Few of us would ever think that the very thing we love so much could one day lead to our death. In fact, more people are now killed in selfie-related deaths than shark attacks! Below are 10 of the most bizarre ways that people have died due to their favorite electronic devices. 10 Man Walks Off A Cliff While Using His Phone We’re all guilty of texting and walking in our homes, at the grocery store, or maybe even at the mall....
10 The Deer In 2011, a 62-year-old Indiana man named Paul J. Smith was hunting deer at Chain O’Lakes State Park. Around 9:00 AM, he left a message on his son’s voice mail about a scuffle that he had just had with a deer. Smith described how he was coming down from his tree stand after shooting the deer, only to discover that the animal was still alive and willing to fight to the death....
SEE ALSO: 10 Royal Families Riddled With Incest 10 The Effects Of Inbreeding Even if you believe that two consenting adults should be able to have sex with whomever they please, there’s no escaping the fact that reproducing with a close relative has some serious drawbacks. When we mate with someone with a completely different gene pool, our chance of passing on recessive genes is only 50 percent. Many times, those genes remain dormant, but when people who share a large number of genes breed, the chance of passing on conditions known as autosomal recessive disorders—conditions that are inherited through recessive genes, including cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and albinism—increases significantly....
10An Ancestor To Lions, Tigers, And Bears In January 2014, a research team led by Floreal Sole announced the identification of Dormaalocyon latouri, a mammal from the Paleocene-Eocene boundary period 55 million years ago. Scientists had theorized for a long time that the planet’s large carnivores—such as lions, tigers, and bears—shared a relatively recent common ancestor. The Dormaalocyon latouri has brought them one step closer to learning more about that ancestor....
10 Ibis Ibis was a popular humpback whale that would often visit the Maine and Cape Cod areas of North America in the late 1970s and 1980s. Humpback whales in the North Atlantic typically migrate between the Bahamas and anywhere from Newfoundland to Greenland or even as far as Norway. Scientists were able to identify Ibis by her individual flukes, which have markings that are equivalent to fingerprints in humans. Migratory routes are recorded by sightings of whales based on this principle....
ACORN stands for Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. ACORN was a collection of community-based organizations in the United States that advocated for low and moderate income families. They also provided information on voter registration and affordable housing. In 2009, selectively edited videos were released by two young conservative activists, James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles (shown above). The two dressed up like a pimp and prostitute and then used a hidden camera to elicit damaging responses from ACORN employees, that appeared to advise them how to hide prostitution activities and avoid taxes....
Eunice wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Puritan life was harsh and difficult—and even stricter than you imagined. 10 Christmas And Easter Were Banned The Puritans who settled in America didn’t believe in celebrating Christmas—or any holiday. Anyone caught celebrating the birth, death, or resurrection of Christ was seen as a blasphemer who risked punishment. According to the Puritans, celebrating holidays took away from the holiness of Sunday, “The Lord’s Day....
There is a stereotype about homeless people that they must have done something wrong to deserve their fate, like crime, drug addiction, or alcoholism. While it’s true in some cases, such instances are only a fraction of what homelessness in the United States actually looks like. Thousands of children cannot take any blame for their situation. There are veterans, unemployed professionals, and chronically ill people whose medical bills sent them plummeting into bankruptcy....
In a way, sex robots are just animated sex dolls. But is there more to a “sexbot” than just movement that animates the old-fashioned blow-up doll? Some say there is. Truth be told, these machines have become rather intricate, and as time goes on, they reflect the human beings they’re designed after more and more. Will sex dolls ever be able to fool us into believing they’re actual humans someday?...
10There’s More Than One Flash Due to the article in front of his name—the Flash—it’s easy for casual fans to forget about just how many scarlet speedsters there have been. Not counting the usual comics chicanery of alternate dimensions and non-canonical Elseworlds stories, there have been four characters to go by the name. The original was Jay Garrick, a college student who inhaled gases from hard water experiments and became a living embodiment of the speed god Mercury....
10 The Real-Life Priest Who Inspired Nacho Libre Father Sergio Gutierrez is a 70-year-old priest with a busted nose, bad eyesight, and his fair share of scars. He’s a poor man living a simple life, but despite his humble circumstances, Father Gutierrez has traveled to Japan, inspired two movies, and become a Mexican celebrity. And he did it all for the kids. Father Gutierrez was born into poverty in 1945 and grew up to be a junkie in Mexico City....
When cities pump water out to their residents, they put the water through a series of filtration and disinfection steps first. This is obviously beneficial because when you pull water from lakes and rivers it’s most likely going to be filled with bacteria. Filter it, and you can get most of that bacteria out. The important word there is “most,” because even the most advanced filtration techniques are not infallible....
Most of us would probably be content to draw a few flying cars and maybe a Back to the Future–style hoverboard, but most of us aren’t architects. Over the years, plenty of architects have found time to sit down and decide exactly what they’d like to see in a hypothetical future society. The results range from mind-blowing to downright insane. 10Moving Skyscrapers Have you ever found yourself gazing gloomily out your apartment window, wishing you could just move somewhere else?...
10 The Olterra The plan sounds like something from a spy movie—to use a secret underwater base as a jumping-off point for launching and recovering midget submarines that would destroy British shipping. That’s exactly what the Italians planned and eventually executed. An Italian cargo ship, the Olterra, was stuck in Spain after World War II broke out and just happened to be anchored across the harbor from the British fortress at Gibraltar....
But while the last seven days may have been short on world-changing stories, there was still enough going on to pique our interest. From a dusty road between China and Bhutan to the Greek capital, Athens, to a truck stop in Texas, here’s what’s been happening. 10 Salvador Dali’s Corpse Was Dug Up (To Settle A Paternity Case) After he died in 1989, Salvador Dali was interred beneath a marble slab in the middle of his self-designed museum in the Catalan town of Figueres....
This week, the biggest story in Washington, DC, was the continuing fallout from Dr. Christine Ford’s accusation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her at a party. Thanks to the vagaries of writing schedules, the big Thursday hearing involving the two hadn’t wrapped by the time this column was filed. So we’ll discuss the consequences next week when things are clearer. In the meantime, settle yourselves in for a look at all the other stuff that was happening away from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room these last seven days....
As they say, history is usually written by the winners, and the winners will nearly always make sure that things are written in a way that makes them look smarter and more benevolent than they probably were. While many of these lords of conquest were quite sly in their manipulations, some historians today have managed to pierce through the fog of history and find the truth behind many of the myths....
But you didn’t load this page for a highlight reel of this era. We’re here to clear up some misconceptions that a cursory education about the period may have produced. In the process, we may bring Napoleon Bonaparte down a peg in several ways. It’s an effort which is long overdue. 10 Napoleon Was The Best French General Of The Era Even among nations that felt the wrath of Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies and despite the fact that he died a prisoner in exile on a small island in the southern Atlantic Ocean, his enduring legacy is as one of history’s greatest commanders....
Rarely, a country might grant a person immunity from their crimes if it seems that they might be able to help out in one way or another. This was often done following World War II. Here are 10 people who committed monstrous acts but were granted immunity by one nation or another. 10 Dr. Toshio Tono Dr. Toshio Tono was one of the men who staffed the infamous Unit 731 in Japan during World War II....
Thimethylaminuria is a rare metabolic disorder that causes the defect in a certain enzyme that breaks down trimethylamine, a compound released by protein-digesting bacteria, living in our stomach. Sufferers then begin to release the compound through their sweat, urine and other bodily fluids. The result? A lingering body odor reminiscent of rotten fish, thus earning the disease its more famous nickname ‘fish odor syndrome.’ The bad news? The disease is incurable....
