A natural response to that fear is to buttress our untruths with even more deception until the costs outweigh the benefits. But some people take that impulse to ridiculous extremes, trying to conceal the truth in utterly over-the-top ways. 10 Kenneth Crocheron Nowadays, 10 years is an impressively long time to commit to anything. Americans replace their cell phones every 22 months on average. The median employment tenure for an American worker is just 4....

Producers find ways to cut costs that help to increase the bottom line. A big part of that is recycling props, and if you look closely enough, you’ll see that almost every film and show in history borrows and lends its props over and over again. Some are placed in movies intentionally by directors as easter eggs or hints at shared universes, while some are put on screen out of sheer laziness....

SEE ALSO: 10 Horrific Acts That Are Legal In Some Countries The 1985 novel was inspired by many events in history, including the rise of radical Islam in Iran and other parts of the Middle East around that time, persecution of witches in the 17th century, and the resurgence of the Christian right in various parts of the United States in the ’70s and ’80s. Surprisingly, a lot of that social commentary is still quite relevant today....

10Snuffle Calibration Many smaller mammals have far sharper senses than humans do. We’ve long known that animals beat us when it comes to sight and smell, and scientists are now getting around to seeing how we fare against our four-footed counterparts when it comes to the sense of touch. In humans, nerves are densest at a few specific sites, most notably the fingertips. Here, we’re much more sensitive than animals, and this sensitivity served us well when we were first evolving to use tools....

10Handcuffing His Actors Together Hitchcock called the making of The 39 Steps “a lot of fun,” but we doubt it was that way for the lead stars, Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll. In one part of the film, Donat and Carroll’s characters were to be handcuffed together. When they were filming this particular section, Hitch thought it would be funny to pretend as if he’d lost the key to the cuffs....

10Face Swords We all know that hummingbirds use their long, narrow beaks to reach deep into flowers to drink their nectar. The bird gets dinner, and the flower gets pollinated. At first, scientists believed flower shape led to the development of those narrow, needle-like bills, but now this is being reconsidered. Maybe the hummingbirds grew the beaks first and the flowers adapted to the birds. So, why did hummingbirds evolve these long, thin beaks?...

OT Levels The Church of Scientology Scientology, the religion founded by L Ron Hubbard, uses a series of documents that he wrote as their primary scriptures. One can dispute the title of “scripture” in that they are more a series of directions and tests to help members attain the higher goal of clearing their bodies of creatures placed there by the evil warlord Xenu. Having reached a state of clear, members of the church pay to move on to the OT levels (Operating Thetan)....

10 Multi-Mission Effects VehicleC$100 Million The Multi-Mission Effects Vehicle (MMEV) was to be Canada’s answer to both anti-tank and surface-to-air defensive technology on board an 8×8 wheeled LAV III system used for remote command and control (C2). The MMEV program was implemented in 2005 at a projected cost of C$750 million but was canceled just two years later. The reason for cancellation was the diversity of the vehicle. The destruction of an operational C2/anti-air/anti-tank vehicle on the battlefield would reduce the capabilities of the ground forces by 3:1....

The Study: Testing the Infinite Monkey Theorem According to the laws of probability, if an infinitely large group of monkeys is given an infinite number of typewriters and infinite time, eventually they’ll create the entire works of Shakespeare. This is known as the Infinite Monkey Theorem. Completely misunderstanding the theory, a group of researchers in England gave six monkeys one typewriter, which inspired them to create one broken typewriter covered with poop....

10 Jewell Turner The morning of April 20, 2015, began like any other for Jewell Turner of Fort Worth, Texas. She had breakfast, did a few chores around the house, and went to her doctor’s appointment. While sitting in her van outside the doctor’s office, a young man approached, tapping on her window, and said he needed help with directions. Happy to assist, Turner began to advise him on which route to take....

10The Great Gatsby While F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 work is one of the leading causes of complaints among high school students and has a fairly spotty record as far as film adaptations go, the story of how Jay Gatsby threw grand parties in an attempt to draw the attention of Daisy Buchanan has captured the imaginations of generations of readers. Not that there was any indication of that when the book was first published....

Governments around the world keep a lot of classified information from the public, and that has caused a lot of conspiracy theories that politicians are hiding significant facts from the people. They have also been accused of working with aliens. Significant physical proof still remains to be found or revealed. However, there are unresolved stories that still haunt some people’s minds and cast doubt on the politicians’ integrity (like there wasn’t enough already)....

Neurodivergence can present in many different ways. Common conditions associated with neurodivergence include ADHD, autism, OCD, Tourette’s syndrome, dyslexia, and many more. Many of these conditions are commonly misdiagnosed or not diagnosed at all. While some signs point to neurodivergence, it is also important to understand that there are many other ways that neurodivergence can present itself. Also importantly, just because you have seen some of these signs in yourself or others does not mean that you are necessarily neurodivergent....

However, behind the camera, the burgeoning film industry was decadent and dissolute. Movie stars made fantastic amounts of money and spent it wildly, mostly, it seems, on drink and drugs. Studios tried hard to keep the scandals out of the press and present a wholesome family image, working their publicity departments at full stretch to not only promote the films but protect their stars. Given the antics many of them got up to, it was a blessing that they couldn’t talk!...

A pillar of the Colombian community, he had sympathy for those he felt had been let down by the government. Yet the truth, as detailed by family members and those who spent years tirelessly attempting to hunt him down, tells a very different story, one of a cold-blooded assassin who stopped at nothing to make his billions. This is the real sinister legacy of Pablo Escobar that nobody should forget....

However, as with all experiments, not everything was wholesome. Some results showed disturbing human-robot relationships and worse—the tendency to torture a helpless victim existed even in those who thought they were incapable. 10 Goats Like Happy People Goats are known for their smarts. In 2018, an experiment with 20 animals revealed another cognitive ability. They can tell people’s facial expressions apart. The plucky creatures were trained to walk over to the far side of the pen, where they received snacks....

10 You May Be Genetically Incapable Of Happiness Our genes are responsible for many things, and it’s quite likely that one of those things is determining how happy we generally are. Researchers from the University of Minnesota found a definite link between the levels of happiness reported by twins who had been separated at birth, regardless of the lives they had built for themselves. While environment certainly has a huge impact on happiness, it’s likely that biology plays just as big a part....

To make thing even stranger, the Italian was dead at the time, having drowned in the Nile during World War I. His spirit spoke through a middle-aged fishmonger, and together, they led one of the strangest and most tragic armed uprisings in modern history. 10The Fishmonger Of Opit In 1985, a woman named Alice lived in the town of Opit in northern Uganda. She had been married twice, but both husbands left after learning that she could not have children....

10 The World’s Biggest Quran In 2008, Sayeed Najmul Hasan Chishti from India took the world record for creating the largest handwritten Quran. Then in 2009, the record was being eyed by a teenager writing for 12 hours a day to produce a Quran 3,000 meters (about 1,000 ft) long. If she finished, no one noticed because the world record was taken in 2011 by a Quran in Russia. Weighing 1,763 pounds, this massive book was encrusted in gold and silver and a smattering of precious stones....

10Shanyna Isom In 2009, 28-year-old Shanyna Isom was rushed to an emergency room in Memphis, Tennessee after experiencing an asthma attack. The doctors on call treated her with a dose of steroids and sent her home. Soon after this, Shanyna began experiencing an itching sensation which worsened despite medical treatment. Then, alarmingly, she noticed that her legs were turning black. Doctors became convinced she had a staph infection or some type of eczema-like skin disorder....