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Yes. Yes, it is. And yet there have been secret organizations that created the world as we know it. 10The Carbonari After Napoleon’s defeat in 1814, the European powers had to decide what to do with the territory that he’d ruled as part of the First French Empire. The borders of Europe were redrawn at the Congress of Vienna, mainly decided by Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Austria. Napoleon had conquered Italy in 1805, and when the Congress signed their Final Act in June 1815, Italy had been nicely carved up....

10Nelson Mandela’s Family Turned Him Into A Corporate Mascot When Nelson Mandela died in late 2013, it triggered an outpouring of grief that shook the world. Here was a man who had changed history, who had stood up for democracy in the face of decades of repression. His death ensured Mandela’s name would forever mean “freedom.” His family had other ideas. They wanted Mandela’s name to live forever as a byword for tacky memorabilia....

10Permanent Mass Surveillance The Snowden revelations of 2013 changed the world. As a direct result of the whistle being blown on the NSA, Congress passed a law in 2015 banning the bulk collection of data. It was a victory for civil liberties over state intrusion. Yet as Obama was signing the act into law, the UK was headed in the exact opposite direction. Right now, a revived version of the so-called Snoopers’ Charter that was defeated in 2012 is poised to place everyone in the UK under permanent mass surveillance....

10Language Extinction Could Improve Millions Of Lives In the 20th century alone, roughly 400 languages went extinct. That represents a rate of about one every three months. It’s only going to get worse. Some linguists have estimated that by 2100, 90 percent of human languages will have died out. It’s a terrible, tragic idea . . . and one that may wind up improving the lives of billions. According to linguist John McWhorter, a mass language die-out can only be a good thing....

Throughout history, Christians were sometimes complicit in slavery and sometimes fought against it. The lives of these slaves who became Catholic saints show just how complex and nuanced that history really is. SEE ALSO: 10 Incredibly Gross Stories About Beloved Saints 10 Venerable Pierre Toussaint Venerable Pierre Toussaint was born in 1766 in Haiti as a house slave to the French aristocratic Berard family. At the age of 21, he witnessed the slave revolt in Haiti which would become the Haitian Revolution....

10The Five Suns The Aztecs absorbed many nearby civilizations, so their creation myth—the Legend of the Five Suns—came in different versions and adaptations, but the central tenets stayed the same. The gods tried five times to create the human world, each time with a different god becoming a sun. Four times, the world was destroyed. The fifth sun survived and sustained the present Earth. In one account, the gods convened in darkness to create that fifth sun....

10The Mysterious Suicide Of ‘Wm L. Toomey’ On December 4, 1982, a heavily suntanned stranger entered the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boise, Idaho. He appeared to be in his early forties and seemed to be waiting for a turn in the confessional, which was currently occupied. This man would soon be found dead on the floor. It was later determined that he had swallowed a cyanide capsule. He had no identification, but $1,900 was found in his possession, along with a note which stated that the money should be used for his burial....

10 A Business Disagreement Becomes a Murder Born in the 1890s, the world Colonel Sanders grew up in was a much different one compared to the society we enjoy today. Running a Shell gas station, the Colonel had an issue with a rival gas station owner going out under cover of darkness and painting over the Colone’s signs, pointing customers to his business instead. Without much in the way of police intervention, the Colonel elected to head over to his rival’s place of work and declare that he would kill him if he painted on his signs again....

But in the past, many wildly different government types existed side by side for centuries—and some were unimaginably different compared to the way politics work in the West today. Here are ten of the strangest forms of government in history. 10 Carthage At its height, Carthage was a rival to the early Roman Empire and the dominant maritime power of the ancient world, controlling trade throughout most of the Mediterranean....

10SS City Of Chester On the morning of August 22, 1888, in San Francisco Bay, the departing SS City of Chester collided with the incoming RMS Oceanic, a steamliner twice as large. As the Chester headed out of the bay to Eureka, California, carrying her 106 passengers and crew members, the fog was so dense that the crew of each ship missed seeing the other until they were only half a mile apart....

Cannibalism is nothing new, though. Shakespeare even tackled the subject in Titus Andronicus. By and large, cannibalism involves one adult eating another. However, there’s a long, dark, and forgotten corner of history about cannibals eating children. This article examines some of the most terrifying cases from the medieval ages about filial cannibalism or the cannibalism of children. 10 The People of Lamuri Odoric of Pordenone is a Franciscan friar who lived from 1286 to 1331 and documented his travels during the 14th century....

10 Some People May Be Unable To Reform Researchers have been studying the anterior cingulate cortex in the brains of prisoners to predict if and how long it will be until they commit another crime. Before being released on parole or probation, 96 male prisoners were given MRI scans in which their impulsive behavior was tested. They watched a screen and were given less than one second to press a button when an “X” appeared but not when a “K” appeared....

SEE ALSO: Top 10 Things You Didn’t Know About Pornography Know what they found when they dug up Pompeii? Dicks. Lots of dicks; a goddamn smorgasbord of dicks. Images of Pan running around with a Ron Jeremey-comedy-sized wang, people engaging in all sorts of vigorous penetration, and a statue of some dude boning a goat. This wasn’t just the Roman equivalent of glue-sniffing teenagers doodling graffiti on the toilet wall either (that’s not to say toilet graffiti wasn’t around too); this shit was everywhere....

10 Nazi Government’s Covert Crimes and Wrongdoings One of the earliest discoveries of the Nazi’s covert crimes and wrongdoings came from Herbert von Bose, the chief of Adolf Hitler’s conservative Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen’s publicity section. He used his insider status to alert the international press about the Nazi government’s hidden horrors and misdeeds. Herbert von Bose was born on March 16, 1893, in the German-occupied Alsace-Lorraine city of Strasbourg. During World War I, he served as an intelligence officer in the Imperial German Army....

10An ‘Alcoholic’ Who Is Allergic To Alcohol? In Bruce Robinson’s British classic Withnail & I, Richard E. Grant plays Withnail, a pseudointellectual, unemployed, alcoholic actor who visits the countryside to escape the madness of the city. He and fellow lunatic and failing actor-pal Marwood vacate the sordid apartment they share, leaving insane drug dealers, violent Irishmen, and homegrown filth behind—all while in an alcohol-induced daze. Before filming Withnail & I, Richard E....

Whether it was a building or a bridge crumbling to pieces due to construction methods and materials, unregulated safety standards, or the environment testing the structure to its limits, there is a lesson to learn in each and every tragedy. Here are ten of the most horrible tragedies to ever happen due to construction-related mistakes. 10 Pleasants Power Station Early in 1978, construction was underway for a second cooling tower for West Virginia’s Pleasants Power Station....

When the storm struck on September 8, waves measuring 4.5 meters (15 ft) covered the island of Galveston in water, and in just a few hours, winds moving at 215 kilometers (135 mi) per hour turned Texas’s largest city into a pile of rubble. After the nameless cyclone finally moved on, it left bloated bodies and shattered lives, but it also left behind survivors determined to rebuild and numerous stories about that fateful day....

Most people believe that psychopaths are dangerous people who should be separated from society. Despite this characterization, there are nonviolent psychopaths. In fact, people with this disorder may have some advantages over other people. 10 Psychopaths Are Better Looking If you’ve ever wondered why all the best-looking people seem to be total psychopaths, you’re not alone. Many scientific studies have tried to explain why psychopaths are better looking than the rest of us....

10 Unnerving Premonitions That Foretold Disaster During the following season, Meredith’s eerie premonition is brought to fruition when she nearly drowns in the Elliott Bay. She is eventually revived, but not before having a strange after-death experience with several characters who had died in previous episodes. On this list are people who, like Meredith, had a persistent sense of impending doom. These feelings were validated by awful tragedies on a much larger scale....

Even after all this time, though, there is still a great deal we don’t know. Some of the biggest discoveries of the ancient world still lie covered under the sands of Egypt, waiting to be revealed. More often than not, such revelations only yield yet more mysteries and unanswered questions. 10 The Lost Labyrinth Of Egypt 2,500 years ago, there was a massive labyrinth in Egypt that, in the words of one who saw it, “surpass[ed] even the pyramids....