The Matawan Man-Eater | The Inspiration for the Film Jaws
There's no denying that the movie Jaws definitely made some beach-goers scared to go into the water. However, the story that inspired Jaws was what really had people scared to have a day at the beach. The Jersey Shore shark attacks of 1916 were so unexpected, sudden, and violent that they stuck in the public's mind even up to the point that the movie hit theaters. The "Matawan man-eater," as the shark was called, took down at least three people before the killings finally stopped, and it forever changed the public's view of sharks.
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The Real-life 'Exorcism Of Emily Rose' Is Way Scarier Than The Movie
The ‘70s were a big decade for Lucifer. The Exorcist came out in late ‘73, Anton LaVey was really feeling himself with the growing popularity of his Church of Satan, and his book, The Satanic Bible, was really hitting its stride.
In this video, we’ll uncover the violent truths that still shroud Anneliese Michel’s death, and the 67 exorcisms she endured, which inspired The Exorcism Of Emily Rose.
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Palm Springs | The Craziest Old Hollywood Celebrity Scandals
Palm Springs, CA, has been a hideaway for celebrities since the 1920s; the desert location, with its unique microclimate and dry weather, was seen as a "tonic" for those looking to escape the stress and pressure of Hollywood. In the early and mid-1900s, there was a "two-hour rule," meaning stars couldn't live further than two hours away from set in case they were called back to work unexpectedly. Palm Springs became the perfect destination for celebrities who needed to stay close but desired privacy.
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Stray Dogs Are Still Living In Chernobyl
In one of the more ironic disasters of all time, the unit 4 reactor of the Chernobyl power plant in Ukraine failed during an emergency shutdown safety test in 1986, belching nuclear waste and radioactive isotopes all over the nearby city of Pripyat. More than 30 years later, hundreds of stray dogs live in and around the power plant, along with the many wild animals that call Chernobyl home.
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How Juliane Koepcke Survived A Plane Crash And 11 Days Alone In The Amazon
In December 1971, 17-year-old Juliane Koepcke and her mother were traveling to see her father on LANSA Flight 508 when the plane was felled by lightning and broke apart. Considered the worst lightning strike in history, the crash ultimately led to the loss of every passenger on board - except Koepcke. The teenager plunged two miles through the air to the floor of a Peruvian jungle, still strapped to her seat. Despite this harrowing experience, she lived to tell the tale. Koepcke, who miraculously suffered only minimal harm, ventured through the forest for 11 days seeking help.
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Marguerite Alibert | From Prostitute to Princess to Murderer
Marguerite Alibert | From Prostitute to Princess to Murderer
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Strange Facts That You Didn't Know About Henry VIII
Henry VIII might be known as a bad husband with a hot temper who straight beheaded a couple of his wives. But he was also a surprisingly talented musician and was an animal lover. Henry was a complicated man. Today, we’re going to talk about some strange facts that you didn’t know about Henry VIII.
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The Dannemora Escape
On June 6, 2015, two men escaped from New York’s Clinton Correctional Facility in a breakout that was so complex and layered, the media called it a real-life Shawshank Redemption.
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What Being A Prisoner In The Tower Of London Was Like
What was it like to live in the Tower of London? That depended on a prisoner's social position and personal wealth; however, even the most notable prisoners were subject to horrible fates. Many prisoners in the Tower of London faced torture and even death, but privileged inhabitants brought servants and threw feasts.
The Tower of London didn't start off as a prison, but it certainly became one of the gnarliest places to send criminals and political enemies. The last executions at the Tower of London took place after World War II when Josef Jakobs was shot by firing squad. But between its origins and the final shot, the Tower of London offered a vast array of experiences for prisoners.
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How a Pirate Became Pope
How did Baldassarre Cossa, the pirate pope, become the leader of the Catholic Church? From 1410-1415, Cossa reigned as Pope John XXIII, but he wasn't the only pope at the time. In fact, Cossa was one of three popes who struggled to rule over the church. Known as the Western Schism, the split lasted from 1378-1417, and multiple popes declared supremacy but refused to step down. In the chaos, the former pirate seized power, literally placing the stole of Peter on his own shoulders.
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Feral Boy Raised By Wolves Was The Real Inspiration Behind Mowgli From "The Jungle Book"
Meet Dina Sanichar, the real life Mowgli, of Jungle Book fame. Dina was discovered, literally following a pack of wolves, by a group of hunters in Uddar Pradesh in 1872. The wolves—and the boy retreated into a den. The hunters smoked out the wolves, and shot them as they emerged. They captured the boy as he escaped the den. He was presumed to be six years old.
The name “Sanichar” is Urdu for “Saturday”; the name was given to him at the mission orphanage where he would be raised by his human wards. Alas for poor Dina, having not grown up around his own kind, he never acquired language. He did, however, make grunting and growling noises. There was another feral—“wild” boy at the orphanage to which Dina did respond.
Rudyard Kipling wrote <a href="https://rumble.com/v30fk1-the-jungle-book-premieres-with-wild-red-carpet.html" target="_blank">The Jungle Book</a> in 1894, which was a collection of stories, rather than a single comprehensive novel. Kipling had never explicitly indicated that his Mowgli character was based on Dina Sanichar, although the period in which the character was conceived followed the fostering of the real wild boy by Father Erhardt, Dina Sanichar’s caretaker. Unlike Mowgli, Dina would never fully integrate or shed his wolf-like behavior. Besides never talking like humans do, Dina continued to walk on all fours, and even preferred raw meat. Unlike <a href="https://rumble.com/v41xhw-family-returns-to-africa-after-living-in-wild-for-years.html" target="_blank">Mowgli</a>, Dina didn’t willingly abandon the jungle and rise to humanity, but was snatched from the jungle, and at least psychologically and developmentally, there he stayed.
Ironically, Dina readily took to one of the worst of human traits: he became addicted to cigarettes. Maybe cigarettes gave him security, like a child’s blanket, in the strange new world forced upon him. We can imagine the shock of being captured and separated from your family. It must have been a very confusing scene. The aliens are really your own species, but they are the very last things you would consider family. So little do you have in common with other people, that you can’t even convey your needs to them. Our own babies strive constantly to rise to their adult capacity, so at least they know ahead of time what it is we expect of them. But the feral child doesn’t even have that, so behaviors like walking, talking, and dining etiquette aren’t even something they should learn. It’s all very incomprehensible.
After 10 years of living with people, Dina still fell well short of the expectations of his human caretakers. He was also short in stature, barely five feet tall. He was jumpy and anxious. Much of what we know about Dina Sanichar was described through the lens of the imperialism of the time, so terms like “low, pronounced forehead” are interpreted with suspicion. We can imagine that a deficient diet (for people, not wolves) might stunt our growth, but what does a “low, pronounced forehead” mean in the context of not having grown up with humankind? Dina Sanichar’s story would not have a fairy tale happy ending. He passed away from tuberculosis at the estimated age of 29 years old.
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How you could have survived the Black Plague
The Black Death was period in 14th Century Europe where three variations of the plague, bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic wiped out an estimated 60% of Europe.
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Everything That Went Wrong for Chris McCandless
You may have seen the 2007 movie, or even read the 1997 book, but the real story of the man behind ‘Into The Wild’ and his untimely death in the Alaskan Wilderness is a lot more twisted and confusing than you’d probably ever think.
Chris McCandless’ death was far from straight-forward.
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What may have caused the death of Elizabeth I
What May Have Caused the Death of Elizabeth I
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The History of Gout
For centuries, many have called gout "the disease of kings" because it affected men who ate rich diets and drank heavily. As early as the ancient Greeks, doctors wrote about gout, claiming that only wealthy men could become afflicted with it. And when royals like Henry VIII came down with gout, it transformed into a fashionable condition. Just like the French imitated the royals at Versailles, Europeans aimed to get gout as a status symbol. In the 16th century, men claimed that gout prevented other maladies and even called it an aphrodisiac.
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Why Andrew Jackson Was the Craziest President Ever
Why Andrew Jackson Was the Craziest President Ever
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Things you may not have known about Nikola Tesla
In this, the age of the Internet, Nikola Tesla has enjoyed a posthumous surge in popularity that makes Einstein look like an old french fry. It took an entire David Bowie to fill his shoes in The Prestige. Today, we’re looking at things you didn’t know about Nikola Tesla.
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What it was like to be a Roman slave
Slave labor was a huge aspect of Roman life and the Republic depended heavily on free work from human beings who had no rights, no possessions, and were left at the whims of their masters to be worked to death, starved, tortured, and sometimes even killed for the sake of enjoyment. Sure, you may have seen Russell Crowe play one in a movie, but chances are you have no idea just how brutal it really was.
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The Insane History of Krampus: Santa's Evil Partner in Crime
Krampus, the horned half-goat half-demon hybrid sent to torture naughty children and drag them to Hell isn't exactly the stuff of good holiday cheer. But this anti-Santa creature's history is as fascinating as it is terrifying. With roots in Paganism and Norse mythology, Krampus has been reminding children they better be good for ages. Remember, it's not just Santa who knows if you've been bad or good.
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What It Was Like To Watch A Public Beheading By Guillotine
Reservedly advocated as a humane killing device by Dr. Joseph-Ignace Guillotin during the 18th century, the guillotine executed people en masse during the French Revolution; France discontinued its use after 1977. The mechanism of death evoked fear and altered public sentiment about execution. During that time, many viewed capital punishment as a grand, public spectacle, but death by guillotine was a quicker, less-involved process than hanging or traditional beheading at the blade of an ax.
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What was it like to be a Civil War soldier?
We’ll put it as bluntly as possible -- the life of a Civil War soldier sucked. Sure, all war is hell, but if you signed up to be a Civil War soldier it was essentially the equivalent to signing your own death certificate.
Today, we’re exploring what life was really like to be a Civil War soldier.
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The Plague that made people dance themselves to death
Medieval Europe had no shortages of super deadly disease outbreaks that could wipe out a chunk of the population without much effort. But none of them were quite as fun as the bizarre case of Frau Troffea and the dancing plague that had upwards of 400 people compulsively dancing in the streets, some even to their deaths. Today, we’re going to examine the Plague that Made People Dance Themselves to Death.
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Everything The Movie 'Pearl Harbor' Got Historically Wrong
On December 7, 1941, a military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service hit the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. In 2001, the film 'Pearl Harbor' by Michael Bay was released. The drama follows American friends Rafe McCawley (played by Ben Affleck) and Danny Walker (played by Josh Hartnett) as they enter World War II as pilots.Though roughly based on real events, the movie is full of historical inaccuracies. Issues like segregation, "the surprise" attack, and many other glaring errors have caused many historians to dismiss the film as wildly off base.
The majority of today's public gets their information from the media or movies. What's more, people watch movies they believe are real since they are depicted from real events; however, some directors and producers take the liberty to create an action film rather than a film that has no storyline. Most movie producers find that to be what is called a documentary. However, the director of Pearl Harbor wanted to make a romantic action film.
The risk that you take when developing a movie based on historical events such as Pearl Harbor, is that you run into the displeased audience due to non factual information. Therefore the movie received less-than-stellar reviews simply because of the inaccuracies.
One of the inaccuracies is the fact that the movie portrays Pearl Harbor to be a sneak attack when actually intentions of both sides were well-known. The movie also illustrates racial aspects portraying nurses looking after soldiers. This is a bit misleading because back during Pearl Harbor, hospitals were <a href="https://rumble.com/v4aawf-female-journalists-segregated-stuck-in-a-pen-for-pence-western-wall-visit.html" target="_blank">segregated</a>.
The most misleading thing in the movie is the fact that the main character can be seen in the opening scene how it goes to fight against another country. Back during Pearl Harbor there were no wars or animosity going on where an American would have gone off to fight against another country. As a matter of fact it was illegal to begin or be in a war with another country at that time and you could lose your citizenship if you did that.
Another inaccuracy is that the main characters of the movie are portrayed as fighter pilots but by the end of the movie they are dropping bombs over the Japanese. This isn't accurate simply because those two jobs are completely different in the military then and now.
Another noticeable glitch throughout the movie is that where the main characters jumps around the military with no explanation and this type of action would not occur in the military then or now as well.
The movie deals with women's rights as well. In the movie, women are given lots of different types of jobs such as mechanics, radio personnel, and nurses. Unfortunately, back during Pearl Harbor women were only known for being nurses.
Technological advances such as speaking to other fighter <a href="https://rumble.com/v4zywb-pilot-steps-onto-moving-ship.html" target="_blank">pilots</a> or simply other planes did not exist either. Another technological advance can be found in the opening scene, crop dusters were not commercially available during Pearl Harbor, as a result, the boys in the opening scene could not have been playing with one.
The cigarettes that are found in the movie, Marlboro Lights, we're not available until 1972. The vehicles and planes used in the movie we're also not around until much later after Pearl Harbor happened. The movie also shows an aerial view of an entire fleet of ships but those things did not exist until the 1970s. The boats, ships, and planes that the military used, didn’t have bright colors.
Another inaccuracy is the leather jackets that the main characters wear. The jackets, if properly used during the war, would have come with Chinese writings on them so as to let the Chinese know not to kill the soldiers.
The portrayal of the president was also inaccurate as he did have polio, however he did not use his condition to make a political statement. One glaring question exists, would the movie have been more successful if it had been more accurate?
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13 Bizarre Pirate Traditions Most People Don't Know About
Pirates have a reputation--admittedly earned--for being ruthless, bloodthirsty killers.
Life on the high seas demanded so much of those willing to brave it that it became customary for new pirates to develop an honorable accord.
Pirates had a surprisingly complex culture, and what’s crazier to us is that movies have barely scratched the surface of their traditions.
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What it was like to be an Egyptian Royal
What was everyday life like for Egyptian royals? In a word: busy. Though they lived in the lap of luxury and enjoyed a standard of living that most other ancient Egyptians didn't, Egyptian royalty generally didn't have much downtime.
From around 3150 to 30 BC, Egypt was ruled by kings and queens called pharaohs. As supreme heads of a complex kingdom, pharaohs spent their days overseeing the religious, economic, cultural, and political life of Egypt. But pharaohs didn't just have to manage Egypt's affairs - they also had to manage the affairs of their families. The life of the royal family was undeniably political.
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