10A 40-Year Sentence Charles Bronson is Britain’s most notorious prisoner. For 40 years, prison staff all over Britain have struggled to contain him due to his massive strength, propensity toward violence, and growing popularity. It all started in 1974 when Charles Bronson (then still Michael Peterson) was arrested for a robbery where he tried to get away with the princely sum of £26 (about $43). He was sentenced to seven years in prison—with good behavior he’d be released in four....

And while the following ten stories are most likely not genuine, there remains a tiny sliver of doubt; they might not be complete fabrications, either. So, with a huge pinch of salt with extra helpings, here are ten UFO and alien encounter claims that are just a little too unbelievable. 10 George Adamski—An Authentic Initial Sighting That Descended Into Lies? The first person on our list is also one of the most well-known....

10Mark Masters And Sean Thompson In 2008, teenagers Mark Masters and Sean Thompson were playing a thuggish and brutal game they called “Happy Slap,” which was not so much a game as beating up innocent passersby. When they targeted 29-year-old Gavin Waterhouse, they had a 15-year-old female friend film the attack on her phone. They giggled and joked as they punched Waterhouse repeatedly in the face, then kicked him into unconsciousness after he fell down....

10The U-28 Sea Crocodile During World War I, the British steamer Iberian was cruising off the coast of Ireland when it was attacked by the German submarine U-28 (pictured above right). The Iberian tried to flee, but U-28 pursued, firing shells and torpedoes. After taking two direct hits, the Iberian tipped up and sank with her bow in the air. The sinking would be all but forgotten today if not for an article the U-28‘s captain, Baron von Forstner, wrote for a German newspaper in 1933....

Most Americans have a rose-colored view of their nation’s standing in the world, but there are plenty of aspects of the country that no American should be proud of. This list highlights some of the worst things most Americans either don’t want to know or at the very least, probably wish weren’t true, but sadly, are. SEE ALSO: 10 Ways You Can Legally Discriminate In The USA 10Most Americans Are Up To Their Eyeballs In Debt In the United States, it has been common to pay via credit card for almost anything, but the use of credit cards hasn’t been as widely accepted in other places around the world....

10Rachael Runyan The kidnapping and murder of Rachael Runyan is one of the reasons that parents have to tell children not to take candy from strangers. On August 26, 1982, Rachael was playing with her 10-year-old brother in a school playground in Sunset, Utah. A black, mustached man between 25 and 35 was hanging around the park for about 15 minutes, talking to other children before approaching Rachael. He offered her candy and gum, and she followed him to his car....

10The Girl With The Pearl Earring Despite all the theories and speculation, no one seems to know the identity of Johannes Vermeer’s girl in the famous 1665 painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. She is turned toward us with soft light glinting off her young face and a large pearl dangling from her ear. She looks as though she’s about to say something, but we have no idea what her story is....

Historically, the role of the emperor has alternated between being a public symbol and a powerful monarch. Some emperors had little influence over the country, while others proved to be tremendously important to Japanese history. For better or worse, the following emperors are remembered for the extraordinary personalities, intrigues, and acts of violence that marked their reigns. 10 Sudo Emperor Sudo never served as emperor during his lifetime. In fact, he was only declared an emperor after he died....

10 Mark Thatcher Financed A Failed African Coup The late Margaret Thatcher has always been a controversial figure in Britain. Prime minister for several years, Thatcher’s conservative ideology has long been a point of contention among historians and political writers. Her son, Mark, became a prominent businessman and eventually became entangled with the central African nation of Equatorial Guinea, which is controlled by a rigid dictatorship. The exact details of what occurred and how involved Mark was with anti-government conspirators is subject to debate....

10 NASA Has An Alligator Problem Since 1968, NASA’s main launch site for spacecraft has been the Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island. The island is also home to a national wildlife refuge which shares a natural border with the spaceport. This means that, occasionally, wildlife residents pay the flight center a visit. Most animals don’t really pose a problem for NASA. But one species that has caused a stir on multiple occasions is the American alligator....

10 Dirt-Eater Mask Dirt eating (geophagy) was relatively common among slaves in the 16th–19th centuries. Many had picked up the habit in West Africa, where geophagy was so widespread that favored varieties of dirt were even gathered and traded. Slave owners supposed this practice was unhealthy and were told by physicians that it would give their slaves depression, stomachaches, dropsy, poor appetite, shortness of breath, and vertigo. So, in an attempt to protect their “property,” slave owners outfitted the dirt-eaters with disturbing, mouth-blocking masks that they had to wear even while laboring in humid, dangerously hot conditions....

10Babies Can Understand Other People’s Thoughts Before we get started, we need to establish how scientists “interview” babies. As you might’ve noticed, infants are a little lacking in the conversational department, so scientists rely on other methods to interpret baby behavior. When conducting experiments, researchers pay close attention to how long babies look at an object. If a baby encounters something surprising or confusing, the child will stare at that object for a very long time....

Witch finders used a range of bizarre methods, often bordering on torture, to entice confessions from the accused or otherwise “prove” their guilt. Would any of these insane tests prove you guilty of witchcraft? 10 Waking The Witch The Italians pioneered a particularly uncomfortable method for testing witches that became very popular in Scotland. We know it now as sleep deprivation. This may sound like something you have suffered yourself if you work a stressful job or have young children....

It hasn’t all been clear sailing. Uber’s journey has been marred by a series of controversies, earning the company a reputation for lax security, bawdy jokes, and worker exploitation. The culmination of these difficult episodes resulted in half a million users deleting their accounts in the space of a week. That said, the app still boasts 75 million customers worldwide and annual revenue of $11.3 billion. Like it or loathe it, Uber has transformed our modern world....

Man may truly have its closest common ancestor in this ape, as it thinks of nothing but sex. After all, everything it does is draped in a hyper-sexual overcoat: they use sex to greet each other, resolve conflict (i.e make-up sex), and as bargaining chips to trade for food. They engage sexually in many of the ways us humans do (e.g. mutual masturbation, oral sex, French kissing) and some we do not (sometimes they fence with their penises, like phallic swashbucklers)....

Some of the facts below are so surprising that you may be left with your tongue hanging out of your mouth. So grab a snack, practice your tongue twisters, and get ready to find out some facts that might leave you tongue-tied. Let’s explore ten weird facts about your tongue. 10 Your Tongue Has the Most Flexible Muscles in Your Body A common misconception often repeated is that the tongue is the strongest muscle in the body....

It would be impossible to list everything Nintendo has tried to sell because they’ve tried pretty near everything. There are some highlights, though, that tell the story of a company desperately trying to find its niche—and you’d be surprised at just how much of it involves brothels, the yakuza, and light pornography. 10 Supplying The Yakuza’s Illegal Gambling Rings Nintendo’s first major customers were the yakuza: Japan’s organized crime syndicates....

Animals’ body-clocks get all messed up During major solar eclipses, birds and insects will often lapse into an eerie silence. Those that generally sleep at night will actually begin to get ready for a nap, while nocturnal animals begin to wake up and move around. Since the darkest part of an eclipse doesn’t last too long, the daytime animals wake up as soon as it’s over and the nocturnal animals try to go back to sleep....

In turn, the Romans borrowed and modified the Greek alphabet to fit the sounds of Latin. Most modern writing systems use some form of the Roman alphabet, although there are several other scripts that have found widespread use, including Cyrillic, Arabic, and Devanagari. However, there are a few cases of unique writing systems that were invented to suit the needs of a single language. Here are 10 of those writing systems....

I love wine – most people on here (or on my facebook page) know that. But this fact is gross enough to even make me reconsider it! When grapes are harvested by machine for wine making, the machine shakes the grapes off the vine. But this also means that insects, birds and basically anything else in the vine comes off too. Cheap wine makers don’t generally sort the grapes before pressing, so all of that extra stuff goes into the wine....