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In the midst of the Cuban Missile Crisis, on October 25th, 1962, a guard at an air base in Duluth, Minnesota, spotted an intruder scaling the perimeter fence. He fired on the intruder, and raised the alarm, which also activated alarms at all bases in the area. However, at Volk Field air base in Wisconsin, the alarm had been wired incorrectly. Instead of sounding a sabotage warning, the alarm ordered F-106A Delta Dart interceptors armed with nuclear missiles to take off....

The Holiday In case you were not aware, I have just spent a month in New Zealand with family and friends for Christmas. I had a wonderful time – the weather was great and the food amazing (as always). While most of my time was spent in Wellington (the Capital city), I did venture out to Hawkes Bay and Auckland. I had a great Christmas and I have been re-energized by the trip – which is good for the site as it means I have more energy for new lists!...

It’s one thing to make a great movie. It’s quite another to make one in a way instantly identifiable for its directorial calling cards. Here are ten directors whose distinctive styles helped make them legends. 10 Wes Anderson The director of such classics as The Royal Tenenbaums, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou is modern filmmaking’s most effectively weird filmmaker. With few exceptions, Wes Anderson movies are more live-action storybooks than conventional films, with relatively simple plots serving as vehicles for ornate typography, elaborately embellished set designs, and quirky characters toggling between outcasts, antiheroes, and flat-out oddballs....

Devastating at first, we are now seeing the changes this earth-shattering virus produced. More people are working from home and are connected more than ever via the internet. Also, who doesn’t love food delivered right to their doorstep? While seemingly novel in modern times, it is not the first time the loss of millions of lives carved out a path of progress. So here are 10 ways massive death tolls have affected human society....

Here are ten things found at flea markets that were secretly worth a fortune. Top 10 Accidental Discoveries 10 Alexander Calder Necklace Alexander Calder was a 20th century American sculptor from a family of famous artists. His wire and metal mobile sculptures can be found in galleries and museums across the world. As well as paintings, prints, and a range of other art forms Calder also turned his hand to jewellery....

Although some of their backstories are still unclear, we do know the fascinating histories of others. More importantly, each of these inventions has become as commonplace today, in one form or another, as ancient inventions, like paper and concrete, have. 10 Life-Changing Inventions That Were Discovered By Accident 10 Science Fiction Films In 1902, Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) became the first science fiction story shown on-screen....

Disclaimer: I am an agnostic, and do not wish to perpetrate my views in any way. That is not the purpose of this post. My use of the bible and biblical references in this text respect it not only as a religious text, but as a work of high art also. The original model for the now archetypal ‘super-sleuth,’ Holmes is a master of two things: deduction, and being hard....

We are all familiar with the tales of Siamese twins (named for the country of birth of the first known conjoined twins). It is, of course, a rare disorder in which twins are born joined together at one or more parts of their bodies. In the most rare cases, children can be born joined at the top of their head. Sometimes Siamese twins can be separated, allowing both to live full lives, but more frequently, this is not possible....

Although children bite, we supposedly outgrow this atavistic behavior. Yet, if we routinely resort to mauling with the mouth, a question emerges: How savage is humanity? 10 Brutal Attacks On Prisoners By Prison Guards 10 Mafioso Muncher In prison, weapons can be improvised from anything—even mouths. On September 9, 2020, Italian daily Il Messaggero reported that a Sicilian Mafia boss bit off and swallowed the pinkie finger on the right hand of a prison guard....

10 Meet Drella Andy Warhol was notoriously fickle. To close friends, colleagues, and strangers alike, the pop artist could be any number of different Andy’s depending on the moment and the mood. The problem is that Andy’s fluidity was so pervasive that his close friends and collaborators went beyond the trite “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” comparison and created their own dichotomy. They went with Dracula and Cinderella and so gave Warhol the nickname “Drella....

Top 10 Fascinating Deathbed Moments 10 For Pets Why should humans be the only creatures to be honored by a proper send-off? Samsara Eternity crematory in Soignies, Belgium, agrees. Clients at Samasara can have a memorial service where their beloved pets are surrounded by decorative fabrics and soft lighting. Those who do not want to have their furry friends cremated may opt for a burial in a nearby pet cemetery or choose to have their best pals stuffed by trained taxidermists to eternally keep them at their master’s sides....

But strange times have a habit of inspiring strange behavior, and the pandemic has been no exception. Since coronavirus first emerged at the start of 2020, all manner of weirdness has occurred. Spaniards have been taking their crabs for a walk as an excuse to get out of the house. Hungarian politicians have been caught fleeing wild lockdown orgies. In fact, things have become so dire that, in parts of Belgium, locals have had no choice but to poop in the streets....

Technically it isn’t a sport, but you really need to see this – it is weird. Musical canine freestyle—also known as musical freestyle, freestyle dance, and canine freestyle—is a modern dog sport that is a mixture of obedience, tricks, and dance that allows for creative interaction between dogs and their owners. There are two types, musical freestyle and freestyle heeling (also known as heelwork to music), the main difference being that freestyle heeling focuses on a dog’s ability to stay in variations of the heel position while the handler moves to music, whereas musical freestyle demands that the dog perform a variety of tricks and other obedience talents, and places a greater focus on the trainer’s dance abilities and creativity....

It was passed along by the oral and song tradition. This all changed with the advent of locomotion, big cities, the Victrola and the jukebox, and the record companies putting out “race records” in 1923. The blues is like a family recipe with spices and ingredients plucked from many different places. It’s a magnificent form, molded from amalgamated parts, containing the secular and sacred. Not a whole lot is known about a number of the gentlemen on this list....

Some books are just challenging. Some are told through unreliable narrators, some have too many characters and subplots to keep track of, some ask you to wrestle with concepts that aren’t best explored through the written word, or even just make up words of their own. Some overexplain, others rely on you to have an encyclopedic knowledge before you even get past the dust cover. Some are just way longer than they need to be....

Aside from glasses, you will need some kind of hard object for squashing fruits in the glass (this is called a muddler). You will also need a cocktail shaker (a large lidded jar will do if you can not get a cocktail shaker), a tall glass, a stirrer, and a strainer. This is what they look like: Some things to note about cocktails: a true cocktail will never include milk or cream....

Keith Richards may have fallen out of a tree in Fiji while out of his gourd on other than vitamin supplements, but he is what rock n’ roll is all about: debauchery. And, while a sober Eric Clapton was quoted as saying, “I hate listening to my old records, which I did stoned or drunk.” He’s alone in that camp as most fans of his music hate listening to anything that he’s done straight....

But for every original, spooky ghost story you hear, there are 10 more that you hear that sound pretty identical. Like, “we-have-a-story-like-that-in-our-town-except…” kind of identical. Every story has it’s kernel of truth, but sometimes it feels like that kernel was genetically cloned from a kernel in another state, creating clone-corn ghost stories. Here are 10 of the most common elements in the world of ghost stories. That headless railroad employee that roams the tunnels looking for his lost head is simply not allowed to go by his name in life....

The things we do every day—from putting pictures on Facebook to uploading home videos on YouTube—have led to some major lawsuits. And lately, people have been getting sued for some absolutely ridiculous reasons. 10 The Purring In A Cat Video A YouTube user got a letter from the video site in 2015, telling him that one of his uploads was being removed. EMI Music had filed a formal complaint against him for plagiarizing one of their songs—which must have been a strange song because the video was a just an hour-long looped clip of Digihaven’s cat purring, which he’d uploaded the previous year....

Actually it isn’t blood at all, but rather something called hemolymph. It’s been somewhere between 500-600 million years since humans and insects shared a common ancestor, so it is no surprise that there are a few differences. Hemolymph is copper-based, rather than the iron that runs in our veins, giving it a blue or greenish tint when it is oxygenated. It’s not used to carry oxygen, however, as respiration through the skin is adequate for an insect’s oxygen needs....