Lisa A. Flowers lists at Ranker - the ultimate source for lists and rankings in all categories

Lisa A. Flowers - Lists at Ranker

Fantasy

Though the&nbsp;legendary Weird Tales has a reputation for being&nbsp;the premiere fantasy and horror&nbsp;magazine, it did have a predecessor that was just as darkly rich and full of macabre genius: the brilliant Der Orchideengarten&nbsp;(AKA The Orchid Garden). Hailing from the vibrant avant-garde heart of Weimar Republic-era Germany, Orchid was published from 1919-1921, and is now widely considered to be the world&#39;s first official supernatural fantasy magazine.&nbsp;

During its heyday, the publication played host to a dizzying number of <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/best-writers-of-all-time/ranker-books" target="_blank">famous authors</a>, including some who have written the <a href="https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-greatest-horror-books-of-all-time" target="_blank">best horror books</a> from history. Edgar Allan Poe,&nbsp;H. G. Wells, Voltaire, Guy de Maupassant, Apollinaire, Charles Dickens, and Nathaniel Hawthorne are just a few of the literary names whose work bloomed among its pages. It&#39;s perhaps most famous, however, for its fantastic illustrations which sprang from of the minds&nbsp;of&nbsp;Gustave Dore,&nbsp;Max Schenke, and ilk.

Thomas Negovan of the Century Guild Museum of Art&nbsp;in Los Angeles released&nbsp;an anthology which chronicles all of the magazine&#39;s most unforgettable offerings. The <a href="https://www.orchidgarden.store/" target="_blank">remastered edition&#39;s</a> official website describes Orchid&nbsp;as a vision that was born &quot;After the First World War when German art was at its height of decadence and debauchery.&quot; The site goes on to detail the series, &quot;[It] included a wide selection of new and reprinted stories by both German-language and foreign writers ranging from suspense and terror to crime and the eerily-erotic. The artworks range from peculiar medieval etchings to occult woodblocks to expressionist visions - all balancing the romantic and the gothic with hyper-elegant sophistication.&quot;

Read on to explore a plot or so of&nbsp;The Orchid Garden magazine&#39;s&nbsp;many carnivorous, night-blooming wonders.

Haunting Highlights From 'The Orchid Garden,' History's Very First Supernatural/Fantasy Magazine

General

Haunting Highlights From "The Orchid Garden," History's Very First Supernatural/Fantasy Magazine

Lisa A. Flowers

Film

To a cinephile, there&#39;s nothing more obsessively haunting than a lost film. And nothing more thrilling than the prospect&nbsp;of lost films discovered. Like the holy grail or some priceless archaeological relic, the re-emergence of said moving pictures are monumental events. And when&nbsp;lost films are found in unexpected places (if not downright bizarre ones), their legacy becomes even more compelling.&nbsp;

The past hundred years have yielded&nbsp;great rediscovered cinematic&nbsp;treasures. Take, for instance,&nbsp;Carl Theodor Dreyer&#39;s masterpiece The Passion of Joan of Arc, which&nbsp;was discovered, poetically enough, in the broom closet of a Norwegian psychiatric hospital. Or the lost print of Dario Argento&#39;s iconic Suspiria,&nbsp;discovered in 2017 in an old Italian cinema. Or Andy Warhol&#39;s&nbsp;Batman Dracula, which was found in someone else&#39;s documentary&nbsp;(yes, you read that correctly).

The canon of lost films that were found via various cosmic and miraculous ways is fascinating indeed.

Lost Films That Were Discovered In Bizarre Places

Fictional Characters

Caricatures in The New Yorker&nbsp;often derive their wit&nbsp;from flesh-and-blood targets, but real people also&nbsp;inspired&nbsp;<a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/list/best-cartoon-characters-on-tv/greg-hahn?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">classic cartoon characters</a>. From the vultures in The Jungle Book&nbsp;(based on John, Paul, George, and Ringo) to Ursula the Sea Witch (based on John Waters muse Divine), animation inspiration can often be traced to actual people.Some celebrities who inspired cartoon characters, such as&nbsp;Betty Boop&nbsp;muse Helen Kane,&nbsp;weren't&nbsp;happy with their depictions. Others,&nbsp;like The Little Mermaid&nbsp;inspiration Alyssa Milano, were delighted. But there's no doubt that animated icons are much more than whimsical figures invented for children.You'll be surprised to learn the real-life origins of your favorite cartoon characters,&nbsp;and how these drawings eventually took on&nbsp;lives and legends of their own.

Famous Cartoon Characters Whose Appearances Were Based On Real People

Fictional Character

11 Cartoon Characters Whose Appearances Were Based On Real People

Lists about the fascinating, often brutal customs and rituals about the legendary Norse seafarers.

A Viking's Life for Me

Ancient History

When most people hear &quot;Viking festival in Scotland,&quot; the associations are immediate: bonfires, mead, bagpipes, hardcore Pagan partying, and&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/viking-sex-lives-facts/lyra-radford&nbsp;" target="_blank">perhaps even public sex</a>&nbsp;or ebulliently bizarre&nbsp;<a href="http://http://www.ranker.com/list/norse-funeral-facts/richard-rowe" target="_blank">funeral rites</a>. (<a href="http://http://www.ranker.com/list/viking-wedding-traditions-and-rituals/lyra-radford&nbsp;" target="_blank">Or wedding rites</a>, for that matter).&nbsp;But what, specifically, is the Up Helly&nbsp;AA&nbsp;Festival? It's&nbsp;an ancient winter festival&nbsp;designed to usher in the end of the Yule season, and it's&nbsp;held annually in the&nbsp;Shetland Islands.According to Up Helly&nbsp;Aa's website,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/weird-viking-rituals/lyra-radford" target="_blank">the Viking ritual</a> involves&nbsp;all the usual merrymaking and imbibing, but culminates&nbsp;in:<blockquote> &quot;The world famous torchlit procession [that] typically consists of nearly one thousand guizers who carry their Torches through the town, following the Galley along the route towards its fiery end and Valhalla. The route is lined with spectators, who on a good night may number over five thousand strong, cheering at the guizers as they pass by.&quot;</blockquote>After the beautifully painted galley is marched through the streets, it is torched, burned to the ground – and then the partying begins.&nbsp;The tradition is <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/viking-religion-beliefs/lyra-radford&nbsp;" target="_blank">technically religious</a>, but nowadays, it mostly seems to be about the manifold joys of pyromania and carousing.What does the name 'Up Helly&nbsp;AA' mean?&nbsp;According to the <a href="https://www.worldcat.org/title/etymological-dictionary-of-the-scottish-language-in-which-the-words-are-explained-in-their-different-senses-authorized-by-the-names-of-the-writers-by-whom-they-are-used-or-the-titles-of-the-works-in-which-they-occur-and-deduced-from-their-originals/oclc/4363471" target="_blank">Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language</a>, the word &quot;up&quot;&nbsp;derives from the&nbsp;Old Norse&nbsp;word&nbsp;uppi, which is used to describe something coming to an end. &quot;Helly&quot; is a term for&nbsp;a festival or &quot;holy day,&quot;&nbsp;and &quot;a&quot; generally means&nbsp;&quot;all.&quot;To feast your eyes on a rowdy... and rousing... collection of Up Helly&nbsp;AA photos, read on.

A Look Inside Scotland's Massive Viking Festival That Happens Every Year

Pop Culture

Being a black market success doesn't mean eschewing advertising -&nbsp;it just means broadcasting&nbsp;your services&nbsp;in subtle&nbsp;and ingeniously unconventional&nbsp;ways. That, apparently, is&nbsp;why a lot of modern-day drug dealers have turned to business cards.Since the acid renaissance of the 1960s,&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/unique-business-cards/ashley-reign" target="_blank">unique business cards</a> (and <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/celebrity-business-cards/nathandavidson" target="_blank">celebrity business cards</a>)&nbsp;have been something of a cult sensation.&nbsp;&nbsp;However, instead of exuding professionalism, many drug dealer business cards in the 21st&nbsp;century are downright hilarious in&nbsp;their underground allusions and/or blatant crudity. You just have to know what you want, and what&nbsp;you're&nbsp;looking for.Check out the below cards, and vote up the most hilarious ones.&nbsp;

These Drug Dealer Business Cards Are Hilarious (And Probably Not Fooling Anyone)

Makeup Junkie

It's often been said that destruction is an act of creation, an Isis and Osiris-like dismembering&nbsp;for the sake of exalted resurrection; it turns out&nbsp;people apply&nbsp;the same philosophy to high-end cosmetics. Believe it or not, makeup destruction videos are a major thing,&nbsp;and they're evoking curiously strong reactions&nbsp;from viewers, ranging from almost fetishistic delight to incandescent&nbsp;rage. Even the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/makeup-destruction-trend/lisa-a-flowers" target="_blank">makeup products worth splurging on</a> suffer this terrible fate.The words &quot;destroying your makeup&quot; may conjure up images of pressed highlighters flying into pixie-dust or lipsticks being mashed into clown goo, but&nbsp;in fact&nbsp;there's a method behind the carnage: most of said cosmetics are simply being transmogrified into different forms and color combinations. Read on to to discover&nbsp;some very unusual space saving makeup techniques, and to find out why beauty bloggers destroying makeup are actually just inspired (and economically aware)&nbsp;cosmetologists dedicated to reinventing their chosen art form.&nbsp;

The Real Reason People Are Destroying Their Makeup Actually Makes A Lot Of Sense

People Are Cooking Their Makeup And We Have A Real Problem With It 

Interesting

Few counter-cultural&nbsp;figures are as iconic as Harvard professor&nbsp;turned&nbsp;psychedelic acid&nbsp;pioneer Timothy Leary. Credited with popularizing LSD in the mid 1960s, Leary... a writer, philosopher, psychologist, and scientist...&nbsp;would go on to spearhead&nbsp;an unprecedented&nbsp;odyssey of consciousness-expanding exploration. Timothy Leary and the Beatles, Timothy Leary and the Black Panthers, Timothy Leary the deep-space explorer... all were equally important manifestations of the same proverbially cosmic Self. And in the end, Leary's philosophies became the stuff not only of life imitating art, but of art going way past life and revolutionizing death itself.All that said,&nbsp;who&nbsp;was Timothy Leary, in the strictly linear and biographical sense? Read on for an overview. &nbsp;

The Harvard Professor Turned LSD Guru Who Escaped Prison And Became An International Fugitive

Timothy Leary Escaped Prison And Became An International Fugitive

Lists about actors and actresses and the characters they became, how they disappeared into roles, what they really look like, and more.

Doing What Actors Do

Performances

Method acting, which was born within the philosophy of the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.britannica.com/art/Stanislavsky-system" target="_blank">Stanislavski&nbsp;system </a>and popularized by the Strasberg Institute, has many famous adherents:&nbsp;from Marlon Brando to Marilyn Monroe. The past 40 years, though, have ushered in a rise of brilliant actors who took method acting way too far. While some of the <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/best-new-shows-with-good-acting/ranker-tv" target="_blank">best overall acting</a> can come from the practice, these stories will leave you wondering if it was really worth the risk.&nbsp;

&quot;Too&nbsp;far,&quot; of course, is a subjective term. For many, the insane commitment&nbsp;simply comes with the territory. But as is the case with almost any experiment, things can backfire. Heath Ledger -&nbsp;who may have actually sacrificed his life for his unforgettable turn&nbsp;as the Joker -&nbsp;tops&nbsp;the list of&nbsp;actors whose lives were destroyed by method acting. Or so the legend goes, anyway.

The business&nbsp;abounds with method acting consequences that were as extreme as they were short-lived. Consider Christian Bale, who almost starved himself to death for his role in The Machinist.&nbsp;Or Divine, who famously upstaged everyone by actually eating a piece of real dog sh*t for the sake of art.

While consuming dog sh*t may not be one of&nbsp;the worst manifestations of method acting, it&#39;s surely&nbsp;the most repulsive (even though Nicolas Cage did&nbsp;eat a live cockroach for Vampire&#39;s Kiss). But there&#39;s a lot&nbsp;more where that came from, so read on to inquire further -&nbsp;and vote up the actors who went above and beyond for their craft.&nbsp;

12 Times Method Acting Nearly Destroyed Actors' Lives

Actor

12 Times Method Acting Destroyed Actors' Lives

Lists about real life on the wild American frontier and fictionalized versions of the Old West.

Wild, Wild West

History

In the American push toward Manifest Destiny, the&nbsp;West represented – and continues to represent, for some –&nbsp;a&nbsp;perpetually vast, limitless, and epic&nbsp;adventure.&nbsp;And, though much of it has given way to gentrification, settlement,&nbsp;and &quot;progress&quot; over the years – blame the settlers and governmentally incentivized programs to <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/americans-nearly-hunted-bison-into-extinction/kellie-kreiss" target="_blank">exterminate the fauna (think buffalo)</a>&nbsp;and people there –&nbsp;it's still very much present&nbsp;in all its exhilarating glory.<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/real-life-old-west-real-wild-west-photos/jude-newsome&nbsp;" target="_blank">Photos of the Wild West</a>&nbsp;have a special grandeur. From the California gold rush to the plains of Texas to <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/creepy-old-west-photos/kellen-perry" target="_blank">harrowing gunfights</a>&nbsp;and saloon brawls,&nbsp;the natural wonders of the old West never cease. And to imagine what the land, in all its dazzling natural&nbsp;diversity, must have looked like when the first photographers&nbsp;initially&nbsp;set eyes on it is, in itself, an exercise in awe. Thankfully, some of those photographers captured what they saw on film.

20 Majestic Photos Of The American Wild West As Seen By The Outside World For The First Time

20 Majestic Photos Of The American Wild West

As long as men have been writing history, women have been clearing their own paths.

Herstory: Women of the Past

Exploring the thrilling, dangerous, often tragic expeditions of some of the world's most determined adventurers.

The Ends of the Earth

All western schoolchildren have&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-sacagawea/rylee_en " target="_blank">heard of Sacagawea</a>, and even more know the story of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-the-real-pocahontas/stephanroget" target="_blank">Pocahontas</a>&nbsp;either from class or the Disney movie. But who was the great &ndash;&nbsp;and comparatively&nbsp;unknown &ndash;&nbsp;Marie&nbsp;Dorion? No less than one of the most resilient, courageous, and frankly&nbsp;badass&nbsp;women in history. Dorion&nbsp;(1786 &ndash; 1850) was the daughter of a French Canadian father and a Native American&nbsp;mother. A seasoned survivalist, she would&nbsp;go on to become the&nbsp;only female member of John Jacob Astor&rsquo;s legendary Astoria expedition, whose goal was&nbsp;to establish the first trading post at the mouth of the Columbia.

Along with her&nbsp;husband, Pierre Dorion, and a band of trappers,&nbsp;Marie&nbsp;traversed mountains, plains, and raging rivers &ndash;&nbsp;all with her small children in tow. Stranded after her spouse and the other members of her party were killed and scalped, Marie and her two young sons set out against all odds across a glacial&nbsp;winter landscape. It was&nbsp;a <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/10-of-the-most-doomed-expeditions-in-history/analise.dubner" target="_blank">brutal journey</a>&nbsp;that has more than earned its place in the epic-odyssey canon.

Today, the story of Marie Dorion and the Astoria&nbsp;expedition, or the story&nbsp;of&nbsp;Marie Dorion and John Jacob Astor, is the stuff of towering and underappreciated history. Read on to find out more.

The Insane Untold Story Of The Most Badass Woman In American History

The Insane Untold Story Of The Most Badass Woman in American History

Lists that examine the unique, bizarre, and sometimes shocking ways that different worldwide cultures view and celebrate life and what comes next. 

Post-Mortem Rituals

Death

Dying before you've had a chance to be absolved of your sins is a huge predicament to find yourself in&nbsp;but, once you're dead, there's no going back (as far as most people are concerned, anyway). How, then, does a spirit go about acquiring&nbsp;a get-out-of-hell-free card?&nbsp;In 18th- and 19th-century Scotland and Wales, the doorway to deliverance came by way of Catholic &quot;sin-eaters.&quot; The term is as literal as it is&nbsp;figurative: sin-eaters were tasked with actually eating a meal off a corpse's chest. In&nbsp;doing so, they symbolically consumed&nbsp;the sins of the deceased - thereby taking&nbsp;them on themselves. However, rather than being seen as a selfless and heroic act, eating someone's sins was looked upon with horror, and the sin-eater was basically ostracized (at least until they were needed again) for being a rancid, crime-accumulating plague.To find out <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/tags/how-to?ref=internalCrossLinking_tag">how to</a> become a sin-eater (and/or to explore one of <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/weird-jobs-from-the-victorian-era/david-sharp" target="_blank">history's most fascinating&nbsp;and bizarre&nbsp;occupations</a>), read on.

Sin-Eaters Ate Meals Off Of Corpses' Chest To Symbolically Absolve The Dead Of Their Impure Deeds

"Sin-Eating," The English Tradition Of Eating A Meal Off A Corpse's Chest

Fascinating facts and interesting stories about organized crime: gangs, gangsters, mobsters, the mafia, and other criminals & crime syndicates all over the world.

Feels Good to Be a Gangster

Organized Crime

Who could forget that bit&nbsp;in 1990's&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/GoodFellas-Robert-Niro/dp/0790729725?&amp;tag=rankercom-20" target="_blank">Goodfellas</a>,&nbsp;when&nbsp;the boys cook&nbsp;a gourmet Italian meal in their swanky prison cell... complete with wine, artisan-grown tomatoes, and hand-peeled garlic? As it turns out, Al Capone's prison cell (that is, the Al Capone cell at Eastern State Penitentiary; the mobster&nbsp;was imprisoned several times) was almost as swanky.&nbsp;And it was certainly nicer than many of the tiny, bedbug-infested holes that are&nbsp;increasingly&nbsp;going for top dollar all over Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the like.What was Capone's jail cell like? Pictures of it feature luxurious oriental rugs, expensive antique armoires, exquisite lamps, and a decidedly hip decor – something&nbsp;akin to one of those novelty B&amp;Bs that are built into the side of a cave. After Capone was released from Eastern State after serving a six-month sentence, he spent time in the Atlanta U.S. Penitentiary, and then later in Alcatraz,&nbsp;where he rapidly <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/al-capone-syphilis-end-of-life/melissa-sartore" target="_blank">deteriorated&nbsp;due to the ravages of syphilis</a>.&nbsp;Nevertheless, for a while, America's most memorable mobster lived a more than charmed life – even while incarcerated.

Al Capone's Prison Cell Was Nicer Than A New York Studio Apartment

Lists about common mental illnesses and disorders and the many people around the world and throughout history who have lived with them.

A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Psychology

Mental illness through history often gets overwritten or overlooked... largely because it makes certain people&#39;s stories less tragic. (&quot;Organic&quot; catastrophe is always more poetic.)&nbsp;But many disturbed historical figures lived during times when&nbsp;only physical afflictions ever garnered&nbsp;any validity or research, leaving the mentally burdened to fend for themselves in the only ways they could.

Moreover,&nbsp;if mentally ill historical figures did receive&nbsp;treatment, it generally came in the form of <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/life-in-19th-century-mental-institutions-and-insane-asylums/christopher-myers" target="_blank">history&#39;s terrifying mental asylums</a>, those outdated horror chambers that surely exacerbated more problems than they ever solved. All in all, being mentally ill proved to be a double whammy against you: No one took your diagnosis seriously, and if they did, they imprisoned or electro-shocked&nbsp;you for it.

Many of the great artists and innovators of the world were also historical figures with crazy phobias - disorders&nbsp;that are&nbsp;largely absent from textbooks or biographies. Thankfully, the modern world generally shows&nbsp;more sympathy for&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/celebrities-who-suffer-from-anxiety/celebrity-lists" target="_blank">famous figures with anxiety</a> and other forms of mental illness. But victims of archaic medicine enjoyed no such privilege, and for that reason&nbsp;their afflictions&nbsp;(some of which&nbsp;undoubtedly contributed&nbsp;to the works that the world continues to appreciate today) deserve recognition.

Historical Figures Who Had Mental Illnesses or Crippling Phobias

Person

10 Historical Figures Who Had Mental Illnesses or Crippling Phobias

Though not as well known as other courageous young resistance fighters like Sophie Scholl, Freddie Oversteegen&nbsp;and her sister, Truus, were pivotal forces in the anti-SS&nbsp;movement&nbsp;and heroines of the Dutch Resistance during WWII. Through a combination of human passion and meticulous strategy, they succeeded in luring countless members of the SS&nbsp;to their ends&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;and they did their most important work as teenagers.&nbsp;

When Freddie and her sister were&nbsp;14 and 16 years old, respectively, a member of the resistance visited their&nbsp;family home to ask their mother (who was also involved in the movement) for her permission to let her daughters join the cause,&nbsp;and the rest is history. As <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/dp5a8y/teenager-nazi-armed-resistance-netherlands-876" target="_blank">Vice&nbsp;put it</a>, the Oversteegen sisters, along with their more famous colleague, Hannie&nbsp;Schaft, &quot;would flirt with German&nbsp;collaborators under false pretenses and then lead them into the woods, where instead of a make-out session, the men would be greeted with a bullet.&quot;

Read on to find out more about the Dutch&nbsp;Resistance&#39;s extraordinary anti-fascist youth movement, and&nbsp;about this extraordinary&nbsp;teenager&nbsp;who seduced and took down WWII German soldiers.&nbsp;

She Seduced Nazis And Led Them Into The Woods... Where Snipers Were Waiting To Kill Them

The Oversteegen Sisters and How They Led Nazis to Death by Seduction

Culture

Salvador&nbsp;Dal&iacute;&nbsp;and Alice In Wonderland go together like Beethoven and the sublime. So what could be&nbsp;better than a Dal&iacute; illustrated Alice in Wonderland? Only an IRL trip down the rabbit hole&nbsp;itself&nbsp;could possibly&nbsp;compare. The original Dal&iacute;/Lewis Carroll collaboration was published by NYC's Maecenas Press (a division of Random House) in 1969, and it subsequently went out of print and became a rare and sought-after collector's item. However, thanks to the delightful&nbsp;<a href="http://www.evertype.com/" target="_blank">Evertype</a> publishing, and the digitizing skills of New York's <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/2011/11/15/salvador-dali-alice-in-wonderland-1969/" target="_blank">William Bennett Gallery</a>, Dal&iacute;'s&nbsp;Alice in Wonderland illustrations are once again available for your viewing pleasure. Read on to explore an annotated gallery of seldom-seen, fabulously psychedelic&nbsp;Salvador&nbsp;Dal&iacute; illustrations that might just blow your mind. And to buy your very own copy of this magnificent piece of art, simply click <a href="https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691170029/braipick-20?&amp;tag=rankercom-20" target="_blank">here</a>.

The Rare Copy of Alice In Wonderland Illustrated By Salvador Dali Is Haunting And Beautiful

The Rare Copy of Alice In Wonderland Illustrated By Salvador Dali Is Haunting

1910s

When American Parcel Post services launched on January 1, 1913, citizens suddenly&nbsp;found themselves with a revelatory new way&nbsp;of getting objects from point A to point B. And back in those days, &quot;objects&quot; often meant parcels in the form of unlikely entities like live chickens, bizarre medical supplies (such as cadavers), and even flesh-and-blood tots&nbsp;themselves. Yes, children&nbsp;were sent through the mail.The history of mailing babies is whimsical rather than shocking, however: kids&nbsp;were always chaperoned to their destinations, not sealed up in&nbsp;boxes with breathing holes. In fact, most people&nbsp;thought of the process in terms of purely economical advantage: it was&nbsp;far cheaper to send one's&nbsp;child through the post than it was to buy him or her&nbsp;a train ticket-proper. Eventually, the <a href="http://http://www.ranker.com/list/baby-cages-worst-invention-ever/kellie-kreiss&nbsp;" target="_blank">practice was deemed inappropriate</a>, and it gradually fell out of fashion, but not before some folks took full advantage of posting their progeny.

Parents Used To Literally Mail Their Babies Because It Was Cheaper Than Public Transit

It may seem shocking, but throughout history, humans have been using their deceased in unconventional ways. Though it&#39;s no secret that bodies were once used&nbsp;in <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/facts-about-seventeenth-century-corpse-medicine/lisa-a-flowers" target="_blank">bizarre early medical practices</a>, not many know that there are quite a few&nbsp;modern products&nbsp;as well. Contemporary medical science has proven&nbsp;that body parts can have healing properties - like&nbsp;cadaver skin, which can be (and frequently is) used to treat burns and ulcers in the form of skin grafts. But as it turns out, the departed are still an active part of non-medical industries&nbsp;that go&nbsp;way beyond the mortuary world and the &quot;posthumous fame&quot; phenomenon.

Take, for instance, Eau de Death, the innovative perfume that&#39;s said to be partially distilled from corpse emissions. Or other macabre products like &quot;Occult Jam,&quot; made by London company Bompas&nbsp;&amp; Parr, which is an edible rumored to contain the flavor&nbsp;of the hair of the late Princess Diana.&nbsp;We&#39;ve hardly pried the lid off the coffin of commercial, medical, and artistic services&nbsp;the <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/12-people-who-were-found-living-with-dead-bodies/carly-kiel" target="_blank">dearly departed</a> can apparently provide.&nbsp;Read on to discover&nbsp;more about contemporary&nbsp;products you might wish you&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/surprise-dead-bodies/lyra-radford" target="_blank">never knew about</a>.

Human Corpses Are Being Used To Make Modern Products And People Are Actually Buying This Stuff

11 Bizarre Ways Corpses Are Being Used In Modern Products

Entertainment

Most diehard cinephiles love&nbsp;camp. Who doesn't have a soft spot for Beyond the Valley of the Dolls&nbsp;and co.? Less appreciated by the general public and legions of wannabe critics haunting the dark digital corners of the Internet&nbsp;are those serious movies that are unintentionally hilarious, be they farcically&nbsp;existentialist&nbsp;French movies (there's no shortage of those, just as there's no shortage of brilliant Gallic films)&nbsp;or pretentious movies that are&nbsp;hilarious in their pitch-black, angstily&nbsp;despairing humorlessness. (The end of the world ought to facilitate comedy, not render it superfluous).Movies that fall into this category have myriad&nbsp;incarnations, from&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/french-movies-about-how-america-sucks/lisa-a-flowers" target="_blank">over-the-top French gems</a>&nbsp;like Catherine Breillat's Anatomy of Hell to&nbsp;the likes of&nbsp;River's Edge, an ostensibly serious drama hijacked by the ludicrous performance of Crispin Glover.&nbsp;In any case, movies so bad they're fun&nbsp;are perpetual delights, and many have even come to be&nbsp;regarded as masterpieces. Several, in fact, have even&nbsp;been recipients of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/greatest-academy-award-winners-for-best-picture" target="_blank">Academy Awards</a>, despite how tragically awful they are.&nbsp;&nbsp;It's hard to say for certain why heavy films that are accidentally funny are often regarded as serious works of cinematic art. The answer requires a good amount of sociological legwork, but perhaps&nbsp;in the end, it comes down to nothing more than&nbsp;marketing. The right presentation/angle is calculated to put&nbsp;critics and audiences alike in a serious frame of mind, tricking them&nbsp;into taking&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/good-bad-movies/jacob-shelton" target="_blank">disasterpieces of accidental hilarity</a> seriously.&nbsp;

Serious Movies With Heavy Reputations That Are Accidentally Hilarious

16 Serious Movies That Are Accidentally Hilarious

Songs

What song do you want played at your funeral? It is, of course, an eternally subjective question, as different&nbsp;songs mean different things to different people. For every individual who associates Beethoven's 9th with those iconically disturbing scenes in&nbsp;A Clockwork Orange, there's someone else who connects the music&nbsp;with sheer joy. In other words, the question of what to play at a burial service&nbsp;is one that has a trillion neither right-nor-wrong answers.Nevertheless, there are some tried-and-true standbys out there. Songs like When The Saints go&nbsp;Marching In (as sung by Louis Armstrong) and Sinnerman (as sung by Nina Simone) seek to transform&nbsp;the sorrow of death&nbsp;into the ecstatic possibilities of the life (hopefully)&nbsp;to come.&nbsp;Then there's&nbsp;beautiful ballads&nbsp;like Beck's We Live Again,&nbsp;or&nbsp;electrifyingly rousing&nbsp;numbers like Nick Cave's Jubilee Street.By contrast, the world will always welcome&nbsp;heartbreakingly&nbsp;plaintive tribute-dirges&nbsp;like Tom Waits's&nbsp;Kentucky Avenue,&nbsp;or&nbsp;Radiohead's Videotape. Or&nbsp;darkly mystical songs like Johnny Cash's Ain't No Grave or The Doors'&nbsp;The End. Whatever your best funeral soundtracks might be comprised of, however, here's some songs to consider for a memorial – no <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/bodies-set-up-to-look-alive-at-funerals/elle-tharp" target="_blank">elaborate stagings</a> or fancy <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/history-of-coffins/lyra-radford" target="_blank">coffins</a> required.

What Song Do You Want Played At Your Funeral?

Song

20+ Songs You'd Totally Play At Your Funeral

Taking a closer look at the prim & priggish customs, beliefs, and practices unique to the Victorian era.

In the Time of Queen Victoria

The jaunty image of the Victorian child chimney sweep is indelibly romantic, evoking the picturesque London glamorized in&nbsp;Mary Poppins. But the truth is that chimney sweep kids – and children living in Dickensian squalor, in general – usually led lives that were &quot;nasty, brutish, and short,&quot; to quote the philosopher&nbsp;<a href="http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/254050.html" target="_blank">Thomas Hobbes</a>.The history of chimney sweeps is, in many ways, the history of London itself. After the Great Fire of London gutted half the city&nbsp;in 1666, chimneys were rebuilt to minimize the risk of inferno. Their new,&nbsp;narrow,&nbsp;winding structures&nbsp;meant that children&nbsp;were the only humans small enough to fit through them. The horrors of child labor were, of course,&nbsp;legion;&nbsp;and&nbsp;&nbsp;the repercussions were dire for these small workers: they often suffered stunted growth, damaged joints, and even &quot;Chimney Sweep's Cancer,&quot; which claimed countless livesIn other words, children chimney sweeps in Victorian England may seem&nbsp;whimsical, even today; but in reality, they represent a particularly dark chapter in the UK's past.

Children In Victorian England Were Sold Into Chimney Sweeping Slavery

Heartbreaking Photos of Victorian Children as Chimney Sweepers

World History

Egyptomania. It wasn't just an obsession with anthropology, as one might think, but, rather, part of a 19th-century craze that found its expression in everything from heavy Cleopatra eyeliner to elaborate headdresses to Victorian mummy unwrapping parties. The&nbsp;Victorians, you see, were a trifle death obsessed, and seriously into <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/odd-victorian-mourning-rituals/amandasedlakhevener" target="_blank">mourning rituals</a>.&nbsp;And, as&nbsp;their&nbsp;name suggests, mummy unwrapping parties were basically gatherings where&nbsp;corpses&nbsp;were de-bandaged&nbsp;amidst great cocktail consumption, afterlife enthusiasm, and merrymaking.If all this sounds like a gimmick, it wasn't: said mummies&nbsp;were real and imported, and it cost a pretty penny to get a front row seat at their unveilings. Despite the high price, however,&nbsp;no socially conscious person would be caught dead (get it?) at home on a Friday night when they could be seen alive at an unrolling. &nbsp;Read on to find out why ancient Egyptian mummies in Victorian England were the veritable&nbsp;life of the party, despite the fact that they'd been dead for centuries; and to learn why corpse unwrapping parties in Victorian England made their way from ceremonial&nbsp;tombs to gilded parlor rooms&nbsp;in the first place.

Rich People In Victorian England Would Get Drunk And Unwrap Corpses For Fun

People In Victorian England Unwrapped Ancient Egyptian Mummies For Fun

Though they weren&#39;t quite&nbsp;as wild as those crazy kids from the Weimar Republic, the&nbsp;habitu&eacute;s of Andy Warhol&#39;s Factory were no less memorable&nbsp;in their excesses. The 1960s&nbsp;New York City art scene was an era teeming&nbsp;with groundbreaking&nbsp;aesthetic&nbsp;and social&nbsp;movements, and as the decade developed into the&nbsp;equally taboo-shattering 1970s, Warhol&#39;s gathering place remained at the forefront of everything. (Even if&nbsp;it did have to change locations three times... no small feat, even in a pre-gentrified NYC that still had cheap spaces to offer artists).

Warhol may have&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/a-list-of-famous-andy-warhol-quotes/reference" target="_blank">famously&nbsp;declared</a>&nbsp;that everybody would be famous for fifteen minutes, and the digital age may have expanded that prediction into a 24/7 rotation of neverending&nbsp;exposure. Nevertheless, easy access is no substitute for the novelties of history, and these <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/true-stories-andy-warhol-life/erin-mccann" target="_blank">true stories of Andy Warhol</a> and The Factory remain as notorious as ever. Pull up a&nbsp;<a href="https://www.lomography.com/magazine/226508-the-factory-andy-warhols-studio-and-hip-hangout" target="_blank">silver&nbsp;tinfoil upholstered chair</a>&nbsp;and delve into art world&nbsp;debauchery&nbsp;and outrageous shenanigans that still have the power to make hair curl&nbsp;and squares hurl.

Andy Warhol's 'Factory' Was The Weirdest Place On Earth For Two Decades

The Most Batsh*t Insane Things From Andy Warhol's The Factory

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

People Trivia

Part of the morbid allure of mummies lies in their surreal out-of-time physicality. <a href="/list/ways-to-make-mummies/laura-allan" target="_blank">Mummies from around the world</a> offer people a glimpse into the literal,&nbsp;tangible past, bringing history&nbsp;to life in a way no written chronicle can. And when it comes to making ancient life seem real, few human relics can match the impact of the Mummy Juanita, AKA the Inca Ice Maiden.&nbsp;

In 1995, internationally-renowned anthropologist&nbsp;Johan Reinhard, along with his climbing companion, Miguel Z&aacute;rate, discovered the <a href="/list/whoa-ice-mummies/mallory-weiler" target="_blank">ice mummy</a> Juanita in the Andes. Uncannily well-preserved - even her organs and the contents of her stomach were intact - Juanita immediately captivated researchers. She&#39;s believed to have been an Inca child, <a href="/list/brutal-human-sacrifices/t-l-perez" target="_blank">sacrificed to appease the gods</a> around the year 1450. She was&nbsp;a mummy <a href="/list/mummies-found-in-real-life/mike-rothschild" target="_blank">long before she was found</a>. Nevertheless, if it hadn&#39;t been for the volcanic eruption that&nbsp;effectively dislodged her resting place, she might never have been discovered&nbsp;at all.&nbsp;

Today, Juanita has been relocated from her icy tomb. She sits on display at&nbsp;the&nbsp;Museum of Andean Sanctuaries in Arequipa, Peru, where&nbsp;she seems to greet visitors from across the centuries.

This Ancient Child Sacrifice Found Perfectly Preserved In Ice Is Fascinating

13 Facts About the Mummy Juanita, The Inca Ice Woman

Fun facts, fascinating trivia, and wild stories about some of your favorite ladies behind the microphone.

Let's Hear It for the Girls

Musician/Band Trivia

With her majestic three-octave vocal range and raw, brilliant lyrics, Amy Winehouse was a force of nature&nbsp;unto herself, and one of the <a href="http://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/20-greatest-singers" target="_blank">most gifted musicians&nbsp;of the 21st century</a>. Nevertheless, despite her abundant promise and&nbsp;charmed life,&nbsp;there are plenty of sad Amy Winehouse stories, the most tragic of all being her untimely demise. After the singer descended into hard drug use and bulimia, her life spiraled out of control quickly,&nbsp;and fame (not to mention a tumultuous relationship with her ex-husband) only exacerbated the problem.

Now, <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/amy-winehouse-documentary-review/jessica-bedewi" target="_blank">Amy Winehouse&#39;s tragic life</a> is the stuff of legend, but that&nbsp;still hasn&#39;t eclipsed the impact of her fantastic talent. Read on to find out exactly what went wrong with the life of one of the world&#39;s most dazzling singer/songwriters,&nbsp;whom Bob Dylan <a href="https://bobdylan.com/news/qa-with-bill-flanagan/" target="_blank">once called</a>&nbsp;&quot;the last real individualist around.&quot;

What Most People Don't Know About The Tragic Life Of Amy Winehouse

12 Tragic Facts About The Short Life Of Amy Winehouse

Lists of fun facts, fascinating trivia, and wild, charming, and even heartbreaking stories about some of the most famous actors of classic film you feel like you already know.

Gonna Make You a Star

Who was Grace Kelly? She was an extremely gifted, enigmatic, and versatile actress who&nbsp;embodied&nbsp;the feminine ideals of the 1950s&nbsp;– beauty, elegance, and sophistication – in ways few thespians&nbsp;could match; and an unconventional royal whose real-life fairytale enchanted her fans.&nbsp;Born into a prominent Philadelphia family, Kelly&nbsp;rebelled against her genteel upbringing and disapproving parents and pursued a life on the stage and screen. Her luminous beauty and talents soon caught the eye of Los Angeles executives, and of actor Gary Cooper. By the early 1950s, Kelly was starring in Alfred Hitchcock thrillers and garnering Oscar acclaim. Her fame led to another opportunity: meeting Prince Rainier of Monaco. Sparks evidently flew, and Kelly married him&nbsp;in a deal that involved an unusual and very <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/most-lavish-dowries-in-history/carly-silver" target="_blank">lavish dowry</a>.The star-turned-princess eventually died tragically in a car accident. But even though her life was brief, it&nbsp;was as fascinating and tumultuous as it was charmed. These facts about Grace Kelly's early years, wedding, and legacy&nbsp;just might change the image you have of America's most regal screen queen.

Fascinating Facts About Grace Kelly, The Movie Star Who Became A Princess

Fascinating Facts About Grace Kelly

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

Glitz and Glamour

Old Hollywood

The phrase&nbsp;&quot;golden age of cinema&quot; conjures up&nbsp;images of brooding leading men and glamorous Hollywood alpha females. But the era was also an outrageous time of Hollywood cougars and scandalous seductresses, <a class="edS-cl" href="https://www.ranker.com/crowdranked-list/the-most-beautiful-women-in-hollywood?ref=internalCrossLinking_keyword">female movie stars</a> who did what they wanted when they wanted, and were seemingly immune to the gossip their affairs stirred up.

That&#39;s not to say that cheating is always the classiest move. Some of the icons&nbsp;on this list, like Vivien Leigh and <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/old-hollywood-movies-where-the-stars-were-totally-hooking-up/david-sharp">Elizabeth Taylor</a> (and their male cohorts, of course)&nbsp;threw innocent third parties under the bus in shocking ways, by the standards of any era. But on the other end of the spectrum, there were fabulous figures like <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/jayne-mansfield-career-decline/erin-mccann" target="_blank">Jayne Mansfield</a> (who kept smitten Satanist Anton LaVey on romantic tenterhooks), Lupe V&eacute;lez (who deliberately courted scandal to prove a point about malevolent gossip) and Louise&nbsp;Brooks (who left Hollywood so that she could sleep around and drink gin in peace).&nbsp;

10 Awesome Old Hollywood Actresses Who Slept With Whoever They Felt Like

Alpha Females From The Golden Age Of Hollywood Who Cheated On Whomever They Wanted

Lists about those holy and virtuous mortals who suffered through life, but were rewarded with an eternity in Heaven.

The Life of a Saint

Most of us can agree that the concept&nbsp;of eternal life/dwelling forever in some species&nbsp;of&nbsp;paradise sounds&nbsp;appealing. However, not many people&nbsp;think of the physical body, itself, as everlasting - which is why the image&nbsp;of the &quot;incorruptible&quot; saint&nbsp;is so enduringly fascinating. For centuries, the Catholic church (and some Buddhist temples, as well) have housed&nbsp;the remains of icons who are supposedly immune to decomposition and decay as we know it. The preservation and display of these bodies represent&nbsp;a <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/weird-catholic-beliefs/lea-rose-emery " target="_blank">holy tradition</a>, even though incorruptibility is no longer considered a miracle by the Vatican.&nbsp;

&quot;Incorruptibility,&quot; itself, is an increasingly fluid term that can encapsulate any number of definitions.&nbsp;A corpse that&#39;s initially uncannily&nbsp;preserved can start to decay with time, <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/how-do-bodies-decompose/robert-f-mason" target="_blank">as bodies are wont to</a>; or only certain parts of the mortal remains (like a heart or an isolated hand or limb, for example) may&nbsp;be left intact. In any and all cases, a saint, once canonized, is always a saint, whether their mummified remains are reposing amid splendid settings or they&#39;re little more than a <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/preserved-saints-photos/melissa-sartore" target="_blank">bejeweled skeleton</a>. Read on to find out more.

11 Major Religious Figures Whose Corpses Allegedly Never Decayed

11 Saints And Holy People Whose Bodies Supposedly Never Decayed

The most bananas stories and insane 100% true tales about the lives and behind-the-music antics of your favorite rock stars and legendary bands.

Freakin' Rock Stars

Funky monks rejoice - your high priest has been anointed. Once a punk-junkie anonymously wandering the streets of Los Angeles, Anthony Kiedis&nbsp;is now <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/most-famous-rock-bands-right-now/ranker-music?ref=search" target="_blank">at least as famous</a>&nbsp;as &quot;mythic&quot; SoCal street poet&nbsp;Jim Morrison. While some&nbsp;extravagant details of his outlandish life are widely known, rock history, being the lurid mythos that it is, will always welcome dark&nbsp;stories and lurid facts about Anthony&nbsp;Kiedis. Many of these stories come straight from&nbsp;the Kiedis <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Scar-Tissue-Anthony-Kiedis/dp/1401307450" target="_blank">autobiography</a>&nbsp;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Scar-Tissue-Anthony-Kiedis/dp/1401307450/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1499812157&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=scar+tissue+anthony+kiedis?&amp;tag=rankercom2590486-20" target="_blank">Scar Tissue</a>,&nbsp;and many are way more over-the-top than you can imagine.&nbsp;

From his unorthodox, drug-infused Hollywood upbringing&nbsp;to his long battle with heroin and cocaine addiction to his famous onstage theatrics, Kiedis is rock &#39;n&#39; roll (or <a href="http://www.ranker.com/list/best-red-hot-chili-peppers-songs/voteable" target="_blank">funk &#39;n&#39; roll</a>, if you will) history personified. While the Red Hot Chili Peppers as a collective lay claim to one of the great, sordid canons in the annals of rock history, Kiedis&nbsp;merits individual examination for his truly depraved and outlandish antics.&nbsp;

Slap your bass. Get your friends on your aeroplane. There are souls to squeeze, kisses to suck, and higher grounds to be achieved. Strap yourself in to your sex magik rocket ship with a full supply of mother&#39;s milk, because it&#39;s time to travel all around the world and into a parallel universe, naked in the rain with the righteous and the wicked. Dig?

Totally Bizarre And Insane Stories About Red Hot Chili Peppers Frontman Anthony Kiedis

22 Insane Stories About Anthony Kiedis From His Autobiography

Lists about real-world demonic possessions that will having you saying, "What an excellent day for an exorcism!"

Kindly Undo These Straps

Pregnancy

Researching stories of satanic pregnancy, &nbsp;and locating women who truly believe that they&#39;ve carried Satan&#39;s spawn,&nbsp;is more difficult than it might seem. The world will always welcome kaleidoscope-eyed acolytes in peasant smocks and Manson-following concubines with swastikas carved into their foreheads, it&#39;s true, but <a href="https://www.ranker.com/list/signs-youre-carrying-the-devils-baby/jacob-shelton" target="_blank">bearers of the Antichrist</a> don&#39;t always get so lucky.

Some IRL&nbsp;<a href="http://www.ranker.com/review/rosemary_s-baby/1938712" target="_blank">Rosemary Woodhouses</a>&nbsp;hail from the colonial era&nbsp;when Satan was basically a household name. Some come from present-day tribes stuck seven centuries back in the time continuum, while others are just Goths in love with the smolderingly tormented glamour of the Dark Lord. But all claim to have, or have had, one thing in common: a womb that&#39;s played host to a cloven, mauling, fanged little bundle of joy.

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