₦airaland Forum

It requires a lot of time and effort to create and maintain a successful hoax. However, it takes a particularly crazy mentality to conduct a hoax which involves the fabrication of a person who does not even exist. As insane as it may sound, sometimes a prankster will go to the trouble of creating the persona of a completely fictitious individual and convince a lot of people that said individual is real. If the prankster has enough dedication, they can keep this illusion going for a long time before anyone figures out that they have become invested in the life of a nonexistent person.

10 Kodee Kennings

In May 2003, Southern Illinois University student newspaper The Daily Egyptian published a letter from an 8-year-old girl named Kodee Kennings. Kodee claimed that her mother was deceased and that her father, Dan Kennings, was a solider with the 101st Airborne Division in the midst of being deployed to Iraq. Kodee expressed how worried she was about her dad and her letter garnered such a strong reaction that it would become a recurring feature in the newspaper. Over the next two years, they would publish Kodee’s letters on a frequent basis, as she provided updates about her life and her dad’s service overseas.

These letters were provided to The Daily Egyptian by a young woman named Colleen Hastings, who claimed to be Kodee’s caregiver. However, in the summer of 2005, everyone was shocked to discover that neither Kodee nor Dan Kennings existed. “Colleen Hastings” was actually an SIU student named Jaimie Reynolds, who wrote all of Kodee’s letters herself and deliberately included misspellings and grammatical errors to make them look like they written by a young girl.

Reynolds had friends of hers pretend to be Kodee and Dan Kennings for photographs and public appearances, telling them they were merely playing parts for a movie. Reynolds even went to the trouble of disguising her voice to impersonate Kodee during phone calls to the Egyptian’s newsroom. The hoax unraveled after Reynolds claimed that Kodee’s father was killed in action in Iraq, but a subsequent investigation found no record of a “Dan Kennings” ever having served in the 101st Airborne.

9 Anthony Godby Johnson

In 1993, a memoir titled A Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy’s Triumphant Story was published, chronicling the troubled life of a 15-year-old boy named Anthony “Tony” Godby Johnson. Tony was repeatedly abused throughout his childhood by his parents, who allegedly ran a pedophile ring. He managed to escape and was cared for by his adoptive mother, a social worker named Vicki Johnson. Even though he had contracted AIDS, suffered a stroke, and had his leg amputated, Tony bravely told his story in A Rock and a Hard Place, which became an acclaimed best-seller.

Tony’s story even wound up being profiled by Oprah Winfrey in an Emmy-nominated television special about children overcoming adversity. However, over the years, people started realizing that no one else besides Vicki Johnson could ever confirm meeting Tony. Vicki always claimed that Tony was too ill to do any interviews or make public appearances, and that she had to keep him out of the spotlight to protect him from the pedophile ring. While Vicki did allow Tony to speak to people during phone calls, a voice analysis expert listened to a recording of one of the calls and determined that it was Vicki disguising her voice.

In 2006, Vicki provided a photograph of Tony for a segment on the news program 20/20. However, a viewer came forward to say they recognized “Tony” as another child named Steve Tarabojika, who had been a former student of Vicki’s when she taught grade school under her real name, Joanne Vicki Fraginals. Tarabojika was soon confirmed to be living a normal, healthy adult life and knew nothing about Tony’s story. Today, the general consensus is that the memoir was a hoax and that Tony never existed.

8 John Adam

In January 2005, a group of militants calling themselves the Mujahedeen Brigades released a statement on their website, claiming they had abducted an American military man serving in Iraq and were holding him hostage. They said the military man’s name was John Adam and posted a photo of a black soldier sitting up against the wall with his hands bound behind his back and a rifle pointed at his head. The militants stated they would behead Adam if certain Iraqi prisoners were not released by the US within 72 hours.

While this story managed to garner mainstream media attention, the US military was instantly suspicious, since none of their soldiers were known to be missing in Iraq. Furthermore, the kidnapped soldier in the photo looked strangely stiff and emotionless. The so-called “kidnapping” was finally exposed as a hoax by a most unlikely source: a representative from the American toy manufacturer, Dragon Models USA, Inc. He noticed that “John Adam” bore quite a striking resemblance to “Special Ops Cody,” a military action figure from their toy line. In other words, these militants had taken a photo of themselves pointing a toy rifle at the head of a toy doll and tried to pass it off as a hostage situation.

7 Martin Eisenstadt

During the 2008 presidential campaign, many bloggers and mainstream media outlets followed the writings of a man named Martin Eisenstadt who claimed he worked as an adviser for Republican candidate John McCain. Eisenstadt first garnered notice in a YouTube video, where he was interviewed on Iraqi television and claimed that a casino was going to be built inside the Green Zone in Baghdad. Eisenstadt maintained a blog detailing his experience as a campaign adviser and it began to generate a strong following. After the election, word leaked out that Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin thought that Africa was country, and Eisenstadt came forward to claim he was the source of that leak. Some mainstream outlets, including MSNBC and The Los Angeles Times, reported this as fact.

Not long afterwards, it was finally revealed that “Martin Eisenstadt” did not actually exist and was an elaborate hoax concocted by filmmakers Dan Mirvish and Eitan Gorlin. Gorlin had portrayed Eisenstadt in the fabricated “interview” for Iraqi TV. Since some bloggers believed the interview was real, Eisenstadt’s comments about the casino in the Green Zone generated controversy, so the filmmakers decided to continue on with their hoax. While some people figured out that the Eisenstadt character was a work of satire, others reported his quotes as legitimate news. In essence, Martin Eisenstadt was devised as an experiment to expose the media’s tendency to report a story before checking the facts. After the hoax was revealed, Mirvish and Gorlin went on to publish a satirical fake memoir called I Am Martin Eisenstadt: One Man’s (Wildly Inappropriate) Adventures with the Last Republicans.

6 Taro Tsujimoto

In 1974, George “Punch” Imlach was the general manager of the National Hockey League’s Buffalo Sabres. In June, Imlach was participating in the NHL’s annual amateur draft and things were moving at a very slow pace. By the time the draft reached the 11th round, Imlach was bored out of his mind, since the teams were mostly selecting players who had no chance of making it to the NHL. In order to relieve the tedium, Imlach decided to play a little prank and drafted Taro Tsujimoto, who played for the Tokyo Katanas of the Japanese Hockey League. Of course, neither the player nor the team actually existed.

Imlach decided to keep the joke going for the next several months, refusing to admit that Taro Tsujimoto wasn’t real. Tsujimoto was listed as an official draft pick by the NHL and Imlach kept telling everyone that this mysterious Japanese player was going to show up for the team’s training camp. Tsujimoto’s name made it into the Buffalo Sabres media guide and the team even went to the trouble of making him a uniform and assigning him a stall in the locker room. Imlach did not even tell Sabres’ owner Seymour Knox that the whole thing was a hoax and made him believe that Tsujimoto was going to be checking in at the team’s hotel. This led to an awkward situation where Knox stalked a random Japanese man through the lobby because he was thought it was Tsujimoto. To this day, “Taro Tsujimoto” remains a popular inside joke among Sabres fans and he even has his own fictitious trading card.

5 Nat Tate

In 1998, a British novelist named William Boyd published a biography titled Nat Tate: An American Artist 1928-1960. The book told the story of an abstract expressionist painter named Nat Tate, who worked in New York during the 1950s and produced some beautiful works of art. While he did achieve some modest success, Tate was also a depressed, irrational alcoholic who suddenly became very dissatisfied with his work. He wound up destroying 99 percent of his paintings before leaping to his death from the Staten Island ferry in 1960. Photos of Tate’s few remaining works of art were published in Boyd’s book.

However, Nat Tate never actually existed and the Boyd’s book was a complete fabrication. Tate’s supposed artwork in the book was actually painted by Boyd himself. Boyd even went to the trouble of recruiting some celebrity friends to help him with his elaborate prank. Gore Vidal and Picasso’s biographer, John Richardson, openly endorsed the book. David Bowie stated that Tate was one of his favorite artists and that he owned some of his surviving works. Bowie also held a launch party for the book and invited several prominent figures from the art world. Throughout the evening, no one in attendance acknowledged that they didn’t know who Nat Tate was, and some even claimed to have attended retrospectives of his work in the 1960s. Of course, no one seemed to notice that the launch party was held on April Fools’ Day, and the art community was left with egg on its face when the hoax was revealed one week later.

4 J.S. Dirr


Over the course of several years, a man named J.S. Dirr acquired an Internet following by sharing his story on numerous social networks. J.S. claimed he was a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and chronicled a life where he had numerous sexual encounters with different women and fathered 10 children. J.S. eventually married a surgeon named Dana, but his seventh child, Eli, was afflicted with leukemia. The couple set up a Facebook page for him called “Warrior Eli” and it garnered a huge outpouring of support for the child.

However, tragedy struck again in 2012 when J.S. announced on Facebook that his pregnant wife had been killed in a car accident. However, Dana managed to give birth to his 11th child just before she died. After this story went viral, people started to notice some suspicious inconsistencies, as there didn’t seem to be any news reports out there about Dana Dirr’s accident. It was eventually discovered that most of the photos of the Dirr family on the “Warrior Eli” page had been taken from other websites. In fact, the photos of “Eli” originated from the Flickr page of another boy undergoing cancer treatment in New Mexico.

Whenever supporters wanted to send donations to J.S., he always said that he couldn’t give out his address but told them to send everything to his sister, Emily, in Rootstown, Ohio. It turns out that Emily Dirr was actually a 22-year-old university student from Ohio who had fabricated J.S. Dirr’s entire story. She had gone to the trouble of creating over 70 fake Facebook accounts using hundreds of stolen photos. While she eventually apologized for her actions, her motivation for this elaborate hoax remains a mystery.

3 Reece James Dalton

In 1998, Matthew Wojtowicz, a young Australian train station attendant, had a brief relationship with a woman from Beverly Hills named Debra Ann Dalton. After the relationship ended, they went their separate ways until Debra suddenly phoned up Matthew and told him she had just given birth to their child, a baby boy named Reece James Dalton. Debra said she planned to raise the child on her own and asked Matthew not to visit her at the hospital, but it wasn’t long before Debra contacted Matthew again to tell him that Reece needed treatment for a chronic kidney disorder, which would require child support payments.

Over the next two years, Matthew had no reason to doubt Debra’s story, as he was sent several invoices of payment from a child support agency. He also received documentation from a pediatric center in New York, confirming that Reece would need to seek treatment there. Matthew wound up paying over $23,000 in child support, causing himself great financial strain, but he was always denied access to Reece.

When he finally inquired about his legal rights, police decided to question Debra and were shocked to discover that she never had a child and that her whole story was a hoax. Reece James Dalton was not real and all the documentation confirming his existence had been fabricated by his “mother” in order to extort money from Matthew. Debra would be charged with fraud and sentenced to 400 hours of community service while Matthew took legal action to recover his so-called child support payments.

2 Jimmy, The Eight-Year-Old Heroin Addict

On September 28, 1980, The Washington Post published an article titled “Jimmy’s World” that garnered instant acclaim as one of the most vivid and gripping stories they had ever done. The article was written by a relatively new journalist on the staff named Janet Cooke and chronicled the life of a poor eight-year-old African-American boy named Jimmy, who also happened to be a heroin addict. This harrowing story made such a strong impression on the public that Washington, DC mayor Marion Barry organized a police task force to find Jimmy and get him medical treatment. The following April, Janet Cooke was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.

However, an investigation could turn up no trace of Jimmy and there were allegations that the entire story was fraudulent. It was discovered that Cooke had lied about many of her academic credentials, and when Washington Post editors could find no record of her original meeting with Jimmy in Cooke’s files, they decided to question her. Cooke finally confessed that her article was fabricated and that “Jimmy” never actually existed. The Post would issue a public apology for the hoax, and only two days after receiving the Pulitzer Prize, Cooke would be forced to give it back and resign from the newspaper.

1 J.T. LeRoy

In 1997, an anthology of memoirs called Close to the Bone was published, featuring a memorable story titled “Baby Doll.” Written by someone using the name “Terminator,” “Baby Doll” told the tale of a 12-year-old boy who lived an abusive lifestyle as a child prostitute and often dressed up in women’s clothing. Two years later, this same character would resurface in an acclaimed novel titled Sarah, which was written by an author named Jeremiah “Terminator” LeRoy. The story was allegedly an autobiographical one, based on J.T. Leroy’s own troubled childhood. After Leroy published some more autobiographical stories chronicling his experiences, the reclusive transgendered author finally came out of the shadows and started making public appearances.

However, in October 2005, it was revealed that all of these stories were penned by writer Laura Albert and that “JT LeRoy” did not actually exist. What about the person who was making public appearances and pretending to be Leroy? That actually turned out to be Savannah Koop, the half-sister of Albert’s partner, who wore a disguise in order to assume the J.T. Leroy persona. Even though the stories were fabricated, Albert described LeRoy as an “avatar” which allowed her to explore deeply personal issues that she couldn’t have written about on her own, but a lot of people were angered by her deception. Albert was actually sued for fraud and forced to pay damages after she had the nonexistent J.T. Leroy sign a contract granting a production company the film rights to his story.

Abdul Sattar Edhi
Dr. Gino Strada
Dr. Denis Mukwege

10 Dr. Jill Seaman
Sudan

The west Upper Nile is one of the world’s most remote areas, with no roads, infrastructure, markets, transportation, or health and educational systems. As a result, the ethnic population grows extremely isolated, and for a long time no one knew of the epidemic that killed most of the Duar population. The armed conflict and civil war that had plagued Sudan for most of its independence since 1955 had weakened the population further, while the government seemed to have no interest in stopping either the epidemic or the war.

As the epidemic began to spread, the government in Khartoum banned all international agencies. But the Dutch branch of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) stayed and deployed a team headed by Dr. Jill Seaman. Named a “Hero of Medicine” by Time in 1997, Dr. Seaman first traveled to Sudan when war broke out in 1983 to work with the International Refugee Committee.

The team set up operations in the village of Leer, several days’ walk from Duar. In surrounding villages where the entire population had died, cows wandered unattended and survivors were so emaciated they could barely stand. The epidemic was kala-azar (“black sickness” in Hindi), or Visceral leishmaniasis, the same protozoal disease that decimated the population of East India in the 19th century. In between bombings of their Leer facility, Dr. Seaman and her colleagues worked tirelessly.

In the seven years they served, Dr. Seaman and the MSF staff treated 19,000 patients. Jill Seaman has personally dealt with more than 10,000 cases of kala-azar—more than anyone else in the world. Two years after the MSF team pulled out, Dr. Seaman and Sjoujke de Wit, a Dutch nurse, returned to Duar and launched the Sudan Medical Relief program. The program started as a privately funded organization and later became a fully integrated MSF program.

9 Dr. Georges Bwelle
Cameroon

In the 1980s, hospitals around Cameroon were ill-equipped, overcrowded, and understaffed; there were no neurosurgeons or other specialists to tend to the sick population. Patients came in as early as five in the morning and still had to wait for hours to be seen; some even died while waiting.

Today, the doctor-to-patient ratio has risen to one doctor for every 5,000 people, according to the World Health Organization. But because two out of five Cameroonians live below the poverty line, many still can’t afford to be seen by a physician.

With the help of volunteers, Dr. Bwelle started the nonprofit ASCOVIME in 2008. Every Friday, they pile into vans with medical supplies tied to the roof and travel through rough terrain to remote villages. On each trip, they receive around 500 patients, some of whom have come as far as 60 kilometers (37 mi) on foot. Malaria, malnutrition, diabetes, tuberculosis, sexually transmitted infections, and parasitic diseases are among the many illnesses they treat. Through the program, they also give away free eye glasses, crutches, and birth certificates.

Dr. Bwelle and his volunteers perform minor surgeries in the evenings and finish in the early hours of the next morning. In a given year, they perform up to 700 free surgeries, and have treated close to 19,000 patients since 2008. In addition to running these free clinics, Dr. Bwelle works as a surgeon in private hospitals around the capital; this second job funds 60 percent of the free operations, and the rest is funded through private donations.

8 Dr. Denis Mukwege
Democratic Republic of Congo

For 14 years, Dr. Denis Mukwege treated patients with the bare minimum of resources smack dab in the middle of a raging war. Dr. Mukwege’s hospital was raided and destroyed—along with the patients in it—twice, and both times he had to flee and start from scratch. In 1999, a year after the last attack, Dr. Mukwege received a rape victim with bullet wounds in her genitals and thighs. Three months later, 45 more women came in with the same story. To this day, Dr. Mukwege has helped some 30,000 women using a four-stage approach, which includes psychological support, surgical care, socio-economic support, and legal assistance.

On October 25, 2012, an attempt was made on the life of Dr. Mukwege. He survived the attack, then fled to Europe with his family. But less than a year later, Dr. Mukwege, inspired by the determination of the Congolese women who chipped in for his plane ticket home, returned to continue the fight. The war in Congo is not really a religious conflict between Christians and Muslims; it’s more along the lines of a conflict of economic interests. It is being waged against Congolese women, supported by major international corporations that hold an interest in its outcome.

7 Dr. Tom Catena
Sudan

Dr. Tom Catena is an American missionary doctor from upstate New York who has lived and worked in the Nuba mountains of Sudan since 2008. When the attacks began in June 2011, Dr. Tom Catena decided to stay. What began as an assault on the militants became an all-out assault on the Nuba population. Civilians were mass executed and buried in eight mass graves around the region.

As the only qualified surgeon at the only hospital in Nuba, Dr. Tom saw hundreds of patients a day. Almost overnight, the hospital went from doing elective surgeries to doing trauma surgery in the middle of a war zone. The worst were the bombing casualties; Antonov bombs are dropped from converted cargo planes every week by the Arab-centric regime in Khartoum to impose authority over the non-Muslims and non-Arabs, who the Arabs consider second-class citizens.

Dr. Tom fears that the Nuba mountains will eventually become a second Darfur if air strikes and massacres continue under Omar Al-Bashir, the president of Sudan. And with war comes starvation, disease, and displacement—at least one child dies of malnutrition every day, and many are dying of malaria because the Sudanese government refuses to allow humanitarian organizations into the country.

6 Dr. Gino Strada
Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq

The Salam Centre Hospital in Sudan is like a shining white beacon of hope in the middle of a ravaged and war-torn wasteland. It is absolutely spotless; infection rates there are lower than many hospitals in the US or the UK. The Salam Centre is the only hospital in Sudan that offers first-rate open heart surgery for free to patients from across Africa.

Amid the calm setting is a rugged, chain-smoking man who started everything in 1994. Dr. Gino Strada is a surgeon and heart and lung transplant specialist who devotes his life to living in some of the worst places on earth—like Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, or any of the countries aided by Emergency, an international aid organization. In its 19 years of existence, Emergency has treated over five million people, and Dr. Strada has personally performed more than 30,000 surgeries.

Dr. Strada built the Salam Centre in the middle of the Sudanese desert and negotiated with the Taliban so he could operate the hospital well within their front lines. He did this and more at a time when the Red Cross fled and NATO said negotiating was impossible. At 65, most men think about retiring and going fishing—but for Gino Strada, the operating room is the most important thing. In Afghanistan alone, Emergency runs four hospitals and 34 clinics that mop up the mess the war is causing, all without NATO’s help.

5 Dr. Robert Paeglow
United States


To those whose lives he has changed, Robert Paeglow is known simply as “Dr. Bob.” But Dr. Bob is so much more than a doctor to people in need. At age 36, with a wife and four kids, he decided to go to medical school. After graduating in 1994, he started working in family practice and spent his vacations going on mission trips to Africa. Then Dr. Bob gave up everything again to open a clinic in the poorest section of Albany, New York, where most doctors wouldn’t open their car door. He had a vision to open a center where patients could get not only medical help, but spiritual and socio-economic help as well.

Dr. Bob treats his patients, prays with them, and gives them medicine if he has it. If he doesn’t, he pays for it and then gives it to them. As a result, the Paeglows have very little they can call their own. Dr. Bob takes absolutely no salary and survives on donations. But even when he receives money from donations, he usually puts it back into his practice to continue giving free medicine to his patients.

4 Sergio Castro
Mexico

Neither doctor nor priest, 72-year-old Sergio Castro nevertheless works every day to fill the yawning gap in health care in the state of Chiapas. Although Mexico has improved access to healthcare services through its universal health bill, the kind of labor-intensive care that Sergio Castro provides is far beyond the capabilities of rudimentary health centers.

Known as Don Sergio around town, he spends most of his time patiently cleaning and bandaging wounds that frequently become infected. Don Sergio accepts no cash from his patients, believing they can be more motivated to heal without worrying about money. When he can gather enough donations, every penny makes its way to the villages to build schools and treat their water, or to more personalized projects, such as building a small convenience store for one of his paralyzed patients to run from home.

Each afternoon, Don Sergio sees patients at a small clinic; many of them are Mayans from the highlands and are among Mexico’s “forgotten” citizens after suffering centuries of violence, discrimination, and neglect. Poverty, mismanagement of resources, and negligence aggravate the complexities of health care in Chiapas.

3 Dr. Tan Lai Yong
Yunnan Province, China

In 1996, Dr. Tan Lai Yong packed his bags and moved with his family to Yunnan, China, where he joined a community development team and worked with poor villages, orphans, and the disabled.

The next 15 years saw him getting on 16-hour bus rides, bicycling 30 kilometers (18.6 mi) daily to remote villages, running clinics, and training over 500 village doctors. He taught the doctors to draw up management plans and handle prescriptions. Partnering with local hospitals, Dr. Tan helped build up their own capabilities and had them perform 10 to 15 surgeries daily as opposed to doing only four like they were used to. He created innovative ways to teach health and hygiene to the different ethnic minorities and provided basic medical training to the farmers. Dr. Tan acted as a bridge to bring in other Singaporean doctors who performed free surgeries. With volunteer students, Dr. Tan also initiated a tree-planting program that helped raise the farmers’ incomes and reduce soil erosion.

The Tans still lead a simple life now that they’re back in Singapore, getting by with financial support from their Church and Dr. Tan’s monthly wage as a partner in a Chinatown clinic.

2 Dr. Catalin Cristoveanu
Romania

Romania is a country riddled with corruption, especially in the medical sector. That’s why Dr. Catalin Cristoveanu has taken it upon himself to fly sick children to Germany, Austria, or Italy to be treated by doctors who don’t demand bribes. In a place like this, where bribery in the medical field is commonplace, you can’t expect to have your sheets changed or your medications administered without bribing a nurse. It’s not uncommon for a surgeon to refuse to operate on a child without a bribe—a deadly scenario for poor families. This is one of the reasons Romania’s infant mortality rate is more than double that of the European Union; one out of 100 infants don’t even reach their first birthday.

In 2005, the sum of bribes across Romania was estimated to be $1 million per day. In a solitary effort to eliminate corruption, Dr. Cristoveanu has implemented a zero-tolerance policy to corruption in the Marie Curie Hospital, which in itself had disastrous consequences. The cardiac unit was left practically unstaffed, since nurses and qualified professionals do not bother to apply for jobs in which they cannot take bribes. In addition, in 2011 alone, some 2,800 doctors abandoned Romania—which spends only four percent of its budget on health care—to work in Western Europe.
Dr. Cristoveanu continues to fight for the children who come to him for care. He is more than a hero to these children and their family—he’s a lifesaver.

1 Abdul Sattar Edhi
Pakistan

He wears blue overalls, a Jinnah cap, and sports a long silvery beard. He has been stopped and interrogated several times at airports for his dress and his beard. He is Abdul Sattar Edhi, the 85-year-old philanthropist who looks more like a Taliban warlord than the most revered and respected man in Pakistan. He lives in the congested neighborhood of Mithadar in Karachi, Pakistan, and serves as the spiritual and moral adviser to a vast nonprofit network of free hospitals, maternity and cancer clinics, orphanages, blood banks, and drug rehabilitation centers.

Abdul Sattar Edhi started everything in the early 1950s when he dropped out of school and began selling toys and food on the streets. After some time, he sold his little business for 5,000 rupees, which he used to buy a battered old van that he converted into his first ambulance. In it he set out around Karachi transporting the sick and picking up unclaimed bodies from the streets and rivers.

As donations started pouring in, the Edhi foundation gradually expanded to become Pakistan’s largest welfare organization with over 300 centers that provide medical aid, family planning, and emergency assistance. The Edhi Foundation has saved 20,000 infants, trained 40,000 nurses, housed 50,000 orphans, delivered roughly one million babies, and rehabilitated over three million children. The Edhi Foundation basically runs on nothing. And despite the foundation’s immense growth, Edhi himself doesn’t receive a salary.

DEVA1: Sounds like a great man. I thought he died of tumor-related infection(1000 ways to die)

He died from peritonitis on Halloween in 1926 after suffering from acute appendicitis.

houdini

Reflecting on many aspects of Houdini’s life from beginning to end, this list will reveal that not only was he the greatest showman ever, but one of the most remarkable personalities the world has ever known too. “It is still an open question, however, as to what extent exposure really injures a performer.” -Harry Houdini.

10 The Man with Many Names


Houdini was born Erik Weisz in 1874 in Budapest, Hungary, to Jewish parents. One of six children, the Weisz family moved to America in 1878. He changed his name to Ehrich and his friends called him Ehrie, which inspired his Americanized first name ‘Harry.’ He later changed his surname to Houdini because his partner, Jake Hyman, said it would mean ‘like Houdin’ in honour of the magician Robert-Houdin. His other stage names include, ‘Eric the Great,’ ‘The King of Cards,’ and ‘Eric, Prince of the Air.’

9 Early Performances


Fascinated with magic from an early age, his first performance was at age 9; he picked up pins with his eyelashes whilst hanging upside down (he was paid thirty-five cents). He was also a trapeze artist and later devised an act called The Wild Man, locked in a cage wearing a loincloth and eating raw meat. Before gaining fame, he worked for free as a locksmith in order to gain a thorough knowledge of lock mechanisms. When he gained fame as an escapologist, one of his early stunts was to escape from the belly of a whale.

8 Macabre Connections


Houdini was interested in anything to do with death; he bought the first electric chair, Edgar Allan Poe’s desk, and performed many of his stunts on Death Row. He also developed an interest in murderers, especially John Wilkes Booth. After the death of his beloved mother, Houdini gained an interest in spiritualism but later took it upon himself to expose all mediums as conmen (he attended séances in disguise, wearing a false beard and hat and revealed himself at key moments). Friend and creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, was convinced Houdini could communicate with the dead without knowing it.

7 Mrs. Houdini


Always referring to each other as ‘Mr. Houdini’ and ‘Mrs. Houdini,’ Houdini married Wilhelmina Beatrice ‘Bess’ Rahner only two weeks after meeting her. He wrote her hundreds of love letters during their thirty-year marriage, often when they were in the same room. She was always his onstage assistant. Whenever they argued, Houdini would leave the house and take a short walk. On his return, he would throw his hat into the room; if she threw it back out, she was still angry. She was distraught at his death and attended many séances, despite him exposing many mediums as frauds.

6 Mayer Samuel Houdini


Houdini and Bess never had children and many speculated on the reason why. One speculation was that Houdini was x-rayed many times by his brother Leopold (New York’s first x-ray specialist) and the radiation made him sterile. To make up for this, he simply invented an imaginary child. He was called Mayer Samuel Houdini who was named after Houdini’s own father. Over the following years, Houdini wrote many letters to Bess on Mayer’s progress but they stopped after their ‘son’ became President of the United States.

5 Pilot Extraordinaire


In 1909, six years after the Wright brothers proved human aviation possible, Houdini became extremely interested in airplanes. He once told a friend that the only reason he learned to drive was to get to the airport quicker. He learned to fly in Germany, the condition being that he taught German pilots once he was qualified. He regretted it afterwards, furious that he had taught the enemy pilots in War World I. He was the third person to fly across Australia (he claimed to be the first) and never flew again after that.

4 American and Proud

Houdini was a very patriotic American; so much so that he lied about his birth and claimed he was born in Appleton, Wisconsin. In 1917, he volunteered to fight in the First World War but was rejected due to his age. Instead, he went on tour in Europe and performed for the troops for free. One trick he performed was ‘Money for Nothing’ in which he produced a seemingly infinite amount of coins out of thin air for US soldiers (he gave away over $7000 dollars of his own money).

3 Tough Boss

Houdini’s assistants were not to be envied as they were often on the receiving end of his volatile temper and suspicion. One of their main jobs was to chloroform any overly eager punters who showed up backstage and leave them lying unconscious elsewhere. Despite writing numerous books and magazines on magic tricks, Houdini was highly secretive about his own. Because of this, he demanded an intense loyalty from all his assistants. His need for this allegiance was so great that he made them sign an oath, allegedly the only performer to have gone to such lengths.

2 Perfectionist

In order to achieve his death-defying stunts Houdini had to train himself to be both physically and mentally fit. He had an over-sized bath tub fitted into his house so that he could practice holding his breath (he could hold his breath for three minutes). He trained himself to be ambidextrous, making his left hand as able as his right. Determined to reach the peak of his profession, Houdini would practice card tricks over and over again without looking. As he sat down to talk with friends he would repeatedly untie knots with his feet.

1 Death and Beyond


He died from peritonitis on Halloween in 1926 after suffering from acute appendicitis. Over two thousand people attended his funeral and a fellow magician ceremoniously broke a wand, starting a tradition that still exists today. He was buried beside his parents with his mother’s letters under his pillow. He bequeathed all his props to his brother Theo but requested their destruction after Theo’s death. He was also an avid book collector and willed over 5,000 books to the Library of Congress (in life Houdini hired a librarian to maintain his books and he took hundreds of books on tour).

We’ve talked a bit before about some things, some great and some dubious, that the United States doesn’t lead the world in. That got us thinking about who the world leaders must be in the things that nobody would ever want to claim. Some of the things we found were surprising, some were sadly not, and some will outright shock you. And yes, Americans, we make more than one appearance.

10 Murder Rate
World Leader: Honduras


Nowhere in the world are you more likely to be killed than Honduras, which averages one murder every 75 minutes. Mexico’s bloody gang warfare may grab international headlines, but Honduras’s murder rate is four times higher.

It’s the perfect storm of gang domination and police collusion. Of a population of about 8.2 million, there are 65,000 gang members. Just two percent of criminal cases result in convictions. Thousands of gang members have been deported to Honduras from Los Angeles, and gangs have infiltrated the police force and legal system. The government struggles to provide basic services, let alone deal with corruption on such a massive scale. Ninety percent of all cocaine flights bound for the US travel through Honduras. There does not seem to be much light at the end of the tunnel either. The mayor of Tegucigalpa, Ricardo Alvarez, literally made “free funerals for everyone” part of his platform— and won.

9 Devalued Currency
World Leader: Zimbabwe

Most people are familiar with the concept of inflation, in which there is a slow, steady rise in the general level of prices. The term “hyperinflation” is used to describe an episode where a country experiences a monthly inflation rate greater than 50 percent for a sustained period. Since 1950, 18 countries have undergone periods of hyperinflation, none as severe as terrifying recent events in Zimbabwe. The African nation can now claim the dubious honor of having the most devalued currency in the history of the world. What does this mean, exactly? Well, in the perfect 50 percent monthly inflation scenario described above, an item purchased for $1 on the first day of one year would cost $130 on the first day of the next. Zimbabwe’s peak month of inflation, November 2008, was estimated at 6.5 sextillion percent. That’s not a number we made up—in case you don’t know off the top of your head it’s a one followed by 21 zeroes.

When a country finds itself printing hundred-trillion dollar bills—as in one single note with a face value of $100 trillion—things simply cannot continue. Late in 2008, it was reported that one American dollar was worth 642,371,437,695,221,000 Zimbabwean dollars. And if you think having a wallet full of hundred-trillion dollar bills sounds awesome, remember a single egg costs $35 billion.

The Zimbabwe dollar was wisely abandoned in 2009, one of the only instances of complete abandonment of any nation’s currency. They didn’t bother trying to replace it. All business in Zimbabwe is now conducted using foreign money.

8 Suicide
World Leader: South Korea


You may remember that South Korea appeared on the list linked in the introduction—they easily lead the globe in Internet speed. They also lead the industrialized world in suicides, and there actually does appear to be a connection between the two stats.

In the early 1990s, before the advent of the Internet, and before the rapid modernization of South Korea, the country’s suicide rates were among the lowest in the world—about eight per 100,000. Since the “wiring” of the country, suicide rates have skyrocketed to over three times that number. Anywhere between 35 and 40 South Koreans kill themselves every day. The incredible speed with which the country has modernized (South Korea is now the world’s 12th-largest economy) combined with societal stigma and lack of understanding toward depression and mental illness seem to be heavily contributing factors—not to mention the high cultural significance placed on academic achievement and career prosperity. South Korea is also one of few modern societies to experience rashes of “sympathy suicides,” sometimes numbering in the hundreds or even thousands, when a public figure takes their own life.

7 Infant Mortality In Developed World
World Leader: United States


It might seem surprising, but the US has by far the worst first-day infant mortality rate in the developed world. Every year in the US, about 11,000 babies die on the first day of their lives. The number is 50 percent more than all other developed countries combined, and while one doesn’t typically think of the States as a dangerous, unsafe place to give birth, there are some pretty common-sense factors that come into play.

For one thing, the US also has easily the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the world, and half of all pregnancies in the US are unplanned. Teen mothers are less likely to receive proper prenatal care, resulting in more premature, low birth weight pregnancies. And while neonatal (premature infant) care has come a long way in recent decades, the US preterm birth rate is one in eight, second in the industrialized world.

6 Illiteracy
World Leader: Burkina Faso

Due to civil strife, political unrest, and centuries of outright exploitation, the countries of the African continent are unfortunately likely to show up on lists like this. The tiny, landlocked African country of Burkina Faso, despite boasting a university and free public education system, leads the world in illiteracy, with only 26 percent of the adult population able to read.

As bad as that may seem, it actually represents a significant improvement over the very recent past. In the last decade there has been a concerted effort by volunteer organizations to raise the literacy rate in Burkina Faso. As recently as 2008, the adult rate was half of what it is today. School enrollment rose from about 35 percent to almost 60 percent between 1997 and 2008. The results are beginning to show, and with a rapidly increasing rate of literacy among children, it’s hoped that Burkina Faso won’t hold this distinction for long.

5 Unemployment
World Leader: Macedonia

The Republic of Macedonia is a fairly young nation, having gained its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991. Since then it has struggled to develop its economy. In 2012, Macedonia was the only nation in the world with an unemployment rate of more than 30 percent.

That staggering 32 percent unemployment rate dwarfs developed nations like the US and UK (both slightly over eight percent), and even exceeds war-torn regions like the the Gaza Strip (around 25 percent). Macedonia’s rough transition from socialism to the free market was a particularly painful one, and despite over a decade of economic reforms (and a relatively high average income) Macedonia’s unemployment rate is rivaled only by its poverty rate, which is about 25 percent.

4 Political Corruption
World Leader: Somalia

According to global anti-corruption think tank Transparency International, the world is an extremely corrupt place. On a 10-point index, 132 out of 180 countries were found to have a score of less than five. Of those, 56 were rated at less than three. And then there are the nations of Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Somalia, locked in a race to the bottom. The two tied several years in a row at an abysmal 1.4 until Somalia pulled ahead in 2010 with a 1.1 rating.

Many people immediately think “piracy” when hearing of Somalia, and of course it’s a huge factor. Without a government for the better part of a dozen years, the current UN-installed regime has struggled to assert any real control since its 2004 formation. Without little real authority (but a healthily raging network of warlords and pirates), Somalia may very well be the first country to bottom out at a perfect zero on the Transparency International index one of these years. Meanwhile, Myanmar is a divided country of business and military elite on one side, and a desperately impoverished populace on the other.

3 Natural Disasters
World Leader: Philippines

Technically, the tiny South Pacific island nations of Vanuatu and Tonga are the most prone to natural disasters in the world, but their populations total less than a half-million people combined. In practice, the UN consider the most disaster-prone nation in the world to be the Philippines, with its population of almost 100 million.

After 2012′s Typhoon Bopha, which left one million people homeless, humanitarian organizations began appealing for disaster relief funds and also for better preparedness training. According to one study, over half the country’s area, comprising over 85 percent of its economy, is at risk from multiple natural hazards. A 2012 International Organization for Migration report concluded that the Philippines could spare one-fifth of its population from the effects of natural disasters by shoring up the protection of its coral reefs, which provide a natural barrier against tsunamis and tropical storms. Tropical and coastal nations, of course, made up the bulk of the top 10 disaster-prone areas.

2 Incarceration Rate
World Leader: United States

Not only does the US have the highest rate of incarceration in the developed world, it has held that record since 2002. An incredible 500 out of every 100,000 people in the United States is in prison. That’s right, you’re about six times more likely to be imprisoned in the United States than you are to be killed in Honduras.

Between 1972 and 2010, the rate of incarceration grew steadily in the US, even as violent crime rates dropped. If you’re wondering how that’s even possible, the answer is simple: drugs. According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, drug offenders constitute fully 47 percent of those incarcerated in the US, far more than all murderers, robbers, rapists, arsonists, and kidnappers combined. More, in fact, than all other types of crime combined except one—immigration offenses, which account for about 12 percent.

1 Homophobia
World Leader: Nigeria

Unfortunately, there are still very few places in the world where it’s not pretty difficult to be gay. We’re just now at a point where most civilized nations are statistically barely more accepting of homosexuality than not. There may not be any great, friendly places to be gay, but there’s one place above all others to not be gay—Nigeria. There, fewer than one percent of the population finds homosexuality acceptable. In 2013, their government passed the harshest anti-gay law in world history, providing for up to 14 years in prison for simply displaying affection toward someone of the same sex. This was followed by another, separate bill, outlawing gay marriage. Apparently in Nigeria, rampant corruption, terrorism, and religious violence can be tolerated, so long as one isn’t forced to look upon two people of the same sex smooching.

Many of us dream of setting a world record. Who wouldn’t want to break the record for blowing the world’s biggest bubblegum bubble or owning the largest collection of traffic cones? But some record holders never planned or wanted the record they now hold, and few will seek to dethrone them.


10 Farthest Distance Thrown By A Tornado And Survived

Matt Suter was a 19-year-old high school senior on March 12, 2006, when a storm rolled over his hometown of Fordland, Missouri. Suter was at his grandmother’s mobile home that Sunday night with grandma and a disabled uncle. As gusts of wind and rain pelted the trailer, Suter stood on a sofa and tried to close a window while dressed only in his boxer shorts.

That’s when Suter heard a roar. “It got louder and louder, like 10 military jets coming right at us,” he said. The mobile home’s front and back doors blew out and the walls, floor, and ceiling began moving “like Jell-O.” The trailer began to tip over and the walls began to collapse. Then a lamp hit Suter in the head, knocking him out cold. As his grandma watched, Suter’s limp body was sucked out into the maelstrom.

It was an F2 tornado and it carried Suter 398.37 meters (1,307 ft)—the length of four football fields. He awoke in a field, alive and unharmed except for a small scalp wound. Miraculously, his grandmother and uncle also survived the disintegration of their mobile home after being pinned to the ground by heavy furniture. Suter’s record-breaking flight is not without precedent. In 1999, an Oklahoma baby survived when a tornado threw her 30 meters (100 ft). A South Dakota girl and her pony were unharmed when a tornado flung them 300 meters (1,000 ft) in 1955.

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9 The Most Prolific Parents

We all shake our heads at the Duggars, the Arkansas family who have a reality show that documents how they survive 19 kids. But how would anyone survive 87 offspring? As unlikely as that number seems, Guinness World Records cites a contemporary newspaper account of Feodor Vassilyev, an 18th-century peasant from the Shuya District in Moscow. Feodor and two wives sired 22 sets of twins, 9 sets of triplets, and 4 sets of quadruplets.

Vassilyev was born around 1707 and began fathering rugrats at the age of 18. Forty years later, he stopped. He said that all but two of his children survived infancy, a remarkable number for that time. And by the time he was interviewed at the ripe age of 75, 84 of his kids were still living. His fecundity was so extraordinary that he was sent to St. Petersburg to meet Empress Catherine II.

And who was the most prolific mother? That would be Feodor’s first wife. No one seems to have bothered to discover her first name, which is a shame because she deserves far more accolades than her husband. She, after all, endured 27 pregnancies and 69 births. Feodor’s second wife—also unnamed—endured a paltry eight pregnancies and 18 births.

8 The Heaviest Humans

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the heaviest man and woman ever recorded were both Americans. Of all the countries, the US had the highest percentage—34 percent—of obesity in 2013.

Jon Brower Minnoch hailed from Washington state and at age 12 he weighed 135 kilograms (298 lb). His weight increased steadily until he reached a peak weight of 635 kilograms (1,400 lb) in 1978. That March, he suffered heart and respiratory failure and 12 firemen were needed to transport him to University Hospital in Seattle. Once there, he was diagnosed with massive edema and the doctor estimated that he carried 400 kilograms (900 lb) of accumulated fluid. He remained in the hospital for two years, lying on two beds lashed together. It required 13 people to roll him over.

While in the hospital, Minnoch married a woman named Jeannette and, because she weighed only 50 kilograms (110 lb), they set a record for the biggest weight difference between spouses. He was put on a 1,200 calorie diet and by the time he was discharged in 1980, he had lost 419 kilograms (924 lb), the largest weight loss ever recorded. But it took a toll on his body and he died in 1983 at the age of 41.

Guinness gives the nod for the heaviest woman to Floridian Rosalie Bradford, who reached a peak weight of 544 kilograms (1,200 lb). Like Minnoch, Bradford fought obesity all her life, but it wasn’t until she married and had a child that her weight skyrocketed. She became so depressed that she tried to commit suicide with painkillers, but her weight was so great that the pills merely made her sleep for days.

After being contacted by weight-loss guru Richard Simmons, she started a diet and exercise program. At first, exercise consisted of clapping her hands. In one year, she dropped 190 kilograms (420 lb) and eventually lost a total of 317 kilograms (699 lb), a record weight loss for a woman. In 1992, she weighed under 136 kilograms (300 lb) and went to school, earned a degree in psychology, and began touring the country delivering motivational speeches. She died in 2006 at the age of 63.

7 The Most And Biggest Kidney Stones

By December 2009, 45-year-old Dhanraj Wadile, a shop owner in Shahadah, India, had endured six months of acute abdominal pain. Dr. Ashish Rawandale-Patil determined that Wadile suffered from kidney stones. Using an endoscope and a scalpel, Dr. Patil spent four hours removing 172,155 calcium oxalate and phosphate stones ranging in size from a millimeter to 2.5 centimeters (.039–.98 in). All of them came from Wadile’s left kidney.

It took Dr. Patil’s team over a month to count the stones. Once completed, he sent them all to Guinness to be verified. Sure enough, Guinness dubbed Wadile’s feat a world record, beating the previous record of 14,098 stones removed from one patient.

The lucky record holder for the largest stone was also from India, a 37-year-old Mumbai police constable named Vilas Ghuge. In February 2004, Ghuge had a stone surgically removed that was 13 centimeters (6 in) across. Typically, stones are no bigger than 9 centimeters (3.5 in) across, about the size of a baseball. There is also another contender: In 2009, a Hungarian named Sandor Sarkadi had a 1.13 kilogram (2.5 lb) stone removed that was the size of a coconut.

6 Survived The Fastest Car Crash

Donald Campbell held eight world speed records, both on land (LSR) and the water (WSR). He is still the only person to break both the LSR and WSR in the same year (1964). But on September 16, 1960, he set one record he hadn’t counted on.

Donald was the only son of Sir Malcolm Campbell, a racing pioneer and holder of 13 speed records, nine on land and four on the water. Shortly after his father’s death, Donald heard that an American was attempting to break his dad’s WSR and decided that he needed to keep his family’s flag flying. During the 1950s, Campbell nudged the WSR steadily upward from 257 to 418 kilometers per hour (160–260 mph). He constantly measured his success against his father’s, frequently asking his best friend if he thought Sir Malcolm “would be proud.” And in 1960, young Campbell took on the LSR that had already dethroned his father’s record.

That record was 634 kilometers per hour (394 mph), set by fellow Brit John Cobb. Cobb too had been on the LSR/WSR treadmill and in 1952 he died trying to break Donald’s WSR. Donald was certain that his Bluebird CN7 could exceed 643 kilometers per hour (400 mph), and he was on his sixth test run on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah when he lost control traveling at 586 kilometers per hour (360 mph). The Bluebird’s structural strength saved his life that fateful day on September 16, 1960, but he did suffer a fractured skull and a ruptured eardrum.

Within months, he was racing again, but it wasn’t until 1964 that the Bluebird achieved a record 648.5 kilometers per hour (403 mph). He returned his sights to the water and died on January 4, 1967, when he lost control of his Bluebird K7 at more than 480 kilometers per hour (300 mph). His body remained at the bottom of the lake, Coniston Water, until it was recovered in 2001.


5 Longest Time Spent On A Gurney In A Hospital Hallway

Guinness created a new category when Tony Collins, a 40-year-old Brit, reported that he had lain on a gurney for 77 hours and 30 minutes. Collins was a diabetic and caught a virus that sent him to Princess Margaret Hospital at Swindon, England on Saturday February 24, 2001. Told that he would have to wait for a hospital bed, he was put on a gurney in a hallway parked outside the bathroom at 3:00 PM. “I developed a bad back, had no privacy, and had to rely on the nurses to bring me a drink because there was nowhere to rest a jug,” he said. They finally found a room for him at 8:30 PM—on Tuesday.

Ironically, while Guinness was investigating Collins’s claims, he again fell ill and returned to Princess Margaret. This time, he was left on a gurney for 60 hours. As for his record, he said, “Unfortunately, it will probably be the sort of record that gets broken every day in the NHS.” He was referring to the National Health Service, Britain’s government-run, public-funded healthcare system.

Collins’s prediction came true—in March 2013, 62-year-old Herbert Edwards was admitted for a suspected heart attack to Great Western Hospital, also in Swindon. He waited for a room on a gurney for six days, a total of 144 hours. He, however, will not break Collins’s record because he was kept in a “designated area” instead of a hallway. In that same hospital, 41-year-old June Rogers waited 157 hours for a bed, 88 of them on a gurney. She will not break Collins’s record either, because her hours on a gurney were not consecutive.

4 Most Hand Amputations From The Same Arm

Some records are unlikely to be repeated not only because nobody would want to break them, but because of the controversy the record holder generated. Clint Hallam’s three hand amputations is just such a record.

Hallam’s first amputation occurred in 1984 while he was incarcerated in Christchurch’s Rollston Prison for fraud in his native New Zealand. A circular saw cut off his right hand above the wrist. Surgeons reattached the limb, but it became infected and was amputated a second time in 1988.

Ten years later, Hallam was offered a chance to make medical history as the recipient of the first hand transplant. He was flown to Lyons, France and the hand of a deceased French motorcyclist was successfully grafted. Hallam later said that he hated his new hand from the start: “The donor hand was bigger than my hand, bald and pink. And my skin is olive-toned and with hair. It didn’t match.” While recuperating, Hallam fell for his French nurse and left his wife of 12 years and their children. “Marti [the nurse] is the only good thing the surgeons gave me,” he said. “Apart from her, I gained nothing.”

Hallam lost contact with his doctors and stopped taking his anti-rejection medication. Inevitably, his body rejected the hand and it had to be amputated a third time in 2001. The medical world and his French surgeon were bitter over the waste of the donor’s hand. Hallam asked for another transplant in 2002. To date, he has not received one.

3 Most Bones Broken

By the time he jumped for the last time in 1977, Robert Craig Knievel, known as Evel Knievel, had logged 150 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps over various obstacles. He crashed or had major mishaps during 18 of those jumps. As a result, he suffered more than 433 fractures of 35 different bones, a world record. He fractured his skull, nose, jaw, both collarbones, both arms, both wrists, his sternum, every single rib, and his back five times. In addition, he broke both ankles, some toes, his right shin, right knee, tailbone, left hip, and had his pelvis crushed and broken three times.

When his first serious injury occurred, he wasn’t even riding a motorcycle. In February 1966, Knievel tried to jump, spread-eagle, over a speeding motorcyclist. He jumped too late and was struck in the groin, tossing him 4.5 meters (15 ft) through the air. By far his worse crash was on December 31, 1967, when he tried to jump the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, a distance of 43 meters (141 ft). He made it over the fountains but came up short on the landing, tumbled over the motorcycle’s handlebars, and skidded across a parking lot. His upper leg and pelvis were crushed and he fractured a hip, a wrist, both ankles, and received a concussion that put him in a coma for 29 days.

Retirement did not herald an end to hospital visits. A fall on a golf course resulted in a prosthetic hip. Knievel fell twice in his own whirlpool, breaking ribs and a knee. He received a liver transplant in 1999 after alcohol killed his own.
By the end of his life, he had a pump stapled to his abdomen that delivered morphine and synthetic heroin directly to his spine. He died on November 30, 2007, of pulmonary fibrosis.

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2 Survived The Most Fatal Incidents In One Day


Dosha, a 10-month-old pit bull mix living with her master in Clearlake, California, had a really bad day on April 15, 2003. That morning, she jumped a fence to escape her yard and was subsequently hit by a pickup truck. Dosha was glassy-eyed and limp when the police arrived. Thinking that the dog was fatally wounded, the cop shot Dosha in the head, just below her right eye, to put her out of her misery. Animal control arrived and put what they thought was a carcass in a plastic bag. They transported Dosha back to the dog pound and loaded her into a freezer. Two hours later, a worker opened the freezer to find Dosha sitting up, still in the bag.

The officer’s bullet had traveled along Dosha’s skull—barely missing her brain—and had lodged in the skin under her jaw. She also suffered from hypothermia but had no broken bones from the initial accident. The bullet fragments were removed, but she was left with some hearing loss in her right ear. For her triple death-defying feat, Guinness dubbed Dosha the luckiest dog in the world.

1 Hardest To Kill

Because they don’t want people competing for this record, Guinness doesn’t have an official category for this. But if they did, there would be a number of runner-ups. There’s the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin who, in one frenzied night, was poisoned, shot three times, castrated, and dumped in a frozen river before he died. But the record-holder would undoubtedly be Michael Malloy.

Malloy was a 50-year-old Irish immigrant living in New York City in January 1933. He was formerly a fireman, but by then he was homeless and an alcoholic. Five acquaintances hatched a plan to take out three insurance policies on him, then murder him. One of the conspirators owned a speakeasy and gave Malloy an unlimited tab, hoping he’d drink himself to death. But even though Malloy spent nearly every waking moment exercising his elbow, he didn’t die.

Frustrated, the bartender, another conspirator, replaced Malloy’s whiskey with antifreeze. Malloy drank six shots of it before he passed out—but he didn’t die. For a full week, Malloy drank nothing but antifreeze. Next, it was straight turpentine. This was followed by horse liniment mixed with rat poison. When raw oysters marinated in wood alcohol failed to kill him, they tried spoiled sardines sprinkled with carpet tacks. Malloy came back for seconds.

One night, the temperature dropped to -25 degrees Celsius (-14 °F) and the conspirators dumped Malloy in a snow bank and poured water on his bare chest. When that didn’t work, another conspirator rammed Malloy with his taxi, sending the hapless man flying like a rag doll. The conspirator then drove over Malloy for good measure. That put Malloy in the hospital for three weeks, but he returned to the speakeasy, complaining, “I sure am dying for a drink.” Finally, they waited until Malloy passed out, stuck a rubber hose in his mouth, and fixed the other end to a gas outlet. It took an hour and Malloy’s face was purple, but he finally kicked the bucket.

The conspirators would have gotten away with it, but they squabbled over the insurance money loud enough for the police to get wind of the scheme. They were tried and four of the five conspirators were executed in the electric chair. All of them died on the first try.

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Sure, some con men are just too good with their schemes. However, some scams (like the ones below) were so obvious that only an idiot would have fallen for them. And guess what? Several did—and ended up paying the price for their gullibility.


10 Hongcheng Magic Liquid


In the 1980s, Chinese man Wang Hongcheng claimed that he had invented a magic liquid that turned ordinary water into gasoline. He was just an amateur chemist with no advanced education, but that didn’t stop numerous government agencies (including the military) from believing his claims.

By the 1990s, Wang had pilfered about $37 million in government funds to support his supposed research. After a series of investigations by scientists, Wang also found himself on the receiving end of government ire after he failed to produce the desired product. A court found him guilty of fraud and gave him a 10-year prison sentence in 1998.

Wang achieved a legendary status among some conspiracy theorists, who are certain the Chinese government imprisoned him because he withheld his secret for free energy.

9 Miracle Cars

This incident would prove to be one of the biggest advance fee frauds in US history. The scam began in 1998, when Los Angeles teen security guard Robert Gomez announced in his local church that his wealthy adoptive father had died and wished to give away his fleet of cars. Selling the cars at rock-bottom prices, said Gomez, lowered his father’s estate taxes and rewarded his fellow devout Christians.

Although Gomez and his friends told the buyers that they had to wait for some time before getting the cars, and they could not access the VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) due to a judge’s gag order, several congregations fell for the scam. When the scheme finally fell apart in 2002, the teenage con men and their accomplices had fleeced some $21 million out of their victims, with an estimated $9 million unrecovered to this day.

8 The Great Reality TV Swindle

Playing on the early-2000s reality TV craze, London bookstore employee Keith Gillard transformed himself into TV producer “Nikita Russian” in 2002 and created his own non-existent reality contest named “Dame Fortune.” He then managed to sucker 30 people into joining his contest with promises of fame and fortune for the winners. He was so convincing that some the contestants even left their jobs and sold their homes to join the show.

Although everything seemed fine at first, the contestants became suspicious when Gillard revealed the rules of the game. Split into three teams, the contestants had to make $1.5 million to win the show’s top prize of $150,000. Not only that, he failed to provide them proper accommodations and insisted he have open access to their bank accounts at all times.

The show fell apart a few days after its launch when most of the contestants left. The remaining few detained Gillard and had a local station cover the bizarre scam. Two years later, the victims turned the tables on Gillard when a TV producer made his story into a documentary to warn all those who want their 15 minutes of fame.

7 The $1.3 Million Wine Hoax

In an eight-year-long scam that made fools of wine connoisseurs, Indonesian native Rudy Kurniawan manufactured cheap counterfeit wine out of his kitchen in California and passed it off as genuine vintages. Kurniawan first burst onto the wine world in the 2000s, dazzling his clients with claims that he had discovered a “magic wine cellar” in Europe. With that pitch, he was able to regularly sell his homemade wines for thousands of dollars each.

So-called experts’ taste buds failed to detect any hint of fraud in Kurniawan’s collection, letting him amass $1.3 million (or more, according to his victims). His clients only became suspicious after they noticed irregularities in the labels and dates on the bottles.

Authorities put an end to Kurniawan’s operation when they raided his house in March 2012 and found incriminating evidence. Subsequently, a court convicted him of fraud and is set to give him a 40-year sentence.

6 The Great Diamond Hoax Of 1872

Having failed to strike it big during California’s Gold Rush, veteran prospectors and cousins Philip Arnold and John Slack figured they could still enrich themselves through less-than-scrupulous methods: selling a non-existent diamond mine.

The two men started their scheme by depositing a bag of diamonds into the Bank of California in 1871. Rumors of the deposit, along with the pair’s reluctance to reveal their source, roped in some prominent investors, including Bank of California owner William Ralston and two generals from the army.

After some lucrative offers, the two men finally revealed that they had discovered a diamond mine. To seal the deal, they led their investors to a site they had salted beforehand with uncut gems. After successfully convincing their victims of the mine’s authenticity, the pair made off with $600,000 in cash and stocks.

They would have gotten away with it, were it not for the timely arrival of legendary geologist Clarence King in the area in 1872. King and his team, who had already combed the site, found evidence of salting and revealed his findings to the investors. News of the scam reached as far as New York, where the media expressed astonishment that a pair of prospectors outwitted so many cunning businessmen.


5 The 1980 Pennsylvania Lottery Scandal

Nick Perry was an announcer working for a local TV station, one that also broadcasted Pennsylvania’s local three-digit lottery game Daily Number. In February 1980, he hatched a plan to rig the draw.

Perry secretly placed weighted ping-pong balls in the machines and left those with the numbers 4 and 6 unchanged, thereby largely limiting combinations to these two numbers. His lackeys bought a great many tickets using those numbers across Pennsylvania and also placed their bets on with bookies on the street.

As expected, the rigged machines picked up the numbers 6-6-6 as the winning combination, earning the conspirators more than $1 million in payouts. However, the ominous combination plus the many tickets purchased with those numbers raised rumors of a fix. Investigating authorities corroborated the charge and tracked it back to Perry. A month later, a court found Perry and his accomplices guilty.

4 The Welsh-Thrasher Faith Scam

“With faith, you can see your investments triple” was the claptrap UK native Howard Welsh and his American girlfriend Lee-Hope Thrasher fed their victims in a “divinely-inspired” scheme that started in 1999 and ran until the early 2000s.

Operating a classic Ponzi scheme with a religious twist, the couple lured an estimated 1,000 people in Virginia—mostly churchgoing and devout—by promising insane returns in their “Living Your Purpose” financial plan. The couple managed to take more than $30 million from their victims.

After complaints of non-payment piled up, the couple ran and hid in several countries. They were finally tracked down in the UK in 2004 and extradited back to the US in 2006. A court later convicted Welsh and Thrasher and sentenced them to 20 and 15 years in prison respectively. Amazingly, a few of their victims expressed their support for the couple during their trial, sure they could never have committed such a crime.

3 Civil War Gold Hoax

As city editor for the Brooklyn Eagle, Joseph Howard Jr. was responsible for one of the Civil War’s most audacious scams. Howard bought a lot of gold then made a fake Associated Press dispatch on May 18, 1864 announcing that Lincoln wanted to conscript 400,000 more men for the war effort. It had the effect Howard had hoped: The price of gold rose, letting him sell his shares at an inflated price.

After the initial euphoria died down, however, people wondered why the announcement appeared in only two newspapers. By noon of that same day, the Associated Press and the White House categorically denied the dispatch’s claims. Authorities traced the hoax back to Howard and his accomplice, a reporter named Francis Mallison.

Howard served three months in prison before Lincoln pardoned him in a show of mercy. Ironically, the president did issue a real proclamation two months later—only this time, he called for 500,000 soldiers.

2 The Great Oil Sniffer Hoax

One strange scam became the center of a political scandal in France in the 1980s. Italian engineer Aldo Bonassoli and Belgian count Alain de Villegas approached oil company Elf Aquitaine in 1976, asking for funds to perfect their machine to detect oil hidden deep underground. Elf acquiesced and gave the pair millions of dollars to improve their elaborately-designed contraption. Their invention was actually a series of ordinary appliances, including a mere photocopier that whipped out previous exploration reports.

The scheme came undone in 1979 when scientist Jules Horowitz put the machine’s detecting prowess to the test. In the pair’s lab at Brussels, Horowitz asked Bonassoli to detect a ruler he had hidden behind a wall. Unknown to him, Horowitz had bent the ruler before placing it there. The machine printed out a straight one.

The government—worried about its reputation—covered up the embarrassing story and allowed the two conmen to go away with $100–150 million in their pockets. It later stirred great controversy in France when the new administration discovered their predecessors’ cover-up and revealed it to the public.

1 Enzyte Auto-ship Scandal

Although Cincinnati native Steve Warshak, the founder of Berkeley Nutraceuticals in 2001, fleeced countless males into buying his non-working male herbal enhancement pill Enzyte, that wasn’t his gravest sin. The crime that forced his company into bankruptcy and got him jail time was his infamous “Auto-ship” program.

First-time customers enrolled (usually without their knowledge) in this program received a steady supply of Enzyte pills in the mail and were billed for it even though they never placed an order. To make things worse, Warshak capitalized on the customer’s fear of sexual inadequacy to make refunds near-impossible to obtain, with one of his requirements being a physician-certified document stating that the pill failed to work on the patient.

After complaints, authorities raided Warshak’s headquarters in 2005 and uncovered evidence of the company’s shocking corporate practices. In 2008, a federal court found Warshak guilty of fraud and sentenced him to 25 years (later reduced to 10)

Asabi mi, Aponke mi, Aya mi, Apinke mi, Nife me, ololufe asake mi owan. Omo abisuloro, omo wa omo ekun, omo akoko moja, omo ologose afarafinifini, omo elekule adewure, Wura mi, Jigi mi, amope arewa idunu mi, omo amuledun, omo amuiledun, omo amuinumidun.

They told me it is real, i was like "dats bull****". they told me it leaves a pang in ur heart when she aint there i was like "Go and wash ur head in river Niger with soap" then i saw you.

You smiled, i blushed and my heart leaped.

You walked away and i turned a stalker.

You made your hair and for the first time i cared how and which type of hair you fixed

I tried so much to look for one better looking than u.

Oh! i saw but she simply was not you.

I tried reading the bible and guess what? The first scripture i saw was " God said that it would not be good if i left Adam without a helpmate"

God!! i must be losing mi mind so i went to the pastor.

Sir.. i think am being jinxed by someone.

okay.. why do u tink so

sir when i wake, her face is the first face i want to see.

sir her smile makes me want to jump up and just take her to paris

okay?.....

sir when she passes by the football centre, i leave my friends and even man utd match just to see her pose, calmnes and her smile

sir she simply makes me want to be committed.

hmmm.... young kosi, see eh i think you are in love.

WHATT!! no sir i cant be, Hell no. Kosilala that is Bashorun of all women now fall in love with one? No sir its not possible.

Okay... have you tried ignoring her?

Yes sir

how did it work?

i simply could not sir

have u stop sending her text

yes sir

what happened?

my hands would simply not stop typing sir

okay have u tried stoping urself from following her?

yes sir. But mi legs never obeyed

Well young man. You are in Love.

So here am i with my friends. They are jisting and playing around and suddenly i stand and declare

I THINK...I THINK AM IN LOVE.