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However, many other discoveries have gone largely unnoticed by the public, although they are no less spectacular. From cryovolcanoes to extragalactic planets, we will see some of the best celestial findings and inventions that this year has left us. 10 The Largest Star Map Ever Made In April 2018, the European Space Agency (ESA) publicly released the largest sky map ever created to date. The map is a three-dimensional reconstruction of the sky seen from Earth, thanks to data obtained by the Gaia spacecraft....

10Steve Flaig And Christine Tallady On October 5, 1985, Christine Tallady gave birth to a boy whom she planned to give up, since she wasn’t ready to be a single mother at that time in her life. Years later, she would get married and have two more children, but she never forgot about that first little baby boy. When the boy was adopted, he was given the name Steve Flaig. When Flaig turned 18, he began looking for his birth mother, who had left the adoption records open in case the child ever wanted to contact her....

On this list are just a few of these types of fascinating finds that sent ripples of excitement around the world. 10 Lost City of Kweneng In 2018, archaeologists in South Africa announced that they had uncovered the remains of the country’s earliest metropolis, namely the ancient city of Kweneng. The city is situated around 50 kilometers (31 miles) south of Johannesburg and was believed to be lost to history....

From fangs in whales to herbivores with a taste for meat and carnivores unlike anything seen today, ancient animals were survival specialists. Recent fossils also revealed unknown predators that terrified the prehistoric landscape and solved the mystery of a unique, if not gruesome, shark. 10 Whales That Ate Whales Egypt’s Wadi Al-Hitan (“Valley of the Whales”) is littered with the bones of extinct whales. In 2010, researchers stumbled upon a skeleton sticking through the sand....

10Scrolls For Tortured Souls Surveyors in the Serbian city of Kostolac have discovered a forgotten burial ground that harkens the former glory of Viminacium, a Roman outpost from the fourth century BC that at its peak boasted 40,000 inhabitants. The site belched up a few 2,000-year-old skeletons and also two mystifying leaden amulets. Inside the amulets, they found adorably tiny scrolls of gold and silver. Commonly referred to as “curse tablets,” such spells generally invoke otherworldly powers to affect or afflict the caster’s friends, family, or foes....

In some ancient societies, though, dead bodies were modified, and parts were kept for ritual, symbolic, or practical reasons. Some corpses were adapted before being buried, either to protect the living or as part of ritual funerary rites. These practices have led to some pretty eerie archaeological finds. 10 Skull Cups Skull cups have been created by many different cultures, in many time periods. They involve taking the cranium from a corpse and carving it into a usable cup shape....

Despite being unable to digest their snacks, some animals really develop a taste for inedible objects. In fact, certain animals consume so many inedible objects during their lifetime that they are believed to seek the items on purpose. It should be no surprise that one of the most common duties for veterinarians is helping animals that have consumed something they cannot digest. Just about everything easy to reach and small enough for an animal to swallow has been found within the stomachs of various creatures....

10 The Biblical Flood Many scholars have argued that the source of Biblical Flood story was most likely a great and destructive flood that affected the region of Mesopotamia. If so, then the proportions of such a flood were enhanced by the imagination of the authors of the story. During the 1928–1929 excavation season in southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq), British archaeologist Leonard Woolley uncovered 3 meters (10 ft) of waterborne sediment in the ancient city of Ur....

10The Morality Of Using Robot Warriors Bradley J. Strawser of the US Naval Postgraduate School argues that the US has the right and the moral obligation to use drones in battle. He believes that they’re a “moral improvement” on other types of air combat for two reasons. First, drones reduce civilian casualties by striking their targets more precisely instead of blowing up everything in the area. Second, drone pilots are better protected from harm than those who fly conventional planes....

Not all such waste is confined to the US, and not all of it is lampooned or criticized. But the absurd cases that do come to light illustrate how freewheeling officials of government agencies often spend citizens’ hard-earned dollars. Unfortunately, these 10 astonishing government boondoggles, as preposterous as they are, are only the tip of the iceberg of government fiduciary mismanagement, abuse, and sheer lunacy. 10 Measuring Breasts And Buttocks A witty critic of US government waste, US Senator William Proxmire suggested that the measurements of the breasts and buttocks of stewardess trainees by the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) “seems like a bust....

The National Film Registry annually recognizes American-made films that have been deemed to be ‘culturally, historically or aesthetically important’ and, therefore, in need of permanent preservation by the nation’s largest library. What is appointed to the list each year is the decision of the Librarian of Congress with the recommendations of the National Film Preservation Board, a 44-member group made up of professionals from the American film industry. Public votes are also accepted and considered in all discussions....

10 NASCAR Today’s NASCAR races are scientific affairs, with precision-engineered cars that cost well over $100,000 to build. They’re helped along by billion-dollar sponsors. But America’s largest spectator sport came from humble origins. NASCAR got its start in the days of Prohibition, when moonshiners used souped-up cars to evade police. In 1933, when Prohibition was repealed, the moonshiners continued their reckless ways, this time staying one step ahead of the tax man on the dirt roads of the Deep South....

10 The Snow Maiden Father Frost, the Russian Santa Claus, isn’t all that different from the Santa you’d see in the West, except that he has a female helper. In fact, he is the only Santa in the world who has a female sidekick. The Snow Maiden travels with Father Frost to deliver gifts, acting as an intermediary between him and the children. The Snow Maiden has mixed fairy tale origins....

This was even more impactful when radio was one of the only news sources. This list compiles hoaxes from the 1940s onward. While some are definitely within the time frame of the advent of the Internet, you’ll be surprised at how gullible some people really are! 10 Nixon For President . . . Again? Back in 1992, the National Public Radio broadcast a sound bite of Richard Nixon telling Americans that he was going to run for the presidency ....

10The Star Of Bethlehem Astronomers believe that the Star of Bethlehem may have been a very real event, just perhaps not a sacred sign showing the birthplace of the Messiah. The triple conjunction between the Sun and three planets—Jupiter, Venus, and Earth—is a natural phenomenon with a visual effect very similar to the long-tailed star. Once the other two planets align, Earth would then overtake the pair, making them appear different than normal....

The Peregrine Falcon is the fastest predator on the planet, bar none. Peregrine eyes are over 12 times as powerful as a human eye, and can spot a small bird up to 5 miles away. Once a bird is sighted, the peregrine folds its wings and enters an angle swoop in which speeds of over 300 kilometers per hour are reached. Unlike most birds of prey, the peregrine does not slow down or use its talons, but hits its prey at full speed, killing it with a blow from its keeled breast bone....

10The Urine Diet The urine diet is a bizarre weight loss practice that involves restricting your diet to 500 calories a day and injecting yourself with the urine of pregnant women. The diet can supposedly help you lose up to 0.5 kilograms (1 lb) a day. Strangely enough, this miraculous weight loss is attributed to the injection of urine, as opposed to the limit on your calorie intake. The urine of pregnant women has a special hormone called human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which is created by the placenta....

In the following stories, however, these animals were featured in the headlines for various other, often bizarre reasons. 10 An Elephant Never Forgets In June 2022, it was widely reported that a 70-year-old woman named Maya Murmu had been attacked and trampled by a wild elephant while she was collecting water in the Mayurbhanj district in eastern India. The elephant had wandered away from the Dalma Wildlife Sanctuary when the woman appeared in its line of sight....

10 Horses Use Their Ears And Eyes To Point And Communicate Horses are a lot more articulate than we thought. They communicate not only through snorts, brays, and neighs, but also with eyes and ears, the latter of which are highly pliable and used like equine turn signals. In a study, University of Sussex PhD student Jennifer Wathan and her adviser Karen McComb photographed horses looking at buckets of food. They then altered some of the images to obscure either the eyes or ears before scaling the photographs to life-sized proportions and showing them to real horses who were given a choice between two similar feed buckets....

10Rani-Ki-VavIndia The stepwells of India are both hugely practical and amazingly beautiful. Some of these are in elegant temples that honor one of the most sacred substances on Earth—water. Originally, these stepwells were utilitarian. Wells were dug down to the water table allowing access to water even in the long and dry summer months. Eventually, many of the stepwells were constructed not only as water sources but also as temples and memorials that honored the rain-giving deities....