New York City experienced one of its most infamous crimes on April 19, 1989 when a 28-year old woman named Trisha Meili was raped and severely beaten while jogging through Central Park. The attack left her in a coma and she had no memory of the incident after she recovered. Five Harlem youths – Anton McCray, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam, and Kharey Wise—had been in the park the night of the attack and were brought in for an interrogation. With the exception of Salaam, they would each make videotaped confessions to the crime. The Central Park Five were all tried and found guilty and given sentences ranging from five to thirteen years.

However, all five youths would recant their confessions and claim they had been coerced and intimidated by the police. Their statements were not consistent with the physical evidence and the prosecution downplayed the fact that none of the DNA from the crime scene matched them. In 2002, the DNA did wind up matching a convicted serial rapist named Matias Reyes, who finally admitted to the crime and confirmed that he did it alone. By that time, the Central Park Five had already served their sentences and been forced to register as sex offenders after being released. On the basis of Reyes’ confession, their convictions were officially vacated.

On July 8, 1997, a Norfolk, Virginia woman named Michelle Moore-Bosko was found raped and murdered at her residence. A neighbor named Danial Williams and his roommate Joseph J. Dick, Jr. were soon brought in for questioning and confessed to the crime. Since no trace of their DNA was found at the scene, police were forced to look for other suspects, and Dick eventually named two more accomplices, Derek Tice and Eric C. Wilson, who subsequently confessed to being involved. Williams, Tice and Dick were sentenced to life imprisonment while Wilson received 8 ½ years. All four men claimed that they only confessed and pleaded guilty after being threatened with the death penalty.

The separate confessions of the Norfolk Four all seemed to contradict each other in their details, and naval logs showed that Dick was serving on the U.S.S. Saipan at the time of the murder. An inmate named Omar Ballard eventually confessed to committing the murder on his own and his DNA was present at the crime scene. However, the Norfolk Four remained incarcerated since police still maintained that they acted as Ballard’s accomplices. Wilson was released after serving his sentence, and Tice, Williams and Dick would receive conditional pardons from Virginia governor Tim Kaine in 2009. However, the Norfolk Four are still required to register as sex offenders and they continue to fight to clear their names.

It’s bad enough when a coerced confession sends an innocent person to prison, but it’s especially horrific when it sends them to death row and almost costs them their life. On June 4, 1982, 19-year old Rebecca Lynn Williams was raped and stabbed to death 38 times inside her Culpeper, Virginia apartment. One year later, police turned their attention to a farmhand named Earl Washington Jr., who was in custody for another crime. After interrogating Washington for two straight days, he eventually confessed to five different crimes, including Williams’ murder. The other four confessions were thrown out, but he was still sentenced to death for killing Williams.

Washington had an IQ of 69 and was coerced into making all his confessions. His initial confession to the Williams murder was filled with inconsistencies and he got many key details wrong, including the race of the victim and the location of the crime. His execution was ultimately halted when a fellow death row inmate named Joseph Giarrantano contacted a law firm to file a habeas corpus petition on Washington’s behalf. In 1994, Washington would receive clemency from the governor of Virginia and had his sentence commuted to life in prison. It was not until DNA testing proved he wasn’t the perpetrator that Washington was finally granted a full pardon and released after serving 17 years. The real killer of Rebecca Lynn Williams has never been found.

On April 13, 1986, the small town of Aurora, Missouri was shocked when one of its most respected citizens, 79-year old Pauline Martz, was murdered. She had been beaten and burned alive when the killer set her home ablaze. Acting on an eyewitness tip, police were eventually led to a 20-year old resident named Johnny Lee Wilson and after being interrogated for nearly four hours, he confessed to the crime. In order to avoid the death penalty, he would enter an Alford plea and was sentenced to life in prison.

However, Wilson suffered from mild retardation and had an IQ of 76. He was threatened and intimidated by police during his interrogation and thought he would be allowed to go home if he confessed. The details about the murder were clearly fed to him and he seemed unaware of what he was doing when entering his plea in court. Wilson also had an alibi for the time the murder took place and the eyewitness who implicated him was another mentally challenged man who later admitted to lying. A convicted murderer named Chris Brownfield eventually came forward and confessed that he and an accomplice had killed Pauline Martz during a robbery. In 1996, Johnny Lee Wilson was finally granted a pardon by Missouri governor Mel Carnahan and released after serving nine years.

On November 8, 1983, a Fort Lauderdale woman named Susan Hamwi was found stabbed to death with a butcher knife in her home. To make things even more tragic, her 18-month old daughter, Shane, died of dehydration in her crib after being neglected for several days. Police investigated a neighbor named John Purvis, who suffered from schizophrenia and was looked upon as the town “weirdo”. Even though there was no physical evidence linking him to the crime, Purvis would eventually confess to the murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

However, because of his schizophrenia, Purvis had trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. The first time he was questioned, Purvis’ mother broke up the interrogation when she saw detectives attempting to intimidate her son. The next time they brought Purvis in for questioning, they made sure mother wasn’t present and he was coerced him into making a taped confession. While Purvis was in prison, authorities seemed disinterested in pursuing other potential leads that popped up. The investigation was not reopened until 1992 when evidence came to light that Hamwi had been murdered by two hitmen who were hired by her ex-husband. They would soon be convicted of the crime and in January 1993, John Purvis was finally released after serving nine years.

The Juan Rivera case is a prime example of how much weight a false confession can carry. On August 17, 1992, an 11-year old girl named Holly Staker was raped and murdered while babysitting in Waukegan, Illinois. A tip from an informant eventually led authorities to 19-year old Juan Rivera, who had an IQ of 79 and was in custody on a burglary charge. He was questioned for four straight days and reached the point where he experienced a psychotic episode and started banging his head against the wall. Authorities eventually coerced him into signing a confession and he was sentenced to life in prison for the crime.

In 1998, Rivera received a retrial because his first trial was littered with procedural errors. This time, the prosecution produced one of the kids Staker had babysat as an eyewitness. Even though he was only two years old at the time the murder took place, his testimony helped convict Rivera a second time. In 2005, DNA tests excluded Rivera as the perpetrator and he was granted a third trial. Remarkably, he was found guilty again because the prosecution claimed that Staker had consensual sex with someone else that night… even though she was only 11 years old! It was not until January 2012 that the charges against Rivera were finally dismissed and he was released from prison.

On November 15, 1989, Angela Correa, a 15-year old resident from Peekskill, New York, went missing while on her way to class. Two days later, her body was found in a wooded area. She had been raped, beaten and strangled to death. At her funeral, police noticed that one of her fellow students, 17-year old Jeffrey Deskovic, was crying profusely and became suspicious when they discovered he’d been absent from school during the time Correa went missing. Deskovic was questioned on eight separation occasions, and on January 25, 1990, he was administered a polygraph test without a parent or counsel present and told he had failed. After being interrogated for six hours, Deskovic finally confessed to the murder.

Before the trial, DNA testing was done on semen samples and it excluded Deskovic as the perpetrator. However, the confession strong enough to garner a guilty verdict from the jury and Deskovic received a sentence of 15 years to life in prison. Like the Juan Rivera case, prosecution pushed the theory that the victim had consensual sex with someone else before she was murdered. It would be 16 years before new DNA testing was done and it wound up matching Steven Cunningham, a convicted inmate who was serving time for another murder and subsequently confessed to killing Correa. In 2006, Jeffrey Deskovic was finally exonerated and released.

On September 28, 1973, 51-year old Barbara Gibbons was found murdered at her home in Canaan, Connecticut. Her throat had been cut, she had been sexually assaulted, and there were numerous injuries on her body. Her body was discovered by her 16-year old son, Peter Reilly, but police were suspicious by his supposed lack of emotion and immediately brought him in for questioning. After failing a polygraph test, the exhausted Reilly was interrogated for several hours. He eventually came to believe the police’s assertion that he had blacked out and forgotten he committed the murder, so he signed a confession. Even though Reilly would later recant his confession, he was still convicted of first degree manslaughter and received a sentence of 6 to 16 years in prison.

In 1977, Reilly was granted a new trial after evidence was uncovered that a state trooper had seen him driving his car five miles away at the time the murder was supposedly taking place. The judge decided to clear Reilly of all charges and criticized the authorities’ handling of the case. The state police has always maintained their position that Reilly was the real killer and while he has made many attempts to find out who really killed his mother, authorities have always refused to release their files about the case and Barbara Gibbons’ murder remains unsolved 40 years later.

The town of West Memphis, Arkansas was shaken on May 6, 1993 when the naked bodies of three murdered boys—Christopher Byers, Michael Moore and Steve Branch—were found in a drainage ditch. One month later, police brought in 17-year old Jessie Misskelley, Jr. for questioning, and he eventually confessed that he and two other teens, Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin, had murdered the three boys as part of a satanic ritual. The West Memphis Three were soon charged and found guilty of the murders, with Echols being sentenced to death.

However, Misskelley quickly recanted his confession, which was filled with inconsistencies. He had an IQ of 72 and appeared to have details of the crime fed to him during 12 hours of interrogation. There was no DNA or physical evidence to link the suspects to the crime scene, and more compelling evidence seemed to point towards Steve Branch’s stepfather, Terry Hobbs. The “Paradise Lost” series, a trilogy of documentaries about the case, garnered national exposure for the West Memphis Three and much outrage about their convictions. In 2011, a deal was reached where the West Memphis Three would be released from prison if they entered an Alford plea, officially pleading guilty to the crime while maintaining their innocence. Even though they are now free, they have never been officially exonerated and the real killer of the three boys remains unpunished.

In the early morning hours of November 1, 2001, sports editor Kent Heitholt was beaten and strangled to death with his belt in the parking lot of the Daily Tribune in Columbia, Missouri. The case remained cold until 2004 when a young man named Chuck Erickson told police he believed he had repressed memories of having committed the murder with his friend, Ryan Ferguson. After being interrogated, Erickson was eventually coerced into making a full confession. Ferguson was charged and given a 40-year sentence for the murder while Erickson received 25 years.

However, there was no physical evidence to tie either of them to the crime scene and the validity of Erickson’s confession has been questioned. He was a known drug and alcohol user with a history of mental illness and could not provide accurate details about the murder until they were fed to him by police. The only other piece of evidence was the testimony of a janitor named Jerry Trump, who claimed he saw Ferguson and Erickson in the parking lot that night. However, in 2012, Trump claimed he had been coerced into naming them by the prosecutor, and both he and Erickson would give sworn affidavits recanting their testimony. Even though there is no longer any evidence to tie Ryan Ferguson to the murder, all attempts to secure him a new trial have been unsuccessful and he remains in prison.

Robin Warder is a budding Canadian screenwriter who has used his encyclopedic movie knowledge to publish numerous articles at Cracked.com. He is also the co-owner of a pop culture called The Back Row.

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The Iguana has become a fairly popular pet in recent years, and advocates would say having this giant, prehistoric looking reptile around is like an alternative to a dog. Although herbivorous, the Iguana can be unpredictable, and possesses razor sharp teeth. On several occasions, savage injuries have resulted when “tame” but powerful Iguana have become agitated and latched on their owners face or slashed hands with teeth and claws. Iguana may weigh up to 18 pounds and reach over 6 feet in length, making an attack by this giant lizard nothing to joke about. Emergency room visits could very well follow your visit to Jurassic park.

The Leatherback Sea Turtle is the largest of all turtles, occasionally reaching over 8 feet in length. These 2,000 pound omnivores are possibly the widest ranging vertebrate animal on Earth, but are becoming rare and endangered due to development, pollution and bycatch. The turtles are usually fairly gentle giants, but can deliver a bone shattering bite if disturbed, and are extremely strong and powerful. In one bizarre case, a huge leatherback, likely weighing over 1500 pounds turned its aggression toward a small boat and charged it. The turtle had just been chased by a shark, so the boat was considered a threat.

South America’s Amazon is famous for its incredible and sometimes disturbing creatures. Sharing the rivers with Piranha and River Dolphin is the unearthly Mata-Mata Turtle. The fate of a human who stepped on a Mata-Mata has not been well tested, but the bizarre river reptiles have an elongated, snake-like neck with a strange mouth filled with two sharp plates that resemble human fused teeth. Prey items of these extraordinarily creepy exclusive carnivores include waterbirds, fish, and other reptiles. We could only imagine the effect on a boater who reaches towards the bump in the water…

The Big-headed Turtle is a bizarre chelonian species with a long, snakelike tail nearly the length of its body. This turtle is native to Southeast Asia, where it hunts for a variety of prey items in the rivers. The large head cannot be retracted into its shell, and carries immensely powerful jaws. The turtle will not hesitate to use its bone shattering beak if a threat is perceived, so it is best to keep your distance. The Asian Soft-shelled is, incredibly, capable of climbing trees, where it may perch, birdlike. Sadly, this awesome creature is at risk due to poaching, which must be combatted with increased diligence.

Looking like flattened, human/reptile hybrid out of an alien horror film, Soft-Shells make up for their shell shortcomings with a very hard bite. Among the many species of Soft-Shelled Turtles worldwide, the Cantor’s Giant Softshell, native to China is the most terrifying. It hides in the sand, waiting for prey, before striking out with sharp teeth. The sheer size and power of the bite could lead to horrendous injuries. However, this species is unfortunately now endangered, but more abundant species of soft shell such as the Florida Soft Shell occur in numbers worldwide and may chomp unwary fisherman.

The Nile Monitor shares the Nile and other African rivers with crocodiles, growing up to 9 feet in length. This terrifying lizard often preys upon the young crocodiles as an addition to its mammal and bird diet, and possesses an extremely powerful, infectious bite. When threatened by humans or other potential intruders, a Nile Monitor can seize with a viselike, bone shattering grip, which it is reluctant to release. The giant reptiles are sold as family pets, but owners should be cautious with reports of serious injuries and the fact that these lizards can “snap a cat’s neck in an instant and then swallow it whole”. Children should remain well out of reach of these lizards, as an attack is a possibility with such predators.

The Gila Monster is North America’s largest lizard at over 2 foot long, and is the only one that is venomous. Gilas are endangered and protected by law, but humans who interfere may become endangered themselves. If disturbed, a Gila Monster may latch on to the offender’s legs or arms, where it sinks its teeth in, quickly releasing a dose of extremely potent, neurotoxic venom. A number of deaths took place before greater awareness of the dangers and treatment options became known. Lacking fangs, the Gila will hold on with great force to a human hand, slowly chewing up the flesh, leaving a mangled, venom soaked mess. Submerging the monster in water may force it to let go, stopping the carnage.

The Malayan Water Monitor is the second heaviest lizard in the world, and lurks in the rivers and deep swamps of Southeast Asia. The lizard has backwards curving teeth, and is known to feed on…dead bodies. If a living human fell into the water where several Water Monitor were feeding, it is very possible that the reptile’s hunting instinct would be activated by the vulnerability of the human, provoking an attack. Water Monitors are capable of feeding on a wide range of animals, and have little trouble with large prey, weighing over 150 pounds in some cases. Length may reach…9.5 feet.

The Alligator Snapping Turtle is the world’s largest freshwater turtle, and by far the most dangerous. Weighing over 200 pounds, the bizarre looking reptile has a cone covered, dinosaur like shell, and a massive beak that will cleanly amputate any body part brought near it, and is capable of severing a broom handle with lightning speed. A swimmer accidentally treading nearby could easily lose part of a foot. Although deaths have not been confirmed, drowning may have occurred undetected. A hypothetical report of a 400 pound snapper is supported by the continued growth of this species throughout its lifespan, which may reach 200 years.

The Komodo Dragon stalks the forested lowlands, beaches and plateaus of Indonesia, posing a threat to nearly every living thing as a prehistoric apex predator. The 10 foot, 300 pound beasts are the largest lizards on Earth, forming microcosm of a prehistoric world where reptiles ruled. Komodos feed on prey as large as water buffalo, and have attacked, disremembered and consumed humans. Such large prey items are charged and knocked down, followed by a vicious attack involving large amounts of flesh being removed. The toxic saliva and bacteria will weaken an animal that does not die right away. Scientists have theorized the Komodo evolved to feed on now extinct dwarf island elephants.

Ron Harlan is a wildlife enthusiast and fan of incredible, dangerous or animals. He does freelance writing covering fascinating and scary wildlife, conservation and oddities.

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While many of the procedures on this list are quite risky, the face slapping bit is in good fun. Offered by Bangkok masseuse Tata in her San Francisco massage parlor, the treatment consists of pinching and manipulating the skin and light slaps that are said to cure wrinkles and shrink pores. Whether this is at all helpful in restoring a youthful appearance is highly debatable, but it doesn’t come cheap. A single 15 minute session will set you back $350.

The use of stem cells in medical treatments remains highly controversial, with detractors claiming their use is “playing God”. Very basically, stem cells can “transform” into any other cell, and are used by the body to make repairs. The only stem cell treatment approved by the US Food and Drug Administration is a bone marrow transplant in the instance of leukemia, but that hasn’t stopped many patients from seeking cutting-edge plastic surgeries, wherein the cells are drawn from the body via liposuction and then re-injected into the face, to repair wrinkles. Unfortunately, the procedure is in its infancy, and there is no way to predict exactly how the cells will behave. In at least one horrifying instance, a woman grew bones in her eyelid.

The doctor fish is native to the rivers and springs of the Middle East, a toothless creature around the size of a guppy. Like a lot of fish, these guys are not particularly picky eaters. In fact, they have been used for some years to perform pedicures; gnawing the dead and callused skin away from the feet. The creepy procedure is apparently quite effective, and those who have had it done claim it is painless. However, in much of the world, just as these pedicures began taking off, they were banned, as letting fish in communal baths chew on toes of multiple customers is not in the least sterile. Seized fish have been shown to carry a wide array of bacteria, including that which causes cholera and streptococcal infections.

The ideal of the geisha is quite foreign to Western sensibilities; her role often varied, anything from servant to concubine to entertainer, and everything in between. Perhaps the best known aspect of the geisha is her white pancake makeup, which was once lead-based and ravaged the skin. To restore their appearance, the geisha used a cream made from the droppings of nightingales, which contained revitalizing enzymes. Or so the staff at Shizuka New York, a posh Japanese spa in Manhattan, would lead you to believe. For just $180, they will paint your face with bird poo, carefully sanitized under ultraviolet light and mixed with some other ingredients to hide the rather disagreeable smell. While the claims seem dubious, some customers have reported a “glow” on their face after the treatment.

DC-CIK treatment is another controversial procedure which involves drawing blood from a patient suffering from cancer. The blood is then turned over to a lab, where it is concentrated, then injected back into the body after chemotherapy or surgery. It is said to promote healing. However, some dubious clinics in Hong Kong have begun offering the treatment to give patients a more youthful appearance. At least one death from septic shock has been reported, and several others have been sent to the hospital, infected by mycobacterium abcessus, a nasty bacteria known to cause lung disease and wound infections.

Most of us have a relationship of absolute necessity with our urine; one quick flush and its gone. There is however, a small but dedicated community that extolls the supposedly restorative properties of urine. These people claim drinking urine can cure (or at least relieve the symptoms of) a vast number of diseases, ranging from lupus to multiple sclerosis, and even cancer. Urine is also used for beauty treatments; when applied topically, advocates claim it is excellent for the skin, clearing up psoriasis, eczema, and acne. The best urine is apparently taken midstream first thing in the morning, when beneficial hormones have been able to build up overnight. Perhaps not surprisingly, the legitimate medical community has not recognized any benefit to the consumption of urine.

Although many bodily modifications made in the name of beauty could be described as frivolous, toe narrowing is amongst the most foolish. A growing number of people, unsatisfied with “fat” toes, have been turning to podiatrists for help. The procedure, which is somewhat gruesome, involves splitting the toe open and grinding down the bone and fat inside. While not a terribly risky procedure, it still carries the dangers inherent in any surgery. There is also usually a long recovery time.

The micro-needle roller resembles some kind of medieval torture device; sporting hundreds of tiny spikes, it is designed to puncture the skin at the microscopic level, both inducing it to heal itself and allowing for the penetration of creams. Many celebrities are said to use micro-needle treatment, and it is particularly popular in China. While the effectiveness of the treatment itself is debatable, the danger is not: there is no way to truly sterilize the equipment, and using it on multiple people provides a vector for infections, including blood-borne pathogens like HIV and hepatitis.

Advertised as a “safer” version of botox (itself a tamed version of the Botulinum toxin, one of the deadliest known substances), bee venom wrinkle cream has become all the rage, the beauty secret of the UK’s Duchess of Cambridge and Duchess of Cornwall. Quite expensive, the cream apparently induces a reaction in the skin that causes the body to believe it has been stung or damaged, increasing blood flow and collagen and repairing the area. The venom itself is harvested in a process wherein a “harmless” mild electric current is run through a pane of glass, inducing the bees to sting. There has been a larger movement for some years to use bee venom to cure all sorts of maladies, from multiple sclerosis to arthritis, but tests have shown it to be largely ineffective. Obviously, the use of venom carries with it serious risks; those who find themselves allergic can easily succumb to anaphylactic shock.

This one takes masochism to extremes rarely imagined. A few decades ago, the vast majority of those sporting tattoos were bikers and sailors, outlaws of a sort. Today, sorority girls the world over are inked. Cosmetic tattooing is not a terribly new phenomenon, with many women getting their eyebrows or lips done. But a strange new craze has begun sweeping the UK; women getting their nipples darkened and defined. Over a dozen salons offer the treatment, and word continues to spread. Local anesthesia is administered and a color complimentary to the patient’s skin tone is added. Every year to year and a half, a follow up appointment is scheduled to maintain the appearance.

Mike Devlin is an aspiring novelist. He cuts his own hair, so he probably isn’t the person to look to for beauty advice.

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Judging by their ability to meditate for hours on end, to abstain from food for days, and their vows of silence, most us would agree that Tibetan Monks have better control over their minds and bodies than the average person. Still, what’s particularly amazing is some of them can control physiological processes, such as blood pressure and body temperature – feats many medical doctors find astounding.

In one of the most notable exhibits of their skills, a group of Tibetan monks allowed physicians to monitor the monk’s bodily changes as they engaged in a meditative yoga technique known as g Tum-mo. During the process the monks were cloaked in wet, cold sheets (49 f / 9.4 c) and placed in a 40 f (4.5 c) room. In such conditions, the average person would likely experience uncontrollable shivering and would shortly suffer hypothermia. However, through deep concentration, the monks were able to generate body heat, and within minutes the researchers noticed steam rising from the sheets that were covering the monks. Within an hour, the sheets were completely dry.

Although, the display was fascinating to the doctors, for the monks it was an ordinary occurrence. In fact, new monks use g Tum-mo as a way of proving their meditative strength and hold contests to see who can dry the most sheets in one night.

The Buddhists say the heat they generate is a byproduct of the meditation, since it takes energy to reach a state of alternate reality – a place unaffected by our everyday world.

Multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder, is a mental condition that’s interesting on many levels. Perhaps most intriguing of all is how some sufferers not only exhibit personality and behavior changes as they switch between their different identities, but some also have measurable physiological variations between each persona. For instance, one of a patient’s personalities may need eyeglasses and another won’t. Or, one identity might be diabetic and another will have perfect health. In such cases, it isn’t simply a matter of the patients thinking they need eyeglasses or insulin, their bodies actually go through legitimate alterations, such as differences in intraocular pressure or blood sugar levels.

In one case, published by the American Psychiatric Press, a doctor noted how medications prescribed to a dissociative identity disorder patient had different effects depending on what “personality” took the drug. For example, when a tranquilizer was given to the person’s childish persona, it made the individual sleepy and relaxed. However, when the adult personality was administered the same drug it made him anxious and confused. Similar results were found with other patients and with a variety of different medications. Doctors even noticed visibly apparent traits, like lazy eye, would come and go depending on which personality was present.

This phenomenon is especially fascinating since no one, including the patients, is claiming mysticism is at work. On the contrary, it is a genuine example of the mind altering the body.

A placebo is an inert substance or belief which produces real biological effects in humans. It’s so widely accepted as fact that a placebo variable is included in most medical tests as way of proving if, say, a drug works on its own merits or because people “think” it works.

There are tons of experiments showing the proof of the placebo, but one of the most amusing to watch is a test done by a group of Princeton students who decided to throw a non-alcoholic keg party for their unsuspecting classmates. The experimenters secretly filled a keg with O’Douls (contains about 0.4% alcohol while regular beer has around 5% alcohol) and then watched as their peers acted silly, slurred words, slept on the ground, and generally acted drunk. Although it’s nearly impossible to get intoxicated on O’Douls, these college students had such a strong belief they were drinking standard beer that it affected their behavior.

Curiously, researchers have discovered the placebo effect is somehow getting stronger, and some drugs that have been on the market for years, such as Prozac, are now proving less effective than placebos. Naturally, this is a major issue for big pharmaceutical companies, which has left many scrambling to conduct neurological studies in an effort to come up with new ways to safeguard their industry from ordinary sugar pills. Incidentally, Big Pharma is currently more profitable than Big Oil, so there’s quite a bit at stake.

While placebos are generally associated with positive outcomes, like curing an illness or getting drunk on O’Douls and having fun (if you consider that positive), the nocebo effect produces negative results, such as a cancer patient vomiting before chemotherapy starts or someone breaking out in a rash because they thought they touched poison ivy, even though it was merely an ordinary plant.

One of the most talked about examples of the nocebo phenomenon was an incident published in “New Scientist.” According to the account, late one night an Alabama man, referred to as Vance, went to a cemetery and met up with a witch doctor who told Vance that he was going to die soon. Believing the witch doctor’s prediction, Vance soon fell ill and within a matter of weeks was emaciated and close to death. Vance was taken to the hospital but the medical doctors could find nothing wrong with him. Finally, Vance’s wife told the physician, Dr. Doherty, about the encounter with the witch doctor, which gave the creative physician an idea. The next day, Dr. Doherty told the couple he had tracked down the witch doctor and physically threatened him until the medicine man finally admitted he had put a lizard inside Vance that was eating him from the inside. Of course, the Doctor’s story was completely fabricated, yet he made a big show of injecting the patient with a mysterious substance and snuck in a genuine, green lizard that he pretended to extract from Vance. The next day, Vance awoke alert, hungry, and it didn’t take long before he fully recovered.

Apparently, that story was corroborated by four other medical professionals, and is often cited when explaining why Voo Doo sometimes works (i.e. not because of magic, but because of the nocebo effect).

There are a lot of stories floating around out there about people who experienced an injury in their dreams and then found real, physical evidence of the wound on their bodies once they awoke. For instance, some people have claimed to have been caught in a fire in their dreams and then woke up to find burn marks on their skin. Other common stories involve people being attacked during their dreams and then waking up to find scratch marks somewhere on their bodies. However, most of these stories are found in chat rooms or message boards, so it’s hard to corroborate if they are true.

But, there is one well documented case, reported by famed psychiatrist Ian Stevenson, about an Indian man named Durga Jatav who, during a battle with typhoid fever, had an extremely vivid dream about being held captive in another realm. To keep him from escaping, his dream captors cut his legs off at the knee. Unfortunately, his legs were already severed by the time the captors realized they had the wrong man and didn’t need to keep Jatav after all. When Jatav asked how he could leave with no legs, they offered him several pairs of legs, he picked out his own pair, and then they were miraculously reattached.

While Jatav was having the dream, his body became very cold and at one point his family thought he was dead, yet he revived a few days later. Once he was awake, his sister and neighbor noticed deep fissures around his knees that weren’t there previously. X-ray photographs showed no abnormality below the surface of the skin, which led Jatav and his family to believe the marks came from his dream experience. Dr. Stevenson met Jatav some 30 years later (1979) and took pictures of the still visible scars. Although Stevenson did not witness the event, he apparently believed the story, which was confirmed by all involved, and he even included the account and photographs in his book “Reincarnation and Biology: A contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects.”

Obviously there’s no scientific proof to this intriguing account, but it’s not too far-fetched considering what we already know about the power of the brain over the body.

Like the Tibetan monks, Indian Yogis seem to have an unusual talent for manipulating their physiological processes while in deep meditation. After hearing stories of yogis spending 28 days underground and surviving, in 1936, a French cardiologist named Therese Brosse traveled to India to see if the yogis truly did have such talents. In her experiments, the yogis reportedly slowed their heart down so slow that it was only detectable via an EKG machine.

In the 1950s Brosse’s study was expanded by another group of researchers who traveled through India with an eight-channel electro-encephalograph and various other instruments, which they used to monitor the yogis’ brain activity, respirations, skin temperature, blood-volume changes, and skin conductance. Two of their test subjects were placed in air-tight sealed boxes, on two separate occasions, and were monitored for 8 to 10 hours. During that time the Yogis showed biological characteristics similar to sleep and were able to slow down their heart rate and respiration to low enough levels that oxygen and carbon dioxide quantities inside the box remained virtually in the same proportions as found in air at sea level. Thus, it was shown that by slowing down their bodily processes and not panicking (as most would do) the Yogis could survive a live-burial for far longer than the average person, possibly even weeks longer.

Many athletes claim it helps them perform better when they “play” the game in their minds before ever stepping foot on the field or court. While we might assume doing so is just a mental exercise that enables them to better focus on the game, there might be more concrete changes happening inside the body.

Take, for example, Air Force Colonel George Hall who was locked in a small, dark North Vietnamese prison for seven years. While most would lose their minds in such circumstances, Hall went to his happy place, so to speak, by mentally playing golf every day of his imprisonment. His visualizations were extremely in-depth and included everything from hitting the ball off the tee, raking the sand traps, feeling the wind, and of course tapping the ball into the hole.

Regardless of being weak and 100 pounds lighter than before his capture, one of the first things Hall wanted to do after his release was play a legitimate round of golf. He was invited to the Greater New Orleans Open where he astoundingly shot a 76. When a member of the press suggested his performance was a case of beginners luck, Hall replied, “Luck, I never 3-putted a green in the last five years!”

So, despite his physical deterioration and not stepping on a course in over seven years, his body had developed muscle memory based simply on his imaginings.

Jack Schwarz, a Dutch Jewish writer, also lived in horrific conditions while forced into a Nazi concentration camp during World War II. Like so many others, he was beaten, starved, and tortured beyond what most of us can comprehend. To cope with his situation, he began the practice of meditation and prayer, which he developed to the point where he could block out the pain of his torment and subsequently withstand his situation.

After his release, Schwarz continued his mind over matter practice and occasionally demonstrated his skills by putting a long sail-maker’s needle through his arm without injury. He also displayed his ability to regulate his body’s blood flow by causing the puncture hole in his arm to bleed or stop bleeding at will. Schwarz was studied by researchers at the Menninger Foundation who found that he could indeed control many of his bodily processes with only his mind. Furthermore, through an electroencephalograph, they determined his brain had different electrical activity as compared to most other test subjects. According to Schwarz, he could also see people’s auras, which allowed him to gauge their physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental conditions.

Undoubtedly it’s difficult to keep a positive attitude when you’re facing a life-threatening disease, but, based on a variety of medical studies, doing so may mean the difference between living and dying.

For example, in 1989, Dr. David Spiegel of Stanford University conducted a study on 86 women with late stage breast cancer. Half of those women received standard medical care while the other half were given weekly support sessions in addition to the standard medical care. During the sessions the women shared their feelings, talked with other patients, and generally had a positive outlet where they could cope with their illness. At the end of the study, the women in the support group lived twice as long as those not in the group. In 1999, a similar study found that cancer patients who have feelings of helplessness and hopelessness have a lower chance of survival.

In recent years, David Seidler, writer of “The King’s Speech,” claimed to have eliminated his cancer through meditation and imagination. After battling bladder cancer for years and only two weeks away from surgery, Seidler decided to see if he could get rid of the cancer through his imagination. He admittedly thought the idea was a little “woo-woo,” but by that point he figured he had nothing to lose. So, he spent the two weeks leading up to his surgery envisioning a clean, cream-colored, healthy bladder. When Seidler went in for his pre-surgery biopsy, the doctor was stunned to find a distinct lack of cancer – he even sent the biopsy to four different labs for testing. While Seidler believes his visualization were behind the cancer’s disappearance, his doctor labeled it a “spontaneous remission.”

It seems counterintuitive that increasing numbers of people are claiming to put a greater effort into exercising and eating a nutritious diet, yet there are more obese people in the world than ever before. Some researchers think positivity is a missing variable in the weight loss equation, and a lack of it is what’s keeping people chubby.

To prove the point that the mind has a major impact on the body, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer conducted an experiment on a group of predominantly overweight hotel maids who, judging by their daily activity levels, should have been thin. Despite essentially exercising all day long through their work, Langer discovered through a survey that 67% of the maids felt they didn’t do any type of exercise. Langer predicted the maids’ perceptions were hampering their weight loss, so she took half the maids aside and, in addition to taking their physical measurements, explained that through their cleaning work they were exceeding the surgeon general’s definition of an active lifestyle. The other half of the maids were given no information.

A month later, Langer’s team returned to the hotel and reevaluated the maids. They found an overall decrease in systolic blood pressure, weight, and waist-to-hip ratio in the educated group. The other group had no significant physical changes. While some suspect the mere discussion of exercise somehow altered the women’s behavior, Langer said there was no indication any of the maids modified their routines, and she feels the results were due simply to a change in mindset.

Content and copy writer by day and list writer by night, S.Grant enjoys exploring the bizarre, unusual, and topics that hide in plain sight. Contact S.Grant here.

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Saint Benedict is a pretty important saint and is known for both his skills at speaking and his general holiness and purity of heart. Saint Benedict is known for surviving multiple attempts on his life by his enemies. According to the legends some monks decided to poison him. The first time they tried to poison his wine and the glass shattered into little pieces when he prayed over it. The next time around the monks decided to use food, since that can’t shatter so easily. However, their plans were ruined when a bird flew away with the bread they had laced with poison. St Benedict founded the most famous order of monks the Benedictines and placing a Saint Benedict Medal over the doors of your house is said to keep evil spirits away.

According to his life-story, St Boniface arrived in Germany and saw the people worshipping a tree. He was angry at what he considered to be the worship of false idols and decided to destroy the tree. Supposedly with one blow of an axe the tree was felled and the Germans who saw this believed in his message. Some people claim that to satisfy their attachment to trees, Boniface invented the Christmas tree and told them to use it was a symbol of everlasting life.

There have been many saints who have supposedly had the gift of prophecy. One of the more interesting legends is that of St Anthony Mary Claret. He asked a group of farmers to come to his mission; many explained they could not because they needed to tend to their fields. He told them that if they came their fields would yield more, and if they did not come their harvest would be completely ruined. According to the story, his prophecy did indeed come true. There is also the prophecy of Saint Malachi, which has been mentioned here before. This prophecy of the popes predicts that the last pope will reign at the start of the end of the world. According to those who pay attention to the prophecy, our current pope (Francis) is supposed to be the last. The prophecy of the popes is suspected by some to be a forgery and—as with all post-apostolic prophecy—Catholics can freely choose to believe or disbelieve.

Many Catholic Saints through the ages have claimed to have something akin to an out of body experience. One of them, Saint Theresa of Avila claims that it felt like her soul was traveling to regions outside her body. Other saints to report this phenomenon include St Pio of Pietrelcina and St Frances Xavier. Saint Theresa was said to gain this ability through long meditative states of prayer, eventually feeling as if she was going through a sort of “detachable death” and felt it took her much closer to God.

The stories say that St Andrew the Apostle was eventually captured for preaching the message of Christianity and was affixed to an X shaped cross. His captors used this remarkably cruel means of execution because he seemed to feel no pain at all when they had previously tortured him. It is said that even though his execution was long and brutal, that he felt no pain whatsoever. Some legends also say that the specific type of cross was chosen because Andrew did not believe himself worthy to be killed using the same method Jesus had used for his sacrifice—the same reason St Peter chose to be crucified on a upside-down cross.

One of the oldest legends is that of St Lawrence, who was a deacon at the time, stationed in the city of Rome. The Saint is said to have been in charge of taking care of the poor, and was ordered by those in authority to give him their treasures. He brought the poor before them and said that these were the true treasures of the church. In retaliation for his impudence, his execution was ordered. In order to make it as painful as possible he was tied to a hot gridiron and slowly roasted to death. The story says that no matter how long it went on, it seemed not to bother him and he offered a quip near the end that he could be turned over as he was finished on one side.

Incorruptibility is when a corpse seems to not follow normal decomposition patterns and remains mostly fine. The skeptics argue that this is due to people secretly using embalming of different varieties, however, some cases are harder to explain and happened in cases where it seems decomposition should have actually been going faster. Some of the more famous cases include that of Saints Catherine of Genoa or Francis Xavier. The bodies of St Catherine of Laboure and St Bernadette are also said to be incorruptible, after being examined thoroughly it seems their bodies are pretty much in the same shape as they were when they died. St Bernadette is pictured above.

St Joseph of Cupertino is the patron saint of Astronauts, Pilots and pretty much anything to do with flying. This is because Joseph of Cupertino was known to have the ability to levitate. The stories say that his rapture in prayer was so great that he would get caught up during Mass and start levitating above the altar. Another legend says he was able to levitate carrying an enormous cross as if it were basically weightless. It was believed among those who knew him that his incredible holiness gave him incredible abilities.

This one is perhaps the most well known, but also incredibly controversial. There are many who say the claims of Stigmata are simply untrue. Others believe in the Stigmata, but argue over which cases are actually genuine and not faked. The most recent legend is that of Padre Pio, who is said to have received the stigmata, the same marks that would have been upon Jesus on the cross. Padre Pio (now St Pio of Pietrelcina) also allegedly had the ability to read the sins on a confessor’s soul and to bi-locate.

Bi-Location is one of the strangest paranormal phenomena. While many strange happenings are impossible to prove, some seem plausible. But how can you be in two places at once? Even if you could, it would seem a challenge to act in both places; your brain can only accomplish one task at a time. However, reports of this go back a long way. Among Catholic saints who have been seen in two places at once, include Saint Alphonsius Liguori and Saint Gerard Majella. One of the strangest features of many of these stories is that we never hear any evidence that the Saint in question was aware they were in two places at once. Some have then logically said that perhaps one of them was an apparition, but that would still make it quite a remarkable phenomenon.

You can follow Gregory Myers on twitter.

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Ten thousand Greek Mercenaries trapped deep in hostile territory—Persia. With their employer, the usurper to the Persian throne, Cyrus, dead in battle and the mercenaries’ general killed in a treacherous plot, the Ten Thousand elect the philosopher-soldier Xenophon to lead them back home. And that’s just the first five minutes (or first few pages if you’re reading Anabasis).

With supplies dwindling , Xenophon chose to lead the Ten Thousand home via the shorter path north to the Black Sea. To get there, the Ten Thousand crossed mountains, fought their way through Armenia, and navigated a series of clannish alliances and feuds. When the remaining Hellenes finally reached the Black Sea shores, Xenophon wrote that the soldiers screamed, “The sea, the sea!” And while that wasn’t the end of the Ten Thousand’s ordeal, for cinematic purposes, that’s one heck of a finale.

True, The Warriors (1979) brought the Anabasis to the screen in the form of stylized Coney Island gang-warfare. But as great as the Warriors’ adaptation was, a half-dozen leather vest wearing street toughs lacks the epic appeal of ten thousand Greek warriors fighting for their lives across the Persian Empire.

Memnon was a hired Greek general in service of the Persian king Darius. He just barely escaped his first encounter with Alexander the Great at the Battle of Granicus. Alexander’s army routed Memon’s mercenaries and Persian allies there, but like all great underdogs, Memnon quickly bounced back from defeat.

After Granicus, Memnon proved himself to be the only commander capable of even slowing down Alexander’s march east into Persia. Memnon recognized the futility of challenging Alexander in pitched battle, and instead commandeered the defense of strategic cities like Halicarnassus. Before the walls of Halicarnassus, Alexander’s advance came to a grinding halt and Memnon’s defenders allowed Alexander only the most Pyrrhic of victories. The Macedonians spent months struggling to control the city and still the citadel remained under Persian control when Memnon chose to withdraw and regroup his forces elsewhere.

Alexander’s greatest rival continued to challenge the Macedonian forces in the west from the Aegean Sea. Fortunately for Alexander, Memnon died suddenly from a fever before he could rally Sparta and other disgruntled city-states to throw off Macedonian rule and force Alexander to return to Greece.

The tenth century marked a turning point in Scandinavian-Byzantine relations. Rather than fight against one another, for the first time, Vikings in large numbers were hired into the Byzantine military. For the next several centuries, hired Norsemen wielding giant battle-axes made up the elite corps of the Byzantine emperor’s personal guard. To its own detriment, Hollywood has thus far ignored the action movie gold mine that is the Varangian Guard’s history.

If pressed to choose just one story of a Varangian Guardsman, the life of Harald Hardrada would be a good place to start.

In the early 11th century, an uprising forced a young Harald to flee Norway—the country his family once ruled. He found refuge, and employment, in Byzantium. For eight years, Harald fought in service of the emperor. He rose through the ranks and became captain of the guard. But when the Byzantine empress refused Harald’s request to marry her niece, Harald kidnapped the girl and escaped the empire with more wealth than any Viking had ever seen before. And when he returned to Norway, Harald found the kingdom welcome him with open arms.

You want soldiers of fortune? How about an entire city filled with and ruled by them? Fourteenth century Athens was that city. And the Catalans were those mercenaries.

The Catalan Company was formed to swing the balance in the war for Sicily. After that fight wound down, the Catalans hired themselves out to the Byzantine Empire, who desperately needed more bodies to replace the ones Turks were chopping up.

The Catalan Company achieved several victories for their new paymaster. Maybe too many though, as Catalan leadership tried to establish its own kingdom within the Byzantine Empire. Not surprisingly, the offended emperor had the Catalan general, Roger de Flor assassinated and fired the Catalan Company, who in 1311, drifted south to serve the Duke of Athens.

And that’s where the story really gets going, because after winning several victories for the Duke, the Catalans’ new employer decided to stiff the mercenaries. Big mistake. The Duke of Athens then attempted to pit the mercenaries against each other. Bigger mistake. Offers of land and noble titles could not sway the Catalan leaders to turn upon their comrades. The company rallied together, defeated the Duke’s army, and took control of Athens and the surrounding areas. The mercenaries ruled Athens for the next seventy years.

The 17th century was the century for vicious religious warfare. The century’s death toll from the Catholic-Protestant struggle for Europe’s soul makes the Crusades look like a friendly disagreement by comparison. By the end of the 1600s England and Ireland were center-stage in said struggle.

Patrick Sarsfield, an Irishman, was part of the losing effort following England’s Glorious Revolution to reestablish the Catholic James II on the English throne. Sarsfield’s leadership wasn’t enough to wring out a victory. But, his efforts forced the beleaguered King William III to sign a treaty with an unusual provision.

Sarsfield and thousands of Irish-Catholic soldiers were permitted to seek refuge in France. The exodus became known as “the flight of the wild geese.” And France was more than happy to hire Sarsfield and his experienced soldiers.

The “Irish Brigade” fought all over Europe for the French monarchy, hoping one day for the invasion that would bring them back to Ireland. The brigade never got that chance, though Sarsfield was honored as a marshal of France for his battlefield tenacity. Shortly after, Sarsfield was struck down by an English musket during fighting in the Netherlands. As he lay bleeding, Sarsfield supposedly said, “If this was only for Ireland,” and then died.

Steiner’s story was seemingly made for film. As a German teenager, Steiner spurned his family’s military roots and ran away from home to study for the priesthood. A tryst with a nun ended Steiner’s religious aspirations, though.

Steiner joined the French Foreign Legion one year later. Once again a romantic relationship altered Steiner’s trajectory. While stationed in Algeria, Steiner fell for an Algerian woman who prompted her future husband to join Anti-French dissidents.

The Legion didn’t take kindly to anti-government sympathies among its ranks and kicked Steiner out. Beginning in 1967, Steiner took up various insurgent causes across Africa.

He led Biafran rebels with some success against the Nigerian regime. Later, Steiner found more success leading Southern Sudanese separatists against dictatorship in Khartoum. Steiner’s early efforts to establish a Southern Sudanese resistance were taken up by subsequent leaders who used the guerrillas to affect the end of the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972). Sudanese government troops captured Steiner, though, and the mercenary served three years in various prisons before being released due to poor health.

Before the soldiering life seized him, Mike Hoare was an accountant. World War II intervened though, and the former accountant deployed first to India and then Burma as a British officer.

After the war ended, the potential for adventure in Africa drew Hoare away from London. He began a safari company in South Africa, which familiarized him with terrain and people across much of the continent. He put his connections and knowledge to use as a mercenary in the Congo in the 1960s and gained fame for helping rescue a group of European hostages held in Stanleyville.

Unfortunately, Hoare’s career suffered an ignominious end. In 1981, a still fervently anti-communist Hoare, attempted to depose the corrupt and communist leader of Seychelles. Hoare and 43 mercenaries flew into the country disguised as a beer-drinking club on a charity mission. Things deteriorated when customs found weapons in one of the mercenary’s luggage. A gun-battle ensued between the mercenaries and local police, before Hoare commandeered a passenger plane and most his men escaped to South Africa.

Hoare and his crew were convicted only of hijacking. And most of the mercenaries were released after a few months, while Hoare served three years of a ten-year sentence before being released.

Bob Denard was the prototypical soldier-of-fortune—shadowy origins, a menagerie of aliases, and questionable renegade tactics. Throughout the French mercenary’s career, wherever a state was failing, Denard could be found either propping up or dismantling the government roughly in accordance with France’s desires.

The Congo, Algeria, Yemen, Benin, Nigeria—Denard and his small band of mercs, in keeping with Cold War sensibilities, fought for whichever paymaster was most ardently anti-communist at the time. But out of all the strife-ridden states of the 20th century, Bob Denard made the biggest impact on the Comoros Islands.

For two decades (1975-1995), Denard played king-maker in the south-east African island nation. Four times during that span, Denard staged coups. And for most of the 1980s, Denard essentially ruled the country through a series of Comoran political puppets.

Denard had a hard time letting go after being ousted in 1989, and attempted one last coup in 1995 with just thirty fellow mercenaries. For once, the French government didn’t approve and returned Denard to France. After a brief prison spell, Denard lived out his years relatively peacefully, as French prosecutors were somewhat reluctant to strictly prosecute a man French special services admitted to utilizing.

Tim Spicer represents the “new” mercenary—the corporate mercenary. A British Army veteran who served in the Falklands and North Ireland among others, Spicer found that civilian retirement didn’t suit him.

Spicer proved an adept marketer and his fledgling freelance military company was awarded contracts in Papua New Guinea and Sierra Leone. Both operations ended in scandal and failure. At least one university case study cited Spicer’s actions in Sierra Leone as a perfect example of exactly what not to do in armed conflict.

As the scandals mounted, Spicer moved smoothly, changing company names and establishing new ones. In 2002 Spicer finally founded a winner with the incorporation of Aegis Defense Services. In just two years Aegis grew from security consulting for cruise ships to winning a massive 300 million dollar contract from the U.S. government to coordinate the thousands of military contractors in Iraq. It’s like the Social Network, but with more up-armored SUVs.

And sure enough, scandal found Spicer in Iraq. Not long after Aegis’ arrival, videos surfaced of “employees” targeting unarmed Iraqi civilians.

The plot was simple enough. Simon Mann, a former member of the British SAS, gained the support of wealthy financiers to recruit, equip, and direct a small army of mercenaries to execute a coup in the oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea. But before Mann’s group could replace Guinea’s regime with one more favorable to outside financial interests, the mercenaries had to actually get to Equatorial Guinea.

Mann’s mercenaries planned to fly from South Africa to Zimbabwe to acquire weapons before continuing on to Equatorial Guinea. But a near-total lack of confidentiality undid the operation.

When the mercenaries landed in Zimbabwe, local authorities were waiting in force to arrest the sixty-plus mercenaries and Mann for attempting to purchase weapons illegally. The fifteen man advance party in Guinea was easily apprehended the following day.

Mark Thatcher—yes, son of the Margaret Thatcher—was also implicated in the conspiracy and arrested. Thatcher got off light. Simon Mann, not quite so, but the mercenary was pardoned in 2009.

Mann’s story actually seems to have captured Hollywood’s interest. And a film adaptation of the so-called “Wonga Coup” may be in the works.

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In 2003, scientists were surprised to discover a massive circular stone structure underneath 30 feet (9 m) of water in the Sea of Galilee. The structure is comprised of basalt rocks, stacked in a cone shape and it is twice the size of Stonehenge in the UK. In their findings that were only recently published, archaeologists have noted that it shares some features of ancient communal burial sites found worldwide, but it may also be a ramp or a ceremonial structure. As they have never come across a structure of this size, with its specific features, they can only speculate as to its exact age, how it was constructed and how it was used.

The circular anomalies that can be seen off the coast of Florida, North Carolina, and Belize have been documented by enthusiasts and archaeologists alike. Even though they are found on a global scale, their true objective hasn’t been discovered so far – many believe they were used as an ancient type of burial mound. They are also very similar to stone structures that have been found in Saudi Arabia that can be seen on this website. It is believed that the underwater structures have been better preserved than those on dry land and may date back to ±8,000 BC. as those in Saudi Arabia have been dated to around 7,000 BC.

Divers discovered proof of Eastern Canada’s ancient past while taking part in a unique submarine project in 2005. They found the very curious stone structure at a depth of 40 feet (12 m) below the surface. It consists of a massive 1,000 lb (453 kg) elongated rock with an almost completely level surface resting on 7 baseball-sized stones, which in turn sits on a huge several thousand pound slab on top of a ledge. It was thought to be a natural formation until geologists and archaeologists looked at the images. The discovery of the man-made “rock cairn”, was deemed to be proven when an underwater archaeologist concluded the existence of three shims was enough proof that the structure was man-made.

Whether it is a UFO, a Nazi anti-submarine defense tool or simply a glacial rock that has been dragged across the sea floor, the discovery of the disc-shaped Baltic Sea anomaly (and its subsequent investigation in 2012) kept all the interested parties on the edge of their seats. Although Swedish explorers generally convinced everyone that it is a rock and not a UFO, their research has raised a lot of questions. Firstly, the rock didn’t have a silt-layer on it, which is usually the case when rocks have been lying still at the bottom of the ocean for any period of time. Furthermore, the 196 feet (60 m) wide rock seems to be covered by construction lines and boxes and it appears to be propped up by a 26 foot (8 m) high pillar.

Lake Baikal in southern Siberia is unique in many regards. It is the oldest, deepest and largest fresh water lake on earth. The sediment deposit on the bottom of the lake is more than 4 miles (7 km) deep and many of the fish species that thrive in its waters can be found nowhere else on earth. As its ice cover normally lasts into June, astronauts on the International Space Station were alarmed to see a very large circular area of thinned ice near the southern end of the lake in April 2009. To their astonishment, there was also another feature above a submarine ridge that divides the lake. Although the origin of the circles is a mystery, the distinct pattern would suggest that warmer water were brought to the surface, but hydrothermal activity has never been observed over the very deep water at the southern tip of the lake.

Even though Stonehenge in the UK is one of the most famous historical stone monuments in the world, it is not unique. Similar stone arrangements have been found worldwide. In 2007 while surveying the bottom of Lake Michigan with sonar, a team of underwater archaeologists discovered a series of stones aligned in a circle 40 feet (12 m) below the surface. One of the stones also seemed to feature a carving of a mastodon, an animal that has been extinct for 10, 000 years. If the site is validated, it would not be completely out of place, as other stone circles and petroglyph sites can be found in the vicinity.

A series of submerged structures discovered off the Cuban coast in 2001 captured the imaginations of archaeologists, researchers and Atlantis-hunters worldwide. Found by a company doing surveying work, the sonar images have shown symmetrical and geometric structures that covers an area of 200 ha (almost 2 square km) at depths between 2,000 and 2,460 feet (± 700 m). Skeptics believe the site is too deep to be manmade as it is estimated that it would have taken the structures 50,000 years to sink to their current depth. If conclusive proof can be found that these structures were indeed manmade, it would back up the Maya and local Yucatecos stories of an ancient island inhabited by their ancestors that vanished beneath the sea.

Since its discovery in 1987, the massive Yonaguni Monument off the coast of Japan has been a subject of debate between scientists, archaeologists and scholars. Many supporters claim that the site is natural but may have been modified by human hands like the rock-hewn terraces of Sacsayhuaman. If proven true, the site would have been modified during the last ice age – around 10,000 BC. Skeptics on the other hand believe the whole structure to be natural; that the drawings and carvings observed are nothing more than natural scratches. The fact remains that although Yonaguni’s features can be seen in many sandstone formations worldwide, the high concentration of questionable formations at one site is unlikely.

During expeditions in 2006 and 2007 the deeper waters to the west of Bimini were mapped using side-scan sonar and sub-bottom profiling. A number of rectangular features were discovered at a depth of 100 feet (30 m). They are all aligned in the same direction in straight, parallel lines. The researchers have claimed that the structures appear to be very much like those found off the coast of Cuba. At a later dive managed by the History Channel, the formations were better observed. There are about 50 stone piles, mainly 10 by 45 feet in size, and all at a depth that would place their age around 10,000 BC.

In May 2001, it was announced the ruins of an ancient city was discovered in the Gulf of Khambhat. The discovery was made with the help of sonar while routine pollution studies were being done. During the announcement, the site was described as evenly spaced dwellings, a drainage system, bath, granary and a citadel that pre-dates the Indus Valley Civilization. During follow-up investigations, the area was dredged and several artifacts were recovered. Among them were wood (dated ± 7,000 BC), stones described as hand tools, fossilized bones, pottery sherds and a tooth. Among the controversies are that all the supposed artifacts are stones of natural origin, that the “sherds” are natural geofacts and that the dredging could have allowed errant artifacts to be dug up along with the site’s, removing all credibility from the finds.

Hestie lives in Pretoria, South Africa. She is amazed by all the mysterious discoveries that dates back to 10,000 years ago

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The space race between the USSR and the USA—not to mention countless blockbuster space films—created a popular conception of astronauts as some of the most heroic, intrepid, and glamorous people in the world. This list will attempt to rank the ten most famous, inspirational, and influential astronauts of all time, who each changed the course of history by breaking down one or another of humankind’s barriers.

“I really don’t want to say goodbye to any of you people” (Before boarding the Challenger)

Christa is probably the most tragic figure on this list, and one who will always be in many of our older readers’ hearts.

When she was still a child she had been fascinated by the space program, but when she grew older she instead opted to become a teacher. In 1984, however, NASA announced that it was seeking a teacher to fly on the Space Shuttle Challenger. Christa applied, got the job, and took a leave of absence from teaching to train for the fulfillment of her childhood dream.

She and seven other astronauts on board were killed when the Challenger exploded only seventy-eight seconds after taking off from Cape Canaveral, in what remains to this day one of the most tragic accidents in NASA’s history.

“Houston, we’ve had a problem here”

It’s very possible that most people who hear this name (and know it) probably think of Tom Hanks, and not the real Jim Lovell. It’s also quite possible that if Lovell were a sportsman, he would be considered to be an extremely unlucky player—the one who never quite made the cut for the big game. He was the commander of the Apollo 13 mission, which suffered from a crippling system failure en route to the moon but was brought back safely. The mission was left unaccomplished, however, and once again Lovell had failed to make his dream come true.

Lovell was the first of only three people to fly to the moon twice—and the only one to have flown there twice without making a landing. He will always be something of a king without a crown.

“If you like waterbeds you’re going to love zero gravity…”

If there had been an exclusive marathon for astronauts, there’s no doubt that Valeri Polyakov would have won it. He experienced his first spaceflight as a researcher onboard Soyuz TM-6. The Soyuz linked up with the Mir space station, where Polyakov spent a whopping two hundred and forty days in space, studying the effects of micro-gravity on humans.

On January 8, 1994—this time as a doctor-cosmonaut on the Soyuz TM-18 flight—Polyakov returned to Mir. He spent the next 437 days in space, a world record that still stands today. During his stay on the space station, he conducted medical and physiological research. He orbited the earth 7,075 times and traveled 186,887,000 miles before landing back safely on March 22, 1995.

Dr. Polyakov left the Russian space service shortly after his return, after accumulating a then-record total of 678 days in space. Even though many of his records have been broken since then, Polyakov is famous as the first astronaut to make space his second home.

“I don’t know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets”

John Glenn made history in 1962, when he became the first American to orbit the Earth. But even before that, John had been a war hero who had flown fifty-nine combat missions during WWII. In 1959, Glenn took on a new challenge after he was selected for the U.S. Space Program. He and six others—including fellow legend Alan Shepard—were put through incredibly difficult training, and together they became known as the “Mercury Seven.”

Glenn orbited the Earth three times during his mission, which lasted nearly five hours. After this success, he became an American hero and a household name. He was feted with parades, and received numerous honors. President John F. Kennedy even awarded him the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and the two eventually became personal friends. It is believed that Kennedy was the one who encouraged Glenn to consider a life in the public service. After a few failed attempts, he was elected to the US Senate in 1974.

“Exploration is wired into our brains. If we can see the horizon, we want to know what’s beyond”

Buzz Aldrin is probably the second-most popular member of Apollo 11, and was one of the first people to walk on the moon. Aldrin—along with flight commander Neil Armstrong—made the historic Apollo 11 moonwalk, becoming the first two humans to set foot on the moon. They spent a total of twenty-one hours on the moon’s surface, and returned with forty-six pounds of moon rocks.

The historic walk was broadcast around the globe to an estimated six hundred million people—the largest TV audience in history. Upon his safe return to Earth, Buzz was decorated with the Presidential Medal of Freedom and his own star on the Hollywood walk of fame.

“I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space”

Leonov is a legendary Soviet cosmonaut, and the first man to leave the spacecraft and take a spacewalk. He left the Voskhod 2 spacecraft and spent twelve minutes floating alongside, attached by a tether. He practiced free-fall maneuvers, made observations, and even took a short motion picture. When he attempted to return to the capsule, he found that his suit had over-pressurized to the point where he couldn’t fit though the hatch. He had to release the excess air before he could get inside.

Leonov is the only surviving member of the legendary Voskhod programme, and his legacy can be spotted in Arthur C. Clarke’s novel, “2010: Odyssey Two.”

“I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all”

Shepard enjoys the honor of being the first—and so far the only—man in history who played golf on the moon. Unfortunately for Shepard, this is not a sports list; such an accomplishment can’t help his ranking, but it still makes him pretty awesome.

Early in 1961, NASA chose Shepard over Glenn and Grissom, the two other finalists, to be the first American in space. After his historic flight, Shepard’s thirst for adventure remained unquenched, and looked forward to future missions. On January 31, 1971, Apollo 14 blasted off from Cape Kennedy, nearly ten years after Shepard’s first space flight. He commanded the Apollo 14 mission, piloting the lander to what was the most accurate landing of all the Apollo missions. He became the fifth person to walk on the moon, and the only member of the Mercury Seven to do so. Alan Shepard will be remembered both as the first American in space; as one of a handful of moon-walking pioneers; and certainly as the first human being to play sports on another planet.

“If women can be railroad workers in Russia, why can’t they fly in space?”

Valentina Tereshkova was the first woman in space, orbiting the Earth in June, 1963, at the young age of twenty-six. Her excited and lively voice was broadcast to people all around the world: “It is I, Seagull!”

The image of a seagull soaring on high seemed to fit the young cosmonaut perfectly, and thereafter she came to be known affectionately as “Seagull” by people throughout the world. Valentina Tereshkova was an ordinary cotton mill worker, who managed to accomplish something quite extraordinary.

According to the Soviet propaganda machine, her flight showed the world that in a socialist state, women could achieve just as much as men—and that they were even encouraged to reach for the stars. The reality, however, was that Tereshkova’s three days in space were nothing more than a political stunt to upstage the Americans; no more Soviet women would enter space until 1982, nearly twenty years later.

“That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind”

Neil Armstrong was one of the most influential figures of the twentieth century. As a young man, he took an active part in the Korean War, and received the Korean Service Medal. After his service he returned to University, eventually graduating with a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering. In later life, he took a teaching position in the Department of Aerospace Engineering at the University of Cincinnati.  

These are all fair accomplishments, of which any person would be proud. But they’re nothing compared to the journey that made Armstrong famous around the world. As we all know, he became the very first human to ever walk on the moon, on July 21, 1969.

“”I looked and looked and looked but I didn’t see God” (Disputed)

Yuri Gagarin is the prototype of all future spacemen—and except for that of Neil Armstrong, his name is probably the most recognized of all astronauts to this day. He became the first human to enter space, and the first to orbit the Earth—giving a huge boost to the Soviet space program, and intensifying the space race with the United States.

After the flight, Gagarin became a global celebrity, and one of the very few Soviets who was allowed to tour the West. He visited numerous countries, such as Germany, Italy, Canada, Brazil, Japan, and China, with the aim of promoting the Soviet Union’s accomplishment of putting the first human in space.

He was greeted everywhere as a hero, despite the petty politics of the Cold War. Three months after the Vostok 1 mission, he even visited the United Kingdom, where he was worshiped like no other Soviet in history. He remains the most decorated astronaut of all time, having received honors and medals from more than twenty-five different countries.

Theodoros II is a collector of experiences and a law graduate. He loves History, Sci-Fi culture, European politics, and exploring the worlds of hidden knowledge. His ideal trip in an alternative world would be to the lost city of Atlantis. His biggest passions include writing, photography, and music. You can view his photostream here.

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Back before he was a United States president, William Henry Harrison was a general. During the War of 1812, he established Fort Meigs just south of Toledo, Ohio, and successfully defended it against British attacks for over a year before it was finally abandoned and burned down. Because after all, who needs a fort proven to be highly defendable?

These days, people claim to hear cannon fire, muskets, and the sounds of fifes and drums being played, and no one can explain exactly what is causing those sounds. Still more people have stated they hear footsteps and, when walking around outside, have seen apparitions staring at them through the windows. It’s believed that over 500 dead Americans, British, and Indian soldiers are buried in unmarked graves around and underneath the fort, which was reconstructed and opened to the public in 1974.

If you have ever read The Last of the Mohicans, or at least watched one of the movie versions, you are familiar with Fort William Henry. Located on Lake George in upstate New York, it was a fort used in the French and Indian War. Of course there is a chance you may have become familiar with the fort through another means: an episode of the television show Ghost Hunters, since rumor has it that Fort William Henry is one of the most haunted military sites in America.

There are ghost tours offered at Fort William Henry, with reports over the years of lights turning on and off as well as the sounds of unexplained footsteps, as well as wind chimes sounding despite the absence of any actual wind. The fort was home to a massacre during the skirmish between Indians and British soldiers, with some believing that the spirits from both sides of the conflict still roam the grounds.

Going back to the War of 1812, but this time hopping across the border and into Canada, we move now to Stoney Creek. Located in Ontario, Stoney Creek was home to Mary Jones Gage and her family. Her husband, who had fought for the British, had died during the American Revolution, and then in 1813 invading American troops stormed the home with the hopes of taking it as their headquarters. The next day, the Battle of Stoney Creek broke out with the Gage family holed up in the basement of their posh home.

Unlike most of our other entries on this list, the Stoney Creek home once owned by the Gage family is not said to be haunted only by deceased soldiers but by Mary Jones Gage herself, whose family had been at one point held captive by American forces during that fateful battle. These days it is believed Gage still haunts the grounds. She died in 1841, and before she could be laid to rest her body and headstone disappeared. In addition to Gage haunting the actual home, there have been reports of misty figures who appeared to be soldiers marching in the area, apparently headed to battle.

In 1066, the Battle of Hastings took place with King Harold II and 7,500 of his Saxons defending against the invading Norman conquest of William, Duke of Normandy. William defeated Harold, and an abbey was built on Senlac Hill with the high altar said to have been placed on the very spot where King Harold perished. Apparently building an abbey on the site of that much bloodshed was a bad idea, considering that over the years there have been numerous bizarre reports.

Apparently, most of the sightings are of ghostly monks rather than soldiers, with visitors claiming to have seen re-enactors dressed in robes wandering the grounds only to be later informed that there were no re-enactors employed at the time. There are some other claims, such as the high altar bleeding and a soldier marching through the Great Hall carrying a sword, but those tales are considerably less substantiated.

Built in 1867 in San Angelo, Texas, as an outpost to protect the frontier settlers in West Texas, Fort Concho operated for more than 20 years. Among the commanders who served there was Pecos Bill himself, William Shafter, and today it is considered an historical landmark sitting on 1,600 acres. It saw numerous battles over the years, and its soldiers helped put down the Comanchero Movement, which saw illegal profiteering between Mexican and American traders.

These days, however, it is more famous for being haunted by several ghosts, including the spirits of James Cunningham, George Dunbar, Edith Grierson, and Ranald MacKenzie. MacKenzie was the most famous commander at Fort Concho, and visitors claim to have seen him appear as an apparition throughout the fort, particularly in Officers Row, where he lived for the duration of his time at Fort Concho. The other three, including the spirit of 12 year old Grierson, have been spotted throughout the facility over the years.

The Battle of Marston Moor was fought on July 2, 1644 during the First English Civil War. 4,000 members of the Royalist side were killed in what was a decisive victory for the Parliamentarians, with Oliver Cromwell leading the victors. Cromwell used the Old Hall in the village was used as a base of operations by Cromwell, and according to legend, he’s there to this day, haunting the grounds.

Oh, and that’s not even mentioning the fact that, apparently, the spirits of the Royalists who were slain in battle still roam the area. There have been reports over the years of phantom soldiers marching in Marston Moor, including possible sightings in 1932, 1968, and 1992, when people reportedly observed long haired, finely dressed soldiers marching along the roads.

The Battle of Cold Harbor took place from May 31 to June 12, 1864 during the American Civil War, and is considered one of the bloodiest battles in United States history. Union general Ulysses Grant led his men against Confederate general Robert E. Lee in what would turn into a bloodbath, with the Confederates decimating Grant’s troops through the course of the two weeks of fighting. It was one of the last battles for Grant, and one that he would call one of his largest regrets.

The Cold Harbor battlefield is also believed to be one of the most haunted military sites in America, with locals reportedly hearing sounds of the battle to the point where cannon fire, gun fire, and the sounds of screaming men are sometimes reported in the local newspaper. Tourists claim to still smell gunpowder when they visit the historical landmark, and both the Cold Harbor National Cemetery and the Garthright House, located across the street, are said to be haunted by the spirit of a young girl.

The Dieppe Raid, also known as Operation Jubilee, was a precursor to the Normandy Invasion during World War II. Consisting of primarily Canadian soldiers along with some British and a few Americans, the operation commenced on August 19, 1942 and between the hours of 5:00 a.m., when it began, and 2:00 p.m., when the battle ended, the attack proved to be a failure for the Allies. The casualties numbered more than 4,000 before the Allied forces retreated back across the English Channel.

Fast forward to 1951, when a pair of tourists were vacationing in Puys, nearby to Dieppe, and at 4:00 a.m. they were awakened by what sounded like gunfire, shouting voices, and other sounds of battle coming from the beach nearby their hotel. For the next three hours, they listened to the events unfold and documented all of the sounds they heard, and later the Society for Paranormal Research determined that their notes matched up almost to the second to the Dieppe Raid on that exact same beach.

The American Civil War was an incredibly bloody affair, to put it mildly. However, nowhere was this more evident than at the Battle of Antietam, which took place on September 17, 1862 on Antietam Creek in Maryland. The battle lasted four hours in this tiny area, and the casualties were astonishing. In that one small span of time, more than 23,000 men were killed, wounded, or missing in action. Today, the small road near Antietam Creek where the battle took place is known as Bloody Lane, for very good reason.

Today, the sound of gunfire and smell of gunpowder is often reported at Bloody Lane, and visitors have claimed to have both seen and heard spirits in the area. Virtually everything surrounding the Battle of Antietam has had reports of haunting, from Burnside’s Bridge, where Ambrose Burnside’s Union soldiers pushed back the Confederates and where the dead were quickly buried in shallow, unmarked graves, to the nearby St. Paul Episcopal Church, which was used as a Confederate hospital in the aftermath of the battle. According to the local legends, the floorboards of the church are so stained in blood that not even sandpaper will take it out.

If Antietam was the bloodiest single battle in the American Civil War, Gettysburg is the most famous and, over the course of several days, became one of its bloodiest with more than 50,000 men killed, wounded, or missing. Fought from July 1 through July 3, 1863 in the small town in southeastern Pennsylvania, the Battle of Gettysburg is viewed as the turning point for the Union in the Civil War.

And in the 140 years since the battle was fought, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone who visited to Gettysburg who does not have some spooky story to share. At the Daniel Lady Farm, which served as the Confederate field hospital, it is believed that more than 10,000 deceased soldiers still haunt the grounds. Cashtown Inn, where the first soldier in the Battle of Gettysburg was killed, also has some bizarre tales, and the owners claim to have photographic evidence of spirits on the premises, as well as guests reporting hearing knocking on doors, lights turning on and off, and doors locking and unlocking themselves. Those are only a small sampling of the alleged ghostly sightings, which have also been reported at the Gettysburg Hotel and the Baladerry Inn, as well as on the battlefields themselves.

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In the past we’ve talked about some of the greatest impostors in history, but here’s another installment for your viewing pleasure. These are 10 of the greatest impostors and con men of the 20th century.

Our first entry begins in the final years of the 1800′s and carries over to the leading decade of the 20th century. Cassie Chadwick was born Elizabeth Bigsley in 1857, and it wasn’t long before she embarked on a long and incredibly successful con career. It only took fourteen years to lead to her first arrest—she was picked up after forging checks in Ontario under the claim they they were inherited from a long lost British uncle. The court released her shortly, claiming her to be insane—a dubious accomplishment for a 14-year-old.

As the years progressed, so did Cassie’s schemes. In 1882 she married her first husband, masquerading as a clairvoyant named Madame Lydia DeVere. The high profile wedding, however, brought her past victims out of the woodwork and to her front door, demanding payment for the money she had stolen from them. The marriage lasted less than a year.

Fifteen years and three husbands later, Cassie Chadwick embarked on her most ambitious scam to date, and the one that turned her into a legend—she convinced the world that she was an illegitimate daughter of Andrew Carnegie, the ludicrously wealthy steel and railroad mogul. Over the next eight years, she scammed up to $20 million in bank loans under Carnegie’s name—while the banks themselves were too afraid to ask Carnegie to vouch for the loans for fear of stirring up controversy over his “illegitimate daughter.” The entire scheme collapsed around her in 1904 when she was arrested after one bank called her bluff. She was given 14 years in jail, but in 1907 she died due to heart complications.

It’s hard to fault a man for trying, no matter how devious their intentions may be. And it’s hard to find a man who tried harder than Stanley Clifford Weyman. Unlike most impostors, Weyman wasn’t in it for the money—he wanted the adventure, famously stating: “One man’s life is a boring thing. I lived many lives. I’m never bored.”

In between impersonating navy and military officials, journalists, and the actual U.S. Secretary of State, he also masterminded a meeting between an Afghani princess and Warren Harding, the President of the U.S. See, in 1921, Afghanistan and Britain were in talks to negotiate a peace treaty, and Princess Fatima, of Afghanistan, was visiting the U.S. However, the U.S. government wasn’t acknowledging her official presence.

So what did Weyman do? He visited Princess Fatima under the guise of a Liaison Officer for the State Department and promised that he would arrange a meeting between her and President Harding. All he asked was that she supply $10,000 as a complimentary present to the State Department. But here, where most con men would have taken the money and run, Weyman actually followed through on his promise—he used the $10,000 for first class transport and accommodations for the princess, then lied his way up through the chain of command at the White House until he got to the president himself. When the press released his photo beside the princess and the president, he was recognized and arrested. Why did he do it? Just to see if he could.

It’s rare that an impersonator will manage to make a positive impact on the world and save the lives of the people who come to depend on him. Most impostors are after money or, in the case of Stanley Weyman, excitement. For Ferdinand Demara, impersonation was about filling in gaps, picking up the pieces where a job was needed, whether he had the training for it or not.

Early in his “career,” Demara was a soldier in the military. Not happy with where that was taking him, he decided to fake his own suicide in 1942 and assumed the name of Robert French, then began teaching college psychology at a Pennsylvania university. Every now and then he would move to a different university position under a variety of names. Eventually, though, he was caught and given jail time—not for impersonating anyone, but for deserting the army years earlier.

Out of jail and with the headlines of the Korean War plastered across newspapers, Demara decided to assume the name of an acquaintance, a surgeon named Joseph Cyr. Under his new identity he got a job on the Canadian destroyer HMCS Cayuga and shipped off to Korea. Unfortunately, he turned out to be the only surgeon on the ship, and ended up performing more than sixteen major surgeries—with no formal training. All of his patients recovered. In the biography of Demara’s life, The Great Impostor, Demara claimed that he simply read a surgery textbook before operating.

George Dupre is an interesting case, in that his only real impersonation was of himself. However, the history he actually had and the history he claimed to have were so different that he inadvertently became one of the greatest Canadian war heroes in the years following WWII.

After the war ended, Dupre began traveling across Canada as a public speaker, describing his missions as a spy for the Special Operations Executive, a legendary espionage organization sometimes referred to as the Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Dupre wove intricate tales of life behind enemy lines in occupied Paris, working with the underground resistance to overthrow the Nazi Gestapo. He described his harrowing experience as a prisoner of the Gestapo undergoing weeks of physical and psychological torture yet refusing to divulge any information. His story became so widespread that a book was written about it, The Man Who Wouldn’t Talk, and Dupre became an international sensation.

Except that none of it ever happened. With the fame from the book came testimonies from people who had actually served with Dupre in the war. The truth was, Dupre spent the entire war behind a desk in London. It turned out that Dupre had just embellished a few stories for fun, and somehow the entire thing spiraled out of control. Aside from the fame though, Dupre never benefited from the book deal and the public talks—he donated all his proceeds to Scouts Canada. His biography was reclassified as fiction.

Most of the impostors on this list got their start at a young age—few of them achieved notoriety before the age of twenty. David Hampton is now considered one of the youngest successful con artists and impersonators, and his story has since been adapted into the play and film Six Degrees of Separation. His gimmick: impersonating actor Sidney Poitier’s son (Sidney Poitier actually has six daughters and zero sons).

In 1983, at the age of nineteen, David Hampton tried to get into a Manhattan night club with a friend. The bouncers refused to let them in, but when Hampton came back later and told them he was Sidney Poitier’s son, they immediately showed him to the VIP section. Thus, an identity was born. Hammond took to showing up at first class restaurants, claiming that he was meeting his “father.” He would dine, then act disappointed when his father never arrived while simultaneously signing the check in Poitier’s name.

Soon he began to target the wealthy citizens of Manhattan—including Calvin Klein and Gary Sinise, among others. Hampton would introduce himself as David Poitier, then make up a story about how he had been mugged and needed a place to stay until his father arrived the next day. In one of these homes he stole an address book, and took to calling first, claiming that he was a friend of their son/daughter from college.

After Hampton’s story became famous in Six Degrees in 1990, he began traveling the country under various other personas (“David Poitier” wouldn’t exactly fly anymore), playing the impersonation game until 1993, when he passed away from AIDS.

Christian Gerhartsreiter is a German who moved to the U.S. in 1979 in the hopes of getting a job as an actor. His plan worked—but not exactly in the normal sense. A mere eighteen years old with no money, no connections, and no legal visa to be in the States, he decided that the best thing to do would be to get married and obtain a green card through his wife. So that’s what he did—he found a young woman named Amy Duhnke and told her that if he were sent back to Germany he’d be conscripted into the German army to fight the Russians (this was during the Cold War). She agreed to marry him, but the day after the wedding Christian skipped out on the honeymoon and pointed his compass towards California, where his true calling lay.

His true calling, of course, was to become Clark Rockefeller—the faux multimillionaire social butterfly who spent the next two decades—from around 1985 to 2006—claiming to be a member of the illustrious Rockefeller family. The plan worked exceedingly well until his wife Sandra Boss (of 11 years we should add), began to get suspicious that he was not, in fact, a Rockefeller. The married couple had been living exclusively on Sandra’s income the entire time, while “Clark” pursued high profile social connections.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Sandra Boss discovered the lie, filed for divorce in 2006, and left with their daughter. Two years later, Clark was arrested for kidnapping his daughter in Boston, sparking a whirlwind investigation into this mysterious German’s true identity. As it turned out, he also killed a guy.

Stanley Kubrick is an American director who’s something of a legend among movie buffs. The words “greatest director in history” have been thrown around, along with the words “not British” and “heavily bearded.” Those last two are particularly important, because in the early 90′s the reclusive Kubrick began to show up in social clubs in London—only now, he was clean shaven and decidedly English. The “new” Kubrick was actually a man named Alan Conway, who had taken to using the name for the social status it imparted.

Despite the changes in his physical appearance, and reportedly having next to no knowledge of any of Kubrick’s films, Alan Conway (real name Eddie Alan Jablowsky) managed to keep the charade going. Since the real Kubrick hadn’t been seen in public more than a handful of times in the past 15 years, it couldn’t have been terribly difficult—and even people who had actually met Kubrick in real life were fooled by the act. The film critic Frank Rich was famously convinced and, based on Conway’s behavior, came to the conclusion that Kubrick was gay (which Conway was).

Unfortunately, this story would be hilarious if it wasn’t quite so tragic. Conway was a violent alcoholic, according to his son, and his impersonations were closer to fanatical delusions than any carefully calculated plan. Conway passed away in 1998 from heart problems.

In the past, masquerading as one of the captains of industry seemed to be the surest way to a quick million. These days, the Hollywood faces are the new American royalty. In 1992, Tehran native Anoushirvan Fakhran came to the States on a student visa, and spent the next several years living a lavish lifestyle, sprinkled with privileges usually reserved for celebrities and visiting royalty. That’s because nobody knew him by the name of Anoushirvan—to everyone who knew him, he was Jonathan Taylor Spielberg, nephew of director Stephen Spielberg.

In fact, he had even gone so far as to officially change his name to Spielberg in 1997. Then, in 1998, an anonymous woman placed a call to Paul VI high school in Fairfax, Virginia. She claimed to represent Steven Spielberg, and said that his nephew would be filming a movie in the area and wanted to research high school life. So the school allowed “Jonathan” to attend free of tuition, and gave him an official transfer from his previous school, the fictitious Beverly Hills Private School for Actors. Jonathan Spielberg was now a student.

During this time, Jonathan and his mother were living in a posh apartment in Fairfax Village, and Jonathan drove a BMW to school, often parking in the school principal’s reserved space. Nobody complained; he was related to a celebrity. Eventually though, the scheme backfired—Jonathan stopped attending classes, and the school tried to reach Steven Spielberg to find out why. Jonathan was arrested and sentenced to 11 months in jail for forging documents.

Steven Russell is probably closer to an escape artist than an impostor, but the means through which he masterminded his many prison escapes are the stuff of legend. In 1990, Russell lost his job and, instead of searching for new work, faked an accident and sued the company. This landed him his first prison sentence, and his first chance to escape. In 1992, Russell impersonated a prison guard by changing his clothes and just walking right out of the prison.

On his second arrest, which was for embezzling nearly $1 million from a medical company, Russell was given a $950,000 bail—he couldn’t pay it, so he simply called the courthouse, told them he was a judge, and reduced the bail to $45,000, which he promptly paid. Unfortunately, he was quickly tracked down again once the error was discovered, and Russell found himself facing a 40 year sentence for the previous embezzlement charges.

So he escaped again—this time by coloring his prison uniform with several dozen green markers until it resembled surgical scrubs. Again, he walked right out the front door. And again, he was quickly found and arrested. So this time Russell typed up fake medical records on a typewriter in his cell, and, through judicious use of laxatives, convinced the prison guards he was dying of AIDS. Then he called the prison and said that he was a doctor looking for volunteers to test a new AIDS treatment. When the prison warden announced the news, Russell promptly volunteered.

The next time he was caught, he faked a heart attack and was taken to a hospital under guard of FBI agents. So he asked to use the phone—and called the very agents guarding him under the guise of an FBI detective to let them know that they no longer needed to guard him. Russell is currently back in prison, looking forward to his release date in the year 2140. The film I love you Phillip Morris is based on his exploits.

The Rockefellers just can’t catch a break. Before the German Clark Rockefeller, there was Christophe Rocancourt, the “French Rockefeller.” Christophe started his scams big, and kept the ball rolling his entire career—his first scam was faking a property deed in Paris, and then selling that deed for $1.4 million.

With his wallet freshly stuffed, he then hopped the ocean to the United States and began fraternizing with the Hollywood fat cats, claiming to be a French relative of the Rockefellers. Through this alias (and others), he convinced multiple people to fund his fictitious projects. Most of the time, he never even had to make any concrete claims—he would just show up at a party and make a vague mention of his mother, who might happen to be an actress one week, or a famous producer the next week.

In 2006, he was interviewed by Dateline, and claimed that he had, all said and done, scammed about $40 million in his lifetime. His modus operandi was to convince someone wealthy that he was working on a large investment, but needed some capital to get it off the ground. The person would give Rocancourt the money, and Rocancourt would disappear. He famously convinced Jean Claude Van Damme, the action star, to produce a movie of his.

He was arrested for fraud in 1998, but has continued his scams well into the 21st century. As of 2009 he was in jail in Vancouver, where he told reporters, “I never steal. Never. I lied, but I never stole.”

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