the fruit with plasma (which consists of ionized particles and is considered the “fourth state” of matter, along with liquids, solids and gases). The particular plasma they use is not the destructive, superheated one you may know from movie and video game weaponry. Instead, they use nonthermal plasma, which is roughly room temperature and relatively safe . . . unless you’re a microbe.

Easily the most futuristic technique on this list, Nonthermal Plasma Treatment has proven to be a reliable antimicrobial treatment that doesn’t alter the food in any way—apart from making it safer to eat and giving it a longer shelf life.

Have you ever wondered how catering services manage to transport their food so that it’s still good and fresh when they serve it? Cooking the food on location is often impossible, and they can’t just prepare it in their own kitchen and cart it to the party guests on the other side of the town.

Or can they?

The technique many caterers use is called blast chilling. It’s a method of safe and swift preservation that is custom designed for hot food. First, they cook the food. Then, they rapidly cool it down from 158 °F (+70°C) to 37 °F (+3 °C) or below. As long as the process takes under 90 minutes, the food remains in the exact condition it was before chilling. A normal storage cooler could never manage that (shockingly, they can take 12 to 23 hours to cool food properly), so a special “air blast chiller” cabinet is used for the process. The frozen food is easy to transport and all they need to do is heat it up on location—its taste and quality has remained the same.

Since the technique is effective and relatively easy, its use has started to spread beyond catering. For instance, the next time your frozen TV dinner tastes particularly appealing, chances are it has been blast chilled.

Our ancestors realized that one of the most effective ways to preserve food was to seal it away from the elements, especially oxygen. They also knew that the best way to cover food was with even more food.

This is how two classic preservation techniques were born. Aspic (which is essentially savory jelly) was created around the middle ages, when cooks found the way to turn various stocks and consommés (clear stock or broth soup) into gelatin. They started encasing food (particularly meat and seafood) inside chunks of aspic. The gelatin prevented oxygen from spoiling the food, and provided a delicious addition to the eventual meal.

Confit also relies on shutting off the oxygen. There are two variations: The meat confit, where food is slowly cooked submerged in its own fat, cooled off (so the fat forms a solid layer all around the meat) and sealed in a container. The fruit version replaces the fat with sugar water.

Both aspic and particularly confit are also revered cooking techniques. The Confit d’Canard (duck’s leg confit) of southwestern France is considered a legendary delicacy.

Air is essential to plants and animals alike. But once they become food, air suddenly turns into an enemy: The oxygen that once gave them life now aids microbes and oxidization, doing its best to decompose the food as quickly as possible.

Food industry has gotten around the problem with a trick called “modified atmosphere”. It’s exactly what it sounds like—they artificially create an atmosphere that prevents spoilage. The practice originated in the 1930s, when food ships started filling their holds with carbon dioxide in order to increase their cargo’s shelf life. Later, the industry developed packaging techniques that helped encase products in the kind of gas that was optimal for the shelf life of that particular foodstuff.

Although the practice may sound suspicious, modified atmosphere gases are actually completely safe. They’re just different mixtures of oxygen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide, all of which are naturally present in the Earth’s atmosphere.

Lye is a strong alkaline solution that is commonly used in things like soap, drain cleaners and various cleaning agents. It is extremely caustic and highly poisonous. Despite all this, it’s also used for food preservation.

When combined with fat (either animal fat or vegetable oil), lye reacts by starting a process called saponification. The end result of this reaction is usually soap, but certain lye solutions (“food-grade lye”) can be used to saponify food. This changes the texture, scent and flavor of the food to a great extent.

The most notable lye-treated foods are probably Lutefisk (lye-soaked whitefish) and cured olives. The fish is gelatinous and has an extremely sharp taste and smell, whereas the olives become soft and slightly soapy.

Lye treated food is considered a delicacy by some. But before you decide to make some, please remember that the treatment process is fairly challenging. Food grade lye is hard to come by and even if you find some, getting just one step of the process wrong can result in a dangerously poisonous meal.

Our modern world puts a huge emphasis on fresh and clean food. While there’s nothing wrong with this, it couldn’t be further removed from the priorities of our ancestors.

Humanity has been cooking meals for a long time, and the oldest way to treat food is the simplest: Just let stuff be and see if the end result is edible. Of course, we don’t call it exactly that: We dance around it with fancy terms like “biopreservation”. Still, deliberate spoiling is at the heart of many of our favorite foodstuffs.

The most commonly used variety of this is fermentation. Our favorite drinks (beer and wine) are completely dependent on this controlled spoiling process. Many milk products and baked goods rely on it. Many charcuterie products (prepared meats such as salami and dry aged beef) also benefit from the fermentation process.

Fermentation can also be used to effortlessly prepare food in most extreme conditions. An old Icelandian recipe called Hákarl requires no cooking: It’s chunks of pressed, disemboweled shark that has fermented underground for six weeks. Alaskan Inuit tribes are also known to prepare their catch by letting it ferment. This method is not without its failures, though—a lovely snack of fermented walrus can come with a side order of botulism.

Pauli Poisuo enjoys his food and also writes for Cracked.com. Why not follow him on Twitter?

There’s no doubt about the connection between nerds and scientists. Often, the culture of one feeds the other. Perhaps it is because the phenomena of the natural and technological worlds become building blocks when creating fantastic fictional worlds.

However, it is not always the scientists who inspire nerd culture to provide the elements to create wonderful worlds of fantasy. Sometimes, the influence travels in the opposite direction and inspires scientists to examine fictional worlds to understand our own natural world.

Regardless of the direction from which ideas flow, an incredible symbiotic relationship exists between both spheres.

10 Moving Atoms

In September 1989, IBM physicist Don Eigler managed to arrange 35 Xenon atoms to spell out “IBM.” This amazing feat was made possible by a scanning tunneling microscope. Single atoms are arranged by using a sharp tip to move over a surface and release attractive and repulsive forces to pick up and put down the atoms.

Since then, physicists have managed to write the word for “atom” in Japanese Kanji, create the world’s smallest abacus, and leave notes for colleagues. The culmination of their work is depicted by manipulating atoms in the short film, “A Boy and His Atom,” which is more science than fiction.

While the real-world application of building on such a small scale has not been fully realized, it is predicted that the discoveries made with this technology will assist in developing life-changing nanotechnology.^[1]

9 Lucy

Perhaps one of the most iconic fossils in the world is that of Lucy the Australopithecus afarensis. Discovered in 1974 in Hadar, Ethiopia, by Donald Johanson and Tom Gray, Lucy is dated to have lived about 3.2 million years ago.

Her curved spine, bicondylar knees, and pelvic structure indicate that she was primarily bipedal. Thus, she was one of the oldest hominid ancestors at the time she was discovered.

What makes this discovery so nerdy, though?

After they initially found the remains, the team partied into the night. The popular Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds” played throughout the night. Like all good stories, nobody knows exactly who decided to call her Lucy, but it was clear that the Beatles inspired the naming of one of the most famous human ancestors.^[2]

Although it may seem like a stretch to consider it nerdy to name a fossil after a song by the biggest pop band in history, I would consider Beatlemania to be an offshoot of “nerd.”

8 Sonic Hedgehog Gene

Scientists who discover genes are a little eccentric when it comes to naming them. The most popular may be the Sonic Hedgehog gene, which is responsible for many aspects of a human’s early development. This includes signaling the split of the brain into a left and right side and the split of the eye field so that we develop two separate eyes.

Sonic Hedgehog got its name from two scientists. In the early 1990s, Christiane Nsslein-Volhard first discovered the gene when she deactivated it in fruit flies. This caused a mutation resulting in the growth of small denticles that resembled hedgehog quills. The gene was simply named Hedgehog.^[3]

Three similar genes were later discovered. They were given the names Indian, Desert, and Sonic. While Indian and Desert are names of real species of hedgehog, Sonic came from researcher Robert Riddle. He was inspired by a promotional comic of Sonic the Hedgehog that his daughter had brought over from the UK before the video game was released.

Recently, some scientists have been trying to cut down on the silly names that researchers have been giving to genes. They want to be more professional when speaking to human patients. Although the gene in question is now officially known as SHH, most people still refer to it as Sonic Hedgehog.

7 William Gibson And The Internet

When we watch films or read books set in the future, we often laugh at how far off their vision can be. Take a look at Back to the Future‘s view of what 2015 would look like compared to what really happened during 2015. While predicting the future is often a crapshoot, many of the writings of William Gibson have been extremely accurate.

With his first novel, Neuromancer, written in the 1980s, Gibson was able to envision a world much like our current one in terms of the Internet and how computers have seeped into every aspect of our lives. Gibson is credited for creating the terms “cyberspace” and “computer virus” as well as inspiring the film series The Matrix.

Gibson downplayed many of his predictive abilities and insisted that his writings were focused on how people were living currently and following those trails to what they might evolve into. Despite his predictive powers and inspiration on the world of computer science, Gibson humorously points out that the major thing he never thought to include in his story was the prevalence of cell phones.^[4]

6 Cthulhu

H.P. Lovecraft was unable to attend college and enter the scientific community due to a childhood illness. However, like the cult of the tentacled cosmic entity Cthulhu that was bent on destruction and chaos, scientists have been spreading the influence of Cthulhu throughout the scientific world and beyond.

First, a spider in the redwoods of California was given the name Pimoa cthulhu. While the spider doesn’t exactly resemble the evil being, the discoverer G. Hormiga states that it was “named after H.P. Lovecraft’s mythological deity Cthulhu, akin to the powers of chaos.”

Additionally, microbes referred to as protists found in the guts of termites have been named Cthulhu macrofasciculumque and Cthylla microfasciculumque, an ode to the Great One and his secret daughter.^[5]

These microbes have been described by the researchers as having up to 20 flagella (tentacles) that they use to locomote like an octopus. They are responsible for breaking down the wood that termites eat into a sugar that the creatures can digest.

Extending past our world and into the far reaches of space, a region on dwarf planet Pluto was named after Cthulhu. The region is one of the darkest features on the planet, and that includes places named after evil Lord of the Rings creatures and the Mayan god of death.

5 The Lord Of The Rings Inspires Everything

Speaking of evil creatures from The Lord of the Rings, it’s time to talk about one of the most present forms of nerd culture in the scientific world. The Lord of the Rings is pervasive in almost every scientific discipline—from the taxonomy of creatures both extant and extinct to regions of planets and comets.

A software company named Palantir also works with the CIA and NSA. In case you’re wondering, Palantir refers to Middle Earth’s version of a crystal ball that allows the user to see anywhere in the world. Let that sink in.

Even more interesting, J.R.R. Tolkien’s influence has extended beyond scientists paying homage by naming discoveries after things from Middle Earth to actual scientific research based on Tolkien’s works. For instance, researchers have created climate models for Middle Earth and determined that the Shire, the home of the hobbits, is much like Lincolnshire or Leicestershire in the UK and that Mordor is similar to Los Angeles or West Texas.

Others have investigated the oxygen levels of Middle Earth to explore how men in that world could perform fantastic feats of athleticism, whether Frodo could survive a stabbing while wearing mithril armor, and the physical and mental disabilities of Gollum.^[6]

While these articles are somewhat tongue-in-cheek, real science was conducted to investigate these aspects of the story. However, the question remains: Why do scientists strive so hard to come up with scientific reasoning for Tolkien’s works?

It is because they are inspired by the depth that was put into these stories. Tolkien created languages, lineages, and geographies in his stories. That kind of attention to detail in world-building attracts and inspires scientific minds.

4 IBM Watson

IBM is known for creating interest in science and technology with their Grand Challenges. These challenges typically pit man versus machine in tests of intellectual prowess.

IBM previously had created Deep Blue, the computer responsible for defeating Grand Master Garry Kasparov at chess. Searching for their next Grand Challenge, IBM worker Charles Lickel looked to Ken Jennings’s record 74 wins on the quiz show Jeopardy.

Originally considered to be “too gimmicky,” the project developed from creating a system that could barely beat a five-year-old to winning against two of Jeopardy‘s legendary contestants in a three-day, head-to-head challenge.

Beyond simply answering questions, the system—named after the company’s founder, Thomas J. Watson—had to overcome the challenge of formulating questions from clues given on the show. To a human, the concept seems fairly straightforward. But for a machine, this is a precise and nuanced difference.

To accomplish this, IBM developed software called DeepQA that analyzed what was being asked and the information it was being given. The system would create multiple threads with likely answers. Based on the likelihood of being right, Watson would give the answer.

For Jeopardy, over 200 million pages of information were generated that Watson would comb through for answers. Back in 2011, when Watson demolished the other contestants with a lead of more than $50,000, Watson was the size of the entire room.

Currently, Watson is used for information sectors and can fit in the vegetable crisper of a refrigerator. With the supercomputer’s huge advancements in the past few decades and its proof of intellectual superiority, Ken Jennings said it best when he admitted, “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.”^[7]

3 Scientific Studies From Interstellar

Films often require suspension of disbelief to some degree. Whether it is adding dramatic flair, creating wholly fictional worlds, or slightly changing the physics of reality to make a more compelling story, filmmakers are known to bend the truth a bit.

So it should raise some interest when astrophysicists and other scientists credit a film with being an accurate representation of reality. This makes Christopher Nolan’s movie Interstellar stand out among most other high-budget films.

To give the most accurate portrayal of black holes in real life, the special effects team Double Negative partnered with physicists such as Kip Thorne, who also participated in Carl Sagan’s film Contact.

While the filmmakers have admitted that some true features one would see in a black hole were toned down to reduce confusion, the results seen in the film are the most accurate depiction and have led to some interesting discoveries about the behavior and morphology of black holes. By studying the code used to create the visual effects in the film, physicists have published scientific papers detailing the behaviors of black holes.^[8]

2 James Cameron Reaching Deepest Point In Ocean

While Christopher Nolan’s film took us through the unexplored reaches of the final frontier, the work of James Cameron has helped science explore the unseen depths of our own planet.

In March 2012, James Cameron, director of some of the most iconic films in history (Titanic, Avatar, The Terminator) partnered with scientists to complete a solo descent into the deepest portion of the Mariana Trench known as Challenger Deep.

This was the first time since the 1960s that anyone had descended to these depths and the first time that anyone had done it solo. The purpose of the mission was to explore the deep unknowns of the planet and to possibly bring back any life found for research purposes.

So, how did the famous filmmaker manage to become the first and only person to ever reach the deepest part of the Mariana Trench? Cameron answered, “I sort of joke about this, but it’s more true than not that I made the movie because I wanted to do an expedition to the wreck of the Titanic, and I did explore it.”^[9]

For Cameron, there is no separation between explorer and storyteller. His blockbuster films are the ways he tells his stories about the inspiring majesty of nature that he has explored.

1 Cost Of Death Stars Destroys Empire

In what may be one of the most thorough accounts of “they did the math,” Zachary Feinstein took an in-depth look at the galactic economy and the potential catastrophe that destroying two death stars would have on the economy. Feinstein published his findings in 2015 in an article titled “It’s a Trap: Emperor Palpatine’s Poison Pill.”

He determined that the destruction of both death stars in the original Star Wars trilogy would have tragic economic consequences if the Rebel Alliance was not prepared for any kind of buyout.

Based on previous research, the materials and development (in 2012) would have cost a grand total of at least $419 quintillion. Although that’s a large number, Feinstein notes that the galactic economy surely is larger than our piddly US economy.

Then Feinstein goes on to develop a picture of how the galactic economy would have looked and the toll that destroying two death stars would have. The argument is that the empire would have taken out a government loan to build these hulking planet destroyers.^[10]

With the death of Emperor Palpatine, the destruction of both death stars, and the dissolution of the empire, the borrower would default on the $419 quintillion loan (without anyone to pay for it) and throw the economy into a huge deficit unless the Rebel Alliance would have planned for such a circumstance.

But as Feinstein notes, the Rebel Alliance probably had no such plans. As best explained by one of their highest-ranking members, the rogue-like Han Solo: “Never tell me the odds.”

+ The Time An Astronaut Called Into Car Talk

Car Talk was a radio show that aired between 1977 and 2012 and featured the Boston-accented brothers Tom and Ray Magliozzi. The show consisted of the brothers taking calls from people around the country asking about their car troubles.

The simple concept of the show eventually became comedic as the brothers argued and laughed about the strange experiences people would have with their cars. Perhaps one of the strangest calls on the long-running show came from John in Houston in 1997.

The twice that I’ve driven this thing off the line, when I first start it up, it starts great. It starts really, really well, and it runs incredibly rough for the first two minutes. This is one of those puzzlers. After the first two minutes, after this really rough ride, there’s kind of a jolt. And then it runs smooth for about six and a half minutes, and then at that point, the engine dies.^[11]

The caller informed them that he was talking about a government vehicle. The brothers weren’t easily fooled and soon found out that the caller was John Grunsfeld aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. “Not exactly our area of expertise,” the brothers concluded.

George enjoys reading, writing, and playing guitar. He likes writing about science.

From the 15th through the 18th centuries, Europe was a scary place, particularly if you were an elderly woman. Tension between the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church meant that religious terror was rife, bad luck was blamed on Devil worshipers, and the European witch trials claimed the lives of around 200,000 people across Germany, Sweden, France, and Britain.

Witch finders used a range of bizarre methods, often bordering on torture, to entice confessions from the accused or otherwise “prove” their guilt. Would any of these insane tests prove you guilty of witchcraft?

10 Waking The Witch

The Italians pioneered a particularly uncomfortable method for testing witches that became very popular in Scotland. We know it now as sleep deprivation. This may sound like something you have suffered yourself if you work a stressful job or have young children. But for accused witches, it was a creatively cruel trial and punishment.

The accused had an iron hoop with four sharp prongs forced into her mouth. It was then attached to the wall behind her, the effect being that she would be in pain and unable to lie down.

The men charged with guarding the witch were also instructed to keep her awake through whatever means they deemed necessary. Usually, after about three days of this, the victim would start to vividly hallucinate. When questioned in this state, the accused would recount fantastical tales of flying, turning into animals, and partaking in satanic rituals.^[1]

The witch catchers proclaimed that this was the witch “awakening” within the woman and was undeniable proof of her guilt. Those found guilty of witchcraft in Scotland were usually strangled at the stake and then burned.

9 Touch Test

In 1662, two elderly women in England were subjected to the infamous “touch test.” Their names were Rose Cullender and Amy Denny. They were charged with bewitching two young girls who had been suffering with fits.

The witch hunters believed that someone who was under the influence of sorcery would have an unusual reaction to physical contact with the spellcaster. The suspect would be brought into the room and forced to lay her hands on the person having fits. If the illness ceased, this was seen as proof that the accused was guilty.

In the Cullender and Denny case, it was said that the suffering children held their fists so tightly clenched that even the strongest man in the village could not pry their fingers open. Yet, as soon as they were touched by the accused women, the girls stopped their fits and easily opened their palms.^[2]

To test if the girls were lying, the judge had them blindfolded and touched by other members of the court. It was found that they had the same reaction every time someone placed their hands on the girls. So they were faking. Despite this, Cullender and Denny were found guilty and faced execution by hanging.

8 The Rack

Germany is usually considered to be the country that executed the most witches. During the 1620s, the five-year-long Wurzburg trials are estimated to have killed over 900 people. No one was safe from the Prince Bishop Philipp Adolf von Ehrenberg, including his own nephew, 19 Catholic priests, and some boys. Seven were found guilty of having sexual intercourse with demons before being beheaded or burned at the stake.

The accused were found guilty following confession, and torture was not yet illegal in Central Europe. The Germans had many cruel methods of forcing confessions from their victims, but the most popular was the rack.

It usually consisted of an iron frame with a wooden roller at one or both ends. The unfortunate souls had their hands bound to one roller and their ankles bound to the other. During their interrogations, their torturers would use the rollers to increase the tension on the binds and essentially stretch the accused.^[3]

The joints of the victim would eventually be dislocated and then separated entirely while they listened to the sickening popping and snapping of their own bones. Would that be enough to make you plead guilty to witchcraft?

7 Pricking

Witch pricking was once considered to be the most accurate way of testing for witchcraft. The accused would be stripped completely naked in front of the court and then shaved from head to toe. The witch pricker (a revered profession) would then seek out the “Devil’s mark” by pricking the victim all over with a thick needle.

It was believed that there would be a spot that did not bleed or cause pain—proof of a contract with the Devil. This was really a form of horrendous sexual abuse. In a society that held modesty in high regard, many women would confess just to end the humiliation.

In Scotland, a witch pricker could expect to make £6 per witch discovered. When you consider that the average daily wage in those days was one shilling, this was a significant amount.

As with most jobs, it was a male profession. But that didn’t stop one woman from becoming one of the most infamous witch prickers of all time. While dressed as a man and calling herself John Dickson, Christian Caddell sentenced as many as 10 witches to death. She was eventually caught and banished to the fever-ridden Barbados. Many people didn’t even survive the voyage.^[4]

6 Spotted By Visgossar

Sweden was unique in its persecution of witches because it relied heavily on the witness testimonies of children (often the offspring of the accused), who were tortured until they provided suitably fantastical tales.

The children would be predominantly questioned about their experiences visiting Blakulla—not hell, but the Devil’s banqueting hall with a peek hole in the floor through which one could observe Hell beneath. Some of the youths would find themselves competing to fabricate the most creative stories, which would ultimately end with the execution of their parents.

The visgossar were young boys who were believed to have the power to spot the invisible Stigma Diaboli (mark of the Devil) on the forehead of the witch. Following a church service, it was common practice for the boys to point at a few women and name them guilty. These poor folks were often executed just days later.^[5]

The boys were paid per witch identified, and this meant that many homeless orphans and beggars would come forward claiming to be visgossar as a way to make easy money. Of course, the profession came with its own dangers. On several occasions, vigossar were found beaten to death by the families of those they accused.

5 Ducking Stool

Often referred to as “dunking,” the ducking stool was the most widespread and trusted method for testing a witch. The suspect was tied to a chair or with her wrists bound to her ankles. Then she was attached to a pulley and lowered into a body of freezing water.

The logic was simple. If she was guilty, she would float on the top and be put to death as a witch. If she was innocent, she would sink to the bottom and drown.

Witch catchers believed this would work for different reasons. Some thought that witches would automatically float to the top of the water because they had renounced their baptisms as a rejection of God. Others believed that witches were able to use their magical powers to float to the top and stop themselves from drowning.

Either way, it was generally accepted that the victim was innocent and would be accepted into Heaven if she drowned and died. In the eyes of the witch catchers, this was a far better fate than living as a guilty witch bound for execution and hell. Sometimes, a floating witch would be dunked repeatedly until she confessed, which was a medieval form of water torture.^[6]

Interestingly, the ducking stool was designed specifically for women only and was also used as a punishment for being a prostitute or scold. A scold was a woman who was generally considered a nuisance, who spread chaos among her neighbors by habitually chastising, quarreling, or gossiping.

In these cases, the ducking stool contraption was sometimes attached to wheels and paraded through the town on the way to the dunking site. This was to ensure maximum humiliation for the accused.

4 Weighing The Witch

Holland had a very famous weighing house in Oudewater. Women from as far away as Germany and Hungary would travel there to prove their innocence. The idea was simple. Souls are heavy burdens to bear. As a witch would not possess one, she would be significantly lighter than an innocent woman.

The weighing house had a large set of scales. The accused would stand on one side, and cast-iron weights would be placed on the other. Women of the proper weight were given certificates to prove their innocence.^[7]

The Dutch were not the only ones who believed that you could find a witch by weighing her. In Aylesbury, England, it was common practice to strip a woman naked and weigh her against a heavy, iron-bound Bible. If the scales did not balance out exactly, the woman would be convicted as a witch.

In other places in Europe, women would be weighed against stacks of Bibles. If they were not found guilty straightaway, extra Bibles were sometimes added to the pile.

3 Cruentation

If someone was accused of murder by witchcraft, they could be proved guilty by cruentation in many European courts. They believed that the soul still resided in the body shortly after death and that the body would react unusually in the presence of the murderer.

The accused was made to call out the name of the dead person, walk around the corpse, and touch the body’s sores. If fresh blood appeared, the body moved, or it began to foam at the mouth, the suspect would be considered guilty.

What the court was actually witnessing was the leaking of a liquid known as purge fluid. It looks a lot like blood and is expelled from various orifices during putrefaction. Dead bodies may also twitch slightly, expel the contents of their bowels, or even seem to “groan” soon after death. This would be seen as the person’s soul leaving the body to further escape his killer (too little, too late).^[8]

2 Have Your Witch’s Teat Discovered

If you had a pet, it was likely that a witch catcher would try to prove your guilt by seeking out your witch’s teat. It was believed that witches kept demons in their houses as pets, disguised as dogs, cats, insects, or rodents and that these familiars suckled on a special nipple gifted to the witch by the Devil.

The presence of a mole, skin tag, or unusual birthmark on the body was considered proof that the accused was practicing witchcraft and feeding her familiar in this manner.

At least 80 percent of the people prosecuted for witchcraft were female, and the idea of a Devil-made and villainous breast is a perfect example of how misogynistic the trials really were. Many breasts of the accused were subject to brutal and humiliating treatment and were often publicly exposed or even whipped.^[9]

Anna Pappenheimer from Bavaria was tortured into admitting to having sexual relations with the Devil. As punishment, her breasts were cut off and forced into her mouth and then into the mouths of her two adult sons before all three were burned at the stake.

1 Be Unable To Cry

The Malleus Maleficarum (“The Hammer of Witches”) was a medieval document published about witches, their practices, and methods to conduct trials and punish them. It was written in Latin by two German monks. For hundreds of years, it was the best-selling book in Europe, second only to the Bible.

Malleus Maleficarum stated that witches would be unable to shed real tears when put in front of a judge or even when subjected to torture. It implored witch catchers to be wary of mischievous witches who were likely to fake tears by spitting on their own faces.^[10]

During the medieval period, a lack of health care and personal hygiene meant that it was common for the elderly to suffer from what we now call lacrimal ducts. This is an infection in the tear ducts that stops the sufferer from being able to shed tears. This meant that many elderly women were executed as witches simply for having poor eyes.

Fennella is a Green Witch living in London. Blog: www.fennellathewitch.com. Instagram: @fennellathewitch

The human body contains from 55% to 78% water, depending on body size. To function properly, the body requires between one and seven liters of water per day to avoid dehydration. Clearly, water is an essential part of human life. But under the right circumstances, as if you were a dwindling camp fire, water can extinguish you in in a variety of interesting ways.

Hypothermia is a condition in which your core body temperature drops below the required temperature for normal metabolism and body functions. For humans, this threshold is defined as 35.0 °C (95.0 °F). If you are exposed to cold and your body’s internal mechanisms are unable to replenish the heat that is being lost, a drop in core temperature occurs. As body temperature decreases, characteristic symptoms like shivering and mental confusion begin to set in. Heat is lost more quickly in water than on land. Water temperatures that would be quite reasonable as outdoor air temperatures can lead to hypothermia. For example, a water temperature of 10 °C (50 °F) can lead to death in as little as one hour, and water temperatures hovering at freezing can lead to death in as little as 15 minutes. A notable example of this occurred during the sinking of the Titanic (pictured above), in which most people who entered the ?2 °C (28 °F) water died within 15–30 minutes.

Scalding is a form of burning caused by heated fluids that come into contact with your skin. Most scalds are considered first or second degree burns, but third or even fourth degree burns can result, especially with prolonged contact. Death by boiling (pictured above) takes advantage of this principle. It is a method of execution in which a person is killed by being immersed in boiling water. While not as common as other methods of execution, boiling to death has been used in many parts of Europe and Asia. Executions of this type were often carried out using a large vessel such as a cauldron or a sealed kettle. Depending on the intended cruelty, the victim was either immersed before the liquid was heated or plunged head first into the already boiling water.

Death in these cases was by severe scalding caused by the hot liquids. Immersion burns would form on the arms, torso and legs. Prolonged scalding would result in anything up to fourth-degree burns of the skin. The epidermis and the dermis are destroyed, leading to the complete breakdown of subcutaneous fat. Eventually the heat would expose muscle, leading to breaches in major arteries and veins. Scalding deaths also take place on occasion when people underestimate the temperature of a natural hot spring and decide to go swimming.

Ice is simply water frozen into a solid state. It appears naturally in many forms, like snowflakes for example. Snowflakes may be harmless individually but their strength grows in numbers. An avalanche is a large and potentially deadly mass of rapidly flowing snow down a slope. Avalanches are typically triggered by a mechanical failure in the snowpack where the forces on the snow exceed its strength. After initiation, avalanches usually accelerate rapidly and grow in mass and volume as they entrain more snow.

85.7% of avalanche deaths are due to asphyxiation. If you should find yourself caught in one, and you manage to carve out a little air space around your face as the slide grinds to a halt, heat from your breath will soon ice up that lifesaving air cavity. This impenetrable “ice mask” may asphyxiate you within half an hour. Fewer than half of those who are totally buried survive, and nobody who’s been buried deeper than seven feet has lived to tell about it. During World War I, an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 soldiers died as a result of avalanches during the mountain campaign in the Alps at the Austrian-Italian front.

Waterborne diseases are caused by pathogenic microorganisms transmitted in contaminated fresh water. Throughout most of the world, the most common contamination of raw water sources is from human sewage. Infection commonly results during bathing, washing, drinking, or during the preparation of food. Various forms of waterborne diarrheal disease are the most prominent examples. Such diseases affect mainly children in developing countries and account for about 1.8 million deaths annually. Parameters for drinking water quality fall under two main categories: microbiological and chemical. Microbiological parameters include Coliform bacteria, E. coli, and specific pathogenic species of bacteria, viruses, and protozoan parasites. Chemical parameters tend to pose more of a chronic health risk through buildup of heavy metals. For example, sixty million people are estimated to have been poisoned by well water contaminated by excessive fluoride.

Water is an essential part of human survival and drinking it inevitably leads to urination. Hopefully, this entry will dispel an interesting medical myth: that you can die by “holding it in” and forcing yourself not to urinate. You can die indirectly, by causing a urinary tract infection (which could then lead to death), but you can’t die from a ruptured bladder due to not going to the bathroom. Your urethral sphincters make it physically impossible to build up urine in your bladder to the point of rupture. The kidneys and ureters cannot produce enough pressure to burst the bladder. When there is an obstruction, the kidneys fail first. In the case of trying to hold it, the body would protect the kidneys by reacting violently, forcing urethral sphincters to fail and causing the person to wet themselves.

Contrary to popular belief, Tycho Brahe never died of “retaining urine at the banquet table out of politeness”. The actual cause of death is assumed to be a kidney stone that rendered him to be unable to pass urine. The blockage lead first to kidney failure and then ultimately his death.

There are a number of reasons why it is potentially deadly to drive in the rain. Rain makes for slippery roads, especially when it has not rained in a long time. This is because greasy substances like lubricants and oil drip from cars as people drive, and these substances accumulate on the surface of the road until they are washed away. The first rain can loosen these greasy materials, creating an oily slick on the surface of the road which can make driving very dangerous. A long, hard rain can also cause deep puddles on the surface of the road which may cause your car to hydroplane, essentially skimming across the water. Poorly drained roads can be covered in huge pools of water which may not seem deep or serious until you drive on them and your car spins out of control. Also, poor visibility caused by heavy rain is a major threat, as you may be less aware of oncoming cars, pedestrians, and hazards in the road. It is estimated that over 3,000 people die per year from rain related auto accidents just in the United States alone.

Although pure water does not conduct electricity by itself (I bet you didn’t know that!), any impurities, like salts in the water, enable it to be an extremely effective conductor. When salts are dissolved in water, they separate into positive Na ions and negative Cl ions. These opposite charges, like the opposite poles of a battery, create the potential for the conductive effect. Waters conductive properties make it very dangerous as it allows an electric current to travel through it rapidly and shock any unsuspecting person in contact with the water.

Electric shock occurs upon contact of a human body part with any source of electricity that causes a sufficient current through the skin, muscles, or hair. Large currents passing through the body may make it impossible for a shock victim to let go of an energized object. Still larger currents can cause fibrillation of the heart, damage to tissues, and death. For example, in 2012 two boys were electrocuted while swimming in a lake in Knoxville, Tennessee. As it turns out, a boat house floating at a dock nearby had frayed wiring that became exposed and contacted the lake water. The five adults who jumped in the water to help were also shocked.

Chinese water torture is a process in which water is slowly dripped onto a person’s forehead, driving the restrained victim insane. Hippolytus de Marsiliis, born in Italy in 1451, is credited with the invention of this form of water torture. Having observed how drops of water falling one by one on a stone gradually created a hollow, he applied the method to the human body. The term “Chinese water torture” was invented merely to grant the method a sense of ominous mystery. A documented account of such torture during the Spanish Inquisition reads as follows: “Victims were strapped down so that they could not move, and cold or warm water was then dripped slowly on to a small area of the body; usually the forehead. The forehead was found to be the most suitable point for this form of torture because of its sensitivity: prisoners could see each drop coming, and after long durations were gradually driven frantic as a perceived hollow would form in the center of the forehead.”

A tsunami is a series of water waves caused by the displacement of a large volume of a body of water, generally an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, glacier calvings, meteorite impacts, and other disturbances above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami. While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 meters (330 ft.) and a height of roughly 2 meters (6.6 ft.), a tsunami in the deep ocean has a wavelength of about 200 kilometers (120 mi)! Yes, you read that correctly. Such a wave travels at well over 800 kilometers per hour (500 mph).

Tsunamis cause damage by two mechanisms: the smashing force of a wall of water traveling at high speed, and the destructive power of a large volume of water draining off the land and carrying a large amount of debris with it, even with waves that do not look large. Although the impact of tsunamis is limited to coastal areas, their destructive power can be enormous and they can affect entire ocean basins; the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was among the deadliest natural disasters in human history with over 230,000 people killed in 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean.

Water intoxication, also known as water poisoning or dilutional hyponatremia, is a potentially fatal disturbance in brain functions that results when the normal balance of electrolytes in the body is pushed outside safe limits by over-hydration. Under normal circumstances, accidentally consuming too much water is exceptionally rare. Nearly all deaths related to water intoxication in normal individuals have resulted either from water drinking contests in which individuals attempt to consume large amounts of water, or long bouts of intensive exercise during which electrolytes are not properly replenished, yet huge amounts of fluid are still consumed. Moreover, water cure, a method of torture in which the victim is forced to consume excessive amounts of water, can cause water intoxication.

Water, just like any other substance, can be considered a poison when over-consumed in a specific period of time. For example, in 2003, Walter Dean Jennings, a freshman history major at SUNY Plattsburgh, died while pledging to a campus fraternity. On his last night of hazing, the 18-year-old was forced to drink gallons of water through a funnel, which caused his brain to swell from water intoxication and ultimately resulted in his death.

Ross works as a patent agent and is a long time Listverse reader.

Food production is a huge industry, meeting our vital need to stuff our faces. Unfortunately, it’s almost impossible for food producers to avoid 100% contamination. Despite the fact that it’s taboo in every culture in the world, many foods contain traces of fecal matter. And not just the exotic foods you can’t pronounce. We’re talking about things you probably eat every day, like …

10Leafy Greens

Leafy greens are often grown using synthetic fertilizers, rather than manure. However, even these crops can be invaded by various forms of fecal matter from nearby animals. According to research conducted by the Yuma Agricultural Center (YAC), fecal matter from cows can increase the possibility of contaminating crops with the bacteria E. coli. The research further indicated that dog, rabbit, bird and the feces from other animals didn’t pose as high of a risk for contamination.

There have been a number of E. coli-related outbreaks linked to leafy greens, such as spinach. The study conducted by the YAC determined that crops can become contaminated when the fecal matter containing the bacteria contaminates the irrigation system. The water used for the crops then spreads contamination. The study also indicated that furrow irrigation was the safest practice to avoid contaminating crops, though it could still occur even then.

9Organic Food

Many people have opted to pay for high-priced organic food, convinced that it is healthier than other modern options. They purchase and consume the food because, understandably, they don’t want to put pesticides or other chemicals in their body. However, studies have shown that organic food is at a greater risk for fecal contamination.

A study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine in 2012 revealed that five percent of lettuce was at a greater risk for fecal contamination and 65 percent of organic pork was contaminated with E. coli. Another study conducted by the University of Minnesota found that 9.7 percent of their samples from organically grown produce were contaminated with E. coli, whereas only 1.6 percent of their conventionally grown samples contained the bacteria.

8Candy and Chocolate

Children and adults alike enjoy a tasty piece of candy or a delectable chocolate treat from time to time. Many are drawn in by the smooth and flawless appearance of these foods and the enjoyable texture and flavors when they consume them. What many aren’t aware of is that certain types of candies and chocolates contain ingredients that are produced from insect feces.

Confectioner’s glaze or resinous glazes are ingredients that are used to produce a smooth, shiny coating on certain types of candy and chocolates. These particular ingredients are produced by the female lac insect and are derived from its feces. Tastes sweet, doesn’t it?

7Spices

There’s nothing better than the aroma of a home-cooked meal that has been lovingly seasoned with a variety of carefully selected herbs and spices. These special ingredients add a delightful flavor to food and certain herbs and spices have also been known to have health benefits. Oh, and of course they contain feces. Have health benefits ever tasted so good?

The FDA permits a certain level of contamination in food products before they take action, herbs and spices included. According to the FDA’s website, “contamination of these products by animals usually results from either gnawing or defilement by excreta. Whole rodent pellets, bird droppings, and other pieces of animal dung are typically found.” Who knew that insect and animal excrement could add such flavor?

6Wheat

Wheat is an ingredient used in an endless variety of food products. Bread, pizza dough, cakes, cookies and a long list of other products contain wheat as one of their main ingredients. Those that cook at home often use wheat flour as an ingredient in much of their baking. It’s an ingredient that is widely consumed by a countless number of individuals. The fact that we eat so much of it doesn’t matter–the FDA allows 9 milligrams or more of rodent pellets per kilogram of wheat. In other words, a small percentage of rodent feces is tolerable in wheat and permitted to enter our food supply. Bread, anyone?

5Imported Seafood

Americans consume a large quantity of seafood from overseas. For example, America received approximately eight percent of its shrimp from Vietnam, some of its shellfish from Hong Kong and some of its tilapia from Hong Kong. Although the FDA inspects these shipments, it is only able to do spot checks (about three percent of these imports).

A significant portion of the seafood that is imported to the United States from these countries has been raised on feces, including pig and geese feces because it is cheaper to use than commercially sold fish food. Some claim that the fish don’t actually consume the feces, but rather the algae that are produced from using it. Either way, the idea of fish consuming and/or floating in swine feces isn’t exactly appetizing.

4Peanut Butter

Peanut butter can be a nutritious snack. Enjoyed with crackers or apple slices, it’s a great treat to feed the kids and an excellent alternative to sugary snacks such as cookies or ice cream. Peanut butter also contains some extra ingredients that you won’t find listed on the nutritional label–one of which is rodent feces.

As with other food items, the FDA finds that a certain amount (five percent) of rodent feces or other rodent filth such as hair, is permissible in peanut butter. As long as you get crunchy peanut butter, you probably won’t know the difference. Right?

3Ground Turkey

Ground turkey is often purchased as a healthier, leaner alternative to ground beef. But it’s not exception to the “must include some feces” rule this list is working on.

In a recent Consumer Reports study, 257 samples of ground turkey sold in the United States were tested. Of those samples, more than half were contaminated with bacteria from fecal matter. The study found that 69 percent of the samples contained enterococcus and 60 percent contained E. coli. In most cases, the bacteria discovered in the ground turkey can be destroyed by cooking thoroughly but a fecal burger sounds decidedly less appetizing than a “turkey” burger.

2Soda Fountain Machines

A small study conducted in the Roanoke Valley of Virginia found that soda fountain machines contained the bacteria coliform, which can, you guessed it, indicate fecal contamination. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has even banned the bacteria from being present in drinking water because it may be a sign of contamination by feces.

Of the samples tested, 48 percent were contaminated with coliform and 20 percent of the samples tested had a detectable amount of coliform that exceeded the limit allowed by the EPA. It is assumed that the contamination is not from the soda itself, but rather the machines. It seems the contamination occurs within the plastic tubing and is then deposited into the soda when patrons go to fill up their cups. Is anyone getting thirsty?

1Human Feces Steak

A sensational hoax that just won’t die is that of the steak created using human feces. According to internet legend, a Japanese scientist developed the steak using human feces and a few other simple ingredients. He even taste-tested the fecal steak and gave it his seal of approval.

Many legitimate news agencies reported the story as fact. But if they had done some digging, they would have discovered that the YouTube video that brought this poop steak to the web was actually a hoax–with many subtle clues available in the video footage.

It’s unlikely that humans will ever purchase human feces meat, but if they ever do, perhaps it would pair nicely with a side of shiitake mushrooms.

Kelly is a freelance writer and the owner of ColoradoSocialSolutions.com, a social media and content management service.

Animals have always been a massive part of medical research. They are most commonly utilized in clinical trials, where we test the effectiveness and safety of new medications before moving on to human trials.^[1]

While animal testing is very crucial to the success of human medications, there are amazing lines of research involving animals in a less traditional sense. Some involve training animals to sniff out diseases, utilizing their body fluids for human treatment, or even using components of otherwise deadly venoms. Whether you are for or against animal testing, the things on this list will be sure to blow your mind!

10 Dogs Smell Cancer

There are many stories out there telling the tale of how a pet owner noticed their dog acting strange around them. Open further examination, they notice a lump or start feeling sick. After going to the doctors, they are diagnosed with cancer and have their dogs to thank for saving their life! But how does the science around this actually work?

It can really be chalked up to one thing: dogs’ amazing sense of smell. In our noses, we have olfactory receptors, which allow us to distinguish odors. The average human has approximately six million of these in their nose, while dogs have a whopping 300 million. This makes their sense of smell a lot more than just superhuman; it allows them to detect the slightest differences in the scents around them. What scent does a pet dog pick up on most often? Their owner, of course. Knowing this, it makes sense to think that dogs can even smell biological changes within us.

How effective is this method in terms of catching cancer early? A study using urine from prostate cancer patients found that dogs had a 91-percent success rate in identifying the cancer.^[2] Maybe sometime in the near future, we’ll see dogs used as a cancer screening method.

9 Animals Improve Symptoms Of Mental Illnesses

You’ve probably heard that animals have positive impacts on depression, but this isn’t the only mental illnesses that animals can improve. To list a few, animals aid in autism, ADHD, and anxiety.^[3]

Animals accomplish this by presenting social opportunities that would not arise otherwise. A good example of this is a depressed pet owner walking their dog. Also, exercise of any kind has been proven time and time again to alleviate symptoms of depression, as does being outside in nature. Pets can help improve sensory perception in autistic individuals and allow people suffering from ADHD to learn what routine is like and handle the responsibility of taking care of a living creature.

What pet owner doesn’t feel better after petting and cuddling their cat, dog, horse, rabbit, or any other pet out there? Knowing that an animal loves you unconditionally is a pretty special feeling and can lessen the mental burden of illnesses like depression and anxiety.

8 Zebrafish And Metabolic Disorders

In the United States, the vast majority of adults are either obese or overweight. In fact, 160 million (including both adults and children) are estimated to be overweight or obese. In an obese person’s body, there is an underproduction of or lack of sensitivity to leptin (a hormone that inhibits hunger and regulates fat stores) and a decrease in the body’s sensitivity to insulin (which regulates fat, carbohydrate, and protein metabolism). This is why obesity is considered a metabolic disorder, as hormones that regulate our metabolic system are being compromised.

Proteins found in zebrafish have been used in clinical trials involving mice that are being fed high-fat diets. Using these proteins as drug injections protected mice from the causes of obesity, explained above as the lack of sensitivity to necessary metabolic hormones.^[4] If this is could be applied to humans, this means that a simple injection could mitigate most of the harm caused by our Westernized diets. The results are remarkable and have opened up a huge area of research for the treatment of metabolic diseases.

7 Brazilian Viper Venom And High Blood Pressure

The venom of Bothrops jararaca, a Brazilian pit viper, can cause you hemorrhage (due to your blood being unable to clot) if you are bitten by it.^[5] This sounds terrifying, and the snake looks pretty terrifying, too. It comes as a huge surprise, then, that the venom of this deadly snake led to the discovery of the method used to treat another of America’s biggest health problems: high blood pressure.

If injecting this venom into you is deadly, how could this possibly be of help to us? The entire process is actually pretty revolutionary. Back in the past, medical researchers looked everywhere for the key to decreasing blood pressure. The Brazilian viper’s venom gave us that key. ACE inhibitors, the current treatment for high blood pressure, were originally developed from a peptide in the venom. These inhibitors block receptors in our body that tell our blood vessels to constrict, causing high blood pressure.

6 Childhood Blindness And Mice

While childhood blindness isn’t as common compared to other illnesses on this list, it is still very unfortunate. Children are born without one of their five main senses, making their life difficult from a young age. Giving sight back to someone who was born blind seems like an impossible miracle, but a linked gene found in mice could make this possible.

A 2006 study dealt with childhood blindness caused by defective genes, meaning that the proper cells that allow us to see aren’t created. This model was recreated in mice by knocking out the same gene that is missing or damaged in blind humans. When using gene transfer to reintroduce a healthy version of that same gene, the mice were able to begin producing the necessary cells for sight.^[6]

5 Giant Pandas’ Antibacterial Blood

Giant pandas look cute and cuddly, and their benefits to humans are proving to be so much more than just their adorable exterior.

Pandas happen to ingest and encounter a lot of types of bacteria in their natural habitats. Due to their constant exposure, their bodies have evolved to produce multiple strains of natural antibiotics. We can derive specific compounds from the panda’s genomes and use them to produce a diverse range of antibiotics that can fight bacteria and fungi.

This is significant because the antibiotics pandas produce have been found to kill certain strains of bacteria six times faster than the antibiotics we currently use.^[7]

4 Cats’ Purring Heals

This one is pretty mind-blowing. There is legitimate medical research that backs up the healing properties of a cat’s purr. If there wasn’t enough reason to own a cat, this should push aspiring cat owners over the edge.

There are a couple frequencies that promote bone growth and healing; they are 25 and 50 hertz.^[8] These low frequencies also happen to be in the range of cat purring, anywhere between 25 to 150 hertz. Scientists hypothesize that the reason cats purr is to promote self-healing, using their own frequencies to help with any internal bone injuries. This would also explain why cats purr when they are under stress or in pain.

The pressing question is whether it really benefits human bones as well. There is no scientific research directly supporting this theory, but many studies have shown that pet owners live longer. If cat purring was a contributing factor to this, that would be pretty amazing.

3 Dolphins Could Make Us Super-Healers

Imagine getting a shark bite and not suffering that much for it. Shark bites may not be lethal the majority of the time, but we still have to go to great lengths to properly heal the wound. Stitches, antibiotics, and other measures need to be taken to ensure that the wound closes and doesn’t get infected.

Large injuries observed on dolphins (presumably caused by sharks) require no special attention at all to heal. Their injuries healed in only weeks, despite the wounds being significant. The dolphins showed no signs of intense pain or discomfort from their injuries, and no permanent damage was dealt to them.^[9]

This strength of healing is unheard-of in any human suffering from an injury of this magnitude. So how do dolphins do it, and how could this benefit us?

Scientists suspect dolphins don’t bleed or get infections due to their “diving reflex,” which diminishes blood flow. Natural antibiotics found in their blubber ensure that no life-threatening infections occur. Similar to the giant panda on this list, we can utilize these antibiotics as well as learn a lot from their amazing healing properties.

2 Hibernating Mammals And Synapse Repair

The human brain uses synapses to pass signals from neuron to neuron. This process is essential for everything we do, from exercising to sleeping. We struggle to repair damaged synapses, this is why neurodegenerative diseases are so dangerous. However, a recent breakthrough allowed us to observe synapses that undergo significant cooling but still function after the cooling is over. Hibernating mammals manage this, though the study in question used artificially cooled mice.

The study was able to link a specific RNA-binding protein (RBM3), which was responsible for restoring the synapses after the severe body cooling.^[10] If this protein is removed, there is a significant reduction in synapse repair. This data supports the necessary presence of RBM3 for synapse and neuron health as well as the possibility of using gene therapy to increase production of RBM3 in patients with neurodegenerative diseases.

1 Scorpions And Brain Tumors

Scorpion venom is yet another type of venom that you wouldn’t expect to both help and harm humans. The scorpion in question is Leiurus quinquestriatus, more commonly known as the deathstalker. That name speaks to the nature of this scorpion—it’s pretty deadly. The mix of neurotoxins in its venom is extremely dangerous; get stung by it, and you’ll need to be rushed to the nearest hospital.

Unlike the snake venom mentioned before, the compound utilized comes straight from the scorpion venom, and its name is chlorotoxin. This chemical can target brain tumors originating in the top of the spine and brain.^[11] The discovery of chlorotoxin has justified research into other scorpion toxins, and more testing is needed to see just how effective other species’ venom is.

Operating on tumors within the brain and spine is very risky. One wrong move, and the surgeon can cause irreversible damage. This makes chlorotoxin even more valuable. If we can fight tumors without operating, many risks are alleviated.

Many great science fiction novels present us with futures where capitalism has gone awry. Huge, international companies run the world, buying and selling anything they like with reckless abandon. Well, the future is now, ladies and gentlemen, because the food and drink companies we view as nothing more than the providers of our delicious treats are much more powerful than you realize. For example, did you know that…

10 They Break Down Language Barriers

Imagine you’re in a foreign country. You don’t know the city, you don’t know the people and most unnervingly, you don’t know the language. It’s hot and you are dying for a Coke. But how do you order one when you don’t know how to speak to the shopkeeper? Cultures differ drastically, even with the simplest of things. So what possible chance do you have of guessing how to order your desired fizzy beverage? Apparently you just say ‘Coca-Cola’. An international survey revealed that the words ‘Coca-Cola’ were the second most universally understood term on the planet, losing only to the positive affirmation ‘OK’.

9 They are Multiplying Rapidly

Sometimes it seems like a new fast food or café chain opens every day. Well it seems that way because it’s true. KFC is planning to open one hundred new stores every year in India until 2015. In the last few years McDonalds has opened an average of one new store every day in China. Between 1987 and the mid 2000s Starbucks opened an average of two stores every day. They famously were ridiculed for what seemed like too rapid a growth and many stores were closed down. But that didn’t seem to phase them, at the end of 2012 plans were announced to open more stores in America—approximately 3000 more.

8 They have Economies Bigger Than Countries

GDP stands for Gross Domestic Product and countries are often ranked this way, with the list giving rough ideas and estimations of a nation’s wealth. But the GDP of developing and third world countries aren’t just dwarfed by the GDPs of large Western nations—they’re sometimes significantly smaller than the GDP of individual companies.

In 2010, McDonald’s’ revenue was larger than the country of Latvia’s entire GDP. Oman, a small country bordering Saudi Arabia has a GDP smaller than the revenue of Pepsi, with a difference of over two billion dollars.

7 They Feed Our Armies

Surely one of the worst things about living on an army base would be the food, right? Not if you like Burger King. In the 1980s, Burger King received a major contract with the US Army and Air Force and to this day just about every key Army and Air Force base plays host to a Burger King restaurant.

And that isn’t just the bases located in America, even the Kandahar Air Field in Afghanistan has one. Though it was closed in 2010 due to suggestions that it took up space that could be used for mail or ammunition, a drop in soldier morale brought about the BK’s return in 2012. And if the soldiers get tired of Burger King? Not an issue, there’s also a Popeye’s Chicken and a Pizza Hut.

6They Have Absurd Amounts of Products

Most people know that Coca-Cola don’t just make Coca-Cola. There’s Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Vanilla Coke, heck even Coke two was a thing. And on top of that, Coke also distributes Dasani bottled water, Vitamin water, and Poweraid. So with all the diet, new flavors and sugar free options of their most known drinks the number of beverages the company actually has on offer rises pretty dramatically, but how many drinks would you guess they sell worldwide? Twenty? Fifty? Try three and a half thousand.

5 They are Bigger Than Religion

Religion is relatively universal. It frequently transcends languages and is present in some way all over the world. Individual pieces of religious symbolism, however, are apparently not as recognized around the world as fast food symbolism.

In various studies the McDonalds ‘golden arches’ logo was more recognizable than the Christian cross. Other studies as well as scenes from the 2004 film ‘Supersize Me’ have shown that most American children will recognize fast food mascots such as Ronald McDonald and Wendy but will be unable to identify religious characters such as Jesus.

4 They Give you the Illusion of Choice

Who would you rather give money to Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza Hut or Taco Bell? Well it doesn’t really matter because all three are owned by the same company: Yum! Brands Inc.

Many familiar companies have a hand in a much more varied range of products than you would expect. Pepsi Co owns Quaker oats, which means it owns a huge variety of cereals, rice snacks, pasta dishes and even baking mixes. Pepsi also owns several chip companies and even some types of coffee.

But hey, maybe those types of products aren’t your thing, so you’re gonna completely ignore Pepsi by sitting home and enjoying a nice cup of Lipton Tea. Yeah, you see where this is going: Pepsi owns Lipton too.

3 They’ll Completely Change their Product

Most products have a certain demographic. If what you’re selling doesn’t match everyone’s needs there’s not much you can do right? Well, most fast food companies are happy to completely change their image, even if it make them unrecognizable.

For example, KFC is hugely popular in China, but it’s not KFC as you might know it. Chinese KFC stores often serve shrimp burgers, fried dough sticks, egg tarts and soy drinks as well as a huge list of other foods specific to China.

What if you’re a company wanting to open a store in a country where the food you are famous for is religiously banned? No problem, just get rid of it completely. Many Indian McDonald’s stores don’t sell beef or pork products at all. In fact the first vegetarian only McDonald’s is set to open in India within the next year.

2 They Convinced us Water is Bad

Water is pretty essential to the whole ‘being alive’ thing, which is why most people have it on tap, basically for free. And that’s bad for companies trying to sell you beverages of their own.

Robert S. Morrison, chairman of Pepsi Co., apparently said that tap water was his company’s biggest enemy, and the H2NO campaign planned to do something about it.

Founded by Coca-Cola, the H2NO operation sought to dissuade people from ordering (free) tap water in favor of more enjoyable (that is, profitable) beverages. It’s aim was to convince people tap water was boring, and what’s worse is that it started to work. Olive Gardens restaurants took part in the campaign, attempting to convince people to avoid tap water and drink soda instead.

It worked.

1 They Want to Hire Everyone

Are you a teenager living in Brazil? If so, you probably work at McDonalds. McDonalds has gathered a huge following amongst the youth of Brazil, to the point that the company has become the leading private-sector employer, with over 36,000 Brazilians working under the name. Of those employees almost 90 percent are under 21 years old.

But don’t think those astonishing numbers are specific to Brazil. McDonalds announced plans to hire more than 75,000 new employees in China over the next year. In America fast food companies are also the go to job for youngsters, in fact it is estimated that one in eight people have been employed at McDonalds at some point in their lifetime.

Scott tweets @frigginboom. He also friggin films himself.

Lead is a versatile, common metal that has been used for many applications throughout history. However, it is also incredibly deadly in even the smallest of amounts. While our ancestors believed that lead was an insignificant part of life, it actually could have ravaged their minds and bodies without their knowledge. Its effects still harm us today.

10 Ancient Rome

In 1983, Canadian scientist Jerome Nriagu examined the diets of 30 Roman emperors from 30 BC to AD 220 and made an astounding discovery: They were filled with lead. At the time, it was common to boil down grapes into syrups as a flavoring for food. This was done in copper kettles that released huge amounts of lead into the product.

Knowing that emperors were gluttonous in their eating habits, this could have led to chronic lead poisoning and, as Nriagu thought, the fall of Rome. While Nriagu’s conclusions have been disputed by various studies, others have backed him up based on the pipes of the Tiber River, long the chief source of water for Rome. This water contained around 100 times as much lead as fresh springwater.

9 The First Artificial Sweetener

Sadly, lead was humanity’s first artificial sweetener. Where sugar couldn’t readily be obtained, lead acetate was used because of its naturally sweet taste. In Roman times, lead acetate was called sapa and was frequently added to wine.

In 1047, Pope Clement II suddenly died from an unknown cause. A 1959 examination showed that he suffered from chronic lead poisoning, most likely from lead acetate in wine. Clement II was German, and the Germans of that time had a custom of sweetening their wines in the Roman way.

There are even rumors that Ludwig van Beethoven, another wine lover, was ill from chronic low-level lead poisoning related to his consumption of lead-laced wines. A study of his bones showed high levels of lead, which is the most likely cause of his well-known deafness in later years.

8 Toxic Rum

When 17 males were exhumed from the Royal Naval Hospital cemetery in Antigua, it was discovered that their bones were tainted with lead. The normal amount of lead in bones is 5–30 ppm (parts per million). But in the bones of 14 of the men, it ranged from 13–336 ppm, with 80 ppm being lead poisoning.

One hypothesis for this high level of lead could be lead that entered Antiguan rum in 18th-century distilleries. In the past, the Royal Naval fleet gave out rum rations to sailors. This could have caused chronic lead poisoning in many sailors, including the 17 buried in Antigua.

If true, this has severe implications for other members of the Royal Navy who served in the West Indies and may have consumed similarly tainted rum. The rum ration was an established tradition in the British Royal Navy at the time.

7 Artists And Lead

In 1713, Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini wrote in his book De Morbis Artificum Diatriba that he knew many artists and painters who suffered similar symptoms unique to their profession: chronic sickness, a colorless complexion, and melancholy. He was one of the first to theorize that “painter’s colic” was the result of the paints they used.

This ingestion of deadly metals was called saturnism and affected several famous artists. Throughout much of history, lead was involved in the creation of most paints. A study showed that this most likely affected Michelangelo Buonarroti, Francisco Goya, Candido Portinari, and possibly Vincent van Gogh. They all displayed symptoms of “painter’s colic” and worked closely with lead paints for much of their lives.

6 American Pewter

In the first years of colonization in America by the English, the most common types of dishes, cups, and other serving containers were all coated in a deadly layer of lead. Pewter was widely used in musket balls, too. So anyone at the time who used a musket—which was the vast majority of colonists—would have been exposed.

However, wealthy Americans in the 1600s were the ones who mainly used pewter dishes, so much so that researchers can tell who was wealthy back then from the amount of lead in their bones. For example, Colonel Joseph Bridger, one of the wealthiest and most prominent Virginians of his time, died in 1686. But when his body was exhumed and tested by medical professionals in 2007, the lead levels in his bones were measured at 149 ppm, which would have been seven times the average amount of lead.

5 Medieval Lead Glaze

Medieval Europe’s upper class used lead on their silverware and dishes as a sort of glaze so that they were easier to wash and more aesthetically appealing. In 2007, six cemeteries from Germany to Denmark were tested. Interestingly, lead was virtually nonexistent among the serfs and other poor, but it was dangerously high in the urban dwellers.

The lead on the dishes could be absorbed by the acidic foods that were frequently consumed by urbanites of the times. When salty foods were stored in lead-covered containers, the glaze would dissolve and the lead could leak in and contaminate the stored food. These dishes were hard to come by in poor rural towns, so lead poisoning distinguished rural and urban dwellers even more than the rich and poor.

4 Samurai Makeup Poisoning

During the Edo period of Japan’s history (1603–1867), many samurai suffered from their own beauty expectations. When the bones of 70 men, women, and children from that time were tested, researchers were shocked to discover lead levels as high as 120 times the harmful level in the bones of samurai children.

Environmentally, lead levels were actually low during the Edo period. But there was a surprising source for the contamination: mother’s makeup. Aristocratic women used a cosmetic white face powder that children may have encountered while nursing. Lead based and incredibly toxic, this face powder probably caused many children to die or suffer severe mental impacts.

3 Lead In Commercial Paints

Despite the lead industry knowing about the danger of lead in paint for decades, lead continued to be used in paints well into modern times. As far back as the 1920s, paint companies fought to have safety labels removed from their products even though as much as 70 percent of a can of paint was made of lead pigments.

A mere thumbnail-sized chip could cause a young child to have convulsions. When children became ill from this, the lead companies claimed that it was the fault of the parents, especially “uneducable Negro and Puerto Rican” parents who “failed” to stop children from placing their fingers and toys in their mouths.

In 1949, Maryland’s House of Delegates passed a bill banning lead in children’s toys. But this was repealed after overwhelming pushback. In 1959, the New York City Board of Health banned interior paints containing more than 1 percent lead. In 1971, the federal government banned lead paints in public housing. But it wasn’t until 1978 that the federal government banned lead in virtually all paints.

2 Ghost Factories

Lead production in the US may have shut down decades ago, but the toxicity remains. Wherever there were once lead factories—now dubbed “ghost factories“—high amounts of lead can still be found in the soil. From the 1930s to the 1960s, many of these factories operated by smelting lead from the various ores that contained it.

William Eckel, an environmental scientist, first called attention to this after writing that as many as 400 unknown shuttered factories could be contaminated by lead. He paid to have the soil tested at eight locations, with all but one testing positive for high lead levels.

Despite the EPA ordering the clean-up of lead in the soil in 2001, there has been virtually no action. Children who live and play near these factories are particularly affected.

1 Leaded Gasoline

In 1921, Thomas Midgley Jr. invented tetraethyl lead, a compound that would make cars incredibly efficient. Tetraethyl lead remained in gasoline until it was banned in 1986 due to the debilitating mental and physical effects it caused.

Since the ban, blood-lead levels in US residents have dropped by 75 percent. Before lead gasoline was phased out, it is estimated that 5,000 Americans died every year from lead-related heart disease.

There is also a high correlation between the rise and fall of lead gasoline and the rise and fall of violent crimes committed throughout several countries in the 20th century. Twenty years after lead gasoline was introduced, crime rates skyrocketed. But after lead gasoline was banned, crime began to fall, which shows just how significant this gasoline really was.

Gordon Gora is a struggling author who is desperately trying to make it. He is working on several projects, but until he finishes one, he will write for for his bread and butter. You can write him at [email protected].

A large part of every conflict is gathering information about the other side. Throughout history, people have had to formulate crafty methods to get the vital intelligence they needed. The stories about how and what they did make for an interesting perspective of the past.

10 Ham Common Torture

Recently, controversy has centered around the use of torture—or “enhanced interrogation”—to get information from suspected terrorists. But it’s not a new tactic.

As part of World War II’s Operation Fortitude—the plan to deceive the Germans about the D-day landing location—the SIS (British Intelligence) held 19 German agents in a cellar in a home in Ham Common. The German agents were “turned” into double agents through sleep deprivation and gross physical and mental abuse that was in direct violation of the Geneva Convention.

Subsequently, they began to share information about the German military while sabotaging the Nazis at the same time. They told the Abwehr (German Intelligence) that the invasion would land in Pas de Calais rather than Normandy Beach. These German agents continued to cooperate with the SIS until the end of the war.

9 World War I Sardines

World War I was the start of several intelligence and counterintelligence activities by world powers. One ingenious method by the Germans was the use of sardine shipments.

Ludovico Zender was a native of Lima, Peru, and the son of Norwegian immigrants. In 1914, he arrived in Glasgow as a “tradesman.” Zender ordered a large shipment of Norwegian sardines in 1915, claiming to be taking them back to Peru.

However, the telegrams sent by Zender went to Oslo, a known drop site for German intelligence. Zender’s operation was exposed because it was the wrong season for sardines. In actuality, his telegrams were descriptions of British shipping movements disguised as sardine transactions. Zender was convicted of espionage and executed at the Tower of London in 1916—the last spy to be executed there during World War I.

8 Silver Bullets

During the American War of Independence, both sides devised brilliant techniques to smuggle information back and forth. One technique was writing on tissue paper and stuffing the message into small objects like hollowed buttons, quills, or small silver balls resembling musket balls. These objects could easily be swallowed if the messenger was caught.

In 1777, British spy Daniel Taylor was entrusted with delivering a message from General Henry Clinton to General John Burgoyne. It was stuffed inside a silver ball the size of a cranberry.

When Taylor was caught by an American sentinel, they observed him swallowing an object. They forced him to consume tartar emetic to vomit up the bullet. “Out of his own mouth,” he was convicted as a spy and hanged.

7 Musical Spies

In medieval times, most elite musicians made money by touring and performing in the courts of royalty. Since they were thought of as entertainers and nothing more, they were the perfect candidates to become spies.

Such was the case of spy Pierre Alamire, a celebrated musician and composer of beloved choir books, who was recruited by Henry VIII’s adviser Cardinal Thomas Wolsey (pictured) in 1515. Alamire was to gather information about Richard de la Pole, a loyal Yorkist during the War of the Roses who later allied with the French to wage war against the English.

Alamire traveled to Metz, France, where Pole was living. In a strange twist, Alamire became a double agent and began passing information to both courts. He was no longer trusted by the English and, after 1516, never returned to England.

6 Pancho Villa’s Mormon Cowboy

During the Mexican Revolution, Pancho Villa was forced to find friends at every turn to stay one step ahead of those who wanted him dead. One unlikely ally was a Mormon trader named Jess Taylor. Villa’s enemies were known to raid Mormon colonies in Mexico, stealing supplies and holding captives for ransom.

Villa agreed to help Taylor with these colonies if Taylor could show Villa the locations of the enemy. Taylor, who appeared to be an ordinary cowboy, raised no suspicion while he was leading Villa and his army to the enemy. They were successful in their efforts, and Villa remained forever indebted to the Mormon cowboy.

5 Captain Allan McLane’s Disguises

When George Washington needed vital information during the American Revolutionary War, he dispatched his bravest spy—Captain Allan McLane. Captain McLane had caught Washington’s attention by distinguishing himself on the battlefield. He was then appointed to be an intelligence gatherer, which would remain his biggest priority from 1777 to 1782.

Twice, McLane disguised himself and went behind enemy lines. He first did so when Washington needed information on where the British planned to go after leaving Philadelphia in 1778. Disguised as a farmer, McLane pretended to wander into a British camp in New Jersey. He gained access and gathered the appropriate information.

Soon afterward, Washington successfully attacked at Monmouth Courthouse. Later, McLane disguised himself as a country bumpkin and entered the Stony Point Fort, which the British had taken. From what he saw, he created a bayonet battle plan which allowed the Americans to take the fort in only 25 minutes.

4 The Nazi Generals At Trent Park

During World War II, Nazi generals who were captured by the British were treated with incredible kindness—or so they thought. At one time, around 59 Nazi generals were held as prisoners in a luxurious home named Trent Park. There, they were fed good food and generally given whatever they desired. They thought that they had managed to get a good deal as POWs, but little did they know that their every word was overheard by British intelligence.

Inside Trent Park was an “M room” where German refugees worked with British intelligence to listen to the generals’ conversations. The information they gained was crucial. As Winston Churchill acknowledged, “If it wasn’t for this bugging operation, we may well have not won the war.”

Some of the things learned at Trent Park were the location of a secretive V-2 rocket site, facts about vital military technology, and the abuse of Jews by the Nazis.

3 Gossiping Gertrude Bell

A few months before World War I, Turkish authorities permitted British archaeologist Gertrude Bell to explore in Constantinople. She went to the city of Hail, which hadn’t been reached by Westerners since 1893. Although she appeared to be traveling for archaeological purposes, she really went to the city because it served as the capital of the brutal al Rashids and the British wanted to know their strength.

Upon arriving, Bell was imprisoned, but a personal code of honor among the Rashids kept them from harming her. She began to ingratiate herself among their polygamous wives and listened to their gossip. They so casually shared their intrigues and personal information that Bell was able to report to the British that the Rashids were weakening and the British should ally with the Saudis.

This policy recommendation to the British after the fall of the Ottoman Empire influenced the fate of the Middle East for the next century.

2 The Black Spies Of The Confederate White House

Throughout the Civil War, Jefferson Davis and his wife, Varina, lived in their own White House in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Little did they know that every bit of their lives was watched and listened to quietly by their black servants.

William Jackson, their coachman, escaped the Davis home in 1862 and went to a federal camp where he divulged details of Davis’s plans for the war. Jackson said, “He plans advances, but [his generals] execute masterly retreats.”

Another slave-spy in the Davis home was Mary Elizabeth Bowser, who worked with an extensive Union spy network run by Richmond socialite Elizabeth Van Lew. It seems that Mary was installed as a waitress at the Davis home, and her efforts along with others by Van Lew provided valuable military information to the Union.

1 Sylvanus Morley
US Spy And Archaeologist

During World War I, archaeologist Sylvanus Morley played a seminal role in preventing German interests in Mexico, which could have drastically altered the course of history. A Mayanist, Morley traveled through Central America photographing ancient ruins and structures.

In 1917, he arrived in Honduras and attempted to photograph an old Spanish fort along the coast. When soldiers stopped him, he had to argue all the way up to the Honduran president before he was allowed to continue his activity. Little did they know that he was identifying German agents, photographing submarines, and hunting German shortwave broadcasts.

In all, he traveled 3,200 kilometers (2,000 mi) while documenting the German presence in Central America. Because of his efforts, Morley has been identified by historians as “arguably the best secret agent the United States produced during [World War I].” His method became the template for future efforts during World War II.

Gordon Gora is a struggling author who is desperately trying to make it. He is working on several projects, but until he finishes one, he will write for for his bread and butter. You can write him at [email protected].