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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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
Mar12
Even though the rules of hygiene were extremely relaxed during some periods of history, the following 15 people – royalty, actresses, philosophers, and more – became known not only for their accomplishments but also their disastrous hygiene.
1. Benedict of Aniane
Saint Joseph once preached, “He who has bathed in Christ has no need for a second bath.” Early Christians took this literally and never bathed. Benedict was an odd monk that spent most of his life in rags, rarely eating, and speaking only in awkward outcries. He was canonized for saving monasticism in the 8th century, through which he spread the idea that bathing was a vanity that facilitated sins of the flesh. This meme stuck with Christians until the 18th century.
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Mar12
A few months back we featured a list of 10 badasses from the pages of history. Unfortunately, despite the high level of ass-kicking, on the list, some people wanted more face-punching action and less touching stories about moms raising their kids to be awesome. This is a list of 10 people who were badass enough to warrant mention purely for their ass-kicking skills… despite being, you know, dead.
1. Simo Häyhä
Simo Häyhä, the Finnish sniper, still holds the record for highest amount of sniper kills in any major war, an astonishing 500+ in 100 days of the Winter War. Before the war, Häyhä was a simple farmer. During the war, he was an unstoppable death machine. Despite having more soldiers, being better armed, and having more supplies, The Soviets were terrified of Häyhä. They called him the “White Death” and tried to kill him on numerous occasions, going as far as to call down artillery on his position. But Häyhä wasn’t content to just rack up kills – he had to do it better than anyone else. He used iron sights instead of telescopic ones to make himself a smaller target, and would keep snow in his mouth to keep his breath from giving away his position. Oh, and one other thing – in addition to his 500 kills with his sniper rifle, he also had 200 unconfirmed kills with his short range sub-machine gun.
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