Animal world

This pigeon saved 500 soldiers during WWI. Read about her story

There’s a sled dog that battled a blizzard to deliver medicine, a horse that solved math problems, a cloned sheep, and that’s just the beginning. Some major events in history didn’t have people as their protagonists, but animals, and their stories deserve to be read. Here are 10 remarkable animals that changed science, war, medicine, and even the future of human flight.

It’s not uncommon to see cute animals perform impressive tricks, and there are even talent shows specifically for animals. But more than a century ago, one remarkable horse stunned Americans by appearing to read, spell, and solve math problems.

Beautiful Jim Key was born in Tennessee in 1889 and was trained by Dr. William Key, who had been born enslaved in 1833 and taught himself veterinary medicine after emancipation. Key noticed the young horse watching him play fetch with a dog and decided to see what else the animal could pick up. Using patience instead of harsh methods, Dr. Key taught Jim to recognize letters, numbers, and words well enough to amaze crowds across the country. The horse debuted in 1897 at the Tennessee Centennial Exposition in Nashville. He could spell simple words, identify coins, operate a cashier, and hand back correct change to customers. President William McKinley watched him perform and called it one of the most astonishing exhibitions he had ever seen.

Detective shows lovers know that tiny clues can crack a case wide open. Fingerprints, footprints, and stray hairs have solved countless mysteries. In 1994, a criminal case was broken through due to a cat’s hair.

In 1994, Prince Edward Island, Canada, became the setting for one of forensic science’s most unusual breakthroughs. After the murder of Shirley Duguay, investigators found white cat hairs on a bloodstained jacket belonging to the natural suspect, Douglas Beamish, her partner. Tucked inside the lining were 27 strands of long white fur. Those hairs matched Snowball, Duguay’s pet cat, through DNA extracted from the fur. It marked the first criminal conviction in which non-human DNA played a decisive role. The case demonstrated that animal DNA could connect suspects to crime scenes just as effectively as human evidence. Snowball never knew he was helping detectives, but it was his fur that changed forensic investigations forever.

During wartime, a missed message could cost hundreds of lives. Long before radios became dependable on the battlefield, armies often relied on an unlikely messenger that could succeed when every other method had failed.

Cher Ami was a homing pigeon serving with the American Expeditionary Forces during WWI. In October 1918, more than 550 American soldiers of the "Lost Battalion" became trapped in France’s Argonne Forest and were mistakenly shelled by their own artillery. Major Charles Whittlesey had already lost two messenger pigeons to enemy fire when he released his last bird, a Black Check cock named Cher Ami, carrying a note begging American gunners to stop the barrage. Despite being shot through the chest, blinded in one eye, and nearly losing a leg, Cher Ami completed the flight carrying the desperate message that identified the battalion's true position. The shelling stopped, and roughly 194 soldiers survived the ordeal. The pigeon received the French Croix de Guerre, and her body is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution.

If you were watching the news in February 1997, you probably remember the day this story broke. Dolly was born on July 5, 1996, at the Roslin Institute near Edinburgh, though her existence stayed under wraps until researchers published their findings the following year.

She had been created by scientists Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell from a single cell taken from the udder of a six-year-old Finn Dorset ewe using a technique called somatic cell nuclear transfer. Before Dolly, scientists believed adult cells were too specialized to create an entirely new animal. Her successful birth proved otherwise and became one of the greatest breakthroughs in modern biology. Dolly went on to live an ordinary-looking life at Roslin, grazing alongside other sheep and eventually giving birth to six lambs of her own. She passed in 2003, at age six, and her body is now preserved and on permanent display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, where she remains one of the most visited exhibits in the building.

If you need a medicine today, you probably walk a few blocks, get to your local chemist, and get it. However, in 1925, the inhabitants of Nome, Alaska, suffered a whole lot more than that to get some life-saving medicine, and the hero behind the story is a dog.

That year, a diphtheria outbreak threatened the people in Nome, one of the most isolated communities in the country. With airplanes grounded by brutal weather and sea routes frozen solid, officials organized an emergency relay of about 150 dogs and 20 mushers to transport lifesaving antitoxin across nearly 700 miles of Alaska. Balto is the dog that led the final 53-mile stretch through blinding snow and powerful winds, guiding musher Gunnar Kaasen safely into Nome on February 2, 1925. Although many teams contributed to the famous Serum Run, Balto became the public face of the mission. His achievement was celebrated with parades, newspaper headlines, and even a bronze statue in NYC’s Central Park.

Hot air balloons today are pretty common, but in the 18th century, they were a brand new invention, and no one really knew whether living creatures could survive the journey into the sky. Before risking human passengers, the Montgolfier brothers, French paper manufacturers from a small town in the south of France, decided to let a few animals go first.

Montauciel, whose name means "Climb to the Sky," was a sheep selected by the Montgolfier brothers for a historic balloon experiment in 1783. Accompanied by a duck and a rooster, the sheep lifted off from the grounds of the Palace of Versailles before King Louis XVI, Queen Marie Antoinette, and thousands of spectators. The balloon climbed roughly 1,500 feet and traveled about two miles before landing safely. Finding the animals unharmed reassured scientists that high-altitude flight was possible for living creatures. Just a few months later, on November 21, 1783, humans made the first free hot air balloon flight.

Everything around the FIFA World Cup revolves around taking home that golden cup and keeping it for the next four years. Imagine the chaos it must have been when the Jules Rimet Trophy was lost just before the tournament started in England in 1966.

Weeks before England was set to host the tournament, the Jules Rimet Trophy was stolen in broad daylight from a stamp exhibition at Westminster Central Hall in London, lifted from a display case despite a team of guards posted nearby. For a whole week, investigators looked for it, but couldn’t find it. On March 27, a week after the robbery, a Londoner named David Corbett was heading out for an evening walk with his four-year-old collie mix, Pickles, when the dog stopped to sniff a package tucked under a garden hedge near their home. Wrapped in a newspaper was the missing trophy. Corbett became a suspect for a brief time, but after all doubts about him were cleared, Pickles became an international celebrity, appearing on television, attending banquets, and even receiving a year's supply of dog food.

Many people grew up believing that making tools was what separated humans from every other living creature. But in the forests of East Africa, one chimpanzee challenged that belief without ever realizing how important his actions would become.

In 1960, while studying chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe Stream National Park, researcher Jane Goodall observed an adult male chimp she named David Greybeard poking a stem of grass into a termite mound, pulling it out coated in insects, and eating them straight off the stalk. Days later, she watched him strip the leaves off a twig first, shaping it into a more effective tool. Goodall reported her findings, and the discovery forced experts to rethink what it meant to be human. Greybeard became one of the most famous chimpanzees in scientific history and helped transform the study of animal intelligence.

If you own a small dog, you know how amazing their ability to squeeze into tiny places is. During WWII, that simple ability turned one Yorkshire Terrier into an unlikely military hero whose size helped save lives.

Smoky was discovered in 1944 inside an abandoned foxhole in New Guinea by American soldiers. Weighing only about four pounds, she soon became the companion of Corporal William Wynne. During the fighting in the Philippines, engineers needed to run telephone wire through a narrow, 70-foot pipe beneath an airfield without exposing workers to enemy fire. Smoky was small enough to pull the line through while following her owner, sparing dozens of soldiers from dangerous work under attack. After the war, Wynne began bringing Smoky to visit wounded soldiers in military hospitals, and the effect she had on morale was so noticeable that historians now regard her as the first documented therapy dog. She lived until 1957 and is buried in Ohio, where a small statue marks the spot.

Visiting the zoo is a fun activity; kids love the thrill of seeing a wild animal up close. But people don’t usually think about how difficult life can be for animals raised by people, out of their own habitat. One lioness changed public attitudes about that and inspired millions to care about wildlife conservation.

In 1956, a Kenyan man named George Adamson made a tragic mistake by taking a lioness’ life in self-defense, only to discover she had been protecting three newborn cubs hidden nearby. Two of the cubs were sent to a zoo in the Netherlands, but the smallest, a female Adamson and his wife Joy named Elsa, stayed behind with the couple. Rather than raising her in captivity, the couple gradually taught her to hunt and live independently before releasing her into the wild. Joy later wrote "Born Free," published in 1960, which became an international bestseller and inspired the Academy Award-winning 1966 film of the same name. Elsa's story introduced countless readers and moviegoers to the importance of protecting Africa's wildlife while demonstrating that careful rewilding could succeed under the right conditions.

SING IT WRONG

Leave Your Pizza Burning: 10 Famously Misheard Song Lyrics

Image: Expect Best

Have you ever realized that you’ve been belting out the wrong lyrics to a song for years? Don’t worry, you’re not alone. There’s even a term for phrases we mishear and apply new meanings to: mondegreens. Some misheard lyrics become so widespread that they leave multiple listeners convinced the words they hear are correct. Let’s dive into ten of the most famously misheard lyrics that have made us all hit pause and rewind.

Image: Jayne Harris

Singer and songwriter Sting of The Police composed "Message In a Bottle" to illustrate a state of loneliness and disconnection. The first verse talks about a castaway lost at sea, who was presumably involved in some accident or shipwreck. Sting’s distinctive British accent caused confusion in the first line after the song’s chorus. Some listeners wondered if he could have broken his nose in the shipwreck. However, the correct words are "A year has passed since I wrote my note," which makes more sense in a song called "Message In a Bottle."

Image: Call Me Fred

The 1971 song "Tiny Dancer" reminds many of a certain actor with a similar-sounding name. Elton John’s pronunciation perplexed some listeners years after the song’s release, especially when Tony Danza’s name became widely recognized for his TV roles. This mondegreen became so widespread in the U.S. that it even made it into an episode of Friends. In that scene, the character Phoebe says that she thinks the most romantic song ever written is the one where Elton John sings "Hold me close, young Tony Danza." For many years since then, people have been deliberately singing the wrong lyrics as a joke.

Image: James Hardman

"Beast of Burden," by The Rolling Stones, doesn’t mention any pizzas. Mick Jagger’s iconic singing style, however, can make every repetition of "beast of" sound like "pizza" and "burden" like "burning." These misheard lyrics have had listeners giggling since the song’s release in 1978. Some lines of the song were, in fact, improvised by Mick Jagger while Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood played their riffs. However, the line that gives the song its name was not improvised. "I’ll never be your beast of burden" were words written by Keith Richards to thank his band members for their support through hardships.

Image: Pixabay

Europe’s glam metal 80s anthem "The Final Countdown" was inspired by David Bowie’s song "Space Oddity" and the idea of leaving Earth for another planet. This is why it makes it unlikely for the singer to declare that the team is "herding for peanuts." However, that is what some people heard when Swedish vocalist and songwriter Joey Tempest sang "We’re heading for Venus" after the first chorus. In this case, the grandiose and epic reverb effect used in this space-themed song might be to blame.

Image: Saya Omar

This mondegreen comes from Elvis Presley’s voice. In "Suspicious Minds," the hit song released in 1969, he is singing that he and his lover are caught in a "trap," not a "trout." This song about a couple who mutually fear betrayal was written and recorded by Mark James, but his version failed commercially. It was then offered to Elvis, who gladly included a version of it in his album From Elvis in Memphis. Apparently, however, his pronunciation conjured a funny image in the minds of some listeners.

Elvis’ version of "Suspicious Minds" was so successful that he went on to record another song by Mark James, which became just as memorable: "Always on My Mind."

Image: Gelatin

This particular mondegreen completely reverses the meaning of the song. "I’m A Believer," originally written and performed by Neil Diamond, caused a few laughs in the version by The Monkees. It was the biggest-selling single of 1967, recorded in just two takes. In this version, the band sang the exact same lyrics as Neil: "Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer." However, some listeners misheard the quote. People found the misinterpretation so funny that T-shirts are now sold with the incorrect phrase.

Image: Bob Osias

Not even a timeless song like "Hotel California" is free from misunderstandings. It is the exact first phrase of the Eagles’ 1976 song. Famously, it describes an eerie hotel that seems idyllic but keeps its guests for life. The lyrics use many vivid and enigmatic images to narrate the story. However, someone driving with Heinz Cool Whip in their hair is not one of them. Instead, vocalist Don Henley begins the song with: "On a dark desert highway, cool wind in my hair." Despite the silly alternative lyrics, the song won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1978 and solidified the Eagles as one of the top bands of the era.

Image: Sander Dewerte

This is what some people swear they can hear in Queen’s anthem "We Will Rock You." Instead, Brian May’s composition describes some aloof young man "kicking (his) can all over the place." You’ll notice the word "can" coincides with the clap in the iconic stomp-stomp-clap of the song. Freddie Mercury’s ardent performance, combined with the song's powerful beat, can easily make that final "n" sound like "t" to some listeners. The wrong lyrics have triggered jokes since then, and even today, memes and cartoons about offended cats are associated with the song.

Image: Kaique Rocha

This one might be attributed to Kurt Cobain, both as the vocalist and lyricist of Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Spirit." First, at the point of this line in the grunge anthem, he is screaming. Second, the lyrics of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" are famously cryptic and abstract, and speak of societal containment, so this mondegreen isn’t very far-fetched. The original line "Here we are, now! Entertain us!" of the 1991 song is powerful enough, referring to the expectations placed on Cobain and his generation. However, one characteristic of grunge is slurring and mumbling in the vocal delivery, so misinterpretations are likely.

Image: Charlein Gracia

ABBA’s pop hit, "Take a Chance on Me," was inspired by morning runs. During his jogs, band member Björn Ulvaeus used to repeat a tck-a-ch-sounding rhythm to himself. He proposed taking that idea to the studio, and thus the rhythmic chorus of this anthem was born. It became a worldwide hit in 1978.

Unbeknownst to them, that very same year, a young man in Hong Kong was having his breakthrough in a kung fu action comedy, Snake in the Eagle’s Shadow. His name was Jackie Chan, and some years later, when hearing ABBA’s song, some people would swear they could hear the superstar’s name being chanted dozens of times.