Max Headroom Incident: America’s Creepiest TV Hack

In 1944, George Stinney Jr. was 14 years old when he was executed in South Carolina. It took only ten minutes to convict him — and 70 years to exonerate him.

The first person to jump off the Brooklyn Bridge was a professional high diver who "wanted to demonstrate that people did not die simply by falling through the air, thus encouraging people to be willing to jump from a burning building into a net." He proved himself correct by safely falling 135 feet through the air and dying only when he hit the water.

The Arabia was a steamboat that sank in the Missouri River in 1856. Over time, the river shifted 800 meters to the east, eventually turning the site of the sinking into a field. The steamboat remained under 45 feet of slit and topsoil until 1988, when it was excavated. The mud, as it turned out, was such a great preserver that most of the artifacts on board were found to be intact. They even found jars of preserved apples that were still edible!

Henry Ford was the first Industrial Giant to give his employees both Saturday and Sunday off in the hope of encouraging more leisurely use of automobiles and thus popularizing the concept of the "weekend."

Marion Stokes, a Philadelphia woman began taping whatever was on television in 1979 and didn’t stop until her death in 2012. The 71,000 VHS and Betamax tapes she made are the most complete collection preserving this era of TV. They are being digitized by the Internet Archive.

In the 1980s, an Indian man spent 72 hours in a glass cabin with 72 snakes, some of which were extremely venomous. His aim was to prove that snakes only attack when provoked. Remarkably, he was not bitten once in those 72 hours and even set a Guinness World Record in the process.

In 1985, after an 8.0 magnitude earthquake hit Mexico City, nearly all newborn babies survived a collapsed hospital. They are known as “Miracle Babies” for surviving 7 days without nourishment, water, warmth or human contact.

At the 1936 Summer Olympics, two Japanese pole vaulters named Sueo Oe and Shuhei Nishida tied for second, but they declined to compete against each other. As a result, Nishida was awarded the silver medal and Oe won a bronze medal. Upon returning to Japan, the athletes had their medals cut in half and spliced together to create new "friendship medals," which were half silver and half bronze.

Volcanic eruptions can devastate cities, change the world's atmosphere, and devastate economic systems. They can create molten lava rivers, mudslides, suffocating ash, and poisonous gases that cause chaos around the world for years. A volcanic explosion's effects can be massive, from its size to its death toll to its economic cost. Here is ten world’s most destructive and dangerous volcanic eruptions in history.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Quaker Oats and MIT conducted experiments on radioactive iron and calcium-containing cereal. The diet was part of a study to see if the nutrients in Quaker oatmeal traveled throughout the body. In January 1998, a $1.85 million settlement was reached for 30 victims who came forward.

During WW2, there was a special unit of men dubbed the ‘Ghost Army’. The unit was made of artists, creative and engineers and their job was to create deception about the enemy. From inflatable tanks to phony convoys to scripted conversations in bars intended to spread disinformation, they used all possible tricks to fool the enemy.

In 1919, J.D. McMahon convinced investors to fund a 480-foot skyscraper, but he labeled the plans as 480 inches, building a 40-foot structure instead. After taking $200,000, he won in court since the plans matched what he built.

A baboon worked as a signalman for the railroad in the late 1800s. He never made a mistake and worked for the railroad until the day he died.

The assassination of King Alexander of Yugoslavia marked a pivotal moment in the country's history. This article delves into the rise and reign of King Alexander, exploring his early life and ascension to the throne. It also examines the political and social climate in interwar Yugoslavia, setting the stage for the tensions and challenges that ultimately culminated in his tragic assassination. By understanding the context in which this event unfolded, we can better grasp the significance and impact it had on the nation and its future.

The inventor of shopping carts, Sylvan Goldman, had to hire several male and female models to push carts around in his store, demonstrate their utility, and explain their use to other customers, due to not catching on initially.

Archaeologists were shocked to discover that a series of camels carved into desert rock faces in north-western Saudi Arabia are actually prehistoric, dating from 7,000-8,000 years ago - before either the Pyramids of Giza or Stonehenge were built.

The ancient Egyptians used a pregnancy test that involved potentially pregnant women peeing on barley and wheat seeds. Plant growth indicated pregnancy: barley for a boy and wheat for a girl. Later tests revealed that pregnant women's urine causes plant growth 70% of the time, whereas non-pregnant women's urine does not.

For years, scientists didn’t know what caused mysterious cave networks in South America. In 2010, they learned that the caves were actually tunnels dug by ancient giant sloths

Between 1764 and 1767, a mysterious animal called the Beast of Gévaudan terrorized the French village called Gévaudan. It attacked and killed about 100 adults and children. While most believe it was a wolf, some say it may have been a wolf-dog hybrid, hyena or even a lion, but without any genetic evidence, the beast will remain a mystery forever.

The Eiffel Tower was intended to be a temporary structure for the World's Fair in 1889, but it was nearly dismantled and sold for scrap metal. It was saved because of its potential use as a radio antenna, and it now serves as a tourist attraction as well as a working broadcast tower.

In 1939, George Dantzig arrived late to his statistics class. On the board were two famous “unsolved” problems in statistics written as an example by his professor. Dantzig mistook the examples for homework assignments. He solved the “unsolved” problems and submitted the homework to his professor a few days later. His solutions earned him a doctorate.

When Nathan's Famous Hot Dogs first opened in 1916, the owner hired people to dress as doctors and eat hot dogs outside his shop, to convince people his hot dogs were healthy.

Nathan "Nearest" Green was an African-American head stiller who is now more frequently referred to as a master distiller. He was renowned for imparting his distilling knowledge to Jack Daniel, the creator of Jack Daniel's Tennessee whiskey distiller, after Jack Daniel was freed from slavery following the American Civil War.

American environmental activist Julia “Butterfly” Hill lived in a 1500-year-old California Redwood tree for 738 days to prevent it from being cut down by the Pacific Lumber Company. The Simpson’s episode “Lisa the Tree Hugger” was inspired by Hill’s story.

In China, Lotus shoes were used to bind women's feet to keep their feet small