Free College and University Courses

Have you ever wanted to take a course at MIT? How about at Stanford? Have I got news for you. In recent years, massive open online courses ("MOOCs") have become a trend in online education. The term was coined in 2008 by David Cormier, manager of web communications and innovations at the University of Prince Edward Island. 

MOOCs are designed like college courses but are available to anyone anywhere in the world, at no cost. Sadly, you do not receive a college credit, but you will receive a certificate of completion when you complete all coursework. The courses span a myriad of subjects, often are taught by some of the leaders in those fields, and are available in many languages.

Coursera is perhaps the most well-known of the online education facilitators. As of April 2014, Coursera has 7.4 million users in 641 courses from 108 institutions. Coursera offers courses in physics, engineering, humanities, medicine, biology, social sciences, mathematics, business, computer science, and other subjects and are available in 12 different languages. They even has an official mobile app for iPhone and Android.

EdX is a non-profit course site, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is governed by MIT and Harvard. EdX offers MOOCs and interactive online classes in subjects including law, history, science, engineering, business, social sciences, computer science, public health, and artificial intelligence (AI). It has partnerships with institutions in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Japan, China and Korea. It currently has over 2.1 million users in 176 online courses.

MIT has their own open courseware, where most of the materials used in the teaching of almost all of MIT's subjects are available on the Web - free of charge. They have more than 2,000 courses available. Stanford also has their own online and open courses. These sites are both great options if you prefer to work at your own pace, as compared to structured classes like those offered at Coursera and EdX.

European institutions are also getting in on the act. Germany-based Iversity offers courses in both English and German and the first courses went online in October 2013. Future Learn is a subsidiary of the British Open University and has partnerships with universities across Britain, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand.

For those looking to learn a language, Duolingo offers completely free language education. As of January 2014, Duolingo has 25 million users, out of which about 12.5 million are active. If you're interested in learning a valuable skill, Codecademy teaches programming and coding with interactive online courses. Other sites, like Open Culture, are not affiliated with institutions. On Open Culture, the editor finds the free courses and audio books on the web and hosts them on the site. The courses are available in audio and video, and can be downloaded straight to a computer or mp3 player. They currently have 950 courses available.

For the geeky and whimsical, there is the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry, in which "a Hogwarts education has now become available online to all aspiring witches and wizards. You are now able to enroll at Hogwarts, collect your textbooks and begin taking our 9-week courses online. You can now progress through all seven years of schooling and be assigned a professor, homework assignments, quizzes and more." All for free...or at least until Universal gets a whiff of the site and closes it down! Better enroll quickly.

This is by no means a complete list of all site and institutions that offer free online courses. MOOC List has many more listed. These MOOCs are a great way to expand your knowledge at a cost that anyone can afford.

The Most Extreme Cases of OCD

Last night, I attended the closing ceremonies for the 9th annual Newburyport Literary Festival. I fully expected to enjoy the panel which consisted of four well-respected and best selling authors, Jenna Blum, Andre Dubus III (this year's honoree), Wally Lamb, and Richard Russo and was not disappointed. Unsurprisingly, all four of these literary powerhouses were amusing and engaging storytellers.

One of the stories really resonated with me. An audience member proposed a question to the authors about how and why they write. Their responses ran the gamut as to why and how, but it was Richard Russo's response that was the most interesting. He regaled us with a story which told of his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) that became apparent when he was in college. He became obsessed with playing a pinball game; so much so, he was using all of his food vouchers to play. He admits as far as obsession go, this one was pretty innocuous and other than feeling the pangs of hunger, it was better than becoming a drug addict. Russo also noted that obsessions can never actually be eliminated but they can on occasion be refocused. For Russo, writing is his panacea for his OCD and he stated that if it hadn't been for writing, he might very well be in a psych hospital.

As someone who has a mild form of obsession, I found his story fascinating. Fortunately, my form of obsession is more of a mild mental obsession. I can never seem to turn my mind off of a couple of issues and they just roll round and round in my head - taking up way too much space and causing all sorts of issues, i.e., sleeplessness, sadness, anger, etc.

Curiously, Russo's story led me to wonder about what extreme cases of OCD have been documented. I conducted some research and here's what I found:

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

A Serbian America, Tesla is considered one of the greatest inventors of the 20th century. He was also an electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist.

In addition to being a germaphobe, Tesla probably suffered from OCD in his later years. He developed a hatred of jewelry and round objects, could not bear to touch hair, did not like to shake hands, and became obsessed with the number three. He often felt compelled to walk around a block three times before entering a building and demanded 18 napkins (a number divisible by three) to polish his silver and glasses and plates until they were impeccable whenever he went dining. He would bewilder guests by estimating the mass of his meal before taking a bite and counting jaw movements while he was eating and would not eat alone in the company of a woman. If he read one of an author's books, he felt compelled to read all of their books (I do this!).

Although an obstacle to social relations, Tesla's obsessions also fueled some of his scientific ideas. Consequently, he left a legacy behind him of impressive accomplishments.

"Jean" - Obsessions and Psychasthenia (1903)

Pierre Janet (1859-1947), a French psychiatrist, published a book concerning obsessions and compulsions in 1903, entitled Obsessions and Pyschasthenia. In the book, he presented case studies of his patients who suffered with OCD. Patient "Jean", a 30-year old man, avoided wearing a certain pair of shoes because they made him think of a woman with whom he was obsessed. The connection was that the shoes had the number "49" on them, and the woman had been age 49 when his obsession with her had begun. If Jean upon waking, happened to view a red object on his right, he needed to find one on his left.

Additionally, Jean was obsessed with health and the possibility of his own death. Janet noted that his patient felt the need to constantly check his own heartbeat and that he became anxious at the slightest irregularity. Despite his healthiness, he was unable to attend funerals or pass in front of his local town hall when the announcements of deaths were taking place.

Jean also had an obsession with his own genitals - suffering great pain as a result - and he would spend days at a time rubbing ointments on the area.

The William Hammond Case (1879)

William Hammond (1828-1900), who served as surgeon general of the U.S. Army during the Civil War and later helped to found the American Neurological Association, coined the term "mysophobia" to describe an obsessive fear of contamination. In a psychiatric treatise, he described a "young lady, aged eighteen" who sought treatment from him for such a condition in 1879. This case is one of the earliest documented cases in history.

The patient’s obsession of contamination increased to the point where she was unable to make contact with any surface without washing her hands. According to her mother, she would do so over 200 times each day. Remember, this was the 19th century, when people weren’t nearly as fastidious about cleanliness as they are today.

Whilst on the street, she had to gather her clothes up to avoid touching other people, as she considered them sources of contamination. When questioned, the woman admitted that her compulsions made no sense but still found that she could not stop acting on them - a common OCD experience.

Martin Luther (1483-1546)

It’s a little known fact that Protestant Reformation leader Martin Luther suffered from obsessions and repetitive patterns of thought, which has led many modern researchers to believe that he was afflicted with OCD.

Luther described feelings of “fleshly lust, wrath, hatred, or envy against any brother,” which constantly “vexed” him and would not leave no matter how hard he tried to block them from his mind. He also experienced periods of “blasphemous” thought that left him confused and disturbed - one of the classic symptoms of OCD that commonly causes sufferers to experience uncontrollable mental images that oppose their normal desires.

Martin Luther also suffered from obsessive doubts; in his mind, his omitting the word enim ("for") during the Eucharist was as horrible as laziness, divorce, or murdering one's parent.

Richard Wallace (1950 - )

Compulsive hoarding is a form of OCD that involves cluttering a living space with items to the point where it can become uninhabitable. UK resident Richard Wallace is an extreme case, a man with a collection of junk so large that in 2011 it took up an area larger than his house. This junk pile was so large that it could even be seen on Google Earth.

Wallace’s hoarded goods included six rusting classic cars and stacks of newspapers going back 34 years. He was unable to use any of the space inside his house and had to sleep and eat in his chair.

A senior planning officer from the Mole Valley Council in Surrey served an order on Wallace in 2009 instructing him to clean up his garden. But Mr Wallace fought the order, explaining that it was his “human right” to hoard.

Still, with the help of his neighbors, Wallace did clear up his garden, removing 30 tons of junk in just one afternoon. Finally, he could walk to his front door again. He has since sought an appointment with a psychologist to deal with his hoarding issues. Wallace's hoarding makes the Collyer Brothers seem almost normal...almost!

"Rat Man" (1907)

A patient who first came to Sigmund Freud in 1907 became a classic case for the founding father of psychoanalysis. "Rat Man" was the nickname given by Sigmund Freud to a patient whose case history was published in 1909. This patient's condition was marked by a number of obsessive thoughts, the most notable of which was an intense fear that his father would be tortured using a bizarre Chinese method involving a rat, as described to him by an army colleague. He also feared a female friend (whom he eventually married).

Rat Man also complained of other obsessive thoughts, such as cutting his own throat with a razor. Freud interpreted the symptoms as the patient identifying himself with the rat and thus having fantasies involving both his father and his female friend.

The patient was later used as a showcase for the psychiatrist’s newly developed method of psychoanalysis, but Freud heavily exaggerated when he claimed to have cured Rat Man completely. A letter to Carl Jung written in 1909 revealed that the patient’s problems continued to trouble him. There is some dispute on the identity of the Rat Man. Recent researchers have decided that the "Rat Man" was in fact a clever lawyer named Ernst Lanzer (1878–1914); though many other sources maintain that the man's name was Paul Lorenz.

Budapest between 1890 and 1900

Johanna H. (1895)

In 1895, Dr. Julius Donath of the University of Budapest treated a young woman who suffered from obsessive and compulsive symptoms, including one symptom that revolved around her fear that she might cheat on her husband. A telegraph employee, Johanna H. was 23 years old and happily married for one year. She went to see Dr. Donath who noted the following: "For the past six months she has developed the compulsive fear that she might commit an indiscretion with a man she has just met or seen; and cannot dismiss from her mind this most improbable situation, given that she is happily married; hence, if someone were to tell her that she has had sex with a man, she would immediately believe it."

Her husband added important details which she had omitted. "The compulsive idea of sexual intercourse with other men can be so intense that she has worn knickers made of strong linen, tightly fitted, closed at the front and back [a sort of chastity belt]; in order not to reveal her condition to anyone else, she made this underwear herself." Whenever the husband had to go out, she asked him to lock her up in the house and take the key with him. If another man was in the house, the husband had to reassure her repeatedly that she had not been near him.

Donath attempted to treat this patient using hypnosis, but indicated that she stopped coming to her appointments after only four hypnosis sessions.

Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882)

Eminent evolutionist Charles Darwin is now also widely accepted to have suffered from OCD. Darwin wrote about various obsessional thoughts and how he could not get away from them. In a letter to a friend he wrote "I could not sleep and whatever I did in the day haunted me at night with vivid and most wearing repetition". The thoughts, as he himself put it, were of "horrid spectacle" including thoughts that his children would inherit his kind of illness and to stop them he would try "closing his eyes firmly" but they would not go away. The bad thoughts during the night were more persistent than those in the day, because at night he was not distracted from them by activity.

Darwin also craved reassurance from others and was self critical and also felt himself to be ugly and would repeat himself hundreds of times the mantra "I have worked as hard as I could, and no man can do more than this".

Mad’lle F (1838)

The case of 34-year-old Mad’lle F was recorded by French psychiatrist J.E.D. Esquirol, and apart from being bizarre, it’s notable for being the first compulsive checking behavior described by a medical authority. Mad'lle F made frequent visits to her aunt's house, habitually wearing an apron. One day, at the age of eighteen, without any known cause, upon going out of the house of her aunt, Mad'lle F was seized by the idea that she might accidentally take something that belonged to her relative. After that day, she would deliberately not wear an apron when visiting her aunt.

This symptom was an early indicator of what would come later -- a complex series of rituals. Upon waking, she would rub her feet for ten minutes in order to make sure that nothing had been caught in her toes or between her nails. She would then turn her slippers over and over, shook them, and would then hand them to her chamber-maid, in order that after having carefully examined them, the maid would assure her that they conceal nothing of value. Next, she would run a comb through her hair numerous times to ensure that nothing was trapped there. Every article of her clothing was examined successively, a great number of times, inspected in every way, in all the folds and wrinkles, and rigorously shaken. Finally, she would vigorously shake her hands and rub her fingers until she was convinced that there was nothing on them. The sheer force of these actions exhausted Mad’lle F as they sometimes would take anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours to complete.

Like many OCD sufferers, Mad’lle F was very aware of the ridiculousness of her condition and rituals but was unable to stop making her compulsive checks. Small wonder, then, that Esquirol described OCD as a kind of “partial insanity.”

Howard Hughes (1905 - 1976)

When it comes to OCD, no one suffered more than legendary aviator, filmmaker and businessman Howard Hughes who was perhaps the closest thing the mid-20th century had to a Renaissance man. Yet his obsessive drive to tinker with mechanical objects (he once re-designed his bed to be more comfortable during a stay in hospital) may have been related to the OCD symptoms he developed later in life. These symptoms included a morbid fear of germs and a bizarre obsession with peas in which used a special fork to sort them by size.

Although Hughes had suffered mood swings and obsessions as a younger man, following his near-fatal plane crash in 1946, the symptoms seemed to get worse. In 1947, he refused to leave his screening room for four months, living entirely on milk, chocolate, and chicken and relieving himself in the empty containers.  He was surrounded by dozens of Kleenex boxes, which he continuously stacked and re-arranged. He wrote detailed memos to his aides on yellow legal pads giving them explicit instructions not to look at him, or speak to him unless spoken to. Throughout this period, Hughes sat fixated in his chair, often naked, continually watching movies.

In a bout of obsession with his home state, Hughes began purchasing all restaurant chains and four star hotels that had been founded within the borders of Texas. This included, if for only a short period, many unknown franchises currently out of business. Ownership of the restaurants was placed in the hands of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and all licenses were resold shortly after.

Another time, he became obsessed with the 1968 film Ice Station Zebra and had it running on a continuous loop in his home. According to his aides, he watched it 150 times.

Hughes insisted on using tissues to pick up objects, so that he could insulate himself from germs. He would also notice dust, stains or other imperfections on people's clothes and demand that they take care of them.

Towards the end of his life, Hughes’s condition worsened, and the former womanizer began to shun all social contact. At the time of his death from kidney failure, his beard and fingernails had both grown out of control making him practically unrecognizable. He also suffered from malnutrition and reportedly had a body weight of just 90 pounds.

Freakiest Deaths of Historical Figures

I mentioned a few posts back about my new obsession with a podcast called Rex Factor, which rates the reigns of all the kings and queens of England. I'm only about halfway through the 70+ episodes and am still loving every moment, but who knew that so many English monarchs died in bizarre ways. Many of the very early monarchs died in battle, but there were a few others whose deaths were a little strange. For example, Edward II of England quite possibly died very cruelly - by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs without marking his body, thereby hiding the assassination. YOWCH!!!! Of course, there is no proof that this event actually happened, but that doesn't stop the rumors flying.

One would imagine that people of prominence would die with perhaps a little dignity. However, such is not always the case. Inspired by the story of Edward II of England, I decided to research what were some of the craziest deaths of historical figures. Here's what I found:

Death by Mercury:

In 210 BC, Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, died after ingesting several pills of mercury in the belief that it would grant him eternal life. He was wrong. The prime minister, along with the Emperor's eunuch courtiers, concealed the death while they plotted the succession and placed carts of rotting fish in front and behind the wagon of the Emperor to disguise the smell of the decomposing corpse. They also pulled down the shade so no one could see his face, changed his clothes daily, and even brought food. He was then buried in a fantastic city-sized mausoleum which is still being excavated. His artifacts and treasures include the famous life-sized Terracotta Army which was created to protect him in the afterlife.

Death by Food:  

In Normandy in 1135, Henry I, King of England died from complications of eating a plethora of his favorite food, lampreys (an eel-type fish). Often warned by physicians to avoid eating this dish, Henry I died from post-binge food poisoning. After Henry died and was embalmed, servants sewed the body of the king inside the hide of a bull to keep it from rotting on the journey to his home in England. The body was brought to Reading where in January 1136 he was buried in front of the High Altar of the abbey that he had founded in 1121. But due to the dissolution by Henry VIII of all monasteries, his tomb's location remains a mystery.

In 1771, Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden, died of digestion problems on 12 February after having consumed a meal of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favorite dessert: semla served in a bowl of hot milk. He is thus remembered by Swedish schoolchildren as "the king who ate himself to death."

Death by Sex:

The 58 year old, French president, Félix Faure died suddenly from apoplexy in the Élysée Palace on 16 February 1899, while engaged in sexual activities in his office with 30-year-old Marguerite Steinheil. It has been widely reported that Faure had his fatal seizure while Steinheil was fellating him, but the exact nature of their sexual intercourse is in fact unknown and such reports may have stemmed from various jokes made up afterward by his political opponents. One such pun was to nickname Mme Steinheil "la pompe funèbre" (wordplay in French: "pompes funèbres" means "death care business" and "pompe funèbre" could be translated, literally, as "funeral blow-job"). Who says the French don't have a sense of humor?

Death by Wildlife:

In 458 BC, Aeschylus, the ancient Greek playwright, traveled to Sicily to visit the city of Gela where he died in 456 or 455 BC. Valerius Maximus wrote that he was killed outside the city by a tortoise which had been dropped by an eagle. The eagle had mistook Aeschylus's head for a rock suitable for shattering the shell of the reptile. Pliny, in his Naturalis Historiæ, added that Aeschylus had been staying outdoors to avoid a prophecy that he would be killed by a falling object. His plan backfired.

Death by Beard:

Hans Steininger, the burgomaster of Braunau, Austria, was famous for having at that time what was the world's longest beard (it was 4.5 feet long) and for dying because of it. One day in 1567, there was a fire in town and in his haste Hans forgot to roll up his beard. He accidentally stepped on his beard, lost balance, stumbled, broke his neck, and died instantly! A tragic, yet bizarrely humorous way to die.

Death by Gangrene of the...:

King of Judea, Herod the Great suffered from not only kidney disease but a rare infection of the male genitalia, called Fournier's gangrene, which is described as "symptoms that include intense itching, intestinal pain, shortness of breath, convulsions, and gangrene of the genitalia." Does that mean that his sausage just rotted away??? YYYYYYOOOOWWWWCH!!! That's got to hurt!

Death by Coats:

First legislator of Ancient Greece, Draco is responsible for creating one of the first written sets of laws, a set of rules governing 7th Century BCE life in Greece. In 590 BCE, Grecian authorities held a celebration to commemorate his hard work. Unfortunately, Draco died from suffocation due to audience members tossing hundreds of coats and shirts on top of him, a common custom during that time performed to show respect. I think I'd rather they didn't show their respect.

Death While Urinating:

Roman emperor, Caracalla is remembered as one of the most notorious and unpleasant of emperors because of the massacres and persecutions he authorized and instigated throughout the Empire. He was assassinated while urinating at a roadside near Carrhae on 8 April 217 (4 days after his 29th birthday), by Julius Martialis, an officer of his personal bodyguard. There were two differing thoughts on why Martialis killed the emperor: the first, Martialis' brother had been executed a few days earlier by Caracalla on an unproven charge; the second, Martialis was resentful at not being promoted to the rank of centurion. Either way, it's pretty ballsy to kill an emperor while he's peeing.

Death by Decapitated Head:

Sigurd Eysteinsson (aka Sigurd the Mighty, ruled circa 875–892) was the second Viking Earl of Orkney. He was a leader in the Viking conquest of what is now northern Scotland. Bizarrely, he was killed by the severed head of one his enemies, Máel Brigte (nickname Máel Brigte the Bucktoothed because of his protruding teeth). Sigurd strapped Brigte's head to his saddle as a trophy of conquest, and as he rode, Máel Brigte's buckteeth grazed against Sigurd's leg, causing injury. The wound became inflamed and infected and Sigurd died as a result. How embarrassing is that?

Death by (i) Poison, (ii) Gunshot Wound (4x), (iii) Beating by Clubs, and (iv) Drowning:

According to legends, Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin (1869-1916) was first poisoned with enough cyanide to kill ten men, but he wasn't affected. So his killers shot him in the back with a revolver. Rasputin fell but later revived. So, he was shot again three more times, but Rasputin still lived. He was then clubbed, and for good measure thrown into the icy Neva River. Rasputin was finally dead for good.

Lovers On The Run - The Continuing Story of Zakia and Mohammad Ali

If you remember, approximately 6 weeks ago, I posted a blog about a modern day Romeo and Juliet story that was taking place in Afghanistan.  To recap, two young adults (Zakia, 18 and Mohammad Ali, 21) had fallen in love but because they are from different sects, their families would not allow them to wed. 

Here's an updated story:

On the first day of spring, Zakia and Mohammad Ali eloped and were wed by a mullah. But despite their marriage, all is not well. This lovely young couple are on the run from both their families - who have threatened to kill the couple and the police who have trumped up charges of bigamy and "attempted adultery." Because of these issues, the newelyweds cannot truly enjoy their honeymoon as they are constantly on the run from authorities. In the past month, they have stayed in homes of friends when they could and even slept in caves when they could not find shelter. For awhile, they were staying with distant relatives and former neighbors of Mohammad Ali in the mountains of central Afghanistan, but they were seen by another distant relative who told Mohammad Ali's father where the couple were staying. Nosy old biatch! 

Running short of money, constantly on the run, and unable to escape Afghanistan has not lessened the love this couple feels for each other. They remain committed to their relationship and want nothing more than to live their lives in peace with each other. I am glad The New York Times in continuing to follow the story.  You can read the full article here. There's a video on The New York Times website where Mohammad Ali shares his thoughts and feelings.

Zakia and Mohammad Ali, my thoughts and best wishes for your safety!!

"Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children" Is So Much More Than Peculiar!

Being an English teacher, I am always on the lookout for books that I can introduce to my students in the hopes of making them lifelong readers. One of the ways I accomplish this task is by giving them books that I think they might enjoy, but of course, this can be an expensive endeavor. Last year, I discovered World Book Night - "a celebration of books and reading held on April 23, when 25,000 passionate volunteers across America give a total of half a million books within their communities to those who don’t regularly read." It's simple enough. You sign up to be a 'volunteer giver' (someone who hands out books), choose a book from the WBN list that you would like to give, and why you want to do this event. If approved, WBN sends 20 copies of the book you requested and you then gift them to others. My students are the recipients of these books. Last year, I picked Sandra Cisneros's The House on Mango Street and they went like hotcakes. This year, I chose The New York Times bestseller Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2011) by Ransom Riggs. Having never read the book, I decided to check it out before passing copies onto my students. I am glad that I did.

Synopsis: "A mysterious island.

 An abandoned orphanage.

 A strange collection of very curious photographs.

 It all waits to be discovered in Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, an unforgettable novel that mixes fiction and photography in a thrilling reading experience. As our story opens, a horrific family tragedy sets sixteen-year-old Jacob journeying to a remote island off the coast of Wales, where he discovers the crumbling ruins of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. As Jacob explores its abandoned bedrooms and hallways, it becomes clear that the children were more than just peculiar. They may have been dangerous. They may have been quarantined on a deserted island for good reason. And somehow -- impossible though it seems -- they may still be alive. 

A spine-tingling fantasy illustrated with haunting vintage photography, Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children will delight adults, teens, and anyone who relishes an adventure in the shadows." (Amazon.com)

Review:  Mr. Riggs's debut novel, Miss Peregrine's, reached #1 on The New York Times Best Sellers list for children's chapter books on 29 April 2012 after being on the list for 45 weeks. It remained there until 20 May, when it dropped to the fourth spot on the list. The book dropped off the list on 9 September 2012, having spent a total of 63 weeks on the list. Pretty impressive start to what looks like a promising career.

Part fantasy, part adventure, part eccentric photo collection, this coming-of-age story received a lot of well-deserved attention after publication for the way it incorporates unusual antique photographs into the narrative. Even without the photos, this would be a gripping story, but the photos add an irresistible element of mystery. Mr. Riggs is clearly a gifted writer who decided to create a magnificent story around his collection of weirdly wonderful photographs. The first-person narration is authentic, funny, and poignant. Enthralling, magical, and spooky, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is one of the most original and captivating books I have read in a long time. A must read. The movie rights have been sold to 20th Century Fox with Tim Burton slated to direct. I cannot imagine a better choice for director.

I’m looking forward to the next volume in the series, Hollow City, which was released earlier this year!

Rating:  4 out of 5

Why Is True Happiness So Elusive?

I've been contemplating this question for...well...hmmm...my entire life. Okay, my entire ADULT life. I just cannot understand why it seems that some people (i.e., yours truly and a few other people that I know) just can't seem to find true happiness. Oh, we have moments of enjoyment and fun, but that is almost always fleeting. Four years ago, I thought I had found true happiness -- I actually stumbled upon it when I wasn't looking, and the unfortunate fact is that this happiness lasted only a few months. Then later, I figured out that it was built upon a web of lies; therefore, I question whether it really was true happiness? Can you have actually have happiness when it's built on deceit? I cannot even look back on those days with fondness because the memories are tainted by all the dishonesty and the hurt and pain that went along with it.

So I repeat the question: why is true happiness so elusive? What exactly is happiness and how do we achieve it? Is it a gift we give to ourselves or is it part of a reward system? The intangible state of simply being happy is hard to find and there are no maps or GPS trackers to help us chart a course.

My douchebag ex-therapist once told me that I don't allow myself to be happy. The word "allow" grates on my nerves and annoys me to no end. "Who doesn't allow themselves to be happy?!" I asked. "You don't," he said. "Being simply happy is difficult for you and it shouldn't be. Everyone deserves to be happy but you don't allow it."

Stated like that, I grudgingly concede that there might be a modicum, just a very small kernel, of truth in what he said. Happiness is always "somewhere, out there" in my future. It isn't that I don't enjoy ever my life. To a certain extent, I do. It's just that I don't feel content with my life pretty much all the time. My dumb mindset is that happiness should be a reward -- for meeting that deadline, for losing those 10 pounds, for doing everything right, in finding that person who will make my life complete, etc.

Many people have a hard time permitting themselves to be happy. Like myself, they tend to be 'people-pleasers' and, while that is great for their families, co-workers, and friends, it is not at all good for the individual. These individuals don't, won't, or can't find happiness. We are too busy being "the good little girl or boy," who must make sure everyone around us is happy first. Or worse, we see ourselves as unworthy, not deserving of happiness until certain goals, usually totally unattainable and defined by others, are met. For example, I can't really begin to be happy until my life meets certain conditions and those conditions vary according to where I am. Home, work, leisure -- every area has its own unique criteria for how and when I might attain happiness. Naturally, I never actually accomplish my goals because they are often unattainable so then I punish myself over these failures.

We can also fall victim to what I call the "Goldilocks Syndrome". Everything in our lives must be "just right" in order for us to be happy. Of course everything is never "just right." Life isn't like that. Nothing is ever "just right", because life is imperfect.

How we view happiness is a prime factor in achieving it. Are we looking for ecstatic, "jumping for joy" happy? Are we saying that once a certain thing "happens" we won't ever be unhappy again? That is fairy tale thinking.

Despite whatever is going on in our lives, happiness isn't something we should be putting on hold. Happiness should be attainable. It should be a feeling of satisfaction and joy for the good parts of your life and the knowledge that you are not just hanging around, waiting for something fantastic to happen.

But all too often that is exactly what we do.

Making happiness conditional will never work. Trying to reach some unrealistic goal set by someone else won't fly either. Conditions and other people cannot define or create happiness for us, only we can. It should be as natural a state as breathing. It should be, absolutely, but that is not how it is. What sinister marker in our DNA makes us gluttons for the punishment of sacrificing our goals or for believing we must postpone happiness until the exact right time?

If happiness is an intangible state of being, then, for some of us, it may very well be ever elusive and hidden from sight unless we begin to make our own happiness our priority.

Of course, all of this contemplation goes under the "physician heal thyself" category. I don't know how to find my happiness without it being tied to other things. <sigh> I don't suppose I'll ever figure this issue out during my lifetime. Therefore, I am back to hoping that my next life is some sort of animal where I don't have to worry about these types of things.

Weird Flags From Around the World

Last night, I was watching a rerun from Season 5 of The Big Bang Theory - "The Beta Test Initiation". A side story for this episode is Sheldon and Amy introducing a new YouTube podcast called Sheldon Cooper presents: Fun with Flags. The podcast is aimed to teach vexillology (the "scientific study of the history, symbolism and usage of flags or, by extension, any interest in flags in general"), which got me wondering what are the strangest flags found around the world. A few hours of research today and I am astounded! Who knew that there were so many weird flags? (Yes, this is how I spent the first few hours of my April vacation. I'm such a nerd.)

Flags today are primarily something to wave while yelling something at a sporting event, or something to roll yourself up in before attending a town council meeting, or to express yourself in some other, more subtle way. While most flags are fairly simple and convey a clear message, others can be a little busy… or just plain incoherent. Here are ten notably odd flags:

West Africa

The best and most concise description of this flag probably comes from the British National Maritime Museum which displays it: “A red wool bunting flag with a linen hoist, machine sewn with a rope halyard attached. The design is applied in white fabric with painted details, representing a naked man decapitating another with a sword.” The link above shows the actual flag.

Yes indeed, what you see are two totally naked dudes in a very one-sided fight; one wonders why the naked dude without the sword didn’t just run away. The origin of the flag is much more confusing: While popularly labeled “Flag of the Benin Empire” and indeed captured during a British raid on the capital city, the flag is said to be very similar to flags born by the allied Itsekiri forces.

At this point, the issue is moot, as Benin has long since been absorbed by Nigeria and by now everyone understands that the proper reaction to a nude man with a sword is to flee immediately.

Guam

Guam -- a Western Pacific American territory covered in tree snakes, Japanese tourists, and the military -- depends primarily on tourism for its income, so the design of their flag makes a certain amount of sense. It looks as if they've just bought a T-shirt from the nearest souvenir shop and put it on a flag pole. Even if this was the case, I have a hard time believing that they couldn't find a better T-shirt.

Here's the thought process for creating this flag: “You want palm trees? We got palm trees. How about a sailboat? Bam, sailboat right there. Now, just in case you forgot where you’re going, we’re gonna print the name of the island right there in the center, see? G-U-whoops, tree’s in the way-A-M. What about the rest of the flag? Eh, whatever, we don’t have much else to talk about on this island. Watch out for snakes, I guess.” I'm not even going to talk about the horrendous red border around the seal and the flag edge. Horrible!

Baie-James

A huge and sparsely populated municipality of Quebec containing the world’s largest and most powerful hydroelectric power complex, the Municipalite de Baie-James was recently dissolved and reorganized as the Eeyou Istchee James Bay Territory after an agreement with the local Cree natives.

As a result, the municipality’s oddly unsettling flag -- combining the terrifying power of hydroelectricity with the knowing gaze of an Arctic owl -- is now a collector’s item.

Will the fierce Hydroelectric Owl swoop down on the dreams of Quebecois and Cree legislators like they were terrified raccoons? It’s hard to say for sure, but I will venture to say that yes, that is absolutely what is going to happen.

Isle of Man

Yeeaugh! The Isle of Man, a pleasant island in the Irish Sea known for cats and motorcycle races, is represented by one of the oldest and weirdest European symbolic motifs: the triskelion.

The triskelion is typically a combination of three spirals but in this case is represented by three bent, armored legs, for reasons which have been lost to history but were probably still weird even at the time. In order to have the toes pointing clockwise on both sides of the flag, a two-sided emblem is used.

Dating back to the European Iron Age, the triskelion is popularly associated with early Irish and Gaelic cultures but has been seen as far south as the Mediterranean, possibly due to the three legs jumping off of the flag and running at incredible speeds across the Iberian Peninsula.

Nepal

Nepal’s flag is the only one in the world that isn’t quadrilateral. Why? Because screw you, that’s why, and also because the tiny country’s location on the peaks and high valleys of the Himalayas are echoed by the jagged twin-pennant design.

The blue border symbolizes peace while the red is the color of the rhododendron, Nepal’s national flower; the moon represents both soothing calm and the cool temperature of the Himalayan highlands, while the sun represents fierce resolve and the relatively warmer temperature of Nepal’s lower foothills.

Fun fact: The sun and moon both used to feature little people faces until 1962, when the decision was made to “modernize” the flag by making it much less cute. Boo!

Antwerp

Those of you who still have retinas might remark on how remarkably, uh, colorful the flag of the Province of Antwerp is. Up until 1997, the province was represented by a rather blah tricolor that saw so little use that some provincial authorities were said to have forgotten it existed.

Recognizing a need for a memorable flag, historians looked to Antwerp’s past as part of the Brabant provinces, known for their colorful checkered flags, and combined the three color combinations of Antwerp (red-white), Mechelen (yellow-red), and Turnhout (blue-white) into an … erm ... arresting … display of regional pride. It's a chess board on acid.

The flag is now a crucial part of the Belgian defense system, being flown at times of national emergency in order to stun and confuse invading armies and perhaps even induce seizures.

Mozambique

There are many good options when you’re looking to put together a really threatening flag -- lions, dragons, eagles, lion-dragon-eagle hybrids -- but when Mozambique’s Soviet-influenced FRELIMO party gained power in June of 1975 they decided to really embrace modernity with a silhouette of an AK-47 with fixed bayonet right on the flag.

They accompanied the gun with a jumble of Soviet imagery: a huge cogwheel, an open book of learning, the Marxist revolutionary star, and a hoe (somewhat difficult to identify in silhouette) all over the traditional Mozambican colors of red, black, yellow and green. The flag currently used today has gone unchanged since 1983, when they ditched the cog-wheel, and while many in the Mozambique parliament would prefer not having a huge Communist rifle on their flag, the country has yet to find a suitable replacement. One would think that pretty much ANYTHING would be better than a AK-47!

Wallonia

What is wrong with Belgium? Antwerp's flag is bad enough, but a rooster? Wallonia is the predominantly French-speaking southern region of Belgium. It is governed as the Walloon Region, which makes up 55% of the territory of Belgium but with only a third of its population.

The rising of a Walloon identity led the Walloon Movement to choose different symbols representing Wallonia. Walloons have a deep reverence for that saucy iconic French rooster of song and legend, Chanticleer. Chanticleer is a rooster from a children's fable designed to teach children that the fox is smarter than the rooster, or something. He also appears in the movie Rock-a-Doodle, meaning the Wallonian flag violates the most important rule of flag design: your flag shouldn't be based around any characters that could logically appear in a movie called Rock-a-Doodle.

Just imagine going into battle behind a jive-talking rooster. By the way, the French name of this flag is le coc hardi - I swear!

Libya (1977-2011)

The flag used in Libya between 1977 and 2011 goes under the category of "most boring". Strictly speaking, this is the flag of the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, a confusing mouthful of Communist and Muslim buzzwords that represented Muammar Gaddafi’s desire to unify the two opposing systems of Soviet totalitarianism and Islamic theocracy. Or at least his desire to continue receiving money and arms from both systems while never really supporting either.

The color green has deep significance to many Muslims, being associated with the color of paradise and with the flags of the original prophet Muhammad, and by lucky coincidence was closely tied to the Tripolitania region of Libya.

So, when it came time to roll out the philosophies of Gaddafi’s “Green Book," the old Republic triband was dipped in green and Gaddafi started making speeches in a keffiyeh. After Muammar had an unfortunate encounter with a bayonet, Libya went back to the flag of the Kingdom of Libya, a rather classy red-black-green triband with white star and crescent.

Sicily

YEEEEAAAUGH! Severely upping the ante on the Isle of Man’s triskelion, the traditional flag of Sicily features three nude legs seemingly joined by the winged head of Medusa and individual stalks of wheat.

The Sicilian triskelion (called by Sicilians the trinacria for “three limbs”) is thought by a few to be even older than the Isle of Man’s. Pliny the Elder attributing the design to the (roughly) triangular shape of the island.

The wheat obviously enough represents the island’s agricultural origins, and the red and gold diagonal represent the municipalities of Palermo and Corleone, respectively. The winged Medusa head is said to protect the residents of the island, presumably as long as they avoid eye contact with it.

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Honorable Mentions: These are the flags which I found nearly as interesting, but didn't quite make the top 10 list. Bhutan (kick ass dragon), Central African Republic (hideous and seizure inducing), Friesland (are those Chinese fortune cookies?), Krygyzstan (a tennis ball blocking out the sun?), Lombardy (creators of the game of jacks?), Northern Mariana Islands (looks like clipart), Swaziland (spears are better than AK-47s, I suppose), and U.S. Virgin Islands (just plain ugly).

Growing Up in the 60s and 70s...

For those of us who were lucky enough to grow up and experience the freedom of childhood in the 60's and 70's, you will enjoy this list. For those of you who are children of the 80's, 90's, 2000's, you too will find this list interesting...and a sad commentary of what you have missed out on.

• Our baby cribs were covered with bright colored lead-based paints.
• We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets.
• We rode our bikes, we had no helmets.
• As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat.
• We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.
• We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this.
• We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soda pop with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!
• We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on.
• No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.
• We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. After running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem.
• We did not have Playstations, Nintendo's, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 99 channels on cable, no video tape movies, no surround sound, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet, no Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.  WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
• We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents.
• We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.
• We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not put out very many eyes.
• We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them!
• Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!!
• The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law!
• We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with it!
• We were fortunate enough to grow up in a time before lawyers and the govenment regulated our lives for "our own good". 

Please note: This is not an original list created by me; it is a saved document of whom the original author I am not sure. To whomever this original author may be, credit to this person is recognized. Although I did make a couple of edits to update the list.

Music Doesn't Lie - Part 30 (Fireflies)

"Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world,
then it can only happen through music." – Jimi Hendrix

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been teaching a poetry unit to my Freshman. In order to liven up the unit, I teach a portion of it using songs instead of poems because after all, songs are just poems set to music. Plus it's a good way to get by the "I hate poetry" complaint of some of my students. As I teach a specific literary element, I search out songs that have that specific element in the lyrics, which brought me to a new (to me) musician. I wanted to teach hyperbole and needed a song with a lot of exaggeration and stumbled across "Fireflies" by Owl City.

Owl City is "an American electronica project created in 2007 in Owatonna, Minnesota, one of several such projects by singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Adam Young" (Wikipedia). Young developed this project in his parent's basement, which differs slight from the other bands, which usually develop in parent's garages. Owl City created quite a stir and following on MySpace (does anyone still use MySpace?). After releasing two independent album, Owl City gained mainstream popularity with the 2009 major label debut album Ocean Eyes, which included the quadruple-platinum song, "Fireflies". In 2011, Owl City released his third studio album, All Things Bright and Beautiful, which was followed by The Midsummer Station in August 2012. Owl City has also recorded songs for animated films including Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole, Wreck-It Ralph, The Croods (cute movie), and The Smurfs 2. Interestingly, Owl City is one of Young's many solo projects, with all music written, composed, recorded, and produced by him. During live performances he is accompanied by a group of supporting musicians.

I've only had time to check out a few other songs by Owl City and in addition to "Fireflies", I also really like "Metropolis", "Shine Your Way" from The Croods, and "Shooting Star". But I really, really love "Fireflies" (lyrics).  Adam Young described the song as "A little song about bugs and not being able to fall asleep at night." The song is built around a "bleepy" 1980s-influenced synthline and includes lyrics about insomnia, fireflies, and summer. As an oftentimes insomniac, I really like songs about sleepless nights. Makes me feel I'm not alone with my sleeplessness.  :-)  Enjoy! 

Would You Actually 'Take a Bullet'?

A favorite line oft quoted by characters in film and television and even in real life is "I'd take a bullet for you." But do you think someone actually means it or are they being hyperbolic? If you were faced with an actual scenario in which you had to leap in front of a crazed gunman to save someone's life, would you actually do it? If you would, who would be the recipient of such largesse? 

One would assume that you'd only take a bullet for someone very special and not the random Joe Blow on the streets. Goodness knows, if I'm jumping in front of a gun, it's only for someone special. I've thought long a hard about this question and I think that I would actually jump in front of a bullet for a couple of specific people in my life. Not many, mind you, but there are a few. Once upon a time, I definitely would have been the bullet-proof vest for the 'one who broke my heart' and truth be known I probably would still take one to this day despite all that has happened. I would take one for my eldest brother but probably not for any of my other siblings. I would dive in front of a gunman to protect my aunts. There are a number of friends and other family members that I'd take a bullet for - provided that it was in the leg or the arm and not the chest or head.  :-D  That's about it though. I don't think I could be a Secret Service agent because I would not take a bullet for any President. Nor could I be a body guard for someone famous or infamous. I'm not taking a bullet for Justin Bieber. NO WAY, NO HOW. You couldn't pay me enough to do that job! There you have it: my very short, very specific list of people for whom I would literally take a bullet, but I do so very much admire the ones who do take bullets for complete strangers: military, police, federal agents, secret service, etc. They are brave souls.

How about you? Would you actually take a bullet for someone else? 

I found this quote and realized how appropriate it is for my life:

'Nuff said.

Best Hoaxes in History!

Is there anyone who doesn't appreciate a good practical joke? Well, maybe there are a few tight butts out there who do not. All of us have been either the recipient or the giver of a practical joke. For example, I once "Spongebobbed" a colleague's desk (by gift wrapping everything with Spongebob SquarePants wrapping paper). I must admit, it was pretty ingenious and everyone found it hilarious - and it wasn't even April Fool's Day. A friend of mine boxed a co-worker's desk to make it look like a giant Rubik's Cube. Very clever.  Even this past April 1, a couple of students attempted prank me - to no avail. They're so young. But it did get me questioning: "What are some of the best hoaxes ever pulled?" There have been many pranks and hoaxes pulled over the years (some dating as far back as the 1st century) and quite a number of them stick out as being unbelievably brilliant, because they have fooled so many people.

Here's my top ten list of the all-time greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on an unsuspecting public in no particular order:

1. The Cardiff Giant: One of the earliest hoaxes of modern times is the Cardiff Giant. In 1869, workers digging a well near Cardiff, New York unearthed a massive 10-foot tall statue of a giant that many believed at the time was a "petrified man" and evidence that a biblical passage (Genesis 6:4) was true. This passage mentions that there were giants that once roamed the Earth. However, the "petrified man" actually turned out to be the brainchild of one George Hull, an atheist and tobacconist from New York City who was intent on besting a Christian fundamentalist with whom he had argued over the biblical passage. Hull hired a stonemason to carve the image of a man out of a massive piece of gypsum and had it buried it on the farm of his cousin, William Newell. It was "discovered" there a year later and for the next few years, served as a source of income for Newell - who charged people a quarter to see it. Hull made an incredible business deal when he sold his part-interest in the statue to a syndicate of five men for $23,000 (equivalent to $429,000 in 2014) - ten times the amount he had spent on the hoax! In the end, however, the scammers were scammed themselves when none other than the famous showman, P.T. Barnum, made his own copy of the Cardiff Giant and declared Newell's a fake. The case ended up in court, with Hull admitting to the fake and both statues being declared a hoax by the courts.

2. The Loch Ness Monster "Surgeon's Photo": It's not so difficult to accept that the most famous photo of the Loch Ness Monster ever taken turned out to the be a fake; what's hard to understand is how it took sixty years to figure that out. Supposedly taken by Robert Kenneth Wilson, a London gynecologist, the photo (left) was published in the Daily Mail on April 21, 1934. The "Surgeon's Photograph" purported to be the first photo of a "head and neck" of Nessie. In reality, it was a toy submarine bought from F.W. Woolworths with a head and neck made of plastic wood, built by Christian Spurling, the son-in-law of Marmaduke Wetherell, a big game hunter who had been publicly ridiculed in the Daily Mail, the newspaper that employed him. Spurling claimed that to get revenge, Wetherell perpetrated the hoax, with the help of Spurling (who made a deathbed confession to the hoax in 1994, thus solving the mystery), his son Ian Marmaduke, who bought the material for the fake, and Maurice Chambers (an insurance agent), who asked Dr. Wilson to offer the pictures to the Daily Mail. The admission that the photo was a hoax didn't hurt the beastie's reputation however, and she (or he?) remains as popular as ever.

3. The Alien Autopsy Film: In one of the most brazen - and relatively successful - hoaxes ever, London-based film producer Ray Santilli presented a grainy black and white film footage that purported to show a dead alien (supposedly from the Roswell crash - but that's another story) undergoing an autopsy. The 17-minute film surfaced in the 1990s, and Santilli claimed he had received it from an unidentified, former military cameraman. Though the footage was at first hailed by many in the UFO community as authentic, a number of discrepancies regarding the footage soon came to light (some of the discrepancies were pointed out by modern forensic experts who had knowledge about autopsy procedures) which, along with Santilli's hesitancy to have the film tested and other evasions, made it appear increasingly dubious.  Since then the film has been thoroughly debunked, though Santilli didn't suffer from the hoax after he made a spoof of the hoax in a 2006 British comedy.

4.  Orson Welles's 1938 War of the Worlds Broadcast: Orson Welles was a virtually unknown 23-year old radio producer working out of New York City in 1938 when he directed the radio adaptation of H.G. Wells's famous novel, War of the Worlds on Halloween Eve. Despite the fact that Orson Welles inserted two disclaimers that the broadcast was fictional, thousands missed them and believed the story of a Martian invasion was real. While reports of the extent of the ensuing panic has been traditionally overstated, what can't be overstated is that it made the young man an overnight celebrity and skyrocketed him to fame. He went on to become an acclaimed producer, director, and actor until his death in 1985, but in all that time he never repeated the broadcast again (although recordings of it have been rebroadcast for years since and the complete broadcast can be found on YouTube). What's different about this hoax compared to others is that this hoax was completely unintentional, making it the most successful inadvertent hoax of all time.

5. Cottingley Fairies:  It all began back in 1917 when two English girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, decided to have some fun by cutting pictures of fairies out of a popular children's book of the era and mounting them on pins, after which they took photos of them. Not surprisingly, they looked pretty flat, but they were apparently convincing enough that the photos - there were five in all - became quite a sensation in England at the time (which was probably looking for a distraction from all the depressing war news). The pictures eventually came to the attention of author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who was an ardent spiritualist. He promptly proclaimed them authentic, which set off a firestorm of debate and in the end, badly tarnishing the brilliant man's post mortem reputation. The hoax was finally and utterly exposed in 1983 when in a magazine article, the women admitted to faking the photos, although strangely Frances insisted that at least one of the five photos was authentic. What's even more curious is how they managed to fool so many people for so many years, especially as the book the figures were cut from was readily available for comparison.

6. Piltdown Man: The never ending quest to locate the famous "missing link" that is supposed to conclusively tie man to the ape bit science in the butt back in 1912 when fragments of a skull and a jaw bone were discovered in a gravel pit near Piltdown, England. Claimed to be the missing link by many reputable scientists, in 1953, it was determined to be a cleverly aged human skull that had been attached to the jaw of an orangutan and imbedded with the teeth of a chimpanzee. Who actually produced the forgery (and why) remains a mystery to this day, but that they managed to keep scientists on the run for over forty years has to be considered one of the great feats of the century - and possibly the reason scientists don't talk as much about finding missing links nowadays.

7. Hitler's Diaries: This one was truly a work of art. In April 1983, the West German news magazine Stern published excerpts from what purported to be the diaries of Adolf Hitler, known as the Hitler Diaries, which were subsequently revealed to be forgeries. The magazine had paid nearly 9 million German marks (US $3.8m) for the sixty small books, plus a "special volume" about Rudolf Hess's flight to the United Kingdom, covering the period from 1932 to 1945. These books were quickly discovered to be the work of a notorious Stuttgart forger, Konrad Kujau, who was known for his ability to mimic Hitler's handwriting. What gave it away? The "diaries" were written on modern paper using modern ink, and included a number of historical inaccuracies. Kujau went on trial in 1984, was convicted and sentenced to 42 months in prison for forgery and embezzlement and I'm certain some executive at Stern lost his much anticipated Christmas bonus for this screw up.

8. Crop Circles: While there is evidence that at least a few crop circles (those mysterious little swirls of stomped wheat that appears with some regularity in English fields each summer) do exhibit some true physiological anomalies, the fact is that most of them are hoaxes. This wasn't entirely clear until 1991, when British farmers Doug Bowers and Dave Chorley - two men with way too much times on their hands - came forward to admit that they had been making the circles themselves and even demonstrated how they did it using ropes and wooden planks. Of course, there were far too many circles for too many years for them to have been responsible for more than a fraction of them, but to the science community, that was proof enough that it was all a hoax. Since then, there are even clubs that have formed dedicated to besting other crop circle clubs in producing the most sophisticated and complex circles imaginable. It's become quite the art form. But when will extraterrestrials fess up to doing some of the circles?

9. Zionist Protocols: Ever wonder where Hitler and the rest of the Nazis got their insane ideas about the Jews from? It might be in part due to a document that surfaced in Russia in 1905. Entitled The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, the document outlined the "super-secret" Jewish plan for world domination. Of course, it was a complete fake - as demonstrated in 1921 by a London Times reporter who demonstrated it to have been largely plagiarized from a 1864 satirical novel - which matters very little to those who are looking for a reason to hate. In fact, it became a major fuel for anti-Semitism throughout the 20th century and was even used as a justification by Hitler for his gas chambers. To this day, it remains a popular book in much of the Middle East and can even be found on Amazon. The lesson to be learned here is that one must be careful about writing satirical literature for one never knows what morons will do with it in the future.

10. The Man Who Never Was (Operation Mincemeat): Who says hoaxing can't be useful, especially in wartime? Not the British, who, during World War II, decided to confuse the Germans by taking the body of a deceased pneumonia victim, dressing him in a Royal Marine Uniform, handcuffing him to a briefcase full of "top secret" invasion plans, and setting him adrift off the coast of Sicily. The payoff? The Italians found the body and turned the briefcase over to their German allies, who learned from it that the allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia rather than Sicily. The only problem was the allies had no such intention, making the landings in southern Italy

Dishonorable Mentions: The Beatles "Paul is Dead" Hoax (the belief that the Beatles hid secret messages regarding the death of Paul McCartney that can only be heard if certain records are played backwards); William Mumler (the first name to make a living successfully hoaxing pictures of "ghosts"); Douglas Corrigan (an American pilot who claims he got lost over New York City and "accidentally" flew to Ireland, making him the second man to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic and earning him the lifetime moniker of "Wrong Way Corrigan"); and, of course, Balloon Boy (the Colorado dad who falsely reported his son was trapped in a flying-saucer shaped helium balloon in an effort to get his own reality TV show - what a douche!). 

Well done to all the hoaxsters, except balloon boy's dad.  I applaud your efforts, except balloon boy's dad.

A full list of hoaxes and pranks can be found on the Museum of Hoaxes website. It's a great site for killing time.