Since at least the 15th Century, there have been reports of what is generally termed star jelly, either falling from the sky or appearing mysteriously overnight. Descriptions vary, but witnesses usually talk about seeing a sticky, slimy goo, somewhat akin to Jell-O, and usually concentrated in puddle or patch form.

Folklore often attributes the jelly to meteors, but there is no scientific evidence for a connection. And even a shooting star that appears to be directly overhead is likely thousands of miles to the left or right and would leave any deposit far from the viewer. Star jelly has a much shorter shelf life than even the most perishable vegetables and usually evaporates or disintegrates before it can be analyzed.

Many guesses have been made as to what it is, from the scientific to the pseudoscientific to the just plain bizarre. Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning looked at some of these and concludes that star jelly is likely not a single phenomenon but multiple ones that have come to reside under the same mysterious umbrella.

Among the rational, terrestrial explanations are that it star jelly are a form of slime mold, which are neither fungus nor bacteria, and which use spores to reproduce. They prefer dead plant matter, which enables them to feeding on its microorganisms. Slime molds begin as a single cell, can reproduce quickly, and move noticeably. When growing, slime molds are wet and slimy, and appear suddenly, with a gelatinous appearance that morphs into a dusty form. Much wind or rain at all will cause it to evaporate or disintegrate. These distinctions are consistent with many star jelly reports, though not all.

Another possible answer are a cyanobacteria called Nostoc. Nostocs exist everywhere on the planet as minuscule colonies of bacteria. They are so tiny that only a botanist looking for them would be likely to make a sighting. But when wet, Nostocs swell to a much larger size and transform into gooey lumps or puddles. This would create an illusion of sudden appearance, when it was actually a change in appearance.

Another candidate is bryozoan, a phylum which exists in colonies of interdependent individuals. Most of these colonies are about a half a millimeter long and secrete exoskeletons. In some species, these skeletons are somewhat solid, making the colony look like a plant or coral. In other species, this exoskeleton is gelatinous, which turns the colony into a wet, sticky blob. Both of these eventualities could be taken to be star jelly.

Other natural substances that could explain star jelly include unfertilized frog spawn or deer sperm. And in The Book of British Amphibians and Reptiles, authors speculate that star jelly may form from the glands in frog and toad oviducts. Birds and mammals will eat the animals but not the oviducts which, when they come into contact with moisture, swell and distort leaving a vast pile of jellylike substance.

There has been speculation that star jelly being a more revolting substance, specifically chemical waste dumped from the airline toilets. However airplanes have never dumped toilet from the sky. It is possible for airline toilet systems to leak, forming blue ice can fall off when the plane descends. But the results are not gelatinous and have a color inconsistent with star jelly descriptions.

A far less reasonable airliner-related speculation is that star jelly is chemtrail residue. This is an instance of Tooth Fairy Science, where someone attempts to explain something by means of something not yet proven. Since chemtrails remain in the realm evidence-free paranoia, they make for a poor explanation as to what causes star jelly.

Jelly star sightings are sometimes accompanied by reports of widespread sickness enveloping the area. This leads to the most (literally) out there answer, that star jelly houses an alien virus. But there would be no reason to suspect that the jelly is causing a mass sickness. That would be a correlation/causation error. There’s never been a diagnosis of a pathogen tied to star jelly and any town is going to have a virus going around to some degree at any time. You could tie that virus to anything you wanted, be it rutabaga sales, tech stock prices, or the percentage of men wearing fedoras.

In elementary school, my younger brother and I observed a couple of juvenile miscrenats trying to sneak a smoke. When they noticed us, they sprinted in our direction and one of them held me down, nervously asking me what I had seen and threatening me with harm if we told anyone. I laid there and meekly took it all until I looked to my side and noticed the other youthful tobacco connoisseur had my scared sibling pinned on the grass.

This provided a surge of energy and determination that caused me, a somewhat wussy 5th grader with average strength, to fling aside the 6th grader who was holding me, then doing likewise to his same-aged cohort. I was now the one doing the pinning down, and my firm grasp kept both assailants immobilized until my brother safely fled.

While there was no lifesaving involved in this case, there have long been tales of heroes rescuing a disaster victim by temporarily acquiring superhuman strength. This power affords them the ability to do much than control a pair of grade school hooligans. These stories’ central figures are said to have summoned the means to lift objects as massive as a car or boulder.

One of the more well-known instances of the putative phenomenon was when the helicopter used in Magnum, P.I. crashed and pinned the pilot under shallow water. A quick-acting onlooker lifted the 2,000-pound helicopter and allowed the pilot to survive.

Occasionally, the courageous crusader is asked to repeat the feat and is unable to do so, sometimes being unable to even budge the object. This lends credence in the mind of some that a temporary super power enabled the hero to do it the first time.

The usual explanation centers on a surge of adrenalin. It’s true that an adrenalin rush leads to physically-measurable changes. As it is pumped into the bloodstream, airways relax, metabolism increases, and muscles experience glycolysis, which readies them for action. Additionally, endorphins are released, peripheral vision is reduced, reflexes sharpen, and reaction times improve.

But while all this may make one capable of doing something that he or she normally couldn’t, does this extend all the way to being able to literally lift a ton? For that answer, we can look to the work of biomechanist Vladimir Zatsiorsky. He uses different strength categories to describe someone’s lifting potential. The primary ones are Absolute and Maximal.

Absolute refers to the theoretical maximum that a person’s muscles, fibers, tendons, and bones would allow them to lift. This is what physiology shows would be theoretically possible, but people actually fall short of being able to reach the full amount.

Meanwhile, Maximal strength is the most that could be lifted using conscious effort, such as in construction work or a weightlifting session. This usually caps out at about 67 percent of the person’s Absolute ability. Beyond that, tissues would fail, no matter how strong the desire to lift more or how much adrenalin had been released.

There is a third, seldom-seen category that rests between these Absolute and Maximial. It can be attained when one is in a competitive mode, such as in the Olympics, especially if being cheered by frenzied onlookers. Zatsiorsky has detected some world-class athletes reaching as high as 92 percent of their body’s Absolute strength during the most intense competitions. That this could happen in such a venue makes sense, as no situation is more pressurized. Unless, perhaps, there’s a life in your vicelike hands.

Such as in a case cited by Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning. He relates an anecdote where a car ran over an Arizona bicyclist in 2006 and trapped the victim to the pavement. On the scene was powerlifter Tom Boyle, who had previously demonstrated the ability to deadlift 700 pounds. Impressive stuff. But the car weighed a ton and a half, and as the story goes, our muscular rescuer managed to get its front wheels off the ground. But since the vehicle’s weight was much more than Boyle’s Absolute lift, his body would have hit structural failure well before summoning the ability to raise the vehicle.

This supposed ability cannot be tested. There is no way to replicate the exact original conditions and there are obvious ethical constraints to intentionally placing someone beneath a pinned car or helicopter. In the Arizona, Magnum P.I., and similar cases, leverage or buoyancy likely came into play and substantially lessened the amount of weight lifted. Another possible mitigating factor, Dunning noted, is that lifting many cars a few inches leaves most of the vehicle’s weight still supported by suspension springs.

So to be clear, these stories are not being fabricated by the hero, victim, or onlookers. In life-and-death situations, details are going to be fuzzy and mis-remembered. Perhaps Boyle lifted from the lighter back end of the car and not the heavier side. Perhaps the car was inclined in such a way that the leverage angle was more favorable.

Whenever such incidents are captured on video and can be paused and rewound, extenuating circumstances can be noticed, which a terrified witness would have missed at the time. For example, during the helicopter incident, the rescuer did not lift the rotorcraft as was reported; rather, he rocked it as it was lying on its side against a sloped and uneven riverbank. While the act was heroic, it did not require the superhuman effort attributed to it.

Physical changes that take place during an emergency situation may lead a person to exceed their usual abilities, but only by a known, limited increment. The hero won’t acquire the ability to impersonate Christopher Reeve. Hitting 80 percent of one’s Absolute strength or subduing a pair of Marlboro-packing bullies seems to be the limit.

A Siberian works his way from poverty and obscurity to become the primary confidant of the Tsarina. He plays a pivotal, albeit unintentional, role in the collapse of the Romanov Dynasty and the birth of communist societies. He was known as the Mad Monk, though he was neither. He did, however, spent time in a monastery debating theological ideas, and sported a greatly unkempt appearance, which when combined with his captivating, harrowing eyes and strange demeanor, made him at once the target of suspicion, wonder, and revulsion.

This life story is fascinating enough without needing embellishment. But there are some persons who find humans landing a probe on a comet to be ho-hum while being simultaneously fascinated by evidence-free doomsday tales of a hypothetical Planet X. In the same way, there are some who remain unsatisfied with amazing true historical accounts and crave a still more spectacular story.

Hence, the idea that Rasputin was nearly indestructible was born. Allegedly, killing him required that he be poisoned, shot multiple times, beaten, and tossed bound into a river, and even all that was barely enough. For maximum efficiency, this fable sometimes holds that he owed his quasi-invincibility to his mystical powers, the same supernatural abilities that Tsarina Alexandra was convinced had saved her hemophiliac son. Because she was certain he had, the self-proclaimed miracle healer and seer became the darling of the ruling matriarch.

She wanted to keep him close, literally and figuratively, so the man who once lived as a peasant received a massive upgrade to castles, ballrooms, and carriages. He enjoyed high society status, had access to the royal inner circle, and influenced politics, culture, and society. Most everyone of relevance had a strong opinion about him, either good or bad.

Some of those in the latter category were insiders who thought Rasputin was dooming the Romanovs and Russia, and wanted him out of the way permanently. The first attempt on Rasputin’s life came in the summer of 1914, when he was stabbed in the abdomen. He survived but a year later, conspirators hatched a second assassination plot, which was uncovered before it could be acted upon.

In December 1916 came another attempt, and the third time was the harm. Led by Prince Felix Yusupov, four other conspirators lured Rasputin to a St. Petersburg palace, where the dastardly deed was done.

Three are three sources which relate what took place in those early morning hours of Dec. 30: The written accounts of Yusupov and his henchman, Vladimir Purishkevich; and the autopsy report. There are some key differences between the first two sources and the other one.

Yusupov recalled that he offered Rasputin tea, cakes, and alcohol, all laced with cyanide. Despite being plied with a lethal chemical compound, Rasputin merely complained about a headache and fiery stomach.

The rest of the putative first-hand account from the assailants goes like this: At 2:30 a.m., Yusopov fired a bullet into Rasputin’s stomach at close range. The victim collapsed, seemingly dead. Rasputin was left lying there for nearly an hour before coming to and attacking Yusupov. Rasputin rushed past the other conspirators, who fired shots at the fleeing man. This time, the killers shot him through the back and head, yet still he survived.

A frustrated and enraged Yusupov then grabbed a club and began pummeling Rasputin, whose body was eventually bound and tossed into the icy Malaya Neveka River. Some claimed that when found, Rasputin was making the sign of the cross, proof he had been thrown living from the bridge and worked free of his ropes.

The autopsy shows something far less dramatic than all this. First, the pathologist found no cyanide present, even though he looked for it specifically since Yusupov  said he plied Rasputin treats laden with it.

Second, while three bullet wounds were found, the pathologist determined that  two bullets hit the torso and one entered the forehead. These entered from the front, not in the back as would be consistent with a fleeing man. Moreover, gunpowder residue was found near the wound, suggesting the gun was fired from close-range, not from across the room. The pathologist also reported that the wounds’ angle indicated the victim was lying down when shot.

Also of note, the autopsy referenced no water in Rasputin’s lungs. And while photographs of the frozen corpse do show Rasputin’s arms to be free, they are not making the sign of the cross.

In summary, the autopsy shows Rasputin was shot from behind, collapsed, rolled onto his back, and was then shot through the head as he lay dying. There was no poison, no water-filled lungs, and no bound, beaten body. He had merely been done in by a lethal head shot.

The embellishments have been fabricated to create a fascinating but false narrative of Rasputin being nearly indestructible. That he had survived two earlier assassination plots, including one that came to fruition, may have sparked the notion of invincibility, and his mystical nature likely added to the post-mortem reputation. Such unwarranted speculation is common when fascinating life comes to a premature end, and has happened with the likes of JFK and Elvis.

Red mercury has been held in mystical regard for centuries: From allegedly being buried with Egyptian royals in order to guarantee them an afterlife to the hushed reverence with which medieval alchemists spoke about it to cacophonous Internet pop up ads blaring about its panacea qualities.

Some modern incantations have the substance manifesting itself in vampire bat nests. Unintentionally comedic YouTube videos show a blob of supposed red mercury being repelled by garlic, attracted by gold, and showing no reflection.
In truth, there are no bat nests. The winged mammals instead cling to walls, rafters, and cave dwellings when needing to rest or sleep. Of more importance with regard to this topic, there also is no red mercury elixir. The only red-hued mercury is mercury sulphide, whose main use is in pottery decoration and to which no healing abilities are attributed.

While much less cool than pharaoh tombs or hypothetical vampire bat nests, Singer sewing machines have also been reported to house red mercury. The ridiculous rumor was apparently started by someone who found it a convenient avenue to unload his surplus sewing machines for 2,000 times their worth.

While usually associated with healing, red mercury tales have darker versions that tie it to nuclear weapons or bomb making. These began making the rounds when eastern European communism collapsed. This time of upheaval and uncertainty, combined with legitimate concern about what would become of nuclear stockpiles, led to wild speculation that red mercury was a necessary element to the weapons and that this destructive force about to be purloined by terrorist outfits or unleashed by a government desperate to stay in power. The rumor may have begun since red mercury is a nickname for a certain nuclear isotope. 

Terrorists have apparently tried to make the rumors come true. In 2015, Islamic State members were arrested after attempting to buy red mercury, though exactly what it is they were buying and what their plans were for it are unclear since the substance doesn’t exist.