Interesting & Funny

Spring-heeled Jack is an entity in English folklore of the Victorian era who was known for his startling hops. The first claimed sighting of Spring-heeled Jack was in 1837. Later sightings were reported all over Great Britain and were especially prevalent in suburban London, the Midlands and Scotland.

There are many theories about the nature and identity of Spring-heeled Jack. This urban legend was very popular in its time, due to the tales of his bizarre appearance and ability to make extraordinary leaps, to the point that he became the topic of several works of fiction.

Spring-heeled Jack was described by people who claimed to have seen him as having a terrifying and frightful appearance, with diabolical physiognomy, clawed hands, and eyes that "resembled red balls of fire". One report claimed that, beneath a black cloak, he wore a helmet and a tight-fitting white garment like an oilskin. Many stories also mention a "Devil-like" aspect. Others said he was tall and thin, with the appearance of a gentleman. Several reports mention that he could breathe out blue and white flames and that he wore sharp metallic claws at his fingertips. At least two people claimed that he was able to speak comprehensible English.

The Times reported the alleged attack on Jane Alsop on 2 March 1838 under the heading "The Late Outrage At Old Ford". This was followed with an account of the trial of one Thomas Millbank, who, immediately after the reported attack on Jane Alsop, had boasted in the Morgan's Arms that he was Spring-heeled Jack. He was arrested and tried at Lambeth Street court. The arresting officer was James Lea, who had earlier arrested William Corder, the Red Barn Murderer. Millbank had been wearing white overalls and a greatcoat, which he dropped outside the house, and the candle he dropped was also found. He escaped conviction only because Jane Alsop insisted her attacker had breathed fire, and Millbank admitted he could do no such thing. Most of the other accounts were written long after the date; contemporary newspapers do not mention them.

After these incidents, Spring-heeled Jack became one of the most popular characters of the period. His alleged exploits were reported in the newspapers and became the subject of several penny dreadfuls and plays performed in the cheap theatres that abounded at the time. The devil was even renamed "Spring-heeled Jack" in some Punch and Judy shows, as recounted by Henry Mayhew in his London Labour and the London Poor:


"This here is Satan,-we might say the devil, but that ain't right, and gennelfolks don't like such words. He is now commonly called 'Spring-heeled Jack;' or the 'Rossian Bear,' - that's since the war."


—Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, p. 52

But, even as his fame was growing, reports of Spring-heeled Jack's appearances became less frequent if more widespread. In 1843, however, a wave of sightings swept the country again. A report from Northamptonshire described him as "the very image of the Devil himself, with horns and eyes of flame", and in East Anglia reports of attacks on drivers of mail coaches became common. In July 1847 'a Spring-heeled Jack investigation' in Teighnmouth, Devon led to a Captain Finch being convicted of two charges of assault against women during which he is said to have been 'disguised in a skin coat, which had the appearance of bullock's hide, skullcap, horns and mask'. The legend was linked with the phenomenon of the "Devil's Footprints" which appeared in Devon in February 1855

A wife who was caught on camera hiring a an undercover cop to kill her newlywed husband told a court she was acting in a bid to become famous on a reality TV show and was threatened to go along with the scheme by a police informant.

Dalia Dippolito spoke at a hearing ahead of her retrial for allegedly trying to pay a hitman $3,000 to murder spouse Michael in 2009, after the pair had only been married six months.

The 32-year-old became an internet sensation when hidden cameras from the show Cops captured her crying in 2009 as officers in Boyton Beach, Florida, revealed he was dead.

It was later revealed that he was still alive and cops had set up the scene to catch Dippolito's ploy in the act.

She admits her tears were fake - but only because she and her husband had formulated the plan together in a bid to be famous after getting the idea from another actor.

During her court appearance on Wednesday, she reiterated that she didn't want to kill her husband and was pressured into saying it.

She was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2011 for solicitation to commit first-degree murder with a firearm, but the case was thrown out in 2014 after evidence of police misconduct surfaced during appeals.

Now she is facing a retrial after Boynton Beach judge Glenn Kelley said the case had been hanging around for too long.

A new species of luminous creatures have been discovered in the Red Sea and they’re pretty incredible.

They were found by Russian researchers investigating coral reefs just off the Farasan Islands.

The ‘fluorescent lanterns’, as they have been dubbed, revealed themselves when biologists placed them under UV-light.

Attaching on to miniature shells of a sea snail, the creatures garland the animal with luminous green lights.

Vyacheslav Ivanenko, one of the lead authors of the research, said: ‘Sea hydroids, unlike hydrae, are often found in colonies and canbranch off tiny jellyfish

‘The unusual green glow of these hydrozoas (presumably, a new species of the genus Cytaeis, whose body length reaches 1.5 mm) was revealed in the peristomal area of the body.’

At the moment, the role of the glow has not been investigated at all but zoologists suggest that the glow around the mouth of polyps may attract prey.

‘Fluorescent flashlights’ may be visible to other invertebrates in the moonlight, and at sunset and sunrise.

Ivanenko added: ‘The fluorescence can be useful for quick identification of hardly recognizable species and for the studies of ecological peculiarities and distribution of hydroids and their hosts molluscs’. Via metro.co.uk

A group of 10 trained Russian hikers started a trek in the Ural mountains during the winter of 1959. One had to quickly return to the closest city because of illness. He was waiting for the news of the others and had to warn authorities if the group would not come back by a certain date.

And they actually never came back.

A rescue team was sent after them. They finally found an empty camp with their tent destroyed. Some footsteps were still visible in the snow and they were heading to the closest wood, but after approximately 500 meters, they faded and were not visible anymore.

The rescue team decided to pursue this path and search the wood : under a huge pine they found a fire camp and 2 dead bodies alongside. Both male and wearing only their underpants (it is believed that at the time they camped there was a snow storm and the temperature was about -25°C).

Searching deeper on the path between the destroyed tent and the fire in the wood, they finally found 3 more dead bodies in the snow. All three were most likely heading back to the tent but they all failed to do that, falling dead at different points on the path: The first one 300 meters away from the big pine, the second 480 meters and the third 630 meters.

4 other members of the team were still missing...

Two month later the 4 remaining members of the team were found dead in the bottom of a small ravine deeper inside the wood.

The five first corpses were analysed by forensics and their conclusion were simple : all 5 died of hypothermia, even though one of them had a small crack on his skull. But on the 4 other corpses, forensics discovered one fatal injury on the head of one, broken ribs on 2 others, and one woman had her tongue missing. Strange fact : no external trace of these injuries was found, leading scientists to think that they were the result of "crushing under a high pressure" with a significant force, stating it could not have been made by a human.

Other curious facts :
* Most of the victims were lightly clothed, some of them were wearing only one shoe or only socks. Some were wearing parts of clothes they seemed to have cut from other members clothes.
* The tent was cut from the inside
* Some of their clothes were found to be radioactive
* Footsteps in the snow show that they were no other persons on this pass and that they all willingly left the tent toward the wood.

Some find paranormal, or secretive explanations, but what gives this story so much mystery is that it is hard to understand what happened, what choices the team made and especially why they left their tent so suddenly. Actually it is very hard to find any logical and rational explanation for the whole affair.

Little Pauline Picard, aged two, disappeared from her family’s farm in Brittany, France in April 1922. An exhaustive search failed to find her, but several days later, police received news that a little girl who matched Pauline’s description was found wandering in the town of Cherbourg, about 320 kilometers (200 mi) away from the Picard farm. Pauline’s parents arrived to examine the girl and announced that she was indeed their missing Pauline.

A few unusual facts stood out about the otherwise happy reunion. First, the girl did not seem to recognize her parents. Second, she did not respond to them when they spoke to her in their native Breton. Dismissing these peculiarities, Pauline’s parents took her back to the farm, where the neighbors quickly affirmed that she was Pauline, and the whole ordeal seemed to end on a happy note.

About a month later, a neighboring farmer walking near the Picard farm stumbled upon something horrifying: the mutilated and decomposing body of a young girl next to her neatly folded clothes. He alerted the authorities, who arrived at the gruesome scene along with the town’s inhabitants, among them Pauline’s parents. Although the young girl’s face could not be identified, the Picards made an unsettling realization: the folded clothes were exactly what Pauline had been wearing on the day she disappeared.

The area where the remains were found had been searched thoroughly when Pauline first disappeared, which suggested to detectives that someone had placed the body there fairly recently. The case became even more perplexing when the skull of an adult male was discovered next to Pauline’s body, adding a second potential victim to the case.

Early reports from the investigation indicated that there was one possible suspect. A few days prior to the discovery of the body, a middle-aged farmer visited the Picard farm and asked them whether they were sure that the girl from Cherbourg was really Pauline. He then stated “God forgive me, I am guilty,” erupted into hysterical laughter, and was hauled off to an insane asylum.

Even so, a myriad of questions still baffled officials and Pauline’s parents. If the body in the woods was Pauline, as the evidence suggested, then what had happened to her? Was the laughing man the killer? How was the unidentified skull related to Pauline’s murder? And who was the little girl from Cherbourg who had been living with the Picards for a month? It remains unclear whether these questions were ever answered: No definitive records exist of a resolution to this story.