On October 8, 1949, Rolla Primarda was killed, struck by the heavens as a bolt of lightning smitten her. Though normally this would be rare, it became even more strange because twenty years ago, at the exact spot, her father was also smitten by lightning and died. Yet the mystery goes even further. The grandfather of Rolla Primarda had, thirty years past her father’s death, in 1899, was struck by lightning-also in the same spot.

In 1883, Henry Ziegland had broken up with a girlfriend. The distraught girlfriend, unable to handle it, committed suicide. Ziegland didn’t suspect that the girl’s brother had held a grudge, and came after Ziegland with a gun. The irate brother took his shot at Henry, and, having finished his task, took his own life. Henry, though, was luckier. The bullet had only scratched his face and became embedded in a tree. Years later, the tree containing the bullet was slated for removal by Ziegland. He believed that using dynamite to destroy the tree would save valuable time and planted several sticks to destroy the large tree. The ensuing explosion propelled the bullet that nearly took his life all those years ago, but this time it didn’t miss, striking Ziegland in the head and killing him.

Mark Twain was a famous American writer. Halley’s comet is a comet that visits the Earth every once in a while, like the garbage truck, except with intervals of 75 years give or take a few. So it was quite the coincidence when Twain was born in 1835 on one of the few days Halley’s comet would appear. Interestingly, he died the same day it disappeared.

The game Overwatch was a popular game with team vs. team combat which was reaching a peak as new characters were beginning to be added and the player base was growing. Among one of these new characters, however, would be one of the worst decisions for the player base.

Before Bridgette was added the gameplay revolved around fast, action-packed sequences relying on Genji and Tracer with an emphasis on rushing in an exciting package of gameplay that was very attractive. This made Genji and Tracer very popular, and the meta was defined by these fast-paced games where certain characters couldn’t keep up with the action.

Then, Bridgette was added.

This changed the meta completely. She was touted as overpowered and as such, the fast-paced action had turned into boring sequences of tanks hugging each other hiding behind shields lumbering their way through. Not many people liked this new development, as it made previously powerful and popular legends obsolete and instead, the gameplay became slow.

In patch 4.03, a weapon called the Greatsword was added to the fighting game Brawlhalla. It was based of an innovative string system that allowed players to guess dodges and bait them out, then punish them by starting a longer string. It became broken after players realized they could reset the string to gain an extremely long combo that threatened to unbalanced the game. In the championships, nearly every contender wielded the greatsword, and the ones who didn’t were crushed quickly.

The problem with many games is that they are doing fine, but the developers, in their eagerness, release something that is so meta-defining that it becomes overpowered. This is the precarious perch that all games rest on if they ever want to be popular.

Humanity depends more on the ocean than we think. The ocean is a massive sink that absorbs carbon dioxide, provides food, and so much more. But in recent years, the ocean has suffered.

Global warming renders important coral reefs devoid of life. Acid sinks into the ocean and pollutes it, and on the forefront of problems, is the plastic pollution.

Plastic is used in our everyday lives. If I looked at my desk, I could name fifty things on it that use plastic in some way. In fact, things not containing plastic probably needed plastic to produce in the first place.

The problem is, more and more of these plastics keep ending up into the ocean, causing millions of animals to die. To a mola mola, a plastic bag looks like the perfect jellyfish snack.

And one of these plastics invading the oceans is a product that contains water: our plastic bottles. A study showed that more than 8 million TONS of plastic bottles are in the ocean already, and another estimate predicted that in 29 years, there will be more plastic than fish.

But among the pioneers combating this crisis one company has risen to the occasion, to take down the villainy of plastic bottle. This company presents, Ooho Water.

Consisting of materials and algae the Ooho water sphere is a spherical item that looks like a translucent membrane containing water-which it is. The edible shell allows you to pop it in your mouth and chomp down. These are perfectly biodegradable and cost less to produce than a water bottle’s plastics.

Though the situation may seem hopeless there will always be companies fighting back against plastic. And eventually, we may finally have a plastic-free ocean.

George Brighty was a Major in the Royal Tank Regiment who was a man who acted on his ideas. 

In 1943, when WW II was in the middle of its swing, the German offensive relied heavily upon its massive Tiger tanks. These behemoths were unlike anything the Allies fielded and were heavy tanks that generally took up to three of the standard Sherman tanks to destroy. Of course, this was usually not very cost-effective, and British command sought to fix this. High Command had rejected a plan to put a 17-pounder gun onto the base Sherman to counteract the heavy armor the Tigers sported, instead favoring the development of two new tanks, the Cromwell and A30 Challenger. Yet George Brighty believed that there was a better way.

From Brighty’s efforts, the Sherman Firefly eventually emerged from its cocoon and emerged on the battlefront. And in a German offensive at Saint-Aignan-de-Cramesnil would soon become the most famous Firefly battle. 

Some Fireflies from A Squadron were part of the force repulsing the counterattack when they met and engaged several Panzer tanks in battle. Unbeknownst to them, out of the seven Tigers they faced, one of them was piloted by the extraordinary Michael Wittman, a hero to the German war effort, awarded the Knight’s Cross by Hitler himself. Yet instead of another tank ace or famous war hero facing him, it was indeed a former shoemaker, whose gun had not yet been fired in combat.

The three Sherman 75’s and the lone firefly piloted by Joe Ekins, our unlikely hero, engaged in combat. In the midst of the standoff, Ekins managed to down three Tigers. One of them, Wittman.

On Friday, September 6, 1901, the Pan-American Exposition had commenced. This World Fair was based in Buffalo, New York, and was illuminated at night. It was to be a grand occasion, with the then-incumbent President, William McKinley.

Leon Frank Czolgosz was a steelworker who had seen several ups and downs within his environment. Strikes from the workers and economic crashes, he began to develop radical beliefs. He looked at America from the uglier side and believed that the American society was fixed; that there was social inequality. He believed the structure allowed for the rich to steal from the poor, that the rich were getting richer off the backs of the poor whilst the poor got poorer. These thoughts made him sympathize with various anarchist and groups because he believed the cause for social inequality was the government itself. He listened to speeches from anarchists and associated himself with some anarchist groups. For years, he sat mulling over the injustice wondering what to do about it. Then, in a moment that would change his life, he received news of the Italian King, Umberto the First who had been shot to death by Gaetano Bresci, an anarchist who decided he had sat around long enough brooding and took action. This heavily influenced Czolgosz’s later decisions. 

William McKinley entered the Temple of Music at 4:07 PM expecting a show. What happened was that Czolgosz followed in the diabolical footsteps of Bresci and shot the President, twice, ending his life. McKinley did not die immediately, but due to the lack of antibiotics and modern medicine, he succumbed to gangrene.

Members of the surrounding crowd quickly rushed Czolgosz and subdued him, while law enforcement stepped in to stop the violence. Czolgosz was savaged by the crowd so much that he nearly died before his trial, though he was convicted quickly to the death sentence.

Though McKinley had died and Czolgosz’s actions accomplished nothing, this would have far-reaching influence into the future. This prompted the establishment of the Secret Service to protect the President. Without the Secret Service, many other Presidents would have died.

Victor Moore was a 10th-degree black belt and is a four-time karate world champion. Impressive, right?

Well, when Bruce Lee told Moore he was going to punch him in the face, every time Lee punched, 8 times consecutively, Moore failed every time, Bruce Lee stopping his fist millimeters from impact. 

This speed drill challenge seemed easy enough-block a single punch to the face without the arms already in a position to block. Yet when Moore was faced with the challenge, he failed.

Humanity’s body has its limits, and this is one of them. A similar punch was later used in a fight by Muhammed Ali taught to him by Jhoon Rhee. The idea was to surpass the human visual stimulus reaction time. Roughly 0.25 seconds, it was no small feat to pull this off. 

Another wonder punch was the famous “one-inch punch”. Bruce Lee popularized this, and as such, it was extremely powerful. With fingers outstretched pushing against the target, Bruce Lee could break a board. Though most people would struggle, as punches require momentum, Bruce Lee managed to generate such an extreme amount of force it launched Joe Lewis back into a chair. Lewis was no weakling himself, as he was voted twice the greatest karate fighter in the world and Bruce Lee considered him to be one of the greats. In fact, Lewis was the number one pick for Chuck Norris’ eventual spot as the villain Colt.

From fraudulent Nigerian Princes to fake Windows support technicians, the internet is full of scams.

Scammers on the internet are actually quite common. Sometimes, you’ll receive a page supposedly by Windows claiming your computer has been infected with a virus and that you must call a number to fix it, or a mysterious email asking for your details in order to fund a transaction. However, whilst many people merely ignore, some people have decided to fight back against these thieves. Many people start small-wasting said scammer’s time by leading them on a wild goose chase. In the case of phone call scams, some people purposely aggravate the scam callers, for instance pretending to give their social security number but hanging up before finishing it, to purposefully acting clumsy and burning the scammer’s time. 

Then there are those who believe the law has not taken prudent action and take matters into their own hands. The Youtuber Jim Browning managed to hack into CCTV of a scamming complex filled with money-grubbing tricksters. And though it is technically outside the law, many police forces who have been alerted to the discovery of scammer’s locations by Browning are probably quite grateful.

Though you can always just click away and ignore it, that doesn’t help much. One person falling for the trick gives the scammer encouragement, so spreading the news is very important. Even more, you can always take time to lead them on a merry hike that leads to a dead-end filling them with frustration and also a contemplation on some of their more edgy life choices. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

It was a game that seemed normal so far on November 7th. It was but a routine game between Leeds United and Crystal Palace in the Premier League. 

Striker Patrick Bamford was pointing with his hand to where he wanted the pass to equalize against Palace. The through ball came in, and Bamford’s diagonal run and a wonderful chip had evened out the game, 1-1.

Or so they thought.

As Wikipedia defines it, the rule called “offside” in soccer, or football, is a law that states that a player is in an offside position if any of their body parts, except the hands and arms, are in the opponents’ half of the pitch, and closer to the opponents’ goal line than both the ball and the second-last opponent (the last opponent is usually, but not necessarily, the goalkeeper).

And so Patrick Bamford’s goal was promptly disallowed since he was in an offside position.

The machine they had used to determine if he was offside was supposed to be a revolutionary piece of work that would prevent such incidents like Maradona’s Hand of God from ever happening. The machine recorded, from various angles of the pitch, footage, with which could be determined offside or not.

Bamford’s arm was pointing towards where he wanted it. Though his arm was past the second-to-last defender, the arms are not included in the rule, as one cannot score with the arms or the hands. So moving away from the arms, excluding them, was there any other part of him past the defender?

VAR thought so. Standing for Video Assistant Referee, this was the machine that was supposed to clear up, as Wikipedia once again states, “clear and obvious errors” and “serious missed incidents”.

Not very many people thought this was “clear and obvious” or “serious and missed”. The reason for this was, excluding his arm, there was a bit of him offside. And so they measured from his armpit. The preposterous thing is, neither can you score with your armpit, but the rules only exclude the arms and hands. 

This is not the only incident. In fact, in nearly every game, things like this pop up. It has gotten ridiculous enough from the new FIFA rules that a team can score by kicking the ball at someone’s arm. People can be centimeters offside and still be revoked of their goal, and others can be given goals for nothing.

Though VAR was meant to do good, it has turned to the dark side, casting off its purpose to fix errors that humans cannot fix and becoming something that enforces large consequences on the slightest of misdemeanors.

The moment is tense, as two gunslingers face each other in a duel. The quietness is unnerving, and in the distance, a tumbleweed rolls past.

Judging from how many times the tumbleweed is present in movies and cartoons in the Western genre, you’d think that tumbleweed is some kind of traditional plant living for many years, but it is far from it. In fact, it is an invasive plant that has caused many problems for agriculture.

The tumbleweed is a type of plant that when mature, detaches from the underground portion of its root. It does this because once detached, the puffy aboveground portion seen in the movies rolling past a scene is propelled by the wind. While bouncing on the ground and rolling, it shakes seeds off. This is an advantage as the seed dispersal increases the chance that one seed lands in a fertile place. 

This might not seem troubling, but it is. This is highly efficient and thus, a certain area can fill up completely with tumbleweed. In fact, there have been instances of tumbleweed invasions on towns, where a town is swarmed with tumbleweed. Tumbleweed is incredibly annoying to deal with, as they stick together into a quivering singularity, plugging up houses and halting traffic. Tumbleweed sport prickly spines and thorns, making them even more of a hassle. 

They also hurt farming, because farmers dig pits between fields so if one catches fire it does not spread. However, tumbleweed can fill the pits making the fire spread.

The reason tumbleweeds are not eliminated is because it is impossible. Over time, America has infected Mexico and Canada with tumbleweed, so to eliminate tumbleweed Canada and Mexico would also have to. They would have to destroy every tumbleweed, but also every seed because even a single tumbleweed multiplies like crazy.

Though tumbleweed may be part of films and cartoons, it is, in fact, a pest that is hurting the USA.

The pea aphid is a sap-sucking aphid that is pretty boring. Beneath the surface, though, when threatened by a ladybug, it explodes itself. Yes, you heard it right, it commits suicide, sometimes taking out the ladybug. The pea aphid is literally a suicide bomber.

The pea aphid does this to protect other aphids, by exploding it can allow other aphids to flee. It doesn’t care a lot about its life or how stupid exploding itself is, it just goes for the explosion kill. 

While for humans it might seem foolish to explode whenever you see something about to eat you, for the aphid, it is a valiant sacrifice.

The Malaysian worker ant is also a known animal that commits an explosive suicide to save the colony when threatened.

You’d think humans would be smart enough not to do the same things that only aphids and ants do, but some humans actually do this. So don’t be stupid because literally only insects attempt this.