-
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…
You May Also Like
Man brings ancient Greek music to life and the result is amazingly avant garde Discoveries and breakthroughs de-mystify the actual sound of ancient Greek music.
5 reasons Santa Claus is clearly a villain When you take an investigative lens to his seemingly flawless image you find more than a few bone-chilling pieces of evidence to the contrary.
How to successfully disappear and start a new life Vital do's and don't for when it comes time to flee the sometimes unpleasant scene that is real life.
-
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.…
You May Also Like
Andrew Jackson’s 1400-pound block of cheese Jackson was a legend. And, at some point, he was gifted a humongous wheel of cheese. This is the story of that cheese,
r/InstagramReality is the best subreddit for all the wrong reasons Looking like an IG model isn't easy, and many choose to cheat. And they really, really suck at it.
The American obsession with Cherokee heritage Miley Cyrus, Johnny Cash, Cher, and Elizabeth Warren have all claimed the same thing — and it's a lie.
-
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…
You May Also Like
52 Hertz: the mystery of the loneliest whale in the world Hydrophones are tracking a whale that doesn't sound or act like any other whale in the world.
11 unintentionally funny local TV commercials Whether it’s poor acting or ridiculous dialogue, local commercials are sometimes so bad they are unintentionally hilarious.
How close did we actually come to Fallout’s nuclear future? Nuclear cars, robots, mutants, the atom-bomb apocalypse... where did Fallout’s grim retro-futurism come from, and how close did we come to a Fallout future?
-
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…
You May Also Like
4 adorable facts about history’s greatest dictators Finally an excuse for those kawaii dictator memes.
Why pro wrestling is better than your “real sports” Wrestling. Isn’t. Fucking. Fake. What goes on on-screen is only part of the fun.
10 lesser-known cryptid monsters that turned out to be hoaxes A lot of these are silly as heck, too. Don't get caught believin'.
-
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…
You May Also Like
r/InstagramReality is the best subreddit for all the wrong reasons Looking like an IG model isn't easy, and many choose to cheat. And they really, really suck at it.
YouTube’s 15 most insane science projects The age of the lone inventor tinkering away in his own backyard is far from over—but this stuff is barely legal.
10 mysterious caves and tunnels nobody can explain Ancient goblin caves, underground pyramid secrets, Victorian crime dens, and even Satanic tunnels under a preschool. Let's go cavin'.
-
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…
You May Also Like
Quantum behavior could be explained by parallel worlds Many Interacting Worlds interpretation could explain some of the truly incomprehensible behavior of quantum particles.
This is why some people have that disgusting cheesy feet smell The answer, surprisingly, comes via malaria research.
The quest to put our sleeping brain to work New study suggesting we can do basic processing and, perhaps, even math in our sleep, is a big step forward.
-
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…
You May Also Like
Everything you never wanted to know about the giantess fetish Meet the giantesses who eat, smother and crush puny, little victims—and the men who worship them.
How our caveman instincts explain why we play video games Video games are fun - that’s a given. But here's what makes them fun.
The finest film foxes of the fifties Let's brush up on babe history.
-
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.…
You May Also Like
10 movie villains who were actually the good guys Villains from throughout cinematic history who, on further examination, were definitely actually the good guys.
The (many) lies pornographers tell Porn counting goes like this: 1, 2, 3, Gang, “INSERT FANTASY NUMBER HERE.” And basically everything else is a lie also.
The joker brokers: a tale so stupid it can’t be a lie We all have financially retarded relatives, but this story from a /biz/ thread takes the fucking cake.
-
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…
You May Also Like
10 scientific reasons to stop procrastinating and get outdoors Just because you don't need to go outside doesn't mean you shouldn't.
The urban underground: Secrets under today’s modern cities Many cities have rich histories that date back millennia, and the source of that history lies right below the structures and streets that make their modern versions.
10 celebrated scientific breakthroughs that turned out to be hoaxes Come with us on a journey into scientific iniquity as we spotlight bogus science in near and far history.
-
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…
You May Also Like
From Bach to 50s weirdness: Everything you need to know about classical music An 8-step cheat sheet to classical music that will make you cultured in one reading.
How to get drunk at children’s birthday parties I like my children, but I LOVE them even more after a few beers. This is the true secret to raising children.
10 freaky animals with real super powers Many superheroes are based on things found in nature—for a reason.
