The Most Bizarre Things On Earth (mind-bending)

Below is a collection of the most bizarre, fascinating, and unbelievable things I’ve encountered while watching documentaries, reading books, and talking to interesting people.

I update this blog with new, bizarre, and cool things I discover.

I hope you enjoy it.

If you have something I should add to the list, tell me in the comments. See you there!

Double Slit Experiment

This is the single most bizarre and crazy thing I’ve heard in my entire life, and, to me, it goes a long way to show we are living in a simulation.

Originally experimentally shown by Thomas Young in 1801, light is indeed a wave instead of a particle (later we’d understand it behaves as both, depending on whether it’s being observed).

An atom changes from a wave to a single particle only when humans are observing it. In other words, turn your back and that atom is in a waveform, but when you turn around to observe the atom (with your measurement instruments) it changes to a single atom. This one is hard to explain in words, please watch the video above.

Shroud of Turin or Holy Shroud

A linen cloth with the image of a man, front and back, on it. It is believed to have been wrapped around Jesus upon burial and before the resurrection. The authenticity of the actual linen cloth is not in doubt, and even the skeptics who have examined it agree: no one knows how an image was recorded on a linen cloth. Even the blood stains contain high amounts of bilirubin, which is associated with trauma. We can’t do that today.

Proponents say the image was recorded on the cloth during Jesus’s resurrection. Our current physics does not explain how this may have happened.

Skeptical? You should be. This was first brought to our attention in the 1300s, the backstory of the garment was not explained, and the only carbon dating on the relic (in 1988) came back to the 1300s.

Mandela Effect

When a large portion of the population misremembers something common. Some examples are:

• Do you remember the Fruit of the Loom logo having a basket behind the fruits?
  • Answer: There never was a basket.
• Do you remember the Monopoly Man having an eye piece?
  • Answer: Never had an eyepiece.
• Do you remember Tinkerbell flying around during the intro of Disney movies?
  • Answer: There is no Tinkerbell.
• Do you remember Frosty the snowman having a scarf
  • Answer: He did not have a scarf.

Our timelines are diverging in the simulation due to overload and why I believe our population may be in a simulation and may be why our population is near is max at nearly 9 billion.

Impossible To Fly….Until They Did It

Simon Newcomb, a Canadian-American astronomer and mathematician, wrote in 1901:

“Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible.”

Two years later, in 1903, the Wright brothers achieved the first successful powered flight.

The majority of people fell for this fallacy called an appeal to authority (ie the general public believed the experts until two men decided not to.).

On December 17, 1903, there were four flights, the longest of which lasted 59 seconds and covered a distance of 852 feet (260 meters).

Be skeptical when listening to the “experts”. In my own experience, if there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that we’re wrong about most things, most of the time (as we learn more, we also learn that we were wrong).

This was only ~125 year ago. Let’s move up 50 years.

 

Cigarettes To Cure Asthma

Up until the 1950s, doctors prescribed cigarettes to cure asthma. This was popular, and even remedies with tobacco were sold over the counter (The Cigarette Century). During routine visits, it was not uncommon for a doctor to offer a cigarette to a patient, including a pregnant woman.

This was only ~75 years ago, but let’s continue down the timeline to only ~40 years ago.

When Crying Doesn’t Equal Pain

Until the late 1980s, doctors didn’t think babies felt pain. Even as they heard gut-wrenching cries during circumcision, sometimes causing the infant to pass out (American Circumcision, Netflix).

The turning point came in 1987, when a groundbreaking study by Dr. Kanwaljeet Anand showed that newborns not only feel pain — they may feel it more intensely than adults, because their nervous systems are immature and their pain-modulating systems aren’t fully developed.

This research was so compelling that it changed medical practice worldwide.

I bring up these three examples to keep you skeptical. What will we look back on in 50 years and think how stupid we were?

Tell me in the comments. I’m tremendously curious.

Falling To Your….Survival From 30,000 feet

For a video of some of the above.

Vesna Vulovic, although having the world record by far, isn’t actually that interesting of a story. On top of that, she seemed to have led an unhealthy and unspectacular life dying of serious health complications only at age 66 while living on a pension of only 300 Euros per month in a dilapidated apartment in Belgrade.

Aboard Juliane Koepcke’s flight, apparently, there were another 14 initial survivors who died before getting rescued.

Alan Mcgee fell while unconscious through the glass roof of a railway station, landing on the found, alive, and taken as a POW during WWII.

I couldn’t find any good videos on the famous Bear Grylls fall from 16,000 feet.

The First Slave Owner in America was Black

Anthony Johnson, born in 1600, was a black slave owner and often credited as the first slave owner in America (to be clear, not the first black slave owner, the first slave owner). He is historically famous because he sued John Casor, one of his slaves, over a dispute over his indentured servitude. Johnson won and Casor was declared a slave for life. But that’s not the whole story…

Originally an indentured servant, Johnson earned his freedom in 1621 and was granted land by the colony. By 1651 he was a wealthy 250-acre tobacco-farm owner with five indentured servants (4 white, 1 black).

In 1653, there was a dispute with John Casor, the black indentured servant who claimed Anthony Johnson was holding him illegally. Robert Parker, Johnson’s white neighbor, convinced Johnson to free Casor who he (Parker) would give work.

In 1655, Johnson sued Parker and originally lost the case. However, Johnson appealed the original ruling and won even though two white planters confirmed that Casor had completed his indentured contract with Johnson. Johnson received Casor as a slave for life.

This was the first judicial case in the original thirteen colonies ruling that someone could be indentured for life.

This story was so surprising to me that I researched more about the subject of slavery in America. My imagination of the 16th century, even to the 20th century, was that of extreme racism. Black and white. All whites were racist. You can imagine the curiosity inspired in me when I learned that not only was there a black slave owner as early as 1600, but he was a rich black person and owned white indentured servants.

In the 1850s, there were at least 180 black slave owners in the state of South Carolina and more than 9,000 free black persons. This is also surprising. I assumed there were exactly zero free black people in America in 1850. Makes me wonder what else was left out of history class, which turns out to be a lot.

For example, there were over one million white slaves in North Africa who arrived via piracy and raids. Black slaves in America totaled 400,000, which grew to 4 million in the mid 1800s. Their living conditions allowed this, including balanced sex ratios. The white male slaves were worked and killed. The white females were sex slaves and killed. There was no organic growth in the white slaves in Africa.

Roe v. Wade Was Based On A Lie

The history teachers skipped over this fact in class, if they even knew it themselves. Apparently, the landmark case giving women the right to choose to have an abortion was based on a lie. Norma McCorvey, the Roe in Roe v Wade, later acknowledged that she lied about being raped. The case was made that because she was raped, she should be allowed to get an abortion. Regardless of your stance on this important subject, I find it shocking it took me 33 years to know this.

A Man From ‘Taured’ Disappears In Custody

As far as I can tell, this is not a true story, but it’s still really interesting. Comment below if you know of any further facts.

In 1954, a caucasian-looking man appeared in the Tokyo airport with a strange passport. Strange because it was official-looking, but from a country which did not exist…in our simulation, I mean world.

He was eventually taken into custody until everything was figured out. The next day he disappeared.

His passport and belongings, held in a separate room, also disappeared.

RIP Stanley Meyers

The inventor of the water-fueled car in the 1990s apparently died of a brain aneurism (says coroner) while yelling he was poisoned during a meeting with two potential Belgian investors.

McGurk Effect

Your ears trick you into hearing the word that you’re looking at, even if a different sound is being produced.

This is the best video I found 👉 Watch this.

The Tragic David Reimer Story

After his penis was cut off accidentally during circumcision, a professional decision was made to raise him as a girl. Knowing something was seriously off in middle school, his parents eventually told “her” that she was actually born a boy. In her teenage years, “she” decided to continue her life as a boy. At 25, he married a woman. At 38 years old, he killed himself, two days after his wife told him that she wanted a divorce. Apparently, this (raising a child differently from their biological sex) is not a one-time occurrence.

Benford’s Law

If you have a random set of numbers in the real world, you’d think they’d be evenly distributed, right? For example, roughly 10% starting with 1, 10% starting with 2, and so on? You’d be wrong. The beginning value (ie the first number) is predictable, and they are not evenly distributed at 10%. Instead, they always follow the following pattern:

• 30% of numbers will start with a “1”
• 18% of numbers will start with a “2”
• 13% of numbers will start with a “3”
• 10% of numbers will start with a “4”
• 8% of numbers will start with a “5”
• 7% of numbers will start with a “6”
• 6% of numbers will start with a “7”
• 5% of numbers will start with a “8”
• <5% of numbers will start with a “9”

This was brought up as evidence being looked at during the 2020 presidential fraud claims. And the IRS uses this statistical analysis to detect tax cheats.

It does not work with randomly generated numbers like the lottery or phone numbers, which are designed to produce an even distribution.

So, what does the Benford Law predict?

• Street addresses
• Stock prices
• Length of rivers
• Populations
• Accounting data
• Incomes

Bizarre Math Loops

Take out your calculator and square root the number 2.
You’ll get 1.4142135….

Now cube that number.
You’ll get 2.8284271…

Now divide that by 2.
You’re back to 1.4142135…

Cube it again? Same number.
Divide by 2? Back again.

If you do that for the rest of your life, you will not get a different number than those above because you’re stuck in a mathematical loop between two numbers.

But try that same pattern on any number higher than 2 and by the 6th operation, it has moved into an absurdly large number.

Try it on any number lower than 2 and by the 6th operation, it has moved into microscopic nothingness.

This is a bizarre mathematical loop that renders logical and predictable math illogical. It is similar to quantum physics and the double-slit experiment above, calling into question what we think we know about reality.

Maybe math isn’t as rigid as we think. Maybe reality isn’t either.

Maybe some systems only stay stable under exact, fragile conditions.
Everywhere else, chaos rules.

Amazon Tall Tower Observatory

A 325m / 1,066ft tall and thin metal tower in the middle of the Amazon rain forest.

Primitive Precision Stonecutting

Someone, please explain to me how primitive Earthlings could cut stone so precisely.

Honorary Most Bizarre Mentions

The wife of Match.com Founder divorced him for someone she met on his dating platform.

Sierra Club supported biomass as an alternative energy source, which is trees turned into woodchips and burned in huge furnaces, creating lots of air pollution while killing biodiversity by razing vast swaths of trees (Michael More, Planet of the Humans). They no longer support this for obvious reasons.

Lobotomy was a miracle cure for mental health issues in the 1950s. We now know this procedure removes all personality, and you get the living dead.

Jeffrey Epstein – Highly controversial man who allegedly was deeply involved in sex trafficking apparently died by suicide (says coroner) even though muscles in his neck would not be broken by suicide, the guard happened to be asleep, and the camera happened to not be working.

I will keep this blog up-to-date based on future bizarre and interesting things I learn about, but please share your own with me.