10There’s Nothing Racist About Picnics The Amazing Fact Do you love picnics? Then you should be ashamed of yourself. Picnic is short for “pick a n—r” and originally described the crowds that gathered for lynchings. The Truth A good rule of thumb for word facts is if it sounds too racist to be true, it probably is. Another is if French already uses a similar word in an identical context, then that’s probably a much-likelier origin....

10 Madame Rachel Whether it’s the fountain of youth or Botox, humans have always looked for ways to stave off old age. Back in the Victorian era, women unhappy with their looks turned to Madame Rachel and her “Costly Arabian Preparations.” Like the fabled fountain, Madame Rachel’s makeup was nothing more than a myth. Born Sarah Rachel Russell, Madame Rachel started life as a fry cook and fortune teller. However, she soon hit on a surefire scheme that would get her out of Whitechapel and put her in a fancy home in Blackheath....

Nowadays, the strangest and most random items can go from worthless to worth millions overnight. All they need is the right buyer at the right time. The same works in reverse as some of the finest things become the biggest flops before you can blink. This list includes ten of those items, seemingly worthless pieces of nonsensical junk that found the right person at the right moment and sold for absolutely insane amounts of money....

Undoubtedly the most significant French victory of the war and one which changed the course of it significantly. Between the 5th and 12th of September 1914, the French (with some British help) stopped the previously invincible Germans in their tracks and saved Paris. In a brilliantly planned counter-offensive, General Joseph Joffre exploited a weakness on the German right flank and pushed his forces between two German armies, casing the German offensive to break down in confusion....

9 Everquest II Pizza Hut In one of the most ingenious ad tie-ins ever, the developers of popular MMO Everquest II added the ability to order pizza straight from the game. By typing “/pizza” as a command, the player was taken to the Pizza Hut website where they could order anything they wanted and charge it to their monthly game subscription bill. (Sony was a little bit overambitious, imagining a future where you could order other real world items, like books and DVDs in a similar fashion....

Nero used the office of emperor to suit his desire for an opulent lifestyle, and had absolutely no care for the welfare of the people. He never trusted his mother, Agrippina (and rightly so), and tried to kill her by having her ship sunk. This didn’t work, and he simply ordered her executed. He routinely executed anyone close to him whom he did not trust, always under mysterious circumstances, because he feared the Praetorian Guard....

For your information, our new hosts (PacificRack in Los Angeles) are currently preparing our new server and the site will be moving some time today. The consequence of this is that we may lose a few comments in the process (I will certainly try to avoid this though) and we may experience some downtime. In addition, and most importantly, because we are moving to a whole new site, listverse.com may, for a short time, be pointing at two different hosts (the old and the new) because it can take a day or slightly more for the new address to spread around the internet....

Sometimes, though, the key to marketing a roller coaster is to engineer something truly weird, to the point where you question if what you’re looking at is a genuine ride or a click-bait poster’s Photoshop passion project. So here is a list of ten roller coasters from around the world that have no problem making a statement. Albeit a strange, questionable, very unintelligible statement. 10 Cobra The Shuttle-Loop roller coaster model is a classic choice for any new park to get in a looping coaster on a budget....

History is riddled with sea monsters of old; however, myth and legend do not come into this discussion. These are ten real-life examples of when fighting forces of the world were pitted against beasts from the deep. 10 The Gulf of Tonkin The Vietnam war was initiated after a confrontation between the United States and North Vietnamese warships in 1964. At the center of this complex interaction was the USS Maddox....

Then there are the intriguingly rare tombs, strange skeletons, and unusual versions of old familiars. Incredibly, the region also recently revealed a fossil that could change the story of human evolution. 10 Coin Stash Mystery During two excavation seasons in 2016 and 2017, archaeologists investigated an ancient harbor. It belonged to Corinth, once a bustling city in Greece that existed for thousands of years. Among the finds was a hoard of buried coins....

There is something especially solemn about looking an endling in the eye. Telling their stories will help us remember them and serve as cautionary tales of how fragile life can be. 10 The Last QuaggaEquus quagga quagga The last quagga to walk on Earth died at the Amsterdam Zoo in 1883. If you were to imagine the front half of a zebra and the back half of a donkey, you’d be fairly close to imagining a quagga....

How and where an unmoved object is found can retrieve authentic history—from previously unknown rituals and chapters of known history to rare information about vanished cultures. Lost cities, art, and even structures known only from descriptions are being seen for the first time. 10 The Unused Roman Oven In 2014, developers eyed a patch near Falkirk, a town in Scotland. Per law, before the shopping center’s first brick was allowed to land, archaeologists had to sweep the site....

Cidade De Deux – City Of God A brilliant use of jump cutting and cutting between two different sets of action. This is incredibly technical editing at it’s best. It is particularly spectacular because it is at the very start of the film, as it has to introduce the main characters. Platoon – Spoiler This very famous sequence in film is on the list because of the use of Adagio for Strings, a very slow moving piece of music, set to such fast and brutal action....

There are some exceptions that prove the rule, however, and most of them come from heavy metal bands. Maybe it’s because the unique style of the genre allows artists to change songs enough to make them stand out but not so much as to be indistinguishable from the original? Maybe it’s because these are the musicians most adept in combining instruments and vocals in interesting ways? Or maybe it’s just coincidence?...

Of course, not every pregnancy is the same, and some are downright weird. Rare conditions and otherwise impossible pregnancies exist, and many of them may surprise you. These ten instances are the most unusual pregnancies ever recorded, and they are straight-up weird. 10 Times Inmates Got Prison Guards Pregnant And Vice Versa 10 Youngest Mother On Record Typically, a girl doesn’t begin menstruating until she’s around 12-years old. While that number certainly fluctuates up or down by a few years, it’s the general average for most women around the world....

On this list Tony and Jonna Mendez, former CIA agents and Chiefs of Disguise, Jack Barsky, former KGB Agent turned American Intelligence, Peter Earnest, the founding executive director of the International Spy Museum and 35 year CIA veteran and William Colby, former Director of Central Intelligence, review some popular movie scenes that are more art than accurate. 10 Nazi Spies and Their Espionage Plots In America 10 Quick change In this scene from Mission Impossible III, unlikely hero, Ethan Hawkes, uses the quick change methodology to disguise his identity....

Packer was an American gold prospector and convicted cannibal. On February 9th 1874, he left with 5 others for an expedition in the Colorado mountains. Two months later Packer returned from the expedition alone. When questioned of the whereabouts of the men that had been with him, Packer said that he killed them in self defense and was forced to eat their remains in order to survive the elements. His story was not believed and he soon after signed two separate confessions....

Alejandro Jodorowsky’s surreal spaghetti Western is widely credited with starting the midnight film movement. El Topo played nightly at the Elgin in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood for nine straight months, regularly selling out. It got a standard theatrical release after John Lennon – who reportedly saw it at least three times – convinced Beatle manager Allen Klein to purchase the movie through the ABCKO film company. Lennon and Yoko Ono later provided the financing for Jodorowsky’s film The Holy Mountain (1973)....

Why they frighten us is anyone’s guess.[1] Suggestions range from evolutionary, which is our primordial instinct to recognize and react to faces, to socially reinforced through movies and media. Regardless, it’s fair to assume that dolls—without meaning to—mean a lot. So, we’ve compiled a list of doll, sculpture, and puppet sanctuaries from around the globe that are known to send visitors’ instincts into a tailspin. Although this list is not exhaustive, it’s a creepy start....

SEE ALSO: 10 Bizarre Cult Teachings Strap in, this is a list of the top 10 cults. In no particular order: Church of Bible Understanding Stewart Traill The Church of Bible Understanding (formerly known as the Forever Family) is a destructive cult, which started in 1971 in Allentown, Pennsylvania by former atheist and vacuum repairman Stewart Traill. The cult targeted teens as young as 13 by drawing on their weaknesses....