10 Bam! Pow! Facts About Robin

While Batman is the one grabbing the headlines, he has had two steadfast allies for over seven decades: angst and Robin, the Boy Wonder. Robin, in turn, has enough surprises about his character to fill a bat cave.

Featured photo credit: DC

10The Second Robin Began As A Carbon Copy Of The First

Photo credit: DC

When DC used its “Crisis on Infinite Earths” storyline to compress its confusing jumble of multiple dimensions, it got a chance to reinvigorate older stories that were lacking in originality. One of these stories was the origin of the second Robin, Jason Todd.
The first Robin, Dick Grayson, was a circus acrobat who became an orphan when his parents died using equipment damaged by a mobster. Before “Crisis,” Jason Todd was also a circus acrobat whose parents are killed, albeit by Killer Croc. As with Grayson before him, Bruce Wayne ends up taking the orphaned boy as his ward.
After “Crisis,” Batman meets Jason Todd as an audacious orphan on the streets trying to steal tires from the Batmobile. He places Todd in a school for troubled kids, but when the young man helps expose the school as a front for crime, Batman recruits him as a new crime fighter.

9One Robin Is Actually Batman’s Son

Photo credit: DC

The different Robins have had different relationships with Batman over the years. They have been wards and adopted children, but only one of them has the distinction of being Batman’s biological son.
Damian was the product of a sexual encounter between Batman and Talia Al Ghul, daughter of Batman nemesis Ra’s Al Ghul. While she remembers it as a romantic encounter in the desert (a callback to an old 1987 story named Son of the Demon), Batman remembers being drugged and raped by Talia. Either way, the bat-seed is strong, and with Wayne’s DNA—along with a high-tech lab and a team of scientists—she produces Damian Wayne.
Damian was noticeably rough around the edges by the time he actually met Batman. He had the fighting abilities and deductive acumen provided by Talia’s League of Assassins but lacked the morality instilled by role models like Thomas and Martha Wayne and Alfred. However, Batman helps to redeem the sarcastic sociopath into a hero who helps to save both Gotham and the world.

8Robin Once Brought Back A Zombie Batman

Photo credit: DC

On a long enough timeline, almost all heroes will go through an experience of death and rebirth. Back in the ’90s, Superman died fighting Doomsday, while Batman only had his back broken by Bane. A decade and a half later, though, Batman has a seemingly more fatal experience when he tries to kill Darkseid and is fried by the dark god’s eyebeams. All that remains is a crispy skeleton. Assuming Batman to be dead, Dick Grayson takes up the mantle of the Bat.
Afterward, Grayson comes up with an idea. Batman’s dead, but they regularly fight Ra’s Al Ghul, who dies and comes back to life through mystical chambers called Lazarus pits. Why not throw the Batman skeleton in there and see what happens?
In a world of comic book logic, this is an almost perfect plan. Unfortunately, Darkseid was using his own comic book logic. He zapped Batman with a beam intended to send him through time and ultimately turn him into a universe-killing bullet. The skeleton is actually the remains of some damaged Batman clones Darkseid had lying around.
The Lazarus pit brings back a mindless zombie that tries to kill both Damian Wayne and Alfred. Not exactly the Boy Wonder’s best moment.

7He Is Sometimes A She

Photo credit: DC

The four Robins of the New 52 DC Comics continuity (Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, and Damian Wayne) have all been men. However, outside of that continuity, there have been female Robins.
The most famous of these would be Carrie Kelley, the young woman who becomes Robin to help the aging Dark Knight in Frank Miller’s legendary Dark Knight Returns comic. In the less critically beloved follow-up The Dark Knight Strikes Back, Kelley has apparently moved on to other role models and calls herself “Catgirl.”
In the pre–New 52 continuity, a woman named Stephanie Brown served first as the heroic Spoiler, helping Batman and Robin before taking up Robin’s mantle after Tim Drake temporarily quit. Finally, early signs indicate that the first Robin in the consolidated Justice League universe of DC’s films may be a woman, ushering in a new era for girls into the former fraternity of boy Robins.

6The Center Of The First Batman Scandal

Photo credit: DC

Jokes about Batman and Robin secretly being gay lovers have been around for six decades. They largely started with Dr. Frederic Wertham’s 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent. The book cited Robin’s appearance (the bottom half of the original Robin outfit was basically green underwear). It further cited the living arrangement of Bruce Wayne and “ward” Dick Grayson—two male dudes living happily together—which, to a bigot in the ’40s and ’50s, was one of the scariest sights imaginable.
The age discrepancy between the characters also contributed to his fears. Werthham believed that Batman comics encouraged older men (particularly those with money) to cruise for adolescent lovers. Ironically, these regressive attitudes toward homosexuality inadvertently helped make Batman more progressive in another way. The first Batwoman was introduced as a love interest for Batman, and the first Batgirl as a love interest for Robin, paving the way for some later female icons of DC comics.

5Robin Came Back To Life As A Killer Vigilante

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The death of Jason Todd’s Robin was a traumatic moment for Batman, and he carried that guilt for many years. During the memorable “Hush” storyline, Batman’s writers teased the return of Todd’s character. However, it turned out to be only one of Clayface’s disguises, designed to disorient Batman.
Later, however, via the magic of reality-warping punches from an evil Superman, Jason did return. He came back with a very specific agenda: murderous justice for the criminals of Gotham City. Jason used Batman’s training and mixed it with a newfound willingness to kill criminals instead of simply imprisoning them. He fueled his rampage with rage over Batman sparing the Joker rather than avenging Jason’s original death.
Jason’s identity since his return has been in flux. At times, he seems an irredeemable villain willing to kill innocent lives. In more recent comics he is the antihero leader of a super team known as “The Outsiders.” The one constant is that his mask is a Red Hood, an homage to one of Joker’s possible earlier identities and a constant reminder of his own original death at the Joker’s hands.

4He Nearly Kills Green Lantern

Photo credit: DC

For years, there was one name synonymous with Batman’s renewed popularity, and that was Frank Miller. Before he penned the gritty Elseworlds tale The Dark Knight Returns—about an aging Bruce Wayne leaving retirement to save his city—many people still associated Batman with the campy Adam West TV show. Miller’s tale put Batman back on the pop culture map as a gritty, violent noir hero with a potent psychological edge.
So when DC Comics announced that Miller would be penning All-Star Batman and Robin—the counterpart to the wildly successful All-Star Superman—fans were excited . . . until they read it, that is. The new comics were full of bizarre logic and lines such as, “Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I’m the goddamn Batman.”
Into this universe, Miller introduces a meeting between Batman, Robin, and Green Lantern at a pre-arranged location. Batman has painted everything in the room yellow, including himself and Robin. Yellow is Green Lantern’s weakness, which helps Robin steal his power ring and give him a flying triple kick, crushing his windpipe.
Thanks to some quick combat surgery, Batman and Robin save the man they almost murdered, but it’s still weird to think a superhero with one of the most powerful weapons in the universe was nearly killed by a 12-year-old in short shorts.

3He Protects Gotham From Its Own Apocalypse

Photo credit: DC

With comics possessing so many alternate universes and tales of what might have happened differently, they offer many glimpses of characters’ futures—futures that may or may not come to pass due to changes in writing teams, editorial decisions, and so on. One of the weirdest possible futures presented in the comics for former Robin Damian Wayne is that he fails to save his father and becomes the Batman of a much grittier and dystopian future.
This future overlaps the world of the old Batman Beyond cartoon in many ways, with Damian often at odds with Commissioner Barbara Gordon and even saving the life of Batman Beyond character Terry McGinnis. Damian’s Batman has supernatural healing abilities and is implied by the comic to have made a deal with the actual devil. With this ability and his trademark ruthlessness, the former Robin saves the entire city from its own specialized apocalypse: a plague of Joker gas.

2He Romances Aliens

Photo credit: DC

When it comes to love interests for Robin, many people primarily think of Batgirl. Or, like Dr. Wertham, they may think of Bruce Wayne. However, one interesting romance for two of the Robins is the alien-turned–Teen Titan Starfire.
The romance starts when she decides to learn English through the most direct means: kissing Robin right on his mouth. Their relationship is solid as he transitions from being Robin to becoming Nightwing, but it falls apart after she is forced to make a political marriage to help keep the peace on an alien planet. They reconcile in time for the former Boy Wonder to propose, but a wacky intervention from the villain Trigon keeps them from being wed, and the relationship finally ends.
More bizarre is her characterization in the New 52 universe. Now, she’s a sexed-up alien who seduces seemingly every man she encounters, including Red Hood Jason Todd. She’s also sleeping with Roy Harper, meaning that she has the unique distinction of sex with two Robins, along with possibly the quickest record of any hero managing to have sex with literally the entire rest of their team.

1The Robin Turnover Rate Is Insane

Photo credit: DC

For years, the idea of disposable sidekicks for Batman has been a running joke. Frank Miller probably didn’t help, as he revealed in The Dark Knight Returns that Batman deliberately used a bright yellow icon on his suit to encourage villains to shoot at his most well-defended spot. This makes a lot of sense for a man dressed like a giant Bat, but it has some disturbing implications for dressing his sidekicks in that same bullet-attracting shade of yellow.
However, more than potential death has made the Robin turnover rate insane. Instead, that force is DC Comics.
DC’s New 52 changes were, in part, an attempt to bring in newer, younger readers by compressing the timelines of these heroes’ stories and making them younger. Thus, instead of the usual 10–15 years of fighting crime under their utility belts, most of the Justice League members have only been fighting crime for about five years. Thanks to the popularity of both the comic and his A-list writers, almost all of Batman’s major storylines have been maintained. However, this leads to some logistics problems: Batman has taken in, trained, and lost four Robins in a span of five years. During this time, he was also still lost for a year in thanks to Darkseid, and also had his back broken by Bane.
Depending on readers’ tastes, this either makes less sense than ever (condensing 70 years of Robin into five years of continuity) or is more realistic than ever. How long can a teen boy jump in front of gun-wielding thugs wearing bright colors, all while working for an ultra-violent control freak, and not either get murdered or quit in frustration?

10 Weird Animal Sex Habits

Animals have sex. And as diverse as the animal kingdom is, their sexual habits are bound to reflect just how different they truly are from one another. You have to imagine a furry mammal with opposable thumbs would reproduce by a means vastly different from an ungrippable cephalopod. And what one might call a “pleasure of the the flesh,” another might literally call a pain in the neck. Here are ten of the weirdest sexual behaviors–at least according to us humans anyway–that can be found right here in the animal kingdom.

10

Bonobo

Man may truly have its closest common ancestor in this ape, as it thinks of nothing but sex. After all, everything it does is draped in a hyper-sexual overcoat: they use sex to greet each other, resolve conflict (i.e make-up sex), and as bargaining chips to trade for food. They engage sexually in many of the ways us humans do (e.g. mutual masturbation, oral sex, French kissing) and some we do not (sometimes they fence with their penises, like phallic swashbucklers). And as a result of this sexually-saturated kind of culture, they are an incredibly peaceful species, although they may enjoy the occasional cock spar.

9

Frigatebird

This bird is a romantic at heart. And throat. Just take a look at their mating call: they inflate their throats into a bright red, heart-shaped balloon, like some kind of self-contained Hallmark greeting. Meanwhile, the female seeks out the biggest and brightest balloon, the owner of which earns her. And then while the two go at it, the male will shield her eyes with his wings so she won’t be tempted to run off with some better balloon-owner. This sort of jealousy and and competitiveness is incredibly human-like, only instead of balloons, it’s expensive cars, spiky hair and spray-tans.

8

Honey Bee

Sex is not pleasant for the honey bee. In fact, it is a veritable Kamikaze mission; when the virgin queen bee is sexually mature (after having been fed a kind of nutritious goo by her servants) she will hand-pick a dozen or so bees from the hundreds to serve as her suitor. And here’s where it gets unpleasant: while mating, the male’s genitals will explode inside of her, securing his paternity, himself literally lodged inside of her, as he is effectively killed in the process. The term “getting lucky” holds no meaning here.

7

Straw Itch Mite

These miniature arachnids are sexual barbarians, ultimately depraved beings. At least they would be if they were human. As they are, their iniquities are too microscopic to be consequential; after the males are born–and after they’ve stung and sucked the bodily fluids out of their mothers–they are already sexually mature… and DTF. Anything they see basically (which includes their newborn sisters). Mites have no concept of incest, but if they were human, [insert joke about the Southern U.S. here].

6

Pandas

Panda porn exists. And it is often seminal to a panda couple’s sex life, and their species as a whole. As pandas are endangered, their procreation in captivity is essential for their species to repopulate. And as they often show little interest in sex without any kind of prior stimulation, panda porn was necessarily implemented in a research facility in China, which has shown great success. Which begs the question: are there also panda pizza boys and repairmen?

5

Hyena

A male hyena having sex with a female hyena is a bit like putting a gun in a perfectly-formed holster; the females are equipped with a sort of “anti-penis” that can erect at will–which is actually just an enlarged clitoris. The task of the male is then to sort of occupy this outer-penis. And then out of this penis, the female eventually gives birth. Ouch! Weird! Gross! But true.

4

Red-Sided Garter Snake

These snakes have what Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi would call “Bunga Bunga Parties.” They indeed involve a disproportionate number of males literally piling upon a single female in a pheromone-soaked snake pit. The pheromones released by the female snake are actually what draw the snakes, each armed with a dual-penis which clamors to secure the female. More curious still, there are transgender snakes who also release pheromones, claiming a pile of snakes for themselves. This is attributed to a possible desire for body heat and protection.

3

Dolphin

The male dolphin is one randy bastard. It’ll essentially hump-back anything it can get its fins on, including inanimate objects and sea turtles. Furthermore, the dolphin’s swivelly penis is actually capable of gripping things, making it a sort of exploratory apparatus. It can be said, then, with absolute certainty that a dolphin is truly guided by its penis. Although, they make terrible lovers (it only takes 12 seconds for them to release).

2

Clownfish

The clownfish can switch genders readily. And that is without invasive surgery; here’s why: there are three ranks of clownfish, ranked according to size from largest to smallest–the female, the breeding male, and the non-breeding male. When the female dies or is captured, the breeding male up and switches sex, as the non-breeding males are promoted to the rank of breeding male. So perhaps we can assume the clownfish is named such because, like a clown, it too sometimes wears the makeup in the relationship.

1

Snail

Do not get on a snail’s bad side (or its good side for that matter), it is armed and dangerous. The weapon: a sharp-tipped sperm dart (which is deployed from the backs of their eyes, where they keep their genitals). Snails are in fact hermaphrodites who don’t auto-impregnate. Instead they seek a sexual partner–also armed with this sort of dart-gun–and engage in dangerous eye sex as if it were some sort of shoot-out, dodging bullets and also seeking to fill the other’s uterus with a calcified, mucous-covered spike. For those who find the missionary position underwhelming, at least there’s no risk of losing an eye in the process.

10 Birds You Really Ought To Avoid

Birds are often associated with a sense of peacefulness; they are the first thing you hear on a sunny day when you wake up in the morning, or when you go for a pleasant stroll through the park. But they can also be cruel, hellbent bastards, leaving a careless path of death and destruction in their wake. While they may be capable of all kinds of monstrosities, they are a sort of affirmation that we do live in a world that has a tendency to chew you up and spit you out in the game of good, Darwinian sport. Here are ten birds you’re better off avoiding.

10

Seagull

You might think that the worst a seagull could do is fly away with you lunch, or crap on your parade, but these beach dwellers have a dark side lurking just beneath their feathers. And you will see it if you stumble upon their nest. Seagulls, if they feel their chicks are in any way being endangered, will strike with a vengeance and peck your brains out (or do the next best thing anyway).

9

Velociraptor

Yes, they are long past existing, along with the rest of the dinosaurs. But it’s worth clarifying that – contrary to Jurassic Park-fueled popular belief – velociraptors were in fact feathered-and-taloned birds and not the scaly overgrown lizards you might have thought they were. That being said, they were were more fierce than any existing bird we have today. They were incredibly smart, hunted in packs (according to one theory), and had stiletto-sharp talons that could easily slash the throats of their prey (which were usually dinosaurs, not so much field mice and fish).

8

Falcon

A so-called bird of prey, these birds’ jobs are to pounce on small rodents and fish and pierce their flesh via incredibly sharp talons. (They can also tear into spinal cords with their uniquely-shaped beaks.) They are hunting machines, equipped with traits that aid in their self-sustenance, like feathery Swiss Army knives. While they can be trained to hunt in favor of humans (“falconry”), they still possess the potential to inflict serious harm, even at a young age.

7

Blue-Capped Ifrita

While this bird eats nothing bigger than an insect, it is armed with an acquired self-defense mechanism that keeps it from being messed with in any serious way. Dieting on a certain type of beetle that produces batrachotoxins similar to the poison dart frog, handling the bird with bare hands can result in numbness and toxins. Who would’ve thought such a pretty bird could be so hazardous to your health?

6

Little Shrikethrush

This bird, like the former, is armed with the same lethal toxin common amongst Poison Dart Frogs. The Little Shrikethrush can be found in tropical and sub-tropical forests of Indonesia, Australia, and Papua New Guinea. The bird is olive colored and often well-camouflaged in the trees, but it does emit a particular musical sound, which makes it like a Siren of sorts, although not so carnage-intent.

5

Pitohui

This was the first of the three known toxic birds to be discovered to carry a lethal poison within its skin and feathers. Papua New Guineans call the bird a “rubbish bird” as it is inedible. Almost. If desperation strikes (as if there was nothing else in the vicinity that could be eaten), the bird could be eaten if the feathers and skin were removed and the skin roasted in charcoal. But your best bet is to just make a note in your bird-watcher’s field guide that this animal is off limits for snacking.

4

Eagle

The danger of this bird lies in its potential for harm. It sports the kind of beak and talons and eyesight that make it such a vicious predator in the wild. It can fly and carry four-pound objects. And it is voracious enough to eat a pound of fish in four minutes. These birds are master huntsman and potent symbol of power, so much so that it serves as the coat of arms and official seal of countless nations (U.S. included).

3

Vulture

These Jim Hensonian birds are as ugly as they are sinister. Often equated to a grim reaper-type presence, looming over corpses and taking advantage of untimely deaths, they are largely scavengers, picking apart the flesh of the dead and decaying, although they can speed up the process of one already en route to their final destination. They are equipped with exceptionally acidic stomachs that can endure kinds of bacteria, viruses, and anthrax which most other living creatures can’t (also, their urine is a powerful anti-bacterial which can kill any of the kinds of unsanitary filth they regularly trudge through).

2

Ostrich

These birds are the biggest birds in the world – they can reach heights of 9 feet and weights up to 350 pounds – and are kind of unpredictable. They can run at speeds of 30 MPH for up to 10 miles straight, and have legs that can kick a hyena to its death. Not only that, but it also has sharp claws. If it weren’t for their goofy faces and sheepish tendencies (the whole putting their heads in holes in the ground thing), you’d swear these things were just oblong monsters.

1

Cassowary

This bird is considered to be the most dangerous bird in the world, with a criminal record deserving (in the human kingdom anyway) of outright capital punishment. Common to New Guinea (do not go there for the birds!), this bird has a 5 inch-long dagger-like claw attached to its second claw that can kill a man (and has before!). Their legs are ridiculously powerful, can kick humans (and dogs) with violent force, and can run at speeds up to 31 MPH. During WWII, American and Australian troops in New Guinea were warned to steer clear of them. So then should you, unarmed and un-armored.

10 Recently Discovered Animals With Amazing Features

Nearly 200 species of plants and animals become extinct on an average day. At the same time, thousands of new species turn up every year, each with seemingly more spectacular features than the last.

Featured image credit: Christian Lukhaup

10 Psychedelic Sea Slug

Photo credit: The Daily Conversation via YouTube

These faceless beings look like something out of an alien movie. With their fingerlike protrusions and electric, rosy-blue markings, they pulse with a rare beauty.
Phyllodesmium acanthorhinum, a newly discovered kind of sea slug, is only 2.5 centimeters (1 in) long and proud to show off its bright red, blue, and yellow coloring. Specimens have been located in the waters around Okinawa, various other islands, and the Great Barrier Reef.
Scientists have hailed this creature as a missing link between coral-eating sea slugs and those that dine on hydroids, which are microscopic organisms. But these eye-popping beauties aren’t the only gastropods that boast spectacular characteristics.
Although discovered some years earlier, sacoglossans possess a superpower of their own. With the ability to steal energy from the Sun, these solar-powered creatures may prove that slugs deserve more love despite their slime and facelessness.

9 Colorful Crayfish

Ordinary crayfish never wear colors quite as pretty as these colorful crayfish. Imagine walking through your average pet store and suddenly finding one of these beauties staring back at you through the glass.
That’s exactly what happened to German researcher Christian Lukhaup. Even though these mysterious crustaceans have been sold since 2000, no one had bothered to research them. Lukhaup traced their origins to Indonesia.
Generally, crayfish have life spans of about 40 years. These omnivores feed on rotting wood, carcasses, leaves, and insects. The adult crustaceans have no natural predators, but the juveniles must constantly avoid fish and platypuses.
These colorful crayfish—given the scientific name Cherax pulcher—are certainly blessed with good looks, but they are also plagued by bad luck. Their lives in the wild are threatened by the pet trade, habitat loss, locals hunting them for food, and all the other burdens that plague most wild animals.

8 Ninja Lanternshark

With a name as cool as “ninja lanternshark,” you’d expect the animal to be just as interesting. But you may not expect them to be slightly terrifying, too. With their bulging pale eyes and gaping teeth, these black sharks look like something out of a horror movie.
Don’t worry, though. At about 46 centimeters (18 in) long, ninja lanternsharks are much smaller than great white sharks. You’re unlikely to bump into them when you swim because they were found 300 meters (1,000 ft) underwater off the coast of Central America.
Lanternsharks are deep-sea dwellers with glowing organs called photophores that compensate for their jet-black undersea habitat. The ninja lanternshark—a new species scientifically known as Etmopterus benchleyi—got its common name from its shadowy ninja appearance that lacked most of the glowing jack-o’-lantern organs of other lanternsharks.

7 World’s Smallest Snail

Photo credit: Schilthuizen

The world’s new smallest snail has a shell diameter of a mere 0.7 millimeters, dwarfing the previous trophy winner, Angustopila dominikae. These miniature beasts, called Acmella nana, are located on the island of Borneo in Malaysia and require a microscope to be seen in the wild.
These snails can help scientists to better understand how isolated species evolve in one place. They get stuck in one habitat because they move so slowly. There, they have enough time to grow undisturbed from the rest of the world.
Although they inhabit three places on the island, their delicate limestone caves are extremely easy to destroy. “A blazing forest fire at Loloposon Cave could wipe out the entire population,” explained researcher Menno Schilthuizen in an interview with LiveScience.
Quarrying the limestone hills in the area could also completely ruin the homes of these record-breaking snails as well as 47 other newly discovered species.

6 Long-Lost Whale

Although Omura’s whale wasn’t discovered recently, it deserves some recognition because it was caught on film for the first time in late 2015. Like a cryptid of the sea, Omura’s whale was mysterious and almost unknown except for some corpses that had washed up on beaches and a few specimens caught during Japanese whaling expeditions.
Until late 2015, no living specimens had ever been found. Omura’s whales are so elusive that we don’t know how many exist. Only 25 have been cataloged so far. A team of scientists led by Salvatore Cerchio of the New England Aquarium and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have successfully completed field observations of this marine mammal off the coast of Madagascar.
This species has often been confused with Bryde’s whale. But Omura’s whales are unique because they have smaller dorsal fins and one-of-a-kind markings on their lower jaws.
Although little is known about these creatures, researchers agree that they are tropical and probably don’t migrate beyond the western Indian Ocean. Scientists hope to study more about their population density, vocalizations, and behavior.

5 Glow-In-The-Dark Turtle

The hawksbill sea turtle dwells in the tropical waters of the Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans. It is probably the most critically endangered turtle species in the world. As you would expect, these sea turtles swim, eat sponges, and have beautiful shells.
Yet at least one sea turtle decided that it was tired of being an average hawksbill. A team of diving scientists in the Solomon Islands found and filmed the world’s first biofluorescent reptile.
This hawksbill sea turtle really does glow in the dark. The scientists also found a community nearby that held young hawksbills, all of which glow red. The researchers aren’t quite sure how these miraculous reptiles do it.
With their neon red-and-green coats, they appear to be radioactive and otherworldly. Although we’ve known about regular hawksbill sea turtles for quite a while, only a handful of the glowing variety have been found as of early 2016.
Biofluorescence occurs when an animal absorbs light into its body and then emits that light as a colorful glow. Numerous fish, sharks, corals, and seahorses possess this ability. They use it to attract prey, communicate with others, or deter predators.
Under ordinary light, biofluorescent creatures appear unremarkable. But their true colors shine in deeper and darker depths. Water absorbs most of the visible light spectrum. So these biofluorescent animals take the remaining blue light and use it to make themselves glow neon shades of green and red.

4 Pig-Nosed Vampire Rat

Photo credit: Kevin C. Rowe And Museum Victoria

This unflattering name unexpectedly belongs to a small, relatively defenseless rodent with a face that you can’t forget. Hyorhinomys stuempkei is a rat with a large, hoglike nose that lives in Sulawesi, Indonesia.
But its most eye-catching feature is its impressively long incisors, which are big enough to compete with Dracula. The bottom teeth of this shrew rat can grow up to 19 millimeters (0.75 in). Researchers admit that they’ve never seen anything like it.
In fact, the strange anatomy of these pig-nosed rats sets them so far apart from other species that scientists have categorized them in a new genus. Their big ears are one-fifth as long as their bodies.
They have also lost the coronoid process in their jaws. This leads them to have a weak bite, which is a relief if you catch sight of their grisly fangs. Fortunately for the rodent, they don’t need to chew much when they dine on their normal meals of worms and beetle larvae.

3 Shape-Shifting Frog

While shape-shifting frogs can’t morph like witches or use magic spells, they are amazing nonetheless. Found in Ecuador, they can change the texture of their skin at will—from smooth to bumpy depending on their surroundings. So far, only two species are known to do this: Pristimantis sobetes and the more recently discovered Pristimantis mutabilis.
These frogs are the size of a marble, yet it is spectacular to see their skin in action. Naturalists Katherine and Tim Krynak discovered one of the tiny amphibians and kept it in a lidded cup to study later. The creature’s back had been riddled with thornlike prickles, giving it the appearance of a punk rocker.
However, once they set the frog on a sheet of paper, its skin morphed to become as smooth as the page on which it sat. Scientists aren’t sure how the frogs accomplish this feat, but their skin structures may allow water movement to change their texture.
The technique undoubtedly gives them added protection from predators by allowing these shape-shifting frogs to blend in with their surroundings, whether bumpy rocks or smooth leaves.

2 Peekaboo Spider

Australia is infamous for its wide diversity of venomous creatures, ranging from the smallest arachnid to the deadliest snake. However, there is one spider that may be cuter than all the rest.
First discovered in 2014, Jotus remus doesn’t boast a colorful design or a startling appearance. Instead, the male’s remarkable feature is the unique way in which it attracts a mate. The two front pairs of legs on this tiny jumping spider are normal enough. But the third leg on each side of its body is longer and topped with a heart-shaped paddle.
While hiding underneath a leaf, the male will raise these paddles and wave them around like an enthusiastic cheerleader to attract the attention of a female. Sometimes, the male waves his paddles for hours. If luck is on his side, the female gives chase. Then, after what seems like a game of cat and mouse, the two finally mate.
Throughout the arachnid world, courtship is famously known to be a dangerous business. If the male isn’t careful, his potential partner will turn him into a tasty meal. So male spiders like Jotus remus have developed interesting dances to convince females to give them a chance and, with any luck, not slaughter them for dinner.

1 Undersea Crop Circles

For 20 years, scientists have been baffled by the appearance of strange circles on the ocean floor. These intricate geometric designs can have diameters of up to 2 meters (6 ft). Could underwater aliens be creating these wacky shapes?
Researchers eventually found the answer hidden in a small swimming creature: the white-spotted puffer fish. Torquigener albomaculosus uses these circles as a spawning nest.
Male white-spotted puffer fish wriggle in the sand to create these masterpieces in the hopes that a passing female will notice their artistic ability. The nests contain grooves to protect the eggs from predators and ocean currents.
Located around Japan, the white-spotted puffer fish looks normal, but its artistic talent is unique. This fish feeds on hard prey such as corals and crabs to stop their teeth from overgrowing.
White-spotted puffer fish are nocturnal and territorial. When their young eventually hatch, currents pick them up and sweep them far away from the nest. With luck, they will survive and create undersea pictures of their own someday.

10 Historical Battles Hollywood Got Completely Wrong

Few would be shocked to learn that Hollywood often plays fast and loose with the historical truth. But accurately depicting historical battles offers a special challenge, which few filmmakers have adequately met. Here are 10 films that incorrectly colored our perception of famous military clashes. Spoilers abound throughout.

10The Battle Of The Bulge
Battle Of The Bulge (1965)

The Battle of the Bulge saw more American deaths than any other World War II engagement, so you’d expect MGM’s movie of the same name to strive for respectful accuracy. Unfortunately, the filmmakers apparently decided that the real thing wasn’t cinematic enough and just made up a different battle entirely.
For starters, the filmmakers were determined to let audiences enjoy the picture in magnificent widescreen Cinerama. As a result, they ditched the rugged, claustrophobic forests of the Ardennes in favor of sweeping vista shots of flat, treeless plains. The result was more reminiscent of the popular cowboy movies of the time than the actual battle. MGM also decided to discard the thick fog that played such a pivotal role in the opening days of the battle. The resulting shots of German tanks thundering across the sunny plains are nice, but in reality such exposed tank formations would have been destroyed from the air almost immediately.
Meanwhile, the screenplay itself was so inaccurate that former President Dwight Eisenhower, supreme commander of the Allied Forces at the time of the battle, felt the need to deliver a scathing critique. Right from the beginning, Eisenhower pointed out, the narrator got names and units wrong, including moving the entire British Eighth Army from Italy to the Ardennes. Eisenhower also pointed out that most of the plot lines were fictional, including a race for a fuel depot that never happened. And the movie wrongly depicted Nazi infiltrators as a real danger to the Allies, when in reality they were never anything more than an annoyance.
Eisenhower also criticized the movie for using Korean War–era American tanks as German panzers. In fact, every tank, plane, and jeep used in the movie is a post-war model. In fairness, the difficulty of finding accurate military hardware would plague all movies prior to the age of CGI, although MGM could at least have painted over the Spanish Army camouflage on their jeeps.

9Marathon And Salamis
300: Rise Of An Empire (2014)

In 2007, Warner Bros. had a huge hit with 300, a visually striking depiction of the Battle of Thermopylae. The movie was criticized for historical inaccuracy, including the decision to depict the horrendously oppressive Spartan slave-state as some sort of beacon of liberty. However, the story was entirely narrated by a Spartan soldier and the filmmakers insisted that any exaggerations were down to the character. But even that flimsy excuse can’t account for 300: Rise Of An Empire, in which no empires rise and the narration ends before the story does.
The movie opens on the Battle of Marathon, fought between the Athenians and a Persian invasion force in 490 BC. The Athenian general Themistocles leads his men at a full sprint to surprise the Persians as they are debarking from their ships. In reality, the Greeks and Persians faced each other at Marathon for five days before they fought. It is true that the Greeks ran straight at the Persian army, but it was to reduce their advantage in archers rather than an attempt to surprise them.
In the film, the battle culminates when Themistocles shoots an arrow which kills the Persian king Darius I as his son Xerxes watches. To be picky, a Greek hoplite like Themistocles wouldn’t have been proficient with a bow. To be less picky, Darius was nowhere near Marathon and died years later of old age.
Enraged, movie Xerxes transforms himself into a glowing giant and prepares to invade Greece. To lead his fleet, he recruits Eva Green’s Artemisia. In reality, Artemisia was the widowed queen of Halicarnassus and provided a handful of ships to Xerxes’ 600-boat navy. She personally commanded her own ships and was respected by Xerxes, but she wasn’t in charge of the whole fleet.
The climax of the movie is the naval Battle of Salamis, which historians agree did not involve giant metal ships or Persian suicide bombers, both of which show up in the movie. Luckily, the day is saved by the narrator, Queen Gorgo of Sparta, who arrives with a huge fleet to destroy the Persians. Of course, the historical Sparta added a mere 16 boats to Themistocles’ 400 ships and played no significant role in the victory. Gorgo certainly wasn’t there and the misogynistic Greeks would never have allowed a woman to lead them anyway.

8The Battle Of Inchon
Inchon! (1981)

Inchon! is very probably the worst war movie ever made. Critics called it “stupefyingly incompetent” and “a turkey the size of Godzilla.” The fact that the movie was financed and produced by Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his controversial Unification Church didn’t help matters.
But Moon did do his research, hiring tabloid psychic Jeane Dixon to contact the deceased General Douglas MacArthur via the astral plane. Luckily, the general’s ghost was happy to endorse the movie and personally picked the director. Moon even included a quote from the spirit in the movie’s press release: “I was very happy to see this picture made because it will express my heart during the Korean War. I will make more than 100 percent effort to support this movie.”
With the spirit world on board, Moon plowed an incredible $46 million into the production. As a result, he felt entitled to insert a scene featuring his favorite ballet troupe and tried to get the director to include subliminal images of Jesus. He also spent $3 million reshooting a crowd scene because the original crowd was too small. Yet the completed film includes grainy stock footage and model fighter planes visibly held up by strings.
It’s hard to be sure if most of the movie is inaccurate, because it’s impossible to tell what’s supposed to be happening. A large chunk is just context-free shots of North Korean soldiers machine-gunning civilians. The Battle of Inchon itself is only given 15 minutes, most of which is pure fiction. Despite the expense, the battle scenes look cheap, with extras throwing themselves to the floor before explosions actually happen.
Inchon! only made $5 million at the box office and is considered one of the biggest flops in movie history.

7The Siege Of Jerusalem
Kingdom Of Heaven (2005)

Very few historical events are as controversial as the crusades, so it was courageous of Ridley Scott to tackle the subject in the epic Kingdom Of Heaven. Scott decided to set the first half of the movie during a truce maintained by King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem and the famous Muslim ruler Saladin, referring to it as a time when “anyone could come and go as they pleased, and worship as they pleased.” Sadly, Baldwin (memorably played by Edward Norton in a silver mask) dies of leprosy and the peace is undermined by wicked Christian fundamentalists like Guy de Lusignan and the Knights Templar.
The moral is obvious and delivered with all the subtlety of a trebuchet. But it’s not really historically accurate. For starters, Baldwin IV wasn’t exactly the moderate modern figure the movie tries to portray him as. Non-Christians were officially banned from Jerusalem during his reign and he once flew into a rage when supposed warmonger Guy de Lusignan failed to attack Saladin. The Muslim leader is himself portrayed as an entirely peaceful ruler forced into war against his will, but the real Saladin worked to capture Jerusalem throughout his reign. Baldwin and Saladin fought each other for years and their truce had more to do with general exhaustion and problems elsewhere than a genuine desire for lasting peace.
But these are minor quibbles compared to the movie’s protagonist: Balian of Ibelin (Orlando Bloom). In pursuit of Scott’s message, Balian is portrayed as a French blacksmith who has a crisis of faith when his wife commits suicide and is denied burial on holy ground. To really hammer it home, the town priest has her corpse beheaded and steals from her grave. In reality, Balian was a nobleman from Palestine, was never a blacksmith, was never a religious moderate, and his wife never committed suicide.
In the movie’s climax, Balian escapes the disastrous battle at the Horns of Hattin and leads the defense of Jerusalem against Saladin’s forces, despite being undermined by the cowardly Christian patriarch of Jerusalem. The real Balian led the defense of Jerusalem in cooperation with the patriarch, who certainly wasn’t his enemy, but the movie can’t risk portraying the clergy in even a mildly positive light.
In a ridiculous scene, Balian negotiates safe passage for Jerusalem’s Christian inhabitants by threatening to destroy “your holy places and ours. Every last thing in Jerusalem that drives men mad.” In response, Saladin wonders “if it would not be better if you did,” which is so far removed from the pious historic Saladin that he might as well have been portrayed as a talking gerbil. In reality, Balian threatened to destroy specifically Muslim holy sites. He also threatened to murder around 500 Muslim slaves he was holding in the city. In the movie, Saladin nobly agrees to let the Christians leave peacefully. In history, the Christians had to ransom themselves and those who couldn’t pay were taken into slavery.

6Operation Red Wings
Lone Survivor (2014)

Lone Survivor tells the story of four members of SEAL Team 10 who were sent into the Afghan mountains to surveil a Taliban wannabe named Ahmad Shah. The team was accidentally discovered by three goatherds, who presumably informed the Taliban of their presence. Approximately 50 Taliban fighters attacked the team, prompting a three-hour running fight down a mountainside. Three members of the team were killed, while Marcus Luttrell alone survived. A further 16 American servicemen were killed when their helicopter was shot down while trying to reach the original group.
Naturally, the filmmakers tried to take a respectful approach to the story. But that doesn’t mean elements of the movie weren’t fictionalized for entertainment value. For example, the opening scene shows Marcus Luttrell’s heart stopping just as he is rescued. The rest of the movie is a flashback from that moment. In reality, Luttrell’s heart did not stop and he wasn’t close to death when he was rescued. This fiction subverts one of the truly amazing things about Luttrell’s story: that he wasn’t near death.
In an interview, Luttrell catalogued his injuries: “I had to have my hand reconstructed. My back’s been reconstructed. Multiple back surgeries. My knees are blown out, my pelvis is cracked, I had maxillofacial damage, I bit my tongue in half. I got shot-fragged by RPGs and grenades, eleven through-and-throughs in my quads and calves, shrapnel stickin’ out of my legs and everywhere. All the skin off my back and the back of my legs was gone.” In addition, he also suffered a broken nose, torn shoulder and a bacterial infection from the water he drank while on the run.
At the end of the movie, the injured Luttrell is discovered and taken to a local Pashtun village where a man named Gulab cares for his wounds. Shah’s thugs track Luttrell to the village and one of them is about to behead the American when the villagers intervene. In response, Shah’s men attack the village. Gulab is shot and his hut is blown up. But American forces arrive just in time to blast the Taliban to smithereens and kill Shah.
The climactic firefight is a typical Hollywood ending, which is a good sign that it didn’t actually happen. Luttrell was indeed taken to a Pashtun village and cared for by a man named Gulab. He was also discovered by the Taliban, who broke his hands, but did not try to behead him before the villagers drove them off. Shah’s men didn’t attack the village and Gulab wasn’t shot. Luttrell was simply picked up by US Rangers alerted by the locals—the rescue was so uneventful that the Rangers had tea with the villagers before taking Luttrell out by helicopter. And Shah? He didn’t die for another three years. Luttrell’s story is genuinely amazing, but apparently the ending wasn’t quite dramatic enough for Hollywood.

5Stalingrad
Enemy At The Gates (2001)

Movies about the Eastern Front of World War II are fairly rare, so it’s unfortunate that the Stalingrad epic Enemy At The Gates makes little effort at historical accuracy. The movie can’t even get basic maps right, opening with an image depicting Switzerland and Turkey as German conquests.
Meanwhile, the filmmakers seem to have been worried that recognizing the Soviet Union’s gigantic contribution to winning the war might also paint communism in a positive light. As a result, the movie portrays individual Soviets as heroes but misses no chance to make the Soviet war effort as a whole look cruel and incompetent, even when actual events don’t back that up.
For example, the movie starts with Jude Law’s Vasily Zaytsev, based on the real sniper of that name, locked into a train with his fellow soldiers. Soviet military train doors were actually left unlocked so the soldiers could jump out and take cover in an air raid. When the train arrives at the depot, no officers or NCOs are present to organize the troops into platoons or companies. Instead, political commissars herd the men into boats to cross the Volga in broad daylight, allowing German planes to inflict huge casualties. In real life, Soviet units crossed the river under the cover of darkness.
In Stalingrad, Zaytsev’s unit is ordered to charge the Germans en masse. Only half of them are given rifles, with the rest told to follow them and pick up the rifles of the dead. This is based on isolated incidents during the confusion of the surprise German invasion in 1941 and was certainly never a deliberate strategy. There is no evidence that Soviet soldiers were ever sent into Stalingrad without guns. They also didn’t stage mass frontal charges against machine guns, which would have been idiotic.
But all of this is nitpicking, since the main plot of the film revolves around a duel between Zaytsev and a German sniper named Major Erwin Konig. No such German sniper has been found in the records and most historians believe that the Soviets simply made him up to increase Zaytsev’s propaganda value.

4The Taking Of Aqaba
Lawrence Of Arabia (1962)

Lawrence Of Arabia is considered one of the greatest movies of all time, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t take a few liberties with the truth. We’ve already mentioned how Auda abu Tayi was altered from a cultured, intelligent man to a greedy brute, while one of Lawrence’s siblings said that he “had a hard time recognizing my own brother.”
Much of the film centers on a critical raid on the Red Sea port of Aqaba. The port was protected from attack along the coast, but Lawrence came up with a plan to take a small party through the Nefudh Desert, allowing them to attack Aqaba from inland. The movie gets that much right, but struggles with the remaining details.
For starters, the movie depicts the Nefudh Desert as a magnificent sea of undulating golden sand dunes. In reality, most of the areas traversed by Lawrence were gravel plains. Along the way, Lawrence rescued an Arab who was left behind in the desert. In the movie, the Arabs celebrate him as a hero and give him a beautiful Bedouin robe, symbolically accepting him as one of their own. But by Lawrence’s own account, he had been wearing Bedouin garb for six months at that point. And the Arabs thought his dangerous rescue efforts were moronic and berated him for risking two lives instead of one.
In one of the most film’s most famous scenes, Lawrence leads a mounted charge straight into the city. In reality, the pivotal cavalry charge happened 65 kilometers (40 mi) from Aqaba at a small outpost called Aba el Lissan. Lawrence’s force outnumbered the Ottomans in the outpost by nearly three to one but still couldn’t dislodge them. Lawrence eventually insulted the Arabs into attacking and they, not Lawrence, led the charge to take the outpost. He did try to participate in the charge, but he accidentally shot his own camel in the head and was thrown ingloriously to the ground. Aqaba was taken without incident the next day.

3The Battle Of Gettysburg
Gettysburg (1993)

When New Line Cinema released the film adaption of Michael Shaara’s Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, they boasted that the movie was “rigorously authenticated down to the boots.” But that doesn’t mean there weren’t a few minor details for historians to pick at.
For starters, the extras in the battle scenes were mostly hobbyist Civil War re-enactors, who provided their own uniforms. This was a significant saving for the filmmakers, but meant that the uniforms were too pristine to accurately represent the ragged forces at Gettysburg. Many re-enactors were perhaps too well-fed to portray Confederate soldiers who had just marched hundreds of miles. At one point, General Lee shakes hands with a soldier sporting a clear tan line from a wristwatch.
For dramatic effect, the events of the battle were shifted in time. The movie opens with the scout Harrison reporting to Longstreet on the morning of June 30. The real Harrison had to have informed Longstreet of the Union’s movements no later than June 29. Lee’s angry confrontation with General Heth over his initial engagement happened late on July 1, not during the battle earlier that day. The famous scene where Father Corby delivers absolution to the Irish Brigade did not happen in the morning of July 2, but in the afternoon just before they went into battle.
The tension of Pickett’s Charge is somewhat undercut if you notice the rubber bayonets wobbling around. Confederate cannon can be seen blowing up, but the Southerners actually didn’t lose a single cannon in the battle. General Kemper is depicted as dying from a mortal wound, 32 years before his actual death in 1895.
But the most noticeable change is how bloodlessly the film depicts Pickett’s Charge. One eyewitness described the real charge as a “hurricane of violence in which human debris literally filled the air.” The filmmakers probably toned it down to keep their PG rating, but the result was a whitewashed scene that one critic described as a “remarkably non-violent, clean, and heroic little parade.”

2The Fall Of The Alamo
The Alamo (1961)

The makers of 1960’s The Alamo tried to sell the movie as a faithful depiction of the real battle. The director, producer, and star of the film—John Wayne—claimed that the sets were based on “original blueprints” of the Alamo. No such blueprints exist and the wildly inaccurate sets were mostly the product of art director Al Ybarra’s imagination.
Wayne also claimed that the screenwriter, James Grant, had thoroughly researched the battle. If he did, he didn’t incorporate any of his research into the script. Grant’s screenplay was entirely fictional, to the point that two historians hired as consultants stormed off the set in a huff. Both historians later asked that their names be removed from the credits.
It’s hard to even know where to start with the movie itself, which historians have described as containing “not a word, character, costume, or event that corresponds to historical reality in any way.” It can’t even get geography right, inexplicably claiming that the Alamo was located on the Rio Grande. The movie’s version of the battle focuses on a huge bombardment by Mexican cannons. Wayne’s Davy Crockett even leads a party to blow up the largest Mexican artillery piece. In real life, the Mexicans deployed only small field pieces at the battle. The adobe Alamo would have been completely leveled by heavy artillery.
In the movie’s final battle scene, Crockett sacrifices himself to blow up the powder magazine. In reality, a defender named Robert Evans attempted to ignite the gunpowder with a torch but was shot before he entered the magazine. Crockett’s fictional sacrifice might have been more meaningful if the movie had ever mentioned why he went to the Alamo or what the men there were fighting for. But Wayne wanted the movie to be a Cold War metaphor, featuring patriotic Americans fighting an evil dictatorship, which worked better if the actual circumstances of the Texas Revolution were left obscure.

1Cowpens And Guilford Courthouse
The Patriot (2000)

The story of The Patriot illustrates how Hollywood struggles with the nuances of real history. Originally, The Patriot was supposed to be a biopic of Francis Marion, a guerrilla fighter in the South Carolina swamps during the Revolutionary War. Marion was a compelling figure whose ambush tactics would have provided an interesting contrast to George Washington’s stand-and-fire battles.
But that movie never got made. Marion’s life simply didn’t fit easily into the standard Hollywood action-movie template. Among other things, he owned slaves and fought in a particularly brutal campaign against the Cherokee during the French and Indian War. He also didn’t have children, but the screenwriter wanted the movie to depict “the conflicting responsibilities of principle and parenthood.” So the character was renamed Benjamin Martin and made a composite of at least five historical figures.
The fictional Benjamin Martin is clearly more palatable to modern movie audiences than Marion would have been. Unlike Marion, Martin frees all his slaves before the start of the movie. Luckily, they all inexplicably continue working on his estate anyway. It seems like it would have been easier to simply not depict Martin as owning a gigantic cotton plantation, but the scenery is admittedly beautiful.
While Martin admits to carrying out a massacre during the French and Indian War, it involved killing enemy soldiers who had just slaughtered women and children. In reality, Marion didn’t carry out such a massacre, but he did help destroy buildings and food supplies in the hope that the Cherokee (including women and children) would starve to death during winter. This wasn’t his idea and he was actually horrified by it, but it’s still less easy to cheer for than Martin’s righteous retribution.
But the filmmakers were evidently still worried that Martin might be too morally ambiguous. So they made his British enemies into monstrous villains who cheerfully committed war crimes whenever possible. In one scene, redcoats lock an entire town into a church and burn it down. That didn’t happen during the Revolutionary War, but the scene resembles a famous World War II German atrocity.
Naturally, the British were unhappy with their ancestors being depicted as Nazis. Unfortunately, they overcorrected, and many British newspapers published articles claiming that Marion was a rapist who “hunted Indians for fun.” Ironically, the real Francis Marion doesn’t seem to have held much ill will toward the British, since he later campaigned against punishing Americans who had fought for them.
The movie’s final battle is unnamed and mostly fiction, although it uses elements of the battles of Cowpens and Guilford Courthouse. At Cowpens, militia leader Daniel Morgan ordered his men to fire two shots before retreating, pulling the redcoats into a trap. In the movie, both General Nathaniel Greene and his British counterpart, General Charles Cornwallis, were at the unnamed battle. Neither were at Cowpens, but both were at Guilford Courthouse. The battlefield in the film also looked strikingly like that of Guilford Courthouse.

10 Creepy Valentine’s Day Mysteries That Are Still Unsolved

For many people, February 14 is a joyous date on which to celebrate the romantic union with your significant other. However, this does not mean that dark, mysterious, and tragic things do not happen on St. Valentine’s Day. In fact, one of the most infamous murders of all time even bears its name. In 1929, a group of Chicago mobsters believed to be working for Al Capone gunned down seven rival gang members in cold blood, and the incident forever became known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Here are 10 more stories of unsolved mysteries that just happened to take place on Valentine’s Day. Appropriately, it’s likely that some of these cases are the result of love gone bad.

10The Murder Of Jodine Serrin

On Valentine’s Day in 2007, Art and Lois Serrin went to visit their 39-year-old daughter, Jodine, at her condo. Jodine was mentally disabled, and even though she was able to live independently, she still required frequent visits from her parents to check on her. When the Serrins arrived at the condo that night, the lights were on, but they could not unlock the front door because the chain was latched. After receiving no answer when they called out Jodine’s name, Art busted open the door. He walked into her darkened bedroom and was surprised to find his daughter having sex with an unidentified man. Art told the man to get dressed and leave while both he and Loris waited in another room.
After several minutes had passed, Jodine had not come out to meet her parents. The Serrins returned to the bedroom and were treated to a horrifying sight: Jodine’s lifeless nude body was now lying on the bed. She had been beaten and strangled to death. Incredibly, Jodine’s killer had been brazen enough to murder her while her parents were still inside the apartment and somehow managed to sneak out before they discovered what he had done. It’s also possible that the sex between Jodine and her killer was not consensual, and her parents unknowingly walked in on her while she was in the midst of being raped.
DNA evidence was collected from the crime scene, but thus far, Jodine Serrin’s murderer has never been caught or identified.

9The Disappearance Of China Rose Sims

In February 1988, English furniture dealer David Sims took a business trip to the Philippines and got married to a woman named China Rose, who was 20 years younger than him. China accompanied her new husband back to England, and the couple eventually moved into a house in Southend. However, the marriage started to fall apart, and China told her sister that she wanted to leave David because he was becoming violent toward her. She even claimed David had told her he’d hire someone to kill her because it was cheaper than getting a divorce. On Valentine’s Day in 1993, China attended a family party, and this was the last time anyone could confirm seeing her alive. Even though China had expressed interest in returning to the Philippines to see her ill father, she never contacted her family again.
Not only did China go missing without explanation, but her husband dropped off the map as well. David was last seen at the couple’s home approximately two months after China’s disappearance, but he subsequently vanished without explanation. Even though David had two daughters from a previous marriage, he ceased contact with them.
Years later, police would track down Geoffrey Paston, who previously shared the Southend home with David and China. According to Paston, David had asked him to sell the house and put the proceeds into an account under David’s alias, “Anthony Peter Lewis.” Approximately £40,000 of this money was collected by a man claiming to represent David, and at least £10,000 remains in the account and has never been touched. It’s strongly speculated that China was murdered, but until she or her husband are found, the case will remain unsolved.

8The Murder Of Marilu Geri

On the morning of Valentine’s Day in 1986, Stephen Geri left his Houston home to go to work. According to Stephen, his wife, Marilu, was still in bed at the time. A few hours later, Stephen called Marilu’s mother, Maria Serrato, from his workplace. Stephen claimed that Marilu wasn’t answering the phone and asked Maria to visit their home to help Marilu prepare for a party that day. Maria complied, but when she arrived at the Geri residence, she was shocked to discover that her daughter had been murdered. Marilu was shot four times and her body contained bullets from both a .38 and a .22. There was no sign of a break-in or robbery, and it wasn’t long before suspicion turned toward Stephen.
While Stephen owned several handguns, none of them were used to shoot Marilu, and he seemed to have an alibi. However, some aspects of Stephen’s alibi seemed a little suspicious. That particular morning, Stephen left the house a few hours earlier than usual and ran errands by visiting several different locations, including a 7-11, post office, and doughnut shop. The day after the murder, Stephen raised some eyebrows by returning to all these same locations and specifically reminding the employees that he had been there the previous morning.
A possible motive was a $400,000 insurance policy that Stephen had taken out on his wife. Marilu’s parents actually took Stephen to court to prevent him from collecting the insurance money, accusing him of being responsible for the murder. The two parties eventually reached an out-of-court settlement, but the details about the settlement are sealed. Stephen Geri has always maintained his innocence, so officially, his wife’s murder is still unsolved.

7The Discovery Of ‘Julie Valentine’

On the morning of February 13, 1990, Glenn Hayward was walking through a field located behind a mall in Greenville, South Carolina. He was looking for some wildflowers to give his wife for Valentine’s Day. The site was known for being an illegal dumping ground, and many items were strewn across the field that day. Hayward came across a Sears vacuum cleaner box and noticed a foul odor emitting from it. When Hayward opened the box, he found the decomposing body of a newborn infant girl.
The deceased child was covered with a blanket and some newspaper. Her umbilical cord was still attached, and the placenta was also inside the box. It’s estimated that the infant had been born approximately five days before she was discovered and died about two days after her birth. All indications were that the child was born healthy, and since traces of food were found inside her stomach, she had been cared for at some point. Investigators were unable to determine the cause of death or uncover the child’s identity, so she received the name “Julie Valentine.”
The only major potential lead was a reported sighting of a man inside a red Pontiac Fiero parked at the site three days before the infant was found. However, no one knows if this man has any connection to the case, so until the child’s identity can be established, she will continue to be known as “Julie Valentine.”

6The Murders Of Nicholas Kunselman & Stephanie Hart

On April 20, 1999, one of the most infamous school shootings of all time took place at Columbine High School in Colorado, and 13 innocent victims were murdered. The community was plagued by the senseless shooting deaths of two more teenage students 10 months later.
At the time, 15-year-old Nicholas Kunselman and his 16-year-old girlfriend, Stephanie Hart, were sophomores at Columbine, and Nicholas worked at a Subway sandwich shop near the school. Shortly before 1:00 AM on Valentine’s Day, another Subway employee drove by the shop and noticed the lights were on even though the place was supposed to be closed. When the employee went inside, she discovered that Nicholas and Stephanie had both been shot to death behind the counter.
Nicholas had been working the night shift, and Stephanie stopped by the shop to visit him while he closed up. At some point, they were ambushed by an unknown assailant. In an eerie coincidence, one of the original Columbine victims, Rachel Scott, just happened to have been employed by the same Subway shop at the time of her death.
The only lead was a sighting of an unidentified man in a red jacket walking away from the store shortly before the bodies were discovered. Since nothing appeared to be stolen, robbery did not seem to be the motive. An investigation would reveal that a drug ring was operating in the area at the time, so it’s been theorized the murders might have been drug-related. In fact, Stephanie’s mother even made a failed attempt to sue the shop’s owner, alleging that he allowed illegal drug activity to take place on the property.
After 16 years, authorities have still been unable to determine who murdered Nicholas Kunselman and Stephanie Hart.

5The Disappearance Of Maureen Fields

In 2006, 41-year-old Maureen Fields seemed very perturbed when she showed up for work on Valentine’s Day at the Wells Fargo bank in Pahrump, Nevada. Maureen was in the midst of a troubled marriage to her allegedly domineering husband, Paul Fields, and told her coworkers that “something’s going to happen.” The following day, Maureen went missing. According to her husband, Maureen left their residence that morning to go to work, but she never arrived. One day later, Maureen’s abandoned vehicle was found stuck in the sand in a remote section of the Mojave Desert near Death Valley. Her purse and several other belongings, including a pair of pantyhose, were left behind, and there was also a blanket on the ground with traces of blood and vomit.
Since an empty Xanax pill bottle was also found, there was initial speculation that she might have wandered into the desert and committed suicide. However, her body never turned up, and since the pill bottle was wiped clean of fingerprints, it seemed like the scene was staged. Male DNA was found on the pantyhose, but it did not match Paul Fields, whom police considered to be the prime suspect.
In 2012, the case took a surprising turn when the DNA was matched to an elderly convicted sex offender named Keith Wayne Holmes. When questioned, Holmes claimed that he had consensual sex with Maureen before leaving her alone in the desert. Holmes also claimed to know Paul, but by this point, he was suffering from dementia and could not provide any concise answers. Holmes died in prison hospice care in April 2014. Paul Fields continues to be the prime suspect in his wife’s disappearance, but the actual details of what happened remain unclear.

4The Mysterious Death Of Antonio Saldivar

At approximately 6:00 PM on February 14, 2014, 17-year-old Houston teen Antonio Saldivar borrowed his mother’s car to go visit his girlfriend. He was planning to deliver a teddy bear to her as a Valentine Day’s gift. Antonio wound up missing his curfew that night, which led his mother to repeatedly call and text his cell phone. At 4:00 AM, Antonio finally answered his phone and let his mother know he was on his way home. Within a half hour, Antonio totaled his mother’s vehicle by crashing into a concrete pillar. Antonio was nowhere to be found at the accident scene, but strangely, his shoes were left behind in the car.
Antonio remained a missing person until February 27, when an employee from a Texas Port Recycling scrap metal plant discovered Antonio’s body, which was trapped underwater beneath a dock inside the Houston Ship Channel. He was found approximately 3 kilometers (2 mi) from the accident scene. It’s possible that Antonio became disoriented before wandering away from the scene and drowning, but a lot of strange details didn’t add up. Antonio never actually made it to his girlfriend’s house that night, and the Valentine’s Day teddy bear was found inside his pants between his legs.
One witness told police they saw a dark SUV run Antonio’s car into the pillar. Antonio was also found inside a secure area near the scrap metal plant, which was inaccessible to the search volunteers who had been looking for him. So how did his body end up there? Antonio Saldivar’s family are continuing to search for answers about his death.

3The Murder Of The Rundle Family

In 1985, Cassandra Rundle was a 37-year-old, two-time divorcee living in Colorado Springs with her two children: 12-year-old Detrick and 10-year-old Melanie. On the morning of February 14, Cassandra’s second ex-husband showed up at the home to deliver her a record album as a Valentine’s Day present. To his horror, he discovered that the entire family was brutally murdered. Cassandra’s nude body was found on her bed. She had been tied up, raped, and beaten before she was strangled to death. Melanie’s body was found in her own bedroom, and she was also raped and strangled. She had a fractured skull, and the condition of Melanie’s room indicated a major struggle before her death.
Detrick had been beaten to death inside his own bedroom. Next to him was a bloody hockey stick, which had been used as a weapon on all three family members. It seemed likely that Detrick had gone outside that morning before the killer arrived and returned to the house while the murders were in progress.
In the months before her death, Cassandra had taken out personal ads in a local newspaper. She received more than 80 responses and made contact with several men, but no evidence could be found to link any of them to the murders. Suspicion has also been directed at a former soldier named Philip E. Wilkinson, who is currently sitting on death row in North Carolina for the 1992 triple slaying of a mother and her two children. That crime bore some similarities to the Rundle murders, but Wilkinson has never been connected to the case. As it is, these horrific murders remain unsolved over 30 years later.

2The Disappearance Of Marcy Jo Andrews

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In 1984, 24-year-old Marcy Jo Andrews and two of her female friends spent Valentine’s Day attending a party at the Chicago apartment of Casey Nowicki. Nowicki was driving the women home when he crashed into a viaduct, injuring Andrews’s ankle. Nowicki gave his car keys to Andrews’s friends and asked them to call a tow truck while he took her to the hospital in a taxi. Later that night, the women called Nowicki’s apartment and spoke with Andrews, who sounded frightened and claimed Nowicki never took her to the hospital. This would be the last time Andrews’s friends ever heard from her. Over the next few days, they made repeated attempts to visit Nowicki’s apartment, but he claimed Andrews had already left and refused to let them inside. When police were notified, Nowicki told the same story and denied all knowledge of Andrews’s whereabouts.
In 2000, Nowicki was finally charged with Andrews’s murder. The prosecution’s theory was that Nowicki took Andrews back to his apartment and drugged her with THC so he could repeatedly sexually assault her. The prosecution produced numerous witnesses who claimed to have seen Andrews in Nowicki’s apartment in the days following the accident. One witness, Michael John Panisi, testified to seeing a nude Andrews handcuffed to a radiator and later seeing her lying dead on the floor. Panisi claimed that Nowicki gave Andrews a deliberate THC overdose before disposing of her body.
Nowicki’s defense team argued that the prosecution’s witnesses were unreliable since most of them had criminal records and were offered deals in exchange for their testimony. Nevertheless, Nowicki was still convicted of rape and murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. In spite of this, Marcy Jo Andrews’s body has still never been found.

1The Murder Of Billy Trimbach

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On Valentine’s Day in 1992, Billy and Cindy Trimbach were married in Stoneham, Colorado. On the date of their first anniversary, Billy was shot to death and found by the side of a frontage road outside of Wiggins, approximately 80 kilometers (50 mi) away from Stoneham. In an odd twist, the sheriff who investigated the case just happened to drive past the same road shortly before Billy was found. He remembered seeing multiple vehicles at that exact spot and may have unknowingly driven past the killer while they were disposing of Billy’s body.
The investigation eventually turned toward Cindy Trimbach, who’d collected a $500,000 life insurance policy on her husband’s death. Physical evidence was also found inside Cindy’s car to suggest that Billy’s body may have been in there at some point.
The cloud of suspicion compelled Cindy to move to Butte, Montana, with James, her 10-year-old son from a previous marriage, and there would soon be a shocking postscript to this story. In April 1994, a Butte newspaper ran an article about Billy Trimbach’s murder, which mentioned that Cindy was a suspect. James was teased about this on the school playground by an 11-year-old classmate named Jeremy Bullock. James responded by pulling out a gun and shooting Jeremy to death.
James was sent to a juvenile home for the crime, and Cindy died of natural causes in 1996. Over the years, rumors have spread that Cindy hired someone to carry out Billy’s murder, and at least one drug dealer has reportedly bragged about being involved. However, the full truth about Billy Trimbach’s death has never been uncovered.