10 Georg Scherer Vienna is not the first place that springs to mind when talking about witches, and there’s a good reason for that: There has only been one case of witch burning in the city’s history—the so-called Plainacher Witch Affair of 1583. The alleged witch was 70-year-old Elisabeth “Elsa” Plainacher (pictured above), who raised her granddaughter Anna in Mank, Lower Austria. When Anna came of age, she left her grandmother and started to experience seizures, most likely due to undiagnosed epilepsy....

Perhaps none can compare, though, to picturing the alternate versions we almost had of famous movies. Somewhere in the multiverse, there’s a parallel world where Heathers was directed by Stanley Kubrick, A Clockwork Orange starred Mick Jagger, and Alien was a Roger Corman production. And those aren’t even the weirdest on our list. 10HeathersDirected By Stanley Kubrick Heathers is like Mean Girls crossed with The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It’s a brutal, black, high school comedy about Winona Ryder and Christian Slater accidentally (and not so accidentally) killing their classmates and making it look like suicide....

10 The Rosetta Stone Was Used As A Building Slab In 1799, the French army was marching through Egypt. This was a military invasion, but Napoleon had his eyes on more than just land. With the army were 167 scientists and artists, who were sent to explore and examine relics of an ancient culture. Their greatest discovery came by chance. A troop had made its way to the town of Rosetta, where they prepared to build a fort....

Won: Writing (Screenplay) 1938 for Pygmalion It is, indeed, interesting to achieve the top honor in two widely disparate fields. As of now, only one person has won an Academy Award and a Nobel Prize, George Bernard Shaw (he became a literature laureate in 1925). Before you flood the comments with how I’m wrong, I would advise you to read the rest of this list. Won: Writing (Screenplay) 1935 for The Informer Famously, Marlon Brando sent Sacheen Littlefeather to refuse his Oscar for The Godfather, in protest of the treatment of Native Americans, and George C....

10 Warmer Climates Contribute To Violence Many research studies over several decades have consistently suggested that rates of violent crime are always higher nearer the equator in warmer climates. But none of them have been able to determine why. So far, there are two leading guesses. First, hot weather makes people uncomfortable and irritated and, therefore, more violent. Second, people go outside and interact more in warmer weather, so there are more opportunities for violent conflict....

In a weird way, we honor the actual person and his deeds on this day. Such is the way of most holidays. Here are 10 interesting facts and legends about St. Valentine, the man who personifies the day of the year when we celebrate love, lust, desire, attraction, and bees . . . yes, bees. 10 Two Valentines It’s actually quite possible that the person known as St. Valentine might be two different people....

Then there are the secret codes and oaths, unique manuscripts, and caves marked with people’s fear. Text-obsessed scholars are talking in dead tongues and admit once again that the ancient Egyptians did some amazing things. The world of rare words and pictures is a magnetic one. Sometimes, it’s even downright funny. 10 Oldest Near-Death Case In 1740, a French doctor called Pierre-Jean du Monchaux described a curious case. An unconscious patient had recovered, only to describe a light so pure and white that the man was convinced he had stood with one shoe in Heaven....

10 World War II Fat For decades, lard from a World War II shipwreck has appeared on the beach after heavy storms at St. Cyrus, Scotland. Most recently, four chunks washed up, still retaining the barrel shapes of their long-gone wooden kegs. The odd war relics started appearing during World War II after a merchant ship was bombed and sunk nearby. It’s believed that the wreck systematically breaks up with each storm, releasing a little bit more of its fatty cargo....

But what if the beach you stumbled up onto was worse than anything you could have imagined? What if it promised not safety but only a different death? You might as well get back in that water; there is nothing here that will save you . . . 10 The Farallon Islands So you have shipwrecked off the coast of San Francisco. You can’t quite make it to the shore, but that’s fine because there are a group of islands and sea stacks not far away....

10Joseph Buatier De Kolta Joseph Buatier was a well-known English magician who performed during the last decades of the 1800s. He almost ended up in the priesthood before choosing to give up his studies and become an apprentice to the popular Hungarian illusionist De Kolta. Although Buatier ended up adopting his master’s stage name, the pupil eventually became greater than his master, as he introduced many acts and tricks that are still in use today....

First, we must distinguish the difference between the deep web and the dark web. The deep web is a collective term for any website that cannot be found via a search engine. These sites might host secure financial records or academic databases. The dark web refers to an encrypted subsection of the deep web that cannot be accessed using traditional web browsers. Anyone browsing the deep web is free from the constant surveillance of the regular net (in theory, at least)....

This tribe has only been mentioned in passing by Tacitus, in his work De Germania. The tribe’s name came from the Proto-Germanic word harjaz, which means “warrior.” True enough, the warriors of this tribe have earned their name, not only from their superior strength, but also from tactics. These warriors had been known to paint themselves and their shields black, and attack during the night, when their enemies least expect it....

10Pacte De Famine Contrary to the popular notion that they are products of the American mind, depopulation conspiracy theories and their beginnings should actually be credited to the French, with their infamous Pacte de Famine (Famine Pact) in the late 18th century. During that period, a combination of unfavorable weather and relatively poor farming methods produced a severe food shortage across many regions of France, resulting in the raising of the prices of food and other basic commodities....

Although the two giants are not friends and compete for the hearts and souls of mortal men, there is a truce between them. Both have legions of warriors with powers that stretch the imagination. Both have loyal supporters, and some people admire both. But who would come out on top if it came to a showdown? Marvel and DC both face the same challenge. They need to create superheroes, but these heroes must have an Achilles’ heel....

Yet, occasionally, their experiments result in findings that otherwise only appear in science fiction novels. Here are some of the more surprising ones. 10Creating Artificial Memories Is it possible to artificially create an entirely fake memory that is virtually indistinguishable from a real one? Yes, it is—if you’re one of the researcher at UC Irvine. Watch this video on YouTube In a study on rats, these researchers managed to introduce new, targeted memories into the rodents’ brains....

This week saw two international cases potentially shake up the geopolitical order in interesting ways. Elsewhere, the events of the last seven days were more of a mixed bag. Violence returned to some regions, and corruption was battled in others, all while the culture wars continued to rage on. 10 Canada Took The US To Court Canada is often portrayed as the United States’ younger brother. If that’s the case, then their friendly sibling rivalry just went full Cain and Abel....

Much of the news this week was dominated by the State of the Union address finally going ahead despite a cancellation threat. However, since neither it nor its Democratic rebuttal were anything but a total snooze-fest, we’re going to completely ignore the whole thing in the column below. Instead, join us on a magical mystery tour through the week’s other headlines, from scandals to high politics to a burgeoning new Cold War....

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Ways Racism Affects White People White people would dress up in an exaggerated way with the goal of mocking and imitating people of color. These shows basically became a thing of the past in the United States when black people spoke up about how offended they were by the concept. Nowadays in the United States, when blackface is worn, it is met with a lot of controversy on social media....

But what happens when someone goes missing while on a date with someone they meet on an app? What if they are murdered? We don’t like to think of this as a possibility, but sadly predators use dating apps to lure in their victims—some for robbery or assault, but others end in murder. Here are ten more cases of dating-app dates that went wrong after swiping right. 10 Indiana Threesome Turns Deadly On October 19, 2021, 36-year-old Heidi Carter met a woman through a dating app....

Nature performs many astonishing feats, yet it is a different matter altogether when we human beings push past the boundaries of normal. It was a viciously cold morning in Lengby, Minnesota, when a man discovered his 19-year old neighbor, Jean Hilliard, lying in the snow. Her whole body was frozen solid from the night before, when temperatures dropped twenty-five degrees below zero. Apparently, Jean was trying desperately to reach her neighbor for help when her car skidded off the road....