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Struggles of a royal mistress: the women who went to any length to obtain their kings In order to have sex with a king, you had to be one accomplished mistress.
“Every woman was born with the ambition to become the King’s favorite,” wrote Primi Visconti, an Italian fortune-teller who lived at Louis XIV’s french court. And in this world of glittering ambition and mercurial passions, it seemed he was right. While princesses were bred to be proper and abiding, the mistresses of kings were edified on an entirely different level. Pandering to powerful men who were accustomed to having their egos and nether regions stroked regularly, the chosen lover or maîtresse-en-titre of the king had her work cut out for her. If prostitution is, in fact, the oldest profession in history, maintaining the position as the chief mistress of a monarch…
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Why Hollywood gets World War II so wrong Hollywood liberals see World War II as the last morally unquestionable war but so often get their facts wrong.
While only 130 movies have been made about World War I, there have been 1,300 made about the World War II. Hollywood liberals see it as the last morally unquestionable war, and so are keen to return to it again and again, replete with its feel-good factor. Two of the most extraordinary episodes from WWII are to be released as new movies, which should fill historians and movie buffs with a mixture of delight and trepidation. The first is the daring killing of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich in May 1942 on a hairpin bend on his daily journey to Prague Castle by the heroic Czech sergeants Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik.…
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How one man lied about a cartoon to prove history is meaningless on the internet Everyone just believed. People started fondly remembering, and reviewing, episodes that don't exist.
Of all the great and terrible things about the internet, its ability to shape and rewrite reality might be the most dystopian. History is written by the victors, and every day it looks like the losers are humanity and meaning. In the Metal Gear Solid series, a collection of sinister artificial intelligences manipulate bulk information online to keep the world firmly under their control. A decade ago, I wrote some fan fiction that continues to distort the truth about a knock-off Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. Everything you think you know about Street Sharks is a lie. Well, that depends on what you think you know about Street Sharks. Before…
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How I survived a year of SHTF in 90s Bosnia No electricity, no food, no running water, no law. In a now legendary forum thread, a user named Selco tells preppers about his experiences and what he and his family did to stay alive.
In September of 2011, a user named selco joined the forums at SurvivalistBoards.com and posted “my shtf expirience-wartime,” a thread that would since become legendary in survivalist communities and beyond – in fact, you frequently see people reference it to this day in communities like 4chan and reddit. In it, Selco details his experience of living in a besieged Bosnian town of 50 to 60k people during the Bosnian War (1992-1995). The siege took away everything modern humans take for granted and tested with extreme brutality Selco’s and his community’s ability to survive. But what is so interesting about this war story is that it was told to a group…
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A brief history of toilets Going to the bathroom used to be a lot weirder. And in some countries, it still is.
The next time you take a seat on your own private porcelain throne: be grateful. You have privacy, toilet paper, and the streets don’t reek of feces. Toilets have come a long way from their dirty, breezy, communal origins. Poop like an Egyptian The earliest humans in hunter-gatherer society would have just gone au naturale out in the woods. But once cities started becoming a thing, the elite needed to figure out a way to keep all that human waste out of their way. The ancient Egyptians were among the first to appoint designated pooping spots for the wealthy. They even concocted some of the world’s first toilet seats—these little…
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How people used to download games from the radio Downloadable games are the format of the future, but they’re not a modern invention. Eager computer users were downloading wirelessly over 30 years ago.
It’s a Monday night in Bristol in July 1983. Your parents are downstairs watching Coronation Street while you skulk in your bedroom under the pretence of doing homework. In reality, you’re hunched over your cassette recorder, fingers hovering over the buttons in feverish anticipation. A quiver of excitement runs through you as a voice from the radio announces: “and now the moment you’ve all been waiting for…” There’s a satisfying clunk as you press down on play and record simultaneously, and moments later the room is filled with strange metallic squawks and crackles. “SCREEEEEEEEEEE…” You’re listening to the Datarama show on Radio West and partaking in the UK’s first attempt…
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Too freaky to fake? 5 legendary TV curses One might be tempted to dismiss this as the inevitable result of an industry that attracts famewhores and the mentally ill. Then again...
These legendary streaks of bad luck are so horrible we just have to believe. Otechestven Front Otechestven Front is a Bulgarian slice-of-life interview show. Presenter Martin Karbovski travels around interviewing normal-seeming folk with extraordinary tales. The most extraordinary tales, however, happen after the show airs…when the guests die. The weirdness started in 2010, when a criminal died days after appearing on the show. Rumors of black magic circulated, but probably the criminal just pissed someone off who saw him on TV and whacked him. If Otechestven Front is really just about exposing criminals without using that face-blur thing, it’s hard for us to call it a curse. Which is why…
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6 baffling phenomena that have surprisingly simple medical explanations "Supernatural" mysteries can pass down generations after they’ve actually been solved, as is the case with the following six “unsolvable” mysteries.
Baffling phenomena create gossip. Solving baffling phenomena, for some odd reason, tends to create less gossip. Which is why “supernatural” mysteries can be passed down generations after they’ve actually been solved, as is the case with the following six “unsolvable” mysteries: 1. Alien Abduction What’s this? Oval-headed, bug-eyed, gray visitors from another planet. They immobilize a research target in bed, enter their room and kidnap them. Then they flash bright lights at the subject and fool around with the subject’s butt because Earthling anuses are simply hilarious. A freaky amount of people have reported this experience. That’s proof positive that aliens exist, right? So what is it, Doctor? Sleep paralysis.…
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The finest film foxes of the fifties Let's brush up on babe history.
It might be hard to imagine that hot, gorgeous, and (dare I say it) sexy women existed before the internet, before Playboy, and even before color television. It’s easy to dismiss them at first, because all of those old movies and news reels are just reminiscent of your parents and/or grandparents. What’s hard to admit, though, is that there’s a good chance that your own grandma was a foxy babe in her time. She knocked your grandpa’s socks off by doing the Charleston or something in one of those scandalous dresses that ended just above the knee. It’s uncomfortable to imagine, we know. We have evidence, however, that though styles…
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Does snuff porn actually exist? A look at the history of porn's most enduring legend.
Filming a death doesn’t count unless the person’s been killed in order to make the movie possible, and the movie’s then sold on. Everyone knows snuff is an urban myth. A bogieman invented when, well… how did it come to pass? Until I saw this documentary I was sure there was a movie called ‘Snuff’ made in South America and mistakenly taken for real in Europe. Turns out I’m full of shit. Truth is the legend began with the murder of Sharon Tate by Charles Manson, rumored to have been filmed and then hidden, and grew as people started to cash in by making (terribly cheesy) films purporting to show…