Author: Jake Brannon

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7 of the Most Beautiful Libraries from around the World

When was the last time you visited your local library? While some are new and updated, the sad truth is that many libraries are bland, brick buildings.

But there are still historic, grand temples that we can all visit if we’re lucky enough to be able to travel. Here are 7 of the most beautiful libraries in the world.

1. Biblioteca Classense – Ravenna, Italy

The main hall of the Biblioteca Classense was constructed in the 1700s and holds over 800,000 volumes.

2. Rijksmuseum Research Library – Amsterdam

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This research library was constructed in 1885 by Dutch architect Pierre Cuypers and contains 450,000 volumes.

3. Biblioteca Do Convento De Mafra – Mafra, Portugal

Photo Credit: Flickr,Rosino

This library is now a museum and was founded in 1717.

4. Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura – Rio De Janeiro, Brazil

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

The name translates to “the Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading” and this building dates back to the 1880s. This library also holds the largest collection of Portuguese works outside of Portugal.

5. Strahovská Knihovna – Prague, Czech Republic

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

Parts of this building date back to the 1600s.

6. Bibliothéque Sainte-Geneviéve – Paris, France

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This Paris library is now part of a university and contains 2 million holdings. The building dates to the mid-1800s.

7. Stiftsbibliothek Sankt Gallen – St. Gallen, Switzerland

Photo Credit: Wikimedia Commons

This public reference library contains 170,000 volumes, and some of the collection survived a 10th-century fire. The building was designed in the 1700s by Austrian architect Peter Thumb.

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Check out These 5 Fascinating Facts About Middle Children

Middle children definitely drew the short straw when it comes to siblings. Think about Jan Brady’s character in The Brady Bunch. Always being overlooked, always living in the shadow of her siblings (and then acting out and throwing hysterical fits).

Photo Credit: ABC

But scientific studies show that middle children don’t really have it all that bad after all. It turns out that they can be very creative, independent, and have great leadership qualities.

So turn that frown upside down Jan Brady (and all the other middle children out there). Here are 5 facts very interesting facts about the middle kids of the world.

1. Their lack of self-esteem might not be a bad thing

Middle children might not get a ton of attention at home and might get overlooked sometimes, but this can help keep their egos in check. Katrin Schumann says, “Having an accurate sense of your self-esteem is more important than having high self-esteem. Surprisingly, new studies show that high self-esteem does not correlate with better grades in school or greater success in life. It can actually lead to a lack of perseverance in the face of difficulties.”

2. They can be good negotiators

Photo Credit: iStock

One advantage of being stuck in the middle all the time? You can become a good negotiator. Katrin Schumann, co-author of The Secret Power of Middle Children, says, “Middles are used to not getting their own way, and so they become savvy, skillful manipulators. They can see all sides of a question and are empathetic and judge reactions well. They are more willing to compromise, and so they can argue successfully. Since they often have to wait around as kids, they’re more patient.”

3. They might be an endangered species

The numbers don’t lie: women used to have a lot more kids. But since the early 1970s, the numbers have declined. Today, 48% of American women have two children, as opposed to 3, 4, or 5 in years past. Society has changed, and people are going to school later and longer, getting married later in life, and the cost of raising kids has gone through the roof.

All this adds up to smaller families, which means fewer and fewer middle children out there. What a shame!

4. They’re faithful

Photo Credit: US Air Force

One study showed that 80% of middle children claimed they have never cheated in a relationship. In comparison, 65% of firstborn children and 53% of youngest children revealed they have been unfaithful to a partner or a spouse.

Studies also show that middle children are the happiest in their marriages…but not with each other because both people might tend to want to avoid conflict.

5. Middle children = Leaders

If we use the loose definition of middle children and include children who were not the oldest or youngest in their group of sibilngs, 52% of American Presidents fall into that category. That list includes Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy. Not bad company, eh?

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20 Moments of Profound Advice That Literally Changed Someone’s Life

We’ve all had a moment when someone’s advice really stuck with us. Naturally, we feel compelled to pass along that advice so it can help anyone else who’s going through something similar.

People on AskReddit shared the things they were told that changed their lives.

1. It’s not about being unafraid

“I was 13 years old, trying to teach my 6 year old sister how to dive into a swimming pool from the side of the pool. It was taking quite a while as my sister was really nervous about it. We were at a big, public pool, and nearby there was a woman, about 75 years old, slowly swimming laps. Occasionally she would stop and watch us. Finally she swam over to us just when I was really putting the pressure on, trying to get my sister to try the dive, and my sister was shouting, “but I’m afraid!! I’m so afraid!!” The old woman looked at my sister, raised her fist defiantly in the air and said, “So be afraid! And then do it anyway!”

That was 35 years ago and I have never forgotten it. It was a revelation — it’s not about being unafraid. It’s about being afraid and doing it anyway.”

2. Amen

“Don’t be a d*ck to your dog. He’s a few years of your life, but you are all of his.”

3. Liberated

“I met a person who was in a wheelchair. He related a story about how a person once asked if it was difficult to be confined to a wheelchair. He responded, “I’m not confined to my wheelchair – I am liberated by it. If it wasn’t for my wheelchair, I would be bed-bound and never able to leave my room or house. ”

Amazing perspective.”

4. Your whole life

“My mom was dying. A friend told me “you have your whole life to freak out about this– don’t do it in front of her. ”

It really helped me to understand that my feelings are not always what’s important. It IS possible to delay a freakout, and that skill has served me innumerable times.”

5. Good advice

“When I was 38 I contemplated beginning a two year Associates Degree in Radiography. I was talking to a friend and had almost talked myself out of doing it. I said “I’m too old to start that. I’ll be 40 when I get my degree.” My friend said “If you don’t do it, you’ll still be 40, but without the degree.” I’m nearly 60 now, and that degree has been the difference between making a decent living, and struggling to get by.”

6. Real talk

“When I was young and having what I thought was a serious relationship talk with my first real SO, I told her that I just wanted to find the right person.

Without missing a beat she said, “Everybody is looking for the right person, and nobody is trying to be the right person.”

That stopped me in my tracks.”

7. Bonds

“A friend of the family’s five year-old child died in a freak accident, where the father had just left the room for a minute to go to the bathroom, and the child climbed on top of the TV, and it toppled and crushed him. The family was in pieces, and the father undeservedly blamed himself for the death of his child. I remember telling my dad, a stoic man who has only said he loves me maybe three times in his life, that this is a reason that I don’t know if I want children. I don’t think I could handle something like this.

His response was: Even one minute with you in my life is worth whatever pain I would feel if you had died.

To hear that from him really showed me how strong that bond can be, even if a parent doesn’t show it openly, and changed my mind about wanting children.”

8. Don’t be embarrassed

“Think of a time you were embarrassed, easy right? Now think of a time someone else was embarrassed. It’s a lot harder to do isn’t it?” I don’t really worry about being embarrassed anymore if no one but I will remember it!”

9. Be better

“After getting rejected by a bunch of colleges in the same week, my dad (who is a writer) said “I was rejected by Stanford three times, and now my books are in their library. You’ve got to be better than them.” “

10. Make mistakes

“As a child, my duty was to empty the dishwasher.

I was something like 10, that day. I was always trying to do that fast, so I had more time to play SMB on my NES.

Only my dad was home, gardening. I grabbed the coffee pot that was in the dishwasher and it slipped off my hand, to broke loudly in pieces on the floor.

I was ashamed and afraid of my dad’s reaction. Like a lot. He was (and still is) a nice guy, but for me it was like a big mistake, and for my child brain, this pot was worth a lot of money. He would be mad.

It took all my courage to go see my dad and tell him, but I did. I was almost crying of shame, while still having the handle of the pot in my hand, as a proof.

My dad, calmly looked at me, and said “Breaking something happens when you work, that’s ok, don’t worry”.

It’s silly, but I think of that almost every day. It’s okay to make mistakes, at least you are trying to do something.

Thanks dad!”

11. Just do it

“Next year, you’ll wish you had started today.”

12. Set a good example

“I’m the oldest of three kids. I’m older than my little brother by 2.5 years and my little sister by 9.5.

When I was about fourteen or so, arguing with my dad in private about something I don’t remember, he, being the second-oldest of eight kids, told me:

“Any decision you make in this household, you make three times. Once when you make it, once when your brother makes the same decision after watching you do it, and once when your sister makes the same decision after watching you and your brother do it. How you treat your brother will tell him how he can treat your sister; and how you treat your sister tells her how she will expect to be treated for the rest of her life, even as far as her future boyfriends.”

That kinda shook me up and made me rethink my role as the oldest child; I started taking my responsibilities as the role model a lot more seriously after that. Even when you aren’t trying to actively influence those around you, those who look up to and respect you will still base their decisions, in part, on how they’ve seen you handle similar situations. If you break down and get stressed and angry when something inconvenient happens, they’ll feel better doing the same when something similarly small happens to them. But if you keep your cool in a dire situation and under a lot of stress, it can inspire them to believe they can do the same.”

13. Open minded

” “How would it make you feel?”

It’s the sentence that changed my stance on gay marriage. Without context, that seems silly, but I’ll offer up a shortened version. I grew up in suburban STL to conservative Christian parents (and they weren’t remotely tolerant) and pretty much never left my comfort bubble. I moved to Kansas City when I was 20 to finish college. My roommate was good friends with a gay couple, and this was my first encounter with gay people (that I knew of, which was ignorant. There’s no way it was my first). Inevitably, we got into a debate, and they basically went into a tirade about how much it sucks to constantly be berated and made fun of, and how it sucks to be treated unfairly because of something they can’t control. I reverted to the classic “it’s a choice!” line of thinking.

They responded with “why would we f*cking choose this for ourselves? Why would we choose to constantly be made fun of, to constantly be judged, and constantly be denied rights? How would it make YOU feel?” It was pretty much that exact moment when I, who I consider to be a logical person, realized I was being an illogical asshole and that I was just regurgitating the sh*t I picked up from being raised in a conservative Christian household. From that moment on, I start undoing all of the programming in my mind from years of living in a sheltered environment. My views have since changed on nearly everything, from gay marriage to abortion to religion. One sentence from one conversation with two gay men changed me in a huge number of ways, and now I scoff at the idea that you can’t change someone’s mind about these things.”

14. Sometimes you just need to cry

“My mom was in a nursing home, recovering from a heart attack (a battle she eventually lost). She had struggled with depression in her life, and this was hitting her very hard. She had worked in nursing homes, and hated them. I spent hours a day with her, and some days were better than others. I pushed her a lot, encouraging a positive outlook, and patience. Patience with herself, her situation, the staff, everything.

I started taking in some headphones, thinking maybe music would cheer her up. So one afternoon I’m sitting next to her bed, and she’s listening to my iPhone, and tears just start running down her face. I pulled the headphones off her and started asking her what was wrong. Asking her not to cry. She looked at me and smiled like a mother looking at her son, and simply asked me “what if that’s what I need right now? To cry?” Then she pulled the headphones back on.

Through all the pain and chaos of the last few years, that really stuck with me. What if sometimes, you don’t need to focus on the positive. You don’t need to smile, and bear it. Sometimes you just need to cry.”

15. Always a team

“I recently got married earlier this year, and obviously our marriage is far from perfect. We argue, and disagree, and sometimes can’t stand to be around each other. I grew up in a very hostile environment and having an arguement with a family member was awful. Personal attacks were always used, instant anger, and no mutual understanding was ever to be had. It was always about who was right and how to make them feel bad.

When I got married, I quickly noticed that my fighting habits were toxic for our relationship, and my husband said something to me that I use in every relationship I have. He told me, “It’s not You Vs Me, love. It’s You and Me Vs Problem. We are always a team.” It’s helped me overcome some serious rifts in my personal relationships and I will never forget it.”

16. Words of wisdom

“Everyone you meet knows something you don’t.” My grandfather told me this, and it’s been a good reminder that I am surrounded by teachers.”

17. Forgiveness

“This is a bit lengthy, but changed my life. Not just the way I think. When I was young my father abandoned me twice as a child. I grew up to be a very angry and depressed young man. I truly hated him for it. In high school, I had this amazing teacher. He helped me, and so many others, in so many ways. But one day he asked me something. He asked “You hate him right?” I said yeah. He said “And he deserves it right?” And, again, I said yes.

Then he then he said “Do you think he feels any of your hatred for him?” I thought for a few seconds and answered “No. He probably doesn’t.” And then he said “But you feel all of it. And you don’t deserve that. It’s time to forgive the man. Not because he deserves it. But because you do.”. He was completely right. I forgave my father, and over time have built up an incredibly close relationship with the man. And I could neve have gotten to this point without my teacher.”

18. Right vs. Wrong

“You know you’re an adult when you can be right without proving the other person wrong.”

19. No guarantees

“In terms of love and romance, the truth is, the only person you know you’re definitely spending the rest of your life with is you.

Everything else is simply not guaranteed -no matter how much you believe in “true love” and all that it entails. People die. People leave. People change their minds. When all is said and done, you end up with yourself. So you better f*cking like who that is. In fact, you better LOVE who that is. Work everyday to be your best self. And don’t let ANYONE EVER define who you are without your permission.”

20. Grandpa knows best

“You’re going to die one day. We all are. Do everything you want to do. Don’t wind up on your death bed one day thinking of all the things you didn’t do because assh*les might have an assh*le opinion about it. They’re just jealous anyways.”

~ My grandpa at 89 years old; a few months before he died 12 years ago.

And that’s the real quote. It was on video.

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Women Describe the Secret Ways They Protect Each Other in Public

Women have to deal with way different things in public than men do. From catcalling to being talked down to, it’s just a different world out there for women.

Photo Credit: Unsplash,Kevin Grieve

Because of this constant unwanted attention (and advances), many women have an understanding and they come to each other’s aid in situations that are uncomfortable and might even escalate to violence.

A woman named Natnova shared her personal experience on Tumblr of being aided by a fellow female when a group of men harassed her when she was only 14-years-old.

“i was 14 and i was walking through a mall by myself at 12am after my shift at coldstone creamery lol and a bunch of men started whistling and meowing and getting really close to me and they kept asking me questions and i kept not answering until i didn’t know what else to do so i said “i’m only 14” and almost in unison they said “we don’t care” i was so fucking scared i didn’t know what to do and they kept talking about how i looked and how my body looked and what they would do i was on the verge of tears i was all alone in a huge mall

i knew i couldn’t outrun them all i felt totally hopeless until a maintenance worker came up to all of us with a huge industrial broom in her hand, i thought she was going to yell at all of us for being in the mall after hours bc she probably thought we were all friends but instead she cursed all of them out in spanish, threatened to press a panic button on her belt and then proceeded to walk me to the basement garage and waited with me until my mom got there to pick me up she had a death grip on her cart the whole time and a face of steel she looked so strong and i just kept saying thank you and she kept saying not to thank her because she had to stop them.

that was the moment i realized women were the most important beings on this planet and we have to protect each other bc nobody else is going to, she didn’t even know me, we couldn’t even communicate that well because of the language barrier, she could have lost her job for waiting with me in the parking lot but she looked out for me when she didn’t have to, she had nothing to gain from it, i’m 21 now and i tell everyone this story even though it happened 7 years ago, what she did that night helped me form and shape lot of my beliefs early on.”

Natnova’s story inspired other women to come forward and share similar stories. Another Tumblr user shared her story.

“i was at a grocery store really late one night and some old guy kind of eyed me as i walked out of the store next to this other lady. She and I made eye contact and i knew she was scared too. we loaded up our groceries into our cars as fast as possible and I had way more bags than her so she got done faster than me.

I panicked because i was sure she was going to leave so i just hurried faster, shaking a little, and then i noticed she sat in her car, watching me and making sure nobody came near. She waited not until all my groceries were loaded, or until my cart was put away, or until I got into my car. No, she didn’t drive away until I drove away.

And that was the moment that I realized how much women need other women. That we can’t win this war without each other and we have to be looking out for each other, every second.”

A woman told her story about what happened one night in New York City.

“my last year in new york city, i got off the subway around 9 or 10p.m. i only lived about 5 blocks from the f train, but i hadn’t gotten more than two before a woman’s hand suddenly touched my arm.

that guy behind us is following you,” she said. “he was watching you leave the train car and followed you up.”

i hadn’t noticed him, or at least not noticed him following me. when we stopped outside a grocery store, he stopped half a block back and loitered. the woman linked her arm with mine and walked me several blocks out of her way to my front door and made sure i got inside safely.

another time, nocigar and i were walking home and at a stoplight a stranger grabbed my arm when i wouldn’t respond to him and tried to physically drag me over to him. she–who is, by the way, not a very physically imposing girl–ripped his hand off my arm and snarled, “don’t fucking touch her.”

protect your friends. protect strangers. there are good men in the world, but don’t wait for them to do something if you can do it yourself.”

And finally, a female who was leaving a nightclub shared her own experience.

“I was at a club once and my friend left with her boyfriend so I finished my drink and was heading out to the parking lot when three girls came up to me and basically surrounded me.

“Those guys behind us were talking about following you. We can walk with you.”

I have MMA training but have never in my life had been offered the protection and sanction of my own gender. This is so important.”

Obviously, there are countless more stories like this out there. I’ll leave you with this video of a real-life incident to remind the ladies that this is how it’s done.

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The Top 10 Most Extreme Junk Foods Ever Made

America sure does love its junk food! So much so, that some people have gone above and beyond to create dishes that are true monuments to gluttony.

Have you ever tried any of these horrific munchy masterpieces?

1. Dunkin’ Donut’s’ Glazed Donut Breakfast Sandwich

Photo Credit: Facebook, Jorge Newbery

The glazed donut will now be your bun, understood? Looks like Homer Simpson’s dream come true.

2. Pizza Hut’s Hot Dog Stuffed Crust Pizza

Well, that’s absolutely disgusting. This creation has never been available in the US, only in the UK and mainland Europe

3. Friendly’s’ Grilled Cheese Burgermelt

Photo Credit: Facebook,Aviation Mall

Here, we have two grilled cheese sandwiches as buns for a juicy hamburger. I think I could actually order this one…

4. Guy Fieri’s Cheesecake Challenge

This beauty is available at Guy Fieri’s American Kitchen Bar in Cancun. Cheesecake doused with fudge, pretzels, and potato chips. Yummmmmmmm.

5. Denny’s’ Fried Cheese Melt

Photo Credit: Facebook, Denny’s

It looks like a heart attack on a plate, but so what?!? Live a little. It’s a grilled cheese sandwich stuffed with fried mozzarella sticks. Boom!

6. The KFC Double Down

Photo Credit: Facebook, KFC

Forget about buns, would ya? KFC had the balls to get rid of buns and replace them with chicken breast filets. In between the chicken buns? Bacon!

7. Jack in the Box’s Munchie Meal

Jack in the Box has a pretty eclectic menu, and it shows with their Munchie Meal. You get a HUGE sandwich, tacos, fries, and a big soda. I have a feeling this is geared toward a certain demographic that craves late night junk food.

8. Pizza Hut’s Cheesy Bites Remix Pizza

Pizza Hut did it again when it replaced the pizza crust with pockets filled with different kinds of oozing cheese. Because you always need more cheese, right?

9. Deep fried butter

You can find this concoction at state fairs and festivals across the U.S. of A! If you can eat it, you can deep fry it!

10. Bacon Bun Burger

It’s all about the buns, people. Yes, you’re looking at a burger with buns made completely out of bacon. WOW.

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People Reveal the Most Disturbing Things That Ever Creeped Them out

You can be having a totally normal day, when all of the sudden – BAM! Something comes out of nowhere that freaks you out and shocks you to your core.

These AskReddit users sure did, and they were brave enough to share their stories with the world.

1. A void

“An accident in which I lost 2 full weeks of memory. I have seen pictures where I’m in a wheelchair being pushed around the hospital by my parents and brother, I have my eyes open, I’m laughing, but I remember literally zero of it. Nothing. It’s a void.”

2. My best friend

“When I was thirteen I found my best friend hanging from a belt in my closet. I thought it was a joke at first until I pushed him and he started swinging. He had just knelt down and let it happen. I got him down and pulled the belt loose and there was a nasty mark and I think that was when I realised how serious it was.

Ran and told parents to call 911. Ran back upstairs and could hear some gurgling noises coming from him. He was in a coma for a week but he lived thank God. To top it off a lot of people including his parents blamed me.”

3. Car wreck

“I was partially ejected from a car crash in December 2008. I fractured my spine, compression fractures. I was asleep in the back seat of a truck that flipped.

I woke up in horrible pain. I thought I was going to die. I was pleading with the EMS to not let me die. When I got to the hospital they thought I was internally bleeding and had to do an emergency exploratory surgery. I didn’t know if I would come out of the surgery or not. I did :)”

4. Bear!

“A group of friends and I were hiking in the mountains near my home one evening and we, being stupid high schoolers, and also stupid stoners, lost track of time. As we were about a mile from the trailhead the sun was already set and it was starting to get dark. If anyone has ever been hiking in the forest at night you know how unnerving it can be. It was especially unnerving after having smoked a bowl.

Well there were four of us and as we rounded a bend in the trail we we’re stopped by probably the worst luck possible. Standing in the middle of the trail, about a quarter mile from the cars was a HUGE grizzly bear. Of the four of us, my close buddy and I were probably the least pants sh-ttingly terrified. We hiked here a lot and the trails where I grew up are famous for their bear population and we saw them pretty regularly. But there was something f-cked about this bear.

The way it sat there staring at us was uncommon and to this day I’ve never seen a predator stand so stock still and loom over me like that. It felt like ages before someone finally realized it’s already dark we need to do something and picked up a stick and waved it above his head. Goddamn if bear was fazed at all. Asshole didn’t move an inch. Which turned out to be the most telling part of the story. Since it was a dead tree wrapped around a boulder and we were all sh-tting our pants over nothing in the moonlight. We still laugh about that today.”

5. Disturbing

“Seeing a women hit by a train and getting splatted was pretty disturbing. Not so much for the aftermath but the noise and the way she looked at me before she jumped has stuck with me.”

6. Be careful on escalators

“I was at an airport and a woman’s leg got stuck in the escalator. I remember a lot of blood and her screaming and watching her pray to god as the paramedics wheeled her away.

Escalators still scare me.

Edit: I also just remembered another detail, people were pressing the stop button and it didn’t stop.”

7. Man in the doorway

“Directly behind my house is a huge recreation area with miles and miles of hiking trails. People have gone missing there in recent years and they’ve found bodies there too. One day about two years ago I fell asleep on the couch accidentally and at like two AM, my dogs went absolutely crazy barking at the front door and they wouldn’t shut up so I got up to see what it was. There was a man standing in my doorway with the screen door already opened in his hand- like I caught him the second between opening my screen door and opening the door to my house, which I had accidentally left unlocked because like I said, I accidentally fell asleep.

I was totally out of it and still half asleep so the situation didn’t really dawn on me and the first thing out of my mouth was “Oh, hey. What do you need?” Then I woke up and realized what the hell was going on and slammed my door shut in his face and locked it and called 911. The dude left and the police never found anyone. I obviously don’t know why that man was on my doorstep but the fact that he could have taken me into that park very easily and no one would have known until it was too late shakes me up every time I think about it.”

8. Ouch

“When I was crossing a road and a car came screaming around the corner didn’t see me and hit me. This happened right outside my sons school. He saw the accident but didn’t know it was me ( I was in all black gym clothes ). Concision, head trauma, obliterated my left shoulder ACL and tore my ACL in my left knee. Huge bruise from hip to lower calf.

Hospital said they only thing that saved me was I didn’t see it coming so was not expecting it and was basically a rag doll. Turns out the driver was not insured, suspended license and the car wasn’t his.”

9. Potential kidnapper

“As a child, around 12, I was walking back to school, from a tennis lesson. The route was around a km and some.

I just started on my way back, and this car soon comes by and pulls over. A senior, possibly in his late 60s is the only occupant.

He asks where I’m going, and if I need a lift. I politely decline, then he started asking other questions. Being oblivious, I answer him, discussing my father’s work, what my mother did with her time, and how many siblings I had. Didn’t think anything of it for so many years, till around 2 years ago, the memory popped up in my head.

Only then did the gravity of what was happening at the time come home. He was trying to familiarize himself with me, and in some way grooming me to see him as a friend.

I’m still glad to this day that I never got into that car.”

10. I will never forget…

“About two years back, I saw a live road accident involving a bike and a truck. The biker’s head was squished like a water melon. This was too disturbing to see. A human body in a shape like that. I will never forget that sight.

ALWAYS WEAR A HELMET GUYS!”

11. Jaywalking

“I had my back turned to the road when an extremely drunk person jaywalking got hit by a drunk girl in a Jeep Cherokee (it was Halloween in a party town, no one was sober). He was still in the air when I turned around, landed roughly 50 feet from where he was hit. I had never heard that sound before but I knew what it was as soon as I heard it.

The kid survived, but his body was pretty mangled. I think the fact that he was drunk and didn’t tense up before impact is what saved him. The girl driving was 17 and wasn’t charged as an adult. Don’t drive drunk, and don’t jaywalk in night when you’re shirtless in dark green body paint.”

12. Horrifying

“A man jumped/fell from a building in New York and landed about three metres behind me. The sound when he hit, and the way he hit half on the sidewalk, half on the road, and his body had moulded to the curb and just..spread out.

This happened in 1998 and I can still remember every detail.”

13. Awful

“Finding my six week old baby deceased. Trying to do cpr on his obviously lifeless little body while on the phone with 911 while I listened to my husband and kids screaming in agony. Holding him against me trying to warm him and knowing this was the last time I would ever have him in my arms.”

14. Stalker

“When I was about 10 years old my family lived in this old rent house. My parents were in the process of buying a house from my moms family. One night we came home and there was a bag of candy with a picture of us in our car at McDonald’s. We were pretty creeped out but figured it might be some kind of prank from my older sister’s friends. We forgot all about it. Then we moved into our new house. It was in the middle of summer. We live in Louisiana so it was also the middle of hurricane season.

In late July we came home from school shopping and found a ziplock bag filled with stuff that would have gone unnoticed but we knew was ours. Each item came from a room in our house. Whoever did it went through every room collecting one item and then left it in plain view for us to find. And in that bag was also a picture of us in the front yard. It was a picture that had been obviously taken from far away and without our knowledge. At this point we realized this wasn’t a joke and my mom reported it. August came around and a hurricane passed knocking out all the power. To eleviate some of the heat we opened the windows in the house.

During the calm part of the storm my sister and I both woke up to someone whispering our names outside of our windows. We went check our parents’ bedroom and they were still sleeping. We huddled up together and didn’t sleep that night. We still have no idea who was terrorizing us and the cops never found the person. I’m now 28 and my sister is 32. Sometimes we still talk about those creepy months and it still scares me that the person is out there watching us and now our own kids.”

15. Dog attack

“Watching my 7 y.o niece have her arm mauled by an 80 lb dog. Desperately smashing its head with a broken shovel to get it to release her. Having to use my hand to hold her upper arm to stop the loss of blood looking ar yee mutilated flesh. It haunts and horrifies me. Everytime I hear a child yell or scream I have a moment panic that goes to.my core. Every time I look at her arm I feel deeply saddened and sickened.”

The post People Reveal the Most Disturbing Things That Ever Creeped Them out appeared first on UberFacts.

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12+ Times Management Immediately Killed Worker Morale

There’s nothing better than a good boss and nothing worse than a bad one.

A good manager has the ability to make even the most minute task seem important. A bad manage, on the other hand, can take the best job and make it a living hell.

Employees on AskReddit offered up their stories of what bad managers did that immediately killed the morale of their workers.

1. Bad move

“I work in a big corporate building. The same older lady came by everyone’s desk towards the end of the day to collect the trash. Just the sweetest lady ever and every time she’d walk to my desk she’d give me a big smile and ask me how my day was and chat for a minute as she got my trash (usually I’d dump it in for her). I had some rough days but she has a way to cheer me up and send me home on a higher note. I know I’m not the only one either.

So then a few weeks back our work implemented a new policy to ‘cut down on trash usage.’ It’s no longer allowed to have a trash bin at our desk and we have to walk across the room and use the community trash to throw anything away. Not a huge deal but the real reason they did it is so they can cut down on cost… the cleaning crew.

Sad to say that I haven’t seen Sharon since.”

2. Figure it out

“This school wanted to switch to Chromebooks. So what did they do? One summer while teachers weren’t working, they removed every single Windows station and replaced them with Chromebooks to be issued to teachers. They were told to “figure it out.”

When teachers came up and asked how they could teach Photoshop, programming, AutoCAD 3d modeling, etc., admin basically googled their program name plus “Chromebook extension” and told them “see? There’s an extension for it and it works!” I don’t think I have to add that it did not work.

They ended up bringing back the desktops for most teachers.”

3. That’s not cool

“Boss Pitched a sales incentive trip to Cancun if the team hit the goal. My team exceeded the goal, and then they cancelled the trip. 2 people quit, I accepted a position with their main competitor, and less than a year later, they closed in bankruptcy. Karma’s a beach.”

4. Posters don’t work

“Put up a poster that said “Complaining is like vomiting. You feel better but everyone around you feels sick.” The morale was already bad but it was just a crappy way to take a hit at upset employees rather than do anything positive.”

5. Don’t mess with programmers

“I was one of a large number of programmers working on a project at CSC. We had a deadline coming up in a couple months and they over-promised to the client and then asked us all to work extra hard to meet the deadline, and asked us to work 50+ hour weeks. Which we did – and then some: some of us put in 70-80 hour weeks to meet this deadline.

But once that deadline was met, suddenly there was another deadline they needed to meet. And another. People got tired, had lives to lead, and scaled back on their hours. Most of us were still working 50-60 hours a week, but not a lot more than that.

Once they realized we weren’t killing ourselves on their project any longer, there was an All Hands meeting where the managers told us that they were incredibly disappointed in our lack of professionalism because so comparatively few employees were now working more than fifty hours a week.

One of our harder workers stood up and said, “Look, I have three kids. I’m driving an hour into and out of work every day, I’m taking care of my family, I’m trying to get presents for Christmas, write out Christmas cards, decorate and clean the house for everyone we’re having over for the holidays – I’m having a really hard time just getting to fifty.”

And the manager looked at her and sneered, “If it wasn’t Christmas, it’d be because it’s Easter, or Memorial Day, or because it’s summer and it’s nice out. You’d always have some excuse.”

There was dead silence in the room.

When we left that meeting, we didn’t talk to each other, but every single worker on that project put in exactly fifty hours a week after that. Then came Christmas – raise and bonus time! Every worker on the project got a 1/2 percent raise; the managers got a five-figure bonus. We were pissed.

For management, the pain came after Christmas. First week off the year, four programmers had better jobs lined up and quit. Three more the following week. Five the next. We hemorrhaged 3-5 programmers every single week for over three months. It got to the point where the managers had to schedule a meeting every Monday at eleven to discuss that week’s resignations and rearrange the surviving staff.”

6. Not gonna work

“Bought a manufacturing plant.
Fired everyone.
Tried to hire them back for $2 less.”

7. A job well done…for me

“I once had a retail manager who sent out a memo that we worked so hard and did such a great job this month that she gets a bonus. That went over like a lead balloon.”

8. Does it?

“I told the hiring manager that I was disappointed in one of his hires because he knew literally NOTHING about our job and asked him “doesn’t that cheapen my knowledge and expertise?”

His response: “Well, let’s be honest, your job doesn’t really need all that, does it?”

There were four other people my level, with varying fields of expertise, at that meeting, and it got real quiet after that.”

9. Trashy

“Telling employees that they are going to fire you if you don’t make more sales. Then when someone quits tell them naww that was just motivation. We were never going to fire you.”

10. A new Silverado

“Small business. 20 employees. Boss made a big speech about austerity measures and no raises this year. A week and a half later he drives up in a brand new Silverado with all the bells and whistles. Expensed to the business of course. He would hate to have to pay taxes on those profits. One of the less subtle members of the staff took a literal poop in front of his office door.”

11. Accused of stealing

“I worked at a club in Miami and the owner was out of his damn mind (years of drug abuse).. when the housing market crashed obviously people were spending far less going out but he insisted we were all stealing. We had meetings once a week with all kinds of threats. Finally he put in an automatic pouring system for 50k+, it basically looks like you’re pouring drinks from a soda gun, super boring. The fun vibe and flair we had was totally gone which made sales drop even more. He ripped the system out two weeks later.”

12. Bad idea

“Former teacher. The administrators at my school were usually pretty chill, but had a habit of randomly coming up with minor rules that they would enforce for us (male teachers had to wear ties even on jeans day, etc.). Overall it wasn’t bad, except for the time an administrator made a crucial mistake… they banned staff from drinking coffee in front of students.

Now if you’ve never worked in a school, you’d think this isn’t a big deal. When you spend nearly 100% of your day in front of students, it definitely is a big deal.

First we tried to find any loophole we could. Energy drinks? Banned the next week. Tea? Banned two days later. It was chaos. Eventually, we realized they couldn’t fire an entire school’s worth of teachers and aides, so we ended up doing the one thing that private schools fear most: we formed a union.

Realistically, it was more of a weird pseudo-union focused specifically on civil disobedience regarding the coffee issue, but it ruffled feathers nonetheless. The administrators caved to our “demands,” allowed us to drink coffee again, and even bought each of us a reusable coffee mug as a gesture of goodwill. And that’s the story of how a handful of school administrators almost accidentally created a teachers union over a complete non-issue.”

13. Banned

“She actively tried to ban friendships. If co-workers became friendly she would schedule them so they would NEVER see each other. “You’re here to work! Not to socialize!”

She also banned everyone from coming into the workplace when they were not working. It was a pub. She banned socializing in a pub.”

14. Lazy

“Told a bunch of people they were going to be promoted to get us to do extra work, no one got promoted. I basically did her job for a month. Me and three of my co-workers quit and she got fired a few months later.”

15. Time to shake things up

“Had a boss everyone loved, then she got transferred to another store and the new guy that replaced her decided the schedule that we’d all gotten used to needed to be “shaken up.” He posted the next week schedule that was completely different than it had been under the previous manager, got a bunch of complaints from people saying they can’t work x days or y times and it SEEMED he was receptive since he took that schedule down. Then suddenly BAM, he just reposted the same exact schedule and said screw everyone.

Oh, we had some people calling in sick from time to time under the old manager, but this new manager has pretty much half his crew every single day calling out because of his crappy tactics.

Here’s the first thing to learn about being a good manager…you don’t need to “shake things up” for people to be better workers. You don’t need to “put your mark” on anything if it’s working just fine the way it was.”

The post 12+ Times Management Immediately Killed Worker Morale appeared first on UberFacts.

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History Buffs Share the Awesome Stories They Don’t Tell You in Textbooks

History is way cooler than we give it credit for. While it might seem like a bunch of stories about stuffy old dudes, things often got pretty crazy back then, too.

AskReddit users took the time to share their favorite stories from history that we didn’t learn in school when we were young.

1. A tale from WWII

“During World War II, the Japanese outfitted special planes (some were designed to be launched from submarines) with enough range to reach the west coast of the United States. The goal was to use incendiary bombs to start wildfires in the forests of the pacific northwest. One pilot, Nobuo Fujita, successfully dropped his bombs over the forest near Brookings, Oregon. Fortunately, a storm the night before had dampened the forest, and the fire started by Fujita’s bomb was quickly controlled by the Forest Service.

Eighteen years later, in 1962, Fujita returned to Brookings. He brought with him his family’s heirloom, a katana (“samurai sword”) that was over 400 years old. Fujita apologized to the townspeople for his actions during the war, and revealed that if the townspeople demanded it, he would ceremoniously kill himself (commit seppuku) with the sword to make reparations for his actions.

The townspeople would have none of it. Fujita was made an honorary citizen of the town and returned to visit it several times during his life, including one trip to plant trees in the forest he had bombed decades before. After his death in 1997, his daughter returned to Brookings and scattered some of his ashes there. The Fujita family katana is on display in Brookings, after being given to the town by Fujita as a token of friendship.”

2. This is a good one

“The Brown-Stigler Incident occurred during World War II. A B-17 bomber was heavily damaged during a bombing run on Bremen. Several of its crew were killed or injured, two engines were out, a section of the tail was blown away, and the radio was disabled. The bomber lost altitude but was saved by the Captain – whose name was literally Charlie Brown. The bomber flow over an airfield and was spotted by a German fighter ace named Franz Stigler.

Stigler took off caught up to the bomber, had it in his sites, than realized that the tail gunner was not firing. At this point he noticed how damaged the B-17 was and took the advice of his former CO to never shoot a man in a parachute. He decided that the bomber was no longer combat capable and was in distress (like a man in a parachute). So he pulled to the side of the B-17 and signaled for Brown to land at the airfield, when he Brown continued to fly, Stigler tried to get him to fly to Sweden, once again Brown continued on.

That’s when Stigler realized that Brown was going to try to return to England. Stigler, technically the enemy, then pulled to the bomber’s wing and escorted it to the English Channel were he gave Brown a salute a returned to Germany. To make a long story short, after the war Brown found Stigler and the two became close friends until their deaths.”

3. The lion

“Not really fascinating, but funny, is the lion of Gripsholm castle. As a part of some diplomatic back and forths, Fredrik the first of Sweden received a lion from the ruler of Algeria. By the time it got to Sweden, it was a skin and some bones, kinda. It was now up to the royal taxidermist to make sure the lion was restored to its former glory. During the 1730’s however, not a great deal of swedes had ever actually seen a lion. The only real thing he had to go on, was the coinage which showed lions in profile. The result?

Yeah. Silver lining, though. This thing is still a major tourist attraction for the castle.”

4. Fastest knife in the West End

“Robert Liston 1794-1847

A surgeon. In fact, he was described as “the fastest knife in the West End” and could amputate a leg in 2.5 minutes (the faster the surgery, the more likely the recovery) – though during this particular amputation he went so quickly he also removed his patient’s testicles.

However, he also amputer a man’s leg (in less than 2.5 minutes), who would later die of gangrene. In his haste, he accidentally cut off his assistant’s fingers, who would later die from gangrene, and (apparently) cut through the coat tails of a surgical spectator, who was so scared he died of fright.

This becoming the only surgery with a 300% mortality rate.”

5. Didn’t learn this one in school

“Sybil Ludington.

She was, essentially (perhaps oversimplifying) the female, teenage Paul Revere. At only 16 years old, she rode through New York in 1777 to alert local militia, just like Paul Revere’s famous ride. BUT, this young woman rode more than TWICE the distance of Paul Revere’s ride, while being significantly younger (she rode about 40 miles at only 16, in the middle of the night).

She also saved her father from being captured by Royalists, she lit candles surrounding her house and gathered her siblings to march around the house and give the illusion that troops were guarding the residence. The antagonists fled.

She is so, so under appreciated in the long term of history.”

6. Secret library

“When Ivan III of Russia married Zoe/Sophia Palaiologina, niece of Dragases Palaiologos or Constantine XI, her uncle gifted them a library along with many other treasures. This library somehow survived the Burning of Moscow in 1493 and continued to be passed down to her son, Vasili III, and then on to her grandson, Ivan IV.

During Ivan IV’s reign of terror (the second half of his reign), he feared the library was too precious a treasure and worried it would be stolen. So he and a few men took the collection out of Moscow (what was most likely a 1-3 day horse ride) and buried the books (possibly in a vault???) To ensure the location of the library would never get out, he had the men killed.

Ivan IV died before the location of the library was ever revealed.

We have no idea what could have been in this library or if the contents have even survived. Though some historians have speculated that Plato’s Hermocrates (the final dialogue pertaining to Atlantis) could have been part of the collection, there’s no proof that this is true.”

7. Lake Peigneur

“The Lake Peigneur Disaster.

Until 1980, Lake Peigneur was a small-ish freshwater lake with a maximum depth of about 10-15ft, located in southern Louisiana. Locals mostly used it for trout fishing, and it also had a canal running 10 miles from the lake southward to the Gulf of Mexico. The main industry of the area was a massive salt mine that stood below the ground, partially underneath the lake itself. Thing is, huge natural salt deposits like this often coincide with oil reserves, so it wasn’t out of the ordinary when oil companies came searching.

In November of 1980, Texaco had set up a rig in the lake and was doing some exploratory drilling, hoping to make bank. Little did they know that one of their triangulation coordinates was slightly off, and so they had incorrectly guessed the location of the salt mine below their feet. Their drill bit punched into the roof of the salt deposit about 400 feet earlier than expected, and water began to drain slowly into the salt.

And what happens when salt meets water?

It dissolves.

As the water dissolved more and more salt, it made more and more room for water to be sucked down, which in turn dissolved more salt and made more room, setting off a massive chain reaction. The oil rig on the surface keeled to the side and collapsed, its workers barely escaping before the water pressure became too much to swim through. The remnants of the rig were sucked into the bottom of the lake in what had turned from a tiny hole to a whirlpool, the force of the water shearing away soil and making a bigger hole as it went.

The salt mine at the time was fully staffed with workers 1500ft below the ground, who were going about their daily shifts in the mine without any knowledge of the events taking place above them, until they saw water dripping through the roof of the tunnels. Thanks to well-rehearsed evacuation plans, none of them died before the mine was flooded, but water is just about the worst thing you can see in a salt mine.

The whirlpool on the surface, having eaten the rig, began to suck down the entire contents of the lake itself, including 11 barges, various small boats, and yes, the poor trout. The whirlpool grew into a maelstrom, its pressure increasing and in turn building more pressure by creating a bigger and bigger hole, eroding more and more of the salt mine. As it pulled down the entire lake, the water began to shear away at the shores, creating landslides and tearing trees out by the roots. Many of Jefferson Island’s 100-year-old pecan trees were lost to the maelstrom, along with several local homes that sat on the shore of the lake and were ripped out by the foundation. The local botanical gardens was destroyed entirely as the soil underneath it was eroded in the span of only a few hours.

Compressed air inside the mine finally exploded out through the mine shafts, quickly followed by a 400-foot geyser erupting from the mine’s entrance.

Not only did Lake Peigneur drain entirely into the mine, dragging 64 acres of destroyed land with it, but the pressure was so great that it also reversed the direction of the Delcambre Canal. The ocean water from the Gulf of Mexico was sucked northward through the canal to fill the Peigneur basin, temporarily creating the largest waterfall in Louisiana.

The chaos didn’t end until the pressure equalized about a week later. When things had finally calmed down, the lake had changed drastically. Its maximum depth was now about 200feet, as opposed to its previous 10. Its shoreline had expanded, chimneys sticking straight out of the water where houses had once been. Nine out of the eleven barges claimed by the maelstrom floated back to the surface, although two remain somewhere in the ground below. The botanical gardens were gone, and many of the local trees. The salt mine was temporarily shut down, and although it did reopen it was finally closed permanently in 1986. Texaco had to pay $32 million to the salt company, and a further $13 million to the gardens. Miraculously, the only casualties of the disaster were the trout.

The most important difference, however, is that today Lake Peigneur is now a saltwater lake with ocean species, ten miles away from the ocean itself.

All caused by some bad numbers and a fourteen-inch drill bit.”

8. Fashion statement

“I’ve told this story before, but it never fails to amuse me. Strap in, boys and girls: it’s time to learn about that time in pre-Revolutionary France where bleeding from your butt was a fashion statement.

In early 1685, King Louis XIV of France developed a fistula: a small channel near his anus, resulting in great pain. Fistulas, much like the Wu Tang Clan, ain’t nothin’ to f— with. Eventually the pain got so bad that he couldn’t ride a horse, sit for long periods (which is kind of important when you’re a king) or even make a bowel movement without regretting it immensely. The normal remedies were applied; enemas and poultices from morning until night, with zero effect. Louis decided, ‘You know what? Let’s go down the surgical route.’

Unfortunately for Louis, at the time there was no surgical route. He hired a surgeon barber named Charles-François Felix and asked him to fix him. Not entirely stupid — and not willing to risk f—ing up a novel surgery on the king of France — Felix requested six months to practice, which he did on prisoners. Live prisoners. Live, healthy prisoners — sometimes as many as four a day, in an era where antiseptics and anaesthetics didn’t exist. The success rates were about as you’d imagine — although at least some of the prisoners survived — and eventually Felix felt confident enough to perform the surgery on the king.

And it worked! Within three months, the king was riding his horse like nothing had happened, and Felix was the talk of the town. People were desperate to emulate the king so badly that people who were entirely healthy would pay Felix to perform the surgery on them, and those less willing to suffer (or at least, less willing to pay) would fake having the surgery, wearing bandages known as le royale to mimic the king and pretend that they too were cool and with it… even though ‘with it’ meant suffering from a painful condition of the butthole.”

9. Gander

“It’s a bit more recent but I love the story of Gander. After 9/11 all the planes were grounded. Almost 7,000 people, which was about 66% of the local population , were forced to land in this tiny town of Gander, Newfoundland. The whole town worked together to make sure all the passengers would have everything they needed.

The local ice rink was filled with frozen food that people donated. You couldn’t find a closed door in town for stranded people to take a shower or just talk.

Once the grounding of planes was lifted those passengers pooled their money together and created a scholarship for the people of Gander to use. This is one of the greatest acts of kindness that I can view in history. To this day a Gander is one of the only places outside the United States where they have a piece of the World Trade Center.”

10. Cursed

“In the 1300s, the greater part of Central Asia was ruled by Tamerlane, a brilliant leader who took after one of his ancestors, Genghis Khan, in ruthlessness, brutality, and skill. Unlike Genghis Khan, Tamerlane was Muslim, and an important part of his particular cultural beliefs (blending Islam, steppe cultures, and countless other influences) was that one’s grave should not be disturbed after death. Being the big shot he was, his grave was magnificent and its location well known, but Tamerlane famously said: “let no one disturb my grave, for if you do, a fate worse than me will fall upon you.” So no one disturbed the tomb. Till Stalin. He let some Soviet archaeologists open it up and examine Tamerlane’s body. The locals warned them about the curse that would go into effect after three days, but the scientists went ahead with the excavation— on June 19, 1941.

On June 22, 1941, Hiltler invaded the USSR.

Whether or not you believe in curses, Stalin was apparently spooked enough that, after devastating loss after devastating loss, he ordered the remains be returned (with full ceremony) and the tomb resealed. Very shortly afterwards, the Soviets won the Battle of Stalingrad and turned the tide of Nazi invasion.”

11. Leo Major

“I may not be too much of a history buff, but I really like the story of Leo Major.

Leo was a Canadian soldier serving in WW2. He was assigned to the division in charge of liberating the Netherlands.

One day in the summer of 1944, he was alone on reconaissance duty when he saw 2 german soldiers walking nearby. He killed one and captured the other, then captured their commanding officer and an entire german garrison after killing a couple more. He came under fire from other german soldiers and juat kept walking. He single handedly captured 93 german soldiers.

In February of 1945, a truck Leo was in hit a landmine. He broke his back, a few ribs, and both ankles, and was told he would be discharged. Leo couldn’t give enough fucks, however, and a week later he snuck out of the field hospital he was in and stayed with a dutch family. After getting better he made it back into his battalion and volunteered to do reconaissance of the city of Zwolle. Once he departed, he decided to take the city himself.

He convinced a german soldier to relay a message back to the german army, then through the night ran around the town making all the noise he could. He shot bullets, threw grenades, captured german soldiers, burned down the Gestapo, and cleaned out the SS building in Zwolle. His tactics were so effective he convinced the german army that the entire canadian army was invading the town, so by the morning the town was free of germans and the canadian army just marched in.

He has a street named after him in that town now.”

12. Uggghhhh

“Diarrhea was so widespread and common in the 19th century that people would develop opium habits because opium makes you constipated.”

13. Basil

“1014 AD: After defeating a large Bulgarian army at the battle of Kleidion, Byzantine Emperor Basil II had 99 of every 100 prisoners blinded, leaving each 100th man with one eye so that he could lead his comrades home. Upon seeing his thousands of blinded soldiers, the Bulgarian Emperor reportedly died of a heart attack.

Basil II was known thereafter as Basil Bulgar-Slayer.”

14. Spanish spy

“In World War II, there was a Spanish spy named Joan Pujol Garcia who approached the Allies to work for them. When they refused, he approached the Nazis, and they accepted him (giving him the codename Arabel). Once he earned credentials working as a Nazi spy, he approached the Allies again, this time getting a job as a double agent (codenamed Garbo).

This is where it gets unbelievable: he fed the Germans a combination of mis-information, true but useless information, and high-value information that always got to the Germans just a little too late. He even started a spy network consisting of 27 sub-agents of his own. Keep in mind that not a single one of these sub-agents existed. They were completely imaginary, but regardless, he submitted expense reports for them and had the Nazis giving him money to pay their salaries. At one point, when he had to explain why some high-value information got to the Germans late, he told them that one of his spies had died. He actually got the Germans to pay the imaginary spy’s imaginary wife a very real pension for her loss. Not only did his false information get the Nazis to waste millions of dollars, but he was also instrumental in convincing the Nazis that the attacks on D-Day were just a diversion, and the real attack was yet to come, keeping vital German resources away from the front lines.

He is one of the only people to ever get an Iron Cross from the Germans (which required Hitler’s personal authorization, since he wasn’t a soldier) AND an MBE from King George VI.”

15. Dwarves

“Peter the Great often forced dwarves to get married and him and his friends would get drunk and attend the wedding. He had a fascination with dwarves, and he once forced someone who had made him angry to marry a dwarf.

Since this post is getting a lot of attention, I thought I’d share that Peter basically had a fraternity, and it was called the All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters. They would drink and party basically all the time.”

The post History Buffs Share the Awesome Stories They Don’t Tell You in Textbooks appeared first on UberFacts.

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Window Washers Reveal the Strangest Things They’ve Seen Through the Glass

Washing windows have a high-risk job. It’s dangerous enough to get really high up on a building and scrub away, but they’ve also gotta look at all the weird stuff that’s going on behind those windows.

These stories from AskReddit users that also happen to be professional window washers DO NOT DISAPPOINT. Take a look at these tales.

1. Sad and lonely

“The weirdest thing to me is a mansion with round the clock staff inside, they even wear uniforms. It’s just this one rich dude his wife and their two kids. I’m not allowed inside, but I can see the wife. She’s surrounded by the serving staff, but she never talks to any of them, and they don’t talk to her. She seems really sad and lonely.”

2. Nude

“I washed windows once, still not sure if it was on purpose but was washing skylights on a regular house and the daughter walks into the bathroom naked and starts checking herself out. She was the same age as me, like 20 at the time. I didn’t know what to do so I apologized. Her parents heard and made fun of her the rest of the day, I’ve never seen someone turn so red as when her dad said “so you were giving the cleaning boy a show?” They were getting ready to sell the house and I was there for another 8 hours cleaning.”

3. Sounds like fun

“I only did the job for about 8 or 9 months but saw two unexpected things.

Got to the top of the ladder and saw a guy I know is a priest enjoying some porn. I scurried back down the ladder hoping he would hear me and then slowly went back up. He obviously had heard me because when I got back to the window he was standing up reading a bible.

The other time I got to the top of the ladder and saw a woman in her 80’s sitting on her bed completely naked. I was sure she saw me so I gave her a few minutes before going back to the window. When I get there she’s sitting in exactly the same place, still naked, smiling at me. I got a job in an office soon after.”

4. Just like a movie

“My (maternal) grandfather was a window washer in the 1930s. He saw my (eventual) grandmother on the other side of the glass.”

5. Wasps!

“I was volunteering for the first time at this small place a while ago because high school, and they gave me a simple job. A bottle of spray and a towel to wipe down the windows.

So I did it obediently, and I was looking through the window. I could see across the road there was a sidewalk and some apartments. On the sidewalk, there’s some trees, not too small or big, just your average tree. I could see this lump dangling on a branch, and I immediately recognized it as a wasp nest because my neighborhood had a lot.

I remember thinking to myself, “Man I feel bad for whoever has to take care of that.” (For some reason I thought people like beekeepers didn’t exist) Lo and behold, a white middle aged woman, kinda chubby, probably in her 50s, is watching from a reasonable distance. She goes back into her apartment, and comes back out with a metal baseball bat. I stopped wiping the windows and watched with horror thinking, “Uh oh.” I started heading towards the door to yell stop, but I wasn’t quick enough.

She runs up to the nest and takes a good hit at it. And I guess she tried to run away from the nest, but sprinting is a bit hard in your 50s, and her weight didn’t help. Yikes. She got stung and she kinda fell on the ground in the process. Wasp stings hurt like hell. I told the store manager what happened and she called an ambulance. She got whisked off, and that’s the end of the story.”

6. Watering the plants

“My boyfriend has done a lot of high rise window washing. As he was doing his thing, a man walked into an office, unzipped his pants, proceeded to pee into a potted plant, and walked back out as soon as he was done doing his business. The man was never aware that he had an audience.”

7. Brothel

“I used to wash the windows of a house that turned out to be a brothel.

Should’ve known really the signs were all there. Different men answering the door, all beds were king size with silky sheets Showers in every room Etc…”

8. Okay….

“A piglet. As in, a baby pig, not the Winnie the Pooh character.

No idea why he got an office on the 10th floor.”

9. Back off, lady

“The strangest was a woman who watched me to my work from the other side, pointing at all the streaks and spots as if I were missing it all. Her windows were filthy because we’d had a rain storm followed by a dust storm (only in Texas). I knew it’d take more than one pass to get it all, so I started with the big squeegee to get the bulk of the dirt off before going at it again with the smaller one that doesn’t leave streaks.

She was losing her mind tapping during the first pass, tapping on the parts I was going to go over again. She pointed out the wet streaks that dry up almost immediately into nothing but clean window. She pointed at the spots I had to really get at when the squeegee didn’t get them. She pointed at me a lot, and I’m not sure what that was about.

As part of the job, I also remove any spider webs or hornet/wasp’s nests I see. Wasps/Hornets aren’t really a big deal if you get the jump on them. You reach up, grab their mud nest, and just smash it in your hands before they get out to bite you. This lady kept freaking out and making barfing faces whenever I did it. She looked completely disgusted. She didn’t ask me to stop cleaning her windows though, so I don’t know what she expected me to do. Not do what I was contracted to do?

The lady clearly thought I was a neanderthal. She later complained that she had to do all the work, pointing it all out to me. I tried to explain that I could sit in a bus and point out the route, but that doesn’t change the work the bus driver is doing. She complained that I couldn’t be that smart because I was a window washer and window washers are lazy. I explained it was one of two jobs I was working while taking a full course load at the university.”

10. Some real weirdos out there

“I used to be a professional window washer for mostly very high end houses. Worked on a few celebrity homes but I really don’t have any interesting stories from them. Here are the top 3 weird places I remember working.

The first place, wasn’t a single occurrence but a particular client. To picture this guy, imagine a more boring version of Steve Carrol Carell.

This dude had a larger house. Probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 3500 square feet. He had the Rolladen shutters around his entire house. For those who don’t know what they are, imaging metalish window covers that roll down over the whole window. Something you’d see in a zombie apocalypse movie. That in and of itself wasn’t that weird. But I still remember the first time those shutters went up. The guy had zero furniture. None. Nada. Nothing except for a very basic queen sized bed with white sheets in one of the bedrooms. The guy would follow us around from the inside and leer at us the entire time we’d be cleaning the windows.

Then when we’d do the inside, he’d follow us around with a roll of paper towels and dab up any minor droplet that would hit the ground. Keep in mind, we always used drop cloths when we cleaned inside glass. We were used to working in the nicest of nice homes so we were always very careful to not get water on the floor. Wasn’t good enough for this dude. He’d literally stand 2 feet behind you with the roll and just stare.

Next place that I can remember that was weird was this gay couple’s house. They were super friendly and perfectly normal for the most part. The inside of their house however, was unsettling.

All of the walls were painted either blood red or black. Pagan and Satanic looking statues, paintings and decorations everywhere. It was unsettling to say the least. The last was this weird guy with insanely curly hair who had like fifty life sized statues of children on his property. Dude lived alone. My co-worker joked he was an angry old mage who would turn children to stone for walking on his lawn when they weren’t supposed too.”

11. Oh my!

“Wash windows for a hospital certain operating rooms have windows… the doctors just waved at me as I could see this persons midsection cut open on a table. I almost threw up down the side of the building.”

12. From the other side

“So I was on the unfortunate side of the incident. Went to go #2, the window is right behind the toilet.. you can see where this is going. I turned back to see a guy looming over me through thinly veiled curtains. I immediately flushed and farted out of there. I’m sure he will never forget that.”

13. Unpleasant

“Finally a question I can answer. We were cleaning a fairly tall building 12 stories iirc adjacent to an equally tall government office building. This office building had several bedrooms on the top level, which we could see from the roof but certainly not from the ground. From where we were standing this bedroom was about ten meters away. As we’re setting up a naked dude jumps onto his bed with an ipad and starts rubbing one out furiously. Facing us.

Not weird necessarily but certainly unpleasant.”

14. What are the chances?

“On my first job as a window washer I went to this house and started washing windows and saw my ex-girlfriend having sex with her new boyfriend. And then she came outside and started yelling at me that “this is insane” and “window washers don’t come to people’s houses at 3 in the morning” and “I’m pretty sure they carry more than just Great Value Window Cleaner and a roll of paper towels.”

I hate when people can’t be professional and mature when it comes to difficult jobs.”

15. Dress shoes

“Just a regular window cleaner here. I was once going up my ladders to clean a bedroom window on the second floor at around 8am. As i got to the top of the ladder i was confronted with a couple going for it at an angle which indicated that he was, shall we say, taking the road less travelled.

Fair enough, lots of window cleaners see people naked or doing it, but this dude, for some reason, at 8am, was wearing a pair of socks and dress shoes. Apart from that they were both butt naked.

Now i can only assume that they were too deeply engrossed to have heard the clatter of my ladders against the window sill, but i got done with that window real quick and just about slid down the ladder.”

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This 12-Year-Old Girl Just Became a New Feminist Hero

The past few years have been big for feminism. And while it seems like some big strides have been made, there’s still a long way to go. Each day, acts of sexism take place that make our blood boil. Some people see these and decide to sit back and do nothing, but not Julianne Speyer, a 12-year-old Girl Scout from Ohio. She saw something that made her angry, and did what she could think of to change it, with a letter directed toward the people who made it happen.

It all began at her town’s local 4th of July parade, when the announcer introduced the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts differently – the boys were touted as the “future leaders of America,” while the girls were “just having fun.” Even though the announcer might not have been being intentionally sexist with his remarks, Julianne was listening – and so were the others in attendance.

Photo Credit: Twitter

She felt that she couldn’t let it go without comment, and since none of the adults were stepping up to make an eloquent, public protest, young Julianne wrote a practically perfect letter to the editor and sent it to her local paper.

They printed it (yay, journalists!), and since then, she’s become something of a feminist hero and inspiration around the country (and the internet). Here’s the full text of the letter:

“The announcer labeled the Boy Scouts the ‘future leaders of America and he said the Girl Scouts were ‘just having fun.’ I found this comment very sexist and patronizing. I would appreciate it if you would help me to let other people know how much this kind of things happens and bad it is. I feel it is an insult to women and girls of all ages. This kind of thing happens way too much, and it is not OK at all.

I have always been taught that if you think something is unjust, change it. This is how I am making a change. So, this is how I am making a change. Thank you for listening to me and I hope you can help me.”

Julianne said she wrote the letter after talking to her fellow Girl Scouts, who came to the consensus that the characterization of them and their organization at the parade simply wasn’t fair – and it wasn’t. Women are proving every day that they are the future – and current – leaders of America, but unless we continue to remind young girls of that fact, their dreams and confidence may begin to erode.

That said, Julianne and her fellow Scouts don’t seem to need reminding. Instead, they’re leading the charge, to the pride and fist-pumping of card-carrying feminists everywhere.

So the next time you see or hear something that doesn’t feel right, channel your inner 12-year-old girl and do your best with what you have to make the changes you want to see in the world.

h/t: ScaryMommy

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