It’s always a bad day whenever an animal dies before their time. When they die at the hands of a human, we’re naturally outraged. But when death is the result of a freak accident, we’re just plain depressed. And now you get to be depressed too, as we visit ten stories of animals who suffered the most unfortunate twist of fate imaginable.

Every artist is influenced by somebody else, but usually it’s fairly obvious: new metal bands were inspired by other metal bands, a new mob movie takes cues from Scarface, etc. But sometimes, a muse is so far removed from the artist that the connection makes virtually no sense. But great art doesn’t always make sense; who says art’s inspiration has to?

On paper, Zero Tolerance in schools sounds good. Classroom violence and brutality has gone too far, and by gum we won’t let it stand even one more time! However, in practice it fails far too often, as perfectly innocent accidents and misunderstandings get treated like major crimes, ruining lives for little reason other than “we gotta look tough, dang it.”

Some facts just about everybody knows, even if they’re totally useless. Others, however, are a bit more obscure, but likely more important than whatever pop culture nugget dominates your subconscious. Here are ten facts that should get shared at parties way more often.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely, says just about everybody who can’t think of their own damn line. But cliched as it may be, it’s usually true, especially in these ten cases. When nobody has the ability to overrule a psychopath with power, everybody loses. Except the psychopaths, who tend to do OK in such cases.

Some animals are so popular and ubiquitous that it’s just assumed they’ve been part of our lives forever. However, it turns out some of these creatures were in hiding longer than we think, and our knowledge of them is restricted to the past 200 years or less. Who knows what else is out there?