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David Sharp - Lists at Ranker

Are you the "horror person" on your virtual trivia team? Meet your new secret weapon: lists about everything even you don't know about movies scarier than the sound of a child's laughter in a cemetery after dark.

Horror Buff Stuff

Film Trivia

It&#39;s a director&#39;s job to get the best performances possible&nbsp;out of their actors.&nbsp;So maybe&nbsp;it&#39;s not shocking that egomaniacal auteurs with their name on the line will go to some pretty insane lengths to get the most out of their performers. But&nbsp;when the film you&#39;re directing is a horror movie, and the look that you&#39;re trying to capture is sheer terror, it can be a dangerous combination of conditions that often crosses over into flat-out illegality and tragedy.

Directors have filmed in terrifying locations;&nbsp;they&#39;ve broken their actors down psychologically; and they&#39;ve put their cast and&nbsp;crew in genuine risk&nbsp;- all for the sake of selling a few more tickets. For some actors, however, the director isn&#39;t the (only)&nbsp;problem. Veteran actors who&#39;ve survived some of the creepiest horror&nbsp;sets possible can attest to that fact. Whether it&#39;s nearly drowning on a set with a very demanding James Cameron barking orders at you or making it through the night in a haunted hotel, casts and crews on horror movies have lived through some pretty terrifying on-set situations.

13 Horror Movie Sets As Terrifying As The Films Themselves

Film

David Sharp

History

Queen Victoria ruled England from 1837 to 1876, presiding over an era of unprecedented technological and social change, as well as an era of unrelenting horrors and human cruelty.Sure, your hipsters and your steampunks&nbsp;may love <a href="http://www.thisvictorianlife.com/">cribbing Victorian&nbsp;style,</a> choosing to remember the pennyfarthings&nbsp;and top hats that look so fun on a&nbsp;Pinterest page,&nbsp;but let's face it:&nbsp;in those days if you weren't&nbsp;a member&nbsp;of the aristocracy, your life was probably unremittingly awful from start to all-too-brief finish. Disease, filth, and poverty were the norm, with people turning to&nbsp;whatever means of support that they could find -&nbsp;even if those means ended up being&nbsp;totally nasty. Victorian occupations usually tended to involve doing something that no human should have to do, for unreasonable hours, until it killed&nbsp;you.&nbsp;Everyone likes to think that they'd be&nbsp;in the landed gentry, but let's face it, there were&nbsp;a lot fewer Mr. Darcys&nbsp;out there than&nbsp;Oliver Twists, and those orphans didn't end up saved in the end. They mostly just ended up in a coal mine somewhere. But those musical numbers wouldn't be quite as fun. Here then is a list of just a few of the weird jobs in the Victorian era that you could have had, just to help you&nbsp;better appreciate the times you live in today.

Craziest Victorian-Era Occupations

General

Unspeakable Times

The September 11&nbsp;attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon left America reeling, its citizens&nbsp;searching for answers. The lengths to which authorities went for retribution&nbsp;in the wake of the&nbsp;national tragedy&nbsp;didn't matter to many Americans, who felt no cost was too high to bring the attackers, and any like them, to justice,&nbsp;even if it meant overstepping legal&nbsp;and moral bounds. Enter Guantanamo Bay detention camp (GTMO).&nbsp;The Joint Task Force's&nbsp;hastily erected prison at&nbsp;the Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, became a living symbol for America's War on Terror. Hundreds of suspects - guilty and not guilty alike - were rounded up, sent to this new prison operating in a legal gray area, and&nbsp;interrogated&nbsp;using methods both sanctioned and not.The GTMO stories that emerged during the Bush presidency&nbsp;are harrowing.&nbsp;The United Nations, International Red Cross, and numerous news outlets, including New York Times and BBC, have condemned&nbsp;the tactics used on GTMO prisoners&nbsp;as torture.&nbsp;Some pundits have even called&nbsp;for George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld to face trial as war criminals.Since before he took office, Barak Obama&nbsp;called&nbsp;for closing Guantanamo Bay. During his time in office he has made numerous attempts to shutter&nbsp;the prison once and for all, but as of this writing, the prison remains open. Read on to learn all about the harrowing history of GTMO prison.&nbsp;

What Really Happens at Guantanamo Bay, from Waterboarding to Pizza Hut

What Really Goes On Inside Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp

Looking closer at the fascinating early days in old Hollywood and ranking the top films of the golden age of cinema.

Glitz and Glamour

Interesting

The taps flowed a bit more freely in the halcyon days of Hollywood - before all the drunken accidents, before Errol Flynn got the Warner Bros. studio lot bar shut down, and before people realized&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/what-is-alcoholism-like/david-sharp" target="_blank">all the terrible things</a>&nbsp;alcohol could do to their bodies and lives.

The Golden Age of Hollywood ran from the 1920s through the 1950s, when the studio system&nbsp;finally collapsed under its own weight (and <a href="https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-s-supreme-court-decides-paramount-antitrust-case" target="_blank">antitrust laws</a>). During that glamorous and often&nbsp;inebriated&nbsp;time, the studios&#39;&nbsp;contract players&nbsp;were given free rein to do basically whatever they wanted - as long as it could be quietly swept under the rug by a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/the-real-life-ray-donovans-fixers-behind-tinseltowns-dark-secrets-8707532.html">studio fixer</a>. The old actors drank a lot&nbsp;at swanky parties every night,&nbsp;they drank when they were on set, and they drank when they&nbsp;drove.

Our standards for alcoholism have shifted over the years, and many folks that contemporary society&nbsp;would&nbsp;deem&nbsp;alcoholics&nbsp;would just have be seen as fun in eras past.&nbsp;There are, however,&nbsp;some true superstars that stand out even&nbsp;amongst the pantheon of Old Hollywood drunks. This article recounts the hedonistic lives those Golden Era stars lived and serves as a cautionary tale for all those who wish to avoid similar fates.

18 Old Hollywood Stars Who Liked To Drink

Person

Old Hollywood Stars Who Liked To Drink

Celebrity Couples

The seemingly limitless ingenuity of the human mind has allowed people to go to the moon, touch the bottom of the ocean, cure diseases, and spread celebrity gossip like the plague. Yet the societal obsession with celebrity is hardly a new phenomenon, and neither is the desire to know every intimate, trivial facet about&nbsp;the love lives of stars. In fact, the tabloids and newspapers of yesteryear were chock full of details about&nbsp;old Hollywood actors who hooked up during filming.&nbsp;

Mostly, you&nbsp;weigh the significance of actor-on-actor romances&nbsp;by&nbsp;how hot the two are on screen. Who cares about the inevitable&nbsp;break-up?&nbsp;They don&#39;t put that on film (<a href="http://www.elle.com/culture/celebrities/g28627/10-celebrity-couples-who-broke-up-while-on-the-job/?slide=1">usually</a>). When you&nbsp;go to the pictures,&nbsp;you wanna see scenes of&nbsp;beautiful people in love. The studio&nbsp;sets of Hollywood&#39;s Golden Age were&nbsp;just as depraved&nbsp;as today&#39;s,&nbsp;if not more&nbsp;so, and everyone was getting in on it. Studio heads tried to manipulate relationships, news agencies sent headlines around the world. Even the Vatican had something to say about the romance between <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/list/liz-taylor-and-richard-burton-love-affair/ddefrank?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton</a>. &nbsp;

Read on to learn about&nbsp;old Hollywood movies where the stars were having sex, and to pick up some juicy tabloid tales of yesteryear to impress your friends with old Hollywood stories of stars hooking up.&nbsp;

14 Old Hollywood Movies Where the Stars Totally Hooked Up IRL

Old Hollywood Movies Where the Stars Were Totally Hooking Up

Lists about trends and fads that all the cool kids are doing around the world and throughout history.

Everybody's Doing It

In the&nbsp;space between the two World Wars, America -&nbsp;and in particular its young people -&nbsp;got into some pretty weird stuff.&nbsp;Let's face it;&nbsp;teenagers, what with their partially formed frontal lobes and massive chemical imbalances,&nbsp;have always found bizarre and unique ways to set themselves apart from their parents' generation.&nbsp;The&nbsp;decades from 1920 to&nbsp;1950, however,&nbsp;were full of historically unique moments that elicited&nbsp;some&nbsp;equally unique teenage crazes.The post-war boom of the 1920s was accompanied by the cultural sea change of Prohibition.&nbsp;The poverty and low employment&nbsp;of the Depression meant Americans had too much free&nbsp;time but no money to do anything with it. Then, just as the country was stabilizing economically, it found itself&nbsp;plunged into&nbsp;global conflict yet again.&nbsp;This forced&nbsp;a whole new&nbsp;round of sacrifices and hardships onto the American people&nbsp;while simultaneously inspiring in them some very odd leisure&nbsp;time activities.While the teen fads of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s often seem totally goofy or&nbsp;absurdly random, they shared common&nbsp;roots in tough times and&nbsp;hardship. When things are going badly, we find ways to cope. When things finally get better, we find ways to celebrate. The methods used by&nbsp;our fun-seeking forefathers&nbsp;may not always make sense to people decades in the future, but&nbsp;hey, it probably didn't make sense to lots of people then, too.You should also&nbsp;remember:&nbsp;that&nbsp;fun, trendy stuff&nbsp;you're into today will probably&nbsp;seem pretty weird to the people of tomorrow&nbsp;(Pokemon Go and hipster 'staches, I'm looking at you). Throughout the eras, human beings have&nbsp;been&nbsp;tenacious in both&nbsp;their quest for novel entertainment and their ridicule&nbsp;of their forefathers, so in that spirit, here&nbsp;are some of the trends, rages, and very weird places that our persistent&nbsp;hatred of boredom has taken us.

15 Popular American Fads from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s

15 Popular American Teen Fads from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s

A look at the long road through love, discrimination, visibility, propaganda, activism, acceptance, and hope in the LGBTQ community around the world and throughout history.

LGBTQ+ History

LGBTQ+

With all the progress&nbsp;the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.hrc.org/" target="_blank">LGBTQ+ civil rights</a> movement has made in <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/26/politics/supreme-court-same-sex-marriage-ruling/" target="_blank">recent years</a>, many&nbsp;see acceptance as the way of the future&nbsp;and&nbsp;homophobia as a marker of the past.&nbsp;The problem with this is that it paints&nbsp;all historical people with the same intolerant brush. While it&#39;s true&nbsp;queer people through the course of history have been marginalized and oppressed in many cultures,&nbsp;there were&nbsp;many&nbsp;places and times in history when being gay was celebrated, or at least understood as a normal part of life.

The recorded history of homosexuality&nbsp;is rather short;&nbsp;the binary of &quot;straight&quot; and &quot;gay&quot; is a&nbsp;newly recorded and talked about&nbsp;concept, globally speaking,&nbsp;and before the introduction of intolerant religious moral codes, most pre-colonial&nbsp;societies had more fluid concepts of gender&nbsp;roles.&nbsp;As long as there have been humans, there have&nbsp;been same-gender relationships;&nbsp;some societies have just been better about embracing that than others. Here&#39;s a quick lesson on homosexuality throughout history.

All the Periods in History When Homosexuality Was Celebrated &amp; Embraced

All the Periods in History When Homosexuality Was Celebrated

Lists about the effects of heavy drinking and people who live with addiction to alcohol.

Drinking Problems

Lists about famous addicts, the effects of substance reliance, the science of habit-forming, and more.

Dependency & Recovery

Graveyard Shift

While a glass of wine with dinner or a few beers on game day may seem harmless, alcohol abuse, alcohol dependency, and binge drinking can all have serious effects on the human body. Research consistently shows how <a href="https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohols-effects-body" target="_blank">excessive drinking</a> over prolonged periods of time can affect essentially every part of the body, including&nbsp;skin, hair, and even sexual performance.

There are also mental health consequences,&nbsp;such as increased depression and decreased brain function. In the most serious cases, <a href="https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-best-cocktails-ever-mixed" target="_blank">drinking</a> can lead to diabetes, liver disease, and even cancer.

Below, we&#39;ll examine some of the most common ways alcohol can negatively impact the human body.

Here Are Some Of The Negative Effects Alcohol Can Have On The Human Body

Here's What Can Happen To The Body Of An Alcoholic

In Soviet Russia

City 40, or what is today known as <a href="https://www.news.com.au/travel/world-travel/europe/the-city-russia-is-hiding-from-the-world/news-story/cb87c4024bac14222787538baf86a590" target="_blank">Ozersk,</a> is a closed city&nbsp;in Russia&nbsp;that the Soviet Union created during the Cold War. City 40 didn&#39;t appear on any maps until 1991, allowed no outsiders to enter, and&nbsp;for a long time, no insiders were&nbsp;allowed out.&nbsp;It wasn&#39;t until very recently that the Western world has even become aware of Ozersk,&nbsp;and it took a brave <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2721744/" target="_blank">documentary crew</a> sneaking cameras through the heavily guarded gates for any footage of the city to escape.

That footage shows&nbsp;Ozersk as the heart of the Russian nuclear program and its residents as the people charged with keeping that heart beating. The denizens of the cloistered city&nbsp;were&nbsp;treated to&nbsp;luxuries that the rest of the country was denied&nbsp;but also exposed to dangers that others were not.&nbsp;While there is (and will always be) much that outsiders will never know about what happens inside those gates, here is what we do know about the surreal, dangerous,&nbsp;closed-off world of City 40.

Everything To Know About City 40, The Secret Town Where Russia Began Its Nuclear Program

Everything to Know About City 40, the Secret Town Where Russia Built Nukes

Egypt

Most of us in the&nbsp;present paint&nbsp;ancient people as&nbsp;prudish compared to modern standards.&nbsp;Well not so fast &mdash;&nbsp;many historical cultures experimented with pleasure&nbsp;boldly, just like us. In fact, there are plenty of ancient Egyptian pleasure&nbsp;toys, but these days, the&nbsp;ancient Egyptians are famous for three things:&nbsp;the pyramids, mummy curses, and <a href="https://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/a18728057/history-of-birth-control/" target="_blank">crocodile dung birth control</a>.

Many&nbsp;ancient Egyptian pleasure&nbsp;artifacts have been lost to history due to the prudishness of the explorers who&nbsp;discovered them. Victorian-era&nbsp;archaeologists&nbsp;likely didn&#39;t feel that it was right to expose the populace to this view of ancient society &mdash;&nbsp;but today,&nbsp;modern archeologists are much less afraid to get dirty and exhibit all of Egypt&#39;s dirty&nbsp;secrets. These are some pleasure&nbsp;toys ancient Egyptians used to get it on.

Strange Things Ancient Egyptians Actually Used for Sexual Pleasure

Are you engaging in the physical act of love or thinking about doing the deed? Or are you the product of mating or a human being alive in the modern world? If so, read these lists immediately. Your life depends on it.

Carnal Knowledge

Science

Let&#39;s face it, the very act of sex is weird. And gross. And the reason you exist. And <a href="http://thenextweb.com/hard-core-high-tech/2016/08/30/porn-pioneers-adult-entertainment-boosts-technology/#gref">the driving force</a> behind the world&#39;s technology.&nbsp;Human beings have developed some <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/23/sexual-fetish_n_4144418.html">very strange habits</a>, and it&#39;s easy to look at something like, say, nasolingusts&nbsp;(nose lickers)&nbsp;and&nbsp;wonder, simply: why? But the science behind bedroom practices is actually fascinating.

The oft-repeated&nbsp;&quot;<a href="https://www.dictionary.com/e/slang/rules-of-the-internet/" target="_blank">Rule 34</a>&quot; states that for every action there is an equal and opposite adult version of that somewhere on the internet. If that&#39;s so, then Rule 35 states that for every quirk and preference, there is also a team of scientists studying that exact quirk in a lab.

We&#39;ve come a long way since the days of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Kinsey">Alfred Kinsey</a> and this article&nbsp;looks at all the best guesses about what&#39;s happening down there&nbsp;from top biologists, psychologists, sociologists, and...ahem...&quot;professionals.&quot; After examining the science of getting it on, it turns out our practices may not be so strange after all. There&#39;s generally&nbsp;a very reasonable scientific rationale behind why you like what you like.&nbsp;

The Scientific Reasoning Behind Our Strange Sex Practices

Lists about life for soldiers and civilians alike during the Second Great War, which raged around the world from 1939-1945.

WWII

Germany

When Hitler&nbsp;was defeated by the Allies in WWII, he left behind almost no post-conflict&nbsp;plans. It had been tantamount to treason under&nbsp;the Third Reich to even mention the possibility of defeat, and by the end, practically every single resource available had been poured into the WWII&nbsp;effort. What remained&nbsp;after Germany's surrender was a grieving populace&nbsp;mourning the loss of <a href="http://www.nationalww2museum.org/learn/education/for-students/ww2-history/ww2-by-the-numbers/world-wide-deaths.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/" target="_blank">millions</a>&nbsp;of their people&nbsp;and a&nbsp;countryside that had been shelled, razed, and trampled by tanks and troops for years.&nbsp;In a <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=9jngDQAAQBAJ&amp;pg=PA13&amp;lpg=PA13&amp;dq=%22%27Displaced+Persons%E2%80%99+were+roaming+about+the+country,+often+looting+as+they+went.+Transportation+and+communication+services+had+ceased+to+function.+Agriculture+and+industry+were+largely+at+a+standstill.+Food+was+scarce+and+there+was+a+serious+risk+of+famine+and+disease+during+the+coming+months.+And+to+crown+it+all+there+was+no+central+government+in+being,+and+the+machinery+whereby+a+central+government+could+function+no+longer+existed.%22&amp;source=bl&amp;ots=Ui5X5PWMNS&amp;sig=ACfU3U0yp-yKohPicVbdJfwWYNdz9NDrPQ&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;ved=2ahUKEwiPqoKyvbvkAhVShq0KHYcDDe0Q6AEwC3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&amp;q=%22'Displaced%20Persons%E2%80%99%20were%20roaming%20about%20the%20country%2C%20often%20looting%20as%20they%20went.%20Transportation%20and%20communication%20services%20had%20ceased%20to%20function.%20Agriculture%20and%20industry%20were%20largely%20at%20a%20standstill.%20Food%20was%20scarce%20and%20there%20was%20a%20serious%20risk%20of%20famine%20and%20disease%20during%20the%20coming%20months.%20And%20to%20crown%20it%20all%20there%20was%20no%20central%20government%20in%20being%2C%20and%20the%20machinery%20whereby%20a%20central%20government%20could%20function%20no%20longer%20existed.%22&amp;f=false" target="_blank">speech on May 8</a>, 1945,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bernard-Law-Montgomery-1st-Viscount-Montgomery" target="_blank">British Field Marshal&nbsp;Bernard Montgomery</a> described the situation that Germany faced:<blockquote> &quot;Displaced Persons&quot;&nbsp;were roaming about the country, often looting as they went. Transportation and communication services had ceased to function. Agriculture and industry were largely at a standstill. Food was scarce and there was a serious risk of famine and disease during the coming months. And to crown it all there was no central government in being, and the machinery whereby a central government could function no longer existed.</blockquote>Life in post-WWII&nbsp;Germany was very, very difficult for a very long time, and the country's rise out of that brutal era has its own word in the German language. They call it the&nbsp;&quot;Wirtschaftswunder,&quot;&nbsp;which translates to the &quot;<a href="http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/GermanEconomicMiracle.html" target="_blank">economic miracle</a>.&quot; Their situation after WWII was so dire that nothing short of a miracle - and the back-breaking efforts of the Allies and the <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/dismantling-the-german-myth-of-tr%C3%BCmmerfrauen/a-18083725" target="_blank">hardy Berliners</a> themselves - could have saved the country. It was also one of the most unprecedented&nbsp;situations in world history; no countries&nbsp;have been through anything quite like Germany after World War 2. Here are some of the unique,&nbsp;harsh, and&nbsp;ultimately&nbsp;triumphant realities of what life in Germany after WWII was like.

14 Harsh Realities Of Life In Germany After WWII

What Germany Was Like Right After WWII

People have been living all around the world for literally thousands of years. Here are some of the most interesting things human beings have ever done (that we know about).

Fascinating Ancient History

Culture

The history of the medical profession is a history of trials and errors. As doctors, researchers, and barbers have searched for cures for&nbsp;various maladies, they&#39;ve tried some unique ancient health practices in the name of science, with many of these &quot;cures&quot; leading to a host of health problems of their own.

The reason the Hippocratic Oath exists is, in part, to help&nbsp;protect patients from overzealous doctors who think their wildly experimental &quot;cure&quot; is the best treatment, regardless of how bad it may be for the patient. But before the words of Hippocrates were widely known, some things ancient people did for their health violated ethical standards, on staggering levels.

Looking over this list of misguided&nbsp;and just plain absurd ancient health customs&nbsp;does make&nbsp;you wonder what procedures we use today that future generations will be&nbsp;horrified by.

13 lists