10 Throwing Mental Patients Onto The Streets Reagan’s mass purging of mental health hospitals first began when he was the governor of California. As governor, Reagan threw more than half of the state’s mental health patients out of hospitals and onto the streets. He abolished the hospitals’ ability to institutionalize patients with severe mental illness. With nowhere else for these mental patients to go—most with disabilities that prevented them from working—they simply became homeless....

10 President Harry TrumanJuly 25, 1945 We met at 11:00 AM today. That is, Stalin, Churchill and the U.S. president. But I had a most important session with Lord Mountbatten and General Marshall before that. We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley era, after Noah and his fabulous ark. Anyway, we think we have found the way to cause a disintegration of the atom....

Here are ten times British princes did things worse than writing a tell-all book. 10 Prince Albert Victor Prince Albert Victor (1864–1892), Duke of Clarence and Avondale, was the oldest son of Queen Victoria’s heir Prince Edward. Despite, or perhaps because of, the queen’s strict moral expectations of her family, several of them went rogue and became embroiled in scandals. Prince Albert Victor was one of the most eligible bachelors in Europe, yet there was something about him that put off prospective brides....

10 Queen Elizabeth I In 1555, John Dee was arrested for witchcraft after casting the horoscopes of Queen Mary I of England and Princess Elizabeth. However, he was exonerated and, a few years later, found favor with Elizabeth once she became queen. She even trusted him to select an auspicious coronation date for her, which was January 15, 1559, based on his astrological calculations. In 1564, he was “appointed Royal Advisor in mystic secrets,” and as her court astrologer, he also advised her on matters of state and science....

10Nazi-Friendly Priests Some bishops and priests have been accused of helping high-ranking Nazis escape justice at the end of the Second World War. One such bishop was Alois Hudal. In charge of a priest training college from 1923 to 1952, Hudal openly shared his pro-Nazi views and is believed to have helped dozens of senior Nazis flee. A recently discovered telegram between Hudal and Hitler only incriminates the priest further. A Croatian priest, Krunoslav Draganovic, has also been accused of playing a key role in organizing Nazi escape lines....

10 Keith Hunter Jesperson In 1990, the body of a murdered 23-year-old woman was discovered off the side of a highway by a bicyclist. Soon after, Laverne Pavlinac told police that she and her boyfriend, John Sosnovske, had committed the murder together. Annoyed that Pavlinac and Sosnovske were receiving media attention for the crime, the actual killer left confessions on public restroom walls across the country, signed with a smiley face....

The term “black metal” was first coined in 1982, when Venom released their second album, Black Metal. The genre itself didn’t really take off until a few years later, when it was pioneered by bands like Mayhem, Burzum, and Bathory. Today, black metal is known for its morbid subject matter, shrieked vocals, DIY-production value, and use of black-and-white “corpse paint.” The over-the-top darkness of the genre lends itself to parody but has also resulted in a number of violent and controversial incidents....

The abbreviations in the list are as follows: NHL (National Hockey League), NFL (National Football League – American football), MLB (Major League Baseball), NBA (National Basketball Association), FIFA (International Federation of Association Football) The best way to show support for your favorite team is to proudly wear the team colors. Greater solidarity comes from tens of thousands of your fellow sports fanatics all wearing the same color. Its beginnings may have come from the NHL’s Calgary Flames during the 1986 Stanley Cup Finals....

It might come as no surprise, then, that some of these dildos have been involved in some very strange cases. The following are just ten of the strangest news stories from the last decade involving dildos. 10 Lotions And Lace In addition to being used as an adult toy, dildos can also function as a weapon like in the following story, which occurred at a Lotions and Lace store in San Bernardino, California, in December 2016....

10Dextre We’ve all seen footage of spacewalks—astronauts dangling precariously off the side of the International Space Station, just begging to be hit by supersonic space debris. This risk should soon be totally eliminated by the lankiest robot NASA ever built: Dextre the mechanical handyman. The dexterous manipulator (as it’s officially termed) is now permanently affixed to the ISS to perform maintenance and keep the humans safe. Originally designed by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), Dextre is quite large....

When the first natural scientists were trying to catalog every tribe and creature that existed on this Earth, they wrote down some strange things. If you traveled far enough away from civilization, they insisted, you’d find tribes of people without heads, with animal heads, or with their feet pointing the wrong way. We’ve never found any proof these people existed, of course. Still, at the time, people insisted they’d seen them....

There are many creatures with the power of flight but this feature is generally not attributed to fish. Flying fish are able to jump out of the water and fly or glide for long distances. This is used as a defense mechanism to escape from predators. The flying fish has a streamlined, torpedo-shaped body which helps it gain enough energy to break through the surface of the water. To get out of the water, the fish swims at speeds of up to 37 miles (60 km) per hour....

10Odic Force Baron Dr. Karl Ludwig Freiherr von Reichenbach was a 19th-century Prussian scientist who devoted much of his life to a physical force known as the odic force. Much like the mystical Force from the Star Wars universe, the odic force, or simply od, was said to consist of a light side and a dark side, and it was also said to be the reason for other discredited theories such as dowsing or feng shui....

10 Antarctic Wars The idea that the United States is waging war through weather modification and earthquakes is an old one indeed, but more recent conspiracy theories hold that the HAARP technology has also fallen into the hands of America’s geopolitical rivals. In remote locations around the world, they say, networks of ionospheric manipulators are being built by the United States, China, and Russia (along with Norway, for some reason). The new front line of this struggle is apparently Antarctica, where mysterious structures have been linked to HAARP technology by conspiracy theorists....

10Human Faces Evolved To Take A Punch Until recently, it was widely believed that robust human faces evolved some four or five million years ago to help our Australopithecus ancestors chew hard foods like nuts. But that belief has now been shattered—by a punch to the face According to a study from the University of Utah, our distant past was not as peaceful as we once believed. Violence may have played a much bigger part in the evolution of human physiology than we ever suspected....

10Xenophobia And Rudeness Combat Disease Just because we know how germs work and how they spread doesn’t mean we’re not still coming up with new theories. Biologists from the University of New Mexico and the University of British Columbia suspect that we’ve come up with a rather ingenious way of preventing disease from spreading to our respective cultures over the years: We’re jerks. In a nutshell, the theory states that we’ve developed cultures in which we view strangers and outsiders as people to be avoided and shunned rather than welcomed in order to make sure they keep their germs to themselves....

But there are also some lesser-known factors that decrease brainpower. Some of these activities only impair intelligence temporarily, while others have been proven to have long-term effects. 10 Dim Lighting Researchers at Michigan State University have discovered a link between dim lighting and a diminished ability to remember and learn. Scientists studied the brains of a group of Nile grass rats. Like humans, Nile grass rats are active during the day and sleep at night....

But what is intangible cultural heritage, you might ask? It’s the traditions and living expressions that we’ve inherited from the generations before us and continue to pass down to the next generation. It’s the performing arts, rituals, festive events, oral traditions, knowledge, skills, practices, and crafts that color every community, country, and culture. Think of the tango in Argentina or Capoeira circles in Brazil, and you’re on the right track....

We are now running on the latest version of the WordPress software which we use for Listverse. Prior to this we were on a very old version which was buggy. In addition to using the latest version, we will be automatically upgraded to all future versions, meaning that we are always up to date with bug fixes and improvements. The comment system remains largely the same (ie, no nested comments and no comment voting) but we have made a few tweaks to improve them....

It took a little time for Bob Kane to refine the Batman character. Nowadays, Batman not only refuses to use guns, but hates them completely. This is logical, considering a gun killed his parents, and ever since he has stalwartly refused to use firearms in his crime fighting. However, in early issues Batman was something of a costumed Sherlock Homes, doing more detective work than fighting, but still carrying a six-gun at his side on his night patrols....