10 ‘Sold Down The River’ Today, a person who is “sold down the river” is someone who has been cheated or betrayed. The phrase has its roots in slave trade–era Mississippi. Back then, slaves in the northern part of the United States were treated comparatively better than those in the South. If any group of slaves in the North proved difficult to handle, they were rounded up and put up for sale in Louisville, Kentucky....
It is still too early to know if this recent case is indeed an assassination attempt by Russian authorities. Or perhaps it was an attempt to “frame” them by other parties for other movties. Regardless, the details surrounding the death of Litvinenko aren’t only darkly interesting, but they may prove to be only one in a list of similar, and perhaps still to come, untimely deaths. 10 Fatal Meeting With Former KGB Agents On the day he first became ill, November 1, 2006, Alexander Litvinenko attended a prearranged meeting with two former members of the KGB, Andrei Lugovoy and Dmitry Kovtun....
Well, not exactly. See, though the name may lead you to assume “developing” countries are stuck playing catch-up, the truth is that they frequently outclass the rest of the world in some significant areas. Think it’s only OECD nations leading the way on important stuff? Guess again. 10 UruguayLeads The Americas On Transparency Compared to, say, Argentina or Brazil, Uruguay probably doesn’t feature all that highly on most people’s radar....
10 Forgetting To Breathe Yes, you read that right. People sometimes forget to breathe. When pressure begins to build on the brain for whatever reason—be it due to a large bloody stroke, an expanding tumor, or the accumulation of water within the brain matter (hydrocephalus)—the brain is eventually pressed against the skull. This often affects the breathing centers, located in the brain stem. So yes, the age-old (and morbid) joke of someone forgetting to breathe actually comes true....
The 11 Times Trick We all know the trick when multiplying by ten – add 0 to the end of the number, but did you know there is an equally easy trick for multiplying a two digit number by 11? This is it: Take the original number and imagine a space between the two digits (in this example we will use 52: 5_2 Now add the two numbers together and put them in the middle: 5_(5+2)2 That is it – you have the answer: 572....
10 Phoenix Jones Phoenix Jones is part of the real-life superhero movement, a group of people who have donned costumes and flamboyant personalities to help law enforcement and the general populace. Despite being a man who literally ran around in a skin-tight black and gold suit, Jones managed to avoid having anyone find out who he was by refusing to name himself in interviews and conducting all media appearances under the guise of his alter ego....
Now, with some distance, we can look back at some of the mysteries that we’ll probably never be able to solve. 10Charles Shelton Colonel Charles Shelton was an Air Force pilot and the last person to be officially considered a prisoner of war taken during the Vietnam conflict. It was only on September 20, 1994 that his status was changed from “missing in action” to “killed in action,” and that happened only after a request from his children....
This is because we subconsciously expect airplanes to be white, car tires to be black, and school buses to be yellow. These things often have these colors for certain reasons. Sometimes, it is all about practicality. Other times, it is all about some weird events that happened in history. 10 Why Traffic Lights Are Red, Yellow, And Green The traffic light was invented for trains. At the time, it had only two colors: red for stop and white for go....
As if we don’t already have enough reasons to be wary of these animals, here are 10 crazy facts that make some naturally ferocious animals even more terrifying. 10 Sharks Use The Sun To Hunt Since 1580, sharks have attacked over 2,700 people and killed nearly 500. In numbers alone, this doesn’t seem so bad. Consider the fact that you’re 10 times more likely to die from just being in the water than at the metaphorical hands of a shark....
10 Dr Who “The Doctor Is Dying” Chameleon Circuit are a Doctor Who-themed band who invented “trock” (time lord rock) and managed to achieve some mainstream success by reaching the charts with their singles and albums. Earlier in 2013, Alex Day and Chameleon Circuit managed to impress BBC so much that they allowed them to use the official TARDIS set to shoot one of their music videos during Youtube’s Geek Week....
10 Brian Pollett Brian Pollett is a 20-year-old graphic designer who also goes by the name Pixel-Pusha. As a project, he decided to go on a 20-day drug binge during which he created a new design each day. Pollett said that he tested each drug to ensure its purity and then created artwork in his studio while listening to his favorite music. The drugs included alcohol, cocaine, and more. Pollett put his finances and his reputation on the line for this project....
10 Earthen MoundsCambodia In 2016, archaeologists discovered mysterious dome-shaped earthen mounds in some of Cambodia’s ancient cities. These mounds, which archaeologists refer to as dome fields, are arranged in grid patterns and are estimated to be around 1,000 years old. Aside from the dome fields, experts also discovered mounds in other geometric shapes like spirals. For centuries, these enigmatic structures had remained hidden in the deep jungles of Cambodia. It was only when researchers scanned the jungle with lasers from low-flying helicopters that these dome fields were exposed to the modern world....
10The Korowai The primitive Korowai have a long tradition of cannibalism, but it’s their tree houses in southeastern Papua, Indonesia that make them fascinating. A family of up to eight people will live in a wooden house with a sago-leaf ceiling that’s built 6–12 meters (20–40 ft) above the ground on a single tree. Sometimes, a house rests on several trees with wooden poles adding support. The Korowai live in the trees to avoid imagined attacks after dark by walking corpses and male witches on the ground....
Curiosity also saw their scientists turn photographs into music and create oceans in cups. NASA’s problems are often equally weird. From cussing crews to the threat of a rogue Martian colony, the agency is proof that real life is better than fiction. 10 NASA Followed A Weird Iceberg In 2018, a photograph surfaced that many would have dismissed as a fraud if not for its source—NASA. It showed an iceberg resembling a floating tabletop....
10 Aimée Crocker To kick off the list is one of history’s most badass female explorers: Aimée Crocker. Crocker was born in 1864 and was known for her collection of husbands, lovers, adopted children, Buddhas, pearl tattoos, and snakes. She survived headhunters in Borneo, a poisoning in Hong Kong, a murder attempt by knife-throwing servants in Shanghai, and lived for a whole ten years in “the Orient.” At age ten, she inherited millions when her father died, but she wouldn’t enjoy the wealth until much later....
10Zebra And ParachuteChristopher Wood Zebra And Parachute was one of two paintings that Christopher Wood produced in Paris in the summer of 1930, the other being Tiger And Arc De Triomphe. Both paintings depict a surreal image of an exotic animal against the backdrop of a manmade structure, although Zebra And Parachute is unique in that it adds a parachuting figure in the sky. It may be darkly significant that the parachutist is limp and appears to be either dead or seriously injured....
10 Joseph Stalin Doubled Russia’s Life Expectancy Joseph Stalin ruled with an iron fist that terrorized Russia. He is responsible for the wholesale slaughter of 20 million of his own people. Life under Stalin, the statistics suggest, must have been brutish and short. In reality, though, it was the exact opposite. During Stalin’s reign, the average Russian life span more than doubled from 32 to 68 years. Before the communist revolution, Russia’s people lived horrid, peasant lifestyles....
No single person can be credited with the invention; many people contributed. A Scot, John Logie Baird, demonstrated a working system at Selfridge’s Department Store in London in 1925. In the United States, Charles Francis Jenkins was making great advances in the same year, and in Japan, Kenjiro Takayanagi demonstrated a system with much-improved resolution in 1926. The world’s first TV station—W2XB—started broadcasting from New York City in 1928. The idea that television would be a vehicle for mass entertainment didn’t occur to these pioneers-that would have to wait until after the Second World War....
10Chainsaw Murder-Suicide In 2015, Christopher Peppelman slaughtered his wife with a chainsaw and then turned the power tool on himself. Nicole Peppelman, 43, was choked and stabbed, but it was the chainsaw that killed her. Christopher, 48, died from self-inflicted “gaping, sharp-force wounds” to his thigh and abdomen. Chainsaw suicide is rare but not unheard of. The couple’s 14-year-old son stumbled across the savage scene in their home in Montgomery Country, Pennsylvania....
10The Bund A great portion of Nazi ideology revolved around the purity of the German “race,” and Hitler shrewdly realized early on that this could be exploited in the German migrant populations of his potential foes. A mere four months after his rise to power in 1933, an American organization known as “Friends of the New Germany” was assembled from several smaller organizations around the US. Originally made up of both German nationals and US citizens of German descent, it was restructured in 1936 into the German American Bund (“Bund” meaning “Alliance”), which admitted only German-Americans....
