Page 53 - Best of the Month

Ed O'Neil's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is intentionally in front of a shoe store!

Ed O'Neil played one of the more iconic characters in sitcom history on a show called Married With Children. In the show, Ed O'Neil plays a man named Al Bundy, and the show revolves around the life of Al trying to balance his work life, his family life, and his romantic life with his wife.

Guess what Al Bundy does for a living? That's right, he works as a shoe salesman. Thus, Ed O'Neil's star was placed outside of a shoe store - the workplace of his most well known role.

Ed O'Neil was the 2,446th person to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and has starred in many other projects over the years including Little Giants, Wayne's World and Wayne's World 2, and his most recent role, the husband of Sofia Vergara on the show Modern Family.

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The company that produced the original Tomb Raider game wanted to include a 'Nude Cheat'!

Lara Croft, the main character in the Tomb Raider franchise is seen as a misogynistic sex symbol to most acting feminists around the world, however the argument can be made that the intention was to make a strong independent woman who doesn't need a man to tell her what to do. Although, Core Design, the gaming company responsible for creating the first Tomb Raider game, had originally intended to use sex appeal to lure people to play the game.

The company gave Toby Gard creative control of the game, and he oversaw the creation of all the cut scenes, and even designed the games levels, as well as story boards. However, Core wanted Gard to put a secret cheat in the game known as the 'Nude Cheat' that would allow gamers to play as a naked version of Lara Croft.

Toby Gard, however, shot the idea down almost instantly. He wanted Lara Croft to be seen as a strong heroine, rather than a sexy video game character used to lure in males to raise game sales.

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A fighter jet pilot managed to shoot down his own plane!

On Friday September 21, 1956, seasoned World War II pilot Thomas W. Altridge Jr was testing out a new aircraft - the F11F. It was a relatively easy mission, fly over the Atlantic Ocean, disperse a few rounds, and then head back to base and enjoy his weekend. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out that way.

After released 70 rounds of ammunition, Altridge took a steep nose dive to test the plane's maneuverability when his windshield was hit by something and his plane started losing power. He was unable to make it back to base, and his plane crashed in a nearby forest which resulted in a large fire, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition exploding. Aldridge suffered a 3 broken vertebrae and a broken leg after hitting what he thought was a bird.

A post-accident investigation discovered something that would embarrass Aldridge for the rest of his life - he had shot down his own plane. After firing several rounds of ammunition, he entered a nose dive - which led him straight to the ammunition he had just fired! The bullets had hit his windshield, engine, and popped a massive hole in one of the plane's wings!

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A company called Holy Smokes will take your cremated ashes and place them in bullets!

Some people want to be buried in a cemetery, others want to have their ashes spread across an ocean, but some people, such as the founder of Holy Smokes, Thad Holmes, want to have their ashes loaded into 250 shotgun shells and used by their loved ones to hunt animals.

Thad is an avid outdoors man, and so is his son, and they both believe that the best way for his son to remember Thad is to use him once every year to hunt an animal. This simply bizarre idea evolved into a business ran by Thad called Holy Smokes.

Basically, people send the company their loved ones ashes, and in return, the company places the ashes in 250 shells (of the family's choosing) and then sends the shells back to the family to use. This one of a kind business charges $850 for their services.

After just a few months of the business being in operation, they already have a website and have had two different families use their services!

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A woman adopted and murdered over 400 children!

Amelia Dyer is perhaps one of the least known serial killers of all time, because the number of children she actually killed is unknown. She was sentenced to death as a punishment for one murder, but there is little debate that she killed many more - potentially 400 children.

Amelia Dyer was interested in making a quick buck, thus became what is known as a 'baby farmer'. Basically, she would adopt children from couples that couldn't care for them and promised the parents that the child would be loved by both her and her 'husband'.

She just asked that the couples provide her with money to pay for the child's food and clothes. Dyer would then neglect the child and allow them to die of starvation, hide the body, and then she would pocket all the money that the parents were sending to her!

She was truly a heinous criminal, as she was able to fool hundreds of parents and was essentially the murderer of hundreds of orphaned children. For more on Amelia Dyer, click the source.

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