Human history is full of examples of people claiming to have a link to the divine, to the world of the dead, to spirits and more. Alexander the Great visited the Oracle at Amun in 332 BC. Astrology was developed in the 3rd millennium BC in Mesopotamia. Fortune-telling goes back as far as 4000 BCE…
Author: Ian Fortey
There’s no doubt humans are the most clever animals on the planet Earth. We developed tool making 2.6 million years ago and in the present we have Swiss army knives and cheese graters, so it’s all worked out well. While animals have yet to develop iPhones and vape pens, that doesn’t mean they haven’t developed…
Urban legends, at least as far as that term has been used to describe them, are relatively new. The name dates back to the 60s and, though they come in many different styles and genres, the basic idea is the same. It’s a story told as though it were true. Often the details are changed…
The word doctor actually comes from the Latin word for “teacher.” These were meant to be people of knowledge and expertise. People who knew things the rest of us didn’t. That sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? In a general sense, that still holds true. But if you pay attention to the news, you know that not…
Arm wrestling of one kind or another has been around since Ancient Egypt. This, despite the fact Wikipedia will tell you it was created in the 1950s. But the idea of a friendly yet physical way to prove one’s mettle or settle disputes is obviously an old one. Wrestling went back thousands of years. Things…
Challenge courses are a relatively new phenomenon in the world but have exploded in recent years. In the 1980s, there were under 1,000 challenge courses operating in the United States. Today there are over 15,000. There are also no formal rules over what makes a challenge course. In the beginning, they were little more than…
Have you ever seen those videos online of a boot or a cactus and then someone comes along with a knife and cuts it and, holy smokes, it was a cake all along? We’re fascinated by that kind of tomfoolery because it’s done in a safe and enjoyable way. What we don’t like is when…
The human mind likes to make sense of things. We look for patterns and order in everything, even if it’s not really there. Few things spark our interest in finding meaning more than when we stumble upon a coincidence. Many people believe they have to mean something. And whether or not these amazing coincidences are…
Sharks are the most maligned creatures on earth. For most of human history, no one cared about these animals until swimming began to grow in popularity. The odd shark attack put them on the radar, and then the movie Jaws sealed their fate. They were slaughtered by the thousands afterward. Nowadays up to 100 million…
Missing persons statistics are harrowing. Upwards of 600,000 people per year go missing in America alone every year. Global statistics are hard to pin down, but some reports indicate over 800,000 children per year go missing. While many of these people are found again, many more are not. So it should come as no surprise…
According to the Doomsday Clock, it’s 100 seconds to midnight. Created in 1947, the clock is a symbolic representation of how close humanity is to destroying the world. The furthest it has ever been from midnight was seven minutes, which is where it started when fear of nuclear war was the inspiration behind the project.…
Google Maps has changed the way we see the world by literally letting us see the world. You can use your computer to see virtually every corner of the planet displayed in clear photographs. But not every place is open to such scrutiny. A handful of locations have been obscured from view, some potentially for…
It’s never easy to prove a negative, so there’s no way to know exactly how many species in the world have yet to be discovered, simply because they have yet to be discovered. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make guesses and some estimates suggest upwards of 86% of all species on Earth have yet…
War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. And to drive that point home with some stark consistency, these are 10 of the most pointless wars that have ever been waged, 10. The Pastry War Most wars are named in a way that gives you an incline about what they were about or at least…
History has presented us with countless mysteries, some of which plague us to this day. What was Jack the Ripper? What happened to the Ark of the Covenant? Was Atlantis real? But other mysteries have proven easier to crack, in particular ancient codes and ciphers that people devoted years to solving, allowing us to catch…
The modern world has made life pretty easy for most of us. When’s the last time you had to worry about a bear eating you? Or dying of dehydration in a desert? It still happens, sure, but not to most of us. But what if it did happen? Would you know how to survive if…
Status symbols are some of the hardest to understand aspects of any culture or society. What makes any given thing a symbol of importance? Is a rare NFT of a cartoon monkey really indicative of anything? What about a Ferrari? Truth is, status symbols have always been pretty mysterious and weird. Just look at these……
Around 71% of the Earth is covered by the oceans. That works out to around 320.3 million cubic miles of water. That’s a lot of water. So it’s no surprise that the oceans hide countless mysteries and marvels. Some of them are far more amazing than others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUUboG3K40c This is an encore of one of…
History is like science in many ways. It seeks to explain the truth, but must be open to new information. Sometimes what we think we know isn’t true at all, and that’s okay. The result is that we all get to be blown away when we discover that we’ve learned everything wrong and delighted or horrified…
The first use of special effects in film dates all the way back to 1895 with the Execution of Mary Stuart. The director came up with a way to make the character appear to have her head cut off on screen and from that moment on, directors and effects experts have been coming up with…
Few things are more embarrassing than realizing you don’t know the name of a coworker or an acquaintance and have been calling them the wrong thing. It’s an innocent enough mistake, but it makes you feel a little silly when it happens. Turns out it’s a very common mistake people make, and it’s not just…
Actors are a different sort of people once they get to the big leagues of Hollywood. They can make tens of millions playing pretend for a few months. That’s not a lifestyle most of us will ever understand. And it seems to go to the heads of some actors who put some questionable demands on…
The living world is full of weirdness. Just look at goblin sharks and platypuses. Biology can account for a whole lot of why things are the way they are, but every once in a while something happens that leaves biologists shrugging their shoulders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5r024wLIgE This is an encore of one of our previous lists, as…
The human body is a weird and wonderful thing. Sometimes we seem soft and malleable compared to all the other creatures in the world. We’re not well designed for life in the wild, and our young can’t take care of themselves for years, compared to some animals which can be up and running around within…