During the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), snipers took up residence in a number of Beirut buildings in what became known as the "Battle of the Hotels."

Construction on the 40-story Beirut Trade Center, also known as Burj al-Murr or the "tower of bitterness," began in 1974, just a year before war broke out. At that point, the $15 million building was 70% complete, Executive Magazine reported in 2004.

In addition to office space, the Trade Center was designed to hold a movie theater and restaurant accessible by helicopter.

Architect Camillo Boano and urban planner Dalia Chabarek described it as a scarred artifact of war that's "difficult to topple" or renovate.

Several artists have incorporated the unfinished building into their work. In 2018, Jad El Khoury put up a temporary installation in the structure, adding colorful curtains to the windows to transform it into Burj El Hawa, the Tower of Air, according to Archinect.

One of New Orleans' tallest buildings has become a danger in the decades since it was erected in the 1960s.

While the $15.5 million building had a few residential units, it was mainly designed for offices. In 2002, building tenants, including the Orleans Parish district attorney's office, complained that toxic mold was making them sick. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the building was gutted due to both mold and asbestos, The Times-Picayune reported in 2014.

Since then, its problems have continued. A piece of paneling fell and hit a bicyclist in 2021. There was a fire in 2022, and a man died falling from one of the floors in 2023.

Despite attempts to salvage the Plaza Tower, "the city made their case that the buildings become a public safety hazard," Ursini said.

Now the city is preparing to demolish the building, though the current owner hopes to find a buyer instead, The Times-Picayune reported in January.

In 2022, Rosin Preservation wrote a report arguing that 909 Chestnut Street, also known as One AT&T Center, should be added to the National Register of Historic Places list.

Completed in 1985, the St. Louis building is one of the tallest in the state, has a "fortress-like base," and a "façade [that] appears to stretch beyond what is expected, seemingly indefinitely," according to the report.

AT&T didn't renew its lease in 2017, and the building has been empty since, according to Costar, which gathers information on commercial real estate. In 2024, the Goldman Group bought 909 Chestnut for $3.6 million, a fraction of its 2006 price of $205 million.

"At that price, I guess the building itself is a blank slate because you're picking it up for almost nothing," Ursini said.

The real estate firm hopes to put in 600 apartments, a pickleball court, and a movie theater, Fox2 reported in January.

Popularly known as Thailand's "Ghost Tower," this looming structure dates back to 1990. The 47-floor building was only 80% finished when the 1997 Asian financial crisis hit.

Its architect was also charged and then acquitted as part of a murder plot that was never carried out, Architectural Digest reported in 2023.

With the unfinished luxury condo in ruins, daredevil travelers risk trespassing and injury to explore the tower. Exposed wires and rusty metals are just a few of the building's hazards.

For years, this empty 45-story building, known as the Torre de David or Tower of David, was also described as the world's tallest slum.

Banker David Brillembourg hoped to create Venezuela's version of Wall Street with the tower, The New Yorker reported, but the country's financial crisis and Brillembourg's death put an end to construction in 1994, New York Magazine reported.

Some 3,000 people took up residence in the concrete shell of a building, transforming it into a community with electricity, grocery stores, and water, Slate reported in 2014. However, the structure was deemed unsafe and the occupants were evicted in 2014, per The BBC.

In 2018, a powerful earthquake did some damage to the upper levels of the Tower of David, Reuters reported.

At between $1.5 million and $20 million a pop, units in 1 Seaport came with the promised luxuries of an infinity pool, dazzling views, and 10-foot ceilings. Buyers snapped them up, putting down hundreds of thousands of dollars as deposits.

In 2017, a carpenter working on the $273 million building fell to his death, The New Yorker recently reported. When it emerged the building was sinking and leaning to the left, its contractors and developers started blaming each other, Curbed reported in 2021.

One lawyer involved in one of 1 Seaport's many lawsuits described the tilted structure as resembling a banana. While the building is unlikely to fall over, construction has been halted since 2020.

Consisting of three towers, the unfinished Oceanwide Plaza has become notorious for artists tagging its exterior. Last year, thrill-seekers even BASE jumped from the top.

The ambitious complex, expected to cost $1 billion, was meant to be home to luxury residential units and a five-star hotel, The Los Angeles Times reported. It's about 60% complete after construction halted in 2019. Oceanwide Holdings, the company behind the towers, filed for involuntary bankruptcy, Los Angeles Magazine reported last year.

Finishing the project would take around $800 million, per the Wall Street Journal.

Jutting high above its surrounding buildings, the pyramid-shaped Ryugyong earned the nickname "Hotel of Doom" when it sat empty and incomplete for over a decade in the middle of North Korea's biggest city.

Work on the 105-story building began in 1987 under the rule of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un's grandfather. In 1992, the economic depression following the Soviet Union's collapse halted construction before windows were installed and the concrete was covered.

Construction has stopped and started several times since, and it's unclear when the structure will open. In 2008, Reuters reported it would take an estimated $2 billion to complete the hotel.

"It was bare," tour operator Simon Cockerell told 9news.com.au of the concrete-filled interior after a visit in 2023.

On the outside, though, a new LED screen broadcasts propaganda.

This is one project that never got off the ground.

Originally, its developers hoped SkyCity would be the Philippines' tallest building. They planned for the 77-story skyscraper to hold a hotel, swanky condos, and a bar, Esquire Philippines reported.

Nearby homeowners complained when developers broke ground in 1997 for several reasons, including that the structure, planned at over 1,000 feet tall, would cast a giant shadow.

A lengthy legal battle ensued, and funding for the estimated $85 million project dried up. The location is just a large, mossy hole now.

Nothing in the vicinity comes close to the height of the rusting, unfinished Goldin Finance tower in Tianjin, a city in Northern China. It was meant to hold a hotel, condos, and offices.

Construction began on the structure in 2008. A diamond-shaped atrium was supposed to sit atop the building, reminiscent of a glittering gem on top of a walking stick.

From the atrium's observation deck and restaurant, guests would have had dizzying views of the city's downtown. Then, in the mid-2010s, Goldin Group, the skyscraper's developer, started having financial troubles.

At that point, it would have taken $10 billion to complete the project, Forbes reported in 2022.

"There's no cladding on the exterior, and the building is just there awaiting a restart of construction," Ursini said. It still remains empty today.

This story was originally published in August 2018 and most recently updated on February 16, 2025.

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DeVonta Smith, 26, has a lot going on right now. In December, he announced on Instagram that he and his fiancée, Mya Danielle, are expecting their second child. Just a few days later, the couple got engaged, according to Danielle's Instagram post.

At 34, Lane Johnson isn't ready to retire just yet, but he recently told CBS Sports that he might quit before he's 40.

Johnson is 6'6" and has to eat 5,500 calories a day, including plenty of protein, to perform at his peak, The Athletic reported in 2023.

Landon Dickerson sat out the second half of the Philadelphia Eagles' NFC Championship Game on January 26 because of a knee injury. However, he's prepped to play in the Super Bowl, telling the Philadelphia Inquirer that "getting carted off on a stretcher" would be the only way to get him off the field.

That actually happened to him in 2020 during the SEC Championship Game when he tore his ACL while playing for the Alabama Crimson Tide.

In 2023, BI asked several Eagles players to name the fittest member of the team. Time and time again, the answer came back as AJ Brown. The 27-year-old is a "freakish athlete," former defensive end Patrick Johnson said. "He's one of those guys who's just built different."

When he's not on the field, he's focused on his two children and longtime girlfriend Kelsey Riley. "When I go home, I'm a father. When I'm in the building, I'm working," he told reporter Josh Tolentino in 2022.

Two years ago, Jalen Hurts was one of the youngest quarterbacks to start in a Super Bowl game. Now 26, he'll face the Chiefs again on February 9 and is hoping to avoid repeating what happened in 2023 when the Eagles lost to the Chiefs 35 to 38.

Creed Humphrey's August 2024 deal made him the highest-paid center in the history of the NFL, making almost $4 million more per year than former Philadelphia Eagles player Jason Kelce.

Humphrey, 25, grew up in Shawnee, Oklahoma, and is a Citizen Potawatomi Nation tribal member.

Joe Thuney almost didn't have a football career at all. "I didn't have a ton of offers because I was pretty skinny and I wasn't that good," he told the Raleigh News & Observer. He ended up at North Carolina State and went on to play for the New England Patriots and then the Chiefs.

The 32-year-old might earn his fifth Super Bowl ring on February 9.

Born and raised in Florida, 27-year-old Jawaan Taylor spent most of his football career in the Sunshine State, playing at the University of Florida and then joining the Jacksonville Jaguars. He's now with the Chiefs.

In 2023, he surprised his mom with a Bentley for Mother's Day.

Chris Jones, 30, has been a member of the Chiefs team since 2016 and is a three-time Super Bowl champ. As a seasoned pro, he has some advice for his teammates.

"Don't play the game before the game," he said during a recent press conference. "Have fun, but also know why you're here."

In January, Patrick Mahomes, 29, welcomed his third child with his wife, Brittany Mahomes.

While famous for his skills on the football field, Mahomes also had the chance to become a professional baseball player. The Detroit Tigers drafted him in 2014, but he didn't accept and joined the Chiefs three years later.

Averion Hurts, Sr. is the head football coach at Channelview High School near Houston. All three of his children attended the school, and he coached his two sons, Averion Jr. and Jalen.

"I always talk about how impactful it was on my life, being a coach's kid," Jalen told GQ Sports in 2021. "Football is something that's deeply rooted into my family."

Meanwhile, his mother, Pamela, is a school counselor who said she knew her son would be a professional athlete from a young age.

She's especially proud of Hurts' all-woman management team. "They rock," she recently told Houston's Fox26. "Sometimes women don't get the opportunities that men get."

Jalen credited his mother and management team for inspiring him to wear cleats with the words "Women Empowerment" in 2021. The shoes were part of the NFL's "My Cause, My Cleats" initiative. Hurts also showed his support for women when he spotlighted Billie Jean King's Women's Sports Foundation, which invests in women's and girls' sports.

"My mom, she raised me with high character and to do things the right way," he told ESPN in 2021. "She's a counselor back home, and that's a perfect platform to impact the people around you, to impact kids around you."

Jalen's older brother, Averion Hurts, Jr., was also a quarterback at Channelview High School. Their father told Houston's Fox 26 in 2016 that the brothers played baseball, which helped develop their arms.

After his brother became a quarterback, "Jalen just kind of followed in that mold," Averion Hurts, Sr. said.

In 2016, both brothers were starting quarterbacks at the college level, Averion Jr. at Texas Southern University and Jalen at the University of Alabama.

According to his Instagram, Averion Jr. is now following in his father's footsteps and coaching at Lee High School in Baytown, Texas.

In 2021, Hurts told GQ Sports that his sister, who played high school volleyball then, might get a college scholarship. Still, he said he set aside $70,000 for her tuition just in case.

"I know she has dreams and aspirations to do special things in her life, whatever it is," he said of his sister in a 2021 ESPN interview. "And I want her to know that she can do anything she puts her mind to, and know that her brother has her back."

Hurts became a freshman quarterback for the Alabama Crimson Tide in 2016. (During his senior year, he'd transfer to the University of Oklahoma.)

Meanwhile, his fiancée Burrows graduated from the same university in 2017 after studying Spanish and political science. She went on to work for IBM.

The couple dated on and off for several years, Essence reported in 2023.

Hurts told GQ Sports that seeing his family's reaction to the draft still gives him chills.

The two have mostly kept their relationship out of the spotlight, but Burrows watched the football star defeat the San Francisco 49ers at the 2023 NFC Championship Game.

In September 2024, Hurts and Burrows shared their engagement photos with Essence. The romantic scene was set near the water, complete with roses, candles, and a violinist.

A few days later, the newly engaged couple appeared together at Prime Video's "Evolution of the Black Quarterback premiere."

Congdon grew up in Forest City, Pennsylvania, while Barkley lived in the Bronx before moving to Pennsylvania as a child. He attended Whitehall High School and almost quit football as a sophomore.

"Barkley was frustrated, struggling with his self-confidence," his former coach told The New York Times. "Some kids had matured faster than him."

However, Barkley stayed on the team and, in 2015, became a running back at Penn State.

Meanwhile, Congdon became a freshman at the same university in 2016.

By December of that year, Congdon posted an Instagram picture of the two of them at a fraternity formal with the caption, "he's alright on the field but you should see him on the dance floor."

A month later, they became a couple, according to Parade magazine.

On April 24, 2018, Congdon posted, "when two became three…," on Instagram, along with a picture of the new parents holding their newborn.

"Words can't even describe how I feel right now," Barkley wrote in part in his own post. "You are the most beautiful thing I've ever seen in my life."

After the Cleveland Browns, the New York Giants had the second overall draft pick in 2018. The team selected Barkley, who was 21 at the time.

In Barkley's first year on the team, the Giants had a rough start to the season.

"No one on the team can say that we're happy where we're at, but we're aware that it's a long season," Barkley told Business Insider then. "We have to continue to grind and continue to believe in each other."

"Everyone pushed me," he told Giants.com in 2022, referring to his parents and Congdon. "I'm happy I was able to accomplish something that was a goal of mine."

"He lights up the room," Barkley told Giants.com in 2022. "Amazing smile. Jada is being an amazing big sister…We've got a beautiful little family."

Now 2, Saquon Jr. is "all into toys and trucks and cars, and he's just a boy," Barkley told People, while 6-year-old Jada "knows it all already."

Last year, several teams were vying for the running back. The Giants wanted to keep Barkley, but not necessarily at the price he wanted.

Giants owner John Mara said he would have trouble sleeping if the team lost Barkley. "He's the most popular player we have by far," he said during an episode of HBO's "Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants."

Ultimately, Barkley signed a three-year contract with the Eagles for $37.75 million.

The Eagles defeated the Washington Commanders in the NFC Championship Game at Philadelphia's Lincoln Financial Field on January 26, clinching their spot in Super Bowl LIX.

"If I could wrap my arms around this memory, I would…," Congdon wrote in a caption after posting the above picture on Instagram.

Coincidentally, Barkley's first Super Bowl is on February 9, his 28th birthday. His family will undoubtedly support him on his big day.

The couple, who lives in Philadelphia, didn't reveal many details about their engagement. However, Barkley did tell People that Congdon has always supported him on and off the field.

"I'd be naive to think that I've made it, and all the stuff that we are able to accomplish this year was all alone and by myself," he added.

Even as workers were building the railroads in the second half of the 19th century, it was dangerous.

"You had a clear segmentation of who was doing the construction of the railroads versus who was an engineer in a locomotive or who was a fireman or a brakeman," Rosenow said. "And the construction efforts, oftentimes, went to immigrant labor populations."

For example, in the 1860s, the Central Pacific Railway hired thousands of Chinese immigrants for some of the deadliest jobs, from working with explosives to scaling cliff faces.

Despite the risk, they received a third less pay than their white coworkers.

Many factors contributed to the danger of rail travel in the US. Collapsing bridges, landslides, and faulty equipment all caused train derailments or collisions. By the early 1900s, thousands died in railroad accidents every year. In 1905, trains injured over 86,000 people.

However, workers bore the brunt of the danger. "In 1890, about one in every 300 railroad workers was killed," Rosenow said. The majority of the deaths were from "little accidents," as one railway claim agent called them.

Railroad workers had to walk between cars to couple and uncouple them. They rode on top of trains to work the brakes. Faulty boiler equipment released steam scalding enough to cause deadly burns.

"One of the most dangerous occupations on the railroads was that of a brakeman, who had this perilous task of stopping the trains," Rosenow said.

As train travel expanded in the latter part of the 19th century, railroad companies built or helped fund hospitals and created in-house medical organizations that could care for passengers during emergencies. By World War I, 10% of all US doctors worked for the railways, at least part-time.

Railway surgeons treated rail passengers and crew by setting broken bones, amputating limbs, and treating burns. Receiving adequate medical care might dissuade them from bringing a costly lawsuit.

Physicians also provided regular medical care for company employees. The railways used these benefits to gain worker loyalty and tamp down unionizing, according to "Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828—1965."

The fir, spruce, and cedar trees of the Pacific Northwest helped build boomtowns during the California Gold Rush. When railroad tracks finally connected the East and West Coasts, they offered a cheaper, more efficient way to transport lumber.

Logging was arduous. Fallers climbed and cut trees by hand with axes or saws. Other workers, known as buckers, stripped the bark and sawed the trees into logs. Newer technology in the 1880s called a donkey engine transported logs through the air with cables and pulleys, risking crushing workers if the machinery failed.

In the early 1900s, one in 150 Washington loggers died each year. Falls, toppling trees, and severe weather all killed and seriously injured lumber workers all over the US.

The Brooklyn Bridge was a massive construction project that started in 1869. At the time, its 1-mile length would make it the world's longest bridge.

To anchor it in New York City's East River, workers known as "sand hogs" spent months digging through the muddy river floor. They needed to sink caissons, rectangular bowl-like structures filled with pressurized air, all the way to the bedrock, as deep as 60 feet below the water.

When they resurfaced, the workers would feel stabbing pains in their joints, get red splotches on their skin, and begin projectile vomiting. Some died from what's now known as "the bends" or decompression sickness.

Historian David McCullough estimated that the bends, falls, debris, and other accidents killed at least 27 people during the project, Esquire reported in 2014.

At the end of the 18th century, textile mills with new manufacturing technologies brought the Industrial Revolution to the US. By the late 19th century, women were doing 75% of the work of making cloth in Lowell, Massachusetts, Scientific American reported in 1879.

Many came from rural areas of New England, swapping farm work for factory jobs. Since many women left their families behind and lived together in boarding houses, they formed new communities.

The boarding houses often had curfews and behavior codes, and at least one company's handbook warned it wouldn't employ anyone "known to be guilty of immorality."

Most of the women were between 15 and 30, but there were children working at textile mills as well.

In 1900, children under 16 made up a quarter of the South's 100,000 textile workers. Child labor grew over the next few years, with 20,000 kids under the age of 12 entering the work force by 1904, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In cotton mills, children were prized for their small and nimble fingers. Spinners, often girls, would fill bobbins or cones with thread, and doffers, usually boys, would replace them on the device.

When a family started working at his mill, one owner said, "it was the children of the family who became skilled employees," the BLS reported. Even kids under 10 could join their parents at the mill and get to know their future workplace.

In 1900, 1 in 5 children worked, per the US Census. Many belonged to low-income families who needed extra income or to get out of debt. Other children had no one else to rely on.

Organizations like the Charles Loring Brace Children's Aid Society moved orphaned children around the country on trains to supply rural areas and factories with cheap labor, according to the BLS.

One estimate put a child's mill earnings in 1860 at an average of $0.57 per day, about $22 a day now.

Workers endlessly inhaled cotton dust, giving "every one the appearance of having a cold," according to one report from the 1870s. Many had likely contracted byssinosis, a disease that causes coughing, wheezing, and shortness of breath.

Other investigations during this time found the long hours, stifling conditions, and physical stress of the work made otherwise healthy people sick. One physician commented on the "careworn, dejected appearance" of the mill workers he treated.

It wasn't until the end of the 19th century that public health reformers connected a building's temperature and humidity to workers' health, according to "When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries."

Textile mills could be hot and humid. Some owners refused to open the windows, even in summer, because they thought the warm, moist air was the ideal environment for manufacturing the cloth. Other industries had even worse ventilation.

An 1895 study of New York bakeries found the bakers worked for over 100 hours a week in cellars or basements that were "damp, fetid, and devoid of proper ventilation and light."

A vast array of conditions could arise from many different industries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Match makers in the late 1800s developed phosphorus necrosis or "phossy jaw." The disease caused infections that could lead to painful swelling and exposed bone. Wool workers picked up parasitic diseases from handling the material. Vaporous odors were so strong that brassworkers drank whiskey or beer to cope. A new factory worker in the early 1900s could show symptoms of lead poisoning after just a few weeks.

In 1907, Illinois held the US' first commission on occupational disease. The purpose was to "investigate causes and conditions relating to diseases of occupation" in metal, glass, brick, and other industries.

In factories and mills, moving belts, saws, and other unguarded machinery caused terrible injuries and death, from detached limbs to decapitations to disembowelings.

Even those who weren't killed or injured by the machines could still be negatively affected. Lucy Larcom, who worked in mills in the mid-1800s, wrote the thrum of the mill made her head ache, and some weavers became deaf after long-term exposure to the machinery's noise.

In 1906, a laundry machine known as a mangler pulled Marguerite Murray's hand into its steam-powered roller. It took nearly 10 minutes to free her.

Later, her doctor described her hand as looking "parboiled, cooked and bruised." Several fingers needed to be amputated, and the pain kept her awake at night, she later said.

In a lawsuit against her employer, Murray's mother testified that her daughter required constant care and could no longer feed or dress herself. Whenever the injured woman was left alone, "she commences to cry and worry," her mother said.

Between 1908 and 1924, Lewis Hine, an investigative photographer for the National Child Labor Committee (NCLC), took pictures of child laborers.

In some photos, he documented children's injuries, including lost fingers from working in textile mills.

One aspect of mid-19th-century mill work that made it so grueling was the long hours. Starting at around 5 a.m., the employees worked 12 to 14 hours, six days a week. They had to pack the rest of their lives into their time off.

"How much is done in the three short hours from seven to ten o'clock," one mill girl wrote in 1845.

While they appreciated the higher wages than they would earn elsewhere, many women in Lowell, Massachusetts, began organizing and pushing for 10-hour workdays in the 1830s and 1840s. Eventually, mills shortened the days to 11 hours.

Though the demographics of Lowell and its labor movement began to shift toward the end of the 19th century, women continued to demand changes. In 1873, over 100 women in Lowell walked out to protest the hot and humid conditions of their workroom.

In 1906, the Bridge and Structural Iron Workers' Union in Chicago compiled the number of deaths and injuries and found that 147 of its 1,358 members were killed or seriously hurt in a single year.

Writer Charles Rumford Walker worked at a steel mill and described the conditions in the Atlantic Monthly. The workers' cries of warning continued to echo in his head. "Watch out for the crane that is taking a ladle of hot metal over your head, or a load of scrap, or a bundle of pipes; watch out for the hot cinder coming down the hole from the furnace-doors," he wrote.

It was often difficult for workers to hear those shouts, though. Working in an environment with molten metal and thunderous clanging could be a deadly mix.

Steel mill shifts were typically 12 hours but every two weeks, workers would stay for 24 hours to rotate from working days to nights.

In summer, laboring near blistering furnaces could get so hot that workers had to "take off their boots, and pour the perspiration out of them," one journalist wrote.

It was rare for older men to withstand these conditions. The "long hours, the strain, and the sudden changes of temperature use a man up," according to one worker. "He quits before he gets 50."

In the late 1880s, Carnegie Steel tried to break up one of the US' most powerful labor unions, the Amalgamated Association of Iron and Steel Workers.

The AAISW had led several strikes to improve working conditions. In 1892, negotiations between the company and the union stalled, and Carnegie planned to lock the workers out and bring in replacements.

On July 6, the strike turned deadly when workers traded gunfire with agents from the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, whom the company had hired as security. Seven workers and three agents died.

In the aftermath, membership in the union declined, weakening its ability to affect change.

In 1907, writer William B. Hard published "Making Steel and Killing Men." In addition to the 46 deaths at US Steel's plant in Chicago, Hard estimated there were hundreds of others who were permanently or temporarily disabled.

The 46 workers "went to their deaths by a large number of different and divergent routes," Hard wrote. Blast furnaces, dynamite, electrocution, falls, falling objects, and hot metal could all be killers in a steel mill.

"Must we continue to pay this price for the honor of leading the world in the cheap and rapid production of steel and iron?" he wrote. "Must we continue to be obliged to think of scorched and scalded human beings whenever we sit on the back platform of an observation car and watch the steel rails rolling out behind us?"

"It's, by the nature of the work, inherently dangerous to go under the earth to excavate the coal," Rosenow said. In the early 1900s, around 3,000 US miners died and another 12,500 were seriously injured each year.

Paid by the ton for the coal they mined, workers didn't receive money for safely securing their worksites. They would stabilize the roof with coal pillars and timber, but falling rocks still caused the majority of mining deaths.

Others died from explosions or by falling down mine shafts.

"We believe that more than half the casualties are directly caused by overwork and long hours in the damp and foul air of the mine," the National Labor Tribune wrote in the 1880s. Reducing workers' hours from 14 or 12 to eight would reduce the number of deaths, the paper added.

Boys as young as 9 worked in the mines, some in dangerous roles.

Trappers would open doors dozens of times a day to let coal cars pass. Breaker boys separated impurities like slate from the coal as it moved by on conveyor belts. Others helped their parents with whatever tasks needed to be done.

They often worked in dark, dust-filled areas for long hours, making the equivalent of $16 to $24 a day.

"Mother, I don't want to go into that dark hole," one boy said, adding, "I'll do anything if I don't have to work there."

Throughout the late 1800s, mining unions pushed for improvements "whereby the lives and health of our members may be better preserved."

In 1913, thousands of miners went on strike after the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company refused their demands for an eight-hour workday and the ability to choose their doctors and housing. CF&I evicted them from their company-owned homes, and the miners and their families moved to tent camps.

On April 20, 1914, the National Guard tried to break up the camps and killed several miners. Two women and 11 children died when a burning tent collapsed on top of the cellar where they were hiding, suffocating them. The tragedy became known as the "Ludlow Massacre."

A 10-day war followed, with miners attacking mines and strikebreakers.

In 1909, one of the worst mining disasters in US history occurred when a fire erupted at the St. Paul Coal Company's mine in Cherry, Illinois. It trapped over 200 miners underground.

Samuel Howard kept a diary of the ordeal. "The only thing I regret is that my brother is here, and cannot help my mother out after I am dead and gone," he wrote. He and 258 others lost their lives, and many of their families had no means of supporting themselves.

Two years earlier, a mine explosion in Monongah, West Virginia, killed 362 people, including several children. In 1913, 263 people died in another explosion at a mine in Dawson, New Mexico.

On March 25, 1911, workers found themselves trapped on the upper floors of a building with no way out. The employees of the Triangle Waist Company, mostly women, were trying to escape a fire but locked stairwell doors barred their way out.

Desperate to get out, some jumped to their deaths. By the time firefighters had put the flames out, 146 people had died, many of them young immigrant women. Some were just 14 years old.

Days after the fire, tens of thousands of people walked for hours in a procession to honor the dead.

"[Owners Isaac] Harris and [Max] Blanck, the Triangle Company, have offered to pay one week's wages to the families of the dead girls — as though it were summer and they are giving them a vacation!" reformer Martha Bruère wrote at the time.

Tragedies like the mining explosions and factory fire helped spur what Rosenow called "regulation by disaster."

"For decades, Americans really didn't have a good sense of what was happening in American workplaces or were in a state of denial," he said. These headline-making tragedies in the early 20th century grabbed their attention.

Reformers, journalists, and the workers themselves already knew about the dangerous conditions and had long been trying to change them.

The labor unions not only pushed their companies to make conditions safer, they also put pressure on elected officials to keep track of workers' deaths and injuries and to make safety laws, Rosenow said.

In 1938, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act into law, which established a minimum wage, the right to overtime pay, and rules for child labor. Government agencies such as the Bureau of Mines were created to find ways to prevent workplace disasters like fires and explosions.

While the frequency of mining disasters has dropped, they do still happen. In 2010, an explosion at the Upper Big Branch Mine in West Virginia killed 29 people.

Other industries, such as construction, have the highest number of worker fatalities from falls and transportation-related incidents. Miners, agricultural workers, and other laborers can also be exposed to chemical hazards that cause long-term damage.

Sources for this story include "Death and Dying in the Working Class, 1865-1920," "Injury Impoverished: Workplace Accidents, Capitalism, and Law in the Progressive Era," "Chamber Divers: The Untold Story of the D-day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations Forever," " Death Rode the Rails: American Railroad Accidents and Safety, 1828—1965," "When the Air Became Important: A Social History of the New England and Lancashire Textile Industries," " The Cotton Dust Papers: Science, Politics, and Power in the 'Discovery' of Byssinosis in the US," the Bureau of Labor Statistics, National Park Service, US Department of Labor, Economic History Association, Library of Congress, Smithsonian Magazine, and PBS.

In Finland, a resident's wealth plays a factor in how much they'll pay for driving too fast.

The country's "day fine" system is based on the offender's daily disposable income and how far over the speed limit they were going.

The system has led to some eye-popping fines. In 2023, a Finnish multimillionaire received a fine of €121,000, or $129,400, for speeding.

There are an estimated 3 million saunas in Finland, per National Geographic — or the equivalent of just over half a sauna per Finn.

Sauna culture is an important part of Finnish daily life and the country's heritage. There are ancient versions dating back to the Stone Age.

Today, you can find saunas in apartment blocks, homes, restaurants, and even government buildings.

Finland's government sends a maternity package — known as äitiyspakkaus, or a "baby box," — to the parents of newborn children.

The box contains essential items such as clothing, bibs, diapers, and bathing products, among other things. The box is fitted with a small mattress and a sheet, though some health experts have warned it may not be a safe place for babies to sleep.

The concept has become popular in other countries. In 2023, the US Department of Health and Human Services started a pilot program to send kits to new parents in a handful of states.

Wife-carrying is now an international sport, but the world championships are still held in Sonkajärvi, Finland.

In the 1990s, when the event debuted, a male partner would traditionally carry his wife while navigating an obstacle course. The rules have evolved slightly over the years, and competitors don't have to carry their real spouses. They just need a teammate who fits the age and weight requirements

The course is about 830 feet long and involves fences and a pond that the teams have to splash through. Past winners have claimed victory by completing the race in about a minute.

"Kalsarikänni" translates to drinking at home in your underwear, or, "pantsdrunk," if you prefer, The New York Times reported in 2020.

Other Finnish words include "vahingonilo," which means to enjoy someone else's misfortune, and "sisu," which is a kind of stoic determination or resilience.

According to some estimates, Finland has over 50 heavy metal bands per 100,000 people, the largest number per capita of any country in the world.

In 2016, former president Barack Obama gave the Finns' musical preferences a shout-out during a Nordic summit, saying he was unsure if there was a correlation between the number of heavy metal bands and the country's reputation for good governance.

While many people assume the long, cold winters fuel Finland's appetite for the aggressive yet often technically proficient style, Antti "Hyrde" Hyyrynen, singer and guitarist of the Finnish band Stam1na, told Market Place in 2018 that was a cliché. Instead, he said that all students study music in school, creating a vast talent pool.

Lots of people in Nordic countries enjoy salty licorice, but many consider salmiakki, the Finnish variety, to have the most extreme flavor.

It's a mix of black licorice and ammonium chloride that pharmacies originally sold as a cough medicine. When a Vice reporter bought a package from a Stockholm shop, the owner warned that it wasn't just strong but "Finnish strong." The taste was "horrible, painful, and completely unpleasant," but she finished the whole bag.

Finland loves candy in general — it ranked fifth in consumption per capita in a 2017 study — and salmiakki is "sort of the national candy," Jukka Annala, the founder and president of the Finnish Salty Licorice Association, told The New York Times Magazine in 2018.

People have described the tongue-tingling taste as bitter, briny, and intense. Sisu, that emphasis on resiliency, might be the reason so many Finns like it, Annala told Eater in 2021.

Set in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the show used the stark, lonesome desert as the perfect place for hiding secrets — and stacks of cash. That wasn't always the plan, though. 

In a 2010 interview with Slant magazine, Vince Gilligan, the show's creator, said he had originally planned for "Breaking Bad" to be set in Riverside, California.

Then Sony approached him with the idea of moving it to New Mexico because of financial incentives. The state offered tax credits for film and television production, Gilligan said.

They chose to film the show there "for strictly financial reasons," he added.

However, the city's proximity to the Mexico border ended up influencing storylines in later seasons. "I feel like I got very lucky that we wound up there, although it was not originally my decision," Gilligan said. 

It wasn't just the plot that benefited from setting the show in New Mexico. Albuquerque saw a spike in visitors eager to explore Walter White's haunts. 

The show's now-famous shooting locations continue to be a major draw for tourists from all over the world. Local souvenir shops sell "blue meth" rock candy, "Breaking Bad" t-shirts, and much more. 

A website listing every known filming location in Albuquerque makes it easy for travelers to plan their "Breaking Bad" sightseeing trips.

Top sites include Walter White's house; Saul's office; and Twisters, the restaurant that served as the set for villain Gustavo Fring's Los Pollos Hermanos.  

The filming location for Walter White's house in "Breaking Bad" became a must-see for tourists. For the occupants, the sensation around their modest three-bedroom home became so frustrating that they recently put it up for sale for $4 million. 

For years, the family dealt with tourists taking rocks from the yard or tossing pizzas on the roof, just like Walter White did in a now-iconic scene from the show. 

The owners hope whoever buys the house will embrace the show and its enthusiastic visitors. "I hope they make it what the fans want," owner Joanna Quintana told KOB4, a local NBC affiliate, earlier this month. "They want a B&B. They want a museum. They want access to it. Go for it." 

During the second season of "Breaking Bad," Walter White famously threw a pizza onto the roof of his home.

While the production team had set aside hours to get the shot, Cranston did it in a single take, he said in a 2012 interview on "Jimmy Kimmel Live."

When fans saw an unsliced pizza swirl into the air and land perfectly on the roof, they wondered what pizza place sells uncut pizza.

In a 2017 Reddit AMA, Gilligan explained that he and the production team knew eagle-eyed fans would catch this, so they added a scene to explain the situation. 

Badger and Skinny Pete show up at Jesse's apartment with a pile of unsliced pizzas. "That's the gimmick," Badger said. "They don't cut the pizza, and they pass the savings on to you."

The show reached out to the US Drug Enforcement Agency to get their input on the show. "But they saw that it might be in their best interest to make sure that we do it correctly," Cranston told High Times in 2012. "So DEA chemists came on board as consultants and taught Aaron Paul and me how to make crystal meth." 

To become even more familiar with the science, Cranston met with the head of the University of Southern California chemistry department. The professor let the actor know they were using some equipment incorrectly, and Gilligan made the changes.

Walt and Jesse are shown throughout the series making methamphetamine in great detail. However, it's not exactly a step-by-step recipe for viewers.  

In a 2011 interview with NPR, Donna Nelson, an organic chemist and a science advisor to the show, said they eliminated key elements from the process to keep people from attempting to make meth at home. 

"That was actually one of the concerns of a lot of people, but Vince Gilligan has been very clever," Nelson said. "If you just simply followed the one synthesis as it's presented, you wouldn't come out with methamphetamine."

In one of the first season's most memorable scenes, Walt and Jesse used hydrofluoric acid to dissolve a body in a bathtub. In addition to dissolving the body, the acid ate through the tub and ceiling, cascading a massive, disgusting, gloopy mess onto the first floor. 

"Mythbusters" tested the method on pig flesh in 2013. Although hydrofluoric acid broke down the tissue, it didn't liquify it as thoroughly as the episode showed.

Meanwhile, the bathtub and drywall were relatively unaffected by the acid in the "Mythbusters" demonstration. 

Initially, executives offered the role of Walter White to actors Matthew Broderick and John Cusack, The Hollywood Reporter reported in 2012.

Both declined, much to the dismay of executives at AMC and Sony Pictures Television who couldn't get past Cranston's history of comedic roles. 

Gilligan pushed for casting Cranston as the antihero because he had witnessed the actor's range in an episode of "The X-Files." The role was very different from Cranston's work on "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Seinfeld," and his performance left a positive impression on Gilligan. 

"We needed somebody who could be dramatic and scary yet have an underlying humanity so when he dies, you felt sorry for him," Gilligan said of Cranston's part on "The X-Files." "Bryan nailed it."

Gilligan showed executives the tapes of Cranston's performance on the 1990s series, and the rest was history. 

While most aspects of the show are fictional, the creators took a few elements from real life. 

Gilligan was talking to another writer, Tom Schnauz, who jokingly pitched an idea based on a news article he'd recently read about a man cooking meth in an RV, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Gilligan couldn't get the image out of his head, he told Vanity Fair in 2010. 

"The idea of it suddenly struck me as wonderful for a TV show because who would do such a thing?" he told The Hollywood Reporter. "And if he were indeed someone like us — meaning a couple of dopey middle-aged white guys — what would that look like?"

From there, Gilligan took inspiration from the Japanese movie "Ikiru," a fictional story about a man diagnosed with cancer, he told NPR in 2019. 

The name Heisenberg, Walt's alias in the show, does come from real life, though. It's a nod to German physicist and Nobel Prize winner Werner Heisenberg. 

Before the multi-Emmy-award-winning series found a home on AMC, some of the biggest networks passed on the show. 

Reportedly, FX was afraid the show was too similar to its other series featuring male antiheroes. Another exec said the concept sounded a lot like Showtime's "Weeds," which was about a suburban woman who secretly grows and sells marijuana, according to Vanity Fair. 

In 2011, Gilligan called his pitch meeting with HBO one of "the worst" he ever experienced. 

"The woman we're pitching to could not have been less interested — not even in my story, but about whether I actually lived or died," he said. 

"My agents could never even get her on the phone afterward to even say no," he added. 

For the character Gus Fring's final scene, the makeup department and special-effects team had to create a realistic, half-blown-off face for actor Giancarlo Esposito.

To do so, the crew members from another hit AMC show, "The Walking Dead," helped out.  

"We did have great help from the prosthetic effects folks at 'The Walking Dead'" Gilligan told The New York Times in 2011. "It's a combination of great makeup and great visual effects. And it took months to do."

While filming "The Avengers" in New Mexico, Samuel L. Jackson hoped to make a cameo as his Marvel character. Nick Fury would casually enter Los Pollos Hermanos in costume, order food, and leave. 

"I just wanted to order a three-piece and really freak people out," Jackson told IndieWire in 2012. "Then people would be going, 'Wow, was that him?'"

He said the producers of "Breaking Bad" weren't interested.

During the show's first season Walter White's son, Walt Jr., created a fundraising website called SaveWalterWhite.com to help pay for his dad's cancer treatment.

Walter Sr. then used the website as a way to launder the money he made from selling meth by making consistent, anonymous donations to himself. 

AMC runs the site, which you can still visit. Its "Click Here to Donate" button links to AMC's own website.

Fans may have heard that Gilligan planned to kill off Aaron Paul's character Jesse Pinkman on the ninth episode of the show's first season, but the 2007 writers' strike meant only seven episodes ran.

As a result, Gilligan had time to reconsider killing off Jesse and ultimately keep him on the show. That isn't quite the full story, Gilligan said on a panel in 2011. 

"The writers' strike, in a sense, didn't save him," he said. By episode two, he and the producers and directors all knew Aaron Paul was a great actor and that it "would be a huge, colossal mistake to kill off Jesse." 

Pinkman remained an integral part of all five seasons of the series.

In a 2013 Reddit AMA, Paul shared that he was knocked unconscious, got a concussion, and went to the hospital after a fight scene. 

"Raymond Cruz who played Tuco gave me a concussion," Paul wrote in the AMA. "Tuco takes Jesse and he throws him through the screen door outside, and if you watch it back you'll notice that my head gets caught inside the wooden screen door and it flips me around and lands me on my stomach."

Cruz continued the scene, thinking Paul was acting, kicking his costar then picking him up and throwing him over his shoulder. In reality, "I was pretty much unconscious," Paul wrote. 

In 2023, Cruz told The Mirror that Paul had some of the details wrong. "I'm actually the one who stopped it," he said, explaining that he quickly realized the actor was hurt. 

Viewers can see the moment that Paul was injured because that's the shot featured in the show. 

"It's a crazy take because it's so violent," Cruz said. "The door ripped off its hinges."

The season-two scene where Walt purposely watches Jesse's girlfriend, Jane, die was the hardest moment for Cranston to film, he told IndieWire in 2018. 

He said he pictured his own daughter choking as he watched Krysten Ritter act out her character's death.

Once the director cut, Cranston said he was a "weeping mess." He turned to the actor who played Skyler White, his TV wife, for comfort. "Fortunately, you have your family around you, and I went to Anna Gunn, and she held me," he said. 

Skyler's sister, Marie Schrader, wears and owns a lot of purple items. Her go-to color was no accident, Gilligan told Vulture in 2011. 

"Well, Marie would say purple is the color of royalty," he said. The show often used color to portray certain energies and foreshadow certain fates. 

"We always try to think of the color that a character is dressed in, in the sense that it represents on some level their state of mind," he told the publication. 

For example, Gilligan said Walter's last name is White because it "is the color of vanilla, of blandness."

On the final day of filming "Breaking Bad," Cranston got a tattoo of the show's iconic Br/Ba logo.

"We were having a couple of drinks at a bar, and they brought in a tattoo artist and we thought, 'Why not? This is the time to do it,'" he told The Wrap in 2013.

The tattoo is hidden on the inside of his right ring finger. "So every once in a while I catch a glimpse of it and I see that logo from 'Breaking Bad,' and it makes me smile," Cranston told E! News in 2013.

During a 2016 interview with Seth Meyers, Paul said he took everything he could from the set of "Breaking Bad."

One of the items was the faux severed head of Gus Fring, which Paul said he keeps in his media room. 

The actor also took the license plate from Jesse Pinkman's first car, and he has an iconic Heisenberg hat, he said in a 2013 interview with Entertainment Weekly.

This story was originally published on September 16, 2019, and most recently updated on January 17, 2025.

Lefties have to reach around the flap and zip up from the other side.

Measurements in cups and ounces face right-handed users. Frequent bakers might want to invest in a left-handed version.

The rings make it impossible for left-handed people to lay their hands flat on the page and write normally. Notebooks with spirals on the top or right side are much easier to use.

In general, writing on paper is tough for lefties because they tend to smear pen ink or pencil graphite as their hands move across the page.

Right-handers get to rest their arms on the surface, but lefties have to keep their elbows hovering in midair.

When you pull the pen over to the left side, the cord gets in the way of what you're trying to write.

Other parts of banking are awkward, too.

Holding a credit card in your left hand and swiping it downward in a machine feels weird, but so does switching to your right hand if you're a leftie. Luckily, many machines are tap-to-pay now.

The cord may not be long enough to comfortably write with your left hand. If you use your right hand, your signature is probably going to be less legible.

Lefties have to reach across the can and turn the crank at an awkward angle, which is difficult. There are left-handed can openers to avoid this issue.

Grabbing a piping hot coffee with your non-dominant hand can be a recipe for spillage.

A few companies do make left-handed keyboards for those who like to hit the number keys with their dominant hands.

The mouse is probably on the right side, for example.

Left-handers have to angle the blade to make an accurate cut and then squeeze the two handles together in an uncomfortable way.

Some, like Jimi Hendrix, simply play a typical guitar upside down.

If a vegetable peeler only has one sharp side, left-handed cooks may find it difficult to position the blade and get a smooth peeling motion.

It may take left-handers a bit to adjust to a camera's setup.

The numbers on left-handed rulers move from right to left so lefties can see them clearly as they move their pens.

It's still readable, but it's a little more inconvenient.

Righties have an easier time using these switches for safety and better control whereas lefties should be extra cautious.

Lefties are the odd person out at rectangular dining tables. To avoid bumping elbows with the person next to them, they need to be selective about where they sit. This is less of a problem at circular tables.

This article was originally published on November 16, 2016, and was last updated on January 15, 2025.

Chile's Tarapacá region sits near the borders with Bolivia and Peru. The region's hyperarid Atacama Desert has been compared to Mars.

The desert soil contains a mix of chemicals carried by groundwater, ocean spray, or fog. A lack of rainfall helped preserve beds of sodium nitrate, or saltpeter.

In the early 19th century, Europeans on the hunt for saltpeter to use in gunpowder turned their attention to the desert.

Companies were mining saltpeter in the region by the early 1800s. When Charles Darwin visited during his voyage on the HMS Beagle in 1835, he dismissed the Chilean version of saltpeter.

"This saltpetre does not properly deserve to be so called; for it consists of nitrate of soda, and not of potash, and is therefore of much less value," he wrote.

The desert's sodium nitrate was more prone to dampness and burned at a higher temperature than potassium nitrate, another type of saltpeter commonly used in gunpowder, John Darlington wrote in "Amongst the Ruins: Why Civilizations Collapse and Communities Disappear."

Extracting nitrate and valuable byproducts like iodine quickly became industrialized. It required a slew of machinery, including hoppers, leaching tanks, and troughs.

As populations grew and scientific development continued, researchers turned to sodium nitrate not as a source of gunpowder but as a useful fertilizer.

By 1870, the Tarapacá region was producing 500,000 tons of saltpeter, the largest source of the substances in the world at the time, the BBC reported.

The Peruvian Nitrate Company founded La Palma in 1862, and nearby Santa Laura followed 10 years later. La Palma was later renamed Humberstone, after a British chemical engineer, James Humberstone, who moved to the area in the 1870s.

Many European investors set up operations in the Tarapacá region, trading a share of their profits to acquire the land.

One of the driest places on earth, some parts of the Atacama Desert receive only 0.2 inches of rainfall a year, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. While the average temperature is in the high 60s Fahrenheit, it can drop to close to freezing at night in the winter.

Humberstone is arranged in a 10-by-6-block grid. Many buildings were made of Douglas fir with zinc roofs. Verandas and covered walkways provided relief from the sun.

A general store and hotel were built at the center of Humberstone on the plaza. A tennis court, theater, swimming pool, chapel, hospital, and school all made up the complex.

Some of the materials for the buildings were shipped in, but workers also used remnants of the saltpeter process for "Pampa cement."

The workers came from Chile, Peru, and Bolivia. Barracks were constructed of dorm-like rooms for single workers. There were also small houses for families.

Managers lived in larger, nicer homes, while owners usually had homes in coastal cities instead of near the mines.

Workers were lured to Humberstone and other mining towns by companies promising to pay their travel costs. "But what they found was really harsh conditions, very rough work, very dangerous work, and very poor pay," Ángela Vergara, a professor of history at California State University, Los Angeles, told Business Insider.

Administrators would also physically punish the workers.

One reporter who visited in the 1880s described the work as incessant, comparing it to the dirty, dangerous work of coal mines. He called houses "squalid-looking," per the BBC.

Rather than being paid in money, workers were paid in tokens that were only accepted in the town's general store.

"That was to trap people," Vergara said. "They could not move because they were dependent on the token."

Saltpeter workers in Humberstone and other towns became an important part of the country's labor movement.

By the end of the 19th century, nitrate railways connected the region's mines to port cities so saltpeter could be shipped all over the world. At the same time, the miners were dependent on the railroads, too.

"All these nitrate camps and towns, they were located in very isolated parts of the Atacama," Vergara said. They had to bring in food and supplies to survive, she said.

Port cities shipped saltpeter to Europe and other parts of the world and imported goods, including textiles and coal.

Between 1880 and 1930, "Chile literally lived off one product: saltpetre," historian Julio Pinto told BBC News in 2015.

It brought in about half of the country's fiscal revenue, he said.

Chile went to war with Bolivia and Peru over nitrate taxes in 1879, eventually annexing nitrate-laden territories from both countries, including Tarapacá.

Bolivia was cut off from the coast, becoming the land-locked country it still is today.

Germany relied upon Chile's saltpeter for fertilizer until the British blockade during the war. Instead, German scientists found ways to synthesize nitrate from ammonia, bypassing the need for saltpeter.

The loss of the industry combined with the Great Depression had a severe effect on Chile's economy. While it had once produced 80% of the world's nitrate, by 1950 it was only responsible for 15%.

A private company bought the operations and then sold off pieces of them in 1961. Workers left to find other jobs, leaving ghost towns behind.

The saltpeter works became Historic Monuments in 1970, saving them from demolition. In the 1990s, former workers and their families formed the Saltpeter Museum Corporation and won the rights to the sites during a public auction in 2002.

The Saltpeter Museum Corporation and former residents gathered 20,000 signatures to have UNESCO recognize the historical significance of the sites.

The pampinos, the area's inhabitants, had a unique culture influenced by the mix of people from all over the world. The towns and the industry represented specialized knowledge that impacted the landscape and deeply affected the country's economy.

Together, the two towns showcase different aspects of the region's former saltpeter industry. Santa Laura's equipment and manufacturing structures are better preserved than Humberstone's, which still has many residential buildings and other remnants of social and cultural life.

Between the 1960s and early 2000s, there was little maintenance on the towns' buildings. Looters took reusable materials, and the elements damaged the fragile structures, which weren't built for long-term use.

Salty fog had corroded the metal, and wind and earthquakes were threatening the wooden and stucco structures.

The Ministry of Public Works, the Saltpeter Museum Corporation, and the National Council of Monuments started working on securing and conserving the sites in 2005. In 2019, UNESCO removed them from its List of World Heritage in Danger due to their efforts. Some buildings are still fragile, though.

Many buildings, including the school and general store, remain. Visitors can wander around Humberstone and Santa Laura, which are only about half a mile from each other.

Mannequins depict what it would have been like to live and work in the towns.

Sources for this story include "Amongst the Ruins: Why Civilizations Collapse and Communities Disappear," UNESCO World Heritage Convention, "Tangible and Intangible Heritage in the Age of Globalisation," Applied Geochemistry, Chemical and Engineering News, Astrobiology, The Hispanic American Historical Review, and BBC News.

A British passenger liner, the Titanic was operated by White Star Line and was traveling from Southampton, England, to New York City. 

When the ship was about 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland, Canada, the two lookouts, Fredrick Fleet and Reginald Lee, spotted the berg.

Fleet and Lee were contending with an unusually calm ocean. With no waves breaking at its base, the iceberg was difficult to spot. Their binoculars were also locked in a cabinet, so they were using their naked eyes to scan the dark water on the moonless night.

While the night was clear, the lookouts later said the berg, between 50 and 100 feet tall, suddenly loomed out of the haze. One weather researcher has suggested a local phenomenon known as sea smoke, steam rising from the water, could have obscured the enormous frozen object.     

First Officer William Murdoch ordered the ship's helmsmen to avoid the iceberg, but they couldn't turn in time. As the ship scraped the iceberg, it tore a hole in the side of the ship, rupturing at least five of the watertight compartments.

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Thomas Andrews, the Titanic's designer, was on board and quickly realized the extent of the damage and alerted the captain. 

Within an hour, Captain Edward Smith ordered the lifeboats lowered into the water, The BBC reported in 2012. As the ship's bow continued to sink, the stern rose into the sky.

Shortly after 2 a.m., the Titanic's lights went out. Soon after, the ship broke into two pieces, and the bow sank beneath the waves. Then the stern followed suit, sending hundreds of crewmembers and passengers into the sea.

There were 20 lifeboats aboard the Titanic, more than the 16 required for a ship that size. However, the boats only had capacity for about half of the passengers and crew, 1,178 people, Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2017.

Women and children were the first passengers to climb into the lifeboats. Many boats were launched below capacity, either because the crew were afraid they would collapse if fully loaded or because they didn't want to spend valuable time coaxing passengers onto the boats, according to "Titanic: A Night Remembered." 

At first, passengers remained relatively calm as the Titanic sank, NPR reported in 2012. The mood changed as more people started arriving on the upper decks where the lifeboats were located, one survivor told The BBC in 1979. 

As they rowed away, some lifeboat passengers feared the suction created by the sinking ship would drag them under. Others feared desperate swimmers would swamp the boats.

Emily Borie Ryerson's lifeboat returned to pick up survivors, mostly crewmembers, she testified during a senate inquiry into the event.

They "were so chilled and frozen already they could hardly move," she said. The water was 28 degrees Fahrenheit, according to "Titanic: 25 Years Later with James Cameron," a National Geographic special about the movie.

When flares from the Titanic woke the captain, he assumed they were "company rockets," or signals passed between ships owned by the same company, not distress signals, the BBC reported.

Between 10 and 19 miles away, the Californian would have reached the Titanic much more quickly than the Carpathia, which was around 58 miles away.

The Californian had also messaged the Titanic earlier, warning of ice. The luxury liner's telegraph operator responded that he was busy, telling the Californian to stop sending messages. 

Harold Cottam, the Carpathia's 21-year-old wireless operator, had planned to go to sleep for the night. First, though, he sent the Titanic a message to let them know he'd picked up transmissions meant for the luxury liner. 

"Come at once. We have struck a berg," Jack Phillips, the Titanic's wireless operator, responded. At 12:35 a.m., Cottam alerted Arthur Rostron, the captain of the transatlantic passenger liner, who threw on a dressing gown and headed his vessel toward the sinking ship, BBC News reported in 2013.   

"All this time, we were hearing the Titanic, sending her wireless out over the sea in a last call for help," Cottam told The New York Times in 1912. 

Another ship, the Olympic, also heard the distress calls but was over 500 miles away, according to The Irish Independent.

He stationed a doctor in each of the ship's three dining rooms, outfitting them with "restoratives and stimulants," per the US Senate's report on the disaster. The crew stocked the saloons with coffee, tea, soup, and blankets. 

When the survivors came aboard, the chief steward and pursers would record their names so they could start sending them by telegraph.    

The first lifeboat reached the Carpathia at 4:10 a.m. It took over four hours for the ship to pick up all of the survivors.

The Carpathia discovered four bodies in the sea and lifeboats, which crew members buried at sea, according to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. 

Captain Rostron ordered the nearby Californian to search the area for any additional survivors. 

"The people on the Carpathia received us with open arms and provided us with hot comforts, and acted as ministering angels," Titanic survivor Archibald Gracie later said. Many voluntarily gave up their beds to the rescued passengers, according to a 2017 article in "Voyage: Journal of the Titanic International Society 101."  

While the doctors treated people for sprains and bruises, one saw women and children crying as the search for other passengers was called off. 

Augusta Ogden offered coffee to two distraught women. "Go away," they said. "We have just seen our husbands drown."

The closest port was Halifax, Nova Scotia, but getting there required traveling through more ice. 

Rostron decided to return to New York, where the Titanic had been headed. 

From the start, there were rumors that the company withheld information about the disaster, The Washington Post reported in 1912.

Philip Franklin, who was in charge of White Star Line at the time, denied knowing about the Titanic striking an iceberg shortly after it happened, Smithsonian Magazine reported in 2015. 

During the next few days aboard the Carpathia, survivors including Margaret Brown, who became known as the "Unsinkable Molly Brown" following the voyage, started a committee to help their fellow Titanic passengers. 

The self-described survivors' committee raised thousands of dollars to thank the Carpathia's crew. Brown, Emma Bucknell, and Martha Stone created lists of basic necessities for the other survivors. 

They camped in a dining room for hours, listening to other passengers as they "poured out their grief and story of distress," Brown later wrote. 

Carlos Hurd, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was aboard the Carpathia when it raced to help the Titanic. He and his wife, Katherine, interviewed survivors and wrote down their stories. 

Rostron wouldn't allow him to use the telegraph during the trip back to New York, so he tossed his notes to his colleague aboard one of the boats, The Missoulian reported in 2012. 

Other journalists shouted at passengers through megaphones, offering $50 or $100 for interviews, WNYC reported in 2012.

The ship had left from the same dock only seven days earlier, The New York Times reported in 2012. 

Families of passengers arrived hoping to be reunited with loved ones. Ambulances lined the streets waiting to tend to the survivors, The New York Times reported in 2010. 

The Carpathia had rescued over 700 people from the freezing Atlantic. 

Of the roughly 1,500 people who died aboard the Titanic, nearly 1,200 were crewmembers or third-class passengers. 

Before docking to let the passengers off, the ship stopped to drop off the lifeboats at the White Star Line's Pier 59, according to the Hudson River Maritime Museum. 

Practically overnight, passenger liners needed to have enough lifeboats for everyone on board, The New York Times reported in 2012. 

Three ships dispatched from Halifax were able to retrieve over 300 bodies from the wreckage, or one in five victims, according to the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. 

The first vessel sent to retrieve bodies, the Mackay-Bennett, ran out of embalming supplies — the ship didn't expect to find so many bodies in the water — forcing crew members to bury more people at sea than intended.

About half of the recovered bodies are buried in Halifax. Relatives claimed 59 bodies and returned them home. Most of the dead were crew members and third-class passengers who were trapped on lower decks, ABC News reported in 2020.

Rostron was reluctant to speak publicly about his role in the Titanic rescue, though he did write an autobiography, "Home from the Sea," detailing his account of that fateful night.

This article was originally published in April 2020 and updated on January 13, 2025.

Scigliano said when you're familiar with the narcissist in your life, you'll learn their patterns. But some common signs a narcissist is gearing up for an argument include "physical agitation, facial expressions becoming sinister, darkened eyes, and a change in their posture to become more imposing or intimidating. Their voice may also suddenly get deeper or sterner, she said.

"Whatever the signs may be, they will reflect the narcissist's desire to regain control of the situation or reestablish their authority," Scigliano said.

Fights with a narcissist are very different from regular relationship spats, Elinor Greenberg, a psychologist and author of "Borderline, Narcissistic, and Schizoid Adaptations: The Pursuit of Love, Admiration, and Safety," told BI in 2023.

Some of her clients have screamed at her over minor inconveniences, such as packages arriving during their session.

"If they're going to yell at me over the UPS man, you can see just how hard it is for them to have a relationship without getting nasty," she said.

When offended, narcissists may accuse their partner of being "disrespectful" or "selfish." The world revolves around them, in their eyes, so focusing on anything else feels like a direct attack.

Narcissistic rage ranges from direct confrontation with name-calling and insults to calculated, closed-down reactions like giving their partner the silent treatment for hours.

"They give you the cold shoulder, or they walk out and they find another partner," Greenberg said. "But it's all done silently and coolly and coldly — you know what you did.

Expect to feel frustrated with how the argument seems to be going nowhere.

"Because narcissists are fantastic at spinning others around in their webs of manipulation, you can easily become disoriented as to how the argument even began, frustrated over their circular arguments, and hopeless with regard to resolving anything," Scigliano said. 

"Oftentimes, people give up and give in just for the sake of ending the argument and reestablishing a modicum of peace," she said. 

There's no point trying to figure out who is "to blame" for something, as narcissists will never admit fault. They're also not necessarily trying to "win" the argument. 

"Be aware that narcissists don't argue to prove a point," divorce attorney Derek Jacques of The Mitten Law Firm told BI in 2023. "They argue to feel a rush of satisfaction of putting you down and belittling you." 

Some therapists debate whether narcissists mean to cause harm to their loved ones. Regardless of their intent, their attacks can still wound those around them. 

Narcissists become "visibly disappointed, frustrated, angry, and at times, violent when they don't receive the feedback, praise, and admiration they expect, especially from partners," Terrell Strayhorn, a professor of education and psychology at Virginia Union University, told BI in 2023.

"Their superiority complex compels them to lash out — verbally, emotionally, psychologically, and physically — against those who disappoint them," Strayhorn said.

One way to soothe a narcissist is to empathize with their feelings, Greenberg said. 

If you are in a relationship with a narcissist, you might naturally have a lot of empathy. You may be able to use that trait to help control the situation.  

Greenberg suggested saying something like, "You must have felt very hurt by what I did. I can understand why you are feeling that way."

Saying "we" rather than "I" or "you" includes yourself in the behavior, Greenberg said. The narcissist is probably angry that you dared to defend yourself, so you can try and remind them you're in this together and that it would be better for everyone to stop.

Scigliano also recommended remaining calm, not sharing your feelings, and sticking only to the facts.

"Expressing emotions makes it easier for the narcissist to twist the conversation around and work you into a tizzy," she said.

Narcissists love talking about themselves and can be know-it-alls.

Dangle a new topic in front of their face to steer the conversation away from conflict. This might not be that effective in the midst of a fierce debate, but after some time has passed, the narcissist will probably take the bait.

Another tactic is to ask for advice. It's a slightly less transparent way of changing the subject that also makes the narcissist feel superior. 

As retaliation for whatever hurt they feel you've caused them, narcissists will bring up past slights or accuse you of being selfish at that moment. 

One way to deal with a narcissist is to "avoid engaging with them on their level," Jacques said. That could mean biting your tongue, even as they're spewing insults at you.  

Even an innocuous statement might provide a narcissist with ammo, Jacques said. "Take those opportunities away from them and you remove their power."

Greenberg also said that by ignoring the name-calling, you can often avoid the fight. If you respond to it, things are likely to escalate, and you're giving the narcissist exactly what they want — your pain.

Being in a romantic relationship with a narcissist can be an emotionally draining, damaging process. Using these methods to deal with a narcissist may help deescalate upsetting and potentially dangerous, situations.

For most people, though, breaking up with a narcissist is the better, safer option. The very nature of being a narcissist means they don't see anything wrong with themselves, so they are unlikely to ever change or seek help. Ultimately, your energy is better off being used elsewhere.

If you suspect you might be in an abusive relationship, or you know someone who is, there are services you can reach out to. The MyPlan App from One Love and the National Domestic Abuse Hotline are resources that can help.

This article was first published in February 2018 and was last updated on January 10, 2025.

In April 2024, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists accidentally caught a glimpse of the Cold War past, buried 100 feet under Greenland's frozen landscape.

Over 900 miles north of Nuuk, the country's most populous city, there was once a secret town of Army workers. Now the only way to see the frozen city, known as Camp Century, is through ice-penetrating radar.

"It's sort of like an ultrasound for ice sheets, where we're mapping out the bottom of the ice sheet," Chad Greene, the cryospheric scientist who took the picture, told Business Insider.

While there are other radar images of Camp Century, this newer device, the UAVSAR (Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar), is more powerful. "That is the highest-resolution image that we've ever gotten to see at this camp," Greene said.

Remote and inhospitable, northern Greenland seemed like an ideal place for a Cold War military base. The US Army Corps of Engineers started constructing Camp Century 26 feet below the ice in 1959.

They dug tunnels large enough for an electric railroad to connect to a supply base over 150 miles away. The 2-mile-long complex, powered by a nuclear reactor, was large enough for 200 soldiers. So they didn't miss the comforts of home, they would have access to a gym, game rooms, library, and barber shop, Popular Science reported in 1960, while the base was still under construction.

The Army told journalists that scientists used Camp Century as a base for collecting and researching the world's first ice core samples. While that was true, the frozen city was also part of Project Iceworm. That mission, to launch ballistic missiles from under the ice, was kept under wraps and was eventually scrapped.

The Army's expectation for Camp Century after abandoning it in 1967 was that snowfall would keep it "preserved for eternity," a group of engineers wrote in a 1962 journal article. Over the decades, dozens of feet of ice and snow have further covered the base. The problem is that warming temperatures could reverse that trend.

If Camp Century melts, thousands of gallons of radioactive waste could surface as well. A 2016 study predicted the area will start losing ice by 2090.

Luke Auld-Thomas was deep in a Google search when he hit the jackpot … for a graduate student in archaeology, at least. It was lidar data for environmental analysis, but he was interested in what was under the trees.

To capture that kind of information, a plane flies over an area and the lidar sensor emits millions of pulses of light that are used to measure the distance between the plane and the objects below. Some light slips between the tree canopy to the ground, which can reveal forgotten structures.

The dataset covered an area of Campeche in Southeastern Mexico where Lowland Maya civilizations once flourished. However, the area is so dense with trees, it's impossible to see structures from the sky. Archaeologists had never studied this particular spot, so Auld-Thomas wasn't sure what the data would show.

It turned out that there were thousands of structures under the leaves.

"The locals were aware of the ruins nearby, but the scientific community had no idea," Marcello Canuto, a Tulane University professor and Auld-Thomas' advisor, told Business Insider.

When Auld-Thomas and Marcello started looking at the lidar data, they were surprised to see an entire city, packed with buildings. It may have been home to 30,000 to 50,000 people between 750 and 850 CE.

The city covered around 6 square miles. The team found over 6,700 structures, including houses, plazas, temple pyramids, and a ballcourt. Some areas were dense while others were more rural, Canuto said.

"There's also causeways, like roads, terraces, hydraulic canals, reservoirs, things that suggest that the landscape is being modified for a series of reasons," he said, including transportation and growing food.

Based on the city's scope, Canuto said it may have served as a regional capital that would have been home to elites or a royal family.

The researchers called it Valeriana, after a nearby lagoon.

Right now, everything the researchers know about Valeriana comes from the lidar data. That information can help see the size and shape of buildings and the size of the city, but they need to visit the site to learn more.

"What lidar doesn't tell you is what's below the surface," Canuto said. The Maya may have buried some objects or structures, or soil may have covered them.

Canuto said many of the stone buildings have likely crumbled over the centuries. They may be decorated or have important architectural features that lidar can't reveal.

While Canuto isn't planning to go to Valeriana himself, he hopes researchers from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History will study the site.

"That's the point of open data is to say, 'Look, it's open to everybody, so make use of it,'" he said.

A decades-long megadrought continues to bake the Southwestern US.

In the early 1980s, Lake Mead, the Hoover Dam's reservoir, was nearing its full capacity of 9.3 trillion gallons of water. In 2022, it was at its lowest level since 1937, when it was first filling up, according to NASA's Earth Observatory.

Satellite images showed a "bathtub ring" of mineralization where water previously covered the shore. A once-wide section of the lake narrowed and then disappeared in the past 20 years.

As the evaporating water revealed the bed below, the remnants of an abandoned town began to emerge.

In 1928, President Calvin Coolidge signed a bill ordering the construction of what would become the Hoover Dam. It was completed in 1936, causing the Colorado River to start rising.

As water pooled in valleys, Lake Mead began to form. Unfortunately for the residents of St. Thomas, Nevada, they were right in its path.

Mormons settled the town in 1865, though most burned their homes and moved after a dispute over taxes, according to the National Park Service. By the 1880s, newcomers had found the town, which would eventually become home to around 500 people.

When the river water started flooding, the town had everything from a school to a post office to an ice cream shop.

In 1838, the last resident escaped by boat.

"St. Thomas, for a long time, you couldn't get to without scuba diving," Michael Green, a University of Nevada, Las Vegas history professor, told The Las Vegas Review-Journal in 2019.

The drought changed that.

St. Thomas started peeking through the disappearing lake in 2002. Walls, foundations, bits of metal, and broken glass litter the earth now.

The town reemerged in 1945 and 1963 but the lake swallowed it up again. It's unclear when that may happen again because climate change is fueling water loss in the Colorado River, a 2023 study found.

Lake Mead rose 16 feet in 2024 after coming dangerously close to the "dead pool" level, when the Hoover Dam would no longer be able to release water downstream to Arizona and California, SFGate reported.

Midyat, in southeastern Turkey, has long held religious significance, as evidenced by its monasteries and churches, some of which were built in the 6th century.

In 2020, researchers on an excavation project unexpectedly found an entrance to a sprawling subterranean city, Agence France-Presse reported in 2024. Its construction was even older than the above-ground churches, dating back almost 2,000 years.

The city's inhabitants, possibly fearing persecution, fled underground and created an entire world.

Tunnels carved into the rock connect dozens of rooms in the underground city, known as Matiate. Researchers found coins, human and animal bones, and areas for storing food and wine, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2022.

People occupied the site for hundreds of years and had many reasons for seeking shelter under ground.

"To protect themselves from the climate, enemies, predators and diseases, people took refuge in these caves, which they turned into an actual city," Mervan Yavuz, the Midyat conservation director, told AFP.

Some may have been looking for a place to safely practice their religions, Yavuz added. "Pagans, Jews, Christians, Muslims, all these believers contributed to the underground city of Matiate."

Workers have only excavated a tiny fraction of Matiate, which covers an estimated 9 million square feet.

"Our aim is to gradually uncover the entire underground city and open it to tourists," excavation leader Gani Tarkan told Daily Sabah last year.

Eventually, Matiate could rival the size and popularity of another of Turkey's underground cities, Derinkuyu.

In 1963, a man in the Cappadocia region of Turkey kept losing chickens during renovations on his basement, the BBC reported in 2022. They would slip through a gap in the wall and disappear. It turned out the wall concealed a tunnel to a long-forgotten city.

Located nearly 280 feet under the ground, the cavernous rooms and tunnels were once home to 20,000 people.

Cappadocia's rock is made from volcanic ash and forms natural spires. Known as tuff, the rock is easy to carve and shape, which may have helped residents build the underground tunnels and dwellings.

The city is ancient, with some estimates of its age at around 3,000 years. In 370 BCE, Xenophon of Athens described a site that seemed to match what's now known as Derinkuyu.

After its rediscovery, archaeologists and others began excavating Derinkuyu, eventually finding over 600 openings leading to the city. Storage rooms, stables, and schools covered 171 square miles. There was a well for water and ventilation shafts bringing in fresh air.

While residents didn't seem to live underground permanently, they could hide from violence or harsh weather for months at a time, the BBC reported.

In the 1920s, Cappadocian Greeks left the city behind after the Greco-Turkish War. They likely knew about the metropolis beneath their feet but took that knowledge to Greece.

Following Derinkuyu's rediscovery, it became a huge draw for the region.

Visitors can now explore several levels of Derinkuyu to see how people sought refuge for hundreds of years in the claustrophobic caves.

Population of metro area: 225,564

Median household income: $73,319

Climate Vulnerability Index: 54th percentile (average vulnerability). This index shows areas of the US most likely to face climate change-related challenges.

Huntsville is a hub for aerospace and defense and attracts startups in these industries. While US News & World Report noted it has an above-average rate of violent crime, the paper also named it one of the best places to live.

Population of the metro area: 280,305

Median household income: $70,484

Climate Vulnerability Index: 6th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

Madison is a college town and Wisconsin's capital. The 2024 Dangerous by Design report ranked it as the second-safest city for pedestrians.

Population of the metro area: 341,778

Median household income: $85,428

Climate Vulnerability Index: 0th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

While Honolulu has a low climate vulnerability percentile overall, sea level around Hawaii is projected to rise up to 1.5 feet by 2050, according to the University of Hawaii, likely affecting some areas of the city.

A popular destination for tourists, Honolulu was ranked the "Safest City to Travel to in the World" in 2024 by Berkshire Hathaway Travel Protection.

It has relatively low rates of violent crimes but an above-average rate of property crimes, according to FBI data.

Population of the metro area: 196,442

Median household income: $80,618

Climate Vulnerability Index: 15th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

In 2023, Vancouver's overall reported crimes dropped by over 9%, according to a report from the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. In terms of natural disasters, the city is most vulnerable to earthquakes, extreme heat, and wildfires.

Population of the metro area: 31,555

Median household income: $100,513

Climate Vulnerability Index: 0th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

On average, Juneau had around 900 violent crimes and 1,200 property crimes each year between 2015 and 2023, according to FBI data. Heavy snow, extreme cold, and landslides are a few of the hazards the city's residents face.

Population of the metro area: 91,003

Median household income: $97,667

Climate Vulnerability Index: 10th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

Located in New Hampshire — the safest state in the US, according to US News & World Report — Nashua has low crime and unemployment rates and ranked well for home and community safety and financial safety in WalletHub's 2024 list.

Population of the metro area: 77,757

Median household income: $70,277

Climate Vulnerability Index: 14th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

Located near Montanta's border with Idaho, Missoula has attracted wealthy newcomers to the area in recent years, raising home prices. Meanwhile, it's scrambling to build more housing to address a spike in homelessness.

Population of the metro area: 253,886

Median household income: $92,633

Climate Vulnerability Index: 40th percentile (average vulnerability)

A recent report found that homes in this growing city have become slightly more affordable. Situated near the Elizabeth River, which flows into Chesapeake Bay, the city experiences flash flooding and hurricanes.

Population of the metro area: 133,188

Median household income: $61,422

Climate Vulnerability Index: 2nd percentile (lowest vulnerability)

After seeing an uptick in crime in 2022, Fargo's rates dropped in 2023 and 2024, Captain Bill Ahlfeldt of the Fargo Police Department told WDAY Radio in September 2024. The city is vulnerable to some natural disasters but has a number of infrastructure projects aimed at reducing the risk of catastrophic flooding.

Population of the metro area: 314,621

Median household income: $127,989

Climate Vulnerability Index: 27th percentile (lower vulnerability)

Home to several universities, Irvine is just a few miles from Disneyland. Its crime rates were among the lowest of all the cities on this list, based on FBI data. For most of this century, the city has had the lowest violent crime rate in the US for cities of 250,000 or more people.

Population of metro area: 453,649

Median household income: $91,141

Climate Vulnerability Index: 18th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

To protect against future hurricanes and rising sea levels, Virginia Beach voters approved a $568 million bond referendum to fund infrastructure projects focused on addressing these risks, PBS reported in 2021. US News and World Report named it the second-best place to retire in the US in 2024.

Population of the metro area: 69,104

Median household income: $83,399

Climate Vulnerability Index: 18th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

Maine's biggest city, Portland, is known for its incredible seafood. It has a lower violent crime rate than the national average, per FBI data. In 2024, the city installed flexible poles and added blue paint to some intersections to make them safer for pedestrians and cyclists, The Forecaster reported.

Population of the metro area: 104,681

Median household income: $115,564

Climate Vulnerability Index: 14th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

Designed to be a self-sustaining city, Columbia is a planned community and Maryland's second-largest city. In 2024, WalletHub ranked it the top city for women in terms of health and safety and financial well-being.

Population of the metro area: 135,958

Median household income: $66,720

Climate Vulnerability Index: 19th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

Iowa's second-largest city experienced a devastating flood in 2008, which caused billions of dollars in damage. Since then, Cedar Rapids has a Community Climate Action Plan aimed at reducing similar events in the future.

As for crime, in 2023, the city's crime rates had dropped compared to the previous year, KCRG reported in January 2024.

Population of the metro area: 207,657

Median household income: $81,097

Climate Vulnerability Index: 24th percentile (lower vulnerability)

Located on the Hudson River, the city of Yonkers has low crime rates compared to the national average, per FBI data.

Its relatively low risk for natural disasters also contributed to the city landing at number six on the list.

However, WalletHub ranked it 139th in financial safety, based on metrics including non-business bankruptcies and underwater mortgages.

Population of the metro area: 235,421

Median household income: $79,977

Climate Vulnerability Index: 9th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

Crime rates in Boise, Idaho, have dropped since the early 1990s, per the city's statistics. The Idaho Statemen described the city as car-dependent, though its downtown is walkable. In 2023 Boise had its most traffic fatalities in a decade.

Population of the metro area: 44,528

Median household income: $68,854

Climate Vulnerability Index: 0th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

This scenic city is Vermont's largest. A mix of low risk from natural disasters and high financial safety secured Burlington's fourth-ranking spot on WalletHub's list.

It's not completely invulnerable to climate change, though. Warming temperatures are bringing more rain and flooding to the area.

Population of the metro area: 82,999

Median household income: $86,193

Climate Vulnerability Index: 22nd percentile (lower vulnerability)

Warwick is the state's third-largest city and has low rates of residents without health insurance, according to WalletHub.

In fact, based on a number of factors, including access, cost, and health outcomes, the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund ranked the state of Rhode Island as having one of the top health systems in the country.

Population of the metro area: 58,720

Median household income: $69,171

Climate Vulnerability Index: 31st percentile (lower vulnerability)

WalletHub cited Casper's low pedestrian fatality rates and comparatively lower risks for earthquakes and tornadoes among the reasons it landed number two on its list. However, the city has dealt with flash floods and nearby wildfires in the past, according to Wyoming Public Media.

Population of the metro area: 21,043

Median household income: $97,229

Climate Vulnerability Index: 0th percentile (lowest vulnerability)

South Burlington jumped from the US's third safest city in 2023 to the top spot in 2024. Most of the city's drivers are insured, and it has a low pedestrian fatality rate. It has good financial security, including a very low unemployment rate. Overall, the area has a relatively low risk of natural disasters, securing the highest safety ranking of the cities on the list.

The mean height for men from Greece is 5 feet 10.59 inches (179.3 cm).

The mean height for women from Greece is 5 feet 5.28 inches (165.8 cm).

The mean height for men from Austria is 5 feet 10.28 inches (178.5 cm).

The mean height for women from Austria is 5 feet 5.71 inches (166.9 cm).

The mean height for men from Belarus is 5 feet 10.35 inches (178.7 cm).

The mean height for women from Belarus is 5 feet 5.71 inches (166.9 cm).

The mean height for men from the Cook Islands is 5 feet 10.19 inches (178.3 cm).

The mean height for women from the Cook Islands is 5 feet 5.87 inches (167.3 cm).

The mean height for men from Bermuda is 5 feet 10.75 inches (179.7 cm).

The mean height for women from Bermuda is 5 feet 5.39 inches (166.1 cm).

The mean height for men from Poland is 5 feet 11.14 inches (180.7 cm).

The mean height for women from Poland is 5 feet 5.28 inches (165.8 cm).

The mean height for men from Germany is 5 feet 10.98 inches (180.3 cm).

The mean height for women from Germany is 5 feet 5.43 inches (166.2 cm).

The mean height for men from Norway is 5 feet 11.06 inches (180.5 cm).

The mean height for women from Norway is 5 feet 5.51 inches (166.4 cm).

The mean height for men from Finland is 5 feet 11.1 inches (180.6 cm).

The mean height for women from Finland is 5 feet 5.55 inches (166.5 cm).

The mean height for men from Dominica is 5 feet 10.94 inches (180.2 cm).

The mean height for women from Dominica is 5 feet 5.71 inches (166.9 cm).

The mean height for men from Sweden is 5 feet 11.06 inches (180.5 cm).

The mean height for women from Sweden is 5 feet 5.63 inches (166.7 cm).

The mean height for men from Ukraine is 5 feet 11.26 inches (181 cm).

The mean height for women from Ukraine is 5 feet 5.59 inches (166.6 cm).

The mean height for men from Croatia is 5 feet 11.18 inches (180.8 cm).

The mean height for women from Croatia is 5 feet 5.67 inches (166.8 cm).

The mean height for men from Slovakia is 5 feet 11.26 inches (181 cm).

The mean height for women from Slovakia is 5 feet 5.79 inches (167.1 cm).

The mean height for men from Slovenia is 5 feet 11.26 inches (181 cm).

The mean height for women from Slovenia is 5 feet 5.83 inches (167.2 cm).

The mean height for men from Lithuania is 5 feet 11.14 inches (180.7 cm).

The mean height for women from Lithuania is 5 feet 5.98 inches (167.6 cm).

The mean height for men from Serbia is 5 feet 11.14 inches (180.7 cm).

The mean height for women from Serbia is 5 feet 6.26 inches (168.3 cm).

The mean height for men from the Czech Republic is 5 feet 11.34 inches (181.2 cm).

The mean height for women from the Czech Republic is 5 feet 6.14 inches (168 cm).

The mean height for men from Bosnia & Herzegovina is 5 feet 11.85 inches (182.5 cm).

The mean height for women from Bosnia & Herzegovina is 5 feet 5.94 inches (167.5 cm).

The mean height for men from Latvia is 5 feet 11.34 inches (181.2 cm).

The mean height for women from Latvia is 5 feet 6.46 inches (168.8 cm).

The mean height for men from Iceland is 5 feet 11.69 inches (182.1 cm).

The mean height for women from Iceland is 5 feet 6.5 inches (168.9 cm).

The mean height for men from Denmark is 5 feet 11.61 inches (181.9 cm).

The mean height for women from Denmark is 5 feet 6.73 inches (169.5 cm).

The mean height for men from Estonia is 5 feet 11.97 inches (182.8 cm).

The mean height for women from Estonia is 5 feet 6.42 inches (168.7 cm).

The mean height for men from Montenegro is 6 feet 0.17 inches (183.3 cm).

The mean height for women from Montenegro is 5 feet 6.93 inches (170 cm).

The mean height for men from the Netherlands is 6 feet 0.36 inches (183.8 cm).

The mean height for women from the Netherlands is 5 feet 7.09 inches (170.4 cm).

A note on mean versus average heights: Using mean heights instead of averages gives a sense of which countries have the most people who are tall. For example, many Icelandic men are 5 feet 11 inches. 

The list would look different ranked by average heights. The Federal Statistical Office of Germany calculates heights by average, for example, and the results would bump the country up several spots in the rankings. 

This post was originally published in 2019 and was updated on December 18, 2024.