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The following products have been around for a very long time, some for a hundred years or more. They’ve become an iconic and ingrained part of our culture, and the little-known and fascinating stories behind their creation and marketing deserve to be told. It’s somewhat of a misconception that Dr Pepper was created by a doctor (we can’t imagine why), but it’s not too far from the truth. The inventor of the world’s oldest soft drink (in 1885) was Charles Alderton, a pharmacist at Morrison’s Old Corner Drug Store in Waco, Texas....

10 The West Bank Barrier The West Bank Barrier is a monolithic wall that separates Israel from Palestine. It’s 684 kilometers (425 mi) long and three times larger than the Berlin wall. Due to the troubles in the Middle East and it’s own divisive nature, the West Bank Barrier is probably one of the most dangerous locations in the world—and in 2005, Banksy tagged it. Both Israeli and Palestinian citizens woke up to find large murals painted on both sides of the wall....

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Amazing Facts About The Original Siamese Twins Symmetrical conjoined twins generally have all the body parts and organs needed to live as two complete individuals if separated. The only birth anomalies occur where the twins are fused. With asymmetrical conjoined twins, one twin is often small, weak, and dependent on his sibling for nutrition. These twins may be separated to increase the chances that the strong one will survive....

Be warned, some of the theories posted below might be considered possible spoilers. Or they might all be completely wrong. Read on and find out. 10Rey Is A Legendary Character’s Kid From the trailers, it’s clear that the three main characters of The Force Awakens are Rey (played by Daisy Ridley), Finn (John Boyega) and Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac). During a panel discussion, Ridley revealed that her character was a scavenger living in a ship graveyard on the planet Jakku....

10 Honest Abe’s Chloroform Abraham Lincoln had terrible dental anxiety rooted in a faulty tooth extraction in 1841 that resulted in part of his jawbone breaking off. The 16th US president endured such pain without anesthesia. Thus, when a severe toothache came calling years later, he wasn’t the slightest bit amused. Reaching into his pocket, Lincoln withdrew a bottle of chloroform, inhaled it, and nodded for the procedure to begin as he gently slipped away into unconsciousness....

10Temperature Resistance All humans have a natural neurological pathway, known as TRPM8, responsible for sensing cold. When TRPM8 converts the physical feeling of cold into an electrical signal, it kick-starts the common symptoms that you feel in a cold environment: shivering, chattering teeth, decreased blood flow to the extremities. Those are survival mechanisms on their own, designed to warm you back up, but they have a tendency to show up even in less than life-threatening situations....

And my, my, my, wasn’t our first full week of 2019 a busy one for news? After a short hiatus, the US Congress reconvened and immediately plunged into partisan rancor. Riots and protests rocked three major countries. China began sniffing around the dark side of the Moon. And all the while, news of coups and kings kept the rest of the world glued to their social media feeds. Time to kick off the new year in style!...

10Haggis There is no doubt that Scotland loves its haggis (a pudding made by stuffing various parts of a sheep into the sheep’s stomach). Most credit this love to Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, who exalted the virtues of the dish in his poem “Address to a Haggis.” Nowadays that passion has transformed haggis into a national dish and the main course during a traditional Burns supper. However, all of this does not change the fact that haggis wasn’t invented in Scotland....

The once-thriving city of Pripyat, which housed many of the nuclear facility’s workers, became a ghost town overnight as frantic residents were evacuated from their homes. They were told the evacuation was a precautionary measure for a few days, maybe a few weeks. They would, of course, never return to their homes again. 10 Huge Shell Entombs Reactor 4 In late 2016, 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster, a huge protective steel and concrete sarcophagus was completed over the blast site at Reactor 4....

10The Death Of Privacy You’ve heard of Google Glass. It’s a wearable computer that looks (surprise!) an awful lot like a pair of glasses. With the wink of an eye it’s capable of taking pictures or video or doing a trillion other absurdly clever things. And it could be about to make society a whole lot nastier. The problem comes from facial recognition technology. Studies have shown that this tech can already pick people out from a crowd and pull up almost anything on them—from Facebook pictures to social security numbers to Linkedin profiles and more....

However, the life of a circus performer is not all successful stunts and cheering children. As these ten circus accidents demonstrate, life in the ring has seen its fair share of death and destruction as well. We begin our list with a well-known tragedy—the execution of an elephant. On September 12, 1916, Mary trampled her handler, Red Eldridge, to death. There are various accounts of what led to the attack—from Eldridge prodding Mary with a stick and infuriating her to speculation that she was simply bored....

But that’s nothing compared to the horrors endured by the workforces of yesteryear. Thumb though a history book, and suddenly, even the most run-of-the-mill job springs to truly terrifying life. Keep these vicious vocations in mind the next time you find yourself praying for five o’clock. 10 Waiting Tables Waiting tables has long been the domain of struggling actors and those working on their screenplays; it’s sort of a holding-pattern profession, not something you aspire to....

10St. Augustine Donkey Not all mysterious graves contain human remains. In St. Augustine, Florida, a local archaeologist was baffled by a unique and bizarre burial of a donkey. The animal was discovered under 120 centimeters (4 ft) of earth and dates to the second half of the 17th century. The animal has an indent on the top of its skull and was likely killed by a blow to the head. But what happened afterward is hard to explain....

10Rene DescartesPassion For Cross-Eyed Ladies The Father of Modern Philosophy, Rene Descartes (1596–1650), maintained close friendships and correspondence with powerful and wealthy women, such as Queen Christina of Sweden and the exiled Princess Elizabeth of England. The women in his personal life were a different story. Descartes never married and only had one child, an illegitimate daughter, with one of the servants in his home. And, until early adulthood, Descartes’s greatest passion was reserved for women with crossed eyes....

The Center for Retail Research says that women are more likely to steal cosmetics, clothes, jewelry, and perfume. Men go for the electronics, especially TVs and power tools. However, people steal far stranger things than vanity and entertainment items. Odder still are the extreme lengths to which people will go to take what’s not theirs. Each US state has its own eccentricities that make it unique, especially when it comes to what people are stealing and why....

Of course, for the modern man, gaining a fortune or winning the love of his beloved is simply not enough cause to memorize page upon page of ancient Hebrew. When compared to the success rate of these books, one would have a better chance of winning the lottery or expecting his beloved to accept him for who he is. It is a dated thing to waste your time on anything less than the acquirement of unbridled power....

Many of these women would be dealt with through violence or general mistreatment, but they still rose up despite the pressure to conform. Whether it be through displays of love, knowledge, or passion, the following women truly scandalized their societies with their antics. 10 Julie D’Aubigny Julie d’Aubigny was a sword fighter and opera singer who lived during the late 1600s and early 1700s. Julie dressed as a boy from an early age and frequently learned alongside boys, being taught dancing, reading, drawing, and fencing....

This week’s list is animal-heavy as we talk about the Siberian unicorn, the largest steer in Australia, and an ant that likes to decapitate other ants and decorate its nest with skulls. In non-animal-related news, scientists eat LEGO pieces for science, a monk is arrested for hosting drug-fueled sex parties, and a football club fakes a player’s death. 10 Science Gets Messy Science has a rich and weird history of researchers who were willing to use their own bodies for experiments....

Kinks and taboos have been built into the very fabric of the sexual experience since the dawn of time, and people have been kinky for as long as they’ve been having sex. Have you ever wondered where your kinks come from? Have you ever thought about who started this unorthodox sex act or that one? From the wild orgies of the Roman Emperor Caligula to the curious and mysterious practices of small Christian sects, world history leaves us no shortage of bizarre, unusual, and downright nasty kinks that all began long before contemporary festivals and modernity....

It is truly horrifying to watch someone being killed with a gun. Since the creation of video, thousands of people have been murdered on camera. In some cases, the footage has been featured on television documentaries and news broadcasts. The videos are always shocking and give people a true sense of how dangerous guns are. 10 Darrell Lunsford On January 23, 1991, a constable named Darrell Lunsford was shot and killed in Nacogdoches County, Texas....