Major Crimes and True Crime

ORIGINALLY, HOOPER WAS MEANT TO DIE  When the shark attacks Hooper's cage, there's live footage of a real Great White with a rope hanging from its mouth. This shark's mouth is clearly much smaller than the shark's mouth when it attacks the boat moments later. These scenes were filmed by noted shark photographers Ron Taylor and Valerie Taylor with the help of shark expert Rodney Fox specifically for the movie.  Because the Great White sharks they filmed would be smaller than the mechanical shark in the movie, they constructed a smaller version of Hooper's shark cage. Inside the cage they alternately used a small mannequin or a little person. One of the sharks they attracted got caught in the cage's cables and tore it apart trying to escape. The footage was so good that they changed the script to reflect the destroyed cage and Hooper escaping by hiding on the ocean floor. However, the small person used in the scene refused to go back in the miniature cage, wh...

This photo was taken in 1890 inside the Whitechapel Workhouse in London — the same street where Jack the Ripper killed just 2 years earlier. Look at the women on the benches. They are not prisoners. They are poor. In Victorian England, if you had no money, no husband, no job, you were sent here. Their job today is picking oakum — tearing apart old, tar-covered ship ropes with their bare fingers to make new ropes for the Royal Navy. Their fingers bleed. The tar burns their skin. But if they stop, they get no food. The woman in the black dress with the cane is the matron. She will hit any woman who talks. Silence was the rule. From 6 AM to 8 PM, they sat here in this freezing stone hall with one tiny window, tearing ropes. See the children next to them? They are 6, 7 years old. In 1890 London, a child in a workhouse had to work too. No school. If a mother entered the workhouse, her children were taken from her and sent to a different room. She could only see them on Sunday for 1 hou...

On April 14, 2014, An Australian rock climber spent the night trapped in the boulder problem known as Squeeze Rock at Mount Arapiles. If you don’t like tight squeezes, this problem is not for you. The 24-year-old was forced to spend the night in “very cold” conditions as rescuers worked to free him.  Luckily for the 24-year-old, and unlike Ralston who had to amputate his own arm, his girlfriend was on hand to call authorities and he survived the 10 hours ‘wedged’ inside the rock with his limbs intact. Ambulance Victoria officers said the man was “extremely hypothermic” and said shampoo, olive oil and other slippery liquids were used to rescue him. The man’s hips got stuck around 10 p.m. on Monday night and was freed around 8 a.m. the next morning. State Emergency Services volunteers, Victorian police, the Country Fire Authority and local rescue specialists were on hand to help paramedics with the rescue. It was worried the climber would fall victim to crush syndrome, a dangero...

As news of Pearl Harbor broke in Tokyo, diplomatic immunity vanished. American staff frantically burned codebooks as Japanese police locked the gates, turning the U.S. Embassy into a prison. Ambassador Joseph C. Grew, along with his staff, their families, and a handful of American journalists, found themselves sealed inside. For the next six months, the roughly 65 internees lived under strict confinement. The Japanese government cut off all direct communication with the outside world, allowing contact only through the neutral Swiss legation. As the Japanese winter set in, fuel was strictly rationed, and food supplies dwindled, forcing the staff to survive on whatever provisions they had stockpiled. While the embassy staff endured the cold, neutral nations brokered an intricate diplomatic swap between the warring powers. Switzerland and the International Red Cross negotiated an agreement to exchange Allied diplomats and civilians trapped in Asia for Japanese diplomats and citizens ...