A manuscript from Isfahan, Iran, was written by a soothsayer about astrology, magic, and demons. You might think the 56 illustrations that accompany it were from the medieval era, especially one that shows a demon riding an elephant that has no ears. But the watercolor images were added to the volume in 1921, ten or twenty years after the text was written. Plenty of these paintings, although not all of them, depict terrifying demons that come to bedevil humans, plucking out their teeth and poisoning their food. A common theme is that of a demon appearing to people as they sleep, like this monster who licks feet, while his tail sports another mouth and tongue. 

These definitely sprang from nightmares. Other beings sport multiple heads, human-animal mixes, and plenty of horns. Read more about the manuscript on demons and see a gallery of pictures at the Public Domain Review.  -via Messy Nessy Chic 

The Spanish band Broken Peach goes all out for Halloween, as we've seen in years before. This year's Halloween video havs them performing Metallica's "Enter Sandman" mixed with a bit of "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads. The music is good, but the presentation is superb. The costumes are not full body skeleton suits as they were in past years, but convey the idea well with makeup and chains that imply bare ribs. And check out those fingernails! They still have those well choreographed, jerky dance moves that we've come to expect. 

Broken Peach is much more than a cover band, as they've built a reputation for highly entertaining live shows in Spain and around Europe. And they do much more than just Halloween and Christmas songs, but those holiday offerings get them noticed around the world every year. If you enjoyed this, check out Broken Peach's Halloween playlist at Spotify. 

A couple of months ago, we posted some of the top images from the Wildlife Photographer of the Year contest. Wouldn't you know it, the photograph that won the contest wasn't even included in them! The contest winners have now been announced, and the top prize goes to Wim van den Heever for the image above, titled "Ghost Town Visitor." The Grand Title image is of a rare brown hyena framed against a building of an abandoned diamond mine in the ghost town of Kolmanskop, Namibia. The image also won in the category of Urban Wildlife. Below is the winner of the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year award.   



Winner Andrea Dominizi named this photo "After the Destruction." It shows a longhorn beetle witnessing the machinery destroying his habitat. This image also won in the 15-17-year-old category. You can see the winning photos in the different categories here. 

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition is held annually by the Natural History Museum in London, and the best of the 60,000 or so photos entered will be the subject of an exhibition opening Friday and running into July of next year. -via Damn Interesting 

(Image credit: M3COPT3R4)

With so many people taking digital photos with their phones all the time, there's going to be some that will surprise or confuse you. These guys in Romania are looking down on tiny little people, but there's no Photoshop at work here. I'll explain it, but you've got to stop reading here if you want to figure it out on your own. The "big guys" are standing on the bucket of a heavy construction vehicle, high above the street. The edge of the bucket lines up nicely with the street lines, so you might not see it right off. Sometimes you spot an illusion as it happens, and since you have a camera right there with you, you record it to share, like this building in Osaka.

(Image credit: Raxxla) 

It's a tower that extends through a hole in the sky! Or is it  a blue ceiling with a hole in it? No, the building has a metal rim jutting out from the top, so shiny that it reflects the rest of the building. You can see it better in this picture. These are just a couple of illusions in a list of 50 of them at Bored Panda that might take you some time to figure out, but you'll be glad you saw them.   

Look at the size of this pumpkin on the banks of the Colorado River! It's not a garden pumpkin, though, it's made of mineral deposits. This is Pumpkin Spring, named for the obvious reason. The pumpkin is the result of a warm mineral spring that deposited limestone as it met the river, creating a natural pool. The water churns inside and then spills over the top, leaving orange streaks down the outside, giving it an autumn harvest color. 

Inside, Pumpkin Spring is more like a witch's cauldron than a gourd. The warm water contains all kinds of dissolved metals, including a high concentration of arsenic. Yes, people swim in it, although it is not recommended, and it is forbidden to drink the water. It is the most poisonous water in the Grand Canyon. Pumpkin Spring is not that easy to get to, anyway. There are no trails, but if you're boating down the river, you'll find it at mile 212.9. See more of Pumpkin Spring at Atlas Obscura, where it is today's "place of the day." 

(Image credit: Nate Loper) 

Here's something you probably didn't know about bats: the common vampire bat has a natural knife sharpener in its mouth to keep its teeth sharp enough to pierce skin. Cool, huh? Vampire bats are the only mammals that can live solely off the blood of their victims (insects are another story), and they have developed adaptations that make them really good at it, like saliva with anticoagulants in it. It might have rabies virus in it, too, but that doesn't help or bother the bat at all.

The good news is that vampire bats only take a small amount of blood relative to the size of the victim, which is usually livestock, and they learn to do it without being noticed. That's all fine and good until your pig comes down with rabies. And it's all the more reason to make sure your window screens are in good shape if you live in vampire bat territory. Vampire bats are scary enough without having to look at them up close, so this TED-Ed lesson animates these bats as much cuter than they actually are.   

Yesterday marked the 959th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, which was the decisive battle of the Norman invasion of England. William the Bastard earned the sobriquet William the Conqueror when he defeated and killed King Harold Godwinson at Hastings.

The Norman yoke then fell upon the people of England. From a certain point of view, Harold Godwinson was the last legitimate King of England.

Internet rumor tells us that, every year, on the anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, the Hastings Observer prints a notice of memorial to him.

-via the patriotic Frenchman Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry:

The Anglo will never forgive the Frenchman for teaching his ancestors how to speak civilized, not eat with his hands, use a toilet, etc. https://t.co/JSaEJiJ03n

— Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry (@pegobry_en) October 14, 2025

The Netty is quite small--just two rooms. But those rooms are luxurious and comfortable. This is what you would expect from an underground Victoria Era public toilet in the UK.

According to The Independent, the restroom in central Oxford was built in 1895 and closed in 2008. Up to two guests can stay in each of the two suites. You can see floor plans and photos here. Although there is no room service, there are restaurants on both sides of the street. Tourists have immediate access to the Ashmolean Museum of art and archaeology literally a few yards away.

-via Oddity Central

Sobibor was a Nazi death camp that operated in Poland beginning in 1942. It was a relatively small camp, because the Jewish people who were brought in by train were immediately killed. The only permanent inmates were a few hundred workers who had skills necessary to run the camp, like carpentry or cooking. Then in the fall of 1943, the Nazis planned to close Sobibor and turn it into a munitions facility. The workers knew that they, too, would be executed instead of transferred. The standard procedure at death camps was to leave no witnesses. 

Yet 58 people survived their time at Sobibor. They had nothing left to lose, so they staged an uprising on October 14, 1943. The plan was put into place after Alexander Pechersky arrived at Sobibor. He was a captured Red Army soldier who had hidden his Jewish heritage from his captors for a year. He was the first actual Allied soldier the inmates of Sobibor had met, and they looked to him for leadership. Some of the camp's German guards or other employees were recruited for the effort, but among the prisoners, few knew what the exact plan was. When prisoners started killing SS officers on the 14th, it caused chaos all through the camp. Around 365 prisoners made an escape attempt, but most were shot. Another 100 or so were caught outside. All the remaining camp inmates were executed. But 58 people made their way to safety, and served as witnesses to the horrors of Sobibor. Read their story at Smithsonian. 

(Image credit: Azymut (Rafał M. Socha) -image cropped) 

Joy is a young woman trying online dating in hopes of finding someone she's compatible with. But she's really Sofia, a much older woman who is using Joy as her cover. Sofia isn't evil, she's just lonely and desperate. For her part, Joy isn't exactly perfect, either. The short JOY by director Steve Oen is a recent offering from DUST. It's partially in English, partially in Dutch, but there are captions. Contains NSFW language. 

However, you should know that JOY was made during the 48 Hour Film Project Amsterdam in 2019. It was written, shot, and edited in only 48 hours, a "weekend of adrenaline, caffeine, and creativity." The prompts in that competition (to make sure every entry was new) were a character named Frits or Freija who is a cartoonist, the line "blind birds do not fly far," and perfume as a prop. JOY won Best Film in that competition, and went to place third in the global 48-hour film competition the next year. -via Geeks Are Sexy     

Very wealthy people come in all flavors, but studies show that on average, they tend to be more selfish than the general population. That seems obvious, but it's only a part of what newer studies show. They also tend to be less empathetic, more aggressive, and more likely to break rules. In other words, they tend to display "dark traits": psychopathy, narcissism and machiavellianism. 

However, this presents a chicken-or-the-egg problem. Is there something about wealth that turns people toward those dark traits, or are people who already have those traits more likely to accumulate great wealth? It could very well be both. Studies show that people who have trouble connecting with others chase money as a substitute, but when that still doesn't provide satisfaction, they become more determined to fill the void with more wealth and power. 

This doesn't apply to all rich people (and wealth is relative), but we all know that there are benevolent ways to become less wealthy and more connected to others. Read about the psychology of the very rich at the Conversation.  -via Damn Interesting

We don't know what her name used to be, but Bella Bellarda was adopted three times. The first two placements didn't work out because Bella was super nervous and didn't always use a litter box properly. Her third placement was with a young man who has infinite patience with her and a commitment to making her feel loved. In return, she showers him with affection. Bella also bonded with his friend who looks just like him except he wears glasses. The friend with glasses moved in, and the roommate became Bella's "godfather," so there is always someone to record Bella on video. I swear there are two guys- I saw them together in one video.   

This video doesn't tell you, but Bella has applied for a Guinness World Record in the cat long jump. The current record is 213.36 centimeters (7 feet). Bella often jumps 240 to 260 centimeters! See her long jump at Instagram, or just bookmark her page to keep up with Bella and her guys.  -via Laughing Squid

While European alchemists were looking to manufacture gold, Chinese alchemists were looking for an elixir of life. What they development instead was gunpowder. The possibilities were endless! First they made flaming arrows with gunpowder, but the development of the bomb came soon afterward during the Song dynasty, who had plenty of wars to fight. The first deployment of bombs, made of gunpowder stuffed into bamboo with ceramic shards added as shrapnel, was in the 11th century.  

Over time, bombs became more deadly, as gunpowder was later packed into ceramic casings (shown above), and then iron shells, first deployed in 1221, which tore apart on detonation and became far-flung shrapnel that could pierce iron armor. These "heaven-shaking thunder bombs" could be heard exploding thirty miles away, and were used during the Song dynasty's 45-year war against the Mongols. Read about the development of the first bombs, and the terror and destruction they created in wartime, at Amusing Planet. 

(Image credit: 震天動地) 

The keyboard? How quaint.

Personally, I'd rather go old school with this peripheral device inspired by rotary phones. Even the backspace key on the Gboard has been replaced with a rotating indicator!

Google's Japan division offers this innovative design. You can download the 3D files and firmware here and make your own. Everything rotates, including the users in the video promoting the product. Google is convinced that everything can rotate and should be rotated for maximum efficiency.

I'm 90% sure this is a joke but 100% sure it is an awesome development that could be useful under unusual or extreme conditions.

-via The Awesomer

McDonald's made a name for itself by making fast food really fast, as in, come in, get your 15 cent hamburgers, and walk out. Since all they sold was hamburgers and cheeseburgers (and drinks and fries), they always had them hot and ready to go. Even after they expanded their menu, it was all about hamburgers. But then the Chicken McNugget was introduced in 1981, and they sold like hotcakes, until entire generations of children were raised on them. Not only that, preparing and serving McNuggets at the point of sale was faster and easier than hamburgers, considering all the "manufaturing" was done elsewhere ahead of time. 

McDonald's has experimented with chicken for more than 50 years now, because chicken is much more profitable than beef. Other fast food outlets found out how good chicken was for sales, too, sparking an actual trade war. Weird History Food takes us through the history of McDonald's and chicken.