Top 10 Brain Teasers

Brain teasers are a good way to improve your mind and have some fun at the same time. They usually require lateral thinking and patience. This is a list of my favorite 10 brain teasers. Remember, don’t cheat! Take your time and when you think you know the solution, click the “view solution” link. In no particular order:

1. The Firing Squad
Pirate Pete had been captured by a Spanish general and sentenced to death by his 50-man firing squad.
Pete cringed, as he knew their reputation for being the worst firing squad in the Spanish military. They were such bad shots that they would often all miss their targets and simply maim their victims, leaving them to bleed to death, as the general’s tradition was to only allow one shot per man to save on ammunition. The thought of a slow painful death made Pete beg for mercy.
“Very well, I have some compassion. You may choose where the men stand when they shoot you and I will add 50 extra men to the squad to ensure someone will at least hit you. Perhaps if they stand closer they will kill you quicker, if you’re lucky,” snickered the general. “Oh, and just so you don’t get any funny ideas, they can’t stand more than 20 ft away, they must be facing you, and you must remain tied to the post in the middle of the yard. And to show I’m not totally heartless, if you aren’t dead by sundown I’ll release you so you can die peacefully outside the compound. I must go now but will return tomorrow and see to it that you are buried in a nice spot, though with 100 men, I doubt there will be much left of you to bury.”
After giving his instructions the general left. Upon his return the next day, he found that Pete had been set free alive and well. “How could this be?” demanded the general. “It was where Pete had us stand,” explained the captain of the squad.
Where did Pete tell them to stand?

Show me the answer

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2. The Servant’s Wish
Once upon a time, in the West Lake village, a servant lived with his master. After service of 30 years, his master became ill and was going to die. One day, the master called his servant and offered him for a wish. It could be any wish but just one. The master gave him one day to think about it. The servant became very happy and went to his mother to discuss the wish. His mother was blind and she asked her son to wish for her eye-sight to come back. Next, the servant went to his wife. She became very excited and asked for a son as they were childless for many years. After that, the servant went to his father who wanted to be rich and so he asked his son to wish for a lot of money. The next day he went to his master and made one wish through which all the three (mother, father, wife) got what they wanted. What was his wish?

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3. The Wisest Son
One day, a father went to his three sons and told them that he would die soon and he needed to decide which one of them to give his property to. He decided to give them all a test. He said, “Go to the market my sons, and purchase something that is large enough to fill my bedroom, but small enough to fit in your pocket. From this I will decide which of you is the wisest and worthy enough to inherit my land.” So they all went to the market and bought something that they thought would fill the room, yet was still small enough that they could fit into their pockets. Each son came back with a different item. The father told his sons to come into his bedroom one at a time and try to fill up his bedroom with whatever they had purchased. The first son came in and put some pieces of cloth that he had bought and laid them end to end across the room, but it barely covered any of the floor. Then the second son came in and laid some hay, that he had purchased, on the floor but there was only enough to cover half of the floor. The third son came in and showed his father what he had purchased and how it could fill the entire room yet still fit into his pocket. The father replied, “You are truly the wisest of all and you shall receive my property.” What was it that the son had showed to his father?

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4. Sherlock holmes and the Broken Window
One snowy night, Sherlock Holmes was in his house sitting by a fire. All of a sudden a snowball came crashing through his window, breaking it. Holmes got up and looked out the window just in time to see three neighborhood kids who were brothers run around a corner. Their names were John Crimson, Mark Crimson and Paul Crimson. The next day Holmes got a note on his door that read “? Crimson. He broke your window.” Which of the three Crimson brothers should Sherlock Holmes question about the incident?

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5. What is it?The Pope has it but he does not use it.
Your father has it but your mother uses it.
Nuns do not need it.
Arnold Schwarzenegger has a big one,
Michael J. Fox’s is quite small.
What is it?

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6. Wheelbarrow Battle
Two men working at a construction site were up for a challenge, and they were pretty mad at each other. Finally, at lunch break, they confronted one another. One man, obviously stronger, said “See that wheelbarrow? I’m willin’ to bet $100 (that’s all I have in my wallet here) that anything you can wheel to that cone and back, I can wheel twice as far. Do we have a bet?”
The other man, too dignified to decline, shook his hand, but he had a plan formulating. He looked at the objects lying around: a pile of 400 bricks, a steel beam, the 10 men that had gathered around to watch, and a stack of ten bags of concrete mix; he thought for a while, and then finalized his plan.
“All right,” he said, and revealed his object.
That night, the strong man went home thoroughly teased and $100 poorer. What was the weaker man’s object?

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7. The Last Stand
General Custer is surrounded by Indians and he’s the only cowboy left.
He finds an old lamp in front of him and rubs it. Out pops a genie. The genie grants Custer one wish, with a catch. He says, “Whatever you wish for, each Indian will get two of the same thing.”
Custer ponders a while and thinks:”If I get a bow and arrow they get two. If I get a rifle they get two!” He then rubs the bottle again and out pops the genie. “Well,” the genie asks “have you made up your mind?”
What did Custer ask for to help him get away?

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8. Blind MenThere was a man who went to the mall where he bought 3 pairs of red socks and 3 pairs of white socks. Another man who had already bought 3 pairs of red socks and 3 pairs of white socks came back to return his 6 pairs. They were both blind. As they were walking, they bumped into each other. All the socks scattered around the floor, but each pair remained held together by a rubber band. Nobody helped them pick the socks up, but in 3 minutes they both had 3 pairs of red, and 3 pairs of white. How is that possible if they are blind?

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9. A man walks in to a bar…
A man walks into a bar and asks the bartender for a glass of water. The bartender reaches under the bar and brings out a gun and aims it at the man. The man says thank you and leaves. What happened?

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10. The Last SunriseA man walks into his back yard in the middle of the night and fires a gun. Due to his strange behaviour he never sees another sunrise. (No, he didn’t kill himself.) Can you explain this odd occurrence?

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10 Slang Words and Phrases Explained

This is a list of the origins of 10 slang words or phrases that we all use regularly. From insults to idiomatic expressions, these are common in virtually all English speaking nations.

1. Idiot
Idiot originally comes from the Greek word Idiotes which was used to refer to a person who was a private individual – or more specifically, one who was so preoccupied with their own personal life that they would not take part in the democratic process. In the biblical sense, the word referred to an uneducated person. By the fourteenth century, it could also refer to a clown, a layman (non-religious), or an individual. Later, however, the Oxford English Dictionary gave it the following definition which has stuck: “A person so deficient in mental or intellectual faculty as to be incapable of ordinary acts of reasoning or rational conduct”. When IQ tests arrived, a person scoring less than 20 was regarded to have earned the “idiot’s score”.

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2. Moron
Another Greek word, Moron meant foolish or stupid. It was first propagated in English by an American psychologist Henry Goddard (1886-1957). In his report to the Journal of Psycho-asthenics about his study of the feeble-minded, he argued for the adoption of the word which he defined as: “One who is lacking an intelligence, one who is deficient in judgement or sense.” It was originally used to refer to an adult with a mental age of between 8 and 12. The term has not really made its way into high literature.
3. Cool
Who hasn’t used this word at least once in their life when speaking highly of something? This meaning of the word is relatively new in English, but not as new as you might think. The earliest record found so far is from 1884 in the phrase ‘Dat’s cool!’. After that the next is 1902 from the lyrics of a song from the Black and White minstrel show: “de way we dress is cooler”.

4. Third degree
To get the third degree means to be thoroughly questioned. The third degree of something has been regarded as the upper limit (or extreme) even since the time of Shakespeare when he wrote: “For he’s in the thirde degree of drinke, he’s drown’d” – referring to a very drunk man. Therefore, it is a natural progression that when referring to the most extreme type of questioning, it would be referred to as the third degree.
5. Slut
This unpleasant term is used these days to refer to an immoral woman. But the origin of the term had a far less sinister meaning. It actually meant a woman who did not keep her room tidy – though it is easy to see that this could be a metaphor for immorality of a sexual type. In Thomas Hoccleve’s 1402 Letter to Cupid, we read: “The foulest slutte of al a toune”. This meaning eventually crossed to the word slattern which retains its original meaning of being an untidy woman. In Victorian English, sluts wool referred to the little piles of dust that gather on the floor if it is not swept.

6. Well Heeled
According to the Chambers Dictionary, well heeled means “comfortably supplied with money” and states that it comes from the word heeled, meaning provided with a heel. Heeled also used to refer to being armed with a revolver. A person carrying a set of guns was said to be long-heeled. Despite the Oxford English Dictionary saying otherwise, it appears that the origin of the term actually comes from Cockfighting. In the early days of cockfighting, the owners would sometimes add spurs to the feet of their birds, putting them at an advantage. If you did not add spurs to the bird it was said to be naked-heeled. The use of the term well-heeled in this context is first seen in print in 1866 in a story by Mark Twain.
7. Kick the Bucket
This means “to die”. Many people consider the term to have come from a condemned man standing on an upturned bucket which was then kicked out from under his feet leaving him to hang, but there is no written evidence that this is the case. In fact, it is more likely from a different type of bucket entirely. In butchery, when a pig was slaughtered it would be hung from a piece of timber called the bucket beam. It is mostly likely that in his death throes, the pig’s feet would bang against the rail to which they were tied. Therefore, kicking the bucket was a term referring to the last actions of the pig before he finally died.

8. Kinky
Originally this word simply meant something with a bend or twist, probably coming from the Icelandic word meaning to bend your knees. In time the word was adopted by the criminal world to mean something that was illicit – for example a stolen car may have been referred to as a “kinky car”. But then in 1959, Colin MacInnes changed the meaning of the word for ever. In his book Absolute Beginners, he says: “Suze […] meets lots of kinky characters […] and acts as agent for me, getting orders from them for my pornographic photos.” From that time on the word was associated with the steamy side of sex.
9. Underhand
Underhand means “surreptitious” or on the sly. The Chambers Dictionary also adds “with the hand below the elbow or shoulder” which would suggest doing something on the sly with your hand while distracting the eye. But the actual origin of the term most likely comes from Archery. A well known lover of archery, Roger Ascham (c1515-1568) wrote: “Thus the underhande [shaft] must have a small breste, to go cleane awaye oute of the bowe.” To shoot underhand was and is a common archery term.
10. Bob’s Your Uncle
Bob’s your Uncle generally means that something is simple or easy or a “job done”. It is most likely that this phrase came about as a result of nepotism (family favoritism). In the late 1800s, Lord Salisbury (first name Robert) was prime-minister of Great Britain. After his third term he was succeeded by his nephew Arthur. Arthur had been made Chief Secretary of Ireland in 1886 which caused some scandal. Suspicions arose that Robert was favoring his nephew Arthur. The term “Bob’s your uncle” could be used at the time as a sly reference to this charge of nepotism.

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Top 10 Ugliest Female Celebrities

Having completed a top 10 ugly men, I thought I ought to follow on with a top 10 ugly women. From least to most ugly, here they are:
10. Camilla Parker-Bowles

Camilla Parker-Bowles is the second wife of Charles, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the thrones of the United Kingdom and the other 15 Commonwealth Realms. She is a dedicated horse-rider and was an avid fox hunter until it was banned under the Hunting Act 2004. She is often compared to a horse.

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9. Rosie O’Donnell

O’Donnell is an 11-time Emmy Award-winning American comedienne, talk show host, television personality, celebrity blogger, film, television, and stage actress.
8. Janet Reno

Reno was the first female Attorney General of the United States (1993–2001). She was nominated by President Bill Clinton on February 11, 1993, and confirmed on March 11. She was the second longest serving Attorney General after William Wirt.
7. Kathy Burke

Kathy Burke is an English actress and theatre director. Burke first became familiar to television audiences as a player of minor roles in sketches by better-known performers such as Harry Enfield, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.
6. Rhea Perlman

Perlman is an American 4-time Emmy Award winning actress, best known for her role as Carla Tortelli on the sitcom Cheers. She is married to actor Danny DeVito, with whom she has three children.

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5. Whoopi Goldberg

Goldberg is an American actress, comedian, radio DJ, and author. She is one of only ten individuals who have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar, and a Tony Award, counting Daytime Emmy Awards. She is the second African American female performer to win an Academy Award for acting.
4. Cher

Cher is an Armenian-American actress, singer, songwriter, author and entertainer. Among her many accomplishments in music, television and film, she has won an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award and three Golden Globe Awards. Cher first rose to prominence in 1965 as one half of the pop/rock duo Sonny & Cher.
3. Helen Clark

Helen Clark became Prime Minister of New Zealand in December 1999 and entered her third successive term in that office in 2005. As of 2007, Forbes magazine ranked her as the 38th most powerful woman in the world. Listverse ranked her as the third most ugly.
2. Sandra Bernhard

Sandra Bernhard is an American comedian, actress, author and singer. She first gained attention in the late 1970s with her stand-up comedy where she often bitterly critiques celebrity culture and political figures. She is also famous for her close friendship to Madonna during the late 1980s. Bernhard is number 97 on Comedy Central’s list of the 100 greatest standups of all time.
1. Jocelyn Wildenstein

Jocelyn Wildenstein, sometimes referred to as “The Lion Queen” or “The Cat Woman,” is a wealthy socialite who has frequently been seen in the tabloid press due to her numerous cosmetic surgeries. Her extreme appearance has led to the press giving her the nickname “The Bride of Wildenstein,” a reference to The Bride of Frankenstein. Wildenstein has allegedly spent $3,933,800 on cosmetic surgery over the years.

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Top 10 Bizarre Artworks

WARNING: Some adult and shocking content is featured here. This article shows some of the most bizarre art in modern history. Art has progressed well past the concept of recognisable structures to completely outlandish (and often nightmarish) images. Seeing is believing, so here is the list:
1. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living [Wikipedia]
Artist: Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst (born June 7, 1965) is an English artist and the most prominent of the group that has been dubbed “Young British Artists” (or YBAs). He dominated the art scene in Britain during the 1990s and is internationally renowned. Death is a central theme in his work. He is best known for his Natural History series, in which dead animals (such as a shark, a sheep or a cow) are preserved, sometimes cut-up, in formaldehyde.
His iconic work is The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14-foot tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a vitrine. Its sale in 2004 made him the second most expensive living artist after Jasper Johns. In June 2007, Hirst became the most expensive living artist with the sale of a medicine chest, Lullaby Spring, for £9.65 million at Sotheby’s in London.

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2. My Bed [Wikipedia]
Artist: Tracey Emin

Tracey Emin RA (born 3 July 1963) is an English artist of Turkish Cypriot origin, one of the group known as Britartists or YBAs (Young British Artists). She has succeeded in equalling, if not surpassing, Damien Hirst among the YBAs in terms of notoriety among the general public.
A drunken outburst on a Channel 4 TV discussion, and My Bed — an installation in the 1999 Turner Prize exhibition, consisting of her own unmade dirty bed with used condoms and blood-stained underwear — both caused a media furore.
3. Bend IT [Wikipedia]
Artist: Gilbert and George

Gilbert Prousch (or Proesch) (born in San Martin (San Martino), Italy, September 11, 1943) and George Passmore (born in Devon, England January 8, 1942), better known as Gilbert & George, are artists. They have worked almost exclusively as a pair. The two first met on 25th September 1967 while studying sculpture at St Martins School of Art, now Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, one of six colleges in the University of the Arts, London.
They were initially known as performance artists. While still students they made The Singing Sculpture (1970), for which they covered themselves in gold metallic paint, stood on a table, and mimed to a recording of Flanagan and Allen’s song “Underneath the Arches”, sometimes for hours at a time.
4. Dolls [Wikipedia]
Artist: Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer (1902 Kattowitz, Silesia – 23 February 1975 Paris, France) was an artist, best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. He is also commonly thought of, in the art world, as a Surrealist photographer. Since 1926 he had been working as a draftsman for his own advertising company. He initiated his doll project to oppose the fascism of the Nazi Party by declaring that he would make no work that would support the German state.
Bellmer’s doll developed from a series of three events in his personal life: meeting a beautiful teenage cousin in 1932; attending a performance of Jacques Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann (in which a man falls tragically in love with an automaton); and receiving a box of his old toys. After these events he began to construct his first doll.
5. Cadaver 3 [Wikipedia]
Artist: Gunther Von Hagens

Gunther von Hagens (b. Gunther Liebchen, January 10, 1945) is a controversial German anatomist who invented the plastination technique to preserve specimens and is heavily involved in its promotion. He developed the Body Worlds exhibition of human bodies and body parts. Von Hagens has a distinct German accent, and wears a black hat during his instructional cadaver dissection videos.
In January 2004, the German news magazine Der Spiegel reported that von Hagens had acquired some corpses from executed prisoners in China; he countered that he did not know the origin of the bodies and went on to cremate several of the disputed cadavers. German prosecutors declined to press charges, and Von Hagens was granted an interim injunction against Der Spiegel in March 2005, preventing the magazine from claiming that Body Worlds contain the bodies of executed prisoners.

6. Death II [Wikipedia]
Artist: Jack and Dinos Chapman

Jake Chapman (born 1966) and Dinos Chapman (born 1962) are brothers and English conceptual artists who work almost exclusively in collaboration with each other. They came to prominence as part of the Young British Artists movement promoted by Charles Saatchi. In their early career they worked as assistants to Gilbert and George.
The Chapman brothers were nominated for the Turner Prize in 2003. As well as including Insult to Injury, their Turner Prize exhibit debuted two new works Sex and Death. Sex directly referenced their previous work Great Deeds against the Dead. The original work shows three dismembered corpses hanging from a tree, Sex shows the same scenario, but in a heightened state of decay.
7. Janet
Artist: Clare Shenstone

Clare Shenstone completed her MA at the Royal College of Art in 1979. She was told that a ‘distinguished visitor’ had been looking at her degree show and left his telephone number. She phoned: it was Francis Bacon, who said ‘I love your work’. He wanted to by a particular piece titled ‘Janet’, this had been the artist’s first attempt at what she calls ‘cloth heads’.
Over the following two years she spent a lot of time with Bacon, making over fifty oil, gouache, pastel and pencil sketches of him. Since then Clare has exhibited widely across London and completed numerous other notable commissions including portraits of Zöe Wanamaker, Ronald Harwood and David Bowie.
8. Fountain [Wikipedia]
Artist: Marcel Duchamp

Fountain is a 1917 work by Marcel Duchamp. It is one of the pieces which he called readymades (also known as found art), because he made use of an already existing object—in this case a urinal, which he titled Fountain and signed R. Mutt. Marcel Duchamp had arrived in the United States less than two years previous to the “creation” of Fountain, and had become involved with Dada, an anti-rational, anti-art cultural movement, in New York City.
Like the use of the word “Dada” for the art movement, the meaning (if any) and intention of the signature “R. Mutt” is difficult to pin down precisely. Mutt and Jeff was a popular contemporary comic strip. It is not clear whether Duchamp had in mind the German “armut” (meaning poverty), but he did state that the initial “R” stood for “Richard”, which is slang in French for “moneybags”. It is also suggested that R. Mutt is a play off R. Mott, the company that produced the Paris sewer pipes.

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9. Innocent X avec viande [Wikipedia]
Artist: Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (28 October 1909 – 28 April 1992) was a gay Irish figurative painter. He was a collateral descendant of the Elizabethan philosopher Francis Bacon. His artwork is well known for its bold, austere, and often grotesque or nightmarish imagery. The philosopher Gilles Deleuze has contributed greatly to the interpretation of Bacon’s work.
This work, Completed, and delivered to the Beaux-Arts gallery in February 1953, of “Study after Velázquez’s Portrait of Pope Innocent X” (1953), Bacon said “I wanted to paint a head as if folded in on itself, like the folds of a curtain”. The Titian Portrait of Cardinal Filippo Archinto (c.1551-1562) is often cited as an ancestor to this device.
10. Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic [Wikipedia]
Artist: Jana Sterbak

Jana Sterbak (born 1955) is a Canadian artist best known for her works constructed from meat. Two sculptures, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic (1987) and Chair Apollinaire (1999), were both works whose primary medium was cured flank steak.
Sterbak’s works deal primarily with issues of power, sexuality, and control, and she also explores the relationship between humanity and the technology it has created. Her Standard Lives – Abridged was displayed in the centre of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in September-October 1990.

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Top 10 Ugliest Male Celebrities

Oh how low we have stooped! Following on from yesterday’s humor theme (and before we roll out some more serious lists) I thought we could have a look at the ten ugliest male celebrities. Many of these men are great in their field (whether it be music or film) but they are just plain ugly. Do you think I have missed anyone? Add him to the comments. Ugly actresses coming soon!
10. John Heder [Actor]

John Heder is a twin, and he is probably best known as Napoleon Dynamite. He grew up in a family of six kids and he speaks fluent Japanese which he learnt while on a mission in Japan for the Mormon church.

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9. John C. Reilly [Actor]

John C. Reilly has played a host of seamy characters to great effect over the years. Of late, however, he has defied the odds by drawing in the ladies with his touching “common man” portrayals of lovable, good-natured schlepps.
8. Nick Nolte [Actor]

Nolte’s breakthrough role was in the TV mini-series “Rich Man, Poor Man” (1976), playing the role of “Tom/Tommy Jordache”. Nick Nolte said that when he played a young man in the early scenes of the project, he weighed about 160 pounds. When he played a middle aged man in the later scenes, he weighed over 180 pounds.
7. Pete Doherty [Musician]

Since 2005, Doherty has become well known to the public at large as a result of his relationship with supermodel Kate Moss, his status amongst fans and his infamous rock and roll lifestyle. His drug use, arrests, and court appearances are frequently reported in the tabloid press.
6. Elton John [Musician]

Elton John is a five-time Grammy and one-time Academy Award-winning English pop/rock singer, composer and pianist. Elton John was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. He has been heavily involved in the fight against AIDS since the late 1980s and was knighted in 1998.

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5. Malcolm McDowell [Actor]

McDowell is an English actor probably best known for his portrayal of Alex in A Clockwork Orange, and more recently playing the part of Mr. Linderman in Heroes.
4. Lyle Lovett [Actor/Musician]

Lovett has won four Grammy Awards, including Best Country Album, Best Pop Vocal Collaboration, and Best Country Male Vocal. He has acted in a number of films, including Robert Altman’s film The Player, Short Cuts, Prêt-à-Porter, and Cookie’s Fortune.
3. Steve Buscemi [Actor]

Buscemi has become famous for his character roles, including Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs, Garland Greene in Con Air, Rockhound in Armageddon, Donny in The Big Lebowski and Carl Showalter in Fargo. Although usually a supporting actor, he has had critical success as a lead actor, particularly in his role as Seymour in Ghost World.
2. Marilyn Manson [Musician]

Manson formed Marilyn Manson & the Spooky Kids in Florida in 1989 (the name was shortened to Marilyn Manson in 1992). In the summer of 1993, the band drew the attention of Trent Reznor. Reznor produced their 1994 debut album, Portrait of an American Family and released it on his Nothing label. Why did he not make top spot? Because at least some of it is makeup – he can wipe it off, on the other hand, number 1 cant:
1. Michael Jackson [Unknown]

A picture paints a thousand words – so I will let the picture above speak for itself.

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Top 15 Photoshopped Photos That Fooled Us All

Images have become the mainstay of our experience of historical events and occasionally people have felt the need to manipulate those images to support their views or manipulate the truth. Since the advent of the Internet, we are now also seeing a large number of “photoshopped” images created for humor or popularity. This is a list of 15 of the most famous manipulated images. These images are shown in no particular order. Click images for a larger view.

15. Harding and Kerrigan skate together

This digital composite of Olympic ice skaters Tanya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan appeared on the cover of New York Newsday. The picture showed the rivals practicing together, shortly after an attack on Kerrigan by an associate of Harding’s husband. The picture caption reads: “Tonya Harding, left, and Nancy Kerrigan, appear to skate together in this New York Newsday composite illustration. Tomorrow, they’ll really take to the ice together.”

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14. O.J. Simpson Covers

In the summer of 1994, O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Smith and her friend. News publications were plastering his mugshot everywhere as it was turning out to be the trial of the Century. Notably, TIME Magazine published an edition featuring an altered mugshot, removing the photograph’s color saturation (which some accused of making Simpson’s skin darker), burning the corners, and reducing the size of the prisoner ID number. This appeared on newsstands right next to an unaltered picture by Newsweek.
13. The Shark and the Helicopter

Helicopter Shark is a composition of two photographs that gives the impression that a Great white shark is leaping out of the water attacking military personnel climbing a suspended ladder attached to a special forces UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. The photo was widely circulated via email in 2001, along with a claim that it had been chosen as “National Geographic Photo of the Year”. The final edited photo was created by combining a photograph of a HH-60G Pave Hawk helicopter taken by Lance Cheung for United States Air Force (USAF), and a photo taken by South African photographer Charles Maxwell. While the helicopter photo was in fact taken in front of the Golden Gate Bridge, the photo of the shark was actually taken in False Bay, South Africa. There are no known sightings of Great White sharks in San Francisco Bay.
12. Tourist Guy

Soon after Sept 11th, 2001, this picture was clogging everyone’s e-mails. It is supposed to be the last picture taken on a roll of film from a camera that somehow managed to survive the decimation of everything in the Twin Towers. It was soon to be found as an altered image. Firstly, the weather on the image did not match the real weather on September 11th, 2001. Secondly, he is standing on the south tower, but the first tower to be hit was the north tower. Thirdly, the observation deck of the WTC was not open when the planes hit. Fourth, the aircraft that struck the WTC were traveling at such a velocity that only an extremely fast shutter speed would have rendered the amount of detail on the aircraft pictured. Finally, the plane on the picture is an American Boeing 757, while the planes that hit the WTC were Boeing 767s.
11. George Bush edited out

The altered image (left) was part of George Bush’s political campaign in 2004. He is digitally taken out by copying and pasting existing soldiers over the podium. Later, campaign managers would admit to the altering of the image. The Bush campaign corrected and re-shipped the campaign to TV stations.
10. Kerry and Fonda Protest
In 2004, an Anti-Kerry campaign was run to tarnish his name. This picture shows Kerry associating with Jane Fonda a vilified anti-war protester. The picture was mocked up to look like a news clipping from the ‘70s. The composite of two different images were of Kerry taken on June 13, 1971 and of Jane Fonda taken in August, 1972.
9. Lukket’s 50s RAND Computer

This image was of an entry in a photoshop contest on popular site Fark.com. The “theme” was of a picture of a submarine control panel mockup. He did such a job on the image that before the contest ended, it was already spread around the internet on bulletin boards and in emails. This caused Snopes.com (myth debunking site) to write up an article. After the snopes article, the photgraph won the contest. The image continued to confuse people from Sept. 2004-March of 2006 including newspapers like the San Luis Obispo Tribune who credited Popular Mechanics and TV and radio personalities such as “Bob and Tom”.

8. 2006 Lebanon War Photographs
In 2006, a reporter from Reuters was covering news about the Isreal-Lebonon conflict. This was the image he used to go with the story. “Hajj claimed he had just been trying to remove dust marks, and that he made mistakes due to the bad lighting conditions he was working under. Critics point out that this is impossible, as Hajj’s doctored image added an entire plume of smoke, duplicated several buildings, and showed a repeating pattern indicating that one plume of smoke was “cloned” several times.”

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7. Katie Couric’s weight loss

In 2006, when Katie Couric announced she would be replacing Dan Rather permanently on CBS evening news, marketing was pushed forward. The picture on the right became her “official image”. A CBS photo specialist shaped Miss Couric from the original on the left. Miss Couric’s remarks were “I liked the first picture better because there’s more of me to love”.
6. Trotsky

The picture above was taken by L.Y. Leonidov on Nov 7, 1919 as the Soviet Union was celebrating the second anniversary of the October Revolution. In the centre is Lenin with his trade mark goatee and wearing a Soviet cap. Two people over to Lenin’s left is Trotsky wearing glasses and giving a salute. At this time Trotsky was a still a powerful figure in Russia and held the powerful chairman of the Supreme Military Council position. In 1967 in time for the V.I. Lenin in the Art of Photography, in Moscow, Trotsky and three others (Kamenev, Khalatov, and unknown) were airbrushed out of the photo.

5. Abraham Lincoln
This nearly iconic portrait of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln is a composite of Lincoln’s head and the Southern politician John Calhoun’s body. Putting the date of this image into context, note that the first permanent photographic image was created in 1826 and the Eastman Dry Plate Company (later to become Eastman Kodak) was created in 1881.
4. Josef Stalin

Stalin routinely air-brushed his enemies out of photographs. In this photograph a commissar (Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov) was removed from the original photograph after falling out of favor with Stalin.
3. Kent State

This Pulitzer Prize winning photo by John Filo shows Mary Ann Vecchio screaming as she kneels over the body of student Jeffrey Miller at Kent State University, where National Guardsmen had fired into a crowd of demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine. The original photograph shows a fence post directly behind Vecchio, that was removed in the published version.
2. National Geographic

In this National Geographic magazine cover story on Egypt, the Great Pyramids of Giza, in a horizontal picture by Gordon Gahen, were “squeezed” together to fit the magazine’s vertical format. Tom Kennedy, who became the director of photography at National Geographic after the cover was manipulated, stated that “We no longer use that technology to manipulate elements in a photo simply to achieve a more compelling graphic effect. We regarded that afterwards as a mistake, and we wouldn’t repeat that mistake today”.
1. Political Correctness

Hoping to illustrate its diverse enrollment, the University of Wisconsin at Madison doctored a photograph on a brochure cover by digitally inserting a black student in a crowd of white football fans. The original photograph of white fans was taken in 1993. The additional black student, senior Diallo Shabazz, was taken in 1994. University officials said that they spent the summer looking for pictures that would show the school’s diversity — but had no luck.

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