Many popular TV shows would have been completely different had the executives stuck with the actors from the pilot episode.

For example, can you imagine Danny Tanner from "Full House" being played by someone other than Bob Saget, or Chrissy Snow from "Three's Company" not being played by Suzanne Somers?

Our friends at Mental Floss have put together this list of iconic sitcom characters who were originally played by other actors.

Danny Tanner from "Full House"

Although show producers always had Bob Saget in mind, the widower and single dad was first played by an actor named John Posey because Saget was contractually obligated to a morning show on CBS. Posey was ousted when Saget got fired from The Morning Project, freeing him up for the family-friendly sitcom.

Meg Griffin from "Family Guy"

The eternally picked-on Meg was voiced by Party of Five and Mean Girls actress Lacey Chabert for the first season. Feeling her voice just wasn’t quite right, Seth MacFarlane and co. asked Mila Kunis to try out after seeing her on That 70s Show.

Cousin Larry from "Perfect Strangers"

Would you believe comedian Louie Anderson was in the pilot as Balki’s cousin? Yep. But after reviewing the (unaired) episode, executives decided that Louie just didn’t have the right chemistry with Bronson Pinchot, whom the series was basically built around. Louie got the axe and Mark Linn-Baker stepped in.

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On September 30, I spent a geektastic day at the Portland Retro Gaming Expo.

I arrived early and got a look at many booths before they opened (later, they would be swarmed by thousands of attendees).

For much of the day I was one of several referees for the Classic Tetris World Championship. The whole day was a joy—a convention hall filled with classic games, from Atari to Zelda, with pinball in between. And, this being a Portland event, there were game-themed crafts everywhere. The expo organizers summarized the weekend like so:

• Over 3,000 attendees came through the doors over the weekend

• Over 160 arcade and pinball machines were on display for freeplay

• Over 70 retro video game consoles were set up to play

• There were over 70 vendors in attendance

• Our after-hours event was a blast with over 200 people dining and drinking until midnight right in the Mega-cade

Our live auction was packed with over 400 attendees. At the auction we raised nearly $900 for Portland’s Cat Adoption TeaI just want to emphasize that this event had a “Mega-cade” and it was, indeed, mega.

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13 Little-Known Punctuation Marks We Should Be Using

Oregon Trail: This actually happened. In 2012. I have hope for future generations. (To the side of the mega-cade was a large area with various classic computers and game systems set up for free play.)

Atari 2600 Combat: This also happened, in a little time-warp area in the back of the hall. In the closeup you can see that the game is Combat. Remind you of your childhood much?

The Mega-cade was frankly more mega than these photos convey. Rows of pinball machines, standup arcade games, co-op games, and lots of driving games—all in freeplay mode!—made for a geeky paradise.

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Radium was discovered by Marie Curie and her husband Pierre in 1898.

In 1903, the Royal Academy of Sciences awarded Marie and Pierre Curie and Henri Becquerel the Nobel Prize in Physics, making Marie the first woman to win the prize.

Later, in 1911, she would win her second Nobel for isolating radium, discovering another element (polonium), and for her research into the new phenomenon of radioactivity, a word she coined herself.

By 1910, radium was manufactured synthetically in the U.S. But before the effects of radiation exposure were well understood, radium ended up in a lot of crazy places for its purported magical healing properties and its glow-in-the-dark novelty.

1. In Chocolate

Food products containing radium, like the Radium Schokolade chocolate bar manufactured by Burk & Braun and Hippman-Blach bakery’s Radium Bread, made with radium water, were popular overseas until they were discontinued in 1936.

2. In Water

Radium water crocks like the Revigator stored a gallon of water inside a radium-laced bucket; drinking the water would cure any number of ailments, from arthritis to impotence to wrinkles.

3. In Toys And Nightlights

The Radiumscope, a toy sold as late as 1942, offered a glimpse of radium in action. Noting radium’s famed luminescence, the ad also mentions that the radiumscope could double as a “wonderful” nightlight, since it “glows with a weird light in a dark room.”

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Invasive species are bad news. They compete with native critters for food, destroy local ecology and, in some cases, are even dangerous to humans.

And thanks to the increasingly global nature of our world, there are more and more animals discovered where they don’t belong every year.

Here are just a few pests that have hitched rides to distant shores, where they’re currently wreaking havoc.

Cane Toad

The cane toad is perhaps the most infamous invasive species. Native to Central and South America, it has been imported to a number of places — Florida, the Philippines, some Japanese islands, most islands in the Caribbean, and Hawaii, among other places — by farmers who hoped the creatures would wipe out local pests.

Instead, they got another kind of pest, one that’s much harder to get rid of. The cane toad is huge — the biggest, captured in 2007, was over 8 inches long and weighed nearly two pounds — and voracious, gobbling up many native species.

The toxins in the cane toad’s skin often kill animals that try to eat it (except for those animals who seem to deliberately get high by licking the toads), and it puts rabbits to shame with its reproductive capabilities; each female lays thousands of eggs each year.

Case in point: Australia. In 1935, 102 cane toads were introduced to combat the Greyback Cane beetle. By 2010, that number had ballooned to 1.5 billion toads spread over 386,100 square miles, and they show no signs of stopping.

The toads are hardy, too: They’ve been spotted coming out of brush fires or hopping away after being run over. One toad even survived being eaten by a dog, which threw up the perfectly-fine toad 40 minutes later.

Asian Tiger Mosquito

You’ll recognize this nasty bug, number four on the list of 100 worst invasive species, by the black and white markings on its body and legs. Native to Asia, it has spread to Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the United States — first in Hawaii in the 1800s, and then the continental U.S. in 1985, when it hitched a ride from Japan in a shipment of tires. Unlike most other mosquito species, the highly-adaptable Asian Tiger is active during the day, and lays its eggs either near stagnant water or in fresh running water.

To nourish her eggs, the female feeds off of humans, birds and other animals with a rapid bite that allows her to eat and fly before she can be swatted.

The mosquito is a carrier of West Nile virus and dengue fever, among other diseases dangerous to people. Scientists in South America are experimenting with genetically modified versions of the males — which, when released into the wild, live just long enough to mate and pass on a lab-tweaked gene that kills the larvae shortly after they hatch — though the plan to introduce those modified bugs in Key West has been met with some protest.

Burmese Python

Burmese pythons, native to Southeast Asia, came to the United States in the 1990s as part of the international pet trade. When those pets escaped their enclosures or were released into the wild, they bred, and the first established populations were reported in 2000.

These massive snakes, which grow to an average of 12 feet (although larger ones have been found, and the snakes can grow to 20 feet in captivity), are eating their way through native species throughout Florida.

Scientists believe they could eat Florida panthers, and at least one has tried to eat an alligator (albeit unsuccessfully: the snake exploded). It’s now illegal to import the snakes.

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Scientists recently recorded footage of a never-before-seen defense mechanism deployed by a small species of deep-sea squid: When threatened, the squid attacks its predator and then pulls away, breaking off the tip of its own arm and leaving it behind as a distraction.

The arm continues to glow and twitch, creating a diversion and enabling the squid to escape.

But this squid isn’t the only creature with a bizarre way of defending itself. Here are several other ways animals try to save their own lives, or the lives of their comrades.

1. The Lizard That Shoots Blood From Its Eyes

The Texas Horned Lizard is a scary-looking creature. Brown, plump and perfectly camouflaged in its native sandy environment, its first line of defense is its spiky demeanor. If the sharp spikes and horns don’t ward off predators, the lizard steps it up a notch and squirts a well-aimed stream of blood out of its eyes. The stream of blood, which can go as far as 5 feet, is mixed with a foul-tasting chemical that wards off predators. But this odd weapon comes at a cost: The lizard may release a third of its total blood supply this way, amounting to two percent of its body mass.

2. The Hairy Frog That Breaks Its Own Bones

What if every time you felt threatened, your first and only method of defense was to break your own bones and use them for weapons? Meet the hairy frog, a Central African species that, despite its name and fuzzy appearance, isn’t hairy at all. When breeding, the male frogs develop thin strands of skin along the sides of their bodies that resemble hair. These strands also, in theory, allow the frogs to take in more oxygen while they watch over their eggs. But what’s really compelling about this frog is its ability to crack its own toe bones and push them through their skin to form sharp claws, great for warding off would-be attackers.

While it’s not completely clear what happens to the bones after the threat of attack subsides, researchers believe the bones slide back under the skin when the frog’s muscles relax.

3. The Newt That Turns Its Ribs Into Spikes

The hairy frog isn’t the only amphibian that uses its bones for weapons. When attacked, the Spanish ribbed newt shifts its ribs forward at an angle and pushes them through its stretched skin. The resulting effect is a row of spikes on either side of its body. Like the hairy frog, the newt has to force the bones through its skin every time it is attacked, but the mechanism seems to cause little or no harm to the creature. “Newts, and amphibians in general, are known to have an extraordinary ability to repair their skin,” says zoologist Egon Heiss of the University of Vienna in Austria.

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What do actors, musicians, and writers say before they die?

From enlightenment to humor, see what these 11 famous men said before they passed away.

Our friends at mental_floss consulted the reference Last Words of Notable People by Bill Brahms to collect eleven examples.

Read on, and get a hanky ready.

Bob Hope (1903-2003)

Last words: “Surprise me.”

The story: “Bob” Hope’s full name was Leslie Townes Hope. As an actor and radio personality, he became best known in his later years for entertaining American troops stationed overseas. He died at Toluca Lake, California at the ripe old age of 100. His wife Dolores asked Bob where he wanted to be buried, prompting his last words.

Reports of Hope’s death were greatly exaggerated in 1998, when the Associated Press accidentally released a prepared obituary. The incorrect news spread so rapidly that it was announced on the floor of the US House. Representative Bob Stump, R-Arizona, Chairman of the Veterans’ Affairs Committee, broke the “news.”

Glenn Miller (1904-1944)

Last words: “Where the hell are the parachutes?”

The story: Glenn Miller was a big band leader and US Army Major during WWII. Miller boarded a plane bound from England to Paris, where he planned to perform concerts for troops on leave in Europe. His last recorded words as he boarded the plane (above) were spoken to Colonel Don Baesell, who replied: “What’s the matter Miller, don’t you want to live forever?” The plane was lost over the English Channel.

Eugene O’Neill, Senior (1888-1953)

Last words: “I knew it! I knew it! Born in a hotel room and, goddamn it, dying in a hotel room.”

The story: O’Neill was a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, best known for Long Day’s Journey into Night and The Iceman Cometh. He was born in a room at the Broadway hotel on what is now Times Square. He died at age 65 in a Boston hotel after suffering neurological disease. The hotel was later turned into the Shelton Hall dorm at Boston University.

O’Neill had an alcoholic son, Eugene O’Neill Jr., who committed suicide in 1950 at the age of 40. The Junior O’Neill wrote in his note, “Never let it be said of O’Neill that he failed to empty a bottle. Ave atque vale.” (The last phrase is Latin for “Hail and farewell.”)

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TV doesn’t get much respect.

It rots your brain and grows couch potatoes. But the so-called idiot box also swings elections, rewires brains, snares criminals, and even sways the Supreme Court.

The following may not be the best shows of the last 25 years—in fact, some are among the worst—but their impact reaches far beyond the living room.

25. "Tropikana": The Brazilian Soap Opera That Won A Presidential Election

As Russians were gearing up to go to the polls in July 1996, Boris Yeltsin was nervous about his job.

The weather gave him additional reason to panic. With the sun shining and the temperatures pleasant, Yeltsin fretted that his city-dwelling supporters would decamp to their dachas, or country cottages, instead of staying home and voting. Russia’s president needed a way to keep his base from traveling.

His solution: a cunning use of soap opera. No show was more popular in Russia than the Brazilian morality soap Tropikanka, which regularly drew 25 million viewers to the state-owned network ORT. With the election looming, ORT made a surprise announcement: The show’s finale would air as a special triple episode on election day between 8 a.m. and 11 a.m.

More amazing was the fact that the scheme actually worked. Because most dachas didn’t have televisions, viewers stayed in the city, glued to their sets. When the episode ended, it was too late to trek out of town, but voters still had time to get to the polling station. Yeltsin’s soap opera strategy helped him prevail by more than 10 million votes.

Meanwhile, The Young and the Restless can’t even sway a lousy Senate race.

24. "Melrose Place": The Show That Turned Prime Time Into An Art Gallery

You probably remember Melrose Place as a vapid, if enjoyable, look at a Los Angeles apartment complex. But the show had more depth than anyone realized. Starting in 1996, the program served as a highly visible billboard for up-and-coming artists.

Melrose’s foray into the art world was masterminded by conceptual artist Mel Chin. As Chin told the Los Angeles Times in 1997, “Everyone criticizes television, but nobody tries to intervene to give it the meaning it lacks.” Chin founded the GALA Committee to do just that.

When Chin approached Melrose set decorator Deborah Siegel with the idea of dressing the show in avant-garde works, she immediately approved. Together the GALA Committee and Siegel collected pieces from artists around the country and worked them into the show. Each time viewers tuned in for a little trashy fun, they got a hidden dose of culture.

Some of the art was surprisingly subversive. Most famously, when Courtney Thorne-Smith’s character was struggling with an unplanned pregnancy, she spent two episodes hunkered down in a comfy quilt. A closer look revealed it wasn’t just a pretty pattern—it was also the molecular structure of the abortion drug RU-486.

The art world, for its part, embraced the exposure, and in 1997, the Melrose Place pieces were displayed in their own show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles.

23. "The Simpsons": The Show That Changed How We Talk

You don’t need to turn on the TV to hear The Simpsons. Just chat with pretty much anyone.

As University of Pennsylvania linguistics professor Mark Liberman wrote in 2005, “The Simpsons has apparently taken over from Shakespeare and the Bible as our culture’s greatest source of idioms, catchphrases, and sundry other textual allusions.”

Liberman’s assertion sounds crazy—at least until you remember there’s a Milhouse quote for every occasion. Even the hulking gatekeeper of the language, the Oxford English Dictionary, has found a spot for Homer Simpson’s trademark “D’oh!” Mmmm … linguistic acceptance.

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You know what visions I get in my dreams?

Visions of falling off of buildings (and doing the full body spasm thing when I hit the ground). These 11 people, on the other hand, had dreams that changed the world.

Let’s hope that my visions take a turn toward genius sometime soon. Until then, I’ll just take inspiration from these guys.

The Periodic Table

It’s said that Dmitry Mendeleyev was on a three-day work bender when he finally gave in for a few minutes of shut eye.

Instead of falling asleep for 17 hours like most sleep deprived people, Mendeleyev dreamt of an arrangement of elements that would change modern chemistry forever, then popped up about 20 minutes later to record it.

“I saw in a dream a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper … Only in one place did a correction later seem necessary.”

"Yesterday"

Paul McCartney was just 22 when he “woke up with a lovely tune in my head” and thought, “That’s great, I wonder what that is?’”

He got up and easily picked the tune out on the piano, but was convinced that it must have been something he heard years ago and subconsciously remembered. After further investigation revealed that it was a McCartney original, he jotted down some lyrics: “Scrambled eggs, oh, my baby, how I love your legs.”

The real words came later, obviously.

Frankenstein's Monster

Mary Shelley was hanging out with her husband (Percy Bysshe, of course), Lord Byron and some other literary notables when they decided to have a writing contest.

Mary was stuck—until she went to bed for the night, and had what she called a “waking dream” of a “hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion.”

Thrilled that her writer’s block was gone, Shelley decided that “What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.”

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Reader Christah wrote into ask, “Why do our voices sound different to us than they do to other people/on recordings?”

For many of us, there are few things more painful than hearing a recording of our own voices. They don’t sound like we think they should.

They’re tinnier, higher and just not right. The tape (or mp3) doesn’t lie, though, and the way we think we sound isn’t how we really sound to everyone else.

This is a cruel trick that happens because of the ways that sounds can travel to our inner ear.

Every sound we hear — birds chirping, bees buzzing, people talking, and recordings — is a wave of pressure moving through the air. Our outer ears “catch” these waves and funnel them into our head through the ear canal. They strike the ear drum, which starts vibrating, and those vibrations travel to the inner ear, where they’re translated into signals that can be sent via to the auditory nerve to the brain for interpretation.

The inner ear doesn’t get stimulated only by external sound waves coming down the ear canal, though. It also picks up on vibrations happening inside the body, and it’s a combination of these two things that make up the sound you hear when you talk.

When you speak, vibrations from your vocal cords resonate in your throat and mouth, and some get transmitted and conducted by the bones in your neck and head. The inner ear responds to these just like any other vibrations, turning them into electrical signals and sending them to the brain. Whenever you speak, your inner ear is stimulated both by internal vibrations in your bones and by the sound coming out of your mouth and traveling through the air and into the ears.

This combination of vibrations coming to the inner ear by two different paths lends your voice as you normally hear it a unique character that other, “air only” sounds don’t have. In particular, your bones enhance deeper, lower-frequency vibrations and give your voice a fuller, bassier quality that’s lacking when you hear it on a recording.

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American diplomacy is as old as the country itself. In 1776, Benjamin Franklin traveled to Paris to serve as a commissioner on behalf of his newly declared country and solicit the support of the French for the American Revolution.

Find out more about U.S. Ambassadors >

Today, a primary function of a United States Ambassador is to act as a representative for the President of the United States and maintain good relations with the country in which they are posted.

Typically ambassadors are either appointed as political favors or they are career diplomats from the Foreign Service.

Here are 25 facts about the ambassadorial world, broken down by numbers.

Foreign Relations

1. The rank of “Ambassador” was first awarded by the United States in 1893. Before this, the highest title was “Minister.”

2. About 7 million visas are granted by U.S. embassies around the world each year.

3. The United States has diplomatic relations with 180 countries.

4. Current United States diplomatic missions: 265.

Presidents As Foreign Ministers

5. The State Department created the Foreign Service in 1924.

6. Six U.S. Presidents have served as Foreign Minister: John Adams (UK, Netherlands), William Henry Harrison (Colombia), James Monroe (France, UK), John Quincy Adams (UK, Netherlands, Russia, Germany), Thomas Jefferson (France), and Martin van Buren (United Kingdom). 

7. U.S. Presidents who served as Ambassador to another country: 0

8. Five nations don’t have U.S. ambassadorial exchanges: Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and the Republic of China (Taiwan).

Embassies And Rankings

9. In 1966, Hungary and Bulgaria became the two most recent nations to get full-fledged American embassies.

10. There are currently 27 vacant ambassador posts.

11. There are 10 possible diplomatic ranks at each post as dictated by bilateral diplomacy: Ambassador, Chargé d’affaires, Minister, Minister-Counselor, Counselor, First Secretary, Second Secretary, Third Secretary, Attaché, Assistant Attaché

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File under Things That Actually Happened: On September 30, 1990, British Satellite Broadcasting aired a single episode of "Heil Honey I’m Home," a Nazi-themed sitcom featuring fictionalized versions of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.

The couple inexplicably live in a Berlin apartment building, across the hall from the Jewish couple Arny and Rosa Goldenstein, whose goofy antics infuriate the Führer, leading to weirdly unfunny 1950s-style sitcom setups.

In this patently offensive parallel comedy universe, the Hitlers are a typical urban couple, and their biggest challenges are making dinner for British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and surviving the antics of their neighbors. (There is some attention paid to the Munich Agreement referenced in Chamberlain’s visit, but solely as a framing device to feed the boss-is-coming-to-dinner style plot.)

“I gotta think nice thoughts: Poland, the Sudetenland…” – TV Adolf Hitler. Seriously, folks—how did this make it to air?

The show ends about five minutes into this next clip. If you stay tuned afterwards, you’ll see a few 1990 BSB TV commercials, which are roughly as unfunny as the show itself. The clip ends with an intro to an interview with Salman Rushdie—leading me, yet again, to wonder who was in charge of this programming lineup.

For more deep thoughts on this travesty, check out SplitSider’s detailed review. I agree with their central thesis: This show fails because it’s not satire—it’s just a crappy parody of 1950s sitcoms…with friggin’ Hitler as the protagonist. It’s just not funny, largely because it fails to comment on its own protagonist’s unique position in history. Future TV writers and executives, take note.

Network Awesome also covered this show and pointed out an interesting bit of trivia: Interestingly, the date "Heil Honey I’m Home" aired is the same date that the Munich Agreement was signed and Prime Minister Chamberlain went to Hitler before his “peace in our time” address – September 30. Coincidence?

SEE ALSO: The 10 Commandments of 21st century franchise production >

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Film is perhaps America’s greatest cultural export. That said, not every American film title translates well into other languages. To bridge the gap, foreign marketers take some very intriguing creative liberties.

Many of the best mangled film titles come from China, where they are downright magical at jazzing up boring old English titles.

Step Up – Sexy Dance (France)

Pretty Woman – I Will Marry a Prostitute to Save Money (China)

No Strings Attached – Sex Friends (France)

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If you grew up in the pre-MP3 era, chances are you had at least one go-round as a member of Columbia House’s mail-order music club. Who could turn down the allure of eight compact discs (or 11 record albums or cassette tapes) for just a penny? It would be stupid not to join! A few months of automatic shipments later, you probably ended up like a lot of members did: as a no-income 14-year-old who owed Columbia House $47 for unwanted Sir Mix-a-Lot CDs. Let’s take a look at a few lingering questions about the music club.

How did the Columbia House business model work?

The underlying model for Columbia House was a pretty simple setup known as negative option billing. Basically, once you sign up for a membership in a club or service, you start getting monthly shipments unless you expressly tell the club you don’t want them. Of course, you also get the bill.

Negative option billing has actually been illegal in Ontario since 2005, but it’s still legal in the United States. There are a few caveats, though. The Federal Trade Commission requires that any club or service offering a negative option plan must clearly and conspicuously indicate minimum purchase obligations, cancellation procedures, the frequency with which members must reject shipments, and how to eventually cancel a membership when they enroll new members.

The FTC really drops the hammer on any company that doesn’t comply with these regulations. In 2009 it reached a $1 million settlement with the online company Commerce Planet, which had been offering a “free” online auction kit while also signing customers up for a recurring $59.95 “online supplier” program.

How did Columbia House make any money while giving away so much music?

Columbia House and competitor BMG brought in a tons of gross revenue — as late as 2000, the two companies were grossing $1.5 billion a year. But even with negative option billing bringing in cash from club members who forgot to return their rejection forms, Columbia House operated on a seemingly tight margin.

Columbia House and BMG had some fairly clever ways to save cash, though. Until 2006, the record companies had never actually secured written licenses to distribute the records it sent to club members. Instead, the clubs saved the hassle (and the expense) by paying most publishers 75% of the standard royalties set by copyright law. The clubs argued that since the publishers were cashing their discounted checks, they were submitting to “implied” licenses.

Music publishers didn’t love this arrangement, but for decades it was pretty tough to fight back against the mail-order clubs. As some of the biggest pre-Internet retailers, the clubs held enormous power over the music market. According to a 2006 Billboard article, if a publisher complained, the clubs would simply stop carrying their records.

On top of that, the clubs generally weren’t buying their records from labels and then selling them. Instead, the clubs would acquire the master tapes of records and press their own copies on the cheap. Moreover, remember those “bonus” or “free” records you got for signing up for the clubs? The clubs generally didn’t pay any royalties at all on those, which further slashed their costs.

In the end, all these little factors saved a ton of money. In his 2004 book The Recording Industry, Geoffrey P. Hull took a look at the economics of the clubs. He estimated that the cost to the clubs of a “free” disc was only around $1.50, while a disc sold at full price cost the club anywhere from $3.20 to $5.50. Hull did the math and realized that even if only one of every three discs a club distributed sold at the $16 list price, the club would still end up making a margin of around $7.20 on each sold disc. Hull explains that retail stores were hard pressed to make a margin of even $6.50 per sold disc, so it’s easy to see how the clubs stayed afloat even with their massive marketing and advertising costs.

Did anyone really, really take advantage of those introductory offers?

Joseph Parvin of Lawrenceville, NJ, was undoubtedly the patron saint of anyone who ever wanted to stick it to a music club for receiving an unwanted record.

In March 2000, the 60-year-old Parvin admitted that he had used 16 post office boxes and his own home address to fleece Columbia House and BMG out of 26,554 discs during a five-year span in the ’90s. He pleaded guilty to a single count of mail fraud.

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Before they were headlining movies and TV shows, these celebs were just like everyone else trying to make it in Hollywood: thrilled to call home to report that the “Flight Attendant #3” role was totally in the bag.

Check out a few of today’s big names back when they were cast as no-names.

Jason Segel as 'Watermelon Guy' in 'Can’t Hardly Wait'

Lucy Liu as a waitress on 'Beverly Hills 90210'

Alexis Bledel as an unnamed student in 'Rushmore'

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OJ Simpson

The beneficiary of one of history’s most famous not-guilty verdicts saw his legal luck run out after a 2007 armed robbery in Las Vegas.

Simpson was convicted on 10 charges related to an attempt to regain some of his sports memorabilia, and he’s currently serving a 33-year sentence in Nevada’s Lovelock Correctional Center.

Here’s how life shook out for a few other acquitted defendants in high-profile trials.

Lizzie Borden

Although 32-year-old Lizzie Borden was never convicted of the 1892 ax murder of her father and stepmother, her highly publicized trial followed her for the remaining 34 years of her life.

Borden became close friends with actress Nance O’Neill, but she lived out the rest of her life as a recluse.

Although Borden remained largely out of public sight, mourners at her 1927 funeral remembered her as a quiet source of charitable donations. Her will certainly demonstrated her charitable streak; the largest earmark from her substantial estate was a $30,000 donation to the local Animal Rescue League.

Fatty Arbuckle

Silent film actor and comedian Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle was one of the biggest stars in the medium’s early days, but his career flew off the rails in 1921. Actress Virginia Rappe fell ill at a party thrown by Arbuckle and died several days later, and the rotund funnyman found himself facing accusations of raping and killing the young woman. Arbuckle weathered two mistrials for manslaughter before being found not guilty in a third trial.

The trial may have legally cleared Arbuckle’s name, but the scandal all but destroyed his Hollywood career. Hollywood briefly blacklisted Arbuckle entirely, but even after the ban was ostensibly lifted he couldn’t find work. Meanwhile, his existing films were rarely shown. (Many prints of Arbuckle’s films have been lost.)

Arbuckle eventually found work directing comedy shorts under a pseudonym before making an acting comeback with Warner Brothers in 1932. In 1933 he signed a contract to make a new feature film, but he died in his sleep the very same night.

Sam Sheppard

Sheppard, a Cleveland-area physician, was convicted of the 1954 murder of his pregnant wife in their suburban home. Sheppard spent nearly a decade behind bars before a 1966 retrial acquitted him.

After a brief attempt to return to medicine following his release from prison, Sheppard found an unlikely second career as a professional wrestler who went by the name The Killer before his death in 1970.

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Back in 2010, I wrote a story about some very rare and very expensive video games. Thanks to that article, Tanner Sandlin of Austin, Texas realized he had one of only a handful of known copies of the Atari game, Air Raid. Normally the cartridge sells for about $3,000 online, but Sandlin had an ace up his sleeve: the game’s original box, which had never been seen before. The game and the box wound up selling for $31,600 on eBay.

If you think that’s crazy, there’s a good chance that Tanner’s auction-price record is about to be shattered.

Recently, a man in California (we’ll call him Lucky, as he would prefer to remain anonymous), was reading another article about rare Atari games. Naturally, Air Raid was mentioned, as was the $31,600 sale price. Lucky recalled that he’d been given a sample copy of the game by a sales rep back in the 1980s when Lucky was an assistant manager at a drug store that sold video games. Lucky took the game home, played it for a few minutes, but decided he didn’t want to order it for the store’s inventory. When he told the sales rep he could have the game back, the rep said not to bother because none of his other clients were all that interested, either. Lucky stuck his copy of Air Raid in an old Atari display case at home, where it sat virtually untouched for the next 30 years.

Upon reading the article, Lucky and his daughter scoured through his old collection and found they had the second known copy of Air Raid in the box. But unlike the copy that Tanner bought from a clearance bin at a discount store in the mid-1980s, Lucky’s Air Raid has never been in circulation, so the box is in near-perfect condition.

As Lucky and his daughter were taking photos of the box to send to Albert Yarusso, the owner of AtariAge.com (who personally examined Sandlin’s Air Raid box in 2010), they discovered something else tucked inside: the instruction manual. Before now, there was only speculation that a manual even existed, so this makes Lucky’s the only “CIB” (Complete In Box) copy of Air Raid ever found.

After verifying that the cartridge still worked, Lucky and his daughter put Air Raid up for sale on GameGavel.com, an auction site exclusively for video games. Will it break Sandlin’s $31,600 sale-price record? Watch the auction and find out!

Watch Lucky discover the rare cartridge here: 

SEE ALSO: How did the game genie work?

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Every year millions of visitors head to Disney World to see Mickey, take a trip through Epcot, and to get their photo taken outside Cinderella's beloved castle.

While families are there gathering characters' autographs and enjoying the rides, a look under the surface shows some of the hidden goings-on at Disney.

We bet you don't know about the ashy remains scattered throughout the parks, the second home it provides to felines, and, details of Disney's coveted Club 33.

There are haunted remains in the Haunted Mansion.

The Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland is one of the scariest places in the park, but not for the reasons you’d expect.

In his 1994 book Mouse Tales, former Disney employee David Koenig tells the story of a tourist group that requested a little extra time on the ride so they could hold a quick memorial for a 7-year-old boy. Disney gave the family permission, but it turns out, the memorial was only half their plan. When the mourners were spotted sprinkling a powdery substance off their “doom buggies,” the Haunted Mansion was quickly shut down until all the remains could be cleaned up.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Stealthy ash scatterings have occurred all over Disneyland. Not everyone tries to skirt the rules, though. Every year, several families ask for permission. According to one Disney spokesperson, the answer is always no.

Cats own the night at the Disneyland park.

Each night at Disneyland, after the sunburned families and exhausted cast members have made their way home, the park fills up again—this time, with hundreds of feral cats.

Park officials love the felines because they help control the mouse population. (After all, a park full of cartoon mice is more enticing than a park full of real ones.) But these cats aren’t a new addition to the Disney family. They first showed up at Disneyland shortly after it opened in 1955, and rather than spend time chasing them away, park officials decided to put the cats to work.

Today, there are plenty of benefits to being a Disney-employed mouser. When they’re not prowling the grounds, these corporate fat cats spend their days lounging at one of the park’s five permanent feeding stations. Of course, Disney also goes to great lengths to manage its feline population. Wranglers at the park work to spay and neuter adult cats, and any time kittens are found, they’re put up for adoption.

Employees had to monitor ride photos to make sure Splash Mountain didn't turn into "Flash Mountain."

Just before the final, five-story drop on Splash Mountain, Disney cameras take a snapshot of the riders to catch their facial expressions. The idea is to provide guests with a wholesome keepsake of the experience.

But in the late 1990s, the photographs took a turn for the obscene after exhibitionists started baring their breasts for the camera. Soon, Splash Mountain had gained a reputation as “Flash Mountain,” and websites featuring the topless photos began cropping up.

In its effort to curb this Tourists Gone Wild phenomenon, Disney began hiring employees to monitor the photos, training them to pull anything offensive before it got displayed on the big screen. Since then, the number of flashers has dwindled. In fact, the countermeasure was so effective that in May 2009, Disneyland decided that it didn’t need employees to monitor the photographs anymore, putting an end to what must have been one of the strangest jobs in the park—watching for topless riders.

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Remember those bedtime stories that were read to you as a kid, and those Disney movies you watched?

Turns out, there are some real psychological disorders and personality types that get their names from those characters.

Peter Pan Syndrome

Peter Pan is the boy who won’t grow up. Does that accurately describe a person in your life? If so, they may have Peter Pan Syndrome. It’s not a syndrome officially recognized by the World Health Organization, but some studies have shown that it does exist. It’s characterized by emotional immaturity and an unwillingness to take on responsibilities. It is more common in men than in women (who can suffer from “Wendy Syndrome,” i.e., acting like mothers to their partners and others).

Sleeping Beauty Syndrome

Sleeping Beauty is the story of a 16 year old girl who pricks her finger on a spinning wheel and falls into a deep sleep, only to be woken by a prince’s kiss years later. Real life Sleeping Beauties might suffer from Klene-Levin Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder characterized by periods of excessive sleep and altered behavior. During an episode, the patient becomes very drowsy and sleeps for the majority of the day and night. They will only wake up to eat or go to the bathroom. These episodes can last up to months at a time, inhibiting the ability to work or go to school.

Rapunzel Syndrome

“Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” Just don’t eat it. Rapunzel Syndrome is an intestinal condition that results from people eating hair, a disorder known as trichophagia. They swallow so much that, over the course of years, the hair accumulates, resulting in a giant hair ball in the stomach or small intestine called a trichobezoar. Occasionally, this mass can wrap around organs and cause perforations. People can’t digest human hair, so the trichobezoar must be removed surgically. Rapunzel Syndrome is very rare, and only about 24 cases have been reported. If you’ve got a weak stomach, I don’t suggest looking up pictures of the hair ball. (Seriously. Don’t do it.)

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Last night we put the call out for readers’ nagging hurricane questions. @BrothaDom and @michellesipics both asked for a peek into the minds of people who defy evacuation orders “in the face of everything that is sane.”

Just hours before Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey last night, Governor Chris Christie chastised residents who stayed behind on the barrier islands running along the state’s shores — despite warnings from state officials and a mandatory evacuation order — and the local officials who encouraged them to do so. He then made it clear that he would not risk the lives of first responders in rescue attempts until conditions improved in the morning. “For those elected officials who decided to ignore my admonition,” he said, “this is now your responsibility.”

Why do some people insist on staying in the path of the storm long after others have been evacuated, the roads have closed or flooded and rescue is difficult or impossible? Why would they put their own lives and the lives of their rescuers at risk?

To answer that question, psychologists turned to the experts on the subject: the New Orleans residents who stayed behind and bore Hurricane Katrina’s wrath.

Leavers vs. Stayers

The researchers, from Stanford University and Princeton University, interviewed people from four groups: New Orleans residents who rode the storm out; residents who left; rescue workers from outside the city who provided assistance during the storm; and people from elsewhere in the country who observed the situation through the media.

They found two important things. The first is that, among the survivors they spoke to, there were a variety of factors that played into the decision to leave or not. One major factor was finances and resources. “Leavers” usually had the money and transportation options to leave the city, and friends or relatives outside the storm’s path that they could stay with. “Stayers” usually had less income, fewer or no transportation options to get out of the city, and little to no social network outside of it. Many of those who stayed simply didn’t have the resources to do otherwise and had no choice but to ride things out.

But money and places to stay weren’t the only things decisions were based on. The researchers also found that there were psychological and psycho-social factors—like a mistrust of outsiders (in the form of people from outside the city making the decision that residents shouldn’t stay); a desire to stay close to neighbors, friends and others from one’s community for support; and a perceived obligation to, in turn, support and assist others from the community—that influenced the decision to not leave.

The other important finding was the way the groups in the study viewed those who evacuated and those who didn’t, and how they viewed themselves. Like Christie last night, federal and state officials and pundits criticized Katrina survivors for their choice to stay behind at the time. Likewise, when asked to describe the survivors who stayed, the other three groups used words like “lazy,” “stubborn,” and “negligent.” To describe the leavers, they used “hardworking,” “self-reliant,” and “responsible.”

Conjoint vs. Disjoint Model Citizens

These groups, the researchers say, viewed the stayers with certain assumptions about the way people act and make choices: that people are independent, that they make choices to influence their environment, and that those choices reflect their goals. This is called the disjoint model of human agency, a framework of action that dominates mainstream American culture and discourse among the middle-class.

The interviews with the people that stayed, though, revealed that they were playing by a different set of rules. The researchers found that their motivations and actions were more in line with the conjoint model of human agency, built around interdependence between individuals and the idea that people make choices to adapt themselves to their environment. It’s a model that psychologists have found at play often among working-class Americans.

Despite what outsiders and talking heads have had to say about those who choose to stay behind in a disaster, this research suggests that they often don’t have much choice in the matter. When they do, they aren’t choosing not to act, but are acting—despite constraints—in a way that fits their environment and worldview, and is sometimes just hard for others to recognize.

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It’s a question that plagues every driver: Just how far can you drive with your car’s “fuel empty” light illuminated?

The detailed answer depends on all sorts of variables like the age and model of your car, how much weight you’re carrying, and what kind of driving you’re doing.

The more fun answer is “Find out the hard way!”

Justin Davis runs a site called TankOnEmpty.com that lets drivers record just how far they’ve driven certain types of cars after their empty lights came on. You can poke around and see how your car has fared.

The results are a little less than scientific, though. Even for a car with a large number of data points, the estimates aren’t super-precise. The Honda Civic, for example, has 248 entries and an average range of 44.38 miles after the light comes on, but the standard deviation of the data is almost 24 miles.

Of course, the major question in play asks when the car’s fuel light comes on in the first place. Sure, driving conditions and number of passengers will affect your car’s range after the light comes on, but if you can pinpoint how much gas is left in the tank when the warning appears, you can at least ballpark what sort of range you’ve got left.

Click and Clack of Car Talk fame have estimated that most cars’ “empty” lights come on once the gas level dips below an eighth of a tank or so, but they have also advocated driving until the light comes on, then immediately stopping to fill all the way up, and then comparing how much fuel your car took with the tank’s capacity published in your owner’s manual. Once you repeat this process a few times, you should have a pretty good estimate of how much gas is left.

If you’re a bit more daring, you can always try the tactic consumer reporter John Stossel employed for a 2008 piece for ABC’s 20/20. Stossel got behind the wheel of his minivan and drove until he ran out of gas. He ended up making it 65 miles after his gas dial claimed the car was empty, including 40 miles after his van’s computerized estimate of its remaining fuel range hit zero.

What about you? Have you ever pushed the limits of your car’s tank, like Cosmo Kramer did on that Seinfeld episode?

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