10 OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST AND STRANGEST MACHINES

10 of the Largest and Strangest Machines in the World 
By Mike Brown, Toptenz, 26 May 2014.

While our technical instruments and communication devices keep getting smaller, our machines just keep getting bigger. There is now aircraft large enough to allow other aircraft to piggyback a ride, ships that pile on other ships as cargo, and bulldozers that need more than one operator in the driver’s seat.

All of these are mind-boggling, yet there are even larger and stranger machines out there, because we won’t be satisfied until we build something so large it can poke its nose into outer space.

10. The Large Hadron Collider

The largest machine in the world was created to study the tiniest composition known: the structure of the atomic nucleus. Nuclear accelerators are nothing new. They were first invented in the 1930′s for investigating the many aspects of particle physics. The Hadron Collider is seventeen miles in circumference and is buried 574 feet under the ground, near Geneva, Switzerland.

Inside the Collider, two high-energy beams are shot at each other, traveling at close to the speed of light. They are guided by thousands of super-conducting magnets inside two ultra-high vacuum tubes. The magnets are kept at a frigid -271.3 degrees, which is colder than the temperature of outer space. There are 1,242 dipole magnets, each measuring 49 feet in length for bending the beams, and 392 quadruple magnets measuring between 16- 23 feet long for focusing the beam.

Science doesn’t want to stop there though. Plans are underway for a new underground accelerator that would be three times larger than the Large Hadron Collider.

9. The Giant Bucket Wheel Excavator

While the Large Hadron Collider is the largest underground machine, the world’s second largest machine is chewing up surface above the ground. The Bagger 293 is a brute built for titans. Built in Germany in 1995, the giant bucket wheel excavator stands 315 feet tall and 740 feet long, and weighs in at 31 million pounds. This multi-ton Tessie uses five operators to push her along, and can move 8.5 million cubic feet of earth per day.

The Bagger may be very good at excavating open mine operations, but it does have some handicaps. It can’t go around obstacles, so workers must remove power lines, place sandbags over roads and railroadtracks, and seed fields with special grass to make operations smoother. Nor does the Bagger see very well. Occasionally, it scoops up unsuspecting bulldozers.

8. World’s Largest Tunnelling Machine

When Seattle decided to replace the Alaskan Way Viaduct - an elevated section of highway that runs between Elliott Bay waterfront and the downtown district - with a tunnel, they hired the world’s largest tunnel borer: a 300-foot long, five stories-high driller named Bertha. Bertha is a very big girl - the 7,000 ton machine needed to be shipped to Seattle in 31 pieces. With a diameter of 57.5 feet, she could easily swallow the world’s second-largest borer, located in Florence, Italy.

Despite her massive size, she was stopped cold December 6, 2013 by what the engineers could only describe as “an object”. Speculations ran from a massive boulder laid to rest during the last Ice Age, to a lost part of the city hidden underground since the Klondike Gold Rush. On January 3, 2014, the object that was stopping Bertha was at least partially confirmed. It seems that though she can muscle her way through tons of soil, debris and glacier rocks, she’s unable to contend with an eight-inch diameter steel pipe.

7. A Giant Mechanical Spider

London took pride in owning their very own mechanical elephant, but Liverpool decided to one-up them. On a rainy afternoon, a gigantic spider ushered in from Salthouse Dock, to awe, thrill and scare spectators. The giant mechanic spider, named La Princesse, trundled down the streets at two miles an hour, eventually climbing the side of the Concourse House, a derelict building on Lime Street. There, her long legs touched down on five stories, from one end to the other.

If La Princesse seems somewhat indifferent to attempts to please her, such as a bath and soothing music, she’s still an impressive sight. Weighing in at 37 tons, she stands 50 feet high and has 50 hydraulic axes of movement. It takes twelve people to operate her. In order to transport her from one place to another, she requires 16 cranes, eight cherry pickers and 250 crew members. She wasn’t enthusiastically greeted by everyone. Some small children tried to hide from her, and the arachnophobes tried to prevent her appearance, but one child actually wanted to take her home. This plan was abandoned after the kid’s dad explained she wouldn’t be able to fit through the door.

6. The World’s Largest Vending Machine

Some shopping malls put out a lot of effort to get noticed. When Berjaya Times Square, a gigantic shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia held its tenth anniversary, it decided to commemorate it by building the largest vending machine in the world. The machine took six months to plan and build and seven weeks to assemble. Its total weight is over 7,000 pounds. A capsule-containing globe with a diameter of fifteen feet, rests on a stand of plywood and mild steel measuring 15 feet five inches in height.

125 capsules reside in the container. The machine accepts acrylic tokens valued at around US$15 each to credit a vend. It dispenses certificates in its 2.5″ capsules for a wide variety of products and services, including big-screen televisions, iPads, spa packages, and theme park passes. It has recently entered the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest vending machine in the world, which means someone is sure to come along to try to outdo it.

5. The Largest Ship in the World

The Emma Maersk has had to surrender its reputation as the largest floating vessel in the world to make way for the Prelude, that took to the waters for the first time in South Korea. Technically, however, the Prelude isn’t really a ship. It’s a floating natural gas facility designed to capture, process, and store liquid natural gas from deep inside the Earth. The 1,600-foot Prelude is three hundred feet longer than the Emma Maersk. If stood on one end, it would be 150 feet taller than the Empire State Building. The two halves of the hull were constructed separately, then joined together, giving it a 243-foot width.

When fully laden, it weighs in at 600,000 tons. Its storage tanks for holding liquid petroleum have a capacity equivalent to approximately 175 Olympic swimming pools. A 305-foot turret runs through the ship to the sea floor to keep it anchored and pivot in the direction of the wind. This, combined with three 6,700 horsepower engines, are its safeguards for handling up to category five hurricanes. The one thing it won’t be able to do is squeeze through the Panama Canal.

4. World’s Largest Motorcycle

Most cyclist have experienced the annoyance of being cut off in traffic by large vehicles muscling them to one side and have wished for something bossy enough to give them respect. Maybe they should talk to Fabio Reggiani, who took Italy by storm in building the largest motorcycle ever.

It’s the dream machine of big boys who like big toys. Standing 16’8″ high, and weighing 5.5 tons, it’s the biggest two-wheeled bike to ever travel 300 feet. It features some very extended handle bars and a 5,000 cc 5.7 litre V8 Chevrolet engine with a three-speed transmission gearbox. Training wheels are included, although steering the bike might prove somewhat of a challenge.

3. Biggest Remote Control Robot in the World

Remote control toys are fun, and the bigger the better, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Germany’s Zollner Elektronic AG spent six years, with a team of fifteen people, designing the biggest remote control robot ever. The dragon was designed to replace the mechanical star of Germany’s favourite play, “Drachenstich.” The original model had not been replaced in 35 years, and had required four operators, so it didn’t really count as a robot.

Zollner’s dragon stands 51 feet tall, weighs 11 tons, is radio-controlled and, of course, breathes fire. It’s powered by a 140 horsepower, 2.0 litre engine, and has a 39-foot wing span. Nor is the robot a dummy. With both hydraulic and electronic components, it has nine separate controllers, each containing two TI processors, a Fujitsu microcontroller, and 238 sensors for determining its environment. Not only that, it has veins that will bleed stage blood on cue - a whole 80 litres worth. With so much realism put into its making, it seems downright mean to spear it.

2. World’s Largest Aircraft

Aircraft keeps getting bigger. There’s the Boeing Dream Lifter with a cargo hold of 65,000 cubic feet, the Super Jumbo Airbus that seats 525 passengers, and the military C-5, which is six stories tall and could fly six school busses from Delaware to Turkey without refuelling. However, the largest aircraft of all isn’t in the US - it’s in Russia. The Mriya - Russian for “dream” - is the only craft of its kind. It was designed to be the air transport system for Russia’s reusable space shuttle. Its maximum take-off weight is 640 tons.

The Mriya uses six powerful jet engines to fly it. It is 275 feet long and stands 59 feet high. It is 26 feet longer than a Boeing 747 with and with a 290-foot wingspan, it outstretches the Boeing by 29 feet. It has put in enough flying hours to circle the globe 46 times. When parked on the runway, it looks like a giant mama bird with a brood of chicks, Boeing included.

1. World’s Largest Dump Truck

With its brightly painted guardrails and ladder, the front end looks more like a yacht than a work machine, but the hybrid-diesel Belaz was built for one thing; seriously moving earth. Its two sixteen-cylinder engines get this super duty bad boy going, giving it 13,738 pounds of torque, more than the combined power of seventeen heavy-duty pickup trucks. The company claims a fully loaded Belaz can lug around 450 tons of dirt at 25 mph and never once cry uncle.

At 800,000 pounds, the Belaz isn’t heavy, just big-boned. Its two turntable axles give its eight 63″ wheels a 65-foot turning radius. For a 67-foot truck in overall length, that’s turning on a dime. The Belaz also has an on-board tire inflation control system for keeping tire pressure in check, video surveillance, heating and air conditioning, and sound insulation. If you can afford the US$3 million price tag and have always had an aversion to large bodies of water, you could always set up a party area in the back and drive your own land yacht.

Top image: Antonov An-225 Mriya, the world’s largest aircraft. Credit: Anthony Noble/Wikimedia Commons.

[Source: Toptenz. Edited. Top image added.]

10 CREEPY INTERNET STORIES THAT ARE DISTURBINGLY BELIEVABLE

10 Creepy Internet Stories That Are Disturbingly Believable 
By Dustin Koski, Listverse, 23 May 2014.

We all love it when the Internet tries to scare us, especially when it taps into our imagination and lets us do most of the work of scaring ourselves. Whether you call those stories “urban legends” or “creepypasta,” there is a quality to them that mainstream horror doesn’t quite provide.

10. Broadcast Interruption

In Seneca, South Carolina, an unnamed viewer is channel surfing. He stops on a broadcast of one of his old teachers reading a poem on public television. As he watches, the teacher’s poem is interrupted by a cartoon, which features a typical, middle-class family on a typical day. It is drawn in an overly detailed but choppy style of the sort fashionable in America in the early ’90s.

As the family makes small talk, a broadcast comes on the radio about how mutations are occurring, flesh is melting, and monsters are emerging from the sea. The family ignores this, despite the fact a green light is coming in through the windows and their skin is becoming jaundiced. They go about their day, absorbing more and more of the green glow, which is making them more and more like mutant blobs. The cartoon ends with white text that reads “Report to the nearest shelter immediately. Remaining at private residences is strictly prohibited.” The date of November 17, 2017 is stated in the cartoon, giving the experience a sense of being prophetic. The author of this story is unknown, and the tale itself seems to have emerged sometime around 2011.

As bizarre as the cartoon and its predictions are, real life has shown it’s not as far-fetched as you might initially believe. After all, the American Broadcasting Channel, certainly a much bigger target than any public television channel, was once hacked by a man in a Max Headroom mask. The man left behind a much more cryptic message than the one featured in this story. And if this Seneca, South Carolina broadcast were real, it still wouldn’t be quite as gory as a network television broadcast called “A Short Vision” (from 1956, of all times). There has been some weird stuff broadcast over the nation’s airwaves, legitimately or otherwise.

9. Woman In The Oven

This story seems to date back to at least 2008. Unfortunately, the name of the original author is lost in the ether. Pity. Someone that can come up with such a bizarre and disturbing story and keep the tone so under control that it stays intriguing and believable deserves more credit.

In a mundane farm house, a woman is found burned to death in an oven. A camera is pointed at the oven, but there is no tape inside. However, a tape seemingly from the camera is discovered by a well behind the house. It shows the woman coming into the shot, setting the oven, climbing inside, and then closing the door after her. After some time, violent banging and shrieking happens inside the oven and smoke begins to emerge. But analysis of the woman in the video and the woman discovered in the oven concludes they are not the same person, based on height and stature. Cremating a human beingtakes two to three hours at 312 degrees Celsius (593 °F), so it can be reasonably assumed that a commercial stove would leave her sufficiently intact for such analysis. How any of this came to be is left for the readers to attempt to imagine in their nightmares.

8. Barbie.avi

Dating back to at least August 9, 2009, Barbie.avi is the story of a young man who goes to a party in a largely abandoned industrial neighbourhood. After being awoken early in the morning by something being thrown into a dumpster, he finds a discarded computer tower that he hopes to restore. Looking through the hard drive, he finds a video file labelled “Barbie.avi.” It’s a video of a woman apparently being interviewed, but it’s impossible to hear what she’s saying over the static. It seems the woman is being verbally abused, with “skin” being the only word the protagonist thinks he can read on her lips.

After 40 minutes of watching, he’s convinced something horrible happened to her. In a shot lasting a few seconds at the end of the video, there’s an abandoned home near some railroad tracks a few miles away. He and a friend go to investigate. They don’t find any trace of the woman in the building. However, more significantly, they do realize that there is running water at this decrepit house out in the middle of nowhere. What could have been covered up?

As hard as it is to believe that people might leave evidence of a murder on their computers before carelessly throwing them out, there are cases of people apparently being even more actively self-destructive with their murder evidence. For example, on Thanksgiving in 2012, a man in Little Falls, Minnesota outfitted his house with a large array of cameras and microphones to capture him tormenting and then murdering two young people that broke into his house. Barbie.avi with its ambiguity and subtlety is actually much more believable than real incidents like that.

7. Sudden Onset

Author theLittleFears is one of those horror writers who really know how to use novel terrors from real life to enhance a horrifying story’s effect. Sudden Onset’s story is simplicity itself. A 14-year-old boy with strep throat participates in a “Bloody Mary” ritual during a sleepover. He and his friends gather in front of a mirror, turn the lights off, and then say “Bloody Mary” into the mirror three times, hoping that a ghost will appear. We don’t know what happens during the ritual, but we are told the aftermath is that the boy is now afraid of mirrors, feels fingers brushing against him at all times, and consequently lives a life of fear.

What allows this to transcend being a regular spook show is that theLittleFears explains that the boy was diagnosed with paediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder - a real condition where children with strep throat suddenly begin to have horrible hallucinations. Thus, this creepypasta straddles the line between the horrors of fact and fiction (and paranormal and normal) to an unusual degree. Does it really matter if there’s actually no ghost of “Bloody Mary” haunting you when your nerves keep telling you she’s got you in her fingers anyway?

6. Dear Abby

Kyle Mangione-Smith’s story from 2012 is about a guy’s descent into madness, and how he mistakes obsession for love. It’s told as a series of letters that a grocery store employee writes to “Abby.” He goes from stealing surveillance tapes of her to breaking into her apartment and destroying photos of her boyfriend. His final stroke is to kidnap her, shortly after she’s gone to the police and starts packing up to move out. The man locks himself, Abby, and a knife inside a rented storage garage. As he lays dying, he is comforted to know that whether she kills herself or dies of dehydration, they’ll be together in death in a way they would never have had the chance of being in life.

While it’s an elaborate and cruel way to kill someone, it’s not much more horrifying than the real story of Roger Troy. Roger stalked and murdered Alissa Blanton in 2010, because he’d become obsessed with her while she was a Hooters server. Such are the threats that could enter an attractive person’s life at any time through no fault of their own.

5. Burial On Box Hill

TheLittleFears returns to this list with a story that takes curious but real historical facts and asks a rather creepy question. The first section is about historical novelty deaths, like Jim Fixx - the man who popularized jogging - dying while jogging in 1894. The story seems to be included to get the audience’s defenses down. The history lesson then transitions to the unusual life and the even more unusual burial of Major Peter Labelliere. Labelliere was buried in a grave 100 meters (330 ft) deep, facing downward, and he insisted that children should dance on his grave. He is also said to have prophesied his own death and had his coffin sprinkled with twigs and leaves that were traditionally used to aid thetransition to the afterlife.

After Peter Labelliere’s odd passing, the story describes the burial arrangements for American general Anthony Wayne, known by the nickname “Mad Anthony.” TheLittleFears mentions that both men were present at the obscure Battle of Paoli, then informs us that Anthony Wayne’s bizarre funeral and burial arrangements called for his bones to be removed and for him to be buried in two parts. She concludes by asking us what these two figures saw at the Battle of Paoli that forced them to arrange burials that would prevent them from ever returning to life.

4. Ickbarr Bigelsteine

Written by Stephan D. Harris in 2012 (apparently a bumper year for Internet horror stories), this tale is about a kid using an imaginary friend to keep the darkness at bay. The imaginary friend is a sock puppet–like being that the child sews himself - at best an ugly-cute creation that you would expect a six-year-old to be able to make. It does keep the darkness at bay, until the day the kid loses his first tooth. His doll says he wants it, and the kid is happy to oblige. Apparently, Ickbarr Bigelsteine is very fond of the teeth. He wants the kid to keep providing them. When the kid runs out of his own teeth, he has to get more if he doesn’t want Bigelsteine to bring him into a nightmarish world.

Seemingly about a person suffering from schizophrenia, the story has an especially unpleasant resonance for many parents. This is because children with imaginary friends often say things their parents really don’t want to hear. Yet they should definitely pay attention to what their children say. Take January Schofield, who claimed that her imaginary friends - ”400 the Cat” and “Wednesday the Rat” - were telling her to kill the family dog and to jump from buildings. Ickbarr Bigelsteine and his equivalents aren’t real, but the danger they represent is.

3. The Red Army

The Red Army is a story of the Russo-Finnish front during World War II. Actually, logically it should be a story of the Winter War of 1939–1940. Despite the opening line saying it happened in 1942, the descriptions of the Soviet Army being repulsed by the Finns and the mentions of Finnish snipers (probably meaning figures like the remarkable Simo Hayha) make it clear the author meant to describe that war instead of World War II.

That pedantry aside, The Red Army is a brief but frightening anecdote of mass cannibalism. Finnish troops overrunning Soviet camps find them either abandoned or having skins hung inside them. Due to a food shortage, the Soviets apparently had no alternative but to resort to the ultimate taboo. The story is accompanied by a photo of what’s purported to be a Red soldier’s flesh, which is presumably all that remains of the man. However, soldiers inspecting the camps find that despite what they’ve been told, the food supplies are fine. Rumours also circulate about some creature stalking the forests.

Untrue as that story might be, there was in fact a considerable amount of cannibalism on the part of the Soviets during the war, although poor logistics were not the cause. It was among Soviet prisoners taken during the Nazi invasion. They were so horribly treated by their captors that only one in five survived imprisonment. SS Colonel Rudolf Hess described in his journal that cannibalism was not uncommon at a camp he visited. Hess claimed that he personally saw a body he was sure had been gutted for the purpose. Also, there was the city of Leningrad, where a million Russians died from combat, disease, and starvation during a 900-day siege. Declassified documents revealed that 260 people were arrested for cannibalism.

As for the creature stalking the forests, real Soviet forests actually had some rather frightening creatures doing rather horrifying things. For example, a spate of wolf attacks occurred in Kirovskaya Oblast in 1944. Children became primary targets, including a group of four girls that were attacked by a pack. With all those problems facing them, Soviet citizens probably would have come to consider a monster stalking the forests as merely another horrible fact of life.

2. Ted The Caver

Photo credit: Creepypasta Wiki

Dating back to 2001, Ted the Caver may be the first creepypasta the Internet has ever produced. It is certainly one of the longest and most exhaustively photographically detailed. Ted and his friend “B” (all names of persons and locations are said to be withheld) decide to explore a deliberately unidentified cave. They dig their way into a narrow opening, which they believe to be about 18 centimetres (7 in) tall - barely tall enough to crawl through. When they begin crawling into this narrow confine, they find hieroglyphics, hear strange noises, and feel the presence of something seemingly malignant. Much of this happens while they’re about as trapped and helpless as they can possibly be. The author writes and posts this account of what happened but then insists he feels compelled to return to the cave. That’s the last we hear from him.

Assuming that Ted and B are not dealing with anything supernatural in the story, real spelunkers have been known to have severe hallucinations. They are among the few people that often explore in absolute darkness and are exposed to other forms of sensory deprivation. As illustrated by the very uncomfortable photo taken by the story’s author, being all but trapped in rock is surely one of the most hellish times to experience hallucinations.

1. Autopilot

In this popular story by Skarjo, a man deeply locked into his routine is thrown off a little by the fact that he forgot his cell phone. This distracts him on his way to work and to drop off his daughter at the day-care on a hot day. After a seemingly typical day at work, he drives home with a bad smell in the backseat - probably something spilled in the back and has spoiled in the heat. When he gets home, he realizes he forgot to pick up his daughter. But when he gets to the day-care, he finds he was too stuck on disrupted autopilot to notice that he didn’t drop his daughter off there. Gradually, he begins to understand what the bad smell coming from the backseat is. His autopilot disengages, probably never to engage in quite the same way ever again.

Autopilot is almost more of a tragedy than a horror story, but it’s certainly not a fanciful story by any means. There are numerous terrible stories of parents leaving their young children in vehicles. And it’s certainly not limited to negligent parents - a hospital administrator once forgot a child in the car seat,where she perished. As such, this story may just be the worst of all. It tells us that the most horrible things don’t happen because of mysterious malignant intent, psychopathy, or anything paranormal. They happen because we’re fallible human beings.

[Source: Listverse. Edited.]

9 ANIMALS THAT CAN LIVE LONGER THAN YOU

9 Animals That Can Live Longer Than You 
By Clay Wirestone, Mental Floss, 7 May 2014.

The average life expectancy in the United States these days is nearly 79 years. As animal species go, humans are pretty hearty, especially given all these fancy medicines we’ve developed. But we’re not the only ones who hope to live past 80 (or 90). Other birds and mammals and fish and microbes manage to live longer. Some a lot longer.

1. Giant tortoises

The Aldabra tortoise, found on a tiny atoll north of Madagascar, can easily live past 100 years, and it’s thought that the oldest in captivity died at age 250 (that’s the upper limit; other records point to an age of at least 150). Who knows how long the Aldabra might live, though. Accurate records of the species’ age haven’t been kept, partly because the tortoises being studied have outlived the scientists researching them.

2. The immortal jellyfish

Scientists discovered Turritopsis dohrnii back in 1883, but it wasn’t until more than a century had passed that they discovered it was technically capable of living forever. That’s right: When faced with stressors like starvation or injury, the jellyfish reverts to its youngest form. Its cells transform into other cells, and it transforms into a cyst. That blob then produces a bunch of baby jellyfish, or polyps, all of which are genetically identical to the original. This method of self-preservation has actually turned it into an annoying invasive species.

3. Ocean quahog

These large clams found in the North Atlantic look unremarkable. More people have probably tasted them than seen them, given that they’re a frequent chowder ingredient. But when their rings are analyzed, it becomes clear that quahogs are some of the longest-lived ocean dwellers. In fact, a clam nicknamed Ming harvested in 2006 turned out to be 507 years old. And given that Ming turned up in a random sample of 200 clams, its likely that many others are at least as old, if not older. And you may have eaten them.

4. Tuatara

Move aside, coelacanth. The tuatara, a reptile found in New Zealand, is also known as a living fossil. Its closest relatives are extinct, and it has a vestigial third eye on the top of its head. (Skin grows over it, but the “eye” can still detect light and dark.) They’re slow-growing, not maturing until the ages of 13-20. They can stop breathing for up to an hour, and they’re not slowed down by cold. Given all of this, one of the least remarkable things about tuataras is that they can live up to a century in the wild.

5. Parrots

With parrots, we skirt the edges of the human lifespan. Macaws, for example, can live some 60 years in the wild. But some have sailed past the 100-year mark, most notably Charlie, who was reportedly owned by Winston Churchill. Taught to spew obscenities against Hitler and the Nazis, Charlie was a fixture at a British garden centre for years. As with giant tortoises, it can be difficult to substantiate birth dates for centenarian parrots - and researchers have cast doubt on Charlie’s provenance - so the exact details are murky.

6. Bowhead whale

The bowhead whale is second only in size to the blue whale - but it’s apparently No. 1 among mammals in terms of sheer lifespan. Scientists have discovered at least three of the whales are 135 to 172 years old, with a fourth clocking in at 211 years old. They figured this out by studying the creatures’ eye lenses, and by finding ivory and stone harpoon points buried in other whales. Those tips haven’t been used since the 1880s. These discoveries doubled the known lifespan for the creatures.

7. Koi

This beautiful, domesticated carp variety lives an average of 50 years. But depending on the quality of their care and genetic variables, koi have been known to live for more than a century. Hanako, a fish that died in 1977, was believed to be 226 years old. Scientists measured her age by examining the microscopic rings on her scales.

8. Flamingo

You’ll likely outlive most flamingos, but not all of them. In captivity, they usually live some 40 years, about 10 years longer than they survive in the wild. But Greater, a flamingo at the Adelaide Zoo in Australia, made it to age 83.The animal’s gender wasn’t known, but Greater managed to survive both World War II and a late-in-life attack from younger flamingos at the zoo. Sadly, complications from age led to the bird's demise.

9. Bacteria

Deep, deep in the ocean you can find some of the longest-lived creatures ever. These viruses, bacteria, and assorted fungi have such slow metabolisms that scientists hesitate to even call them "alive" in the conventional sense of the word (the term "zombie" came up). And yet some have likely existed for millions of years, only reproducing every 10 millennia.

Top image: The Turritopsis dohrnii jellyfish. Photographs courtesy Stefano Piraino (inset) and Maria Pia Miglietta, via National Geographic News.

Other images courtesy of Thinkstock.

[Source: Mental Floss. Edited. Top image added.]