St Thomas Aquinas’ family locked him in a tower and sent in a prostitute to keep him from becoming a priest!

Most of Thomas’s brothers chose military careers, but his mother desired for him to become a Benedictine monk. Instead of joining the Benedictine's, he wanted to join the Dominican order. This didn't sit well with his mom.

To prevent his mother from interfering, the Dominican arranged for him to go to Rome. On his way to Rome, Thomas’s mother sent her other sons to kidnap Thomas while he was drinking from a spring. 

They took him back to their parents’ castle and held him there for two years. Due to political reasons, the Pope didn’t order for his release. During his home imprisonment, Thomas tutored his sisters and communicated with the Dominican Order. 

His mother was hoping that the detention would kill his aspirations. His brothers became desperate and sent a prostitute to seduce Thomas. He chased her away with a burning stick. 

Legend has it that two angels appeared to him that night and blessed him with more fortitude to remain celibate. Finally, his mother realized she’d lost the battle and he wouldn’t change his mind. 

To save face, instead of just releasing him and admitting defeat, she arranged for him to escape through his bedroom window to finally join the Dominican Order. 

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A 13-year-old baby was born after being frozen as an embryo.

While the title may sound bizarre, the whole story is even stranger. Debbie and Ken Beasley decided to try and have a baby over thirteen years ago, but had trouble conceiving so they decided to try in vitro. 

Twelve embryos were made at a fertility clinic and several were implanted, resulting in twins. This is where the story gets odd. Debbie and her husband didn’t think about the remaining embryos after having their children, and it turns out the doctors illegally sold them.  That clinic was shut down due to this.

The couple traced the embryos to an East Coast university where eight had been successfully frozen. Upon finding their potential offspring after believing them to be gone, the couple decided to try and conceive again. 

They had the embryos thawed after 13 years and implanted, which resulted in a healthy baby girl named Laina! Don’t think this story is too strange? Just think, Laina, who was just born, is technically a triplet and the other two are already teenagers! 

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Neil Patrick Harris used to voice Spider-Man.

In the short lived "Spider-Man: The New Animated Series," which aired on MTV for one season of thirteen episodes in 2003, Neil Patrick Harris voiced Peter Parker. 

The show, which loosely continued the story of the 2002 Spider-Man movie, was made using CGI with cel shading and was produced by Mainframe Entertainment for Sony Pictures Television. 

The show took place at some point after the first film, because Norman Osborn (the Green Goblin) is dead, and Peter Parker is in college. It focused mainly on Peter trying to use his powers for good and struggling with balancing his personal life with his superhero life, and revolved around Voltaire's idea of "with great power comes great responsibility."

The series was well received by fans, but less so by critics. Critics thought of the cel shaded animation style and the more violent interpretation of Spider-Man favorably, but didn't like the time line of the film and how loosely it was based on the comics.

The last episode created some confusion because it depicted Peter giving up being Spider-Man for good, even though a second Spider-Man film had just been announced. This meant that the show was then an alternative time line, and was unrelated to the films. 

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One man survived both atomic bombs!

Tsutomu Yamaguchi  was a 23-year-old businessman working for Mitsubishi in 1945. While he was in Hiroshima on a business trip, the first bomb was dropped by the USA. Luckily, Yamaguchi was far enough from the explosion to escape with minimal damage.

The next day, Tsutomu returned to his hometown. Nagasaki. You can probably see where this is going, but while he was at work, the second bomb fell. He survived this explosion relatively unscathed.

Mr Yamaguchi became an advocate against nuclear weapons and called for their abolition in 2006 at a UN conference. He lived a long life and died at the age of 93 in 2010.

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In honor of Mother's Day, a few facts about Moms!

Today, most of the world celebrates Mother's Day. Here's a few facts about moms and mother's day. 

• The earliest celebration of mother's in recorded history comes from ancient Greece, when there was a spring festival dedicated to Rhea, the mother of the gods.
• The modern version of mother's day was first observed in 1907. Anna Jarvis started a letter writing campaign to recognize mother's day, something she wanted to do to honor her deceased mother.
• The US Congress officially recognized Mother's day as a holiday in 1914.
• In 2009, there are an estimated 85.4 million moms in the United States.
• Just over half of women aged 15 - 44 are mothers.
• In 2008, the average age for a woman's first birth is 25.1, slightly up from the previous years
• The number of stay at home moms is dropping. It's gone down from 5.3 million in 2008 to 5 million in 2010.
• Anna Jarvis regretted how commercialized Mother's Day had become and spent the rest of her life fighting the holiday.
• Moms are awesome.

OK, that last one might not be a scientific fact, but we still want to wish all moms a Happy Mother's Day!

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