But every exceptional mind is an unusual one, and none were more so than the mind of Isaac Newton. As Newton’s life dragged on, his grip on sanity slowly started to slip, and his interests twisted away from the scientific and into the mystical. Newton wrote ten million words throughout his life, but most of them had nothing to do with science. The overwhelming majority of the thoughts he put to paper were about alchemy, prophecies, and ancient mysticism—a strange, little-known side to one of the greatest scientific minds in human history....

10Awkward Silence Ever been out for a night on the town, just hanging out with your friends, all talking at the same time? Then suddenly there’s that moment of awkward silence that comes out of nowhere and no one seems willing to break it? This happens daily in all corners of the world. However, a global superstition has it that most of these awkward silences happen at exactly 20 minutes past any given hour....

10The Disappearance Of The McStay Family For nearly four years, no missing persons case was more baffling than the disappearance of the McStay family. On February 4, 2010, Joseph McStay, Summer McStay, and their two children, four-year-old Gianni and three-year-old Joseph Jr., all mysteriously vanished from their home in Fallbrook, California. Days later, their abandoned vehicle was found near the Mexican border. A review of surveillance footage found a family resembling the McStays walking across the border....

You’ve probably heard the adage, “Necessity is the mother of invention.” But you’ve probably also heard that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. The following solutions may have looked good on paper at the time, but they ended up horribly backfiring once they were actually put into practice. 10 Dead Whale Found On A Beach Blown Up With Dynamite Photos of dead marine animals found on the beach make their way into the viral cycle every couple of months or so these days, though back in 1970, something like that was less “further proof of everything bad we’ve done to the oceans” and more, “Huh, what the hell is that?...

10They Probably Weren’t Domesticated For Food It seems surprising, but archaeologists now believe that chickens weren’t actually domesticated for food. Instead, the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) of Southeast Asia were likely first captured by humans for the notoriously cruel “sport” of cockfighting, eventually developing into the modern domesticated chicken. This probably happened at least 7,000 years ago, making chickens one of the oldest domesticated animals. The egg-laying bird quickly spread across the world, although its value as a source of meat was relatively limited until the development of modern industrial farming techniques....

Like most places, Florida is not all bad, and the majority of its inhabitants are not idiots. So to counter the negativity, here are examples of ten “Florida Men” breaking through the stereotype and being the good guys for a change. 10 Florida Man Mowed for Charity Cutting the lawn on a Saturday morning is quite a tedious affair—the back and forth, the exertion, the time wasted—simply to be repeated week after week....

Well, it is true; the ground can swallow you as a quick appetizer without warning, but only under certain circumstances. In the following list, we will see ten cases of people being sucked down by a hungry Earth and how they ended up in such situations. As this list will show us, we should watch carefully where we step. 10 A Man Is Swallowed Inside His House While Sleeping In February 2013, Jeff Bush, 37, was sleeping at his home in Florida when the floor under his bed collapsed and swallowed the man almost instantaneously....

Most of the people who entered asylums never left. They remained nameless, faceless sufferers whose stories were forgotten. There are some, though, who either lived to tell their tales or whose memories survive in the letters they wrote. 10 Herman Charles Merivale Barrister Herman Charles Merivale’s account of his confinement in England’s Ticehurst House Hospital is a rare one. In 1875, he found himself committed with no memory of how he had ended up in the asylum....

When a child is born into the care of monsters, we tend to see the child as an extension of the parents. The children of tyrants often find themselves on trial when their fathers are deposed. Nevertheless, their lives can be every bit as terrible as for anyone else living under the reign of a dictator. Joseph Stalin had three children—Yakov, Vasily, and Svetlana. Stalin’s children didn’t choose to be born into his family, but they were—and they lived their lives directly under under the scrutiny and cold cruelty of the USSR’s harshest dictator....

There are more recorded accounts of such encounters than many people might think, ranging from standoffs with mysterious beast-like men who vanish into thin air to outright abduction by dark humanoid figures who spread nothing but feelings of menace and fear. Here are ten of the most intriguing of these alleged otherworldly encounters. 10 The Imjarvi Incident While skiing near the village of Imjarvi, Finland, in the late afternoon of January 7, 1970, experienced skiers Aarno Heinonen and Esko Viljo each came to a stop on a glade they would regularly use to rest....

Premonitions come in many forms—some as vague feelings, others as explicit dreams. Thousands of people have reported having premonitions right before a huge disaster or terrible tragedy shakes their world. 10American Airlines Flight 191 For 10 nights in a row in 1970, David Booth had the same nightmare. While deep in sleep, he witnessed a jetliner veering off a runway, flipping completely over, and then bursting into flames. Booth felt compelled to inform the FAA about his dreams....

When it comes to phone calls, they are generally easy to track. Caller ID is a pretty common feature, and phone companies keep records of who calls whom. It even appears that the NSA is tracking all the calls that people make. Yet, with these mysteries, there are phone calls that are immensely puzzling. 10The Kuykendall Family Harasser In February 2007, in Fircrest, Washington, 16-year-old Courtney Kuykendall’s phone started sending out random text messages to her friends....

10 Lori Ruff’s True Identity In 2004, Blake Ruff married the love of his life, a woman he thought was named Lori Kennedy. Lori was a private person who refused to speak about her past, and most who knew her accepted her silence as part of who she was. When Lori committed suicide in 2010, the Ruff family found a box that revealed a whole other story: Since 1988, she’d been living under a fake identity stolen from a dead girl....

We usually think of propaganda as a pretty straightforward concept. We might imagine it as something like a poster or news broadcast. However, manipulating people’s minds can take many forms. Over the years, it has gone in some interesting (and unusual) directions. 10 The Racist Coloring Book The Black Panther Party was a shock to traditional white America. Many people were worried the group would become a violent threat. The FBI infiltrated and attempted to destroy the Panthers on several occasions....

Tests to determine their neuroticism, honesty, and appreciation of bad jokes were borderline strange. The answers even more so. They also threw the common cold at cancer, considered chocolate’s extinction, and took Godzilla’s growth rate very seriously. 10 Correct Way To Pet A Cat Some cats are confusing. One second, they love having their heads scratched. The next, they claw irritably at their owners to make them stop. A recent study blamed their ancestry....

This week is full of stories of people doing nice things for strangers. There’s a man who gave a ride to a doctor carrying a transplant organ, a kid who shared his peanut butter, and a barber who specialized in customers with dementia. There is also a touching reunion, a man who is an “octopus whisperer,” and a gator that acts as an emotional support animal. 10 See You Later, Wally Gator A recent visit from Joie Henney to the Glatfelter Community Center in York, Pennsylvania, went viral because he brought along his faithful companion, an emotional support animal named Wally....

This week is largely about tales of children showing us that you can do plenty of inspiring things, even if you are young. You can raise money for worthy causes, you can organize a restoration project for a historical cemetery, and you can even find new animal species. 10 World’s Youngest Entomologist A newly described species of treehopper has been named Hebetica sylviae in honor of its discoverer, five-year-old Sylvie Beckers....

Prostitution actually offers its clients a lot more than just sex, as is noted by some: It offers a variety of types of sexual experiences otherwise not available, such as the ability to live out fetishes and to experience kinks otherwise unavailable with traditional partners, the ability to have sex in secret without the risk of a full-fledged affair, the ability to cut to the chase and not spend valuable time that a real relationship often demands....

10 Josef Stalin Former Soviet Union leader Josef Stalin believed that he could predict people’s character by examining their poop. He was so serious about this belief that he even dedicated a whole department of the state secret police just to examine people’s poop. The target of his poop tests were world leaders, one of whom was Mao Tse-tung. Stalin disconnected Mao’s toilet from the sewers during his visit to Moscow in 1949 and reconnected it to special boxes, from which his poop was taken for analysis....

However, not every scientist fits the classic bill. Some have had wacky quirks that put them in the history books for the wrong reasons. Here is a list of ten scientists who changed science while being weird. 10 Hennig Brand Chemistry is known today as a factual and difficult science, but its early days were filled with decidedly unscientific methods. Before the arrival of proper chemistry, it was the science of alchemy which reigned supreme....