In the 1920s and ’30s, H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos not only started a new genre of horror but also introduced some of the most iconic aliens in all of Science Fiction. While it’s fairly common to find plushies in the form of Cthulhu at Walmart, you will be hard pressed to find any of the…
Author: Eric Malikyte
Since the 1920s, our understanding of the universe has greatly expanded. Edwin Hubble, the man who the famous Hubble Space Telescope was named after, helped to shatter the illusion that ours was the only galaxy in the universe with his observations of what would later be called the Andromeda galaxy. With the James Webb Space…
Geoglyphs are fascinating and mysterious works of artistic and cultural significance, many of which continue to defy efforts to date or even uncover who made them, let alone why. We’ve talked about the Nazca Lines in other lists, but now it’s time to focus on the lesser known geoglyphs that have been found around the…
Geoglyphs are fascinating and mysterious works of artistic and cultural significance, many of which continue to defy efforts to date or even uncover who made them, let alone why. We’ve talked about the Nazca Lines in other lists, but now it’s time to focus on the lesser known geoglyphs that have been found around the…
As the late, great author Douglas Adams once wrote, “Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” And as such, there are a lot of unexplained phenomena out…
Hollywood is certainly not known for realism. Action movies often feature heroes and heroines capable of dodging bullets, surviving explosions that should shred their internal organs to pulp, and leaving car crashes that would more than likely leave any normal person a paraplegic with nothing more than scrapes and bruises. But of all the things…
The deathbed confession is a common cliché in films and television, usually featuring an emotionally charged moment where the character who’s about to push up daisies bears their heart and soul about some heinous crime they committed when they were too young to know any better to clear their conscience before finally exiting stage left;…
Archaeology and the sciences at large are no stranger to less than savory individuals looking for their 15 minutes of fame or, worse, looking to bend history to their worldview or fringe beliefs. People in the 1800s were cut from a different cloth and seemed to be particularly fond of messing with their fellow citizens. …
Volcanoes on Earth are extremely common. Earth is a very volcanic planet, and while our home-world may feature some truly impressive volcanoes, it is not the most volcanically active world in the solar system (that honor goes to a certain moon of Jupiter). It may surprise you to learn just how alien some of these…
After ending the Warring States Period and uniting the six regional lords under one banner, the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huan, would rule for a mere 14 years before being replaced by the Han dynasty; but the Qin dynasty would make many advancements that would echo through Chinese history for centuries to come,…
As Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, “If there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh, well, there it is. Life, uh, finds a way.” Considering the plethora…
Since the Wright brothers created the first motor operated airplane, many countries throughout the world have commandeered that technology and attempted to push it to its absolute limits. This has resulted in some deadly, but admittedly cool aircraft over the last century or so and plenty of them were completely hidden from the public eye…
As mentioned in our list of the 10 deadliest chemical weapons, humans love to find new and terrifying ways of destroying each other. Biological warfare dates as far back as 1155 CE when Emperor Barbarossa poisoned the water supply of his enemies with human bodies, but the foundation of microbiology opened up a whole host…
The universe is a deadly, dangerous place, and it’s filled with nightmarish objects that would cook our poor insignificant planet in the blink of an eye. From our vantage point here on Earth, it certainly seems like Earth is the one place where things seem relatively calm. To quote Howard Philips Lovecraft, “We live on a placid…
The deathbed confession is a common cliché in films and television, usually featuring an emotionally charged moment where the character who’s about to push up daisies bears their heart and soul about some heinous crime they committed when they were too young to know any better to clear their conscience before finally exiting stage left;…
As Ian Malcolm said in Jurassic Park, “If there’s one thing the history of evolution has taught us, it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free, it expands to new territories, and crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh, well, there it is. Life, uh, finds a way.” Considering the plethora…
Hollywood is certainly not known for realism. Action movies often feature heroes and heroines capable of dodging bullets, surviving explosions that should shred their internal organs to pulp, and leaving car crashes that would more than likely leave any normal person a paraplegic with nothing more than scrapes and bruises. But of all the things…
We’ve talked endlessly about mysteries surrounding the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Incas, Aztecs, Maya, and pretty much every ancient civilization in the western world. But what about lesser-known civilizations? Africa features a rich, virtually untapped history, and its lands are littered with megalithic structures and medieval constructions that have remained virtually unstudied. Russia’s thawing tundra is…
In the world of fine arts and antiques, there are plenty of grifters hoping to pass their forgeries off on museums and some who are so bold as to try to fool members of the royal family. But there are also plenty of people who are more than willing to spend bundles of cash on…
The human body is a fascinating balancing act, constantly fighting against gravity to remain upright and active. Before we had science, humans had to do their best to rationalize the various phenomena that they experienced both inside and around their bodies. Like most myths, misconceptions surrounding the human body have little to do with scientific…
Volcanoes on Earth are extremely common. Earth is a very volcanic planet, and while our home-world may feature some truly impressive volcanoes, it is not the most volcanically active world in the solar system (that honor goes to a certain moon of Jupiter). It may surprise you to learn just how alien some of these…
The moon has fascinated humans since we gained the ability to look up at night (so, pretty much the entire 200,000-year timeline in which modern humans have been around). To the uneducated human staring up into the night sky, the moon seems pretty mysterious, and because humans are creative and love to tell stories, we’ve…
There are a total of 573 dead languages in the world, at least that we know of. A language can die off for a variety of reasons including political persecution, globalization, and poor preservation of vulnerable or critically endangered languages. Classical Latin dissolved into more common languages as the Roman Empire dissolved, resulting in the…
The Black Death tore through Western Europe in the mid-14th century CE, reducing the world’s entire population by roughly 100,000,000 people. Today we know that the Great Pestilence is caused by bacteria carried by fleas and rodents, but back in the time of Edward III and the Hundred Years’ War, there was little that the…