Martyrdom, though usually used to define someone who dies in the name of their religion, should not be connected exclusively with faith. The phenomenon of martyrdom is far from new; the ancestral expression “pro patria mori” – to die for one’s homeland — described the most honorable way for a citizen of Ancient Greece and Rome to die.

Ancient Egypt is one of the most fascinating places in the historical record. Their obsession with life after death, their grand pyramids and golden treasures, and the multitudes of evidence they left behind of their great works have captured the imaginations of people for thousands of years. However, underneath the veneer of mysticism and historical grandeur, Ancient Egypt was not always the most fun place in the world to live. Their justice system was often unfair and cruel, some of their medical practices were horrifying, and their devotion to the gods often went to insane lengths.

So, it finally happened. The zombies rose up, Putin hit the nuclear button, scientists created a killer virus, Yellowstone super-volcano erupted, and the apes turned on their human masters. The consequence: bang, no more humanity. Just you. The last list-reading human on Earth.

The issue of how the United States of America will deal with undocumented people entering its borders is so hot that many Americans were willing to embrace a ridiculous campaign promise as of building a wall between the United States and Mexico in hopes of addressing and potentially solving it, something thoroughly debunked in media like a video by Adams Ruins Everything. In our nation’s history, as history.state.gov tells us, there was the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924, which placed a limit on the number of permitted immigrants and banned Asian immigrants in general (which wasn’t changed until 1952).

Chances are that maybe you, or at least someone else you know, is vegetarian. A vegetarian is someone who doesn’t eat meat, fish, or poultry. Vegans, on the other hand, are vegetarians but go a bit beyond that. A vegan not only doesn’t eat the above mentioned meats, but also abstains from all animal products, like milk, cheese, other dairy items, eggs, honey, wool, silk, or leather.

In a world where fake news and false factoids are rampant, it is hard to distinguish what is true and what isn’t, especially when it sounds so unbelievable. We have gone through some crazy news stories and unbelievable tales from history and culled even more of the most interesting, unbelievable facts that sound like BS, but are completely true.

No, we’re not talking about lizards driving around in fancy cars – though that’s not far off from what some people believe is happening. The concept was brought to popularity by former BBC sports writer and self-proclaimed “son of God”, David Icke in his 1999 book The Biggest Secret: The Book That Will Change the World. In the book, Icke posits that society is controlled by humanoid reptiles. For the sake of simplicity, we will call them the Reptilians. While it may sound like a wildly outlandish conspiracy theory, approximately 12 million Americans believe that it’s actually true and there is a conspiracy against humans perpetrated by the Reptilians.

Social media is an unavoidable facet of modern life, and while we’ll never make fun of people for using it (we wouldn’t ask you to follow us on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube if that was the case) we do quite enjoy pointing out examples of objectively awful people getting a much deserved comeuppance because of it. For example, why not revel in the schadenfreude of…

Having secrets is part of being human. There is no person alive today who doesn’t have at least one secret. While most of these secrets are of no concern to anyone else, there are some that could benefit the whole of humanity, or even solve some long-running mystery. While some of these may one day surface, others will forever be lost. Here are 10 people who took their biggest secrets with them to the grave, and left us to speculate about what those secrets truly were and how they could have benefited us if we knew them.

At some point, most of us have probably gone to work despite being sick, or suffered a sports injury or kept right on playing. We tend to feel like a bit of a badass when we do, soldiering on through the adversity. And then there are people who take that to the next level by not even realizing that they’ve been hurt. Their injuries are less along the lines of playing on after getting bruised in a football match, and more along the lines of coming second place in Russian roulette and going back for one more round.