Mar12
Mysteries have always interested me. I was scared shitless during one visit to New Jersey after reading about the Jersey Devil and spent most of my time there making sure I stayed as far away from the woods as possible. This is a list of 7 bizarre, unsolved mysteries that I find interesting along with a possible explanation.
7 ) The Kelly-Hopkinsville Encounter
Not all alien invasion stories are created equal. In fact, all of them pale in comparison to the Kelly-Hopkinsville encounter because it involves rednecks, alien goblins, and guns. On the night of August 21, 1955, a Kentucky farmer went outside to get a drink of water and claimed to have seen a “flying saucer” crash in a nearby gully. Everyone laughed at him and suggested that he was either lying or hallucinating.
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\\ tags: Mysteries
Mar12
With the current election turning increasingly negative, maybe it is time to take a step back and look at 10 people that contribute something to the internet (so no Jack Thompson unless he starts blogging), face a massive backlash, and have become the most hated people on the internet. (Yes, it has Eric Bauman.)
1. Michael Arrington
Being the god-king of tech blogs isn’t easy (unless your name is Pete Cashmore and you can stare at yourself in a mirror), just ask Michael Arrington. He spends most of his panda-like existence blogging and picking fights with anyone that dares to criticize him. Most of the hate for Arrington comes from TechCrunch’s popularity, insane anger, and general douchebaggery towards anyone he considers lower than him.
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\\ tags: Hated People
Mar12
Plato once said, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” If the internet has proven one thing it is that there is someone out there for everyone. This is a list of 10 people from different parts of history that were also famous for being ugly by their society’s standards. You’ll find philosophers, sideshow freaks, politicians, and even a queen.
10 ) Socrates
Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, Socrates was also well known for his piggish features. Alcibiades, an Athenian general and student of Socrates, compared his appearance to Silenus. Silenus was a legendary follower of Dionysus that was portrayed as morbidly obese, constantly drunk, and balding.
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\\ tags: Ugly
Mar12
Unlike most, some people chose a life of celibacy. They avoid marriage and having sex so they can focus on more important things – there is a famous Seinfeld episode about it. This is a look at 6 historic figures that became celibate at some point in their life. They either avoided marriage like the plague or completely cut sex out of their life as if it would give them leprosy.
6 ) Sir Isaac Newton
The English writer that came up with The Three Laws of Motion was also puritanical, rarely smiled, and was a lifelong bachelor. All those years of not chasing women made him one crabby bastard, he was famous for his violent anger towards those he felt had spited him. He spent years hounding Gottfried Leibniz over the discovery of calculus. He kept a list of all the sins he had committed in his life and it included such horrible things like: “Making pies on Sunday night”, “squirting water”, and “peevishness.”
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\\ tags: Celibate
Mar12
Wooo, time for the soft-launch! To match this double entendre my first big update will be about sex.
These days the word “pervert” is mostly used to talk about sex, but it has more to do with taking a social norm and twisting it until it is something completely different. The following five authors managed to pervert social norms of their day. As an added bonus I’ll include a web community that the author would probably be a member of if they were alive today…
5) Lewis Carroll
Who was he?
The author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. He was also a logician, mathematician, Anglican clergyman, and photographer. His use of logic, structure, and wordplay would endear him to a group of fans that make even the most hardcore Star Wars fanboy seem easygoing and understanding (Greedo shot first).
How was he a pervert?
Carroll was usually surrounded by an entourage of prepubescent girls. He would write them letters that included puzzles and tricks but they second they got too old for him, usually the onset of puberty, he’d drop them like a bad habit. Yes, much like Michael Jackson’s undying love for young boys, Lewis Carroll loved young girls – but only English girls, American girls were too rude for his tastes and boys were absolutely disgusting nude. Yes, nude. You see, he loved taking pictures of young girls in basements, naked, spread out across a bed and would then go home and write about “the inclinations of my sinful heart”.
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\\ tags: Pervert
Mar12
Pederasty is a sexual relationship, whether or not consummated, between an adult male and boy aged 12-17, and has been considered a scurrilous perversion for centuries. It is a complicated issue – even the Greeks debated the ethics of it and groups like NAMBLA have brought it to attention in recent history. This is a look at 8 historic figures that liked young boys.
8 ) Cheng I
The famous Hong Kong pirate created an even more famous pirate, Cheung Po Tsai, by kidnapping him and forcing him to be his lover. After his death, his wife married Cheung Po Tsai and became one of the most notorious pirates of the era. Eventually, Cheung Po Tsai would eclipse both of them by amassing about 40,000 men and 600 ships under his command during his career as a pirate.
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\\ tags: Pederast
Mar12
Public executions used to be a form of entertainment and executioners were like rock stars. A good executioner was one that had flair but could kill a victim quickly. This is a look at 7 executioners that became famous for their abilities to dispatch their victims.
7 ) Souflikar
During the Ottoman Empire the job of Bostanci was a prestigious one. The title translates to “Gardener”, and he was one… but he was also expected to prune the Emperor’s court through strangulation. They added another twist to it: the condemned raced the executioner through the gardens to the execution spot. If he managed to beat him, his sentence was reduced to banishment. If he lost, he was strangled on the spot and his body thrown in the river. None were as fast as Mahomet IV’s head executioner, Souflikar, as over the course of 5 years he strangled at least 5,000 people – a rate of almost 3 people a day.
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\\ tags: Executioners
Mar12
Pop culture positions pirates as daring swashbucklers who fight injustice while seeking fame and fortune. But, characters like Captain Jack Sparrow and Long John Silver don’t really present the truth about piracy. Most pirates lived short, dirty, and unpleasant lives. They rarely–if ever!–captured a ship or uncovered treasure, and most ended life at the end of the hangman’s noose, a great publicity stunt for an unpopular governor or mayor. The following is a list of eight popular pirates who were actually huge losers.
1. Stede Bonnet
Stede Bonnet lived as a wealthy landowner and gentleman until the summer of 1717, when he bought a ship, hired a crew, and took to piracy. Bonnet wasn’t trying to escape prosecution or rebelling against the crown; instead, his reasons for becoming a pirate stemmed from “discomforts he found in a married state.” In other words, he became a pirate to escape a nagging wife. His complete lack of sailing experience led to serious wounds he sustained in a battle with a Spanish man-of-war. Bonnet then allowed Blackbeard to help out while he was incapacitated. Blackbeard stole all of Bonnet’s goods, recruited most of his crew, and left Bonnet with a stripped ship and a handful of marooned pirates. Bonnet swore revenge, but since he still couldn’t sail, he never did find Blackbeard. Still on the lam, Bonnet changed his name and the name of his ship to avoid capture. It didn’t work. After running aground during a battle with the Royal Navy, his ship was quickly boarded. Soon thereafter, Bonnet was imprisoned, berated by a long-winded judge, and hanged. At least he got away from his wife.
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\\ tags: Pirates
Mar12
Doctor Zoidberg is one of the reasons I love Futurama. His constant failures at curing even basic illnesses due to an awful understanding of human anatomy make every episode all the better. This is a look at 10 real doctors that were just as bad, if not worse, than Zoidberg.
1. Galen
Galen caused millions of deaths by popularizing Humorism - the belief that the human body is filled with black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood. He had never seen the inside of a human body because Romans considered dissection sacrilegious and wrote most of his influential anatomy books by observing, reasoning, and mostly guessing. The Catholic Church demonstrated that it always has great ideas by declaring him the only authority on human anatomy, leading to centuries of Europeans believing that the brain was a phlegm clot.
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Mar12
What have you accomplished so far in your life? Graduated college, working a nice 9-5 job, and hanging out at the poshest clubs, bars, and lounges around town? Fancy yourself to be a bit of a badass, right? Well, you aren’t. This is a list of 10 individuals that were so amazing at what they did that calling them anything less than a badass is an insult.
10 ) Cale Yarborough
Yarborough made NASCAR interesting by getting into a fist fight during the first televised race. Over the years he has been shot, bitten by a rattlesnake, struck by lightning, and nearly mauled to death by a bear while flying an airplane. His shining moment came in 1958 while working as a skydiver in Jacksonville. During a 5,000 foot jump his chute didn’t deploy until 200 feet when it provided him with minimal drag. He walked away, later saying: “Lucky for me, I landed on a patch of high grass and mud, which gave me a little bit of a cushion. I walked away with a chipped elbow.”
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\\ tags: History
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