Amazing Holes In Our Earth

Here are some amazing collection of man made and natural holes in our earth.

Mirny diamond mine, Siberia



The red arrow in the photo below is pointing to a huge truck.

I believe that most people have seen this one. It’s an absolute beast and holds the title of largest open diamond mine in the world. At 525 meters deep with a top diameter of 1200 meters there’s even a no-fly zone above the hole due to a few helicopters being sucked in.


Kimberley big hole - South Africa

Apparently the largest ever hand-dug excavation in the world, this 1097 meter deep mine yielded over 3 tonnes of diamonds before being closed in 1914.
The amount of earth removed by workers is estimated to total 22.5 million tons.


Glory hole - Monticello dam

This is the glory hole belonging to Monticello dam in California and it’s the largest in the world, its size enabling it to consume 14′400 cubic feet of water every second. A glory hole is used when a dam is at full capacity and water needs to be drained from the reservoir.


Sinkhole, Guatemala

A sinkhole is caused when water (usually rainwater or sewage) is soaked up by the earth on a large scale, resulting in the ground collapsing.
These photos are of a sinkhole which occurred early this year in Guatemala. The hole swallowed a dozen homes and killed at least 3 people. Officials blamed the monster of a hole on a ruptured sewage pipe.

Five Of The Best Animal Fathers

Some animal fathers have taken other paths–shaped by such factors as severe living conditions that require effort from both parents for the young to survive. Or unusual reproductive techniques like external fertilization (used by fish) that leave males the last ones present–and therefore stuck with the parenting duties. No matter the reason, various animal dads are out there plugging away and raising their young.

Here is a list of some of the top father’s in the animal kingdom:

Emperor Penguin

Emperors are the largest of all penguins—an average bird stands some 45 inches (115 centimeters) tall. These flightless animals live on the Antarctic ice and in the frigid surrounding waters. After mating, the female lays one large egg. The egg is then immediately rolled to the top of the male’s feet. The egg is then incubated or kept warm on the male’s feet by a thick fold of skin that hangs from the belly of the male. During this two-month bout of babysitting the males eat nothing and are at the mercy of the Antarctic elements. When female penguins return to the breeding site, they bring a belly full of food that they regurgitate for the newly hatched chicks. Meanwhile, their duty done, male emperors take to the sea in search of food for themselves.


Sea Horse

The beautiful colored seahorses belong to the most magnificent and most remarkable organisms of the seas. There are about 35 different species of seahorses spread all over the world. The Seahorses is the only creature where the male has a true reversed pregnancy. Male seahorses are equipped with a brood pouch on their ventral, or front-facing, side. When mating, the female deposits her eggs into his pouch, and the male fertilizes them internally. Within two or three weeks between 50 and 1.500 seahorse babies develop inside the males pouch, which are finally living born. Frequently not all of the babies will dismiss at one time from the pouch, but in several phases over some minutes or hours, in extreme cases it takes even one or two days. Several males die a few days after birth of the ponies because of remaining dead babies in the pouch resulting in putrefaction and bacterial infection.


Giant African Bullfrog

This is a large frog, many weighing in over 2 kg. The African Bullfrog is carnivorous and a voracious eater, eating insects, small rodents, reptiles, small birds and other amphibians. The giant African bullfrog is a dad with a very special talent — he can eat anything that he can fit into his mouth. Not sure how much that helps in terms of child rearing, but with over 6,000 little ones to raise it’s got to come in handy sometimes. The South American Darwin frog is also a remarkable dad, thanks to his unique method for protecting his eggs: He swallows them, keeping them tucked inside his vocal sacs for six weeks. When they’re ready to hatch, it’s like morning sickness gone wrong — very wrong.


Jacana

African Jacanas are not known to be monogomous in their mating patterns. A mating pair can have up to 30 clutches of eggs each season, resulting from either the same partner or various partners. The female African Jacana is more dominant than her male counterpart. Females are twice as large as males and can be very picky about who they choose as a mate. The female African Jacanas does not generally choose the same male partner for every clutch of eggs that she lays. This species of birds are known as ‘lily walkers’ because their slender legs and toes give them the gracefulness to walk on the lily pads that blanket their wetlands. Due to their smaller size, males are more graceful ‘lily walkers’ than females. The female African Jacana lays several clutches of eggs between December and April, The clutches may be from a variety of mates or only one mate, depending on the circumstances. The male African Jacana is the main caretaker of the offspring, incubating the eggs and carrying the baby chicks under his wings to keep them warm and dry until the chicks are approximately 18 days old.


Stickleback

Sticklebacks are small fish (2-4 inches) characterized by a row of free dorsal spines in front of the dorsal fin combined with the absence of scales. At mating time, the male builds a tubelike nest of vegetation glued together with a secretion from his kidneys. He then lures the female into the nest, where she lays her eggs. After fertilizing the eggs, the male guards the nest and cares for the young. Sticklebacks are popular aquarium fishes. They are usually not kept together with other kinds of fish because they are aggressive. Sticklebacks are not important forage fish and, consequently, of little value as bait. They feed on tiny aquatic animals.

7 Strange Animals Bred for Business Purposes

Supersized bunnies, tiny cows, and frozen goats–they’re not just for children’s books anymore.

Breeders around the world covet certain animals for their economic potential. Some produce a lot of meat. Some are iridescent. Others fit well into small spaces.

Nevertheless, all of the animals featured below have two things in common. One, they have highly unusual attributes. Two, those very attributes make each a potentially lucrative business proposition:


7. Giant Guinea Pig

Cuy meat is lean, protein-packed, and versatile. Better yet, cuys, or guinea pigs, reproduce quickly, offering a steady supply of meat. One Lima official said that guinea pigs will feed a family of up to eight people for only USD $3.20. Peruvians eat about 65 million guinea pigs per year.

With meat in mind, scientists in Peru set out to supersize the cuy. 34 years after they came up with the idea, scientists introduced a giant cuy weighing about 2.2 lbs, twice the usual size. The guinea pigs were especially prized for export, allowing Peruvians living abroad to get a (big) taste of home.


6. Belgian Blue

Known as the Incredible Hulk cow, Monster cow, and Schwarzenegger cow, the Belgian Blue takes the world’s blue ribbon for buffness. The cow’s hereditary myostatin defect results in excessive muscle growth known as “double muscling.” As a result, the breed produces a large amount of lean beef, endearing it breeders looking to penetrate a health-conscious beef market—or just trying to look good with a stable full of manly cows.


5. Fainting Goat

Fainting goats are bred to fall over. A hereditary disorder, myotonia congenita, causes their muscles to freeze when they’re scared, often resulting in them collapsing on their sides. Their small size makes them ideal for small farms, where they won’t hop fences—or will scare themselves into collapsing when they try.

According to oral history, the fainting goat was a good asset protector. Handlers would keep them with other (more valuable) animals, like sheep. When a predator came around, the fainting goat would collapse, effectively sacrificing itself so that the other animals could safely run away.


4. German Giant

The German Giant, one of the biggest domestic rabbit breeds on Earth, can grow to the size of a dog. Breeders covet giant rabbits for their looks, their fur, and their meat.

Breeder Carl Szmolinsky produced Germany’s biggest rabbit in 2006. His win inspired North Korean officials to purchase twelve of Szmolinsky’s German Giants to start a food breeding program. The giant bunnies’ offspring would help alleviate North Korea’s endemic food shortages.

Szmolinsky was scheduled to fly into Pyongyang to help them establish the program. North Korean officials, however, canceled his visit. He suspects that government officials ate the rabbits. “North Korea won’t be getting anything from me any more,” the upset Szmolinsky told Spiegel in the interview.


3. Minicow

If supermarket beef is becoming too expensive, don’t fret. You can purchase your own German Shepherd-sized minicow for a few hundred dollars. It’s tiny, meaty and, best yet, fits in your backyard. Homesteaders can choose from Irish Dexter, Mini Hereford, or Lowline Angus cows, which the Times says produces 70% of the steak of a cow twice its size. All you need is a couple of acres of grass and a little fencing. In return, you get organic, grass-fed beef, sans hormones or slaughterhouse.


2. Jersey Giant

Why eat turkey when you can buy a giant chicken instead? That’s what 19th-century breeders John and Thomas Black were thinking when they introduced the Jersey Giant. The breed, originally crossbred from three other kinds of chickens, produces hens weighing an average of 11 lbs, and cocks of 13 lbs. The meat industry initially took to the idea, but then cast Jersey Giants aside because they don’t grow fast enough.


1. GloFish

Swim aside, goldfish. The Sunburst Orange ® GloFish ™ is genetically engineered to outshine you by miles. And unlike you, boring, traditional goldfish, the GloFish ™ also comes in Starfire Red and Electric Green.

These colorful zebrafish hold the dubious honor of being the world’s first genetically modified pet. In 1999, Singapore-based scientists inserted fluorescence proteins from coral and jellyfish into a zebrafish embryo, resulting in the GloFish’s luminescent qualities. The idea was to create a fish that would fluoresce when it came near toxins, allowing it to detect pollution.

In the US, Austin-based Yorktown Technologies licensed the GloFish—initially created in Singapore—for consumer sales. People continue to buy the dazzling danios, though GMO laws in Canada, and the EU ban people from possessing them.

Fantastic Natural Phenomena‏

The classical natural wonders are huge and hard to miss - vast canyons, giant mountains and the like Many of the most fantastic natural phenomena, however, are also least easy to spot. Some are incredibly rare while others are located in hard-to-reach parts of the planet. From moving rocks to mammatus clouds and red tides to fire rainbows, here are seven of the most spectacular phenomenal wonders of the natural world.

1) Sailing Stones

The mysterious moving stones of the packed-mud desert of Death Valley have been a center of scientific controversy for decades. Rocks weighing up to hundreds of pounds have been known to move up to hundreds of yards at a time. Some scientists have proposed that a combination of strong winds and surface ice account for these movements. However, this theory does not explain evidence of different rocks starting side by side and moving at different rates and in disparate directions. Moreover, the physics calculations do not fully support this theory as wind speeds of hundreds of miles per hour would be needed to move some of the stones.


2) Columnar Basalt

When a thick lava flow cools it contracts vertically but cracks perpendicular to its directional flow with remarkable geometric regularity - in most cases forming a regular grid of remarkable hexagonal extrusions that almost appear to be made by man. One of the most famous such examples is the Giant's Causeway on the coast of Ireland (shown above) though the largest and most widely recognized would be Devil's Tower in Wyoming .. Basalt also forms different but equally fascinating ways when eruptions are exposed to air or water.


3) Blue Holes

Blue holes are giant and sudden drops in underwater elevation that get their name from the dark and foreboding blue tone they exhibit when viewed from above in relationship to surrounding waters. They can be hundreds of feet deep and while divers are able to explore some of them they are largely devoid of oxygen that would support sea life due to poor water circulation - leaving them eerily empty. Some blue holes, however, contain ancient fossil remains that have been discovered, preserved in their depths.


4) Red Tides

Red tides are also known as algal blooms - sudden influxes of massive amounts of colored single-cell algae that can convert entire areas of an ocean or beach into a blood red color. While some of these can be relatively harmless, others can be harbingers of deadly toxins that cause the deaths of fish, birds and marine mammals. In some cases, even humans have been harmed by red tides though no human exposure are known to have been fatal. While they can be fatal, the constituent phytoplankton in ride tides are not harmful in small numbers.


5) Ice Circles

While many see these apparently perfect ice circles as worthy of conspiracy theorizing, scientists generally accept that they are formed by eddies in the water that spin a sizable piece of ice in a circular motion. As a result of this rotation, other pieces of ice and flotsam wear relatively evenly at the edges of the ice until it slowly forms into an essentially ideal circle. Ice circles have been seen with diameters of over 500 feet and can also at times be found in clusters and groups at different sizes as shown above.


6) Mammatus Clouds

True to their ominous appearance, mammatus clouds are often harbingers of a coming storm or other extreme weather system. Typically composed primarily of ice, they can extend for hundreds of miles in each direction and individual formations can remain visibly static for ten to fifteen minutes at a time. While they may appear foreboding they are merely the messengers - appearing around, before or even after severe weather.


7) Fire Rainbows

A circumhorizontal fire rainbow arc occurs at a rare confluence of right time and right place for the sun and certain clouds. Crystals within the clouds refract light into the various visible waves of the spectrum but only if they are arrayed correctly relative to the ground below. Due to the rarity with which all of these events happen in conjunction with one another, there are relatively few remarkable photos of this phenomena.

10 Truly Bizarre Scientific Studies

Where would the world be without scientific studies? I think most would agree that some can be very informative, some not so informative and others are just plain silly and a waste of money. The studies on this list are all rather unusual in nature, hopefully entertaining and each study was sourced at least twice on different websites. Some here I believe do have some merit while others will fall into the questionable category and the results may need to be taken with a grain of salt.

1. Smart Hips

The Study: Curvy Hips Intelligent Study
Conducted By: The University of Pittsburgh and the University of California, Santa Barbara

Researchers looked at data from a study of more than 16,000 women and girls that detailed their body measurements, as well as their education level and scores on various cognitive tests. The women were measured by their waist-to-hip ratio or WHR. This is done by dividing your waist size by your hip size. The report indicated that women with waists that were about 70 percent of the diameter of their hips scored slightly better on intelligence tests and tended to have a slightly higher level of education than women with a higher waist-to-hip ratio. Also women with lower WHRs and their children had significantly higher cognitive test scores. One theory is the amount of omega-3 fatty acids in a woman’s hips and thighs are a key indicator of her heart health. It’s also important for the health of her brain and the brain of any child she may bear.

Interesting Fact: Scientists call the study intriguing but say the differences in cognitive ability that the researchers found were somewhat small. Because of this they think it would be a mistake to over interpret the findings that just because a woman has a curvy figure, she’s smarter.





2. Elephant Recognition

The Study: The Elephant Self-Recognition Study
Conducted By: New York’s Wildlife Conservation Society

Three Asian elephants named Happy, Maxine, and Patty were observed by researchers after a large mirror was placed in the elephant’s yard. Happy was marked with a white X painted above her eye and a similar mark was made on the opposite side of her head in invisible paint of an identical smell and texture. When Happy saw her image in the mirror she repeatedly brought her trunk to her own head to touch the white mark. This is the ultimate test of self-recognition. The Elephants also made repetitive movements in front of the mirror and apparently used it to inspect their body parts. Maxine even put her trunk tip into her mouth and looked as though she was trying to study her mouth’s interior.

Interesting Fact: Elephants have now joined apes and dolphins in being part of a small group of animals that are able to recognize themselves in the mirror.


3. Sheep Recognition

The Study: Sheep Recognizing Faces Study

The Babraham Institute investigated sheep’s ability to distinguish and remember faces of both other sheep and humans. The researchers trained the sheep to associate one of the pair with a food reward. 20 sheep were presented with pictures of 25 pairs of sheep faces. They determined that the sheep could recognize the individuals associated with a reward even in profile. The team further discovered that sheep can remember as many as 50 sheep faces in addition to a familiar human face for up to two years.

Interesting Fact: Scientists concluded that because sheep have such sophisticated facial recognition skills, they must have much greater social requirements than previously thought.


4. Look-Alikes

The Study: Do Married Couples Start to Look Alike Study
Conducted By: Psychologist Robert Zajonc at the University of Michigan

For this study 110 participants were presented with random photographs of faces, and were instructed to match the men with the women who most closely resembled each other. Two dozen of the photographs were of couples when first married and another two dozen were of the same couples 25 years later. The judges were able to match husbands and wives far more often when the couples were older than when they were younger.

Interesting Fact: The results could not be explained but there were some possible explanations. The first was diet with the thinking that if both partners eat a high fat diet, their faces will both tend to look chubby. Another explanation was environment such as sunshine that would affect the skin in similar ways. A third explanation was predisposition with the idea that people are more likely to choose partners who will grow to look like them. The most popular explanation was empathy. People grow to look similar because they are empathizing with each other so the couple would copy each other’s facial expressions. Then over time because of all the empathizing, their faces come to look more similar.


5. Women in Red

The Study: Are Women More Attractive in Red Study
Conducted By: The University of Rochester NY

This study wanted to test whether men have different attitudes towards women based on the color they are wearing. In one experiment Psychologists asked: “Imagine that you are going on a date with this woman and have $100 in your wallet. How much would you be willing to spend on your date?” Pictures of the exact same women were shown to men with different colors. The woman wearing red was more likely to be treated to a more expensive date. In all the experiments, women shown framed by or wearing red were rated significantly more attractive and sexually desirable by men than women in other colors.

Interesting Fact: One of the theories to explain the outcome of the study was it could be due to deep biological roots because nonhuman male primates, such as baboons and chimpanzees, are known to be attracted to females displaying red.


6. Herring Gas

The Study: Do Herring Communicate by Passing Gas Study
Conducted By: Canada and Britain

Two teams carried out this research project. One studied Pacific herring in Bamfield, British Columbia, while the other focused on Atlantic herring in Oban, Scotland. It was discovered that the Atlantic and Pacific herring create a mysterious underwater noise. It turns out that the high-frequency sound was created by releasing air from their anuses. The noise was always accompanied by a fine stream of bubbles. Researchers suspect herring hear the bubbles as they’re expelled, helping the fish form protective shoals at night.

Interesting Fact: Researchers named the phenomenon Fast Repetitive Tick, which makes for a rather interesting acronym, FRT. Scientists say unlike the human version, these FRTs are thought to bring the fish closer together.


7. Bouncing Bosom

The Study: Bra Support for Bouncing Breasts Study
Conducted By: University of Portsmouth, England

70 women were recruited including students at University of Portsmouth with bra sizes ranging from A-cup to extra-large (DD, E, FF, G, H, HH, J and JJ). Each woman walked, jogged and ran while wearing different bra types. During the exercise, biomechanical measurements were taken of breast movement in three directions: up-and-down, side-to-side and in-and-out. During walking exercise, the women’s breasts moved relatively the same amount in all directions. But when participants sped up to a jog or run, their breasts moved proportionally more in some directions than others: The overall pattern of the movement resembled a figure-8. The study showed A-cup women, wearing a sports bra reduced overall breast movement by 53 percent, compared with a 55-percent reduction for G-cup women. A pair of D-cup breasts weighs about 15 to 23 pounds (7 to 10 kilograms) and had little support with ligaments and the skin doing most or all of the support work. It was concluded that whether women are flat-chested or big-busted, ordinary bras fall short when it comes to supporting bouncing breasts.

Interesting Fact: The momentum created by intense bouncing can stretch the breast’s connective tissues, causing sagging and pain for many women. An estimated 50 percent of women experience breast pain during exercise.


8. Fertility Sexiness

The Study: Do Women Walk Sexier When Fertile Study
Conducted By: Meghan Provosat Queens University, Canada

The idea behind this study was to determine whether women give subtle signals to men to advertise they are experiencing different levels of sex hormones. The lead researcher Meghan Provost had expected a sexy hip-swinging walk to be one of those signals. She analyzed the gait of female volunteers and their levels of sex hormones in their saliva. She then showed video clips to 40 men asking them to rate the attractiveness of the way the women walked and then matched the results to the hormone tests. The results were so surprising that she repeated the experiment again with another group of male viewers. The researchers found those with alluring walks were the furthest away from ovulation and the women who were most fertile walked with fewer hip movements and with their knees closer together.

Interesting Fact: It was suggested that during the most high hormonal time it is in a woman’s best interests to form a closer attachment to one man to help raise children rather than to advertise her fertile time and be approached by a larger number of competing males. Also a sexy walk would be too obvious, so women are thought to use changes in smell and facial expressions that can be experienced only at close range.


9. Sexy Shouting

The Study: Why Female Monkeys Shout During Sex Study
Conducted By: The German Primate Center in Göttingen

To investigate the purpose behind the female monkey’s shouting calls, behavioral scientist and primatologists focused on Barbary macaques (Old World monkey species) for two years in a nature reserve in Gibraltar. The researchers found that females yelled during 86 percent of all sexual encounters. When females shouted, males ejaculated 59 percent of the time. However, when females did not holler, males ejaculated less than 2 percent of the time. To see if yelling resulted from how vigorous the sex was the scientists counted the number of pelvic thrusts males gave and timed when they happened. They found when shouting occurred thrusting increased and led to more vigorous sex. It was concluded that female monkeys may shout during sex to help their male partners climax. Scientists found that without these yells male Barbary macaques almost never ejaculated. The information on the study did not reveal how they were able to detect whether an ejaculation occurred but I guess its best to leave some things to the imagination.

Interesting Fact: Male and female Barbary macaques are promiscuous, often having sex with many partners. The females shout when they are most fertile, so males can make the most use of their sperm.


10. Big Hands, Big Feet, Big…

The Study: Foot Size and Penile Length Study
Conducted By: The University College, London

In this study the researchers measured 104 men’s feet and their penises. Because there is no perfect way to measure a man’s penis, they did what many other studies do that measure penis length. The researchers stretched the penis with a defined amount of force to determine how long it can get. This gives a pretty good indication of how long the penis would be when fully erect. The result of this study, (to the relief of all size seven shoe-wearing males) was that there is no scientific support for the relationship between a man’s shoe size and the length of his penis.

Interesting Fact: In another study a group of Greek researchers measured height, weight, waist/hip ratio, finger length and penis length of fifty-two men, aged nineteen to thirty-eight. They found that age and body characteristics were not associated with size of penis except for the “index finger length, which correlated significantly with the dimensions of the flaccid, maximally stretched penis.” A similar study with 1500 men also found that length of index the finger was significantly correlated with penis dimensions.

10 Real-Life Mad Scientists

Science, we are informed by conscientious historians of the discipline, is something that comes to us without anything we might call a “moral imperative” as to what we should or should not be doing with the knowledge. In fact, science has often been described as an “amoral” enterprise, which can be put to evil uses just as easily as good ones. Scientists themselves bear no responsibility to ensure how their discoveries are used by others.

But what if the scientist himself is a diabolical mad man?

Thank the FSM it doesn’t happen often, but here’s a list of ten people throughout history who fit the description of “Mad Scientist” because they used diabolical methods for their experiments. We can be thankful that this sort of research is not applauded today, nor are science students encouraged in these directions. But, they surely are interesting as historical footnotes.


1. Johann Conrad Dippel [1673-1734]

The first and most prophetic fact about Doctor Dippel is that he was born at Castle Frankenstein near Darmstadt, Germany. He studied theology, philosophy and alchemy at the University of Giessen, and promptly found himself in trouble for his theological opinions. In his search for the philosopher’s stone of alchemy, he became interested in creating artificial life.

It is on that score that Dippel gained a reputation for grave robbery, and performing gruesome experiments on cadavers in an attempt to do a “soul transplant.” There were rumors of him being driven out of town by angered townsfolk after blowing up a tower at Castle Frankenstein with nitroglycerine, but careful historical research fails to make a firm connection between Dippel and this substance (not discovered until after his time), or between Dippel and Mary Shelley’s immortalized mad doctor Frankenstein. What Dippel did manage to do with his alchemical experiments was develop “Prussian blue” dye which became a spectacular commercial success.


2. Giovanni Aldini [1762-1834]

The nephew of the man who developed the theory of muscular electricity, Giovanni centered his scientific career around working with galvanism – electricity. He examined medical uses, ways to illuminate lighthouses, and did experiments using electricity for preservation.

Aldini became most famous – or infamous – for his traveling horror show, touring all across Europe electrifying human and animal bodies for the delight of the public. But it was his performance at the Royal College of Surgeons in London in 1803 that earned him his place in Mad Scientist history. He used his conducting rods on the body of a hanged criminal named George Foster, causing muscles to contract and distort and frightening some people badly. For his efforts as well as his showmanship, Aldini was made a knight by the emperor of Austria and a councilor of state at Milan.


3. Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov [1870-1932?]

Yet another Stalinist era Russian scientist made his name doing bizarre and arguably unethical experiments on animals. Ivanov perfected the art of artificial insemination to aid his work, and went on to produce hybrids like Zeedonks (zebra and donkey), Zubrons (wisent and cow), an antelope-cow, a mouse-rat, a mouse-guinea pig, and a guinea pig-rabbit.

Ivanov veered off the merely interesting track with his human-ape hybrid experiments. Seems Stalin had high hopes for an army of man-apes that would be invincible, insensitive to pain and wouldn’t care about the quality of their food or treatment. At an experimental station in French Guinea he inseminated female chimpanzees with human sperm, but could not manage to produce a pregnancy. The French colonial government objected when he proposed inseminating human females with sperm from an orangutan. His contribution was primarily to establish the limits of interfertility, which modern scientists now get around with direct genetic manipulation and cloning.


4. Sergei Brukhonenko [1890-1960]

This Russian scientist of the Stalinist era contributed important research toward the development of open heart surgery, and invented a primitive heart-lung machine he called the “autojektor.” Sergei Brukhonenko’s experiments in how to keep a body (or some part of a body) alive led to some exhibitions that offended the ethical sensibilities of many.

The most famous of those were his experiments with the severed heads of dogs. One of which was able to eat a piece of cheese for the audience, which was then horrified when the chewed cheese exited the truncated esophagus at the other end. He did dog head transplants too, and brought executed dogs back to life. It was primarily experimentation using humans, human bodies and animals that first dictated the regulation of scientific experimentation, and grisly stories on that score helped to make the ‘Evil Scientist’ a stock character in fiction and entertainment.


5. Vladimir Demikhov [1916-1998]

Another organ transplant pioneer from the days of Stalin, Demikhov was famous for transplanting whole portions of live puppies onto the bodies of adult dogs. He also transplanted various organs around. There are videos of some of the most gruesome experiments of Demikhov and his contemporary Brukhonenko, which we’ll not link here. After inviting journalists to his lab to show off his work, a reporter from the Daily Mail wrote:

“Blinking unhappily in the daylight as Demikhov paraded it on its lead, this unfortunate beast had been created by grafting the head and upper body of a small puppy on the head and body of a fully-grown mastiff, to form one grotesque creature with two heads. The visitors watched in horror and fascination as both of the beast’s mouths lapped greedily at a bowl of milk proffered by Demikhov’s assistants.” The article did not say whether any of the assistants were named Igor.


6. Harry Harlow [1905-1981]

Harry Harlow was a psychologist interested in the psychology of maternal-infant bonding, who contributed greatly to the burgeoning animal rights movement that grew out of the long history of scientific research cruelty to helpless animals. One does have to wonder about many of these researchers, as in how many of them tortured animals in childhood and were steered into science as a “healthy outlet” for this sort of behavior that in the wider society would have earned them some serious legal troubles.

Harlow’s most infamous experiments were conducted with rhesus monkeys. He isolated infants from their mothers and offered them a choice of surrogate mother figures – a wire mesh construct or a terrycloth covered construct, one which provided milk and one that did not. He was quite open about his experimental apparatuses, giving them appropriate names such as “rape rack,” “iron maiden” and an isolation chamber called the “pit of despair.” For all the outrage at his cruelty to infant monkeys, Harlow did establish the importance of maternal-infant bonding for humans and his work led to ethics regulations of scientific research.


7. Shiro Ishii [1892-1959]

You may suspect that scientists who feel empowered to dream up tortures for animals might be willing to do the same sort of experiments on humans if the public sensibilities weren’t so averse to such things. You would be right, and there are times in human history when the public is distracted by other things, allowing scientists to do their worst. We call it “war,” and it’s offered cover for things diabolical enough to make an atheist suspect Satan exists, even if God may not.

Making a name for himself in the Japanese military establishment between world wars, Shiro Ishii enjoyed the title “Father of Biological Warfare” for his exploits as chief of Japan’s biological warfare program. Ishii supervised the deliberate infection of thousands of captives with deadly diseases, conducted grotesque surgies, and performed as many as 3,000 ‘dissections’ of live prisoners without anesthetic. A wealthy man never prosecuted for war crimes, Ishii died peacefully at his home in Japan at the age of 67.


8. Joseph Mengele [1911-1979]

His title is still “The Angel of Death,” which he earned the hard way as a German SS officer and physician at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps during the Holocaust. Mengele’s favorite subjects for grotesque experiments were twins, and he experimented on at least 3,000 sets of them. 26 of whom survived. He injected chemicals into children’s eyes to see if he could change their color, sewed a pair of Roma twins together so they’d be cojoined, giving them gangrene. He performed most of his surgeries – including amputations – without anesthesia.

It is questionable that Mengele really thought he was doing science, as most historians simply believe he was mad with power. Despite being the most hunted at-large war criminal in the world for 34 years, he died in Bertioga, Brazil in 1979 and buried under the name of Wolfgang Gerhard. He never expressed regret or remorse for his horrible crimes. While the study of twins has contributed much to knowledge of genetics and the “nature vs. nurture” debates in biology, both the Eugenics movement of the early 20th century and the Holocaust are not spoken about with much reverence by modern researchers.


9. Sigmund Rascher [1909-1945]

World War II offered lots of opportunities for evil scientific experiments the governments involved apparently figured no one would ever care about, given the level of sheer inhuman violence abroad at the time. Sigmund Rascher became a captain in the German Luftwaffe, under whose auspices he began human experimentation for research on high altitude flight. He was a favorite of Heinrich Himmler, who gave him absolute power at the Dachau concentration camp to choose his victims.

Rascher killed scores of victims with his portable pressure chamber, more than a hundred with his “freezing experiments,” which actually did document best methods for warming someone suffering terminal hypothermia. While at Dauchau, Rascher also developed those ubiquitous cyanide capsules that have been so often lampooned as the suicide option of choice for spies and other assorted bad guys. Himmler caught Rascher and his wife lying about extending their fertility into their 50s (they’d bought or kidnapped the babies) and had them executed shortly before the end of the war.


10. Sidney Gottlieb [1918-1999]

The world’s horror at the atrocities committed by German and Japanese ‘doctors’ during WW-II didn’t stop the United States government from investing quite a bit in its own versions of blatantly unethical (and illegal) human experimental projects. Military psychiatrist and speech therapist Sidney Gottlieb was put in charge of the CIA’s MK-ULTRA project in 1953 to investigate “techniques that would crush the human psyche to the point that it would admit anything.”

In addition to coming up with some highly humorous assassination plots against Fidel Castro (always involving some kind of poison), Gottlieb graduated to dosing unsuspecting people with LSD, causing some serious death and mental destruction along the way. In 1973, just as the Congress was closing on on the project, records of MK-ULTRA were ordered destroyed by then DCIA Richard Helms. It is not known (because no one involved has bothered to say) if they ever found the “truth drug” they were searching for but it is known that the program experimented with heroin, morphine, temazepam, mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, marijuana, alcohol and sodium pentothal. What we got instead was a Drug War that is still claiming innocent lives today.

7 Amazing Types Of Invisible Ink & How You Can Use Them

Invisible ink is the stuff of romantic legend. Spies and clandestine lovers alike have used it for centuries to convey hidden messages to their partners. Although invisible ink is still used today for these purposes, it has taken on many more practical and fascinating roles in recent years.

Hundreds of liquids, from fruit juices to specially formulated chemicals, can be used as invisible ink. Here we explore six of the most interesting and accessible types. We hope you’ll be inspired to make your own invisible ink at home. With a bit of practice, you too can become a master of steganography (which is the art of writing hidden messages, in case you didn’t know that already!)


1. Lemon Juice

Lemon juice is a great example of a ‘heat-fixed’ invisible ink. An invisible lemon juice message, scrawled onto a piece of paper, can be developed by exposure to any heat source such as a radiator, an iron or a 100W light bulb.

Many acidic household liquids (Coca Cola, wine, apple, orange and onion juice included) behave in quite the same way, as do a number of bodily fluids. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, people frequently sent postcards containing hidden messages written in saliva and even urine.

-Equipment & ingredients: you’ll find them in most local grocers

-Suitable for: anyone

-Ease of use: really easy


2. Vinegar

Vinegar is another household liquid that can be used as an invisible ink. Unlike lemon juice, messages written in vinegar are best developed by a chemical reaction. Red cabbage, which contains a pigment called flavin (an anthocyanin), can be used in solution to develop vinegar and other strong acids. Red cabbage solution turns a vinegar message dark red.

-Equipment & ingredients: ubiquitous

-Ideal for: anyone wanting to hide a message

-Ease of use: simple


3. Cerium Oxalate

In 2006, two researchers from Michigan State University finally discovered the secret behind the Stasi’s invisible ink. The Stasi would sandwich a piece of material impregnated with cerium oxalate between two sheets of paper, writing on the top sheet to transfer a chemical message onto the sheet below. A solution of manganese sulphate, hydrogen peroxide and other chemicals could then be used to develop the message, turning it orange.

During World War II, numerous chemicals were used as invisible inks: copper sulphate, developed with sodium iodide; iron sulphate, developed with sodium carbonate; and sodium chloride (common table salt), developed with silver nitrate, were some of the more common. The search of one Nazi spy’s hotel room uncovered several large and unusual looking keys, which turned out to be invisible ink writing implements, with hidden nibs and chambers for ink.

-Equipment & ingredients: access to a lab would help

-Ideal for: anyone wanting to hide sensitive information

-Ease of use: time consuming


4. UV

Specially formulated UV inks are invisible in daylight, but glow under UV light sources. UV pens filled with such inks are used to mark items in case of theft, products in manufacturing and hands or tickets for readmission to events, particularly at nightclubs.

Many common substances, from laundry detergents to soap and bodily fluids, can be used as crude invisible inks, as they fluoresce under UV light. Photocopiers can be used to develop messages written in these inks, due to the UV components in their scanner heads.

-Equipment & ingredients: easy to pick up UV lights and pens

-Ideal for: hiding information at school or work

-Ease of use: simple and reliable


5. Printer Ink

Invisible UV ink is also available for use in printer cartridges and is used for printing information onto business forms, so as not to clutter the visible content. The United States Postal Service also uses UV ink to print barcodes and routing information onto mailed envelopes.

By following the instructional video above, you can make your own makeshift invisible inkjet printer cartridge with just an ordinary inkjet cartridge, four invisible ink pens and a syringe. One little tip: make sure you wear gloves!

-Equipment & ingredients: easily sourced from most electronics stores

-Ideal for: home and office use

-Ease of use: ridiculously


6. Pure Distilled Water

When there’s nothing else around, even water can be used as invisible ink. Writing a message in water disturbs the surface fibres on a piece of paper. Such a message can then be developed using the fumes from heated iodine crystals. The marks made by the water turn brown, as iodine particles stick more readily to disturbed areas. This method is not perfect however, as exposure to direct sunlight or bleach can erase your message completely.


7. Disappearing Ink

Disappearing ink is unlike any other ink in this list: it begins visible, but soon disappears. The normally colourless thymolphthalein, which turns blue when mixed with the base sodium hydroxide, is a great example. Over time, the base reacts with carbon dioxide in the air and its pH drops. Once it ceases to be a base, the blue colour disappears. Ink like this is used by events managers on non-reusable passes - and by practical jokers in their water pistols!

-Equipment & ingredients: thymolphthalein may be tricky to source

-Ideal for: good for using on single-use, time-sensitive identity cards

-Ease of use: once setup, it’s easy