10Sherlock Holmes Sherlock Holmes is perhaps the most beloved fictional detective of all time, but Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was inspired by a strikingly similar character. C. Auguste Dupin was a French genius created by Edgar Allan Poe who shares Holmes’s predilection for consulting with the police on crimes. Dupin’s methods are extremely similar to Holmes’s as well, and any Holmes fan would be familiar with the layout of a Dupin story, all of which are narrated by an unnamed Watson-like sidekick....

The locals of the Accokeek area claim that a Jesuit priest stowed away on board Captain John Smith’s ship, as he sailed up the Potomac River sometime around 1606-07, and that this priest had ties all the way back to the Knights Templar. The legend states that he had the Grail for years in England and Europe, possibly taken from #7 when treasure seekers started looking for Arthur’s grave. Somehow the Grail passed down to this nameless priest, who fled for environs where few people would care about the Grail....

Believer or not, no one can deny the influence of the Bible on the Western world. St Jerome is credited as writing the first complete translation of the Bible into the vernacular tongue of his day (Latin). This was to be the first time that the average man could read the Bible unhindered by a need for an education in Greek or Hebrew. At the time, of course, the majority of people in the civilized West were part of the Roman Empire and consequently spoke Latin....

Many of these products are taken for granted nowadays. But had it not been for one act of ingenuity (or complete accident), then these things may never have existed. 10 Webcam Before the days of video chat, people had no way of communicating with each other live via video. This all changed when computer geeks at the University of Cambridge invented a webcam. This was not created to communicate with friends or family but to keep an eye on the coffee percolator....

TCM is well-known for its bizarre and unorthodox approach to medicine. We are only just beginning to understand how it works from a contemporary scientific perspective. Although few comprehensive studies exist to make sense of everything, there is just enough research to let us put together a list of interesting, sometimes scary, and downright weird TCM treatments. 10 Cupping If we take a look past the bruise-covered Michael Phelps, a whole new world of cupping promises a lot more than a little placebo....

And that’s actually a good thing—or, at least, it should be. We should be able to trust that these studies and papers were created by people dedicated to the pursuit of the truth. But there are a few dirty secrets behind the studies we like to trumpet as the truth. Because the reality is that the academic journals that publish these studies are running rampant with bad science—and there are a few things in place that allow it to continue happening....

Today, the idea of the ninja has been so thoroughly embellished that the only agreed-upon fact is that only part of what we know of ninja is true. The mystery of ninja has yet to be fully solved, and there are many reasons why that will never change. 10 People Got It Wrong Then, Too Ninja were widely employed in the 15th and 16th centuries. A common misconception was that ninja were in direct opposition to samurai....

Food companies favor trans fats because it allows their products to stay fresh on the shelves longer and it is also made from less expensive oils keeping production costs down. The main concern with trans fats is the body is unable to break down trans fatty acids causing them to build up triggering high cholesterol and in some cases heart disease. In 2003 Denmark became the first country to ban foods containing large amounts of trans fats....

These once-thriving rivers fell victim to the concrete jungle, but some have successfully been daylighted in recent years. Many people don’t even realize that rivers are flowing beneath their cities. 10 Neglinnaya River Moscow Flowing under Red Square, Alexandrovsky Sad, and the Metropol Hotel in Moscow is the Neglinnaya River, also known as Neglinka, Neglinna, and Neglimna. The natural river once flowed openly from northern Moscow to the south across the center of the city....

Various world governments don’t want you to know about the following secret prisons. Some were closed down before or after they were exposed, while others remain unconfirmed, with the governments in question denying their existence. 10 Salt PitAfghanistan The Salt Pit is a secret CIA-run prison in Afghanistan. It is one of the several prisons set up by the CIA after the 9/11 attacks and was intended to hold people suspected of having links with terrorists....

10 Stonehenge Stonehenge has long been one of the wonders of the world. Very, very slowly, modern technology is helping to unlock its secrets. Recently, news was released of a massive complex discovered in the acres around Stonehenge. Long thought to be a sacred, stand-alone monument (part religious relic, part burial ground, and part astrological mystery), it’s now been found that this view is completely wrong. Ground-penetrating radar has allowed archaeologists to map a massive temple complex that sprawled over the English countryside thousands of years ago, and it included an enormous, 3-kilometer-long (1....

In 1905, Wilbur Wright—one of the two famous pioneering aviator brothers—wrote in his journal, “Twice passed over fences into Bread’s cornfield. Chased flocks of birds on two rounds and killed one which fell on top of upper surface and after a time fell off when swinging a sharp curve.” The plane didn’t crash, and no people were injured, but that would soon change. https://wrightstories.com/bird-strikes/ Here are ten of the most infamous bird-related air disasters...

10Every Morning Started With A Drink Mantle put up tremendous numbers throughout his career. He smacked 536 home runs, still the most in a lifetime by a switch-hitter. His power and bat speed were amazing and even more incredible when you consider that he played practically every game after a big night of drinking. Today’s athletes are careful of what they put in their bodies. Most have specialized diets and talk at length about their specific ways to stay in shape....

And it’s easy to see why, when repeated isolated cases seem to suggest that “something” has altered certain environments. Such conspiracy theories have been further fueled by actual admissions from government officials that such experiments have indeed taken place in the past. Here are ten specific claims of chemtrails and geoengineering that do not at all seem to be in the interests of the general population. 10 ‘Mystery Flu’ Hits The United States In the early spring of 2016, a “mystery flu” appeared to be sweeping many parts of the United States, at least according to Dr....

10The Rumble In The Jungle The Rumble in the Jungle is one of the greatest sporting events of all time, featuring an unstoppable Muhammad Ali in a triumphant knockout victory over his rival, George Foreman. In fact, the fight is so legendary that people tend to forget that the whole thing took place under the auspices of one of the 20th century’s most notorious dictators: Mobutu Sese Seko. Zaire’s kleptomaniac ruler was so eager to stage the fight that he even put up a $10 million purse....

In England before the 19th century, that was not the way that things worked. From a modern perspective, everything looks backward and upside down. For starters, you didn’t call the sheriff when a crime was committed. The sheriff called you. 10 You Had To Arrest Criminals Yourself There were no police officers in Anglo-Saxon England, or if you look at it another way, every able-bodied male between the ages of 15 and 60 was a police officer....

While most pictures tell a tale, the ones chosen for the award often have stories of their own that explain why or how the image was taken. These 10 stand above the rest as some of the most important Pulitzer Prize–winning pictures ever taken. (The year of the award appears below the title or description of the photo.) 10 Firing Squad In Iran1980 Jahangir Razmi’s provocative photograph, Firing Squad in Iran, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1980, but Razmi didn’t receive the credit he deserved until 2006....

10 Karin Catherine Waldegrave In 2011, a bizarre woman named Karin Catherine Waldegrave from Canada began posting a large number of nonsensical posts on Facebook. It was especially strange that she replied to her own ramblings—sometimes as many as 700 times. According to her profile, she had a PhD from the University of Toronto. Supposedly, she had also traveled through different countries and learned languages such as French, Estonian, Latvian, English, Russian, Gallic, Latin, and German....

10 Black Hole Electron In the early 20th century, Albert Einstein introduced cutting-edge physics about black holes, which his theory of general relativity supported. Among his most interesting work was the theory of a black hole electron. Black holes can come in various shapes and sizes depending on how they form. Einstein’s black hole electron was a purposed black hole that had the same size and mass as an electron. In Einstein’s papers, he discussed what this tiny black hole would look like....

History is full of cruel and—more importantly in this case—often extremely strange punishments and legal proceedings, ten of which we’ll be examining right now. 10 Drunkard’s Cloak The strange “drunkard’s cloak,”‘ also known as the Newcastle cloak in the north of England, was a method of punishment given to repeat-offender alcoholics who apparently could not behave after drinking. The strange idea was pretty simple. Take a massive, heavy wooden barrel typically designed to store alcoholic beverages, cut necessary holes for the head and limbs to fit through it, and force the offender to wear it for an extended period while marching through the local streets, presumably resulting in public humiliation....