When your neighbors party late into the night or a garbage truck wakes you up two hours before sunrise, you might curse your neighborhood. We’re not all fortunate enough to have rolling emerald lawns and central air conditioning, but most people reading this have access to the most basic of amenities: heat, running water, electricity, and Internet access. Unfortunately, there are many people throughout the world who are not so blessed—men, women, and children crammed into slums ruled by crime and ravaged by drugs and disease.

10Cité-Soleil, Port au Prince
Haiti

On the outskirts of Port au Prince, Haiti is Cité-Soleil (“Sun City”), a foul slum ruled by gangs and sitting in a pool of its own squalor. Cite Soleil has no sewage system and is composed of hovels. Garbage and excrement sit in stagnant, mosquito-infested puddles. AIDS is prolific, and the life expectancy hovers in the low 50s. There is no police force, and for years, vicious drug lords and kidnappers controlled the streets. According to the Red Cross, “the shanty town of Cité-Soleil is a microcosm of all the ills in Haitian society: endemic unemployment, illiteracy, non-existent public services, insanitary conditions, rampant crime and armed violence.”

In 2004, the United Nations deployed thousands of troops to Cité-Soleil, where they engaged in numerous gun battles with the gangs. Some vague sense of order was restored, but the area remains a hotbed of violence. To this day, one must pass through an armed UN checkpoint to enter the slum. Cité-Soleil weathered Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake well, with many of its structures still standing, but the nearby National Penitentiary was damaged, and 3,000 deadly inmates flooded out in the resulting chaos. They returned to Cité-Soleil with a vengeance, riding motorcycles with assault rifles at the ready. They burned all their arrest records and took back the slum, setting back the progress made by the United Nations.

9 Favelas Of Rio de Janeiro
Brazil

Rio de Janeiro is a beautiful, sprawling city frequently visited by tourists for such events as Carnival and for the white sands of Copacabana Beach. But on the fringes of the city, there exist huge slums called favelas: piecemeal shacks built haphazardly atop each other. The dwellings are tacked together from odds and ends, cast-off bits of lumber, metal, and stone.

Of the approximately 1,000 favelas around the city, one of the most notorious is Rocinha. Rio is a major port for cocaine traffic traveling to Europe, and the favelas are often ruled by heartless drug lords. One of the more colorful characters from the area was Erismar Rodrigues Moreira (street name Bem-Te-Vi, after a Brazilian songbird). His gang carried gold-plated weapons and subjected enemies to “necklacing”— jamming a tire over a man’s head and then setting it aflame. In 2005, Ben was shot down in a police raid. The future of the favelas remains uncertain; since Rio de Janeiro has been accepted as the host city of the 2016 Summer Olympics, the authorities have showed an increasing presence in the streets they once ignored.

8Detroit, Michigan
USA

Once heralded as the “Motor City,” Detroit has more recently come to be known as one of the United States’ “Murder Capitals.” The decline of the American automotive industry has left this city reeling. The population has dropped 25 percent since 2000, and many areas have become a wasteland of foreclosed homes, boarded up and selling for pennies on the dollar—some for less than $100. Of course, this is an “as-is, buyer beware” situation if there ever was one. Many of these houses have been taken over by squatters, and the basements of abandoned buildings are a favorite haunt of dog fighters. Detroit has a huge problem with strays; tens of thousands roam the streets, most of them pit bulls.

On July 19, 2013, Detroit declared bankruptcy, approximately $18 billion in debt. Many residents of the city are also feeling the crunch—unemployment rates stand at around 16.3 percent, actually a marked improvement from 2009, when 24.9 percent were out of work. One need look no further to witness Detroit’s crippling poverty than truTV’s hit show Hardcore Pawn, which takes place in the largest pawn shop in the city and often features lines of people out the door trying to peddle their valuables to make rent and keep the lights on. Data compiled from various sources including the FBI and the US Justice Department reveals that the top three most dangerous neighborhoods in America are all located in Detroit. The worst, the area surrounding West Chicago Street and Livernois Avenue is so bad that you have a one in seven chance of becoming the victim of a violent crime there each year.

7Ciudad Juárez
Mexico

Ciudad Juárez sits just south of El Paso, Texas, the two cities separated by the narrow stretch of the Rio Grande. And yet the difference between these two places is like night and day. In the last decade, Ciudad Juárez has become the epicenter of the Mexican drug war. Rival cartels visit horrifying violence upon each other as they battle for turf, corpses stacking up. In 2009, the city was crowned the murder capital of the world, with 130 murders per 100,000 inhabitants. In truth, the number is probably much higher, as many people simply vanish, buried in mass graves. Police officers are often either too corrupt or too afraid to leave the station.

It is particularly dangerous to be a woman in Ciudad Juárez; sexual assaults are prevalent, and hundreds of women, many just teenagers, have been murdered since the ’90s. Hundreds more remain missing, victims of domestic violence, the drug trade, or worse—some believe that serial killers roam the streets in abundance, their crimes masked by the chaos around them.

6Medellin
Colombia

During the height of the cocaine trade in the late ’80s, Medellin was the most violent city in the world, with Pablo Escobar’s cartel and paramilitary groups running rampant. Escobar was killed by police forces in 1993 and crime declined significantly. Unfortunately, there are still thousands of murders here each year. In 2009, there were 2,899 homicides (down from an astonishing 6,500 in 1991), many tied to drug trafficking. Other schemes perpetrated by local criminals include extortion and kidnapping. Tourists are frequently targeted, held for ransom and forced to empty their bank accounts through visits to ATMs. Since 2012, there has been increasing violence between two rival cartels (the Office of Envigado and Los Urabeños) as they scrap over territory.

5 Brownsville, Brooklyn
USA

New York City (and Brooklyn in particular) have some sordid corners if one looks hard enough, but Brownsville stands out among the rest. Most of the housing in the neighborhood is made up of projects run by the New York City Housing Authority—huge, low-income apartment buildings where crime is prevalent. While much of New York has been subject to gentrification and tumbling crime rates, Brownsville remains quite dangerous, and possibly the most violent place in the entire city. In this neighborhood, some UPS drivers make their deliveries in the company of an armed guard.

As in many rough areas, much of the crime is related to the drug trade. Luckily, the crack-cocaine epidemic of the ’80s and the ’90s is long over, and things have grown (relatively) more peaceful in the interim, with organized gangs fractured into small fragments of their former power. It can be tough to get by on the streets of Brownsville, and many are forced into making their way with their fists. It is no coincidence at all that this neighborhood was the home of a long list of championship boxers, including Riddick Bowe, Shannon Briggs, Zab Judah, and “Iron” Mike Tyson.

4La Perla, San Juan
Puerto Rico, USA

La Perla is a settlement on the outskirts of San Juan that was once home to a slaughterhouse. Today, it is a shantytown known for the proliferation of drugs, particularly heroin imported from suppliers in South America. About 15 square blocks, the streets of La Perla are often omitted from maps of San Juan to keep tourists from traveling there. Despite the abject poverty, La Perla is quite beautiful in many ways, with multicolored homes, breathtaking views, and its own expanse of Caribbean beach. In 2011, La Perla became the site of a massive police raid, netting 114 drug arrests based on an 18-month investigation by the DEA, the Puerto Rico Justice Department, and several other agencies.

3Ferghana Valley
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan

The dissolution of the Soviet Union made for a great deal of tension as the world’s largest country was chopped into independent republics. More than 20 years later, these hostilities remain, some more bitter than ever before. Few places have seen more violence than the Ferghana Valley, an area split in three by the nations of Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. The Ferghana Valley is a center of Islamic fundamentalism and home to a patchwork of ethnicities who are known to clash viciously. The economy is deeply flawed, and the government corrupt. Hundreds of thousands of refugees wander the streets, and corpses litter the sidewalks.

Perhaps the most savage event in the area occurred on May 13, 2005, when the Uzbek town of Andijan became the site of a horrifying massacre as the military opened fire on a group of protesters massed in the main square, decrying the economy and the policies of Preident Islam Karimov. The government would later claim the body count at 187, but those present allege that over 1,000 were killed, including many women and children. They claim that many of the bodies were buried in secret mass graves as a way of downplaying the true scope of the carnage.

2Kibera, Nairobi
Kenya

Nairobi is the capital of Kenya, founded by the British as a rail depot in 1899. Today, it is one of the most important cities in Africa, but it is not free from turmoil. On the outskirts of the city sits Kibera, one of the world’s worst slums. Like many such places, Kibera is forsaken by the government. Enterprising criminals tap into Nairobi’s power grid, bringing electricity to a few select places, but for the most part the area is dark. Homes are typically mud and concrete huts with dirt floors. The water is mostly polluted, causing typhoid and cholera, and toilet facilities consist of holes dug into the ground and used by hundreds. Women leaving their homes after dark are often raped.

About half of Kibera’s population is unemployed, and to alleviate their crushing boredom, they often partake in cheap drugs—glue-sniffing is a big problem—or drink changaa, a powerful local brew. AIDS spreads like wildfire in Kibera, with women selling their bodies just to make enough money to eat, and orphaned children, often born with the disease, haunt the trash-choked streets.

1Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong
China

Hong Kong’s Kowloon Walled City was demolished 20 years ago, but it certainly deserves mention. A former Chinese military fort, it became densely populated with squatters in the years following World War II. Inside the walls of the fort, ramshackle high-rises were built largely devoid of creature comforts like heat or running water. In 1987, a survey by the Chinese government indicated there were approximately 30,000 residents inside the tiny 6.5-acre territory—a population density of 3,250,000 people per square mile. As a means of comparison, the city with the highest population density today is Manila, with approximately 111,002 people per square mile.

Greater Hong Kong largely turned a blind eye to activities within Kowloon Walled City. For years, it was governed by the Triads, Chinese mafia members. Police would only enter in large groups. There were high rates of prostitution, gambling, drug use, murders, and opium dens. Only the faintest trace of sunlight filtered down to the muddy streets, and rats proliferated in the ruin. In the early ’90s, the government finally decided to destroy this anarchic slum. An evacuation was ordered, and in March 1993, the demolition began. Today, the area is occupied by Kowloon Walled City Park, a verdant expanse of gardens and monuments.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist.

We tend to think of history as a collection of abstract facts that have no bearing on the “real world,” but everything connects across the timeline. Big, world-changing events don’t just change things when they happen; they send out shock waves that reverberate into the present. Like William Faulkner said, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

10 Espionage And Sedition Acts

When Woodrow Wilson declared war in 1917, he gave a speech before congress warning of the disloyalty of many Americans. To deal with those who wanted to undermine the war effort, Wilson advocated “a firm hand of repression.”

Thus, Wilson enacted the Espionage and Sedition Acts to prosecute people who threatened “national defense.” The acts granted the government the power to censor newspapers and movies as well as jail those who resisted the draft and made it federal crime to slander the Constitution. The government imprisoned thousands during Wilson’s administration.

Cooler heads never really prevailed. By 1919, the Supreme Court decided that the laws were not in violation of the First Amendment and freedom of speech, and their use continues to this day. They were most recently employed to imprison Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, and they would be used to put Edward Snowden behind bars if he were to be captured.

9 Iron Harvest

Farmers in France, Germany, and Belgium are still at risk of becoming casualties due to the amount of munitions launched during World War I. When they plow their fields, they’re still dredging up tons of unexploded weaponry, and sometimes the bombs go off. Entire teams are dedicated to finding these weapons and disarming them before that happens. People like Michael Colling even have to wear gas masks, as if the war never ended.

In 2012, Belgium uncovered 105 tons of munitions, including poisonous gas. They call the haul, like a macabre crop grown in Hell, the “iron harvest.” In 2004, one site in Germany yielded 3,000 unexploded bombs. Those hauls are only a drop in the bucket. During World War I, 1.4 billion shells were launched. People still occasionally die. The Great War is still claiming lives.

8 Champagne

You may have, at some point, heard a snob proclaim, “Champagne is only champagne if it comes from the Champagne region in France.” Here’s why:

The French regions that could produce champagne were effectively destroyed during World War I. To ensure that champagne would remain exclusively French, a clause was added to the Treaty of Versailles, stipulating that the entire world wouldn’t be able to call any sparkling wine “champagne.” The countries that ratified the Treaty of Versailles agreed.

This stipulation remains at work today, though not completely as intended. If you’re in the US, you may have noticed that a lot of cheap wine is still called “champagne.” This stuff is made in the United States. In the US, you can a get terrible hangover from “champagne” instead of “sparkling wine” because the Senate never ratified the Treaty of Versailles. The US remains technically exempt from the clause.

7 The Red Zone

Some towns in France were so destroyed and contaminated that the French government seized an area of land larger than Paris and deemed it uninhabitable.

Several towns in the Champagne-Ardenne region experienced some of the war’s most devastating fighting. The people that lived there fled, and the towns succumbed to the guns of August. The ground was contaminated, and there were too many unexploded bombs. People didn’t return after the war.

On April 17, 1919, the French government bought the land and declared it uninhabitable. Henceforth, it was to be known as the “Zone Rouge,” a place fit for military training and nothing else. People have returned to some of the towns as the ground became safer, but a large strip of land is still considered impossible for human life.

6 The Hungarian Diaspora

The Treaty of Trianon was the peace agreement established between the Allies and Hungary in 1920, and like all of the treaties dealing with Central and Southern Europe, there was the messy issue of what to do with the losing side’s land. Breaking up the Austro-Hungarian Empire meant dividing the land among the various nations that used to make up the empire.

Hungary really lost hard in the deal. Roughly two-thirds of its territory was given to surrounding countries like Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia. The unintended consequence of this is that millions of Hungarians are in other countries. The Hungarians who found themselves outside their borders did not assimilate into the new nations and essentially created Hungarian exclaves.

Hungary’s solution to this problem today is basically to recreate the Hungarian Empire. They’re creating countries within countries by granting full citizenship, including voting rights, to hundreds of thousands of Hungarians in places like Romania. This has brought the two countries to the brink of war as recently as 2013. It has also promoted the rise of far-right demonstrations chanting “Down with Trianon!” a century after the fact.

5 Debt

World War I was expensive, so much so that Britain went from the world’s creditor to a debtor nation in just four years. No one could have predicated just how devastatingly expensive the war was and how long it would take to pay back all the borrowed money.

Germany was famously stuck with the bill for World War I with the reparations and “war-guilt” clause in the Treaty of Versailles. The country has only recently paid off its debt. They made their final payment of $94 million to the Allies in 2010. They weren’t alone, either. Britain finally paid off its £1.9 Billion debt in 2015.

4 ISIS

ISIS wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for World War I. In fact, the organization makes of point of saying how they will be destroying all of the World War I treaties that created the modern Middle East.

Keep in mind that all of the current nation-states in the Middle East did not exist before 1914. They were (mostly) part of the Ottoman Empire. When it started to look like the Allies would win, the UK and France (again, mostly) decided how they would carve up the new land and add it to their empires. This included the Sykes-Picot agreement.

France and Britain brokered a secret treaty during World War I about who would have what in the Middle East. In the agreement, they decided to create Iraq and Syria and add these newly created territories to their empires. The trouble is that they didn’t take into account how the people living there would feel.

Destroying these borders is now a huge part of the ISIS agenda. In 2014, in one of ISIS’s first videos, they filmed a bulldozer knocking down a chuck of dirt between Iraq and Syria, and then the camera panned down to a sign that said, “End of Sykes-Picot.”

3 Divided Ireland

At the outbreak of World War I, Ireland was part of the UK, but by the end of the war, the Irish had started their own Brexit. Typically, historians have treated the Easter Uprising of 1916 as the origin of modern Irish problems and violence, and it could not have happened without the conditions facilitated by World War I.

Participation in the British military helped to widen the cracks between Irish loyalists and republicans. Northern Ireland fought and died for Britain, and they weren’t about to join Irish nationalists and republicans, who, in their view, weren’t joining or joined for the wrong reasons. Ulster loyalists also supported the conscription of Irishmen, while republicans, nationalists, and Roman Catholics violently resisted.

Things came to a boiling point on Easter 1916, when James Connolly and a group of volunteers stormed Dublin, occupied the General Post Office, and declared the Irish Republic. This event set the tone of violence that would dominate Ireland throughout the 20th century and up until the present day.

2 Pilates

Pilates, the popular fitness fad that has swept the suburbs, was actually born in a World War I internment camp. Joseph Pilates, a native of Germany, moved to England in 1912 to work as a defense instructor for Scotland Yard. Two years later, the war broke out, and the British rounded up thousands of German nationals, whom the British believed represented an enemy threat.

While interned as a potential German saboteur, Joseph developed a method of exercise that could be performed inside the camp. He rigged together what was on hand to enable others to perform effective exercise with little more than their body weight. It worked well and was a hit, and he eventually moved to the US in 1926. He brought his fitness system along with him and opened a studio in New York City. From there, it spread throughout the country.

1 Passports

Papers for travel weren’t always a common necessity. They mostly existed for sailors to pass through ports. By the end of the 19th century, railroads had made travel so popular and easy that Europe simply abolished any legal paperwork that might have been required for travel. From the 1860s to 1914, borders were essentially open.

World War I changed everything. Free and open travel was simply not a reality for nations at war, and the UK was the first to set up the system we recognize today. The British Nationalist and Status Alien Acts of 1914 gave birth to the modern passport. It was a piece of paper with a picture and other identifying criteria encased by a cardboard cover. Besides some minor changes made in the 1920s, these passports became the template for all international travel. Other than increased sophistication in technology, they haven’t really changed.

Secret societies have interested people for a very long time, which makes sense; mysterious groups who remain hidden are understandably intriguing. However, they’re often seen as evil, corrupt, or insidious institutions that intend to do harm to humanity. From the Masons to the Illuminati, conspiracy theorists openly deride such fraternities (whether real or fictional) and claim that they control the world or would at least like to. Here are 10 secret societies that go against that nefarious stereotype, instead having been founded for a good cause.

10 Whiteboys

Formed in Ireland in the 18th century, the Whiteboys were a secret peasant group, bound by secret oaths and known by elaborate pseudonyms, who rebelled against the way that farmers and laborers were being treated by the establishment. Their name derived from group members’ tendency to wear white shirts and the fact they were exclusively young males.

The Whiteboys would proclaim new “laws” that wages were to be increased, tithes were to be reduced, or some other act to help the workers. If these laws were disregarded by the authorities, then the Whiteboys would enforce them through violence, intimidation, and destruction of property. Sometimes, they would even dig graves and place coffins on public roads as a sign of what was to come if the landowners did not change their ways and support the rural poor.

9 E Clampus Vitus

Sounding far more serious than it actually is, E Clampus Vitus is a fraternal society which has its origins in the 19th-century American Gold Rush. It is believed to have been created to poke fun at the actual secret societies that were spreading throughout the West at the time and is essentially a group that promotes alternative local history and having fun—so it’s not your average fraternity.

In good keeping with their original purpose, which was to provide miners with some humorous relief from panning for gold, the “Clampers” mocked institutions such as the Odd Fellows and the Masons with absurd initiation ceremonies. Even their name is a joke, since E Clampus Vitus is not actually Latin, and reportedly, nobody knows what it means. These days, they spend their time putting up plaques for places forgotten by more serious historians, such as saloons and bawdy houses.

8 Family Of Love

A little-known secret society founded in Holland in 1539 with a rather corny name, the Family of Love was a religious movement which sought to aid the poor and believed that religion was about the experience of divine love, not simply belief in one set of doctrines instead of another.

This lack of belief in one particular set of scriptures was quite powerful at a time when Europe was split between Catholicism and Protestantism. Having taken hold in England, the Family of Love was soon outlawed by Queen Elizabeth I, who ordered all adherents to be imprisoned and books to be burnt. Yet, it had a lasting influence on the development of the Quakers, a movement into which the Family of Love was eventually assimilated.

7 Mau Mau

African secret societies are rarely mentioned, and this one certainly deserves more attention than it gets. Mau Mau was a Kenyan nationalist society that originated in the 1950s and engaged in ritual initiations inspired by belief in magic. Unfortunately, Mau Mau’s adherents ended up perpetrating brutal crimes and a great deal of violence, starting an uprising which resulted in the deaths of thousands.

However, it should be noted that Mau Mau was formed to challenge the perceived cruelty of British colonialism in Kenya, and its members’ desperation, hunger, illness, and exploitation was the basis for their violence. Only a few years after this society disappeared, Kenya finally became independent in 1963, and its first president was reported to be a member of Mau Mau.

6 Patrons Of Husbandry

Better known as the Grange, the Patrons of Husbandry was founded as a national agricultural fraternity in 1867 in the United States. Formed along Masonic lines with oaths, passwords and closed meetings, it was alleged that they were essentially controlled by Freemasons and Odd Fellows. However, the Grange, unusual for its time, permitted women to become members, distinguishing it from other, similar organizations.

After a period of rapid expansion due to the Panic of 1873, the Grange became large enough to set up schools, lobbying for causes such as free trade, railroad regulation, and better education. From a peak of over 850,000 in the 1950s, the membership today has fallen to nearly 200,000, perhaps due to the fact that only two percent of Americans are now farmers.

5 The French Resistance

By far the most famous group on this list, it’s often forgotten that the French Resistance was a secret society, at least in some ways. After all, they opposed the Germans in Nazi-occupied France from within the country, something which could only be done in secret. The term “French Resistance” encompasses a broad range of different organizations that existed to fight the Nazis, some choosing to use violence and others deciding instead to spread underground newspapers and broadcast anti-German radio programs.

Led by Charles de Gaulle, who commanded them from the United Kingdom, the Resistance remained secretive and was central to the liberation of France. Regularly carrying out missions of sabotage against railways and intelligence gathering, membership is estimated to have been around 100,000, made up of nine different underground networks, by 1944. Around 50,000 French Resistance fighters were captured by the Nazis and sent to prison camps, of which half never returned.

4 The Order Of Chaeronea

It is well-known that homosexuality has been repressed throughout history, and it is only recently that some parts of the world have fully accepted it. In 1897 in London, a man named George Cecil Ives sought to create a secret society that would allow homosexual men to communicate and gather support for their cause, safe from the rejection and disdain of society.

The Order of Chaeronea’s hard-to-pronounce name comes from the location of an ancient battle in 338 BC, but it remains important in the 21st century. Perhaps the most famous member of the Order was Oscar Wilde, who was imprisoned on charges of homosexuality.

3 Sons Of Liberty

The Sons of Liberty was a patriotic secret society that fought against British colonial rule in America and helped to pave the way for the Boston Tea Party. Initially known as the Loyal Nine when they protested against the Stamp Tax in December 1765, they got their name from words spoken by an Irish MP when debating that very act.

There are countless famous names associated with this society, including Benedict Arnold, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Paul Revere. Although women had little political empowerment at the time, they were actively encouraged to become “Daughters of Liberty” and join the cause against the British Empire.

The Sons of Liberty organized acts of resistance by stockpiling guns, using tactics of mob rule and intimidation, and even methods such as tarring and feathering. As history shows, they got what they wanted in the end.

2 Grand Order Of Water Rats

The charitable fraternity known as the Grand Order of Water Rats was founded by two British musicians in the late 19th century, after they decided that the profits won by their prize racing pony should be used to help struggling performers less fortunate than themselves.

Their rather unimpressive name stems from one occasion when their pony was soaked in the rain, and a nearby bus driver called it a “bleedin’ water rat.” The story goes that because “rats” is “star” spelled backward, and “vole” is an anagram of “love” (the water rat being a type of vole), the name “Water Rats” would embody the society’s desire to bring people together with love and friendship.

However unlikely that may sound, the self-styled “brotherhood” has a long list of very famous members, including Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and Brian May, all of whom have joined in the Grand Order’s cause to help other performers through charitable work.

1 Royal Society

The oldest national scientific society in the world, the Royal Society was founded in London in 1660 as the “Invisible College for the promoting of Physico-Mathematical Experimental Learning.” It was likely “invisible” because of the English Civil War. The society had tried to form in the past, but in 1658, they were disbanded when soldiers stormed their meeting rooms. Yet this group did eventually gain a royal charter from King Charles II, hence the Royal’ in their name.

Despite these turbulent beginnings (and early attempts to discover whether a spider could be trapped in a circle of ground unicorn horns), the Royal Society is far less secret than it once was and has gone on to spread knowledge throughout the world. It boasts an impressive list of members which includes Stephen Hawking, Alan Turing, and Albert Einstein, among many more.

He’s from a flat place with a big sky. Gotta fill all that sky with something, so he filled it with his dreams.

The beauty of origami appeals to the eye as well as the mind. Designs using paper can yield both detailed sculptural works of animals and flowers.

They also employ powerful mathematical principles. Since the 1960s, modern engineering and design have been able to harness both the beauty and the power of origami techniques to introduce efficient alternatives that can be seen in many scientific disciplines today.

10 Emergency Shelters

Zipper tubes can be used for natural disaster relief or emergency shelters. They were created by the amazing researchers at the University of Illinois, Georgia Institute, and University of Tokyo.

They are simply two zigzag pieces of paper glued together. Although a single strip of paper can be quite flexible, two pieces will interlock in a tube design. This provides a much stronger and resilient structure.

Materials that might be used for this design include paper, plastic, or metal. It can be as big as a house or microscopically small. The tubes can be made into shelters as well as buildings or bridges by combining geometric angles for every purpose.^[1]

9 Battery Poisoning

If someone accidentally swallowed a button battery, then this might just save their life. In 2017, there were 3,244 cases of ingested batteries—with almost 2,000 of those by children under age six.^[2]

This origami design has a permanent magnet folded within and is swallowed inside an ice capsule. It is able to take medicine to specific locations in the body. A magnet is used to manipulate where the robot goes in the body, and the bot moves in a “stick-slip” motion. The protuberances can stick to a surface within the body and slip away with body movements. The device also moves around when in contact with stomach fluids.

The origami robot works by allowing the magnetic field outside the body to help process the battery through the digestive system before any harm comes to the person. Instead of paper, the origami design was made from dried pig intestines that are normally used in sausage casing.

This ingenious idea and design is the brainchild of researchers at MIT, the University of Sheffield, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

8 Space

Space missions use nuclear fuel to power the technology to explore the galaxy. This energy source is not particularly economical and has a definite time frame until it is depleted. With space programs hampered by limited budgets to power missions, the ability to combine solar and nuclear energy would mean longer missions for less expense.

Shannon Zirbel from Brigham Young University has imagined a way of using the ancient art of origami to one day do this. Today’s solar arrays (panels) are made of rectangular pieces that fold out in space similar to an accordion. But their size and weight limit how large the arrays can be and, therefore, how much solar energy can be captured.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Brigham Young University, and Robert Lang, an origami expert, have suggested a more efficient design based on origami principles. This could produce up to 250 kilowatts of power compared to the 84–120 kilowatts produced by the solar arrays on the International Space Station.

Based on the Miura fold, invented by Japanese astrophysicist Koryo Miura, their design opens out like a flower to expand into a large, flat, circular area. Simple designs that hark back to origami techniques are already in use in space exploration and research, but the team is constantly searching for more efficient methods of deploying space arrays for missions.^[3]

7 The Ocean

Robert Wood from Harvard University came up with an origami-inspired design to enable soft-bodied marine animals to be captured in deep-sea dives without harming them. The robot’s design had to be simple as a lot can go wrong at those depths, and there are no means to fix any problems without surfacing.

Wood settled on a five-arm feature of interconnected triangles and pentagons that fold together into a 12-sided compartment. Sea slugs, sponges, and corals could be easily captured using the grabber, which is animated by a single motor and attached to a robotic submarine.

In addition, the grabbers are all 3-D printed in mere hours. So you have the means to revolutionize the methods by which marine biologists conduct research at such inhospitable depths.^[4]

6 Shields

Professor of mechanical engineering Larry Howell from Brigham Young University invented a bulletproof shield that was based on a folding pattern dating back nearly 100 years. Bulletproof shields used today can weigh 40 kilograms (90 lb) or more and only protect a single person at a time.

Using an old origami technique, Howell designed a shield that weighs only 25 kilograms (55 lb) and is wide enough to protect several people at once. Even better, the improved design can be easily folded into the trunk of a police vehicle.

The product needed some additional improvements to ensure that the thick bulletproof fabric could fold like paper. The engineers solved the problem by sewing rigid panels into the soft areas between the plates that then behaved like hinges.^[5]

5 Muscles

Robots usually have jerky movements that make interaction with living organisms difficult and potentially harmful.

Researchers at Harvard University and MIT have designed origami-like artificial muscles that can lift objects up to 1,000 times their own weight. It is the equivalent of a duck being able to lift a car.

Using water or air pressure, these muscles have the strength that was missing from other soft designs that were also flexible and dexterous. They look like folded skeletons that are covered with fluid-filled sacs that collapse and contract like real muscles when a vacuum is applied. They can be used for space and deep-sea exploration as well as for miniature surgical devices or wearable robotic exoskeletons.^[6]

4 Airbags

Robert J. Lang gave up his career as a prolific physicist and mathematician with NASA to devote himself to his first love—paper folding. Lang was employed by German engineering company EASi Engineering to help with the design of an airbag using origami techniques.

During a crash, an airbag must fully inflate in only milliseconds. It also needs to be firm enough to stop an accelerating person from injury while cushioning them. Computer simulation of the design is critical, and inventors must be experts in thermodynamics, engineering, physics, and geometry.

Origami begins with a single sheet of paper where polygons can be folded into a design, but an expanded airbag looks nothing like a sheet of paper. Lang used an algorithm called the “universal molecule” to create an airbag with polyhedral facets which could fold into a small space and then open into a device that would protect drivers and passengers without causing damage on impact.^[7]

3 Stents

A stent is a flexible tube design that can be folded into a tiny structure, inserted into problem areas in the body, and then expanded. Esophageal stents are used in the gastrointestinal tract to treat cancers found in the bile duct and esophagus.

This is vital as many of these cancers are inoperable and do not respond to conventional treatment. These stents can instantly allow the patient to swallow. They restore bile flow and often make hospital admission unnecessary for the affected individual.

Zhong You from Oxford University developed a heart stent based on the techniques of the origami “water bomb base” that expands in a similar way to the popular expanding origami boxes. Made of plastic materials, it is small enough to pass through a catheter. Once in position, the stent can be inflated to open up arteries.^[8]

2 Retinal Implants

Sergio Pellegrino, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, has developed a retinal implant inspired by origami that creates a 3-D structure from a 2-D one, a concept vital to this amazing design. The implants are constructed from 2-D parylene-C film and transformed into 3-D spherical structures to help those with retinitis pigmentosa and age-related macular degeneration.^[9]

These conditions result in the loss of photoreceptors that respond to light. The elastic design accommodates a variety of retina sizes and allows for many electrodes to be placed near the retina to relay electrical signals from a camera placed near the eyeball. The device can be built flat to keep costs down.

1 Fighting Cancer

Katerina Mantzavinou, a PhD student at MIT, worked on implants for delivering even doses of chemotherapy to patients whose cancers had spread to their abdomens. The surgeons and oncologists collaborating with her team explained that a sheet design would be better than the existing tube model to increase the surface area reached by the drug.

Having had some experience using origami designs in biomedical engineering, she realized that the tools had to be narrower than 1 centimeter (0.4 in) to reach the area. They also needed to unfurl in the body.^[10]

Stretchy polymers containing the drugs were used to create the folding patterns that were then 3-D printed. Due to her prototypes, Mantzavinou won the MIT Koch Institute image award for 2018. She is currently researching how to make the prototypes thinner to fully realize the design.

Alexa is a writer based in Dublin, Ireland.

World War II affected every person who lived through it. Hundreds of stories from that time have become part of our history, but there are millions more that have gone untold.

Even some famous names you know for something completely different had incredible experiences during the war. Most of their war stories get overshadowed by their more famous accomplishments, but these stories are so incredible that they deserve to be heard.

10 George Bush Barely Escaped Being Eaten By Japanese Cannibals

At age 20, George H.W. Bush, the future 41st president of the United States, was nothing more than a navy pilot. During a bombing raid against the Japanese Bonin Islands, he was shot down—and nearly eaten.

Bush was one of nine men who escaped damaged airplanes during the raid, but he was the only one who survived. He waited on a life raft protected by Allied planes while a submarine rescued him.

The other eight men were not as lucky. They were captured by Japanese soldiers and put through hell. The men were tortured, beaten, and ultimately executed. Some of their bodies were then butchered by surgeons, who served their livers and thigh meat to Japanese officers at a feast.

Thanks to the crew of the USS Finback, Bush made it out alive. But if it hadn’t been for them, the 41st president of the United States would have been served as dinner.

9 Star Trek’s ‘Scotty’ Survived Being Shot Six Times

Before he was “Scotty,” James Doohan was a lieutenant in the Royal Canadian Army. Trained as a pilot, Doohan had a reputation as the “craziest pilot in the Canadian Air Forces” because he did things like slam a plane between two telegraph poles just to prove it could be done.

When D-day came, he was put on the ground and joined the raid on Juno Beach. Doohan personally shot two enemy snipers and led his troops through a field of antitank mines—only to be taken out by his own army.

While Doohan was moving between two command posts, a nervous Canadian soldier opened fire on Doohan, shooting him six times. One of the bullets hit him in the chest. Luckily, Doohan’s life was saved by a cigarette case in his breast pocket.

8 JFK Saved His Crew With A Coconut

John F. Kennedy was deemed medically unfit to fight, but he used his connections to get into the navy anyway. Disaster struck, however, when the ship he commanded was rammed by a Japanese destroyer and cut in half.

Kennedy and his crew clung to the boat for 12 hours before deciding to swim through shark-infested waters to get to land. One injured man couldn’t make the trip, so Kennedy put a life jacket on him and swam him to shore—dragging the man by clenching the strap between Kennedy’s teeth.

The crew was stranded on the island for days before Kennedy carved a message into a coconut, gave it to two natives, and asked them to bring it to a nearby Allied base. His coconut message got through, and the crew was saved. Kennedy kept the coconut shell ever after and even used it as a paperweight in the Oval Office.

7 Tony Bennett Was Demoted for Eating Lunch With A Black Soldier

Before he was a singer, Tony Bennett was a corporal in the US Army and part of a troop fighting its way through France and Germany. For Bennett, that battle didn’t end with the fall of Berlin. It ended at lunchtime.

Bennett invited an old friend to lunch—which would have been fine if his friend hadn’t had black skin. Bennett’s commanding officer objected and ordered the black soldier to take his meal in the kitchen.

Tony Bennett launched into an angry tirade against his racist commander. It was so vitriolic that Bennett got demoted to private, kicked out of his troop, and put on assignment digging up mass graves to send the bodies back home.

6 Gene Roddenberry Created ‘Khan’ To Get In Touch With A Military Friend

When World War II began, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry signed up for the US Army Air Corps. He flew alongside a soldier who would be his best friend during the war—and the inspiration for one of his most famous characters.

Roddenberry’s friend was named Kim Noonien Singh, and the two lost touch after the war. Wanting to get back in touch with his old friend, Roddenberry wrote a character into Star Trek—Kirk’s nemesis Khan Noonien Singh—hoping his friend would see it and get in touch.

Singh never called, but Roddenberry didn’t stop trying. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, Roddenberry named Data’s creator “Dr. Noonien Soong,” again hoping to reach out to his old friend.

5 Bill Nye’s Father Used A Sundial To Find The Location Of His POW Camp

Bill Nye the Science Guy’s father was captured during the war and sent to a Japanese POW camp, where he displayed some of the scientific ingenuity that would later make his son’s reputation.

When the elder Nye wasn’t being watched, he gathered up pebbles and scattered them around a fence post to create a makeshift sundial. By comparing the dial on his creation with the stars, Nye figured out the latitudinal location of the camp.

His trick never got him rescued, and he never managed to share the information with anyone outside the camp. However, Nye said that playing with the sundial kept him sane. After the war, he went into the sundial business professionally.

4 Ernest Hemingway Posed As An Officer And Led A French Militia

Although Ernest Hemingway was just a reporter during World War II, that didn’t stop him from leading an army.

While in France, Hemingway found a ragtag group of French resistance fighters and decided they needed better leadership. Specifically, his leadership. He tore off his noncombatant insignia, convinced the group that he was a US colonel, and took charge.

Hemingway led the group into the town of Rambouillet and stationed them there. By telling the US Army that he was ferrying weapons for another troop, he convinced them to arm him with machine guns and grenades. Then Hemingway marched his militia toward Paris.

Although the plan was to lead an assault on some major cities, Hemingway mostly liberated bars so he could get drunk in them. His group went all the way to the Ritz in Paris, where Hemingway partied through the war. Later, Hemingway used this to claim that he was the first person to liberate the Ritz.

3 Audrey Hepburn Ate Tulip Bulbs To Survive

In 1944, Audrey Hepburn was in Holland when the Nazis locked down the city and began a season that would be remembered as the “Winter of Hunger.”

Food was nearly impossible to come by, and Hepburn claims that she and her family had to resort to eating nettles, boiled grass, and tulip bulbs to survive. Toward the end, Hepburn had whittled away to a mere 40 kilograms (88 lb). The malnutrition racked her body with jaundice and asthma, and she very likely could have died.

On the day before the end of the war, a Dutch soldier gave the future actress seven candy bars. Hepburn shoved all seven of them into her mouth immediately.

2 Lenny Bruce Pretended To Be Gay To Get Discharged

After serving 30 months in the navy, comedian Lenny Bruce was determined to get out. So he wrote a letter to a medical officer saying that he was “attracted physically to a few of the fellows” and wouldn’t be able to fight his homosexual urges much longer.

He convinced the officers on his ship that he was a ticking gay bomb ready to explode—if he didn’t get away from all the hunky men on his ship, he would “give way to the performance of homosexual acts.” Surprisingly, it worked. Bruce was first relocated to a station where “heterosexual companionship was available” and later given an honorable discharge.

If the story sounds familiar, it’s because Bruce’s gay ruse was the inspiration for the cross-dressing character, Corporal Klinger, on M*A*S*H.

1 Coco Chanel Was A Nazi Spy

When the Nazis occupied France, some brave heroes rose up against their oppressors. But designer Coco Chanel definitely wasn’t one of them. Instead, Chanel became the lover of a Nazi officer. She also became a Nazi spy.

Chanel was given the code name “Westminster” and sent around Europe to enlist spies for the Nazis. She even made a trip to see Heinrich Himmler and offered to use her links to Winston Churchill to gather information.

At the end of the war, Chanel and her Nazi lover fled to Switzerland where they stayed together for 10 more years. She was only spared from execution by the intervention of Winston Churchill, who took her name off the death rosters.

+Further Reading

Lest We Forget . . .

10 Fascinating Snapshots From World War II
10 Heartbreaking World War II Diary Entries Written By Everyday People
10 Mind-Blowing Secret Operations From World War II
10 Unanswered Questions From World War II
10 Unsolved Mysteries From World War II

At the end of World War II, the death marches, which claimed the lives of countless people, were considered among the worst atrocities. Some were simply done to kill prisoners or to keep them from being freed by the advancing Allies, while some were marched for later use as hostages. Survivors were witness to the cold-blooded murder of family, friends, adults, and children. They lived to tell of some of the darkest days of World War II.

10 David Friedmann

Before the Holocaust, David Friedmann was one of Berlin’s most important and prolific portrait artists. Although he and his family escaped to Prague in 1938, they were deported to Lodz’s Jewish Ghetto in 1941. Friedmann was ultimately sent to Gleiwitz I and was a part of the death march to Blechhammer. His family died at Auschwitz.

Friedmann and the other prisoners left on January 21, 1945, and marched the 100 kilometers (60 mi) to the next camp. Friedmann wrote of the execution of those too weak to walk and remembers that he was nearly one of those people. Friedmann gave credit to a doctor named Orenstein and two friends for saving his life and getting him to Blechhammer, where they were liberated days later by the Soviets.

After the war, Friedmann continued to paint and immortalized scenes from the concentration camps he was in as well as the death march.

9 Salvator Moshe

Salvator Moshe was born in Greece, where his family had settled generations before, fleeing persecution by the Spanish Inquisition. Moshe and the other Jewish residents of Salonika were deported to German concentration camps in 1943.

Moshe and his brother-in-law were a part of the 4,000-person death march from the Warsaw Ghetto to Dachau in 1944. The march went on for days. On the third day, they were told to stop alongside a river, where the escorting officers told them they could finally have a drink. As they went to the water, Moshe recalled, “[A] fellow next to me, he was drinking water, but I heard bullets. They shooting. Zzz, zzz, zzz. Coming.”

The officers shot their charges as they kneeled to drink, and when the survivors made it back to the road, he saw another officer shooting those who couldn’t continue. Moshe and his brother-in-law survived and were liberated by US troops outside Seeshaupt.

8 William Dyess

A US fighter pilot, William Dyess was one of the soldiers who survived the Bataan Death March. He escaped in 1943 and made his way back to the States.

Dyess published an account of the horrors he witnessed, starting with the first murder. He described an Air Force captain being searched by a Japanese private, who found a handful of yen. As soon as the private, who Dyess described as a giant, saw the yen, he stepped to the side and beheaded the captain.

Dyess also talked about the so-called “Oriental sun treatment,” where captives were forced to sit in the blazing sun for hours on end, with no protection or water. The marchers were followed by a “clean-up squad” of Japanese soldiers who killed those who fell behind.

Once at San Fernando, Dyess and the other survivors found themselves in conditions so dire that they couldn’t even bring themselves to protest.

7 Eva Gestl Burns

When Soviet forces approached Auschwitz and the surrounding labor camps, those being held there were forced to walk. Eva Gestl Burns was working at an ammunition factory when they were told to start walking, and she later recounted a courageous escape.

The prisoners were clad in winter coats, and each coat was marked with a striped square. The women, many of whom were carrying scissors and thread, were able to remove the striped squares, cover the hole with a piece of plain material from somewhere else on the coat, and then replace the striped piece until they saw their chance for escape.

For Eva and a single companion, that chance came as they were being assembled into rows. When no one was paying attention, they ran, tore the striped fabric off their coats, and ultimately joined a group of German refugees heading to Sudentenland.

6 Stanislaw Jaskolski

In January 1945, prisoners at the Stutthof camp system were herded from their camps. Around 50,000 people were scattered. Around 5,000 were marched to Baltic Sea, ordered into the water, and shot. Others headed into Eastern Germany.

Stanislaw Jaskolski later described the march. He remembered freezing cold temperatures and the small bag of supplies they were handed. It included shirts, long johns, half a loaf of bread, and some margarine. They were given a scattering of blankets that were meant to be shared and were herded onto the road.

As they marched, Jaskolski thought of what they were leaving behind—the gallows, the gas chambers, and the crematorium. They were freezing, he remembered, but he also remembered thinking that they were, at that moment, doing pretty good.

5 Jack Aizenberg

Jack Aizenberg was one of 60 people (out of 600) who survived the 160-kilometer (100 mi) death march from Colditz Castle to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The 16-year-old boy was already starving, and he marched for a week with no food. Those alongside him were so hungry they were eating grass.

When they stopped to spend the night at a factory, Aizenberg found a single pea. He wanted to boil it over a fire they had started, and he was terrified that someone was going to try to steal it. He cut it into four pieces to make it last longer, and it was the only food he had for the entire march.

Aizenberg made it to Theresienstadt, and he knew he was dying—but he no longer cared. Soviet forces liberated the camp days later, and he would be taken to Britain as part of a resettlement program for the war’s orphans.

4 John Olson

Colonel John Olsen survived the Bataan Death March and the horror that came after it—Camp O’Donnell.

When survivors arrived at the camp, locals were granted permission to give them food. They were also given a welcome speech by a Japanese captain who made it clear that his only regret was that the code of honor to which he had to abide forbade him from killing the prisoners outright.

As personnel adjutant, Olson kept a meticulous record of what went on every day in the camp and would later use his notes to write a book. His journal records things like an increase in daily sugar rations (to 10 grams each) and the daily death toll. He also wrote about the burial detail and how men would volunteer for the task in order to make sure that their friends could at least have a proper burial.

3 Ingeborg Neumeyer

After World War I, around three million ethnic Germans were living in the area that became Czechoslovakia. By the time World War II rolled around, those Germans were no longer considered racially pure and became subject to the wrath of the Third Reich.

Ingeborg Neumeyer was 15 when she and her family were dragged from their apartment on May 31, 1945, and herded into the streets to join what would be known as the Brno death march. Later, she would recall seeing people shot for falling behind as well as her mother’s attempt to make sure her daughter at least had clothing. She was wearing three dresses when they started the march, but when she tried to discard two of the dresses, she was seen. She was beaten bloody, her clothes were taken, and her shoes were thrown away.

2 Marie Ranzenhoferova

Marie Ranzenhoferova was 24 years old when she walked from Brno to the Austrian border. She was offered the chance to stay by a would-be suitor who promised that if she and her baby went to live with him, she would be safe. She refused, and he would later force her at gunpoint to join the march.

Marie talked about families forced to leave homes they had been in for generations, dropping priceless family heirlooms as they walked, unable to carry them anymore. She remembered being supervised by guards from concentration camps, who were nowhere near as cruel as the men from the Zbrojovka arms factory. Those men were violent drunks, and she remembered one grabbing a baby from a woman’s arms and throwing it into a field because it would not stop crying.

When they reached the border, Marie left the march, and around 700 people followed her into the village of Perna. She stayed there for a while and eventually moved to Mikulov.

1 Keith Botterill

Keith Botterill (pictured above on the right) is one of only six people who survived the Sandakan death march. He and the other survivors only lived because they were able to escape their Japanese captors on the march from Sandakan Camp.

Botterill would later remember the camp itself as decent enough for the first 12 months they were there. As the war dragged on, the beatings and starvation got worse. As he and his companions planned for their escape, they were caught stealing rice in preparation. Botterill’s friend, Richie Murray, stepped forward and confessed to the theft. He was bayoneted.

After their escape, another companion, weakened by dysentery, slit his own throat to keep from slowing them down. The other survivors were Owen Campbell, Nelson Short (pictured left above), Bill Moxham, Bill Sticpewech (pictured center above), and James Richard Braithwaite. All Australian, they had been warned to escape by a sympathetic Japanese officer who knew about an upcoming slaughter.

Botterill died in 1997, just after the completion of a book about the remarkable story of the Sandakan Six.

+Further Reading

Here is a small selection of lists from the archives based around World War II.

10 Bizarre World War II Weapons That Were Actually Built
10 Little-Known Alternative Plans From World War II
10 Amazing Untold Stories From World War II
10 World War II Soldiers Who Pulled Off Amazing Feats

You’ve heard of the Grand Canyon, the Galapagos Islands, and Venezuela’s Angel Falls; you’ve probably even heard of more obscure natural wonders, like the needle-like rock forests at Tsingy de Bemaraha. But no matter how much of the Earth we cover, there’s always something breathtaking just around the bend.

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Photos Of Incredibly Surreal Places on Earth

10Kirkjufell

Kirkjufell Mountain is best known for the stunning pictures brought back by tourists. Located on the Snaefellsnes Peninsula in Iceland, there isn’t anything impressively significant about the mountain itself. It’s not the biggest mountain in Iceland, or the deadliest, and it can’t even claim to be one of the many volcanoes that have given Iceland the reputation of producing a third of all the basaltic lava in the history of the world.

But if there’s one thing that makes Kirkjufell stand out from the pack, it’s how all the elements of the scenery fall together. This is a photogenic mountain. From the Middle-earth landscape to the trio of waterfalls feeding a crystal clear stream at the mountain’s foot, it all creates a perfect portrait of idyllic Iceland. Even the weather pitches in. And, as the picture above shows, Kirkjufell is smack dab in the center of one of the best places to view the stunning Northern Lights.

9Cano Cristales

Known to the locals as the “River of Five Colors,” Cano Cristales is truly a hidden paradise. Tucked away in the mountains of Colombia, there are only two ways to reach the river, and both of them are by plane. The colors of the river come from a combination of algae, the natural hue of the river rocks, and the blue of the water itself. In particular, the red comes from an aquatic plant called Macarenia clavigera.

Because the coloration comes from living creatures, the effect shifts constantly, like a living watercolor painted by God’s own hand. The most spectacular time to see Cano Cristales is in the summer, when the heat brings out the most vibrant shades of red. In addition to the striking colors and the incredible biodiversity of the region, Cano Cristales also flows over some of the oldest rocks in the world—the Guiana Shield, which formed about 1.2 billion years ago.

8Taylor Glacier Blood Falls

Antarctica isn’t usually the first place that comes to mind when you picture a paradise, but as harsh and unforgiving as the weather may be, the landscape can be equally beautiful. We’ve only begun to really explore this frozen continent, but we’re finding more and more wonders hidden beneath the ice.

One striking example of Antarctica’s uniqueness can be found at the Taylor Glacier, which vomits a continuous stream of iron-rich hypersaline water onto the surrounding snow. The glacier was discovered in 1911 by an explorer named Thomas Griffith Taylor, who surmised that the reddish tint was caused by an unknown form of bacteria. It wasn’t until much later that we found the real reason for the spring of blood-colored water—an ancient underground pool of saltwater about 400 meters (1,300 ft) below the surface of the ice.

During the Miocene period, about five million years ago, water levels around Antarctica rose enough to leave a lake of saltwater on the previously dry land. When the ocean receded, it stranded the lake, which was then slowly covered by a string of glaciers until it was completely cut off from the surface. With no oxygen, the lake was left in almost the exact same state as when it was covered—it became a five-million-year-old time capsule. There are microbes down there that have remained unchanged since the Miocene period, and they’re responsible for breaking down iron deposits in the salty water. Once that iron-rich water squeezes its way up through a fissure to the surface and comes in contact with oxygen for the first time, the iron hydroxide reacts instantly, giving us a waterfall of rust—the Blood Falls.

7Beppu Hot Springs

Beppu, Japan is one of the world’s hot spring hot spots; there are more than 2,500 springs in the area—the second largest such cluster in the world. The springs are colloquially known as the “Eight Hells,” since there are eight main areas, each producing a unique type of spring. Blood Pond Hell, pictured above, is saturated with iron, giving both the water and the steam a dark reddish tint.

Some of the other Hells include Demon Mountain Hell, which houses about 80 crocodiles; White Pond Hell, which contains boric acid that gives the water a milky consistency; and Oniishi Shaven Head Hell, which is a mass of bubbling mud that—supposedly—resembles the shaven heads of monks rising to the surface. Entire commerce systems have arisen around the springs, letting you buy vegetables cooked in the Hells’ steam or eggs boiled right in the multicolored water. There are also smaller springs that are cool enough for a foot bath, although the main springs are peppered with “Do not swim” signs—the water in some of the Hells can reach a blistering 150 degrees Celsius (300 °F).

6Spotted Lake

The Okanagan Valley lies at the extreme southern border of British Columbia. For thousands of years, aboriginal tribes have lived and battled in the valley, and their legends remain to this day. One of their most prominent legends told of a battle that occurred in the hills around Spotted Lake—then known as Khiluk to the First Nations of the region. During the battle, both sides called a truce and allowed their men to bathe together in the mineral-rich waters of Spotted Lake.

The alleged healing properties of the lake are still advertised today. There are high concentrations of 11 different minerals, including calcium and magnesium sulfate, and some trace amounts of titanium and silver. In the summer, when the lake partially evaporates, the minerals precipitate into rounded “holes.” Each hole takes on a different color, depending on which minerals are more concentrated in that particular spot.

5Panjin Red Beach

This gorgeous crimson landscape is located in China, near the city of Panjin. It’s situated in the middle of an immense, sprawling wetland area in the Liaohe River Delta, but it’s the only part of the wetland that takes on this vibrant coloration. Rather than sand, the beach is covered with a highly alkaline soil, which is too basic for most plants to live on. That leaves little competition for the Suaeda salsa, a species of seaweed that has completely taken over the 1.4 million acres that make up Red Beach.

In the summer, the seaweed is a dark green color—pretty but not exactly breathtaking. But in autumn, the mature plants take on a fiery red color that turns the beach into a one-of-a-kind spectacle. Most of the beach is closed to visitors in an effort to protect the delicate ecosystem, but there’s a small section that’s open to tourists.

4Pamukkale’s Travertine Pools

One of the most unique sights in the world is, without a doubt, the cliffside travertine pools in Pamukkale, Turkey. Travertine is a type of limestone that’s found in a lot of the world’s hot springs. When the spring reaches the surface, the travertine solidifies into stepped structures that hold the spring water. The fairy-tale result usually looks like something out of a Dr. Seuss book—layers of crystal clear pools stacked on top of each other. No matter where they form, they’re usually beautiful.

Pamukkale was the ancient site of the Greek city of Hierapolis, and the name itself means “cotton castle.” From a distance, that’s absolutely what it looks like. The pools are initially formed from soft calcium carbonate that later solidifies into travertine. Because of the high calcium content, the end result is a hillside that’s white as snow.

3Zhangye Danxia

The Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park is located in southwest China and contains more than a few unusual features. Probably the most startling are the multicolored mountains known as Danxia landforms. The surreal coloration comes from red sandstone and natural mineral deposits that have formed over the course of 24 million years. Each “stripe” constitutes a different mineral, and over the ages, they’ve formed layer upon layer, resulting in a rainbow pattern. Erosion from wind and rain has further polished the surfaces of the mountains.

China is the only place in the world with this type of mineral formation, and a few of the landforms have become UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The town of Zhangye has capitalized on the international interest in the Danxia landforms, and there are dozens of separate tour companies leading groups into the rainbow mountains.

2Lake Retba

There are a handful of names that have been given to this lake, some by locals and some by visitors, but they all essentially mean the same thing: “The Pink Lake.” And while that may not be the most creative moniker, it’s definitely the most accurate. Lake Retba is located in Senegal, and it’s only separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a thin strip of sand dunes. Because of that slight geographic separation, a species of algae called Dunaliella salina has been able to proliferate in the lake’s warm waters.

Found only in a few places in the world, Dunaliella algae are salt lovers—which is good, because Lake Retba is as salty as the Dead Sea. In order to survive such salty conditions, Dunaliella produce a red pigment that allows them to absorb more sunlight and produce beta carotene, which acts as a buffer against the salt. The saltier the lake gets (particularly in the dry season), the deeper the red gets. During particularly dry seasons, the lake will take on a hue that can only be described as “bloody.”

1Lencois Maranhenses

An oasis in the middle of the desert makes a pretty picture, but they’re few and far between in most of the world’s arid regions. Lencois Maranhenses National Park, on the other hand, is absolutely peppered with them. Located in northeastern Brazil, this sand-covered, 155,000-acre park isn’t actually a desert, even though it looks like one. It’s located right outside the Amazon jungle and receives the same amount of rainfall you’d expect to see in a tropical rainforest. When the rainwater collects between the dunes, it forms thousands upon thousands of separate lagoons that stretch as far as the eye can see.

Each lagoon functions as a completely unique ecosystem. Despite the lack of inlets or outlets, many of the standalone lagoons are filled with fish that were carried to the pools as eggs by seabirds. But since the sandy ground is largely devoid of nutrients, very little vegetation grows in Maranhenses, turning it into sort of a combination of two worlds, like oil and water stirred into the same bowl.

Vehicle graveyards are just that—places where vehicles go to die, slowly succumbing to rust until they are saved or scrapped. The decaying vehicles can often be an eerie sight, and many of the largest vehicle graveyards boast some fairly strange stories.

10Bolivia’s Train Graveyard

High in the Andes, in the southwest of Bolivia, lies the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt plain. In 1888, as the local mining industry boomed, British engineers were invited to build a railway network that stretched down to the Pacific. Despite constant sabotage from the local Aymara indigenous people who saw the railway as a threat to their way of life, the lines were completed in 1892.

However, by the 1940s the mining economy had collapsed as mineral deposits became exhausted. As the railway fell into disuse, many of the steam trains were simply abandoned on the salt flats. Even today, it makes for a strange sight: lines of rusting steam engines, many of them manufactured in the UK, baking under the desert sun. Since there are no fences or guards, most of the trains have had metal components stolen from them—some of the gutted parts litter the surrounding area. There are plans to turn the graveyard into a museum, but until then the trains are at the mercy of the locals and the environment.

9Chatillon Forest Car Graveyard

Until recently, the deep woods around the small Belgian town of Chatillon concealed four car graveyards, containing over 500 vehicles slowly being claimed by moss and rust. There is some disagreement over the origin of the vehicles. The most frequently repeated story is that the graveyards began at the end of World War II, when American soldiers unable to afford to ship their cars back home simply left them in the forest, with more being added over the years. Another, less interesting story holds that they were simply the remains of an abandoned junkyard.

Most of the cars were produced in the 1950s and ’60s, and many were highly collectible. As such, a large number were missing parts, either salvaged by collectors or taken by souvenir hunters looking for trinkets. The last of the graveyards was cleared in 2010 amid environmental concerns, but plenty of eerie photos remain.

8Oranjemund Diamond Vehicle Scrapyard

Oranjemund, Namibia is a small town entirely owned by a company called Namdeb, a joint venture between the Namibian government and the De Beers diamond cartel. Located close to the mouth of the Orange River, it is home to large diamond reserves—the town was built to house the mineworkers. The area is incredibly restricted—armed guards patrol the perimeter and you’re not even allowed through the airport turnstiles without a permit. Anyone found in unauthorized possession of a diamond faces up to 15 years in prison and workers have been known to try and smuggle the gems out hidden up their noses or shoot them over the fences with homemade crossbows. On one occasion, a homing pigeon was discovered wearing a tiny jacket stuffed full of diamonds.

Oranjemund is also home to one of the world’s largest earth-moving fleets, second only to the US Army. Once a vehicle enters the mine compound, it is never allowed to leave, apparently to stop them from being used to smuggle out diamonds. Some of the rusting machinery dates back to the 1920s and includes World War II tanks formerly used to bulldoze sand. Company executives used to proudly show off the collection, but now, conscious of their public image, have begun refusing to let photographs be taken of the graveyard.

7Nouadhibou Ship Graveyard

With a population of almost 100,000, Nouadhibou is the second-largest city in Mauritania—one of the poorest nations in the world. The city’s port, located on a wide bay, offers excellent protection for ships to shelter from the Atlantic and is the gateway to some of the best fishing grounds in the world. Iron ore extracted nearby is exported through the port, making it a minor trade hub.

In the 1980s, locals began abandoning outdated and unwanted vessels in the shallow waters of the bay. Before long, ships started to come from all over the world to be dumped in Nouadhibou, facilitated by local authorities only too happy to take a bribe to look the other way. From fishing trawlers to naval cruisers, a huge variety of ships now rust away in the shallow waters. One of the largest is the United Malika, which ran aground in 2003 while carrying a load of fish (the 17 crew members were rescued by the Mauritanian navy). Since then it hasn’t been moved.

Despite measures to prevent further dumping, the number of abandoned ships continues to rise, albeit at a slower pace than before. As a major iron ore exporter, there has been limited incentive for locals to cut the ships apart for scrap. It isn’t all bad however—the half-sunk ships act as a breeding ground for fish and local fishermen often stretch nets between the boats. The government’s current plan is to use the ships to form an artificial reef in deeper waters, but little has been done since the plan was announced in 2001.

6Soviet Submarines On The Kola Peninsula

In Nezametnaya Cove, located inside the Arctic Circle in the far north of Russia, lies a Soviet submarine graveyard. Starting in the ’70s, military submarines, many of them nuclear powered, were simply abandoned in the cove on the isolated Kola Peninsula. The Soviet shipyards were apparently too busy filling orders for new submarines to care about disassembling the old ones.

Access to the area is forbidden without a permit, so information on the graveyard remains limited. It is known that some of the subs were finally scrapped in the ’90s amid concerns over water pollution, but Google Earth images, pictured above, seem to indicate that there are at least seven remaining.

5Barry Scrapyard

In 1955, the newly nationalized British Railways announced a plan to scrap a wide swath of its aging fleet. The newly redundant stock included around 650,000 wagons and 16,000 steam locomotives. Due to the large amount of rolling stock to scrap, British Railways’ yards were unable to cope and many of the trains were sold to private scrapyards. Among them was Woodham Brothers scrapyard in Barry, South Wales. At first, the steam locomotives were cut up shortly after arriving, but by the autumn of 1965 owner Dai Woodham had decided to concentrate on the easier job of scrapping the large numbers of wagons that were rolling into the yard.

The rusting steam locomotives were left out in the open, where they quickly became a popular tourist attraction in Barry. Enthusiasts of steam trains soon realized that Woodham Brothers offered a chance to obtain rare locomotives for the preserved lines that had started to open up around the country—many of the models in Dai’s yard were impossible to find elsewhere. In September 1968, the first “rescued” steam locomotive left the yard, and the pace increased throughout the ’70s. In the end, 213 steam engines were rescued for preservation, much to Dai’s surprise. The last one left Barry in March 2013.

Dai, who died in 1994, was said to have been immensely proud of his part in saving the engines for future generations. Today, many of the steam locomotives from his yard can be found running on preserved lines around Britain.

4A Motorcycle Graveyard In Upstate New York

Beside the Erie Canal, in Lockport, New York, there was an aging warehouse that became legendary in the motorcycle community. The warehouse was once owned by a man named Kohl, who supposedly owned a number of motorbike dealerships over his lifetime. Buying cheap Japanese bikes and defunct dealers’ stock, he soon amassed a staggering number of the vehicles. He bought the building in the 1970s to store the vast collection before selling it off, contents included, in 1997. Mr. Kohl died in 2002, aged 80.

The buyer, known only as Frank, intended to use the warehouse to start a company selling motorcycle parts. However, the building had fallen into a state of disrepair and Frank was unable to justify the cost of fixing the damage. Eventually, the warehouse was condemned by the local authorities, barring anyone from viewing the collection. By November 2010, the bikes had all been cleared out, with many seemingly going to scrap.

Pictures of the graveyard first surfaced in April 2010 on Flickr, causing motorbike enthusiasts to seek out the graveyard, with some buying rare bikes and spare parts just in time. Photographer Chris Seward sums it up well: “It is definitely one of the most eerie, strangest places I have ever been.”

3RAF Folkingham

RAF Folkingham, in Lincolnshire, UK, was originally opened in 1940 as a decoy airfield for RAF Spitalgate—complete with fake planes and personnel—before being handed over to US control in early 1944. Douglas C-47 Dakotas stationed at the airfield were used during the D-Day landings.

The base was handed back to RAF control in April 1945 and closed in 1947, after which British Racing Motors, a Formula One team, used the runways as a test track. It was re-opened by the RAF in 1959 and used as a site for Thor thermonuclear missiles until its second closure in 1963, when it was sold off for agricultural land.

Today the site is owned by Nelson M. Green & Sons Ltd., which uses the old airfield to store hundreds of vehicles used to source spare parts. Among the vehicles are old Caterpillar bulldozers, fuel bowsers, cranes, and tractors, as well as ex-military lorries and armored vehicles dating back to World War II. There is even a DUKW amphibious vehicle, pictured above, which was used in the D-Day landings. Also on site are three pads that housed the aforementioned Thor missiles. Today, the vehicles are still lined up, awaiting their eventual fate.

2Chernobyl Disaster Vehicles

After the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, it wasn’t just people and buildings that were affected by the radiation—so were the vast number of vehicles used in the firefighting and subsequent cleanup operation. Since the disaster, the majority of the vehicles have been sitting in huge graveyards, the largest being at Rassokha, awaiting their fate. However, not all of the vehicles are in the graveyards. The fire trucks that got to the disaster area first had to be buried deep underground.

In the middle of most of the graveyards are the firefighting helicopters whose pilots and crew were among the most badly affected by the radiation. Scarily, locals have been caught attempting to salvage metal from the vehicles, despite the huge risks. The Ukrainian police have arrested a number of people for attempting to salvage one of the Mi-8 helicopters deployed in the operation, which they intended to use as a cafe.

1The Arizona Boneyard

Officially known as the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and home to the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG), the Boneyard is a huge aircraft storage ground located in the middle of the Arizona desert. The size of 1,430 soccer pitches, the Boneyard is home to more than 4,200 aircraft, worth around $35 billion, and is easily the world’s largest military aircraft cemetery.

The Boneyard’s aircraft are divided into four categories: Category 1000 refers to those preserved and able to fly again if needed, Category 2000 are used for spare parts, Category 3000 contains planes in good condition and likely to eventually be redeployed, and Category 4000 refers to outdated aircraft likely to become museum pieces or be scrapped. Among the fourth category were many of the iconic B-52 bombers, scrapped after a 1991 arms reduction treaty with Russia.

Arizona is perfect for the facility since its dry climate helps prevent decay. Unsurprisingly, AMARG works hard to prove that, rather than wasting government money, it in fact earns money through the sale of parts. Such is the fame of the Boneyard that you can even take a guided tour around the site.

Will is an aspiring writer from the UK, whose other interests include filming and photography.

When fighter planes and ships were downed by their enemies in World War II, it didn’t always mean the death of every person aboard. Sometimes, a few people survived but found themselves stranded behind enemy lines. With no one searching for them, they were forced to find their way back home on their own.

Some of the people who made these journeys went through unbelievable experiences—and they made it back alive.

10 Five Americans On A Lifeboat Sailed Through A Typhoon

Calvin Graef, a prisoner of war aboard a Japanese vessel, was cooking rice when he heard his captors in a panic. US ships had found them, but this wasn’t the rescue he’d dreamed of. The US ships had fired torpedoes and destroyed the Japanese ship with Graef and other prisoners of war still trapped on board.

Graef survived by clinging to pieces of the wreckage. Soon, four American POWs who’d escaped picked him up on a lifeboat and helped him aboard. The men made a rudder for their boat by breaking up parts inside. Then they sailed west toward China.

Their trip took them through a typhoon and over 480 kilometers (300 mi) of ocean. In the end, Chinese fishing boats took them to shore, fed them, clothed them, and sent them home.

9 Japanese Soldiers Walked Through 16 Kilometers (10 Mi) Of Crocodile-Infested Waters

In January 1945, Japanese soldiers were forced off Ramree Island by a troop of invading British soldiers. One thousand of the men escaped, fleeing through a swamp. They thought they were going to make their way to safety.

Instead, the men began a 16-kilometer (10 mi) trek through a swamp infested with crocodiles, some weighing as much as 900 kilograms (2,000 lb). The blood of the injured soldiers lured the crocodiles in. Meanwhile, the men struggled through as crocodiles emerged out of nowhere, grabbed the men, and dragged them under, never to be seen again.

The soldiers fired their guns wildly every time one emerged, but it didn’t stop the crocodiles. One by one, the men were dragged into the water by the hungry animals. By the end, only 400 of the 1,000 men who’d entered the swamp made it out alive.

8 A Soviet Pilot Stole A Nazi Fighter Plane And Flew Home

When Soviet Lieutenant Kuznetsov was shot down by a German pilot, he crash-landed in an open field and ran for cover as his plane exploded behind him.

But the German pilot who’d shot him down made a mistake that saved Kuznetsov’s life. The German flew down to the wreckage, eager to take a souvenir of his kill home. He climbed out of his plane and went through the wreckage, unaware that Kuznetsov was still alive.

Kuznetsov sneaked out of his hiding spot, climbed into the German’s plane, and took off, leaving the man who’d shot him stranded on the ground.

Then Kuznetsov had to fly home, entering Soviet airspace in a German plane and having to dodge fire from his own men. Fortunately, he made it through alive and returned to the safety of home.

7 A Japanese Fighter Flew Home After Being Shot In The Face

In 1942, Saburo Sakai, one of Japan’s greatest flying aces, was nearly taken by an enemy bomber. The bomber riddled Sakai’s plane with bullets, one of which hit him in the face. Sakai lost sight in his right eye and couldn’t get the left side of his body to move.

Sakai was determined to go out as a hero. He planned on making a kamikaze run against the first ship he saw. But he didn’t stumble upon a single ship. For four hours, he flew over 1,050 kilometers (650 mi) with half of his body paralyzed.

But he made his way home.

6 A Soviet Pilot Dragged Himself Across A Forest For 18 Days

When Alexsei Maresyev’s plane was shot down by Germans, he found himself trapped inside German-controlled land. He was bleeding from several wounds and was quickly losing the use of his legs. But he was determined to survive.

Maresyev crawled through the forest, gradually making his way through enemy lines and back into Soviet territory. His legs were so badly injured that he eventually lost the ability to stand. It took 18 brutal days of pulling his body across the ground to get through. When he made it back, he was so badly hurt that his legs had to be amputated.

After being fitted with prosthetic legs, Maresyev went right back into his plane and back into combat. “There’s nothing extraordinary in what I did,” he told reporters later. “The fact that I’ve been turned into a legend irritates me.”

5 A Plane Crashed Into A Jungle Filled With Cannibals

In May 1945, a plane flying over New Guinea crashed into a jungle. The pilot, who couldn’t see past the clouds, just flew into the side of a mountain. His mistake killed 19 of the people aboard and left the last few survivors stranded 260 kilometers (160 mi) from civilization.

A tribe living in this jungle still used Stone Age technology, and rumor had it that they were cannibals. In time, the plane crash survivors were spotted by the tribe. The survivors were terrified, but they had no choice but to offer a greeting and hope for the best. To their surprise, this tribe of supposed cannibals just flashed them a smile and then helped to feed and protect them.

Meanwhile, US paratroopers staged a rescue. The lost crew was found and flown out of the thick jungle on gliders.

4 A Chinese Sailor Drank Shark Blood To Survive 133 Days At Sea

Poon Lim was a steward on a British ship traveling to Surinam when Germans attacked the ship with torpedoes. Lim grabbed a life jacket and jumped overboard just seconds before the ship exploded. He was the sole survivor.

Lim climbed aboard a raft in the wreckage and then set out on a grueling journey alone. After the rations on the raft were gone, Lim became so desperate for water and food that he actually tried to lure sharks to him.

At one point, he killed a bird with a knife he’d fashioned from a biscuit tin. Then he used the dead bird to lure a shark to his raft, bashed the shark’s head with a jug, and drank its blood.

Lim passed by several US and German vessels but was ignored by every one. Finally, he was spotted by Brazilian fishermen who brought him ashore after 133 days at sea.

3 Prisoners Escaped From A Soviet Camp And Walked 6,400 Kilometers (4,000 Mi) To India

Slavomir Rawicz spent two years in Siberia as a prisoner of war. Then, with the help of the camp commandant’s wife, he and six others escaped. But their trip to safety wasn’t easy.

The men left during a blizzard and had to wander through the Siberian Arctic, living off what they could catch or find. When they made their way out of the Siberian Arctic, they were stuck traveling through the Gobi Desert and then the Himalayas in their desperate journey to the safety of India.

By the end, they had traveled 6,400 kilometers (4,000 mi) and lost three men. Four of the men survived, though, after traveling through the harshest environments in the world.

2 An American Prisoner Of War Stole A Nazi Plane And Flew It To Holland

When Bob Hoover was trapped as a German prisoner near the end of the war, he saw an opportunity to escape. A German fighter plane had been left unattended, so he took it.

It wasn’t until Hoover was in the air that he realized how insane his plan was. He intended to fly to Holland, but he realized that he would undoubtedly be shot down when they spotted him in a swastika-adorned plane.

As soon as he saw an open farmer’s field, Hoover touched down. Dutch farmers charged at him with pitchforks, believing he was a downed Nazi pilot. Hoover tried yelling to them, but they couldn’t understand. It seemed like the end—until a British army truck drove over.

Hoover yelled, “I’m a Yank!” The British soldiers translated for the Dutch farmers and took Hoover home.

1 A Soldier Spent Nine Weeks Traveling Through Snow With One Foot Exposed

As Jan Baalsrud’s ship was attacked by Germans, he and his crew realized that they couldn’t win. Hoping for nothing more than a few more enemy casualties, the men lit a fuse, jumped overboard, and let their ship explode.

Baalsrud swam to shore and watched as his crew was rounded up by German soldiers. When they came for him, though, he shot two of them dead. Then he fled through the snow.

Baalsrud was wet, missing a boot, and trapped in frozen lands. For nine weeks, he traveled through the cold. His bare foot froze, and he had to cut off his own toe to stop the spread of gangrene. He was hit by an avalanche and buried under snow for four days.

Still, he dug through the snow and made his way to a group of villagers, who carried him to safety on a stretcher. Jan Baalsrud survived.

+Further Reading

For more astonishing tales of survival, look no further than the archives:

10 Epic Tales Of Survival Against All Odds
10 Freak Accidents People Somehow Survived (pictured)
10 Astonishing Desert Survival Tales
10 Off-The-Wall Survival Tricks And Tools
10 People Who Survived Against Nature

Horses can no longer be described purely as beasts of burden. These days, they are athletes, pets, and subjects of unusual studies. Researchers have found that horses can talk in symbols and hold grudges against people they have never met.

The hoofed wonders also wore zebra blankets for science and inspired the birth of movies. Even more surprisingly, their clones can now compete in the Olympic Games.

10 Frankfurt’s Roaming Mare

Frankfurt’s police are used to something very unusual—phone calls about an animal loose in the city. To be fair, the creature is a large Arabian horse and pedestrians often worry that she is lost or might bolt into traffic. The police never do anything and with good reason. They know Jenny well. In fact, the Arabian mare has taken her morning stroll through Frankfurt’s Fechenheim district for the past 14 years—without incident.

Many find it upsetting that she is by herself. However, those who dare to go close enough can read a card attached to her halter. It explains, “I’m called Jenny, not a runaway, just taking a walk. Thanks.”^[1]

Despite the police assuring callers that the horse is a regular feature in the neighborhood, the owner faces a slew of criticism. Werner Weischedel often hears from strangers on social media that he is being negligent. However, an entire veterinarians union stands behind the owner and police. They dismiss the criticism, saying that the Arabian knows her way, walks leisurely, and appears very satisfied.

9 Reilly And Trooper

They may not be all that peculiar, but this pair deserves special mention. Detective John Reilly and his horse, Trooper, were Central Park’s only mounted team. In 2019, Reilly reached 63 years old, the mandatory retirement limit.

Had it been up to Reilly, he clearly would have patrolled Central Park for a few more years. He and his faithful mount were a favorite of selfie-seeking tourists and those needing directions. Reilly had been with New York’s mounted unit for 24 years, but he rode Trooper alone in Central Park during the last decade.

The horse is part quarter horse, part Belgian, and around 15 years old. Trooper logged 10 years on duty, sporting his own department blanket and larger-than-normal police shield.

Coincidentally, Trooper had also reached retirement age. The patient creature went to a special farm that provides lifelong care for retired police horses, and officers can visit. There are no plans to assign the Central Park route to another single officer. Instead, Reilly’s spot will likely be taken by a group of mounted officers.^[2]

8 The Ice Age Foal

Late in 2018, a mummified foal was found in Siberia. It died around 40,000 years ago during the last ice age.

A team of scientists in Siberia wants to use the remains to resurrect the species. It could take a while, if ever, to succeed. However, the foal represents more than just having another species back on the planet. It could help scientists develop the technology to return more difficult extinct animals, notably the woolly mammoth.

The theory is that a living surrogate mare can carry a cloned foal to term without the need for genetic adaptation.^[3] For now, a mammoth must be an elephant-mammoth hybrid to complete the pregnancy inside an elephant cow.

Unlike horses, mammoths and elephants are not closely related. The Siberian team, which boasts international scientists, claims that they only need a single living cell from the foal. It can be multiplied to create countless embryos.

The rest of the scientific community is not forthcoming with support. Ice age DNA is normally broken beyond repair into millions of bits. Also, finding a cell with a complete genetic code is close to impossible.

7 They Get Dressed As Zebras

There are theories about why zebras need lines. Camouflage is an obvious pick—a herd of stripes makes individual zebras harder to spot by predators. Other theories suggest that the stripes aid social interactions or regulate their temperature. Another idea involved flies. For a while now, scientists have known that flies bother horses more than zebras for some reason.

In 2019, three groups of horses got new blankets. One group wore white, another donned black, and the third got saddled with stripy frocks. Researchers watched horse flies in action and gathered hours of data. The study found that the insects swarmed around horses and zebras without prejudice.

Even though the flies approached both species in roughly equal attempts, they landed three times as often on horses. Around zebras and the striped horses, flies seemed a little drunk. They bumped into the animals or just flew away. It would appear that one purpose of the striped hide is to confuse the bloodsucking pests.^[4]

6 The Blanket Board

In Norway, some horses do not wait for two-legged wonders to decide when they should wear blankets. In 2016, a small herd of 23 showed when they wanted a blanket put on or removed or whether they wanted to keep wearing one.

It was not always this way. Researchers designed a board with three signs. Using carrots as a reward, the horses were taught the meanings behind the signs. A horizontal stripe meant “I want my blanket,” a vertical bar denoted “take this thing off me,” and a blank symbol signified “I want to keep wearing my blanket.”

The animals were encouraged to touch the board with their muzzles. Amazingly, it took just two weeks of daily training lasting 15 minutes each at most. All 23 horses made their choices when asked to do so. They did not just thump their snoots at the board to get carrots. Every time, their answers sensibly matched with the weather. (When wet or cold, they wanted their blankets.)^[5]

5 Psychologists Show Them Photos

In 2018, the Universities of Sussex and Portsmouth showed images to horses. This was not an inkblot test but photos of people who looked happy or angry. Horse lovers know that the animals can read human body language very well. The photos not only proved it but also that horses can hold an angry expression against somebody—even when that person did nothing upsetting.

The study took 24 horses and monitored their responses to the photos. Interestingly, the scowling faces increase heart rates and sparked negative reactions from the horses. Most of the animals also viewed the threatening pictures with their left eye.

A few hours later, the models arrived but kept their expressions neutral. When meeting the “angry” humans, the horses experienced faster heartbeats and turned their heads to keep the person in view with the left eye.

The animal ability to recognize a particular person’s emotions hours later has never been recorded before. Even more striking, they prejudged strangers from their photos, which altered the animal’s behavior when they met for the first time.^[6]

4 The First GIF

During the 1800s, the horse was the main way to get around. For this reason, one debate was alive and well: At any point, did a galloping horse lift all four hooves off the ground?

Leland Stanford, the founder of Stanford University, had racehorses himself. To settle the debate and understand equestrian locomotion (he wanted to make his animals faster), he hired a brilliant photographer. Eadweard Muybridge was tasked with the impossible—take photographs of a galloping horse.

The problem? The era’s exposure time was so long that a person having his photograph taken had to stand really still or risk being seen as a blur. Incredibly, to do the assignment, Muybridge invented a shutter that snapped shut within one-thousandth of a second.^[7]

In 1878, he rigged a racetrack with cameras. A horse ran over trip wires and triggered a sequence of photographs. One of them proved that horses were completely airborne at one point. Muybridge took it further and created a device that allowed the images to be viewed in motion—essentially, the world’s first GIF and the inspiration for movies today.

3 Illegal Frog Juice

When a lot of money can be won, an injured racehorse is a bother. Illegal painkillers are nothing new in the racing industry, but regulators actively fight the practice. Meant to keep injured animals running, this inhumane treatment ends with the horse breaking down.

An unusual rumor started circulating around 2012. There was a painkiller being used by trainers that was 40 times more powerful than morphine—and it came from a frog. It took months before samples were confiscated and analyzed.^[8]

Called dermorphin, it was made from the secretions of the waxy monkey tree frog. However, its widespread availability suggested that most was likely produced synthetically. The substance made horses euphoric, hyper, and unable to feel pain.

Dermorphin was also a performance booster. Several horses that tested positive had won large sums in recent races. Due to its potency, dermorphin was outed as one of the industry’s worst and weirdest drug violations.

2 Britain’s First Guide Horse

Mohammed Salim Patel turns heads wherever he goes. Patel, who is visually impaired, cannot see people’s reactions. However, he can hear the stir that he and his guide horse create on the streets of Blackburn in Lancashire.

As he traversed the marketplace one day, he heard cell phones snapping photos of Digby, his American miniature horse. The unusual choice did not come from the desire to stand out. Patel suffers from a fear of dogs. Not having a guide dog made the 23-year-old reliant on people for assistance. Digby was raised at a pony therapy farm in North Yorkshire and is Britain’s first guide horse for the blind.

In 2018, the pair started training together and should complete the program in 2020. After graduation, the tiny creature is bound for his own miniature stable at Patel’s home. Although the choice of species seems unusual, there are perks. Besides being capable of guiding, miniatures live around 45 years—a lot longer than dogs—and have no problem doubling as a shopping carrier.^[9]

1 Clones At The Olympics

Horses have been cloned since 2003. Around four years later, the Federation Equestre Internationale (FEI) banned cloned horses and their offspring from the Olympic Games. Since most would be cloned from high-level champions, FEI believed that the replicas had an unfair advantage in competition.

In 2012, the governing body reviewed the issue. They found that clones were 98 percent identical to the original horse. While the margin was small, it overturned the ban. Other factors also helped. Just because the donor animal shattered records does not mean that the clone is guaranteed to inherit its performance ability.

The rider, training, environment, and nutrition all influence competing skills. In other words, 10 clones from the same horse raised differently in all ways will not turn out the same. Genetic copies must also go through the same channels as natural-born horses to reach the Games. Since roughly 300 animals make it to each Olympics, a clone must really prove itself to qualify.^[10]