December 22nd marks the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the beginning of winter. While daylight is scant, this time lapse packs countless hours of light and beauty, courtesy of the Aurora Borealis, into under two minutes. In 2011, Flatlight Creative House took to Finland’s Laplands to film this stunning Northern Lights time lapse. Suffice it to say, we’ve never wanted to book a flight to Finland more.

The post Video Of The Day: Mesmerizing Northern Lights Time Lapse Will Turn You Into A Winter Lover appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

A series of sexual assaults in Germany may have devastating consequences for refugees seeking entrance into the country. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Germany has been one of Europe’s brightest beacons for refugees fleeing Syria, after years of civil war, and the Middle East at large. The country’s progressive policies on immigration have allowed entrance for around 1 million people, which is a stark contrast to nearly every other country nearby (in the U.S., politicians have made statements both for and against allowing refugees entry into America). Some countries like Poland and Hungary had agreed to take in refugees, but after the November Paris attacks, reversed their commitment. Now it seems as if public sentiment in Germany is shifting as well.

Around 100 women in Cologne, Germany, filed complaints of sexual assault to the police just after New Year’s Eve. A large portion of those complaints were reports of being surrounded, sexually assaulted, and mugged by drunk men of African or Arabic descent. Reports of the assaults dominated German media as women from other cities came forward with similar stories. The police are calling it a “new dimension in crime,” and protestors are targeting immigrants as the perpetrators.

“Making this an issue through oversimplifications and connecting it to the issue of refugees is nothing more than misuse of the debate,” German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said in a press conference. “Now it is about determining the facts and drawing the necessary conclusions.” Yet Maas also said that deportations are “completely conceivable.” Mayor of Cologne Henriette Reker also asked people not to jump to conclusions: “It’s completely improper…to link a group that appeared to come from North Africa with the refugees.”

The actual violence committed against the victims has fallen to the background over talk about immigration quotas and deportations. “This is where (German Chancellor Angela) Merkel’s irresponsible immigration policy will lead us,” Thorsten Craemer, a member of a far right group called ProNRW, said at a rally.

Merkel’s New Year’s Eve address, aired just hours before the attacks took place, carried quite a different tone. It focused on the refugees who have found asylum in Germany, calling them “an opportunity for tomorrow,” and that the influx of immigrants will benefit the country both economically and socially. Everything changed after news of the attacks, as Merkel said that authorities will find the attackers “as quickly and comprehensively as possible and punish them, regardless of their origin or background.”

If these acts change popular opinion in Germany against refugees, there won’t be many other places for them to go. Serbia and Kosovo have taken in the second most refugees after Germany, and the most when adjusted for total population, but the distribution across the rest of Europe is anything but even.

The New Year’s Eve assaults have bolstered some Germans’ claims that the Muslim refugees won’t be able to adapt to European life. If the current mood after these assaults is any indication, the number of refugees who are refused entry into European countries only stands to grow in 2016.

The post What Does The Wave Of Sexual Assaults In Germany Mean For The Refugee Crisis? appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

In 2007, the small town of Urueña, Spain decided to become a Villa del Libro, or a town of books. This is what it looks like.

One of the old medieval gates leading out of Urueña, Spain’s Villa del Libro. Image Source: Flickr

Imagine a small medieval town behind a high wall. A castle stands on one end, and all around are vineyards and fields of wheat. Imagine that within the walls the entire town is devoted to reading and writing. Imagine that the entire town is, in essence, one magical bookstore.

One of many European wonders, this fairytale for bibliophiles exists in Spain. The place is called Urueña, and it is only a two hour drive northwest from Madrid. The town sits within a medieval wall, surrounded by vast plains, in the region of Castilla y León. In recent years, it has transformed itself into a Villa del Libro, a village that celebrates books.

Urueña, Spain. Image Source: Flickr

Fewer than 200 people live in Urueña, according to the 2014 census. But these few villagers run 12 different bookstores, meaning that there’s one bookstore for every sixteen or so people. Some are general interest shops; others specialize in old and rare books. One focuses on the region of Castilla y León, another on children’s books. A shop called El 7 Bookshop specializes in books about bullfighting. Another concentrates its collection on books about wine, and this one is called The Cellar.

In addition to the bookstores, Urueña is home to an institute of ancient calligraphy that offers classes in the old writing techniques found in medieval handwritten tomes. Similarly, the Artisan Book Binding Workshop of Urueña holds seminars on how to physically create and unite the spines, covers, and pages that make up books.

One of the twelve bookstores in the small town of Urueña, Spain. Image Source: Flickr

Urueña also boasts five well-run museums. Naturally, there’s the Museum of the Book and Writing and the Story Museum. But there is also the Ethnographic Museum, run by a local scholar of regional folklore, Joaquín Díaz, that’s set in a 18th century mansion. The nearby Museum of Music houses ancient and valuable instruments from across Europe and around the world. Finally, the e-LEA Centre hosts exhibits and lectures on literature and writing.

The castle that guards Urueña, Spain. Image Source: Flickr

While already a center of learning and history, Urueña made a conscious decision to become a Villa del Libro in 2007. It joined the International Organization of Book Towns and modeled its re-branding after cities like Hay-on-Wye in Wales or Brevedoort in the Netherlands where tens of thousands of tourists come every year for literary festivals or simply to look through the second-hand shops. So far Urueña is the only internationally recognized “book town” in Spain.

At present, Urueña attracts 40,000 bibliophiles to its narrow medieval streets every year. They cross the vast plains of Castilla to search through old tomes; listen to lectures on writing and take classes in calligraphy, and of course to talk to one another about the pleasures found in books.

The post This Small Village In Spain Is Home To More Books Than People appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

Millions have been displaced due to conflicts in the Middle East this year. This interactive map helps visualize it.

A man holds a placard as Syrian and Afghan refugees demand to travel to Germany in September 2015. Image Source: Flickr/AFP

In 2015, unending bloodshed in Syria as well as reignited conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan pushed millions of people to find a new life in a new country. Over the past year, nearly 800,000 refugees and asylum seekers have fled to Europe, hoping to restart in a continent of peace that has maintained relative prosperity even during the recent financial crisis. The arrival of hundreds of thousands of beleaguered men, women, and children has tested the European Union.

To breathe life into what can be a bland recitation of data points, Ville Saarinen and Juho Ojala, of the Finnish data analytics firm Lucify, created the stunning visualization below. It uses monthly, origin-destination data on asylum seekers from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to map the flow of people seeking sanctuary in the European Union. As Saarinen and Ojala write, “The visualisation is designed to provide an intuitive grasp of the scale of the problem.”

Each white spark shooting over the dark map represents 25 refugees. Readers can hover over the map to reveal more information, such as flows from a single origin country or cumulative data from a single destination.

As the creators explain in a post on Medium, the map has some limitations. It does not show migration routes, but only final destinations. Furthermore, it does not necessarily show the accurate length of time of each journey. Instead, the creators decided on randomizing the travel time to between 4-6 km per hour to calculate start dates for refugees. As they write, this speed reflects the weeks or months it can take a Syrian refugee to leave his home and arrive in northern Europe.

The Lucify team made these decisions based on what was needed to tell the story of the data in the most compelling way. The results are impressive. They show the dramatic consequences of a conflict and economic desperation, particularly the disastrous effects of four years of ceaseless war in Syria.

The post This Stunning Interactive Map Visualizes 800,000 Refugees Entering Europe appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

Occasionally, the United States is on the receiving end of declarations of war. Here are some examples you may have missed in history class.

Can you guess which of these places has at one point in time declared war on the United States?

When we think of the nations that despise the U.S. so much that they’d actually declare war on it, Thailand is not necessarily the first to come to mind. But on Jan. 25, 1942, they did just that. The former “puppet-state” of Japan — which had previously declared its neutrality in the Second World War — decided to formally side with Japan. In so doing, Thailand’s Prime Minister Lang Pipul declared war on the United States and Great Britain. Shortly after, he took dictatorial control of Thailand.

What other surprising countries have made like Thailand and declared a surprising war against the U.S.? We highlight a handful of them here.

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In the U.S. alone, the vibrator is a billion dollar industry. But how long have they really been around, and who invented them?

An early vibrator ad. Image Source: Wikipedia

A sex toy staple, the rise of the vibrator has always been linked to the hysteria treatments of Victorian England. But the Victorians were hardly the first to employ “pelvic massage” as a medical treatment. As it happens, the history of the vibrator is much longer than that:

The Vibrator’s Ancient Origins

The term hysteria — from the Greek word for uterus, hysteros — originated some 2,500 years ago and described a triad of symptoms experienced by women: fatigue, nervousness and depression. Hippocrates believed that these symptoms were caused by a “wandering uterus,” and given the science of the time, it was as logical an assumption as anything else. Questionable anatomy aside, dildos apparently appeared as an answer to this set of problems, having been found in places dating back to this period. In Ancient Egypt, legend has it that Cleopatra filled a hollowed out gourd with bees and used it for clitoral stimulation. It’s likely just an urban legend, though: she probably just used dildos, like every other woman of her time.

From Medieval times throughout the Renaissance, village doctors viewed hysteria as a sign of sexual deprivation, and thus encouraged married hysteria sufferers to engage in rigorous sex to cure their ails. In fact, for much of history, the pursuit of the female orgasm was more important than we’ve been led to believe: even in the Victorian era, sex guides touted the female orgasm as essential to pregnancy. If a man wanted an heir, the female orgasm, and foreplay, were essential.

Vibrators In The Victoria Era

A Victorian era doctor comes to the aid of his patient. Image Source: Wikipedia

The Victorians did coin a term for the orgasm: hysterical paroxysm. The clinical definition added a degree of scientific legitimacy to the experience, but was concurrent with a belief that masturbation was sinful and even harmful (although a few doctors conceded that it might have been okay for women on their periods). If a “hysterical” woman was unmarried and didn’t have the option or interest in “rigorous sexual intercourse,” she still had to achieve that curative hysterical paroxysm somehow.

At first, midwives and medical doctors — predominantly men at the time — manually massaged a woman’s vulva and clitoral region in order for the woman to experience a “hysterical paroxysm.” The intended effect did wear off, meaning that women would come back for more treatment — and after a while, physicians ran into a significant challenge: their hands and wrists were getting tired and, in some cases, probably bordering on repetitive motion injuries like tendonitis.

The necessity for an automated massager begat the first of many automatic “vibrators”: more specifically, a rather large, steam-powered one that practically took up an entire room and was known as “The Manipulator.” Perhaps the most well-known iteration, in part because of the major motion picture that dramatized the story, is Dr. Joseph Mortimer Granville’s 1880 invention of the first electric vibrator. Granville never meant to treat “hysterics” with his device; rather, he meant for it to treat musculoskeletal pain in men. Nevertheless, these devices reduced the time it took for women to achieve her paroxysm — helpful as at the time many doctors feared a “hysteria” epidemic — and soon became smaller and more portable, opening up the door for new innovations by actors outside the medical field.

The Modern Vibrator

The “hysteria” epidemic. Image Source: Wikipedia

In a 2012 interview with The Daily Beast, sex historian Dr. Rachel Maines said that by 1899, $5 battery-powered vibrators appeared in Sears catalogs as household appliances, adding that, “After a while, patients realized that if they could order one from Sears for $5, why should they go to the doctor for $2 to $3 a visit?”

By the early 20th century, women had the ability to treat their “hysteria” independently and at home, eliminating the need for office visits and saving the wrists of their grumbling doctors. The advertisements in Sears catalogs at the time called vibrators “aids that every woman appreciates.”

Once vibrators became widely available, the scope of their intended use broadened. In the early 1920s, they started popping up in brothels and later, porn films. By 1952, the the American Medical Association dropped the term “hysteria” from its diagnostic terminology. The term may have exited the lexicon, but the attitude toward women’s health and the suppression of their sexual needs continued: Once it was apparent that vibrators had an explicitly sexual connotation, they disappeared from the consumer market almost as quickly as they’d appeared.

The 1970s sexual revolution ushered in a more open approach to the vibrator, most notably with the famous Hitachi Magic Wand, which hit the scene in 1973. The concept of objects created specifically for sexual use — particularly women’s sexual pleasure — succeeded through the evolving perception of women socially and politically. Even though sex toys had existed for centuries, they had mostly been used in secret. Now they were coming to the forefront, so to speak.

A Hitachi “magic wand.” Image Source: Wikipedia

Today, vibrators exist in just about every iteration you could possibly imagine, varying in shape, size, color and intensity. Babeland, one of the first websites devoted to their sale (in 1993), continues to be one of the most prolific sellers of sex toys to date.

One study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that over half of women they surveyed had used a vibrator — and hearkening back to its medical origins, linked the usage of sex toys to health-conscious behaviors such as regular gynecological exams.

The post The Strange, Surprising History Of The Vibrator appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

Hard times can give way to some pretty creative — and tasty — thinking. Case in point? The majority of your favorite Italian foods. The delicious simplicity of many Italian dishes stems from lack of money, and historical periods when Italians simply had to make the most of whatever ingredients they had.

Many of these dishes have since become more sophisticated in terms of ingredients and preparation, but to celebrity chef Salvatore Cuomo, that just means more potential to lose the heart of Italian cuisine. “The most distinctive thing about Italian food is the limited number of ingredients used,” Cuomo says. “Many chefs around the world just get it wrong — by using very little, you get it right. That is the secret of Italian cuisine.”

For National Italian Food Day — celebrated on Feb. 13th — Cuomo offered us some of his favorite Italian dishes. We’ve sprinkled in some history about them for good measure:

Want more food and drink goodness? Check out how macarons and tiramisu are made.

The post The Mouthwatering History Behind Your Favorite Italian Foods appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

As a method of execution, throwing someone through a window is a bizarre concept. It’s amazing there’s even a word for it, and yet there is: defenestration. We’ve witnessed it in countless movies — the thrilling opening fight scene in Watchmen, Edward Longshanks hurling his son’s lover through an open window in Braveheart, even the triumphant moment in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves when Friar Tuck pushes the money-laden bishop through the stained glass window of his chapel. But there is a very real, and very weird history behind the practice…

The post Look Out Below: The Bloody History Of Defenestration appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

Last month, Switzerland opened its eighth baby hatch. Here’s what it is, and why it’s so controversial.

A baby box in the Czech Republic. Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

In the first week of February, Switzerland opened its eighth baby hatch in the city of Sion. As the name suggests, parents not ready to care for a child can leave their newborn in the hatch, knowing that the child will be safe in the care center inside and that the family will suffer no legal repercussions for doing so.

How Long Have Baby Hatches Existed?

A medieval foundling wheel. Image Source: WordPress/Judith Land

While the very idea of a baby hatch has proven contentious as of late, parents deserting their newborns is anything but a new phenomenon. Economic uncertainty, unwanted pregnancies, an unsafe home environment, governmental gender restrictions, or newborn disabilities have all led families to abandon infants throughout history (perhaps as a way to avoid infanticide or abortion).

Likewise, Catholic churches and convents — staunch advocates of a child’s right to life — have taken in abandoned children for as long as they have existed. Since the Middle Ages, parents who abandoned their infants would often leave them in the “foundling wheels” of these religious institutions.

Why Are They So Controversial Now?

Fast forward a handful of centuries, and the idea is generally the same. That said, more places accept abandoned newborns now, and many more families will not face legal consequences for leaving their child behind. However, a new issue has emerged.

As Nottingham University psychologist Kevin Browne told the BBC, “studies in Hungary show that it’s not necessarily mothers who place babies in these boxes — that it’s relatives, pimps, step-fathers, fathers.” According to the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), this poses a problem as there is no way to know if there was a willing mother behind the desertion of the infant or if she was forced to give her child up.

On the other hand, hatch proponents claim that if the hatches aren’t in place, those who do not want to keep their babies might abandon them on the streets — a far more dangerous fate for an abandoned child. As Swiss hospital director Sandro Foiada told Swissinfo, “The abandonment of newborns exists, and if this hatch helps us save even one, it will be worth the effort.”

Thus, the debate continues: Do the baby hatches promote infants’ rights by assuring them survival or do they take children’s rights away by making it impossible for the babies to know their origins? Furthermore, is this an appropriate way to promote family planning? All these questions are now being asked in Switzerland and beyond…

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Forced to work for the notorious Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz, Gisella Perl risked all to save as many lives as she could. This is her incredible, heartbreaking story.

Gisella Perl with a baby. Image Source: Wikipedia

We have previously shared the story of Stanislawa Leszczyńska, a midwife at Auschwitz who delivered almost 3,000 babies while imprisoned in the concentration camp.

But while Stanislawa delivered infants, another Jewish medical professional risked her life to save the lives of other women in Auschwitz: a gynecologist named Dr. Gisella Perl. Under the watchful, evil eye of Dr. Josef Mengele, Perl realized that in order to save the lives of the women in her care, she could not safely deliver babies like Stanislawa. Instead, Perl performed abortions.

Gisella Perl was born in Hungary in 1907, and showed signs of being particularly gifted early in life. At the age of 16, Perl graduated first in her secondary school class, becoming the first woman and the only Jew to have done so.

Her father was hesitant to support her academic aspirations, particularly in medicine, fearing that they would lead her to abandon her faith. She assured him that they would not. Perl later married a surgeon and was working as a gynecologist in Hungary when the Germans invaded in 1944.

That year, the Nazis sent Perl, her husband, son, parents and extended family to Auschwitz. A young daughter was hidden with a non-Jewish family just before Perl’s family was taken from the Hungarian ghetto.

Upon arriving at Auschwitz, the Nazis separated Perl from the rest of her family. Her son would die in a gas chamber, and her husband would be beaten to death shortly before the camp was liberated. Perl was spared, only to become an Auschwitz physician under the notorious Josef Mengele.

Dr. Josef Mengele. Image Source: Wikipedia

Initially, Perl was tasked with encouraging inmates to donate blood for use by the German army. When Dr. Mengele realized that Perl had been trained in gynecology, however, he saw an opportunity to obtain information about which inmates had arrived pregnant.

In addition to his experiments on twins, Mengele also performed horrific experiments on pregnant women, including vivisection (experimentation and, in some cases, autopsy-like surgeries performed on living, waking humans).

Mengele commanded Perl that she was to report all pregnancies to him directly. Pregnant women, he said, would be sent to a different camp – one with better care for mother and child. Having already seen the horrors that prisoners faced at the hands of the Nazis, Perl knew better than to believe him. She also knew that she couldn’t tell him about a single pregnancy. How she’d keep them a secret, however, she had yet to figure out.

Tragically, some women who overheard this conversation went to Mengele to tell him they were pregnant of their own volition. They were experimented on and, ultimately, died.

The post The Tragic Heroism Of Gisella Perl, “The Angel of Auschwitz” appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

The witch doctors of Sierra Leone, tiny structures built by insects, Texas’ female gun owners, European border photography, history’s most famous betrayals.

Image Source: VICE

Spending A Week With The Witch Doctors Of Sierra Leone

Image Source: VICE

When an American thinks of a physician, images of stethoscopes and syringes often come to mind. In Sierra Leone, at least among self-proclaimed witch doctors, things are a bit different. These unconventional medics often use black magic and herbal medicines to cure the sick, and claim that they can curse or even kill their enemies.

Intrigued by their practices, a VICE reporter went down to Sierra Leone to visit these doctors, all of whom are members of the National Council of Traditional Healers, and learn more about their craft. Check out her photographic documentation of the trip at VICE.

Image Source: VICE

Incredible Tiny Structures, Built By Insects

This structure, discovered in Peru, baffled scientists. Image Source: Macro Photography In Singapore

Insects continually amaze us with their strength, resilience, and now, their architecture. Several species of insects and arachnids create bizarre, ornate structures in which to pupate, live, or trap prey, including the above web creation that has been dubbed “Silk-Henge.” Measuring less than a quarter inch across, the minute creation was found in Peru — a further search yielded many more, mostly built onto the sides of trees and bamboo. They turned out to house eggs that hatched tiny orange spiders, whose species is yet to be determined. See more at Macro Photography In Singapore.

Bagworm moth caterpillars saw up tiny sticks to create these bizarre little log cabins to live inside. Image Source: Macro Photography In Singapore

Arctiine moth caterpillars pull out their own hairs before entering the chrysalis, and build a protective fortress from them. Image Source: Macro Photography In Singapore

The Female Gun Owners Of Texas

Vianne from Sugar Land, Texas. Image Source: Slate

Depending on your beliefs, gun ownership can be a right of passage or a public hazard. But in Texas, owning a gun is just another part of life. Photographer Shelley Calton documented the often overlooked female contingent of that state’s gun-toting community in her book, Concealed.

Seventy women opened up to Calton about their firearms and why they owned them. All the pictures, however, had one through-line: “I try to make them feel comfortable,” Calton says, “but you know, having a gun in your hand isn’t comfortable for anyone.” See more at Slate.

A mother and child in Texas. Image Source: Slate

A gun-bearing sex shop owner in Houston, Texas. Image Source: Slate

The post What We Loved This Week, Mar. 13 – 19 appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

On the Sunday before Easter, many Catholic countries begin celebrating Semana Santa, or Holy Week, an elaborate religious observance that will last until the day before Easter. Among the festival’s many rituals, the solemn street processions held in the main participating cities arrest the eye with their intimidating aesthetics and aura of mystery:

Next, discover the seven most unusual religious rituals and beliefs. Then, check out 17 incredible vintage Easter advertisements.

The post Inside Semana Santa, One Of The World’s Strangest Easter Celebrations appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

Ilse Koch may not be as famous as the Holocaust’s ringleaders, but she was every bit as evil. This is the life story of the woman who made lampshades from the skin of her prisoners.

Ilse Koch. Image Source: Google Cultural Institute

We’ve written twice before about women who not only survived the Holocaust, but saved the lives of fellow prisoners with their superhuman courage and will to survive. The stories of Gisella Perl and Stanislawa Leszczyńska highlight one vital aspect of human nature: Our ability to persevere and care for others in even the most harrowing and cruel of circumstances.

But the Holocaust also presented many opportunities for humanity’s terrible dark side to run wild, as well. While Adolf Hitler, Josef Menegle, and Heinrich Himmler are rightly remembered as its figureheads, there were others just as villainous, but their names didn’t quite make the history books.

One of these individuals was Ilse Koch, whose sadism and barbarism would lead to her to receive the nickname The Bitch of Buchenwald.

The post “The Bitch of Buchenwald:” The Story Of One Of The Holocaust’s Biggest Monsters appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

Throughout much of 20th century Spain, a criminal network of doctors and nuns stole anywhere from 40,000 to 300,000 babies from their mothers at birth, constituting one of the most horrific yet least known events of the Franco dictatorship.

Picture taken during the Spanish Civil War in the late ’30s of General Franco (C) with Chief of Staff Barroso (L) and Commander Carmenlo Medrano looking at a map. Image Source: STF/AFP/Getty Images

General Francisco Franco came to power in 1939, after winning a civil war that had bathed the country in blood for three years. In the four decades that followed — and up to his death in 1975 — Spain stayed mostly closed to the outside world, delaying industrial progress and punishing those who fought on the losing side of the conflict. It was during those years when it is believed that tens of thousands of infants born to “undesirable” families started disappearing from their mothers’ hands.

The Spanish dictator from 1939 to 1975, Francisco Franco. Source: Patrimonio

According to the BBC, the practice may have originally been borne from Francoist ideology which promoted the domination of the “pure” right wing over “inferior” left wing families, but over the years it changed, “as babies began to be taken from parents considered morally — or economically — deficient.”

Following the requests of families who could not have children, a corrupt web of nuns, priests, doctors and nurses went to great lengths to steal babies — most of whom came from low-income families or single mothers — on their behalf or provide them with illegal adoptions.

To cover up the job, baby-seeking families were sometimes told to fake a pregnancy; other times the families simply believed they were going through a legal adoption channel, paying the doctors and nuns for their services. The latter was easy to do, as up until 1987 adoptions in Spain were done through hospitals, which were largely under the influence of the Catholic Church, the BBC wrote.

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One tiny region of Spain has had some unexpected — and slightly concerning — guests over the past several months: falling space junk.

Members of the Explosives Deactivation Team transport space debris believed to be a spare fuel tank to a safe location. Image Source: Spanish Civil Police.

The rural region of Murcia, Spain, just can’t seem to catch a break lately: It has the country’s highest poverty rate, had to ask for a bailout, and now it seems to have become a target for falling space junk.

Over the past several months, the tiny area has been the site of three space junk attacks, which initially added some excitement to the depressed region. When the first object fell, La Opinión de Murcia reporter Enrique Soler said that “the response of the population was mainly curiosity; everyone was wondering where it came from.”

A few days later, local farmers and shepherds discovered two more objects, and the area was put under quarantine. These round objects measured around 25 inches in diameter — about the size of a yoga ball — and weighed around 44 pounds.

The Spanish official Explosives Deactivation Team inspects the object that fell from the sky to determine if it poses a risk for the population of the area. Source: Spanish Civil Police.

Soon enough, curiosity transitioned to concern, Soler said. “When the second one, however, fell half a mile from Calasparra [a village of around 10,000 people] people were worried because the craters left by the objects were very big.”

Locals “saw an undetermined number of objects that looked like fire balls falling from the sky,” Soler told ATI. Fortunately, nobody has been hurt by these objects.

The odds of one region being repeatedly hit by space junk are quite low, especially when you look at the numbers. At any given moment, around 500,000 pieces of space junk — here referring to human-made detritus — are orbiting our planet. While some pieces are so small they can’t be tracked, others are bigger than a softball, and can come hurling at you at ridiculous speeds.

According to NASA, space debris travels at around 17,500 miles per hour, each piece becoming a flying weapon for spacecraft or the International Space Station. For that reason, NASA keeps a close eye on the junk’s trajectory (it even catalogues debris larger than the size of a marble) in case there is any risk of collision. And there is a risk: In 2014 alone, the International Space Station had to move three times to avoid fatal collisions with space junk.

So what happens to the junk after it’s been found? In Spain, procedure dictates that a team of explosive deactivation experts inspects the object to assure it doesn’t pose a risk. After that, it is kept in a safe location, waiting to be claimed.

In Murcia, the local government actually wants to exhibit these objects, which are thought to be spare fuel tanks from a space ship or rocket. The three “balls” found so far are not the only items space has thrust at Spain: Other metal objects have been discovered on farms across southern Spain, and have normally been thought to be falling pieces of regular aircrafts.

One of the pieces of space debris found in Murcia. Photo courtesy of Enrique Soler.

According to the Head of the Space Situational Awareness Department at the European Space Agency, Earth is hit by these types of debris once a week, with a very small likelihood of harming human beings. The same type of objects found recently in Spain have also appeared in locations like Texas in the U.S., Brazil, and Australia.

Next, check out these 29 space facts that prove life on Earth is boring.

The post This Tiny Region In Spain Keeps Getting Hit By Falling Space Junk appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

In one fell swoop, 22-year-old Olga Hepnarová killed eight people and injured dozens more in Prague. Here’s her chilling story.

Hepnarová. Still from Aktualne TV.

Screams filled the air, dead bodies lined the streets, and a few meters down the road, sitting calmly in the driver’s seat, was the 22-year-old girl who had decided to kill them all.

Olga Hepnarová is one of Europe’s most prolific and least known mass murderesses. Her heinous crime — an almost unrivaled example of vehicular homicide — took the lives of eight people, and injured a dozen more. While sickening in its method of execution, it was the cold, premeditated way in which it was all planned that is perhaps most shocking of all.

The truck Hepnarová used to commit her crime. Image: Murderpedia

Riddled with psychological problems and fueled by an intense hatred of humanity, the young truck driver decided to enact a monumental act of revenge upon the world. Detailing her motives in letters she delivered to two Czech newspapers two days prior to the murders, Hepnarová stated:

“I am a loner. A destroyed woman. A woman destroyed by people…I have a choice — to kill myself or to kill others. My verdict is: I, Olga Hepnarová, the victim of your bestiality, sentence you to death.”

This self-appointed form of “sentencing” led to a sentencing of her own — death by hanging. Two years later, she was executed by short-drop hanging, thus becoming the last ever woman to be hanged in then-Czechoslovakia, and one of the last in Europe.

Her darkly fascinating story is the subject of an acclaimed new film, “Já, Olga Hepnarová,” directed by Tomas Weinreb and Petr Kazda. Though the film documents the cold-blooded murder, it also carves its way into the recesses of Hepnarová’s complicated psyche.

Hepnarová, as she appears in the feature-length film. Image: “Já, Olga Hepnarová”

“She wasn´t a werewolf or a fantastic monster,” Weinreb said. “She was a human. In her life, we saw the story of an outcast, of a person that just did not fit into society. Loneliness and hate finally led to the horrifying act of violence – and that was the story we wanted to tell.”

This story, shot in ominous black and white, begins with Hepnarová’s suicide attempt at the age of 13. The attempt, made by taking a handful of the drug Meprobamate, was a culmination of the bullying that she felt she was being subjected to by her classmates.

What followed were long stints of incarceration at a child’s psychiatric clinic in Opařany. During these times, doctors identified a number of unhealthy traits — apathy, insubordination, negativism, detachment, vomiting and nicotine addiction — but were unable to offer a complete diagnosis of Hepnarová’s illness.

One psychiatrist, one of the few people Hepnarová actually opened up to, eventually diagnosed her with schizophrenia. Two years later, in 1967, a week before her 16th birthday, she wrote him a letter, updating him about her state of mind.

She told him that she hadn’t spoken to her father since her last beating, and that she now had nothing to talk about with her mother. She then expressed her view on society in general, writing:

“I hate people. I wonder how my relationship will look as time goes by. I want the people to not exist for me at all, their words and chatter are indifferent to me. That’s what I want. It’s better for me when I’m alone than when I’m with them…Everyone falls for their smiles and fellowship. They mutilated my soul.”

After leaving the hospital and failing to hold down a number of jobs, Hepnarová retired to a cottage in the Czech countryside and got a job working as a truck driver. During this time, her sexual appetite was awakened, and she formed a number of relationships with women — conveyed in the movie by an array of highly-explicit sex scenes.

Olga’s sexual awakening is also depicted in the film. Image: “Já, Olga Hepnarová”

“She was not just a lesbian,” says Kazda, however. “It would be far too simple to brand her like that. She had relationships with men and women, and she described reaching orgasm with men too. She tended towards women, yes. But she shouldn´t be labelled as a ‘lesbian killer’ or something like that.”

The film, in fact, shows her enjoying a lengthy relationship with an older man, Miroslav, and it was him with whom she spent a long, camping holiday, just before committing her crime.

The crime itself was a cold and calculated one.

Having written the letters to the newspapers (the letters were only opened after the act), she rented a truck and drove to a busy, residential spot in Prague called Strossmayerovo Namesti. The tram stop was a busy one, located at the bottom of a hill, and according to her, allowed a good run-up in order to get maximum impact.

When she initially drove toward it, she changed her mind. Not because of nerves or because she’d had a change of heart; it was because she had felt that the number of people waiting there was too few. After driving round the block and resuming her position, she then tried again.

This time Hepnarová drove with intent, mounting the pavement around 30 meters from the tram stop, and accelerating rapidly into the group of people waiting there. She collided with 20 of them, careened into a number of shops, then stopped at the end of the street. After this, she simply sat and waited for the police.

The crime scene. Image: Murderpedia

The collision killed three people instantly, a further five died later in hospital and 12 others sustained other injuries. All of them were elderly.

After the act, Hepnarová showed a complete lack of remorse, repeatedly pleading guilty to her crime and asking during her subsequent trial that she be given the death penalty. Two years later, on March 12, 1975, she was executed.

“She felt to be totally misunderstood by society,” says Kazda. “She wrote about how she was expelled from society, bullied as a teenager and put in the psychiatric hospital by her family.”

“Forty years ago, society did not know how to treat people with the psychological problems that she had,” adds Weinreb. “You were just strange, and others treated you as a stranger. Back at the time of her trial there was either 15 years in prison at most as an appropriate punishment or the death penalty. It was not possible to serve a lifetime. And 15 years in prison just did not seem to be enough for the horror she had done.”

Watch the trailer for “Já, Olga Hepnarová” below:

Next, learn about Oleg Mitasov and his “apartment of madness,” and read these serial killer quotes that will chill you to the bone.

The post The Shocking Story Of Olga Hepnarová, A Truck-Driving Mass Murderess appeared first on All That Is Interesting.

Napoleon Bonaparte is one of the biggest names in history. Everybody’s heard of him, but there are some things you’ve probably never been told about the French emperor.

Napoleon Bonaparte. YouTube

Napoleon Bonaparte makes the short list of people who are most responsible for how the modern world came into being. From his May 18, 1804 installation as Emperor, this little average-sized man rose from a lowly artillery officer from a remote island to a height of power no European had enjoyed since Roman times.

His decades-long rule dramatically altered European politics, from the rule of law set down in the Napoleonic Code to which side of the street most of Europe drives on. Before Napoleon, the whole world seemed to be one way; after him, it could never be that way again.

When you’re as influential as all that, generations of scholars will spend their careers studying every detail of your life. It is inevitable that those scholars will find some weird stuff – imagine a working group at the Sorbonne devoted to reading your diary – and not all of it will fit neatly within the great conqueror narrative. In fact, some of it will just be crazy, like this stuff here.

Napoleon Wrote a Romance Novel

Dineke Veninga/Pinterest

A year or so before the coup that would install him as dictator, Napoleon vented his frustration by writing a romance novel. The book, Clisson et Eugénie, which you can buy right now for about 34 cents on Amazon, tells the story of an army officer who falls in love and marries the girl of his dreams.

Duty calls, however, so the officer comes out of retirement to serve at the front. While he’s away, his wife cheats on him with a friend, driving him to – SPOILER ALERT – die a hero’s death in combat. The full book was only published after Napoleon’s death, and parts of it are still missing today.

Napoleon Nearly Died Looking for Australia

François Gérard/Wikimedia Commons

In 1785, Napoleon signed up for an official venture by the French Crown under the command of Jean-François de Galaup, Comte de Lapérouse. Shortly before the French Revolution broke out, Lapérouse outfitted two ships for an around-the-world voyage to Australia, the Solomon Islands, Alaska, and California, among other sites.

Lapérouse needed 220 men for the trip, and the teenage Napoleon is recorded in the crew ledger as having just missed the final cut. This rejection probably took him by surprise; Napoleon was really good at math, and he excelled in his class at the military academy in gunnery – both vital skills on a sailing ship.

Another surprise came a few years later when word reached France that the expedition had vanished without a trace. In all likelihood, both of the expedition’s ships fetched up against a coral reef in 1788. None of Lapérouse’s crew ever made it home.

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Dr. Josef Mengele’s medical facility at Auschwitz was perhaps the most horrifying place the Holocaust produced. Who was this man behind it all, and what made him the notorious “Angel of Death?”

Wikimedia Commons/ATI Composite Josef Mengele; Auschwitz prisoners to be used in Mengele’s experiments.

Ask a person to name the worst crime in living memory, and the Holocaust will probably be what they come up with. Ask them to name the worst crime scene of the Holocaust, and Auschwitz is the natural answer.

Ask a person who knew that camp what the worst part of it was, and the killing center at Birkenau is the hands-down winner. Ask a survivor of Birkenau to name the most terrifying murderer in the whole complex, and they’ll give you the name of Dr. Josef Mengele.

On June 6, 1985, Brazilian police in São Paulo dug up the grave of a man named “Wolfgang Gerhard.” Forensic, and later genetic, evidence conclusively proved that the remains actually belonged to Josef Mengele, who had apparently died in a swimming accident. Who was this man, and how did he burn his name into the darkest nightmare of modern history?

Josef Mengele’s Privileged Youth

Wikimedia Commons

Josef Mengele lacks a terrible backstory to which one can point a finger when attempting to explain his vile acts. In fact, Mengele was a popular and witty rich kid whose father ran a successful business in Germany at a time when the national economy was cratering. Everybody at school seemed to like him, and he got excellent grades. Upon graduating it was natural that he would go on to university, and that he would succeed at anything he put his mind to.

Mengele earned his first doctorate, in anthropology, from the University of Munich in 1935. He did his post-doctoral work at Frankfurt under Dr. Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, who was a fully indoctrinated Nazi eugenicist. National Socialism always held that individuals were the product of their heredity, and von Verschuer was one of the Nazi-aligned scientists whose work seemed to legitimize that assertion.

Von Verschuer’s work revolved around hereditary influences on congenital defects such as cleft palate. Mengele was an enthusiastic assistant to von Verschuer, and he left the lab in 1938 with both a glowing recommendation and a second doctorate in medicine. For his dissertation topic, Mengele wrote about racial influences on the formation of the lower jaw.

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Wikimedia Commons/Facebook/ATI Composite

As neo-Nazism rises in popularity across Europe, the Austrian government is taking steps to squash one of its symbolic sources: the birthplace of Adolf Hitler.

Recently, the government moved to seize a three-story building located in the 17,000-person town of Braunau am Inn. Hitler lived in the northern Austrian town for approximately three years following his April 1889 birth, before he and his family moved to Passau, Germany.

Over the years, the building’s landlord has repeatedly refused to sell it to the Austrian state, which since 1972 has leased the building for 4,800 euros ($6,966) a month. Now, the state is using its coercive powers to seize the home, agreeing on a bill — now headed to Parliament for a vote — to take ownership of the problematic estate.

If the bill passes, the BBC reports that a 12-member commission from the fields of politics, administration, academia, and civic society will decide on the building’s fate — which has many divided.

Some within the Austrian government are not interested in mere expropriation; rather, they hope to destroy it in its entirety.

“It is my vision to tear down the house,” Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said before a cabinet meeting.

“The decision is necessary because the Republic would like to prevent this house from becoming a ‘cult site’ for neo-Nazis in any way, which it has been repeatedly in the past.”

Some say that the house — which has been vacant since 2011 — isn’t even technically where Hitler was born, ABC News wrote. Rather, these local historians say that the Fuhrer was born in a building behind the contested estate, a building which has long been destroyed.

But perhaps literal truth is not the point here. As the Austrian government wrote earlier this year, Hitler’s close association with the home “makes it unlike any other place in right-wing extremist culture.”

And some say that that singular, historical importance has translated to heightened political pilgrimage. Far-right monitoring group Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance (DCAR) has noted that over the past few years, the home has seen increased patronage.

But some think pure destruction isn’t the best way halt this alarming trend. If the house is destroyed, DCAR head Gerhard Baumgartner says this won’t change — that extremists will go to “Hitler Square” or “Hitler Park” instead.

Instead of destruction, Baumgartner recommends transformation.

“You must completely depoliticize the place,” Baumgartner said. “You must put up something that no one wants to be photographed in front of.”

For his part, Baumgartner proposed turning the home into a fire house or supermarket. Other locals have supported its transformation into a refugee center, an Austrian liberation museum, or maternity hospital.

Next, see the photo of himself that Hitler had banned. Then, catch up on the recent reports about Hitler’s supposed micropenis.

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CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP/Getty ImagesMigrants from Syria and Afghanistan walk in a former church where 60 migrants now live, on March 3, 2016 in Cherbourg-Octeville, France.

As the refugee crisis continues, increasing numbers of those arriving in Western European countries are converting to Christianity, the Guardian reported.

While hard data on precise conversion rates remain unavailable, churches throughout the region have offered anecdotal evidence which suggests “a pattern of rising church attendance by Muslims who have fled conflict, repression and economic hardship in countries across the Middle East and central Asia,” the Guardian added.

In some circumstances, churches such as Berlin’s Trinity Church report performing “mass baptisms,” converting asylum-seeking participants in municipal swimming pools.

As with anyone converting to a new religion, the incentives and reasoning behind the switch vary from case to case.

Some say it stems from disillusionment with the way Islam has been used in their home countries. “In many cases, [asylum seekers] grew apart from Islam after seeing it politicized or misused,” said Jörn Thielmann of the Erlangen Center for Islam and Law in Europe.

Reverend Sally Smith of Stoke-on-Trent, England’s St. Mark’s Church believes it has to do with a desire to belong to a community again.

“It is about being part of a kingdom where there are no border agency officials, where there are no passports necessary, where there are no immigration detention centres,” she told the Guardian. One worldwide family where there are no dividing barriers.”

Still, Smith — like some skeptics — concedes that refugee conversions to Christianity might have to do with the belief that that will aid in the asylum application process. Under European Union rules, migrants are not deported if they face persecution at home for being religious converts.

That’s what Afghan asylum seeker Daoud Rahimi told NPR. In order to avoid deportation, Rahimi said he “might convert” to Christianity. However, he says the switch is motivated by fear, not greed.

“If my country were safe, [returning] wouldn’t be a problem,” Rahimi said. “But it isn’t, and if I return, my life will be in danger.”

In order to ensure that those interested in converting are fully invested in becoming Christian — not just in avoiding deportation — some churches have implemented formalized preparation periods. At the Liverpool Cathedral, for instance, the Guardian reports that the church registers asylum seekers when they first arrive for evidence on an asylum application, after which point they offer five sessions of baptism preparation and 12 sessions of confirmation preparation.

That’s not to say Western European churches’ motivations for offering conversion are pure, either. As religion is on the decline in the West, some critics suggest that these to-scale conversions are self-interested and border on abuse.

“It is taking advantage of people in weak positions and it’s all about the figures,” Pastor Gerhard Scholte of the Reformed Keizersgracht Church, who also leads the refugee task force of combined Amsterdam churches, told the Daily Beast. “That is abhorrent to me.”

That’s why at Scholte’s church, he prefers not to offer conversion “unless it saves lives.”

Still, that both the Church and asylum seekers may benefit from conversion does not bother some pastors. In fact, some religious leaders say that the most challenging aspect of it all is how the converted asylum seekers are treated after the fact.

“My biggest challenge has been the attitude of some of the people within the church,” Smith told the Guardian. “I have had a lot of opposition. Criticism, negative attitudes and trying to undermine the work that we are doing – that’s from the white British congregation.

“I have lost lots of congregation members because of what has happened at the church. They don’t want the hassle and they don’t want the church being messed up. They see the church as having a very definite role and opening the doors to refugees isn’t one of them.”

Others suggest that the Church should keep its doors open for all, regardless of their incentives for entering.

“There are many people abusing the system – I’m not ashamed of saying that. But is it the person’s fault or the system’s fault?” Mohammad Eghtedarian, an Iranian refugee who converted to Christianity and was later ordained, told the Guardian.

“People are desperate for a better life and sometimes they will lie for it…The only person who knows what’s in people’s hearts is God. It is not for me to judge.”

Next, check out this incredible interactive map revealing what exactly the wave of refugees entering Europe look like from on high. Then, have a look at this stark gallery of Syrian Civil War photographs.

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