Russian President Vladimir Putin says Moscow has the means to destroy anyone who attacks Kaliningrad, the Russian exclave squeezed between NATO members Poland and Lithuania. It was a blunt line, and Putin

Six Feet Under Split With Drummer Marco Pitruzzella, Statement Issued + Replacement RevealedAmerican death metal troupe Six Feet Under have officially split with longtime drummer Marco Pitruzzella, the band announced via a social media statement last week. In the process, they also revealed that Ruston Grosse will be Pitruzzella’s replacement.Read Six Feet Under’s Statement About Pitruzzella +...

All The Classic (And Sometimes Weird) Texas Roadhouse Traditions, Explained...

What Happens To Leftover Airline Food?...

The Staggering Number Of Big Macs That McDonald's Sells In A Year...

In the book "Bitter Honey," writer and researcher Jennie Durant explores how industrial agriculture is destroying bees and what can be done to stop them.

Lionsgate FilmsTimothy Treadwell spent 13 years filming, observing, and interacting with brown bears in Alaska.Timothy Treadwell had a passion for bears. After surviving a drug overdose in the late 1980s, he began spending his summers among the wild bears of Alaska, and he attributed his recovery from addiction to the creatures.But Treadwell didnt just observe the animals. He regularly interacted with the coastal brown bears of the Katmai coast, swimming with them and even playing with their cubs. Rangers repeatedly warned him that he was getting too close to the bears, but he dismissed their concerns, believing he had a special connection to them.Then, in October 2003, he was camping in Alaska with his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, when he was attacked. Huguenard trained in vain to save him, but the brown bear that had mauled Treadwell turned on her, too. By the time help arrived, they had both been partially eaten.Audio from the gruesome attack was captured on a video camera that was rolling at the time. It was so disturbing that Treadwells loved ones destroyed it, ensuring that nobody else would have to endure the chilling final moments of the Grizzly Man.How Timothy Treadwell Became Known As The Grizzly ManTimothy Treadwell was born Timothy William Dexter in the Long Island town of Mineola on April 29, 1957. He developed a fondness for animals from an early age, and he even had a pet squirrel. His childhood was fairly typical, and he had a promising future. As the star diver on his high schools swim team, he earned a college scholarship but then things went downhill.During his time at Bradley University in Illinois, he seemingly had some sort of mental break. He began claiming that he was an orphan and dropped out after just two years. He then moved to Los Angeles with hopes of becoming an actor. He auditioned for the role of Woody Boyd on the sitcom Cheers, but he lost the role to Woody Harrelson. At this point, he officially changed his last name to Treadwell and became estranged from his family. He spiraled into drug and alcohol abuse, and he nearly overdosed on heroin in the mid-1980s. He realized that something had to change, and he confided in his friend, Terry Tabor. As Treadwell wrote in his 1999 memoir, Among Grizzlies, Tabor asked him what he wanted to do with his life. Treadwell replied: Well, this might seem crazy, but when I was young I used to pretend I was a grizzly bear. Ive always wanted to see bears, Terry.Discovery UK/YouTubeTimothy Treadwell became known as Grizzly Man due to his encounters with bears.Tabor encouraged Treadwell to travel to Alaska to fulfill his dream. So, a year later, he did just that. He hopped on his motorcycle and rode thousands of miles to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, where he had his first encounter with a wild bear. Treadwell later recalled:[A] row of thick vegetation and shrubbery next to me began to rustle and then sway violently. I froze in my muddy tracks, eyes bulging as I watched the brush. I broke out in a cold sweat as the weeds thrashed and an enormous fur-clad animal bounded out onto the path. A grizzly! I gazed into the face of a kindred soul, a being that was potentially lethal, but in reality was just as frightened as I was.Treadwell returned to Alaska the following year and had additional close encounters with bears. By the end of that trip, he wrote, he truly felt at one with the grizzlies.Living With The Wild Bears Of AlaskaTimothy Treadwell spent 13 summers in Alaska, often camping along the Katmai coast. The coastal brown bears there are technically the same species as grizzly bears Ursus arctos but grow even larger, with males regularly topping 1,000 pounds due to their rich marine diet.Reweaver33/Wikimedia CommonsA coastal brown bear fishing for salmon in Katmai National Park.Treadwell set up his camp in an open, grassy area that he referred to as the Grizzly Sanctuary. There, he closely interacted with the bears, sometimes touching them and playing with their cubs. He named the creatures that he saw repeatedly, dubbing them Booble, Cupcake, and Mr. Chocolate.He had to use bear mace once after a dangerous encounter, but he felt so guilty about it that he vowed never to carry it again. This concerned the park rangers who had been keeping an eye on him.According to a report by the National Park Service, Treadwell had a long history of engaging in behavior that is considered dangerous while bear viewing, filming, and camping on the Katmai coast.Discovery UK/YouTubeTimothy Treadwell swims with a brown bear.Between 1994 and 2003, Timothy Treadwell reportedly received six citations for safety violations ranging from improper food storage to wildlife harassment. However, Treadwell believed that he had an intimate connection with the bears. When he wasnt spending his summers in Alaska, he was traveling across the country to teach schoolchildren about the creatures and promote environmental activism.Treadwell even credited bears with helping him recover from his drug and alcohol addiction, stating, As long as I drank, it was impossible for me to truly be a responsible defender of bears. But in October 2003, Treadwells overconfidence with the animals resulted in tragedy.The Horrific Death Of Timothy TreadwellIn the summer of 2003, Timothy Treadwell invited his girlfriend, Amie Huguenard, to travel to Alaska with him. While Huguenard also loved bears, she was wary of how closely Treadwell interacted with them. By the end of the trip, she was reportedly ready to return home.The two were meant to fly back to California on Sept. 26, but after they ran into trouble with their travel arrangements, they decided to stay another week. An air taxi was scheduled to pick them up on Oct. 6. That morning, pilot Willy Fulton arrived at their campsite but Treadwell and Huguenard were nowhere to be found. Instead, a large male bear was stalking the perimeter.Fulton called park rangers, who flew to the scene to find a gruesome sight. According to the official NPS report, [T]he campsite consisted of two tents that were collapsed and miscellaneous camping equipment. Lying near the pile was what appeared to be a bodily organ, possibly a kidney. Extending out of the dirt pile we observed a human hand.National Park ServiceThe trampled remnants of Timothy Treadwell and Amie Huguenards tent.After searching the area, they also located Treadwells severed head and arms, as well as Huguenards head. While they were at the site, a male bear believed to be the same one that killed Treadwell and Huguenard charged at the rangers, who fatally shot it in defense. Human remains were later found in its stomach.Perhaps most chilling of all, the rangers also found a video camera that had captured audio of the beginning of the attack. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2003, the tape recorded Treadwell shouting, Come out here! Im being killed out here!Huguenard urged him to play dead, and he asked her to hit the bear with a can. Much of the tape is inaudible, but screams could be heard in the background.The death of Timothy Treadwell was the first recorded bear-related fatality in the history of Katmai National Park. Amie Huguenards was the second.In the end, Treadwell died the way he lived. Grizzly Man was aware of how dangerous his lifestyle was, but his passion for bears outweighed the risks. Im sure he knew all along that he was playing with fire, Alaska State Trooper public information officer Greg Wilkerson told the Los Angeles Times, and that was probably part of the appeal.After reading about the grisly death of Timothy Treadwell, learn about Hugh Glass and the bear attack that inspired The Revenant. Then, go inside ten of the worst deaths in human history.The post The Grisly Story Of Timothy Treadwell, The Bear Enthusiast Who Was Mauled In Alaska appeared first on All That's Interesting.

When people hear the word cannibal, they often picture the ritual human sacrifices of a long-gone civilization or an isolated tribe in a distant land. But sometimes, cannibal attacks hit much closer to home.Click here to view slideshowThe taste for human flesh persists to the modern day, and it's not confined to far-off nations. Serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer have admitted to eating pieces of their victims, and drug-fueled rampages have resulted in grisly cannibalistic acts.Sometimes, survivors of disasters are forced to resort to cannibalism if they want to live another day. Plane crashes, shipwrecks, and blizzards have all left people desperate enough to dine on their companions who have already perished.Then, there are the curious people who simply want to know what humans taste like and find voluntary victims willing to fulfill their desires.Above, look through the disturbing stories of 17 cannibal attacks. And below, learn the chilling details of some of the more unbelievable cases.The Mysterious Disappearance And Alleged Disappearance Of Michael RockefellerIn November 1961, 23-year-old Michael Rockefeller vanished off the coast of Dutch New Guinea. The great-grandson of oil magnate John D. Rockefeller had joined an expedition to the territory to collect Indigenous art for his family's collection and study the culture of the region's tribes. But the trip soon took a tragic turn.Rockefeller was traveling on the Arafura Sea with anthropologist Ren Wassing when their boat overturned. The outboard motor flooded, and they were stranded at sea for a full day. Although they were nearly 14 miles from shore, Rockefeller decided to swim for help but he was never seen again.Jan Broekhuijse/Harvard University Peabody Museum of Archaeology & EthnologyMichael Rockefeller during his expedition to Dutch New Guinea in 1961.Investigators initially assumed that he'd drowned, but as more people started asking questions, a terrifying story emerged.Journalist Carl Hoffman interviewed several people involved in the investigation for a 2014 article published in Smithsonian magazine, including a Dutch missionary named Hubertus von Peij who traveled to the village of Omadesep the month after Rockefeller vanished.According to von Peij, he spoke with two men from nearby Otsjanep who claimed that Michael Rockefeller had indeed made it to shore where he'd been murdered and eaten by members of the Asmat tribe. They'd turned his bones into fishing spears and hung his head in a tribesman's house.The men stated that Rockefeller had been killed to avenge the deaths of five Otsjanep residents at the hands of Dutch soldiers several years earlier.The true fate of Michael Rockefeller remains unknown, but if von Peij and the men he spoke with were telling the truth, he didn't drown at all he died in a cannibal attack.Armin Meiwes And His Cannibal Attack On A Willing VictimWhile Michael Rockefeller surely tried to fight off his attackers if he was indeed killed and eaten by Asmat tribesmen there's at least one cannibalism victim who died willingly. His name was Bernd Brandes, and he responded to a bizarre online ad written by German computer repair technician Armin Meiwes in 2001.Meiwes had posted in a cannibalism fetish forum seeking a voluntary victim to kill, butcher, and eat. Brandes had his own fetish castration and he agreed to fulfill Meiwes' desires if Meiwes would castrate him first.The two men met at Meiwes' house in March 2001, and Meiwes led Brandes to the attic. He had transformed the room into a slaughterhouse, complete with six knives, a hatchet, a meat grinder, and a manual for butchering a human body.Public DomainBernd Brandes, the man who agreed to be killed and eaten by Armin Meiwes.After feeding Brandes sleeping pills and cough syrup, Meiwes cut off his genitals. The men tried to eat Brandes' penis together, but they found it too "chewy," so Meiwes instead fried it up with salt, pepper, garlic, and wine.At some point during the night, Brandes became unconscious from blood loss, and Meiwes proceeded with his macabre plan. He hung Brandes' corpse on a meat hook and started cutting off slices of his flesh, which he stored in a freezer and feasted on over the next 10 months.It wasn't until October 2002 that someone reported one of Meiwes' ads and the police uncovered the truth of his cannibal attack. They didn't have to search hard for evidence, as Meiwes had filmed the entire crime. He was ultimately convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.Not all cannibal attacks stem from murder, though. Some are simply a last resort in a desperate situation of life or death.The Tragic Story Of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571On Oct. 13, 1972, 45 passengers boarded Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571 to fly to Santiago, Chile, for a rugby match. Due to poor visibility, the plane crashed as it was flying through the Andes Mountains. Thirty-three people survived the accident but the worst was yet to come.The rugby players and their friends and family members were stranded in the Andes for 10 weeks in frigid temperatures and with little to eat but candy bars. Within a week, their food supplies were depleted, and more people started dying from injuries and exposure. When an avalanche claimed eight more victims, the 16 survivors who were left made a deal.Bettmann/Getty ImagesA frozen body lies outside the wreckage of Uruguayan Air Force Flight 571."We shook our hands and we say, 'If I die, please use my body. So at least you can get out of here,'" Nando Parrado, one of the passengers, told ABC News in 2023. "It's a very, very humiliating thing to eat a dead body," said Roberto Canessa, another survivor. However, the desperate act of cannibalism proved to be their saving grace. It gave Parrado and Canessa enough energy to walk down the mountain until they found help. Eight days later, they met some rural farmers who traveled 10 hours on horseback to deliver a note to the authorities. After 72 days in the Andes, the remaining 14 passengers were rescued by helicopter. If the survivors hadn't cannibalized the bodies of their companions, it's likely that none of them would have lived.After reading about 17 horrific cannibal attacks, go inside the most infamous act of cannibalism in American history: the Donner Party. Then, read about the cannibalism that took place during the siege of Leningrad.The post 17 Grisly Cannibal Attacks, From Starving Plane Crash Survivors To The Man Who Ate A Voluntary Victim appeared first on All That's Interesting.

YouTubeSerial killer Rodney Alcala during his infamous 1978 appearance on The Dating Game that took place in the middle of his string of grisly murders.For most people, September 13, 1978 was an ordinary Wednesday. But for Cheryl Bradshaw, the bachelorette on the TV matchmaking show The Dating Game, that day was momentous. From a lineup of eligible bachelors, she chose handsome bachelor number one, Rodney Alcala.But at that very moment, Rodney Alcala was keeping a deadly secret: he was a vicious murderer soon to be known as The Dating Game Killer.If not for a healthy jolt of womens intuition, Bradshaw would almost certainly be remembered today as one of Rodney Alcalas victims. After the show ended, she conversed with Alcala backstage. He offered her a date shed never forget, but Bradshaw got the feeling that her handsome potential suitor was a little off.I started to feel ill, Bradshaw told the Sydney Telegraph in 2012. He was acting really creepy. I turned down his offer. I didnt want to see him again.Another one of the episodes bachelors, actor Jed Mills, recalled to LA Weekly that Rodney was kind of quiet. I remember him because I told my brother about this one guy who was kind of good-looking but kind of creepy. He was always looking down and not making eye contact.Had the popular dating show performed background checks on their bachelors, they would have discovered that Rodney Alcala, this kind of good-looking but kind of creepy guy, had already spent three years in prison for raping and beating an eight-year-old girl (hed done the same to a 13-year-old too), which landed him on the FBIs Ten Most Wanted Fugitives List.Public DomainDuring his grisly string of murders that left at least eight dead, serial killer Rodney Alcala made a 1978 appearance on The Dating Game and won.But sometimes a background check cant even uncover the whole story. In Rodney Alcalas case, the whole story consisted of at least four prior murders that he hadnt been definitively linked to yet.As one can imagine, Cheryl Bradshaws rejection likely only fueled Alcalas fire. In total, before and after his television appearance, the Dating Game Killer claimed that he killed between 50 and 100 people.This is the chilling story of Rodney Alcala, The Dating Game Killer.The Disturbing Murders Of Rodney AlcalaBettmann/Contributor/Getty ImagesRodney Alcala in 1980.Rodney Alcala was born in San Antonio, Texas on August 23, 1943. His father moved the family to Mexico when Alcala was eight years old, only to abandoned them there three years later. His mother then moved Alcala and his sister to suburban Los Angeles.At age 17, Alcala entered the Army as a clerk, but after a nervous breakdown, he was medically discharged due to mental health issues. Then, the intelligent young man with an IQ of 135 went on to attend UCLA. But he wouldnt stay on the straight and narrow for long.Like many serial killers, Rodney Alcala had a style.His signatures were beating, biting, raping, and strangling (often choking victims until the point of unconsciousness, then once they came to, hed start the process over again). On his first known attempt at killing, he was successful at only two of these things. The victim was Tali Shapiro, an eight-year-old girl he lured into his Hollywood apartment in 1968.Shapiro barely survived her rape and beating; her life saved by a passerby who reported a tip to police on a possible abduction. Alcala fled his apartment when the police arrived and remained a fugitive for years afterward. He moved to New York and used the alias John Berger to enroll in film school at New York University where, ironically enough, he studied under Roman Polanski.After being recognized thanks to an FBI poster, Alcala was finally identified as the perpetrator in the rape and attempted murder of Tali Shapiro. He was arrested in 1971 but only sent to prison on charges of assault (Shapiros family kept her from testifying, making a rape conviction unattainable). After spending three years behind bars, he soon spent another two years in prison for assaulting a 13-year-old girl.Then, authorities regrettably let Alcala travel to New York to visit relatives. Investigators now believe that within seven days of his arrival there, he killed a college student named Elaine Hover who was the daughter of a popular Hollywood nightclub owner and goddaughter of both Sammy Davis Jr. and Dean Martin.Soon after all of this, Alcala somehow got a job at the Los Angeles Times as a typesetter in 1978 under his real name, which was now attached to a substantial criminal record. A typist by day, by night he lured in young girls to be part of his professional photography portfolio some of them never to be heard from again.Now go back and listen to Rodney Alcala tell bachelorette Bradshaw, The best time is at night.How The Dating Game Killer Was Finally CaughtThe year after the Dating Game appearance, 17-year-old Liane Leedom was lucky enough to walk away unscathed from a photoshoot with Rodney Alcala, and she remarked how he showed her his portfolio, which in addition to shots of women included spread after spread of [naked] teenage boys.Public DomainKnown as The Dating Game Killer for his 1978 appearance on the popular game show, Rodney Alcala murdered at least eight victims between 1971 and 1979.Police have since released parts of Alcalas portfolio to the public to aid in victim identification (the photos are still available to view). Over the years, a few have stepped forward to reveal their horrifying moment with this predator.The case that would finally break Rodney Alcalas killing spree was that of 12-year-old Robin Samsoe. Shed disappeared from Huntington Beach, California on her way to ballet class on June 20, 1979.Samsoes friends said that a stranger approached them on the beach and asked if theyd want to do a photoshoot. They declined and Samsoe left, borrowing a friends bike to hurriedly get to ballet. At some point between the beach and class, Samsoe disappeared. Nearly 12 days later, a park ranger found her animal-ravaged bones in a forested area near the Pasadena foothills of the Sierra Madre.Upon questioning Samsoes friends, a police sketch artist drew up a composite and Alcalas former parole officer recognized the face. Between the sketch, Alcalas criminal past, and the discovery of Samsoes earrings in Alcalas Seattle storage locker, police felt confident that they had their man.But beginning with the trial in 1980, Samsoes family would have to follow a rather long and winding road to justice.The jury found Alcala guilty of first-degree murder and he received the death penalty. However, the California Supreme court overturned this verdict due to the jury being prejudiced, they felt, by learning of Alcalas past sex crimes. It took six years to put him back on trial.Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty ImagesImages of Rodney Alcalas victims (including Robin Samsoe, bottom right) are projected during his 2010 trial in Santa Ana, California. March 2, 2010.At the second trial in 1986, another jury sentenced him to death. This one didnt stick either; a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel overturned it in 2001, LA Weekly wrote, in part because the second trial judge did not allow a witness to back up the defenses claim that the park ranger who found Robin Samsoes animal-ravaged body in the mountains had been hypnotized by police investigators.Finally, in 2010, 31 years after the murder, a third trial was held. Just before the trial, Orange County Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy told LA Weekly, The 70s in California was insane as far as treatment of sexual predators. Rodney Alcala is a poster boy for this. It is a total comedy of outrageous stupidity.It is indeed true that Rodney Alcala was one of many California serial killers who ran rampant in the mid-to-late 20th century.Rodney Alcalas Long Road Toward Facing JusticeDuring the years he spent incarcerated, Rodney Alcala self-published a book called You, the Jury in which he proclaimed his innocence in the Samsoe case.He hotly contested the DNA swabs done on prisoners periodically for the police departments evidence bank. Alcala also brought two lawsuits against the California penal system; one for a slip and fall accident, and another for the prisons refusal to provide him with a low-fat menu.Alcala announced to much surprise that he would be his own lawyer in his third trial. Even though now, 31 years after Samsoes murder, investigators also had concrete evidence against him on four different murders from decades past thanks to the prisons DNA swabs. The prosecution was able to combine these new murder charges along with Robin Samsoe in the 2010 trial.Ted Soqui/Corbis via Getty ImagesRodney Alcala sits in court during his 2010 trial in Santa Ana, California. March 2, 2010.During the 2010 trial, the jurors were in for a bizarre ride. Rodney Alcala, acting as his own attorney, asked himself questions (referring to himself as Mr. Alcala) in a deep voice, which he would then answer.The peculiar question and answer session continued for five hours. He told the jury that he was at Knotts Berry Farm at the time of Samsoes murder, played dumb on the other charges, and used an Arlo Guthrie song as part of his closing argument.Rodney Alcala simply stated that he didnt remember killing the other women. The only other witness for the defense, psychologist Richard Rappaport, offered the explanation that Alcalas memory lapse could be equated to his borderline personality disorder. The jury, not surprisingly, found Alcala guilty of the four DNA-backed charges, and also found him guilty of killing Samsoe.A surprise witness at his sentencing was Tali Shapiro, the girl that Alcala had raped and beaten within an inch of her life about 40 years before.Shapiro was there to witness as justice for Robin Samsoe, 12; Jill Barcomb, 18; Georgia Wixted, 27; Charlotte Lamb, 31; and Jill Parenteau, 21, had finally been achieved. The court handed Alcala the death penalty again for the third time.Since that trial, investigators have continued to link the Dating Game Killer to many other cold case murders, including two to which he pled guilty in New York in 2013. The full extent of his crimes may never be known.The Death Of The Dating Game KillerWhile still sitting on death row in California, Rodney Alcala died of natural causes at the age of 77 on July 24, 2021.Immediately, some of his victims spoke up, expressing their relief that the Dating Game Killer was finally, truly gone. The planet is a better place without him, thats for sure, said Tali Shapiro. Its a long time coming, but hes got his karma.Investigator Jeff Sheaman, who had been working on a cold case involving Alcala in Wyoming in recent years, was even more blunt, saying, Hes where he needs to be, and Im sure thats in hell.Sheaman recalled that, during interviews with police, Alcala would trace his finger along the faces of his victims in the photographs put before him, perhaps in hopes that it would irritate and even enrage the detectives. Throughout his investigation, Sheaman was overcome with just how cold Alcala was and ultimately came to believe that he may have taken untold scores of victims that well never know about.Hell, there might be a ton of other victims out there, Sheaman said after Rodney Alcalas death. I have no idea.After this look at Rodney Alcala, the Dating Game Killer, check out serial killer quotes that will chill you to the bone. Then, discover some of modern historys most prolific serial killers. Finally, meet Ed Kemper, the killer whose crimes will keep you up at night.The post The Horrifying Story Of Rodney Alcala, The Serial Killer Who Won The Dating Game During His Murder Spree appeared first on All That's Interesting.

The Witcher 3's Director wants to expand on its masterful side quests in his new RPG, The Blood of Dawnwalker He may no longer be part of CD Projekt Red, but The Witcher 3 Director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz is carrying its legacy forward into his new studio's debut outing, The Blood of Dawnwalker. Tomaszkiewicz isn't the only former CDPR dev who can now be found at Rebel Wolves, and that legacy is...