10 Little-Known Stories From The US Civil War

The US Civil War was a horrible, brutal war. Men raised their weapons against their countrymen, and they slaughtered one another in one of the most violent and devastating conflicts in US history. By the end, 625,000 people had died—more American casualties than World War I and World War II combined.

Nobody imagined that it would be so devastating. When the war began, many thought it would be over in the blink of an eye. Some treated it like a game or a spectator sport. There are some little-known stories that show what people thought this war was going to be, and how the dark truth of what was really happening set in.
Featured image credit: 37thtexas.org

1#Congress Got In A Drunken Fistfigh

In 1858, the US Capitol gave the world an early preview of the war to come. Congress was debating the statehood of Kansas. Their proposed constitution permitted slavery and forbade free blacks from living in the state.

The Northern Republicans were furious. Congress spent days arguing about it. As the debate went on, extending past midnight, they started drinking heavily just to keep from falling asleep.

It was 1:30 AM when Laurence Keitt, a Democrat who was drunk out of his mind, stood up, pointed in Republican Galusha Grow’s face, and slurred out, “You’re a black Republican puppy!” Grow snapped back, “No Negro driver shall crack his whip over me!” Lunging at Grow, Keitt yelled that he was going to choke Grow, and the whole building erupted into a vicious brawl.

There was an effort to calm it down. The Speaker of the House tried banging the house mace, but it only made things worse. Another congressman, misunderstanding what the Speaker was trying to do, thought this meant that weapons were fair game. The congressman grabbed a metal spittoon and smashed it into someone’s head.

The fight didn’t stop until someone grabbed William Barksdale in a headlock and started punching him in the skull. Barksdale broke free, but his hairpiece didn’t come with him. Embarrassed, he picked it off the ground and put the wig on his head backward.

The politicians burst into laughter, and everyone finally calmed down. The fighting stopped, and they managed to come to an agreement—pacified by a man’s wig.

2#An Audience Came Out To Watch One Of The First Battles

Soon, war broke out. On July 2, 1861, 30,000 Union soldiers marched to Centreville, Virginia, waiting to fight the First Battle of Bull Run (also known by the Confederate soldiers as the Battle of First Manassas).

The battle was only a few miles from Washington, DC, and for the people there, it sounded like a good show. This was still in the early days of the war, and they were sure that the Union would have a quick, bloodless victory. A lot of civilians figured there’d be no harm in going out to watch the war.

As dawn broke, a caravan of carriages and wagons made their way to the battlefield, where they set themselves on the side of a ridge to watch. One woman even brought opera glasses. As the battle began, she peered through her glasses for a good view of the fighting, letting out delighted little cries of “That is splendid!” and “Oh my! Is that not first-rate?”

Having an audience got people excited. A few soldiers walked over to the spectators and gave a running commentary on everything that was happening. Meanwhile, a few civilians became so worked up that they tried to sneak onto the battlefield.

Soon, though, it became clear that the Confederates were winning. A cavalry charge overran some civilians who had gotten too close. Some ended up as prisoners, and others didn’t make it out alive. As panic broke out, the audience had to flee and escape back to the capital.

3#The King Of Siam Offered War Elephants To Lincoln

Before the war, King Rama IV of Siam found out that the US did not have elephants. This, King Rama IV felt, was a tragedy and one that needed to be righted as soon as possible.

When the Civil War began, Rama IV jumped on the opportunity. He wrote to Abraham Lincoln, offering to send him as many war elephants as he required. These, King Rama IV explained, would not only help him crush the Confederates but could also be put to work on construction projects or just set loose in the forests.

Lincoln did his best to be polite. “I appreciate most highly Your Majesty’s tender of good offices,” he wrote back. “Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant.”

It’s easy to imagine, though, that a few years further in, Lincoln was probably regretting not putting a few war elephants on the front lines.

4#The Union Was Obsessed With Coffee

For the Union, coffee was a big deal. In fact, the word “coffee” shows up in Union letters and diaries more often than any other word—including words like “war,” “bullet,” “Lincoln,” and “mother.”

Coffee was a more regular part of soldier life than fighting. Every soldier was given a ration of 16 kilograms (36 lb) of coffee per year, and they drank it every morning. One rifle company even made a rifle that had a coffee grinder in the stock. Since most troops only fought two weeks per year, the coffee grinder ended up being used more than the bullets.

The Confederates, on the other hand, hardly had any coffee. Union blockades kept the Confederates from getting their daily caffeine fix. Some Confederate soldiers were so desperate for a java fix that they would brew potatoes and rye until they turned black, just to have a caffeine-free, bitter drink that the soldiers could pretend was coffee.

Caffeine actually made a strategic difference in the war. One Union general would time his attacks based on when his men were most buzzed on caffeine, convinced that the extra rush from coffee gave his men a fighting advantage.

5#One Of The Main Causes Of Death Was Diarrhea

The men might have spent most of their time waiting instead of fighting, but that didn’t mean they were safe. The biggest threat in the Civil War wasn’t the enemy—it was disease. The squalid, unsanitary conditions of war let illnesses run wild. By the end, sickness had killed nearly twice as many men as bullets.

The biggest killer was diarrhea, especially from dysentery. Nearly as many men died in a fit of diarrhea as in combat. It was such a major problem that they set a code of battle: If any man was “attending to the imperative calls of nature,” it was forbidden to shoot.

An expression still used today came from this: “You have to have good guts to be a soldier.” When the Civil War soldiers first started saying it, they weren’t talking about bravery. In this war, anyone who couldn’t hold off diarrhea would have a short life.

6#A Battle Stopped To Watch A Fistfight

During a battle at Saunders Field, the Union and Confederate forces stopped shooting to watch two men duke it out.

The Union forces had opened fire on the Confederates, and in a panic, one of the men jumped into a gully for cover. When he got inside, though, he realized that he wasn’t alone. A Union soldier was already hiding inside, and now two men on opposite sides were cowering in a hole together.

The men started bickering. Each one was pretty sure that he had captured the other, but neither could agree on who had captured whom. So they decided to settle it the old-fashioned way. They would have—in their words—“a regular fist and skull fight.”

The sight of two soldiers climbing out of a gully and beating each other in the head was so baffling that both armies stopped shooting. For a moment, both sides just watched as the men beat the hell out of each other.

The Confederate soldier knocked down the Union soldier. He gave in, and the two men, agreeing on the winner, went back into hiding. As soon as they did, the war started up once more. The two men hid in the gully together until the battle was over. Then, true to his word, the Union soldier presented himself as a prisoner.

7#People Bought Tickets To Watch Prisoners Of War

One of the most brutal prison camps in the war was Elmira Prison. It had been built to hold 5,000 Confederate soldiers. But as the war raged on and more people came in, the prison started getting more than it could handle. Soon, there were nearly 10,000 people crammed inside its walls.

The civilians couldn’t help but be a little curious, and it didn’t take long for someone to capitalize on it. A tower was set up across the street. For 15 cents, you could climb to the top, take a seat with some peanuts and lemonade, and watch the prisoners.

The prisoners started to realize they were being watched and, being bored out of their minds, began putting on shows to make it worthwhile. Some would juggle or do acrobatics to impress the audience watching them from above.

The guards put a stop to their antics, though. Soon, there was nothing to do but wither away. Disease spread through Elmira so viciously that a quarter of the prisoners died. But the audiences kept coming out, paying a nickel and a dime to watch men waste away and die.

8#Thousands Of Soldiers Held Massive Snowball Fights

One morning in 1864, the Confederate Army woke up to 13 centimeters (5 in) of snow. The men rushed out and fought what may be one of the biggest snowball fights in history.

Up to 20,000 men were involved. The Tennessee and Georgian soldiers divided themselves into two armies, built up arsenals of snowballs, and charged at each other. On Tennessee’s side, Colonel Gordon even rode out on horseback, holding up a dirty handkerchief like it was a flag and pelting his men with snow.

Other fights broke out among the Confederate forces. Men lined up, using all their military training, and launched volleys of snowballs at the other side. Some who ran too close to the enemy line were dragged over to have their shirts stuffed with snow.

The boys, after all, were young—some only 17 years old. When the snow cleared, they picked up their weapons again and marched for another battle, where more than just a shirt full of snow awaited.

9#Southern Children Were Told That A Yankee Had Shot Santa Claus

By 1863, the Union blockades had made life in the South insufferable. Prices were skyrocketing, and it was a struggle for families to afford food. As Christmas came around, parents were faced with the harsh reality that they would not be able to get anything for their children.

They had to come up with an explanation, and some of them were pretty harsh. Some parents told their kids that Santa Claus wasn’t coming because he had been shot by Yankee soldiers.

Other parents were a bit gentler, of course. Many told their kids that Santa couldn’t make it through the Union blockade. It affected the kids. In her memoir, one woman wrote that, as a little girl during the Civil War, she would spend her time staring at maps, trying to find a path that Santa Claus could use to break through.

10#An Entire University Signed Up And Didn’t Come Home

When the Civil War began, the University of Mississippi had 139 students. Of them, 135 signed up to fight for the Confederate Army. The school was put to use as a war hospital, and all but four members of its student body joined together to form Company A of the 11th Mississippi.

Not a single member of the company, nicknamed the “University Greys,” made it back unharmed. They group had a rare 100 percent casualty rate, with every man either coming back wounded or never making it home at all.

The Greys were even supposed to fight in First Battle of Bull Run. Their train, however, was delayed, and most of the men didn’t make it. Even without fighting, though, Colonel Moore became one of their first casualties by accidentally shooting himself in the foot.

The rest of the group kept fighting and nearly made it to the end. But on the last day of the Battle of Gettysburg, the Greys joined a mad, desperate charge against the Union soldiers. Of the Confederate soldiers involved, half died—and not a single man from the University of Mississippi made it out alive.a

10 Kinky Tendencies Of The Ancient Romans And Greeks

The ancient Romans and Greeks had a highly liberated attitude toward sex—one that is surprising, even by today’s standards. They had gods devoted to it, festivals to partake in it, and local economies that surrounded it. Sex was not something to be ashamed of or hidden from public view. Rather, it was something to rejoice in.

1#Phallic Bricks Of Pompeii

We all know the legend surrounding Pompeii. The original City of Sin’s people basked in a perpetual heat of promiscuity—promiscuity said to have inspired the gods’ rage with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Since excavation of its near-perfectly preserved remains began in the 18th century, archaeologists have discovered a great deal regarding Pompeii’s sexual identity.

Pompeii’s economy thrived on more than 40 brothels, the most famous of which was named “Lupanare Grande,” translated today as “pleasure house.” The rooms in these brothels were often cramped and dim, with a small straw mattress positioned beneath a piece of pornographic artwork hung on the wall. Despite their appearances, it would be misleading to classify these brothels as the seedy underbelly of Pompeii’s economy. Rather, they existed on a highly public and unashamed platform, alongside the forum and communal bath houses, both of which were important sites of a larger (public) sex system.

Visit the ruins of Pompeii today, and you will no doubt see the “phallic bricks” of Pompeii pointing the way to the nearest pleasure house with an erect phallus engraved into its stone. And if those weren’t clear enough markers, erect phalluses were often positioned above the doors of brothels and private residences as tidings of good luck.

2#Voyeurism

“You may look, but don’t touch,” was somewhat of a guiding theme across Ancient Roman and Greek artwork, as indicated by the many pieces of art uncovered today displaying such provocations. One could discover this for themselves at The Gabinetto Segreto in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples.

This “Secret Cabinet” houses a collection of erotic artwork from Ancient Rome. One such wall painting from, unsurprisingly, Pompeii, displays this voyeurism with a man and a woman having intercourse in front of their attendant, who is visible in the background.

In Ancient Greece, there exists a body of art dedicated to Maenads, the feverous female followers of Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, ritual madness, religious euphoria, and theatre. Artwork surrounding these women were highly explicit, and the sexual acts represented by the artwork displayed the figures as objects to be observed. This idea of voyeurism in erotic art was twofold, where a voyeur existed within the artwork, as was the case in one hydria painting Sleeping Maenad and Satyrs, as well as external to the artwork, where the onlooker (or “innocent bystander”) also became a voyeur.

3#The Wife-Sharing Economy

The Etruscan civilization was assimilated into the Roman Republic during the fourth century BC. However, their customs remained largely intact.

The Etruscan women were known for their liberated attitude toward intercourse and nudity. They kept their bodies in fit condition and often walked around in the nude, enjoying the pleasure of all men who came by. “Marriage” was a loose construct. It was common for children to have no clue who their father was, and for women not to ask.

Frescoes painted on the Tombs of The Bulls, The Bigas, and The Floggings, in Tarquinia, display these kinds of erotic scenes.

4#Fruitful Contest Of The Sexes

Kenneth Reckford, an expert of the Classics, analyzed Aristophanes’s work in a series of essays entitled Aristophanes’s Old-and-New Comedy. One essay, “Aischrologia,” addresses the season ritual of Thesmophoria in Ancient Greece. Only married Athenian women participated in this ritual, which aimed to promote fertility. In preparation, women would abstain from intercourse and oftentimes bathe as an act of purification. During this three-day affair, women would perform various acts of “fertility magic.” In addition, they would share lewd jokes and tales of their indecencies, and play with toys replicating both the male and female genitals.

This ritual, coupled with the Eleusinian Haloa festival, gave women the opportunity to release pent-up sexual frustration through liberal use of sex symbols, pornographic sweets, raucous activities, and free-range slut-shaming—for lack of a better phrase. During Haloa, according to Reckford, Greek women could “say the most ugly and shameful things to one another,” shooting insults at each other regarding sexuality and vulgarity, while proclaiming their own indiscretions.

5#Fun At The Carnival

According to Mikhail Bakhtin, a scholar of literary theory and philosophy, the Carnival of ancient literature was a free-for-all, where people would throw class division, respect, and sensitivity out the window. There was no “saying no,” and certainly no saying “too much.” Carnival was pure id. Suspend reality and imagine a scene of extravagance, with banquets of food and wine, laughter, and sex. At Carnival, everyone was equal, and even degrading remarks inspired a regenerative energy—though, that may be in part due to the number of drugs and intoxicants they used to strip inhibitions.

Arthur Edward Waite in his book A New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry says, “The Festivals were orgies of wine and sex: there was every kind of drunkenness and every aberration of sex, the one leading up to the other. Over all reigned the Phallus.”

These Carnival rituals date back to as early as the fifth century BC and were held during the spring equinox. It should come as no surprise that these festivals, called The Dionysian Mysteries, were dedicated to Dionysus, the Greek god of all your earthly desires and the enabler of all your poor decision-making. This carnival inspired the Roman equivalent, Bacchanalia.

Most of the initiation process for men and women are known thanks to a collection of frescoes preserved in the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii. And, in all fairness, it is a bit reminiscent of what one might expect in Greek life initiation today. The murals a declaration of initiation at the feet of the priestess followed by a descent into the underworld (katabasis), before returning anew. Aristophanes, in his play The Frogs, assumes the origin of this ritual with descent of Dionysis into Hades.

6#Before Viagra, There Was Priapus

The Greeks had a very firm relationship with the phallus—more an obsession, really. In particular was Priapus, the Greek god equivalent to Dionysus, known for his extremely long and permanently erect penis. If you think you recognize the term, it’s because Priapus inspired the medical term priapism.

And even if Priapus didn’t play too well with the other gods, he was revered on Earth. The Priapeia contains a collection of 95 poems dedicated to the sexually driven vulgarity of Priapus.

With this gift of dirty pictures
from the tract of Elephantis
Lalage asks if the horny
deity could help her do it
just like in the illustrations

The law which (as they say) Priapus coined
for boys appear immediately subjoined
“Come pluck my garden’s contents without blame
if in your garden I can do the same.”

7#They Threw Some Serious Shade

Hipponax of Ephesus was a highly controversial iambic poet, even for ancient Greece. Where he excelled were his insults, which were raunchy and lewd and often satirical of the high (dignified) language of his targets.

In fact, as the story goes, he was so skillful at insults, they drove one victim to suicide. Hipponax was apparently after the daughter of Bupalus, but Hipponax’s deformed looks ultimately led to his rejection. In jest, Bupalus made a statue of Hipponax so ugly that Hipponax retaliated with accusations of Bupalus having an incestuous relationship with his mother:

“Bupalus, the mother-f—r with Arete, fooling with these words the Erythraeans preparing to draw back his damnable foreskin”

Other notable shade interpreted in Hipponax’s work includes the dissection of Bupalus’s name, Bou-phallus, meaning quite literally “ox phallus,” and the ever-charming “interprandial pooper,” meaning a person who must get up during the middle of a meal to defecate.

8#Using Sex For World Peace

Aristophanes, considered one of the most famous comic playwrights of ancient Greece, was known for his poignant commentary of the social and political landscapes of Athens during the late fifth and early fourth centuries BC. In one such play, Lysistrata, Aristophanes parodies warfare with a battle of the sexes.

The women use the men’s desires against them, forcing abstinence to compel peace between the Athenians and the Spartans. Women thus use their sexuality to put things in perspective for men, and to ultimately remind them of the “transcendental significance” of sex. According to the women, the men had forgotten this amidst their stubbornness over more trivial matters, like war.

In the end, Peace appears to the men as a young, naked woman to remind the men of their sexual desires to “plow a few furrows” and “work a few loads of fertilizer in.” The men, in turn, realize the importance of sex to their society enough that they put war behind them.

9#“Ars Amatoria”

A short cry from Karma Sutra was the work of one Ancient Roman poet, Ovid (43 BC–AD 17). His work provided instruction for sexual proclivities, with titles including “Amores” (Love), “Medicamina Faciei” (Remedies for Love) “Remedia Amoris,” and most infamously, “Ars Amatoria” (the Art of Love). While his work may sound wholesome, Ars Amatoria became a guidebook for lovers and adulterers alike.

In many ways, he created The Game, which confuses both men and women to this day. He advises men to let their women miss them—but not too much, while advising women to make their men jealous at times, to ensure they do not grow lax nor lazy. In the bedroom, Ovid details what form women should take, to not only maximize pleasure for themselves, but also to make it most pleasurable to the man’s gaze. In one sense, he moved away from the notion of women as possession—as they were equal players in the game of love—while on the other hand, reinforcing manipulative tactics to keep one’s lover constantly on their toes.

Though his language never broke into vulgarity, it was quite explicit in its detail, and in a matter of poor timing, resulted in his exile by Augustus, who was still coping with the news of his daughter’s copulations.

10#Martial

As with other emotional impulses, shock lies in the space between expectations and reality. Marcus Valerius Martialis, or Martial, was a Roman poet from first century, who was made famous by his 12 books of epigrams. To this day, Martial’s epigrams are shocking due to their obscene, and oftentimes graphic, language. If nothing else, their vulgarity sheds light on the type of work published at the time.

Epigrams 79 and 80 of Book III convey vulgarity in a distinct structure. In these epigrams, insults are initially targeted at the subjects’ character and are then redirected by insulting subjects’ sexual “short-cummings.” In Epigram 79, Martial begins by declaring:

“Sertorius finishes nothing, and starts everything. When he fornicates, I don’t suppose he completes.”

Martial’s sharp words pivot this insult more pointedly at Sertorius’s sexual incapability. Likewise, Epigram 80 introduces its subject with a more general observation followed by a hyper-sexualized observation.

“You talk of nobody, Apicius, speak ill of nobody, yet rumor says you have an evil tongue.”

While the former could pose as a general remark to Apicius’s soft-spoken character, the latter angles the reader to the true central insult: Apicius’s skill at oral sex. Here, “evil” is more likely a term for “wild,” suggesting that Apicius’s tongue causes his sexual partner to lose control and that he is skillful at giving head. The explicit quality of this language indicates the level of tolerance Ancient society had at the time regarding sex.

10 Horrifyingly High-Profile Typos

Anyone who has ever taken an English class or left a comment on a Web page knows the annoyance of having their grammar corrected. It’s an unpleasant experience for sure, but it turns out those grammar Nazis may be on to something. No, the world won’t come to a screeching halt if a kitten video commenter forgets an apostrophe, but every so often, a situation arises in which proper spelling and grammar are everything. For one brief moment, the fate of a reputation, a company, or even an entire nation can rest on one properly structured sentence. Unfortunately, we rarely know when we’ve encountered such moments until we’re cleaning up the aftermath. Take the following grammatical gaffes as proof that sometimes, proofreading really does matter.

1#South Africa ‘Honors’ FIFA President

After FIFA president Joseph “Sepp” Blatter awarded South Africa the honor of hosting the 2010 World Cup, they decided to return the favor. The South African government bestowed an award known as the “Order of the Companions of O R Tambo” to Blatter for his kindness. However, when they announced that they were honoring him with the award, the world erupted into giggles rather than applause.

Apparently, Blatter’s leadership style had earned him a few enemies of the passive-aggressive kind. At some point, Internet vandals had taken to Wikipedia to take a few artistic liberties with his page. Then, with surprisingly little information about the man they were honoring, officials copied and pasted his name directly from the site for use on the award. That’s how the South African government ended up bestowing a prestigious award to Joseph “Sepp” Bellend Blatter. “Bellend” is a slang term for “penis” in many parts of the world and is most definitely not the FIFA president’s middle name.

2#Obama’s Ironically Error-Prone Communication Advisor

Social media is a blessing and a curse. Sure, people are now connected in ways that our grandparents would have found completely unimaginable, but that also means that every single thing we do has the potential to be seen by millions—including cringeworthy typos.

On October 8, 2013, President Obama’s senior advisor for strategy and communications, Dan Pfeiffer, was discussing politics with a few of his Twitter followers. After a few tweets back and forth about political polarization, Pfeiffer intended to respond with “also a much bigger factor on the right.” Unfortunately, his errant finger found not the “b” key, but its neighbor “n,” as he spelled “bigger.” He didn’t catch the blunder until after he’d sent it to his many followers, but he was quick to point out that it was “obviously a horrendous typo.” Still, it’s not the brightest moment in the career of the communications advisor to the first black US president.

3#Faulty Print Spacing Creates A New Word

If you have ever attended school and/or speak English, you’re probably familiar with Webster’s Dictionary. This behemoth of a book has been around in some form for centuries, and when it comes to writing, we literally take its word. Many take for granted that a word is only “real” if it’s in the dictionary, but the story of one bizarre little noun may shake that faith.

“Dord,” first published in Webster’s New International Dictionary (second edition) in 1934, is a scientific noun meaning “density.” Or at least, that’s what the folks at Webster’s would have had people believe. It turns out that during the research phase, a small index card marked “D or d, cont/ density.” was mishandled and misunderstood by pretty much everyone involved. The elaborate system meant to mark this as an abbreviation for “density” failed spectacularly, especially when it came to print spacing. In the end, “D or d” was crammed together and lumped in with the dictionary’s actual words. It was a nugget of utter nonsense in an otherwise respected book, and it stayed there for the better part of a decade before anyone noticed.

4#Japanese Executives Accidentally Give Away Their Own Company

The world of stock trading is admittedly confusing. There are a lot of numbers flying around, people buying and selling, and fortunes being won and lost. In other words, it is the kind of place where you want to quadruple-check every single thing you write. Unfortunately, Japanese firm Mizuho Securities had to learn that the hard way.

When going public with their new company J-Com Co. on December 15, 2005, Mizuho executives intended to sell each share for 610,000 yen. However, due to a potentially suicide-inducing typo, they accidentally sold 610,000 shares (41 times what they actually had) for 1 yen each. Realizing their error, they tried to cancel several times but were basically told that in the stock exchange, “all sales were final.” So they were forced to sit and watch as they gave away their brand-new company, and then some, for pocket change. To add insult to injury, they had to pay customers for the nonexistent extra shares, an amount totaling $225 million.

5# Misplaced Decimal Ruins Dinnertime For Decades

Everyone knows how incredibly healthy spinach is. From the moment we’re born, we have our parents, teachers, and doctors telling us that it’s a miracle food. Popeye, one of the most recognizable animated faces in the world, uses it to give himself full-on superpowers. Our society very nearly worships the leafy green vegetable.

But it’s a fraud, an ordinary food wearing an ultra-healthy mask. The misconception that spinach is the holiest of the vegetables comes to us from German chemist Erich von Wolf. In 1870, Wolf was researching the nutritional benefits of different foods, including spinach. While testing for iron content, he mistakenly placed the decimal point for spinach one spot too far to the right. This meant that the vegetable’s humble 3.5 grams was inflated to a staggering 35 grams.

Wolf’s fumble was taken as fact until 1937, when the mistake was discovered, and attempts were made to correct public opinion. But by then, the popularity of spinach-munching Popeye had solidified the vegetable’s undeserved reputation, and the rest is dinner-destroying history.

6#Vatican Misspells ‘Jesus’ . . . 6,200 Times

In 2013, the Vatican wanted to commemorate the beginning of Pope Francis’s papacy with a big, bold gesture. So, they commissioned a series of gold, silver, and bronze medals from the Italian Mint. These small tokens featured an image of Jesus with a Latin phrase that the new Pope found particularly inspirational. They were sold at the Vatican Publishing House in St Peter’s Square . . . for about five minutes.

It seems that a few people were asleep at the switch at the Italian Mint. Despite the many bizarre words in the medals’ incredibly complex Latin phrase, the only one that tripped them up was “Jesus.” Thousands of holy tokens rolled off the line with Christianity’s most revered figure’s name spelled “Lesus.” Even more bizarre is the fact that almost no one at the Vatican noticed. They went on sale with the glaring typo on full display, and four were purchased before the batch was yanked. Those four are now predicted to explode in value.

7#Google Accidentally Shuts Down the Internet

Google is pretty great; it connects us to the billions of Web pages out there quickly and efficiently and protects us from the malicious ones. That level of security is one of the reasons that Google is the mega-service it is, but it still isn’t perfect. Sometimes, the work required to police the flood of new content on the Internet means that programmer attention is spread just a little too thin.

Case in point—the morning of January 31, 2009. While updating the list of harmful sites, one Google employee accidentally listed “/” as a malicious site, which would be blocked by Google. If you have any experience online whatsoever, you will realize that pretty much every web address in existence contains a slash. What that means is that for about an hour, the entire Internet came to a screeching halt as Google prevented access to every single website. Visitors were turned away with a warning screen—and a complete block page if they continued anyway. Google soon corrected the issue, but for one brief moment, communication was set back decades.

8# Poorly Written Manual Fries People With Radiation

When it comes to advanced medical equipment, the last thing you want is a failure to communicate. Some of the contraptions we dream up to heal the sick can, if used improperly, make them much sicker. That includes contraptions like, say, a giant radiation gun.

The Therac-25 was a device from the 1980s that was designed to treat cancer patients with controlled bursts of radiation. Radiation is obviously extremely dangerous, so the machine came with a program to keep exposure strictly limited. This program came with a manual to ensure that the operator knew how to handle any issues.

But unfortunately, said manual was apparently written by someone with no knowledge of how communication works. The nonsensical word salad was completely confusing to doctors, so they more or less ignored it. When error messages popped up on the Therac-25, they just did what they thought was best. They ended up blasting patients with up to 100 times more radiation than is considered safe. Three died, leaving us with a sobering tale about the importance of writing skills.

9#Garbled Computer Code Darkens The East Coast

Life in a computer-controlled society is a double-edged sword. Sure, things are a lot easier with machines handling the monotony, but giving them too much responsibility can be devastating. All it takes is one typo in a computer’s millions of lines of code to completely cripple whatever system it’s handling.

And on August 14, 2003, that system happened to be the North American East Coast’s power grid. A misplaced character buried deep in an Ohio power plant’s XA-21 energy management system began a cascade of glitches that rippled across the Northeast US and into Canada. Within hours, other power stations were failing, and entire cities were going dark, including New York City. In the end, over 50 million people were left without power, communication, and infrastructure for roughly seven hours.

To make matters worse, the whole thing could have been avoided if one power plant employee hadn’t turned off an alarm. When the initial glitch appeared, the error alarm was disabled while it was “fixed.” The alarm was never turned back on, meaning when the bug acted up again, it remained hidden until it was far too late.

10#NASA’s $80 Million Hyphen

When someone wants to call something simple, they usually say something like, “Well, it isn’t rocket science.” There’s a reason for that: Rocket science is extremely complicated. There are a lot of complex calculations to be done and a million disasters just waiting to happen. Something as harmless as a symbol in an equation can wreck everything.

This is exactly what happened on July 22, 1962. The Mariner 1 space probe had just launched from Cape Canaveral for its journey to Venus. Shortly after liftoff, however, it became clear that something was wrong. The rocket carrying the probe began to veer off course, putting it into a path that would carry it not only to a crash landing, but one in a populated area. With no other choice, NASA officials sent a self-destruct signal, destroying the probe and spreading debris across several states.

So what went wrong? While coding the spacecraft’s guidance system, an inattentive programmer forgot something: a hyphen. A single missing “-” caused an $80 million dollar space project to literally go up in flames before it ever even left the atmosphere.

10 Brutal Realities Of Life In The Horde Of Genghis Khan

Genghis Kahn and his Mongolian hordes swept through Asia, slaughtering and conquering a huge part of the world. No army could stand in their way. By the time their conquests had ended, they had wiped out a tenth of the world’s population.

It took an intense and brutal army to pull it off. Fighters in the Mongolian army did not have the option to be weak. Life, in a Mongolian horde, meant giving up even the most basic of comforts and doing some absolutely horrifying things.

1#Mongolians Never Cleaned Their Clothes

The Mongolians of Genghis Khan’s time believed that contaminating water would anger the dragons that controlled its cycle. They feared that, if they dirtied the water, the gods would send a storm to destroy their homes—and so they did not wash anything.

Bathing in running water or washing your clothes was prohibited. Most of the Mongolian fighters would not even change their clothes. At most, they would beat their coats to get the lice out and put them right back on. They would wear the same thing, day after day, until it literally rotted off and could not be worn anymore.

They did not wash the dishes in water, either. Instead, they would wash their plates in the left-over broth from the last meal. Then they would pour the used broth back into the pot and cook their next meal in it.

It was smelly—but they took pride in that. There was a power to their stench. It would be considered an honor if a great Khan gave someone his cloak, not just because he had his clothes, but because he could now carry the Khan’s stench.

2#They Learned to Ride Horses When They Were Three

As soon as a Mongolian could walk, they learned to ride. Every family had a horse, whether they were wealthy or poor, soldiers or farmers. Even shepherds would take care of their flocks on horseback. They had to get ready young—so they started when they were three years old.

The Mongolians had custom saddles made for children, designed with a few extra safety features to make sure they did not get hurt. They wanted their kids to start practicing as soon as possible. It made a huge difference. When Europeans saw them, they wrote back that the little girls in Mongolia were better horse riders than most European men.

The kids learned archery, too. As soon as they started riding, they were given tiny bows and taught to shoot. For a Mongolian in the time of the great Khans, riding a horse and shooting a bow were as essential as learning to walk.

3#They Drank Blood from a Vein Cut in Their Horses’ Necks

The Mongolian army covered incredible distances. In a single day, they could travel 80 miles (129 km), a distance that, in their time, was completely unheard of. It took intense and vicious riding to do it, and they did not have time to stop for food.

To make the journey possible, they would put raw meat on their horses’ backs. It is believed that this was to tenderize the meat, so they could eat it on the go, although that is debated. Some now believe that the meat was for the horse, meant to help heal their sores while they pushed through incredible treks.

Marco Polo claimed that these warriors would ride for ten days straight without stopping long enough to make a fire. When they got thirsty, they would pierce a hole in the necks of their horses and drink the blood that came squirting out.

The horses helped them get drunk, too. They would ride female horses whenever possible and would milk them when they stopped. Then they would take that milk with them, letting it ferment into liquor for the road.

4#They Cut Open Animals’ Chests to Butcher Them

Mongolians barely ate vegetables. From time to time, they would gather a few wild plants or eat some food that had been offered to them by a surrendering army, but they mostly relied on meat and dairy.

Their diet was, essentially, the exact opposite of veganism—and the way they prepared it was the exact opposite of kosher. When they wanted to butcher an animal, they would tie the animal down, jam a knife into its chest, and cut it open. Then they would reach in, grab its heart and squeeze to fill the carcass up with blood.

They would tear out all of its internal organs and cook them up. Every part of the animal’s body would be put to use, usually boiled in a pot of broth, but, on special occasions, cooked on a skewer. The blood would be drained out of the body and worked into sausages.

Usually, they ate mutton, but they would eat horses when they could. Horses were usually saved for special occasions, but they ate whatever horse meat they could. According to one missionary who went to Mongolia, they would even eat the afterbirth of mares.

5#A Mongolian Man Could have 30 Wives

The Mongolians were strict about extra-marital sex. If a man was caught with a married woman, he could have his lips cut off. If they were in bed together, he could be killed. And if he was caught with an unmarried virgin, both the man and the woman would be put to death.

As long as you married them, though, a man could have as many women as he wanted—or, more accurately, as many as he could afford. He would have to pay a dowry for each one, and he would be expected to provide her with her own tent to live in. Some Mongolian men had thirty wives, and the Khans had hundreds.

The women just accepted that this was how life was. It is claimed that, after some men spent the night with his wife, he would invite in all of this other wives to share a drink together.

6#The Youngest Son Inherited His Father’s Wives

When a Mongolian’s life came to an end, they made sure that his wives were taken care of. His land and his possession were divided up among his sons, with the best bounty going to the youngest. He would get his father’s home, his slaves, and also his wives.

The boy would not be expected to marry his own mother, but he would be expected to provide for all of his father’s other wives. And while there were no rules saying he had to, he was allowed to take them as his own. It was not uncommon for a young man who had lost his father to make his stepmothers his wives and bring them into his tent.

7#They Used Psychological Warfare

One of the main ways the Mongolians became such effective killers was by using psychology. They could not have conquered so many nations by fighting alone—they needed to get as many as possible to surrender without having to waste the life of their men.

No matter the circumstances, they would hide their numbers. If the opposing army was bigger than theirs, they would put dummies on spare horses or light extra campfires to seem more imposing. If their army was bigger, they would ride their horses in single-file, with branches tied to their tails to mask them in a cloud of dust.

They were experts at scaring people. They would travel with their yurts, tents that they could set up before a siege as portable homes. In at least one case, they used the colors of these tents to terrify the people within a city’s walls. First, they put up white tents, telling them that if they surrendered now they would be spared. If they did not surrender, they would put up red tents, telling them that only the men would be killed. If the people were still not ready to fight, they would put up black tents, telling them that everyone inside would die.

8#They Massacred Whole Cities

The key to their psychological terror was their reputation for brutality. They needed their enemies to believe that if they did not surrender, every person in the city would be horribly killed. They did not use any tricks to get that reputation—they really did it.

If a city did not surrender, the Mongolian horde would massacre every single person inside. They rounded up the women and children and slaughtered them all. Sometimes they even rounded up the cats and the dogs and killed them for good measure. Their heads would be removed and they would make a pyramid of their skulls to let anyone who passed by know what happened if you angered a Khan.

The most horrible thing was what they did to pregnant women. According to an Arabian writer, the Mongolians would not stop at killing them. They would rip open her stomach and kill the unborn baby inside of her.

9#They Had to Kill Nobles without Spilling Blood

The Mongolians believed that blood contained a person’s spiritual essence. They did not dare spill the blood of a nobleman, believing it would defile the ground on which it fell. So, when they killed royalty, they had to find other ways to do it.

Usually, noblemen would be suffocated or drowned. If a member of the Khan’s family betrayed him, he would usually be rolled up in a carpet and thrown in a body of water. Sometimes, though, they got creative. Guyuk Khan took care of one of his rivals by sewing every orifice on her body shut and pushing her into a river.

They had to get creative with enemy nobles, as well. In one case, they trapped Russian princes under a board and held a feast on top of them to suffocate them without spilling their blood. In another, Genghis Khan had a man killed by pouring molten silver into his eyes.

10#They Catapulted Diseased Bodies over City Walls

The Mongolian army might have been the first to use biological warfare. While they swept into Europe, they were hit by the Black Plague—and they decided to use it to their advantage.

Their enemies had holed up inside of the city of Caffa, where the Mongolians had them surrounded. When the Black Plague started killing their people, though, they realized they could not stay forever. They wanted to make the biggest impact they could before they left—so they threw their dead over the city walls.

Any Mongolian who died of plague was put on a catapult and sent flying over the walls. On the other side, the people tried to get rid of these bodies by throwing them into the sea, but this just tainted their water supply. Soon, the plague had spread throughout the city.

A few people fled over the city walls and ran further west, but it was too late for them. They were already carrying the plague, and, as they ran out westward, they spread it through Europe.

10 Bizarre Facts About The Classic Horror Movie ‘Freaks’

In 1932 in Depression-era America, MGM Studios came under fire after the release of Freaks, a horror film centered around carnival sideshow performers with real disabilities. The following 10 facts focus on the irrational censorship fueled by timid audiences, the public’s absurd reaction to the unknown, and the distressing exploitative nature of pre-Code Hollywood.

1#Public Reaction

Photo credit: screendaily.com

The film’s disastrous test screening was deemed “too upsetting” by moviegoers who had never before been subjected to seeing physically deformed actors on the silver screen.

In a frantic attempt to salvage a project which had already been slated for release, MGM was forced to make extensive last-minute cuts to numerous scenes. Despite the alterations, Freaks was inevitably doomed from the start because of its shocking and exploitative subject matter.

In spite of the film’s modified 59-minute version, international critics were no different in their repulsion. In fact, the movie was banned in the UK for 31 years before being released in 1963 with an X rating.

Though Freaks enjoyed a small fraction of success in only a handful of cities, an overwhelming majority of cinemas around the United States pulled the film, with some states banning it completely. Interestingly enough, some of the laws have never changed since the 1930s, still making it technically illegal to watch the movie in certain states.

2#Schlitzie

Photo credit: hollywoodreporter.com

Perhaps the film’s most memorable yet disturbing performance was that of the pinhead, Schlitzie. Not much is known of the disabled performer’s early life other than a few records indicating that he was born as Simon Metz in the Bronx.

Schlitzie’s gender came as a puzzling surprise to many. Not only did he wear a dress throughout the entire film, but the studio had billed his character as a female. It’s not clear why the studio chose to do so—except perhaps to acknowledge Schlitzie’s clothing, which was solely worn due to his incontinence.

He was born with microcephaly, a condition characterized by an abnormally small cranium which resulted in severe retardation and an unsettling abnormal appearance. Microcephalics (aka “pinheads” in sideshows) were exhibited as a species apart from man and were often billed as being from other planets.

Sadly, Schlitzie’s debilitating misfortune was a gold mine to carnies who indisputably exploited him throughout his life, all the while reaping the financial rewards.

3#Criticism And A Miscarriage

The film’s principal photography was completed in December 1931, and the test screening was the following month. The false expectation of reaping endless revenue from a box office hit was soon recognized from the disastrous reception previously mentioned.

People were said to have run from the movie theater, horrified by the appalling images. One woman even threatened to sue, claiming that the film was so grotesque that it had induced a miscarriage.

Following the studio’s last-ditch effort in editing, more than 30 minutes was cut from the film. All this footage has since been lost. MGM responded to the harsh criticism by taking out ads that congratulated themselves for being the only ones in the business that dared to humanize deformity.

The ads referred to the film as “a landmark in screen daring.” They attempted to justify the picture by praising the studio’s acknowledgment of nature’s little-known “grim reality.”

4#Commercial Failure

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With a string of silent thrillers and 11 collaborations with Lon Chaney, director Tod Browning had already made a name for himself at MGM by the time Dracula was released, his most successful and lasting film.

The unforeseen success of the movie rescued the studio, which was in financial turmoil at the time. This allowed Browning to have considerably more leverage with future projects.

Such leeway was evident during the production of Freaks, despite the bizarre and uncharted cinematic territory the director was delving into. However, the producers were confident in Browning’s direction and believed the film was going to be as successful as his previous vampire hit.

Unfortunately for the optimistic studio, the film was a commercial failure. The immense backlash was unprecedented and proved disastrous for the director. Browning’s once renowned and flourishing Hollywood career was now in ruins, never to be recovered.

Sixty-two years after its release, Freaks was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry due to the film’s cultural, historical, and aesthetic significance.

5#The Hilton Sisters

Photo credit: zerostarcinema.blogspot.com

In the 21st century, it’s hard to imagine that conjoined twins would be the subject of a sideshow spectacle. However, such was the case nearly a century ago when the public’s understanding of this rare phenomenon blurred the lines between reality and science fiction. Of course, this is evident with the casting of Daisy and Violet Hilton in Freaks.

Perhaps the best example of society’s lack of knowledge pertaining to in utero malformations was that of F. Scott Fitzgerald when he encountered the Hilton sisters for the first time. While on the set of Freaks, a drunken Fitzgerald found himself in the studio’s commissary where he unexpectedly came across the girls reading from a menu.

Fitzgerald, who was working as a screenwriter at the time, was so unnerved by the sight that he immediately scurried outside to vomit. The unsubtle exaggerated response merely echoed a nation’s lack of compassion for those considered to be different from the everyday norm.

The Hiltons made one more film, Chained for Life, in 1952. But they found themselves in poverty a few years later. Just after Christmas 1968, Daisy succumbed to the flu, leaving Violet alone and with her own mortality nearing. Their bodies lay undiscovered for several days. It was later determined that Violet had died two to four days after her sister.

6#Cinematic Takeover

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Long before Tod Browning had the unfortunate privilege of directing Freaks, he had a firsthand look into the intimate lives of circus performers. Browning was just 16 years old when he ran away to join the carnival in 1896, a time in history when the popularity of sideshows was at its peak.

Beginning in the mid-19th century, the public’s curiosity to catch a glimpse of actual “freaks of nature” was fueled by P.T. Barnum and drove Americans to traveling sideshows. Throughout the years, cinema began a slow but overwhelming takeover as the sideshow’s main attraction, beginning with the introduction of kinetoscopes.

At the beginning of the 20th century, nickelodeons opened across America, further challenging the longevity of traveling carnivals and the wonders that once enchanted a crowd. Nonetheless, Browning’s years as a carny left a lasting impression on him. It not only influenced his most notorious box office bomb but inspired him to direct 1925’s The Unholy Three, a crime melodrama involving circus freaks.

7#Cafeteria Off-Limits

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When filming began on November 9, 1931, MGM Studios took every precaution to keep the premise of the movie a secret. Most importantly, the “freaks” were kept out of sight from anyone who was not directly connected to the film.

Even those intrinsically involved with the picture found it difficult to work in an environment they felt was uncomfortable, as if they were working beside septic monsters. Film editor Basil Wrangell regretted ever taking the job, claiming that the mere sight of them made you “crawl up the walls.”

One of the only cast members who afforded the “freaks” dignity was Olga Baclanova, who was initially taken aback by their abnormal appearances. At first, she struggled to even look at them, let alone form friendships.

The feeling of uneasiness carried throughout the studio to the point that the “freaks” were not even allowed to share the same eating quarters as the rest of the crew. Succumbing to pressure from fellow producers and studio executives, Louis B. Mayer banned any and all “freaks” from entering the studio’s commissary. He had received numerous complaints of people “throwing up” simply from being around the “freaks.”

8#Going Hollywood

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It would be reasonable to assume that a group of people who shared profound maladies would ultimately form a bond rooted in understanding each other’s hardships. Nothing could be further from the truth, however, among the cast of Freaks.

It was undoubtedly clear in live sideshow performances which character was the main attraction. Typically, the show had only one performer who was genuinely deformed while the rest of the actors were in costume.

Such routine privilege proved difficult among an entire cast who had grown accustomed to being the star of their own show. Their inflated egos clashed, and the competition for attention grew.

One by one, the “freaks” began behaving like prima donnas on set, with several of them wearing sunglasses and acting like big-time movie stars. According to director Tod Browning, “the professional jealousy was amazing.” Not one of the physically deformed cast members had a good word for the others.

9#Zippy The Pinhead

Photo credit: The Atlantic

When Freaks momentarily hit the silver screen in the early 1930s, few imagined that one of the more ghastly characters would inspire a nationally syndicated cartoon strip.

In 1970, cartoonist Bill Griffith was feeling the pressure to create a “very weird” yet memorable character that wouldn’t easily fade from one’s memory. After rifling through a large collection of circus sideshow postcards, Griffith came across a familiar face that brought back haunting recollections of the 1932 cult classic.

Schlitzie, whom we have previously discussed, fascinated Griffith not only because of his apparent physical abnormalities but also because of his innocent, childlike demeanor. Schlitzie seemed oblivious and disconnected to the world around him. This led to the birth of Zippy the Pinhead, Griffith’s ideal caricature of someone who was the embodiment of eccentricity.

Though Zippy would go on to become an American comic strip icon, the exploited man who was the muse for such success would unceremoniously fade from the spotlight. Schlitzie died seven years after the cartoon’s first publication. He had traveled with various circuses and sideshows until his death in 1977.

10#Sexual Innuendos

From the moment Freaks hit the silver screen, it was clear that MGM would be in for a significant financial loss. Hoping to make back any money, the studio sold the film rights to exploitation distributor Dwain Esper, who altered the opening as shown in the video above.

As if Freaks had not already been controversial enough, Esper retitled the picture several times with names such as Forbidden Love, Nature’s Mistakes, and The Monster Show.

In addition, Esper released new posters exploiting the images of the deformed cast and particularly increased the focus on sexual innuendos by adding his own incendiary interrogatives. Some of the exploitative ad lines read, “Do Siamese Twins Make Love,” “What Sex is the Half-Man Half-Woman,” and “Can a Full-Grown Woman Truly Love a Midget?”

After editing out select footage and adding in his own bizarre reels, Esper toured with an adults-only road show where he showed the film for a fee. In time, he hired his own group of deformed individuals. He exploited them for audiences prior to playing the movie.

The film was projected onto hanging canvas banners that were set up in a tent he had constructed, keeping the bizarre act on the road for five long years.