Along the course of history, there has been no shortage of strange, bizarre, and macabre medical practices to horrify us to this day. Ancient Romans thought it to be medically beneficial to drink the blood of gladiators, and a few centuries back, tobacco smoke enemas were all the rage. But even the 1900s gave us no shortage of things we can hardly believe were considered medicine. Our barbaric ways of supposed healing aren’t all far back in ancient history; some of them have been practiced by completely sane individuals even in modern times....

10Female Hysteria Doctors Since the days of Hippocrates, female sexuality has been considered a virulent disease that leads to insanity, irritability, and fainting, among other things. Doctors called this vague female disease “hysteria” and prescribed a simple cure: an orgasm. Specifically, an orgasm given by a trained doctor. Female hysteria reached untold heights in the Victorian era when sexuality was stifled at all times, and some doctors estimated almost one-quarter of females had “hysteria....

10 Jewelry Jewelry is interesting in that it has no value that isn’t social—it doesn’t keep us warm or help us find food. The earliest example of people displaying decoration for its own sake is from 100,000 years ago. Scientists uncovered a collection of shells from Skhul Cave, an archaeological site on Mount Carmel in Israel. Similar items have been found in another site in Algeria. The shells—from a genus of mollusk known as Nassarius—had a hole drilled through the middle so they could be strung on a necklace or bracelet....

10 Gay Orgy At Cardinal’s Apartment An Italian newspaper called Il Fatto Quotidiano first reported that the Vatican police broke up a gay orgy in June 2017 involving at least one member of the Catholic Church. The apartment where the orgy was taking place belongs to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and its current occupant is alleged to be Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio. The cardinal has served as the president of the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts since 2007 and is a personal adviser to Pope Francis....

In some cases of these cases, the miscarriage of justice was caused by unfortunate happenstance. In others, the blame falls upon neglect or willful interference by the police and judiciary, whose responsibility it was to ensure that the suspect was granted a fair trial. Here are ten people who definitely didn’t do it. 10 Harry Gleeson Moll McCarthy was murdered in in County Tipperary, Ireland, in 1940. Moll was well-known in the town as a prostitute....

Qualifications: there is no obligation for the listed persons to have invented or created the object or process concerned. This is in any case frequently unrecorded, or impossible to verify. So far as is known, none of those listed have had their names immortalized as a result of deliberate theft of another’s work. The objects or processes included must be tangible or tangible processes involved in the creation of objects....

Some knew they were dying and documented their deaths, taking notes, or sometimes photos and videos, of their slow end. Others didn’t realize they were dying, even though the possibility was there. Some of these people’s notes have valuable medical uses and give us a glimpse into death. 10 Karl Schmidt Between September 25 and 26, 1957, Karl Patterson Schmidt, a herpetologist (a person who studies reptiles and amphibians) wrote notes explaining how he felt as he slowly died of a snakebite....

10Spanish Doll Factory This doll factory in Spain has an uncomfortable way of getting under your skin. It was abandoned sometime in the ’80s, but for some reason everything was left behind—boxes of doll parts, machinery, half-finished dolls still lying on the assembly line—everything. It’s as if everybody just vanished in the middle of the work day. At the time the factory was in operation, porcelain dolls were commonly made with human hair, which somehow makes these things even creepier....

But what if that centipede were three feet long? Hundreds of millions of years ago, monsters like these were everywhere. Here are a few of the most horrifying prehistoric bugs ever to walk—or should I say crawl—the earth. Anomalocaris canadensis looked like a strange blend of squid and shrimp. It was three feet (1.0 m) long, with a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. Fossils found in China show a massive undersea arthropod that lived about 500 million years ago....

10 Hand Holding Men The bubonic plague that swept through London was something out of a nightmare. The 1348 wave slaughtered more than half of the population. Nearly 50,000 victims received hasty burials in Smithfield. One grave held two men holding hands; their heads turned to look to the right. Another skull was also found with the pair. The men were aged in their 40s and arranged in identical positions, with one man’s left hand holding the right of his companion....

10 Pretzels Most people would probably agree that pretzels are delicious. But how many would consider them the stuff of kings? For an answer to that question, look no further than Sweden in the early 17th century. Around the year 1614, pretzels were considered so prestigious that royal couples used them in their wedding ceremonies. Just stop and think for a second about how crazy this is. You’ve got two blue-blooded people marrying, with all the combined wealth of their rich families, and they choose to tie the knot with a pretzel....

Everything comes from somewhere. Even what we wear on our heads everyday can broadcast surprising messages or continue unexpected traditions. In many cases, a hat’s original connotations were the last thing you’d ever guess today. 10 Fedoras Represent Female Empowerment While not exactly like the hat worn today, the fedora was once a costume piece in an 1880s play named Fedora. (The play was named after the lead character, a Russian princess, not the hat itself....

10 Sonic Weapons Designed For Crowd Control It’s well known that loud noises can cause extreme pain and hearing loss, but it wasn’t until very recently that these noises became fully weaponized. The US government has been using a powerful device for quite some time now called the Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD). It was originally developed in order to project commands over extremely long distances, especially out at sea. LRADs were also used on the ocean to deter piracy....

10Ravens Understand Espionage Ravens can’t stop impressing us with their sharp mental game and have just claimed another superlative for the corvid family—the animal kingdom’s best (non-human) abstract thinkers. Scientists wondered: Are ravens able to consider the thoughts of others as they make decisions? Can they get into others’ heads? To find out, University of Vienna researchers employed 10 ravens—all raised in captivity—and placed them, two at a time, on either side of a room separated down the middle by a window....

10 The Murder Of Vishal Mehrotra And The Mysterious Elm Guest House A massive child sex abuse scandal is currently brewing in Britain, with police looking at decades of evidence and allegations about VIP pedophile rings. Already, a number of prominent politicians, entertainers, and other society elites have been implicated. These official inquiries have also drudged up sinister allegations about the kidnapping of a young boy over three decades ago. In 1981, on the day that Princess Diana and Prince Charles wed to a global audience of millions, 10-year-old Vishal Mehrotra was walking with his nanny to his home in London before disappearing in a large crowd of people....

10 Billy The Kid Was Almost Pardoned At just 19 years old, William Henry McCarty Jr., aka “Billy the Kid,” had already achieved national infamy as one of the most well-known outlaws of the day. But by 1878, tired of his life of crime, he wrote to the newly appointed governor of New Mexico, Lew Wallace, that he was tired of fighting. In response, Wallace suggested that he would pardon Billy if he would testify before a grand jury about the Lincoln County War, a frontier conflict between two factions of New Mexico....

Our culture is changing around us more quickly than ever, and some people have reacted to those changes in the weirdest ways. All of a sudden, we have the world at our fingertips, and anyone can be famous if they find the right angle. The result? Some pretty wild and shocking hobbies. Here are ten of those hobbies which are absolutely strange but becoming more popular by the day....

Now we simply press a button or pull a lever and we need never think of where our unwanted leavings go. However useful they are at collecting waste, sewers often pick up other unexpected items, too. Here are 10 of the weirdest things discovered in sewers. 10 A Rave What could be more fun than meeting up for a late-night dance in a secret location and going wild? Doing it in a sewer!...

The Khan Shatyr is already a reality! It is an immense transparent tent in the centre of Astana – the new capital city of Kazakhstan. It serves as both a cultural center and a place for social interaction amongst the city residents. The climate in Astana is rather harsh with winter temperatures dropping to -35c (-31F). The Nuragic and Contemporary Art Museum in Cagliari, Italy, ran a competition for the design of their new building....

10Beet Juice The persecuted were starved and worked ragged in concentration and work camps, and they were also not given proper clothing. This made their bodies very pale and weak, like living skeletons. At the camp of Auschwitz, during medical examinations, the prisoners would use beet juice (and sometimes their own blood) to give their cheeks a blush tone to make them seem healthier. Should they fail the medical exam, they would be sent to death, so the “blush” in their cheeks gave them leverage over the doctors, tricking them into believing they were healthier than they truly were....