In 2012, author and Harvard professor Steven Pinker wrote a book explaining that, contrary to popular belief, modern people are much less violent than their ancestors. Among other things, he cites the decline in murder rates, a drop in capital punishment, and lower war deaths (proportionally speaking). However, others call the 20th Century the bloodiest, cruelest time in history, fraught with endless wars and unprecedented cases of genocide. According to the Polynational War Memorial there were an astounding 237 wars between 1900 and today, starting with the Boxer Rebellion and continuing to the current war in Afghanistan. So, even if Pinker is right and things are better than they used to be, we still have a craving for war that we just can’t shake.

After watching any of the military training documentaries on the Discovery Channel, it indeed appears like some men were born for battle. They absolutely thrive under the high-pressure, aggression-filled environment of war. Not to mention, they really, really like their weapons. It makes you wonder what these men would do if there was no need to fight—could they even survive a desk job?

Essentially, the question boils down to—are we warring because we have to or because deep down we like it?

It doesn’t take much online exposure to realize people on the internet are inexplicably mean. Skim through any comment board on any site to see some of the most hate-spewed, dialogue around. What’s weirder is it’s usually unprovoked and over inconsequential stuff that logically shouldn’t trigger so much vehemence. You can’t even post a picture of a cute puppy without someone calling you a douchebag or saying only brainless liberals/republicans post pictures of puppies.

So, what gives? Why are people so stinkin’ mean online?

Many say it has to do with anonymity, which allows us to say things without fear of getting punched in the face. Others theorize many folks have a lot of pent up anger and the internet is a “safe” place to unleash it, and Scientific America claims it’s a result of lack of eye contact. Regardless of how we get away with it or why we do it, it’s evident that in unbridled, anonymous situations many people resort to cruelty.

If we want to analyze this issue from a genetic point of view, it makes sense to look at our closest living animal relatives for some insight. Unfortunately, this kind of complicates the matter since we are equally related (share 99% DNA) to both chimpanzees and bonobos, and while chimps have a propensity for violence, bonobos follow more of a ‘make love not war’ philosophy (literally). So, what kind of ape are we? Dr. Christopher Ryan, author of Sex at Dawn, tends to think we have more in common with bonobos and would be happiest in a non-competitive, sexually open society.

However, when you watch footage like the violent chimpanzee attack shown in Planet Earth, it’s easy to see the similarities between an organized chimp ambush and our own guerrilla warfare practices. In some cases, the chimps will cannibalize their victims—and any regular reader of Listverse knows humans have their own history with cannibalism.

Some argue we might be more relaxed and free lovin’ too if, like bonobos, we evolved in an environment where we didn’t have to compete for food. Still, we have to consider that today there’s plenty of food to go around if we were all willing to share, yet we continue to fight for resources and power as if it’s a lot more fun than making sure everyone has what they need. That being said, we all know humans are capable of living peaceably and, as scientist Dr. Christopher Boehm points out, it wasn’t until the emergence of human hunter-gatherers that primates started resolving conflicts through truces, trades, and peace pacts. So, while we all have the genetics for peace, it’s unclear whether it’s stronger than our penchant for violence?

Many of us have a romanticized perception of hunter gatherers, envisioning them as “noble savages” spending most of their days picking berries, hanging out by the fire, and having no concept of jealousy or personal property. There’s a common notion that if it wasn’t for agriculture and industrialization we’d all be stress free and hanging out in hammocks too. Of course, while it is true that hunter gatherers needed an extreme amount of cooperation and sharing to survive, their communal lifestyle didn’t mean there was never bloodshed.

For instance, things aren’t all smiles and rainbows (from a social perspective) in the few remaining hunter gatherer societies left in the world. The Sentinelese people in the Bay of Bengal, for example, have welcomed any would-be visitors to their island with a barrage of arrows and spears. In an incident in 2006, a couple of inebriated fisherman accidentally drifted too close to the island and were promptly killed and buried by the inhabitants. All outside attempts to recover the bodies proved too dangerous, so the island remains the men’s final resting place.

The Sentinelese aren’t the only ones who prefer fighting over negotiation. Anthropologists say two-thirds of modern hunter-gatherers are in a state of nearly constant tribal warfare, and 90% go to war once a year where they lose about 0.5% of their population. That may not seem like much, but it’s the equivalent of 2 billion people dying in our outside world. What’s worse is their high homicide rate, which results in the deaths of 25-30% of adult males.

Thus, it appears our modern lifestyle isn’t to blame for our violent tendencies, since people who have clearly avoided the industrial and technological revolutions are just as brutal as the rest of us (possibly more so).

The most convincing evidence that at least some of us are inherently violent is the existence of the so called “warrior gene.” This gene is technically known as monoamine oxidase A (MAOA), and while everyone has it, in a certain percentage of the population this gene exhibits low or no activity. Interestingly, those who have a low-performing MAOA gene are more prone to aggression and violent behavior—hence, the name “warrior gene.”

Just having the gene doesn’t guarantee you’ll be a violent person, yet it does mean you are predisposed towards aggression and impulsive decisions. Researchers have found those who have both troubled upbringings and the warrior gene are most likely to act out negatively. For instance, in a 2009 murder trial, a man was facing the death penalty for sadistically carving up and murdering his wife and her friend. The lawyer cited the warrior gene and an abusive childhood as the man’s defense, and apparently the man’s bad luck in both the nature and nurture departments convinced the jury to give him 32 years in prison instead of death.

It turns out, around one-third of people in the Western world have the warrior gene, and it’s present in as much as two-thirds of people in other, especially tribal, populations. Incidentally, women are less likely to have the gene since women have two copies of the X chromosome (where MAOA is carried), and it’s suspected the availability of two MAOAs would counteract any deficiency.

In some ways we aren’t much different than the ancient Romans with their gladiator games and fascination with blood and gore. For instance, prime time TV is full of shoot em’ up cop shows and gruesome crime scenes, most news agencies stick with the ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ philosophy, and one of the most violent sports in existence, mixed martial arts fighting, has been dubbed the fastest growing sport in the world. Without a doubt, we have a definite attraction to violence.

While most of the research regarding violence in entertainment has to do with how viewing it affects our behavior, perhaps the bigger question is why we like watching it in the first place? Maybe we’re drawn to it as a way to vicariously live out our savage instincts, or possibly we’re not so much attracted to the violence as we are the excitement. Some scientists argue our humdrum, civilized lives lack sensation and the thrill of conflict and danger provides a type of escape. The only problem with that theory is it doesn’t explain why native people also have ritual violence—unless it breaks up the monotony of their days too.

Towards the end of his life, Freud became largely disenchanted with the human species and considered us one of the worst types of animals. Granted, a lot of his feelings were based on the tumultuous time period in which he lived, as he witnessed World War I and died just as another major war, World War II, was getting started.

In his 1930 book, Civilizations and its Discontents, he wrote “…men are not gentle creatures, who want to be loved, who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness.”

Hundreds of years before Freud, philosopher Thomas Hobbes had a similarly pessimistic view of humanity and famously wrote that the life of man in his natural state is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Essentially, he believed all men were equally capable of killing, and when two people want the same thing the inevitable outcome is war. In his mind, government and civil society were the only ways to curb the brutishness, yet he admitted even governments and the elite were full of corruption.

So, if we ignore Freud and Hobbes for the moment and assume other thinkers are correct, like Jean Jacques Rousseau who thought humans were naturally good or John Locke who believed we all started as a blank slate. Then it makes sense to presume babies—people who have been influenced the least by the world—would lean towards goodness or neutrality. But, is that really the case?

It’s difficult to say because, if you’ve spent any time with a toddler, you know at one point in the day he might be smashing his brother on the head with a wooden block and then five minutes later he’s generously offering you the soggy portion of his half-eaten cookie. Also, we have to teach them how to behave in a socially acceptable manner (i.e. don’t hit, bite, steal, and always, always share). If humans are naturally good, why do we have to spend so much time teaching children how to behave?

Despite all the social instruction that goes on during people’s formative years, researcher Arber Tasimi at Yale University believes his studies prove babies are naturally altruistic. The majority of his tests involve putting toddlers in various situations where they can choose to be selfish or helpful without reward. Surprisingly, in many instances the toddlers went out of their way to help others even when it was inconvenient and offered no incentive.

Regrettably, Tasimi’s theories go out the window when a mere cracker enters the equation. Yes, the toddlers in the study would quickly side with a “bad guy” or be unhelpful if it meant getting three graham crackers as opposed to one. Evidently, like most adults, children can be convinced to do wrong if the price is high enough.

The simple fact that we have any type of government suggests we believe society would spiral into absolute mayhem if there wasn’t someone making and enforcing laws. Essentially, we have very little trust in our fellow man to not kill or steal from us, so we willingly give up many of our own personal freedoms for the sake of protection. This in itself is pretty strong evidence that we believe a large portion of people aren’t innately good.

But would pandemonium actually ensue if we abolished government and lived in an anarchist state? It’s hard to say since hardly any major anarchist groups have existed throughout history—and perhaps that’s proof enough they don’t work. Even most hunter gatherer and tribal people, like the Australian Aborigines, rely on a group of elders to guide their community.

However, there was at least one significant anarchist society in history, which existed in the Ukraine between 1918 and 1921. It was named the Free Territory and consisted of around 7 million people who lived and worked communally to meet their collective needs. Still, even the Free Territory ended up having a leader of sorts in Nestor Makhno who served as the group’s main military strategist and advisor during the Ukrainian Revolution battles. In the end, the Bolsheviks branded the Free Territory as a warlord regime and forcibly overtook their land. Who knows what would have happened if this Ukrainian enclave was left to its own devices for the long term.

Apparently, our instinct to stay alive and compete for resources starts early… really early. Recently, high-clarity MRIs have shown twins fighting for space in the womb by kicking and pushing their sibling out of the way. Doctors initially planned to use the MRIs to study a different “selfish” condition, twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, where one identical twin siphons blood away from the other. If stealing blood wasn’t bad enough, in cases of vanishing twin syndrome, a fetus will absorb their weaker uterine companion until it miscarries or simply “vanishes”—a legitimate survival of the fittest situation.

In truth, the twin who’s making off with the extra blood or nutrients isn’t consciously choosing to “steal” from his womb-mate, yet it’s interesting to see how even as fetuses we have to properly balance the available resources if everyone is to survive.

When it comes down to it, all our seemingly violent or egocentric impulses may be ingrained survival instincts. In other words, we’ll do what’s necessary to stay alive and make conditions more comfortable for ourselves. In our modern world some of these self-centered instincts are likely unnecessary, yet it’s quite a challenge to suppress millions of years of evolution.

S.Grant created this list in the spirit of debate and doesn’t really think all humans are evil, as there are just as many examples of true altruism (perhaps a topic for another list). Contact S.Grant here.

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During WWII, Frankfurt, Germany became one of the nerve centers of the war, and the city suffered no less than eight bombing runs by the Allied forces. It’s no surprise then that the area is filled with WWII era bunkers, even today. On the East harbor of the city lies an industrial labyrinth of old warehouses, buildings, and quite a few of those old bunkers. The German architecture firm Index Architekten took one of those bunkers and converted it into state-of-the-art music recording studios.

The bunker itself is the square concrete block on the bottom of the picture above, and the recording studios are located in the section built on top of it. In designing the structure, the original plan was to house the studios down in the bunker, but the roof had suffered major structural damage. Rather than replace it, they made the decision to fabricate the entire studio section out of wood and perch it on top of the bunker. Musicians can record there, then walk down to the living facilities located in the bunker proper.

The New Dutch Waterline was built as a defensive shield over the course of centuries. It started in the 17th century, when the Dutch began flooding specific regions of their land to protect key cities. These massive moats were perfectly planned—too deep for foot soldiers to cross, but not quite deep enough to accommodate ships. During the first and second World Wars, the Dutch further fortified these regions with rows of bunkers and pillboxes to protect their defenses against artillery strikes.

This example isn’t as visually striking as many of the other entries on this list, but from a historical standpoint it provides a wealth of information. In 2010, Rietveld Landscapers cut through one of the remaining bunkers, Bunker 559 (there were 700 in total), giving tourists a cross-section view of the inside—a slice of history, so to speak. A stairway leads down to the bunker and runs directly through the middle of it, before leading out across the waters of the natural preserve in the background.

In the heart of Shanghai, China, an approximated 2,000 leftover bomb shelters lie dormant from the tense period between China and the Soviet Union during the 70′s. In recent years, the government has released many of these bunkers to the public, and they’re being put to good use. One of the most striking examples is The Shelter, an underground nightclub that was built inside the framework of a 600 square meter (6,500 sq. ft.) bunker in the Xuhui district of Shanghai.

The atmosphere inside the nightclub is dense and moody, echoing with pounding drum and bass tunes—the perfect location for all-night partiers. Most of the original cement structure is left visible, but combined with 21st century furniture and interior design, not to mention some of the best sound systems in the area. Some sections rely heavily on the intrinsic nature of the bunker—”dark rooms,” with no light at all, just the music.

China isn’t the only country cornering the market on bomb shelter night life—on the other side of the imaginary Cold War conflict line, Moscow is joining the arms race with its own specially designed bunker. Bunker 42, formerly known as the Tagansky Protected Command Point, was built in the 50′s and operated up until 1986. The massive underground space (7,000 square meters, or 75,000 square feet) was designed so that 3,000 military officials could survive for three months without resupply. Now, it’s a bar, club, and restaurant.

It’s actually still in development, but the design is evolving into something that looks like a set piece from 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially the main lounge area, which was placed inside a long hallway with curved ceilings, complete with signature Russian opulence in the furniture and decor. While most of the bunker is being reimagined as a club, a small part will be retained as a Cold War museum.

Bomb shelters aren’t the only remnants of modern warfare—missile silos also played a deadly role in the clash of superpowers. And they present some very unique opportunities for remodeling. The SiloHome is built from an abandoned missile silo in Saranac, New York. Although the silo reaches an incredible 185 feet (56 meters) below ground, only the top two levels have been converted into living quarters.

The best part about the home is that—except for the wooden lodge above it—the entire structure is underground. And like any good bunker, it was built to withstand a nuclear attack. You enter through the above-ground lodge (which, it has to be said, is a very decent home on its own). Inside, a keypad encoded steel door swings open into a stairwell that takes you down to the first two floors of the silo, outfitted with every modern convenience you could ask for—yes, even a jacuzzi.

This 19th century fortification isn’t quite as ritzy as some of these bunkers, but what it lacks in glamor it more than makes up for in elegant style. The once-derelict tower sits on the picturesque coast of Suffolk, England, and for the longest time it was preserved by the English Heritage and Suffolk Coastal District Council as a national monument.

When it was bought by the architectural firm Billings Jackson Design, the plan was to turn it into the private home for the owner of the company, Duncan Jackson. The remodeled tower preserves the original brickwork, and the outer walls are almost unchanged, providing a stark contrast between the early 19th century style as seen from the outside and the sleek modern view from the inside.

The Tea House On Bunker in Vreeswijk, The Netherlands beautifully proves that bunker renovation doesn’t need to stick within the boxlike confines of the original structure.The bunker was built in 1936 as part of the line of defense along the New Dutch Waterline, mentioned in entry number nine. The project, developed and implemented by UNStudio, aims to alter the original structure of the bunker as little as possible, and it achieves that goal through a removable stainless steel installment that fits over the top, clicking into place like a couple Lego bricks.

Using the grounded weight of the bunker as a counter balance, the steel structure is able to jut out at an angle that seems to defy the laws of physics, giving the Tea House its unique profile. As a result, the actual meeting area (it was designed for business conferences) is left hovering over a 6 foot (2 meter) block of empty air.

Germany has, arguably, more derelict WWII bunkers than any other country. There are thousands of the structures across the country, and while many of them are left standing because they represent historical landmarks, others are still there simply because demolishing them would be an expensive process—they were, after all, built to withstand bombs.

A German architect named Rainer Mielke is doing his part to contribute to a solution by recycling some of them into apartments. He calls the project Bunker Wohnen (bunker dwelling, or bunker habitation). His apartments utilize the upper floor of the bunker along with an additional level built onto the roof as the living space, while the lower level is used as a parking garage for the residents. When one of the residents, Hans-Albert Eike, moved into the refurbished bunker, he invited the neighbors over for a housewarming party—and actually met several people who had used the bunkers as children during WWII.

During the Cold War, the U.S. government spent billions of dollars peppering the Midwest with missile silos. Some of them were so large they were practically cities buried deep beneath the ground. One of these hardened bunkers, in Topeka, Kansas, was specially built in the 60′s to accommodate a 4 megaton Atlas E nuclear missile—and nearly two decades later, the then-abandoned silo was bought by a schoolteacher named Ed Peden.

Twelve years later, Peden had drained the silo of decades worth of stagnant floodwater, shoveled out mountains of scrap and slag, and converted 604 square meters (6,500 sq. ft.) of the massive bunker into a veritable mansion, where he now lives with his wife. Their living space only encompasses a third of the entire site. Their whole house is underground except for a small sunroom on the surface. As Peden puts it, “We take the garbage up, and we mow the roof.”

Finally, one of the most impressive repurposed military bunkers is the Bahnhof Data Center, built inside an old Cold War era nuclear bunker 99 feet (30m) below the surface of Stockholm, Sweden. When Bahnhof, a Swedish internet service provider, purchased the bunker, they decided that with such a uniquely eccentric location at their disposal, they might as well design it to harmonize with that, frankly, villainous ambiance.

So Bahnhof went all out. The photo above offers a glimpse into the facility, but with over 1,100 square meters (nearly 12,000 sq. ft.) of space in the bunker, a glimpse is really all it is. Since the workers are underground, the bunker has simulated daylight, a series of greenhouses, and waterfalls flowing directly out of the walls. Beautiful, yes, and also nearly impenetrable—the front door is 40 cm (16 inches) of solid steel, and the facility itself was built to hold up against a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb. That security isn’t wasted either—the Data Center also houses private servers, including the sensitive servers for WikiLeaks.

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As far as the law is concerned, tax avoidance is perfectly legal. Which is kind of a shame, as Apple is currently in the process of hoarding enough money offshore to literally end world poverty. I kid you not: according to the Guardian, Apple is hiding around $100bn—with charity Oxfam putting the figure needed to end global poverty at sixty percent of that. Even at our current low(ish) corporate tax rate of 35 percent, getting Apple to pay their dues would yield enough cash to completely eradicate poverty in South America.

But hey, it’s their money, right? If you used this ‘give to the poor’ logic, every business on Earth would be out of pocket; which they may well be, if Apple keep up their insane avoidance strategy. See, having the clout to skip out on taxes and then pull a John Galt before congress isn’t something most companies possess. By bending the rules, Apple gain a hugely unfair advantage over competitors—sort of like if an Olympic sprinter turned up to the starting line in a Ferrari. This screws over any business smaller than Apple (in other words, most of them), while creating fertile conditions for a monopoly. But even worse than running a monopoly is their current strategy of…

Imagine for a second that the IRS came calling and you tried to broker a deal whereby you only paid tax if you set the rate. What do you think would happen? At best, everyone would laugh at you; at worst, they’d probably throw your ass in jail and seize your property. But not if you’re Apple CEO Tim Cook: a few days ago, Cook basically told congress they could tax his company only if they changed the rate to suit him. And, since his proposed rate is nine percent, congress should probably have just laughed then turned him upside down and shook him until $35bn came out his pockets. Instead, they spent hours cooing over how wonderful Apple products are, like those deluded Chris Brown fangirls who still defend his misogynistic butt. In short: Cook openly blackmailed congress, who responded by telling him how awesome he was.

‘Aggressive litigation’ is when someone with a lot of money sues someone else as a way of censoring or damaging their business. And Apple files lawsuits like a professional road accident victim. Take their epic, global battle with Samsung: while both companies come out looking like belligerent, soulless multinationals, only Apple stands accused of using lawsuits to freeze out the competition. If you aren’t following the various cases, they basically amount to Apple attempting to make Samsung phones illegal by trying to patent the entire concept of ‘smartphones’. For example, they tried to patent the idea of unlocking your phone by swiping; the use of square icons to denote apps; the ability to enlarge documents by touching the screen and making the phones rectangular. In case you’ve never seen one before, that basically describes a smartphone. And Apple is trying to patent them faster than you can say ‘anti-competitive’.

On the subject of the Apple v Samsung case, did you know Apple lost their tablet-patent suit in the UK? Now, Samsung have lost elsewhere and—as I mentioned above—both companies ‘do evil’, but what makes this notable is the way Apple openly flouted a UK court order to apologize to their rival. And I mean ‘flouted’—forced by a judge to put an apology on their UK homepage, Apple first posted a notice so objectively unapologetic they were legally required to write another, which they then hid so nobody could read it.

Just think about that for a second: if you openly flouted a court order—twice—chances are you would get hauled in on contempt charges and carted off to the Tower of London. For all Apple’s actions here are essentially harmless (and also kinda funny—the apology is wrapped in a page element called “sosumi”), it more-or-less shows exactly how much respect they have for the laws you and I have to live by: none.

Condensed to three little words like that, Apple’s practice of allowing their suppliers to dump toxic sludge into rivers perhaps doesn’t sound so bad—especially if you consider ‘environmentalism’ code for ‘wishy-washy liberalism’. So let’s break it down into something we can all understand: in taking advantage of Chinese environmental loopholes, Apple allowed its suppliers to release giant clouds of toxic gas over nearby villages. In those villages, people are now dying at a phenomenal rate from cancer. In other words, entire families are being wiped out just so Apple can save a few bucks. On top of that, in 2011, a factory making Apple products managed to poison 137 of its workers when a cheap chemical used in making iPads gave off a cloud of nerve gas. Apple’s response? The corporate equivalent of ‘meh’.

In 2006, it came to light that Apple’s Chinese plants were using sweatshop labour—a practice so vastly immoral it ranks right up there with stealing Christmas. Workers at the Longhua plant near Hong Kong were forced to work 15 hour days with no breaks for as little as $40 a month, a wage that would have been low in the slums of Victorian Britain. And guess what? The conditions were much the same: employees were found to be sleeping in crowded dormitories, forbidden to have contact with the outside world and forced to do army-style training in the morning. In other words, the place was less a factory than a prison camp—and it was far from a one-off. Five years later, another Apple supplier was discovered forcing students to work on assembly lines in return for nothing but a chance to graduate. For the record, that’s as unethical in China as it is over here. And that’s before we even get onto Apple’s use of…

Child labor is one of the few universally agreed-upon evils in the world. So it should come as no surprise that Apple’s Chinese suppliers are all in favor of it.

In 2010, the company uncovered 91 children working at its factories, up from eleven the year before. Because their suppliers are clinical psychopaths, these same juveniles were often put to work lifting heavy goods with zero training, which doubtless went about as well as you’d expect. As an additional bit of awfulness, the report also found evidence of mandatory pregnancy checks being conducted—a step so far back on women’s rights it effectively pretends feminism never happened. But hey, all that was two years ago, they’ve probably cleared up their act by now right? Think again: the most-recent audit found the number of child workers had risen to 106—suggesting either those in charge are incompetent or that nobody gives a damn.

Quick, hands up who’s heard of bonded labour? Basically, it’s a practice often used in human trafficking, whereby foreign workers are made to pay so many agency and transport fees they start work deeply in debt—meaning they have to work for free until the balance is paid off. Since this is an article about Apple, you can probably guess whose Chinese suppliers use bonded labour (clue: it’s Apple). And guess what happens to these modern-day serfs while they’re working for free? That’s right: they get beaten and forced to live in cockroach infested warehouses ripped straight from an Orwellian nightmare.

How Orwellian? Well, this report found a factory where workers are forced to stand for the company song, propaganda is pumped through speakers day and night, 34 hour shifts are compulsory and yawning is punished by having wages docked. In other words, it’s the sort of place Kim Jong-Un would dismiss as ‘needlessly cruel’—and that’s before we get to the workers who’ve died of exhaustion or been forced to sign a contract eliminating anything but minimum compensation for their families if they commit suicide. Want to guess what Steve Jobs’ take on this totalitarian hell-hole was? “It’s a nice place”.

No-one, if they have even the barest technical know-how, can resist ‘jail breaking’ their iProduct. Although it sounds kinda illegal, it’s not: all jail breaking does is ensure you can escape Apple’s rigid app store and use the device to host third party programs or move to another carrier. Sounds innocent enough: unless you happen to work for Apple. Time and again, Apple has sent out ‘updates’ designed to kill modified devices. Meaning that Apple will happily take your hard-earned money—thereby completing the consumer transaction—and then stop your new toy from functioning for no damn reason. Can you imagine if masked Swedish mechanics turned up every time you modified your Volvo and took the engine out? They’d go out of business within a day. Yet we still keep buying Apple products, because—in the end—what’s stuff like ‘ethics’ and ‘self-respect’ compared to having a really shiny phone?

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New York City experienced one of its most infamous crimes on April 19, 1989 when a 28-year old woman named Trisha Meili was raped and severely beaten while jogging through Central Park. The attack left her in a coma and she had no memory of the incident after she recovered. Five Harlem youths – Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, and Kharey Wise—had been in the park the night of the attack and were brought in for an interrogation. With the exception of Salaam, they would each make videotaped confessions to the crime. The Central Park Five were all tried and found guilty and given sentences ranging from five to thirteen years.

However, all five youths would recant their confessions and claim they had been coerced and intimidated by the police. Their statements were not consistent with the physical evidence and the prosecution downplayed the fact that none of the DNA from the crime scene matched them. In 2002, the DNA did wind up matching a convicted serial rapist named Matias Reyes, who finally admitted to the crime and confirmed that he did it alone. By that time, the Central Park Five had already served their sentences and been forced to register as sex offenders after being released. On the basis of Reyes’ confession, their convictions were officially vacated.

On July 8, 1997, a Norfolk, Virginia woman named Michelle Moore-Bosko was found raped and murdered at her residence. A neighbor named Danial Williams and his roommate Joseph J. Dick, Jr. were soon brought in for questioning and confessed to the crime. Since no trace of their DNA was found at the scene, police were forced to look for other suspects, and Dick eventually named two more accomplices, Derek Tice and Eric C. Wilson, who subsequently confessed to being involved. Williams, Tice and Dick were sentenced to life imprisonment while Wilson received 8 ½ years. All four men claimed that they only confessed and pleaded guilty after being threatened with the death penalty.

The separate confessions of the Norfolk Four all seemed to contradict each other in their details, and naval logs showed that Dick was serving on the U.S.S. Saipan at the time of the murder. An inmate named Omar Ballard eventually confessed to committing the murder on his own and his DNA was present at the crime scene. However, the Norfolk Four remained incarcerated since police still maintained that they acted as Ballard’s accomplices. Wilson was released after serving his sentence, and Tice, Williams and Dick would receive conditional pardons from Virginia governor Tim Kaine in 2009. However, the Norfolk Four are still required to register as sex offenders and they continue to fight to clear their names.

It’s bad enough when a coerced confession sends an innocent person to prison, but it’s especially horrific when it sends them to death row and almost costs them their life. On June 4, 1982, 19-year old Rebecca Lynn Williams was raped and stabbed to death 38 times inside her Culpeper, Virginia apartment. One year later, police turned their attention to a farmhand named Earl Washington Jr., who was in custody for another crime. After interrogating Washington for two straight days, he eventually confessed to five different crimes, including Williams’ murder. The other four confessions were thrown out, but he was still sentenced to death for killing Williams.

Washington had an IQ of 69 and was coerced into making all his confessions. His initial confession to the Williams murder was filled with inconsistencies and he got many key details wrong, including the race of the victim and the location of the crime. His execution was ultimately halted when a fellow death row inmate named Joseph Giarrantano contacted a law firm to file a habeas corpus petition on Washington’s behalf. In 1994, Washington would receive clemency from the governor of Virginia and had his sentence commuted to life in prison. It was not until DNA testing proved he wasn’t the perpetrator that Washington was finally granted a full pardon and released after serving 17 years. The real killer of Rebecca Lynn Williams has never been found.

On April 13, 1986, the small town of Aurora, Missouri was shocked when one of its most respected citizens, 79-year old Pauline Martz, was murdered. She had been beaten and burned alive when the killer set her home ablaze. Acting on an eyewitness tip, police were eventually led to a 20-year old resident named Johnny Lee Wilson and after being interrogated for nearly four hours, he confessed to the crime. In order to avoid the death penalty, he would enter an Alford plea and was sentenced to life in prison.

However, Wilson suffered from mild retardation and had an IQ of 76. He was threatened and intimidated by police during his interrogation and thought he would be allowed to go home if he confessed. The details about the murder were clearly fed to him and he seemed unaware of what he was doing when entering his plea in court. Wilson also had an alibi for the time the murder took place and the eyewitness who implicated him was another mentally challenged man who later admitted to lying. A convicted murderer named Chris Brownfield eventually came forward and confessed that he and an accomplice had killed Pauline Martz during a robbery. In 1996, Johnny Lee Wilson was finally granted a pardon by Missouri governor Mel Carnahan and released after serving nine years.

On November 8, 1983, a Fort Lauderdale woman named Susan Hamwi was found stabbed to death with a butcher knife in her home. To make things even more tragic, her 18-month old daughter, Shane, died of dehydration in her crib after being neglected for several days. Police investigated a neighbor named John Purvis, who suffered from schizophrenia and was looked upon as the town “weirdo”. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Purvis would eventually confess to the murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

However, because of his schizophrenia, Purvis had trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. The first time he was questioned, Purvis’ mother broke up the interrogation when she saw detectives attempting to intimidate her son. The next time they brought Purvis in for questioning, they made sure mother wasn’t present and he was coerced him into making a taped confession. While Purvis was in prison, authorities seemed disinterested in pursuing other potential leads that popped up. The investigation was not reopened until 1992 when evidence came to light that Hamwi had been murdered by two hitmen who were hired by her ex-husband. They would soon be convicted of the crime and in January 1993, John Purvis was finally released after serving nine years.

The Juan Rivera case is a prime example of how much weight a false confession can carry. On August 17, 1992, an 11-year old girl named Holly Staker was raped and murdered while babysitting in Waukegan, Illinois. A tip from an informant eventually led authorities to 19-year old Juan Rivera, who had an IQ of 79 and was in custody on a burglary charge. He was questioned for four straight days and reached the point where he experienced a psychotic episode and started banging his head against the wall. Authorities eventually coerced him into signing a confession and he was sentenced to life in prison for the crime.

In 1998, Rivera received a retrial because his first trial was littered with procedural errors. This time, the prosecution produced one of the kids Staker had babysat as an eyewitness. Even though he was only two years old at the time the murder took place, his testimony helped convict Rivera a second time. In 2005, DNA tests excluded Rivera as the perpetrator and he was granted a third trial. Remarkably, he was found guilty again because the prosecution claimed that Staker had consensual sex with someone else that night… even though she was only 11 years old! It was not until January 2012 that the charges against Rivera were finally dismissed and he was released from prison.

On November 15, 1989, Angela Correa, a 15-year old resident from Peekskill, New York, went missing while on her way to class. Two days later, her body was found in a wooded area. She had been raped, beaten and strangled to death. At her funeral, police noticed that one of her fellow students, 17-year old Jeffrey Deskovic, was crying profusely and became suspicious when they discovered he’d been absent from school during the time Correa went missing. Deskovic was questioned on eight separation occasions, and on January 25, 1990, he was administered a polygraph test without a parent or counsel present and told he had failed. After being interrogated for six hours, Deskovic finally confessed to the murder.

Before the trial, DNA testing was done on semen samples and it excluded Deskovic as the perpetrator. However, the confession strong enough to garner a guilty verdict from the jury and Deskovic received a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. Like the Juan Rivera case, prosecution pushed the theory that the victim had consensual sex with someone else before she was murdered. It would be 16 years before new DNA testing was done and it wound up matching Steven Cunningham, a convicted inmate who was serving time for another murder and subsequently confessed to killing Correa. In 2006, Jeffrey Deskovic was finally exonerated and released.

On September 28, 1973, 51-year old Barbara Gibbons was found murdered at her home in Canaan, Connecticut. Her throat had been cut, she had been sexually assaulted, and there were numerous injuries on her body. Her body was discovered by her 16-year old son, Peter Reilly, but police were suspicious by his supposed lack of emotion and immediately brought him in for questioning. After failing a polygraph test, the exhausted Reilly was interrogated for several hours. He eventually came to believe the police’s assertion that he had blacked out and forgotten he committed the murder, so he signed a confession. Even though Reilly would later recant his confession, he was still convicted of first degree manslaughter and received a sentence of 6 to 16 years in prison.

In 1977, Reilly was granted a new trial after evidence was uncovered that a state trooper had seen him driving his car five miles away at the time the murder was supposedly taking place. The judge decided to clear Reilly of all charges and criticized the authorities’ handling of the case. The state police has always maintained their position that Reilly was the real killer and while he has made many attempts to find out who really killed his mother, authorities have always refused to release their files about the case and Barbara Gibbons’ murder remains unsolved 40 years later.

The town of West Memphis, Arkansas was shaken on May 6, 1993 when the naked bodies of three murdered boys—Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steve Branch—were found in a drainage ditch. One month later, police brought in 17-year old Jessie Misskelley, Jr. for questioning, and he eventually confessed that he and two other teens, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, had murdered the three boys as part of a satanic ritual. The West Memphis Three were soon charged and found guilty of the murders, with Echols being sentenced to death.

However, Misskelley quickly recanted his confession, which was filled with inconsistencies. He had an IQ of 72 and appeared to have details of the crime fed to him during 12 hours of interrogation. There was no DNA or physical evidence to link the suspects to the crime scene, and more compelling evidence seemed to point towards Steve Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs. The “Paradise Lost” series, a trilogy of documentaries about the case, garnered national exposure for the West Memphis Three and much outrage about their convictions. In 2011, a deal was reached where the West Memphis Three would be released from prison if they entered an Alford plea, officially pleading guilty to the crime while maintaining their innocence. Even though they are now free, they have never been officially exonerated and the real killer of the three boys remains unpunished.

In the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, sports editor Kent Heitholt was beaten and strangled to death with his belt in the parking lot of the Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri. The case remained cold until 2004 when a young man named Chuck Erickson told police he believed he had repressed memories of having committed the murder with his friend, Ryan Ferguson. After being interrogated, Erickson was eventually coerced into making a full confession. Ferguson was charged and given a 40-year sentence for the murder while Erickson received 25 years.

However, there was no physical evidence to tie either of them to the crime scene and the validity of Erickson’s confession has been questioned. He was a known drug and alcohol user with a history of mental illness and could not provide accurate details about the murder until they were fed to him by police. The only other piece of evidence was the testimony of a janitor named Jerry Trump, who claimed he saw Ferguson and Erickson in the parking lot that night. However, in 2012, Trump claimed he had been coerced into naming them by the prosecutor, and both he and Erickson would give sworn affidavits recanting their testimony. Even though there is no longer any evidence to tie Ryan Ferguson to the murder, all attempts to secure him a new trial have been unsuccessful and he remains in prison.

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. He is also the co-owner of a pop culture called The Back Row.

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The Iguana has become a fairly popular pet in recent years, and advocates would say having this giant, prehistoric looking reptile around is like an alternative to a dog. Although herbivorous, the Iguana can be unpredictable, and possesses razor sharp teeth. On several occasions, savage injuries have resulted when “tame” but powerful Iguana have become agitated and latched on their owners face or slashed hands with teeth and claws. Iguana may weigh up to 18 pounds and reach over 6 feet in length, making an attack by this giant lizard nothing to joke about. Emergency room visits could very well follow your visit to Jurassic park.

The Leatherback Sea Turtle is the largest of all turtles, occasionally reaching over 8 feet in length. These 2,000 pound omnivores are possibly the widest ranging vertebrate animal on Earth, but are becoming rare and endangered due to development, pollution and bycatch. The turtles are usually fairly gentle giants, but can deliver a bone shattering bite if disturbed, and are extremely strong and powerful. In one bizarre case, a huge leatherback, likely weighing over 1500 pounds turned its aggression toward a small boat and charged it. The turtle had just been chased by a shark, so the boat was considered a threat.

South America’s Amazon is famous for its incredible and sometimes disturbing creatures. Sharing the rivers with Piranha and River Dolphin is the unearthly Mata-Mata Turtle. The fate of a human who stepped on a Mata-Mata has not been well tested, but the bizarre river reptiles have an elongated, snake-like neck with a strange mouth filled with two sharp plates that resemble human fused teeth. Prey items of these extraordinarily creepy exclusive carnivores include waterbirds, fish, and other reptiles. We could only imagine the effect on a boater who reaches towards the bump in the water…

The Big-headed Turtle is a bizarre chelonian species with a long, snakelike tail nearly the length of its body. This turtle is native to Southeast Asia, where it hunts for a variety of prey items in the rivers. The large head cannot be retracted into its shell, and carries immensely powerful jaws. The turtle will not hesitate to use its bone shattering beak if a threat is perceived, so it is best to keep your distance. The Asian Soft-shelled is, incredibly, capable of climbing trees, where it may perch, birdlike. Sadly, this awesome creature is at risk due to poaching, which must be combatted with increased diligence.

Looking like flattened, human/reptile hybrid out of an alien horror film, Soft-Shells make up for their shell shortcomings with a very hard bite. Among the many species of Soft-Shelled Turtles worldwide, the Cantor’s Giant Softshell, native to China is the most terrifying. It hides in the sand, waiting for prey, before striking out with sharp teeth. The sheer size and power of the bite could lead to horrendous injuries. However, this species is unfortunately now endangered, but more abundant species of soft shell such as the Florida Soft Shell occur in numbers worldwide and may chomp unwary fisherman.

The Nile Monitor shares the Nile and other African rivers with crocodiles, growing up to 9 feet in length. This terrifying lizard often preys upon the young crocodiles as an addition to its mammal and bird diet, and possesses an extremely powerful, infectious bite. When threatened by humans or other potential intruders, a Nile Monitor can seize with a viselike, bone shattering grip, which it is reluctant to release. The giant reptiles are sold as family pets, but owners should be cautious with reports of serious injuries and the fact that these lizards can “snap a cat’s neck in an instant and then swallow it whole”. Children should remain well out of reach of these lizards, as an attack is a possibility with such predators.

The Gila Monster is North America’s largest lizard at over 2 foot long, and is the only one that is venomous. Gilas are endangered and protected by law, but humans who interfere may become endangered themselves. If disturbed, a Gila Monster may latch on to the offender’s legs or arms, where it sinks its teeth in, quickly releasing a dose of extremely potent, neurotoxic venom. A number of deaths took place before greater awareness of the dangers and treatment options became known. Lacking fangs, the Gila will hold on with great force to a human hand, slowly chewing up the flesh, leaving a mangled, venom soaked mess. Submerging the monster in water may force it to let go, stopping the carnage.

The Malayan Water Monitor is the second heaviest lizard in the world, and lurks in the rivers and deep swamps of Southeast Asia. The lizard has backwards curving teeth, and is known to feed on…dead bodies. If a living human fell into the water where several Water Monitor were feeding, it is very possible that the reptile’s hunting instinct would be activated by the vulnerability of the human, provoking an attack. Water Monitors are capable of feeding on a wide range of animals, and have little trouble with large prey, weighing over 150 pounds in some cases. Length may reach…9.5 feet.

The Alligator Snapping Turtle is the world’s largest freshwater turtle, and by far the most dangerous. Weighing over 200 pounds, the bizarre looking reptile has a cone covered, dinosaur like shell, and a massive beak that will cleanly amputate any body part brought near it, and is capable of severing a broom handle with lightning speed. A swimmer accidentally treading nearby could easily lose part of a foot. Although deaths have not been confirmed, drowning may have occurred undetected. A hypothetical report of a 400 pound snapper is supported by the continued growth of this species throughout its lifespan, which may reach 200 years.

The Komodo Dragon stalks the forested lowlands, beaches and plateaus of Indonesia, posing a threat to nearly every living thing as a prehistoric apex predator. The 10 foot, 300 pound beasts are the largest lizards on Earth, forming microcosm of a prehistoric world where reptiles ruled. Komodos feed on prey as large as water buffalo, and have attacked, disremembered and consumed humans. Such large prey items are charged and knocked down, followed by a vicious attack involving large amounts of flesh being removed. The toxic saliva and bacteria will weaken an animal that does not die right away. Scientists have theorized the Komodo evolved to feed on now extinct dwarf island elephants.

Ron Harlan is a wildlife enthusiast and fan of incredible, dangerous or animals. He does freelance writing covering fascinating and scary wildlife, conservation and oddities.

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While many of the procedures on this list are quite risky, the face slapping bit is in good fun. Offered by Bangkok masseuse Tata in her San Francisco massage parlor, the treatment consists of pinching and manipulating the skin and light slaps that are said to cure wrinkles and shrink pores. Whether this is at all helpful in restoring a youthful appearance is highly debatable, but it doesn’t come cheap. A single 15 minute session will set you back $350.

The use of stem cells in medical treatments remains highly controversial, with detractors claiming their use is “playing God”. Very basically, stem cells can “transform” into any other cell, and are used by the body to make repairs. The only stem cell treatment approved by the US Food and Drug Administration is a bone marrow transplant in the instance of leukemia, but that hasn’t stopped many patients from seeking cutting-edge plastic surgeries, wherein the cells are drawn from the body via liposuction and then re-injected into the face, to repair wrinkles. Unfortunately, the procedure is in its infancy, and there is no way to predict exactly how the cells will behave. In at least one horrifying instance, a woman grew bones in her eyelid.

The doctor fish is native to the rivers and springs of the Middle East, a toothless creature around the size of a guppy. Like a lot of fish, these guys are not particularly picky eaters. In fact, they have been used for some years to perform pedicures; gnawing the dead and callused skin away from the feet. The creepy procedure is apparently quite effective, and those who have had it done claim it is painless. However, in much of the world, just as these pedicures began taking off, they were banned, as letting fish in communal baths chew on toes of multiple customers is not in the least sterile. Seized fish have been shown to carry a wide array of bacteria, including that which causes cholera and streptococcal infections.

The ideal of the geisha is quite foreign to Western sensibilities; her role often varied, anything from servant to concubine to entertainer, and everything in between. Perhaps the best known aspect of the geisha is her white pancake makeup, which was once lead-based and ravaged the skin. To restore their appearance, the geisha used a cream made from the droppings of nightingales, which contained revitalizing enzymes. Or so the staff at Shizuka New York, a posh Japanese spa in Manhattan, would lead you to believe. For just $180, they will paint your face with bird poo, carefully sanitized under ultraviolet light and mixed with some other ingredients to hide the rather disagreeable smell. While the claims seem dubious, some customers have reported a “glow” on their face after the treatment.

DC-CIK treatment is another controversial procedure which involves drawing blood from a patient suffering from cancer. The blood is then turned over to a lab, where it is concentrated, then injected back into the body after chemotherapy or surgery. It is said to promote healing. However, some dubious clinics in Hong Kong have begun offering the treatment to give patients a more youthful appearance. At least one death from septic shock has been reported, and several others have been sent to the hospital, infected by mycobacterium abcessus, a nasty bacteria known to cause lung disease and wound infections.

Most of us have a relationship of absolute necessity with our urine; one quick flush and its gone. There is however, a small but dedicated community that extolls the supposedly restorative properties of urine. These people claim drinking urine can cure (or at least relieve the symptoms of) a vast number of diseases, ranging from lupus to multiple sclerosis, and even cancer. Urine is also used for beauty treatments; when applied topically, advocates claim it is excellent for the skin, clearing up psoriasis, eczema, and acne. The best urine is apparently taken midstream first thing in the morning, when beneficial hormones have been able to build up overnight. Perhaps not surprisingly, the legitimate medical community has not recognized any benefit to the consumption of urine.

Although many bodily modifications made in the name of beauty could be described as frivolous, toe narrowing is amongst the most foolish. A growing number of people, unsatisfied with “fat” toes, have been turning to podiatrists for help. The procedure, which is somewhat gruesome, involves splitting the toe open and grinding down the bone and fat inside. While not a terribly risky procedure, it still carries the dangers inherent in any surgery. There is also usually a long recovery time.

The micro-needle roller resembles some kind of medieval torture device; sporting hundreds of tiny spikes, it is designed to puncture the skin at the microscopic level, both inducing it to heal itself and allowing for the penetration of creams. Many celebrities are said to use micro-needle treatment, and it is particularly popular in China. While the effectiveness of the treatment itself is debatable, the danger is not: there is no way to truly sterilize the equipment, and using it on multiple people provides a vector for infections, including blood-borne pathogens like HIV and hepatitis.

Advertised as a “safer” version of botox (itself a tamed version of the Botulinum toxin, one of the deadliest known substances), bee venom wrinkle cream has become all the rage, the beauty secret of the UK’s Duchess of Cambridge and Duchess of Cornwall. Quite expensive, the cream apparently induces a reaction in the skin that causes the body to believe it has been stung or damaged, increasing blood flow and collagen and repairing the area. The venom itself is harvested in a process wherein a “harmless” mild electric current is run through a pane of glass, inducing the bees to sting. There has been a larger movement for some years to use bee venom to cure all sorts of maladies, from multiple sclerosis to arthritis, but tests have shown it to be largely ineffective. Obviously, the use of venom carries with it serious risks; those who find themselves allergic can easily succumb to anaphylactic shock.

This one takes masochism to extremes rarely imagined. A few decades ago, the vast majority of those sporting tattoos were bikers and sailors, outlaws of a sort. Today, sorority girls the world over are inked. Cosmetic tattooing is not a terribly new phenomenon, with many women getting their eyebrows or lips done. But a strange new craze has begun sweeping the UK; women getting their nipples darkened and defined. Over a dozen salons offer the treatment, and word continues to spread. Local anesthesia is administered and a color complimentary to the patient’s skin tone is added. Every year to year and a half, a follow up appointment is scheduled to maintain the appearance.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist. He cuts his own hair, so he probably isn’t the person to look to for beauty advice.

The post 10 Insane Beauty Treatments appeared first on Listverse.

Judging by their ability to meditate for hours on end, to abstain from food for days, and their vows of silence, most us would agree that Tibetan Monks have better control over their minds and bodies than the average person. Still, what’s particularly amazing is some of them can control physiological processes, such as blood pressure and body temperature – feats many medical doctors find astounding.

In one of the most notable exhibits of their skills, a group of Tibetan monks allowed physicians to monitor the monk’s bodily changes as they engaged in a meditative yoga technique known as g Tum-mo. During the process the monks were cloaked in wet, cold sheets (49 f / 9.4 c) and placed in a 40 f (4.5 c) room. In such conditions, the average person would likely experience uncontrollable shivering and would shortly suffer hypothermia. However, through deep concentration, the monks were able to generate body heat, and within minutes the researchers noticed steam rising from the sheets that were covering the monks. Within an hour, the sheets were completely dry.

Although, the display was fascinating to the doctors, for the monks it was an ordinary occurrence. In fact, new monks use g Tum-mo as a way of proving their meditative strength and hold contests to see who can dry the most sheets in one night.

The Buddhists say the heat they generate is a byproduct of the meditation, since it takes energy to reach a state of alternate reality – a place unaffected by our everyday world.

Multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder, is a mental condition that’s interesting on many levels. Perhaps most intriguing of all is how some sufferers not only exhibit personality and behavior changes as they switch between their different identities, but some also have measurable physiological variations between each persona. For instance, one of a patient’s personalities may need eyeglasses and another won’t. Or, one identity might be diabetic and another will have perfect health. In such cases, it isn’t simply a matter of the patients thinking they need eyeglasses or insulin, their bodies actually go through legitimate alterations, such as differences in intraocular pressure or blood sugar levels.

In one case, published by the American Psychiatric Press, a doctor noted how medications prescribed to a dissociative identity disorder patient had different effects depending on what “personality” took the drug. For example, when a tranquilizer was given to the person’s childish persona, it made the individual sleepy and relaxed. However, when the adult personality was administered the same drug it made him anxious and confused. Similar results were found with other patients and with a variety of different medications. Doctors even noticed visibly apparent traits, like lazy eye, would come and go depending on which personality was present.

This phenomenon is especially fascinating since no one, including the patients, is claiming mysticism is at work. On the contrary, it is a genuine example of the mind altering the body.

A placebo is an inert substance or belief which produces real biological effects in humans. It’s so widely accepted as fact that a placebo variable is included in most medical tests as way of proving if, say, a drug works on its own merits or because people “think” it works.

There are tons of experiments showing the proof of the placebo, but one of the most amusing to watch is a test done by a group of Princeton students who decided to throw a non-alcoholic keg party for their unsuspecting classmates. The experimenters secretly filled a keg with O’Douls (contains about 0.4% alcohol while regular beer has around 5% alcohol) and then watched as their peers acted silly, slurred words, slept on the ground, and generally acted drunk. Although it’s nearly impossible to get intoxicated on O’Douls, these college students had such a strong belief they were drinking standard beer that it affected their behavior.

Curiously, researchers have discovered the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger, and some drugs that have been on the market for years, such as Prozac, are now proving less effective than placebos. Naturally, this is a major issue for big pharmaceutical companies, which has left many scrambling to conduct neurological studies in an effort to come up with new ways to safeguard their industry from ordinary sugar pills. Incidentally, Big Pharma is currently more profitable than Big Oil, so there’s quite a bit at stake.

While placebos are generally associated with positive outcomes, like curing an illness or getting drunk on O’Douls and having fun (if you consider that positive), the nocebo effect produces negative results, such as a cancer patient vomiting before chemotherapy starts or someone breaking out in a rash because they thought they touched poison ivy, even though it was merely an ordinary plant.

One of the most talked about examples of the nocebo phenomenon was an incident published in “New Scientist.” According to the account, late one night an Alabama man, referred to as Vance, went to a cemetery and met up with a witch doctor who told Vance that he was going to die soon. Believing the witch doctor’s prediction, Vance soon fell ill and within a matter of weeks was emaciated and close to death. Vance was taken to the hospital but the medical doctors could find nothing wrong with him. Finally, Vance’s wife told the physician, Dr. Doherty, about the encounter with the witch doctor, which gave the creative physician an idea. The next day, Dr. Doherty told the couple he had tracked down the witch doctor and physically threatened him until the medicine man finally admitted he had put a lizard inside Vance that was eating him from the inside. Of course, the Doctor’s story was completely fabricated, yet he made a big show of injecting the patient with a mysterious substance and snuck in a genuine, green lizard that he pretended to extract from Vance. The next day, Vance awoke alert, hungry, and it didn’t take long before he fully recovered.

Apparently, that story was corroborated by four other medical professionals, and is often cited when explaining why Voo Doo sometimes works (i.e. not because of magic, but because of the nocebo effect).

There are a lot of stories floating around out there about people who experienced an injury in their dreams and then found real, physical evidence of the wound on their bodies once they awoke. For instance, some people have claimed to have been caught in a fire in their dreams and then woke up to find burn marks on their skin. Other common stories involve people being attacked during their dreams and then waking up to find scratch marks somewhere on their bodies. However, most of these stories are found in chat rooms or message boards, so it’s hard to corroborate if they are true.

But, there is one well documented case, reported by famed psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, about an Indian man named Durga Jatav who, during a battle with typhoid fever, had an extremely vivid dream about being held captive in another realm. To keep him from escaping, his dream captors cut his legs off at the knee. Unfortunately, his legs were already severed by the time the captors realized they had the wrong man and didn’t need to keep Jatav after all. When Jatav asked how he could leave with no legs, they offered him several pairs of legs, he picked out his own pair, and then they were miraculously reattached.

While Jatav was having the dream, his body became very cold and at one point his family thought he was dead, yet he revived a few days later. Once he was awake, his sister and neighbor noticed deep fissures around his knees that weren’t there previously. X-ray photographs showed no abnormality below the surface of the skin, which led Jatav and his family to believe the marks came from his dream experience. Dr. Stevenson met Jatav some 30 years later (1979) and took pictures of the still visible scars. Although Stevenson did not witness the event, he apparently believed the story, which was confirmed by all involved, and he even included the account and photographs in his book “Reincarnation and Biology: A contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects.”

Obviously there’s no scientific proof to this intriguing account, but it’s not too far-fetched considering what we already know about the power of the brain over the body.

Like the Tibetan monks, Indian Yogis seem to have an unusual talent for manipulating their physiological processes while in deep meditation. After hearing stories of yogis spending 28 days underground and surviving, in 1936, a French cardiologist named Therese Brosse traveled to India to see if the yogis truly did have such talents. In her experiments, the yogis reportedly slowed their heart down so slow that it was only detectable via an EKG machine.

In the 1950s Brosse’s study was expanded by another group of researchers who traveled through India with an eight-channel electro-encephalograph and various other instruments, which they used to monitor the yogis’ brain activity, respirations, skin temperature, blood-volume changes, and skin conductance. Two of their test subjects were placed in air-tight sealed boxes, on two separate occasions, and were monitored for 8 to 10 hours. During that time the Yogis showed biological characteristics similar to sleep and were able to slow down their heart rate and respiration to low enough levels that oxygen and carbon dioxide quantities inside the box remained virtually in the same proportions as found in air at sea level. Thus, it was shown that by slowing down their bodily processes and not panicking (as most would do) the Yogis could survive a live-burial for far longer than the average person, possibly even weeks longer.

Many athletes claim it helps them perform better when they “play” the game in their minds before ever stepping foot on the field or court. While we might assume doing so is just a mental exercise that enables them to better focus on the game, there might be more concrete changes happening inside the body.

Take, for example, Air Force Colonel George Hall who was locked in a small, dark North Vietnamese prison for seven years. While most would lose their minds in such circumstances, Hall went to his happy place, so to speak, by mentally playing golf every day of his imprisonment. His visualizations were extremely in-depth and included everything from hitting the ball off the tee, raking the sand traps, feeling the wind, and of course tapping the ball into the hole.

Regardless of being weak and 100 pounds lighter than before his capture, one of the first things Hall wanted to do after his release was play a legitimate round of golf. He was invited to the Greater New Orleans Open where he astoundingly shot a 76. When a member of the press suggested his performance was a case of beginners luck, Hall replied, “Luck, I never 3-putted a green in the last five years!”

So, despite his physical deterioration and not stepping on a course in over seven years, his body had developed muscle memory based simply on his imaginings.

Jack Schwarz, a Dutch Jewish writer, also lived in horrific conditions while forced into a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Like so many others, he was beaten, starved, and tortured beyond what most of us can comprehend. To cope with his situation, he began the practice of meditation and prayer, which he developed to the point where he could block out the pain of his torment and subsequently withstand his situation.

After his release, Schwarz continued his mind over matter practice and occasionally demonstrated his skills by putting a long sail-maker’s needle through his arm without injury. He also displayed his ability to regulate his body’s blood flow by causing the puncture hole in his arm to bleed or stop bleeding at will. Schwarz was studied by researchers at the Menninger Foundation who found that he could indeed control many of his bodily processes with only his mind. Furthermore, through an electroencephalograph, they determined his brain had different electrical activity as compared to most other test subjects. According to Schwarz, he could also see people’s auras, which allowed him to gauge their physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental conditions.

Undoubtedly it’s difficult to keep a positive attitude when you’re facing a life-threatening disease, but, based on a variety of medical studies, doing so may mean the difference between living and dying.

For example, in 1989, Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford University conducted a study on 86 women with late stage breast cancer. Half of those women received standard medical care while the other half were given weekly support sessions in addition to the standard medical care. During the sessions the women shared their feelings, talked with other patients, and generally had a positive outlet where they could cope with their illness. At the end of the study, the women in the support group lived twice as long as those not in the group. In 1999, a similar study found that cancer patients who have feelings of helplessness and hopelessness have a lower chance of survival.

In recent years, David Seidler, writer of “The King’s Speech,” claimed to have eliminated his cancer through meditation and imagination. After battling bladder cancer for years and only two weeks away from surgery, Seidler decided to see if he could get rid of the cancer through his imagination. He admittedly thought the idea was a little “woo-woo,” but by that point he figured he had nothing to lose. So, he spent the two weeks leading up to his surgery envisioning a clean, cream-colored, healthy bladder. When Seidler went in for his pre-surgery biopsy, the doctor was stunned to find a distinct lack of cancer – he even sent the biopsy to four different labs for testing. While Seidler believes his visualization were behind the cancer’s disappearance, his doctor labeled it a “spontaneous remission.”

It seems counterintuitive that increasing numbers of people are claiming to put a greater effort into exercising and eating a nutritious diet, yet there are more obese people in the world than ever before. Some researchers think positivity is a missing variable in the weight loss equation, and a lack of it is what’s keeping people chubby.

To prove the point that the mind has a major impact on the body, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer conducted an experiment on a group of predominantly overweight hotel maids who, judging by their daily activity levels, should have been thin. Despite essentially exercising all day long through their work, Langer discovered through a survey that 67% of the maids felt they didn’t do any type of exercise. Langer predicted the maids’ perceptions were hampering their weight loss, so she took half the maids aside and, in addition to taking their physical measurements, explained that through their cleaning work they were exceeding the surgeon general’s definition of an active lifestyle. The other half of the maids were given no information.

A month later, Langer’s team returned to the hotel and reevaluated the maids. They found an overall decrease in systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio in the educated group. The other group had no significant physical changes. While some suspect the mere discussion of exercise somehow altered the women’s behavior, Langer said there was no indication any of the maids modified their routines, and she feels the results were due simply to a change in mindset.

Content and copy writer by day and list writer by night, S.Grant enjoys exploring the bizarre, unusual, and topics that hide in plain sight. Contact S.Grant here.

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Saint Benedict is a pretty important saint and is known for both his skills at speaking and his general holiness and purity of heart. Saint Benedict is known for surviving multiple attempts on his life by his enemies. According to the legends some monks decided to poison him. The first time they tried to poison his wine and the glass shattered into little pieces when he prayed over it. The next time around the monks decided to use food, since that can’t shatter so easily. However, their plans were ruined when a bird flew away with the bread they had laced with poison. St Benedict founded the most famous order of monks the Benedictines and placing a Saint Benedict Medal over the doors of your house is said to keep evil spirits away.

According to his life-story, St Boniface arrived in Germany and saw the people worshipping a tree. He was angry at what he considered to be the worship of false idols and decided to destroy the tree. Supposedly with one blow of an axe the tree was felled and the Germans who saw this believed in his message. Some people claim that to satisfy their attachment to trees, Boniface invented the Christmas tree and told them to use it was a symbol of everlasting life.

There have been many saints who have supposedly had the gift of prophecy. One of the more interesting legends is that of St Anthony Mary Claret. He asked a group of farmers to come to his mission; many explained they could not because they needed to tend to their fields. He told them that if they came their fields would yield more, and if they did not come their harvest would be completely ruined. According to the story, his prophecy did indeed come true. There is also the prophecy of Saint Malachi, which has been mentioned here before. This prophecy of the popes predicts that the last pope will reign at the start of the end of the world. According to those who pay attention to the prophecy, our current pope (Francis) is supposed to be the last. The prophecy of the popes is suspected by some to be a forgery and—as with all post-apostolic prophecy—Catholics can freely choose to believe or disbelieve.

Many Catholic Saints through the ages have claimed to have something akin to an out of body experience. One of them, Saint Theresa of Avila claims that it felt like her soul was traveling to regions outside her body. Other saints to report this phenomenon include St Pio of Pietrelcina and St Frances Xavier. Saint Theresa was said to gain this ability through long meditative states of prayer, eventually feeling as if she was going through a sort of “detachable death” and felt it took her much closer to God.

The stories say that St Andrew the Apostle was eventually captured for preaching the message of Christianity and was affixed to an X shaped cross. His captors used this remarkably cruel means of execution because he seemed to feel no pain at all when they had previously tortured him. It is said that even though his execution was long and brutal, that he felt no pain whatsoever. Some legends also say that the specific type of cross was chosen because Andrew did not believe himself worthy to be killed using the same method Jesus had used for his sacrifice—the same reason St Peter chose to be crucified on a upside-down cross.

One of the oldest legends is that of St Lawrence, who was a deacon at the time, stationed in the city of Rome. The Saint is said to have been in charge of taking care of the poor, and was ordered by those in authority to give him their treasures. He brought the poor before them and said that these were the true treasures of the church. In retaliation for his impudence, his execution was ordered. In order to make it as painful as possible he was tied to a hot gridiron and slowly roasted to death. The story says that no matter how long it went on, it seemed not to bother him and he offered a quip near the end that he could be turned over as he was finished on one side.

Incorruptibility is when a corpse seems to not follow normal decomposition patterns and remains mostly fine. The skeptics argue that this is due to people secretly using embalming of different varieties, however, some cases are harder to explain and happened in cases where it seems decomposition should have actually been going faster. Some of the more famous cases include that of Saints Catherine of Genoa or Francis Xavier. The bodies of St Catherine of Laboure and St Bernadette are also said to be incorruptible, after being examined thoroughly it seems their bodies are pretty much in the same shape as they were when they died. St Bernadette is pictured above.

St Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of Astronauts, Pilots and pretty much anything to do with flying. This is because Joseph of Cupertino was known to have the ability to levitate. The stories say that his rapture in prayer was so great that he would get caught up during Mass and start levitating above the altar. Another legend says he was able to levitate carrying an enormous cross as if it were basically weightless. It was believed among those who knew him that his incredible holiness gave him incredible abilities.

This one is perhaps the most well known, but also incredibly controversial. There are many who say the claims of Stigmata are simply untrue. Others believe in the Stigmata, but argue over which cases are actually genuine and not faked. The most recent legend is that of Padre Pio, who is said to have received the stigmata, the same marks that would have been upon Jesus on the cross. Padre Pio (now St Pio of Pietrelcina) also allegedly had the ability to read the sins on a confessor’s soul and to bi-locate.

Bi-Location is one of the strangest paranormal phenomena. While many strange happenings are impossible to prove, some seem plausible. But how can you be in two places at once? Even if you could, it would seem a challenge to act in both places; your brain can only accomplish one task at a time. However, reports of this go back a long way. Among Catholic saints who have been seen in two places at once, include Saint Alphonsius Liguori and Saint Gerard Majella. One of the strangest features of many of these stories is that we never hear any evidence that the Saint in question was aware they were in two places at once. Some have then logically said that perhaps one of them was an apparition, but that would still make it quite a remarkable phenomenon.

You can follow Gregory Myers on twitter.

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Ten thousand Greek Mercenaries trapped deep in hostile territory—Persia. With their employer, the usurper to the Persian throne, Cyrus, dead in battle and the mercenaries’ general killed in a treacherous plot, the Ten Thousand elect the philosopher-soldier Xenophon to lead them back home. And that’s just the first five minutes (or first few pages if you’re reading Anabasis).

With supplies dwindling , Xenophon chose to lead the Ten Thousand home via the shorter path north to the Black Sea. To get there, the Ten Thousand crossed mountains, fought their way through Armenia, and navigated a series of clannish alliances and feuds. When the remaining Hellenes finally reached the Black Sea shores, Xenophon wrote that the soldiers screamed, “The sea, the sea!” And while that wasn’t the end of the Ten Thousand’s ordeal, for cinematic purposes, that’s one heck of a finale.

True, The Warriors (1979) brought the Anabasis to the screen in the form of stylized Coney Island gang-warfare. But as great as the Warriors’ adaptation was, a half-dozen leather vest wearing street toughs lacks the epic appeal of ten thousand Greek warriors fighting for their lives across the Persian Empire.

Memnon was a hired Greek general in service of the Persian king Darius. He just barely escaped his first encounter with Alexander the Great at the Battle of Granicus. Alexander’s army routed Memon’s mercenaries and Persian allies there, but like all great underdogs, Memnon quickly bounced back from defeat.

After Granicus, Memnon proved himself to be the only commander capable of even slowing down Alexander’s march east into Persia. Memnon recognized the futility of challenging Alexander in pitched battle, and instead commandeered the defense of strategic cities like Halicarnassus. Before the walls of Halicarnassus, Alexander’s advance came to a grinding halt and Memnon’s defenders allowed Alexander only the most Pyrrhic of victories. The Macedonians spent months struggling to control the city and still the citadel remained under Persian control when Memnon chose to withdraw and regroup his forces elsewhere.

Alexander’s greatest rival continued to challenge the Macedonian forces in the west from the Aegean Sea. Fortunately for Alexander, Memnon died suddenly from a fever before he could rally Sparta and other disgruntled city-states to throw off Macedonian rule and force Alexander to return to Greece.

The tenth century marked a turning point in Scandinavian-Byzantine relations. Rather than fight against one another, for the first time, Vikings in large numbers were hired into the Byzantine military. For the next several centuries, hired Norsemen wielding giant battle-axes made up the elite corps of the Byzantine emperor’s personal guard. To its own detriment, Hollywood has thus far ignored the action movie gold mine that is the Varangian Guard’s history.

If pressed to choose just one story of a Varangian Guardsman, the life of Harald Hardrada would be a good place to start.

In the early 11th century, an uprising forced a young Harald to flee Norway—the country his family once ruled. He found refuge, and employment, in Byzantium. For eight years, Harald fought in service of the emperor. He rose through the ranks and became captain of the guard. But when the Byzantine empress refused Harald’s request to marry her niece, Harald kidnapped the girl and escaped the empire with more wealth than any Viking had ever seen before. And when he returned to Norway, Harald found the kingdom welcome him with open arms.

You want soldiers of fortune? How about an entire city filled with and ruled by them? Fourteenth century Athens was that city. And the Catalans were those mercenaries.

The Catalan Company was formed to swing the balance in the war for Sicily. After that fight wound down, the Catalans hired themselves out to the Byzantine Empire, who desperately needed more bodies to replace the ones Turks were chopping up.

The Catalan Company achieved several victories for their new paymaster. Maybe too many though, as Catalan leadership tried to establish its own kingdom within the Byzantine Empire. Not surprisingly, the offended emperor had the Catalan general, Roger de Flor assassinated and fired the Catalan Company, who in 1311, drifted south to serve the Duke of Athens.

And that’s where the story really gets going, because after winning several victories for the Duke, the Catalans’ new employer decided to stiff the mercenaries. Big mistake. The Duke of Athens then attempted to pit the mercenaries against each other. Bigger mistake. Offers of land and noble titles could not sway the Catalan leaders to turn upon their comrades. The company rallied together, defeated the Duke’s army, and took control of Athens and the surrounding areas. The mercenaries ruled Athens for the next seventy years.

The 17th century was the century for vicious religious warfare. The century’s death toll from the Catholic-Protestant struggle for Europe’s soul makes the Crusades look like a friendly disagreement by comparison. By the end of the 1600s England and Ireland were center-stage in said struggle.

Patrick Sarsfield, an Irishman, was part of the losing effort following England’s Glorious Revolution to reestablish the Catholic James II on the English throne. Sarsfield’s leadership wasn’t enough to wring out a victory. But, his efforts forced the beleaguered King William III to sign a treaty with an unusual provision.

Sarsfield and thousands of Irish-Catholic soldiers were permitted to seek refuge in France. The exodus became known as “the flight of the wild geese.” And France was more than happy to hire Sarsfield and his experienced soldiers.

The “Irish Brigade” fought all over Europe for the French monarchy, hoping one day for the invasion that would bring them back to Ireland. The brigade never got that chance, though Sarsfield was honored as a marshal of France for his battlefield tenacity. Shortly after, Sarsfield was struck down by an English musket during fighting in the Netherlands. As he lay bleeding, Sarsfield supposedly said, “If this was only for Ireland,” and then died.

Steiner’s story was seemingly made for film. As a German teenager, Steiner spurned his family’s military roots and ran away from home to study for the priesthood. A tryst with a nun ended Steiner’s religious aspirations, though.

Steiner joined the French Foreign Legion one year later. Once again a romantic relationship altered Steiner’s trajectory. While stationed in Algeria, Steiner fell for an Algerian woman who prompted her future husband to join Anti-French dissidents.

The Legion didn’t take kindly to anti-government sympathies among its ranks and kicked Steiner out. Beginning in 1967, Steiner took up various insurgent causes across Africa.

He led Biafran rebels with some success against the Nigerian regime. Later, Steiner found more success leading Southern Sudanese separatists against dictatorship in Khartoum. Steiner’s early efforts to establish a Southern Sudanese resistance were taken up by subsequent leaders who used the guerrillas to affect the end of the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972). Sudanese government troops captured Steiner, though, and the mercenary served three years in various prisons before being released due to poor health.

Before the soldiering life seized him, Mike Hoare was an accountant. World War II intervened though, and the former accountant deployed first to India and then Burma as a British officer.

After the war ended, the potential for adventure in Africa drew Hoare away from London. He began a safari company in South Africa, which familiarized him with terrain and people across much of the continent. He put his connections and knowledge to use as a mercenary in the Congo in the 1960s and gained fame for helping rescue a group of European hostages held in Stanleyville.

Unfortunately, Hoare’s career suffered an ignominious end. In 1981, a still fervently anti-communist Hoare, attempted to depose the corrupt and communist leader of Seychelles. Hoare and 43 mercenaries flew into the country disguised as a beer-drinking club on a charity mission. Things deteriorated when customs found weapons in one of the mercenary’s luggage. A gun-battle ensued between the mercenaries and local police, before Hoare commandeered a passenger plane and most his men escaped to South Africa.

Hoare and his crew were convicted only of hijacking. And most of the mercenaries were released after a few months, while Hoare served three years of a ten-year sentence before being released.

Bob Denard was the prototypical soldier-of-fortune—shadowy origins, a menagerie of aliases, and questionable renegade tactics. Throughout the French mercenary’s career, wherever a state was failing, Denard could be found either propping up or dismantling the government roughly in accordance with France’s desires.

The Congo, Algeria, Yemen, Benin, Nigeria—Denard and his small band of mercs, in keeping with Cold War sensibilities, fought for whichever paymaster was most ardently anti-communist at the time. But out of all the strife-ridden states of the 20th century, Bob Denard made the biggest impact on the Comoros Islands.

For two decades (1975-1995), Denard played king-maker in the south-east African island nation. Four times during that span, Denard staged coups. And for most of the 1980s, Denard essentially ruled the country through a series of Comoran political puppets.

Denard had a hard time letting go after being ousted in 1989, and attempted one last coup in 1995 with just thirty fellow mercenaries. For once, the French government didn’t approve and returned Denard to France. After a brief prison spell, Denard lived out his years relatively peacefully, as French prosecutors were somewhat reluctant to strictly prosecute a man French special services admitted to utilizing.

Tim Spicer represents the “new” mercenary—the corporate mercenary. A British Army veteran who served in the Falklands and North Ireland among others, Spicer found that civilian retirement didn’t suit him.

Spicer proved an adept marketer and his fledgling freelance military company was awarded contracts in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone. Both operations ended in scandal and failure. At least one university case study cited Spicer’s actions in Sierra Leone as a perfect example of exactly what not to do in armed conflict.

As the scandals mounted, Spicer moved smoothly, changing company names and establishing new ones. In 2002 Spicer finally founded a winner with the incorporation of Aegis Defense Services. In just two years Aegis grew from security consulting for cruise ships to winning a massive 300 million dollar contract from the U.S. government to coordinate the thousands of military contractors in Iraq. It’s like the Social Network, but with more up-armored SUVs.

And sure enough, scandal found Spicer in Iraq. Not long after Aegis’ arrival, videos surfaced of “employees” targeting unarmed Iraqi civilians.

The plot was simple enough. Simon Mann, a former member of the British SAS, gained the support of wealthy financiers to recruit, equip, and direct a small army of mercenaries to execute a coup in the oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea. But before Mann’s group could replace Guinea’s regime with one more favorable to outside financial interests, the mercenaries had to actually get to Equatorial Guinea.

Mann’s mercenaries planned to fly from South Africa to Zimbabwe to acquire weapons before continuing on to Equatorial Guinea. But a near-total lack of confidentiality undid the operation.

When the mercenaries landed in Zimbabwe, local authorities were waiting in force to arrest the sixty-plus mercenaries and Mann for attempting to purchase weapons illegally. The fifteen man advance party in Guinea was easily apprehended the following day.

Mark Thatcher—yes, son of the Margaret Thatcher—was also implicated in the conspiracy and arrested. Thatcher got off light. Simon Mann, not quite so, but the mercenary was pardoned in 2009.

Mann’s story actually seems to have captured Hollywood’s interest. And a film adaptation of the so-called “Wonga Coup” may be in the works.

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In 2003, scientists were surprised to discover a massive circular stone structure underneath 30 feet (9 m) of water in the Sea of Galilee. The structure is comprised of basalt rocks, stacked in a cone shape and it is twice the size of Stonehenge in the UK. In their findings that were only recently published, archaeologists have noted that it shares some features of ancient communal burial sites found worldwide, but it may also be a ramp or a ceremonial structure. As they have never come across a structure of this size, with its specific features, they can only speculate as to its exact age, how it was constructed and how it was used.

The circular anomalies that can be seen off the coast of Florida, North Carolina, and Belize have been documented by enthusiasts and archaeologists alike. Even though they are found on a global scale, their true objective hasn’t been discovered so far – many believe they were used as an ancient type of burial mound. They are also very similar to stone structures that have been found in Saudi Arabia that can be seen on this website. It is believed that the underwater structures have been better preserved than those on dry land and may date back to ±8,000 BC. as those in Saudi Arabia have been dated to around 7,000 BC.

Divers discovered proof of Eastern Canada’s ancient past while taking part in a unique submarine project in 2005. They found the very curious stone structure at a depth of 40 feet (12 m) below the surface. It consists of a massive 1,000 lb (453 kg) elongated rock with an almost completely level surface resting on 7 baseball-sized stones, which in turn sits on a huge several thousand pound slab on top of a ledge. It was thought to be a natural formation until geologists and archaeologists looked at the images. The discovery of the man-made “rock cairn”, was deemed to be proven when an underwater archaeologist concluded the existence of three shims was enough proof that the structure was man-made.

Whether it is a UFO, a Nazi anti-submarine defense tool or simply a glacial rock that has been dragged across the sea floor, the discovery of the disc-shaped Baltic Sea anomaly (and its subsequent investigation in 2012) kept all the interested parties on the edge of their seats. Although Swedish explorers generally convinced everyone that it is a rock and not a UFO, their research has raised a lot of questions. Firstly, the rock didn’t have a silt-layer on it, which is usually the case when rocks have been lying still at the bottom of the ocean for any period of time. Furthermore, the 196 feet (60 m) wide rock seems to be covered by construction lines and boxes and it appears to be propped up by a 26 foot (8 m) high pillar.

Lake Baikal in southern Siberia is unique in many regards. It is the oldest, deepest and largest fresh water lake on earth. The sediment deposit on the bottom of the lake is more than 4 miles (7 km) deep and many of the fish species that thrive in its waters can be found nowhere else on earth. As its ice cover normally lasts into June, astronauts on the International Space Station were alarmed to see a very large circular area of thinned ice near the southern end of the lake in April 2009. To their astonishment, there was also another feature above a submarine ridge that divides the lake. Although the origin of the circles is a mystery, the distinct pattern would suggest that warmer water were brought to the surface, but hydrothermal activity has never been observed over the very deep water at the southern tip of the lake.

Even though Stonehenge in the UK is one of the most famous historical stone monuments in the world, it is not unique. Similar stone arrangements have been found worldwide. In 2007 while surveying the bottom of Lake Michigan with sonar, a team of underwater archaeologists discovered a series of stones aligned in a circle 40 feet (12 m) below the surface. One of the stones also seemed to feature a carving of a mastodon, an animal that has been extinct for 10, 000 years. If the site is validated, it would not be completely out of place, as other stone circles and petroglyph sites can be found in the vicinity.

A series of submerged structures discovered off the Cuban coast in 2001 captured the imaginations of archaeologists, researchers and Atlantis-hunters worldwide. Found by a company doing surveying work, the sonar images have shown symmetrical and geometric structures that covers an area of 200 ha (almost 2 square km) at depths between 2,000 and 2,460 feet (± 700 m). Skeptics believe the site is too deep to be manmade as it is estimated that it would have taken the structures 50,000 years to sink to their current depth. If conclusive proof can be found that these structures were indeed manmade, it would back up the Maya and local Yucatecos stories of an ancient island inhabited by their ancestors that vanished beneath the sea.

Since its discovery in 1987, the massive Yonaguni Monument off the coast of Japan has been a subject of debate between scientists, archaeologists and scholars. Many supporters claim that the site is natural but may have been modified by human hands like the rock-hewn terraces of Sacsayhuaman. If proven true, the site would have been modified during the last ice age – around 10,000 BC. Skeptics on the other hand believe the whole structure to be natural; that the drawings and carvings observed are nothing more than natural scratches. The fact remains that although Yonaguni’s features can be seen in many sandstone formations worldwide, the high concentration of questionable formations at one site is unlikely.

During expeditions in 2006 and 2007 the deeper waters to the west of Bimini were mapped using side-scan sonar and sub-bottom profiling. A number of rectangular features were discovered at a depth of 100 feet (30 m). They are all aligned in the same direction in straight, parallel lines. The researchers have claimed that the structures appear to be very much like those found off the coast of Cuba. At a later dive managed by the History Channel, the formations were better observed. There are about 50 stone piles, mainly 10 by 45 feet in size, and all at a depth that would place their age around 10,000 BC.

In May 2001, it was announced the ruins of an ancient city was discovered in the Gulf of Khambhat. The discovery was made with the help of sonar while routine pollution studies were being done. During the announcement, the site was described as evenly spaced dwellings, a drainage system, bath, granary and a citadel that pre-dates the Indus Valley Civilization. During follow-up investigations, the area was dredged and several artifacts were recovered. Among them were wood (dated ± 7,000 BC), stones described as hand tools, fossilized bones, pottery sherds and a tooth. Among the controversies are that all the supposed artifacts are stones of natural origin, that the “sherds” are natural geofacts and that the dredging could have allowed errant artifacts to be dug up along with the site’s, removing all credibility from the finds.

Hestie lives in Pretoria, South Africa. She is amazed by all the mysterious discoveries that dates back to 10,000 years ago

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