1

Darth Vader (Star Wars)

The first time Darth Vader appeared on the big screen in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977), his presence was mysterious and ominous . Was he a robot? A human? A monster? This enigmatic figure with a mechanical voice and unmistakable heavy breathing terrified his enemies and allies, too.

One of the most frightening elements of Darth Vader is, perhaps, his unpredictability; he could be talking with a crew member of his ship, and suddenly lift them in the air while choking them using the Force. Darth Vader said one of the most iconic quotes ever in one of the greatest plot twists in cinema history, when talking to Luke Skywalker: "I am your father."

2

The Wicked Witch of the West (The Wizard of Oz)

Margaret Hamilton brought to life the unforgettable green-skinned Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz (1939), scaring generations of children with her sinister laugh. In the movie, she relentlessly pursues the protagonist, Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland), and her friends and delivers one of the most quoted villain lines ever: " I'll get you, my pretty… and your little dog, too !"

The witch also commanded an army of Winged Monkeys in some of the most memorable and nightmare-inducing scenes. The American Film Institute ranked The Wicked Witch of the West as the fourth greatest movie villain of all time in 2003.

3

Joker (Batman)

First introduced in the premiere Batman comic book in 1940, the Joker has been portrayed countless times in movies, animated fare, and TV shows, and it's hard to pick the best rendition. The iconic villain has so many characteristic features that make him unique: his exaggerated smile, green hair, and especially his twisted, vicious laugh . The first time The Joker made his big-screen debut was in Batman (1966) with Cesar Romero in the role, though he inarguably became an icon in Batman (1989) when Jack Nicholson breathed life into the character.

The Joker is Batman’s greatest enemy, and unlike many powerful villains, he doesn’t have powers . His only tool is his intelligence, which he uses to come up with the most macabre methods to terrorize Gotham. In 2009, actor Heath Ledger won a posthumous Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance playing The Joker in The Dark Knight (2008).

4

Norman Bates (Psycho)

Who could forget the shower scene massacre of Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) at the hands of Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) — perhaps the most well-known murder scene of all time.

Belying the violent psychopath that lurks within, Norman Bates is the mild-mannered owner of the Bates Motel, and his notorious Mommy issues lead him to murder. Bates was ranked as the second greatest movie villain of all time by the American Film Institute.

5

Hannibal Lecter (The Silence of the Lambs)

The cold-hearted and calculating Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter became world-famous thanks to The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and the fantastic performance of Anthony Hopkins —earning him an Oscar for Best Actor. Hannibal’s refined manners are unsettling when you know the brutality of his actions, creating an agonizingly tense atmosphere every time he’s on screen.

Hannibal uses his deep understanding of human psychology to manipulate almost everyone he meets, including FBI trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster), with his iconic "Hello, Clarice" greeting. Hannibal Lecter was named the greatest villain of all time by the American Film Institute.

6

The Terminator (T-800) (The Terminator)

Even though Arnold Schwarzenegger has over 50 onscreen credits, his most recognizable performance was playing the T-800 in The Terminator (1984), a relentless cyborg assassin sent from the future by the artificial intelligence Skynet that will never stop pursuing his target, no matter what.

The T-800 looks human, though beneath the skin, he’s an indestructible machine with a metal skeleton, and he is tasked with the mission of eliminating Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton). During the movie, the T-800 delivers the staple line of the saga: "I’ll be back."

7

Freddy Krueger (A Nightmare on Elm Street)

The idea of a homicidal maniac who can murder you in your dreams while you are sleeping is absolutely spine-chilling and still haunts many of us. Freddy Krueger was introduced in A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), revolutionizing horror by attacking teens in a place where their parents couldn’t save them .

Freddy became an all-time horror icon thanks to his burned face, red-and-green striped sweater, brown fedora, and glove fitted with razor-sharp blades. Of the nine movies in which Freddy is featured, Robert Englund portrayed him in eight, which makes him one of the longest-running actors to play the same villain.

8

Michael Myers (Halloween)

Michael Myers, originally appearing in Halloween (1978), wears one of the most famous props in movie history: his mask. The undying, knife-wielding killer — whose chief target in the first film and many sequels is Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) — has been portrayed by several different actors over the years, but Nick Castle played him in the original film, turning Michael into a defining villain of the slasher genre .

Like many other villains on this list, Michael Myers’ outfit is unmistakable, and his slow, deliberate walk is a mark of the character. In contrast with other major villains, Michael never speaks, and his silence adds to the mystery surrounding him .

9

Cruella de Vil (101 Dalmatians)

Cruella de Vil’s film debut was in One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), and although the animated Disney movie is a lovely classic, we cannot say the same about her. The eccentric heiress has an obsession with Dalmatians because she wants to make a spotted fur coat , so she terrifies a family trying to steal their puppies.

Her appearance, with her black-and-white hair (a nod to the Dalmatians), red gloves, and bold makeup, is impossible to ignore . Cruella de Vil became even more famous after Glenn Close portrayed her in the live-action films 101 Dalmatians (1996) and 102 Dalmatians (2000).

10

Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest)

Unlike the rest of the villains on this list, Nurse Ratched — brought to life by Louise Fletcher in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) — doesn’t rely on violence; instead, she controls others through quiet authority and emotional manipulation . Ratched is the head nurse of a psychiatric hospital where patient Randle P. McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) battles against her for freedom and control.

Her calm yet intimidating demeanor makes her one of cinema’s most chilling antagonists, and in 2003, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Nurse Ratched as the fifth greatest movie villain of all time — the highest-ranked female villain on the list.

1

Arizona skips Daylight Saving Time

Image: Christoph von Gellhorn

This is partly true because most of the state doesn’t bother with Daylight Saving Time . They stopped changing the clocks back in 1967. The exception is the Navajo Nation, which stretches into Utah and New Mexico and keeps DST so all its communities stay on the same schedule. Now, as for the smaller Hopi reservation, inside the Navajo Nation, it sticks with Arizona time… Yes, quite confusing if you’re not a local.

2

Georgia isn’t really the Peach State

Image: Jessica Furtney

Georgia loves its peaches, sure, but the state’s top fruit money-maker is actually blueberries . In recent years, blueberries have brought in several times more cash for farmers than peaches. Meanwhile, California grows far more peaches than Georgia ever has. The nickname stuck from the old days when Georgia peaches were famous for their flavor, not their volume. So while the pride is real, the peaches aren’t quite the powerhouse people may think.

3

Nevada didn’t record the hottest US temperature

Image: tommao wang

You probably think of Nevada’s desert heat as unmatched, but the all-time record belongs to California’s Death Valley . In July 1913, it hit a mind-melting 134 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest temperature not only in America but the hottest ever recorded on Earth!

4

Minnesota doesn’t have the most lakes

Image: Tom Conway

Minnesota proudly calls itself the "Land of 10,000 Lakes," but that’s selling itself short… The real number is closer to 12,000. However, Alaska wins this battle . The state has more than 3 million lakes over five acres in size. In fact, Alaska contains over 40 percent of the nation’s surface water. If you love fishing, kayaking, or just staring at a quiet stretch of water, the true lake capital of America is far up north.

5

Pineapples aren’t native to Hawaii

Image: Christian Joudrey

Pineapples are everywhere in Hawaiian imagery, but the plant actually comes from South America , mainly Paraguay and southern Brazil. Spanish explorers likely brought them to Hawaii in the 1500s after spreading them across the Pacific to places like the Philippines and Guam. Hawaii’s climate turned out to be perfect for growing them and by the 1900s, the islands were producing so many pineapples that the fruit became a symbol of Hawaii itself.

6

Maine isn’t the country’s easternmost point

Image: Chris Henry

If you’re a Geography geek, you’ll love this one. You might picture Maine’s rocky coast as the eastern tip of America, but the actual easternmost point is thousands of miles away, on Alaska’s Semisopochnoi Island in the Aleutians. How is that possible? Well, that’s because it crosses the 180th meridian, putting it in the Eastern Hemisphere. That means part of Alaska technically sits farther east than anywhere in Maine.

7

The biggest US earthquake didn’t happen in California

Image: Lala Miklós

California has suffered some big earthquakes in its history, but the most powerful earthquake in America struck Alaska in 1964 . It hit Prince William Sound with a magnitude of 9.2. It was so strong it shook the ground for four and a half minutes and triggered massive tsunamis. In today’s dollars, the damage would total more than $2 billion. Alaska sits on a collision zone of tectonic plates, making it one of the world’s most seismically active regions.

8

The Everglades isn’t America’s biggest swamp

Image: Joshua J. Cotten

A lot of people picture the Florida Everglades when they think of swamps, but technically, the Everglades isn’t a swamp at all. The real title of the largest swamp in the United States goes to Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Basin , which spans about 1.4 million acres. This swamp has a vast mix of cypress forests, bayous, and marshes, and it’s more than twice as productive as the Everglades when it comes to wildlife and plant life.

9

Big cities aren’t always capitals

Image: Mackenzie Cruz

It surprises people how often the biggest city isn’t the state capital . New York City? Not the capital… Albany is. Chicago? Nope, that honor goes to Springfield. Pennsylvania’s capital isn’t Philly or Pittsburgh, it’s Harrisburg. Even California’s capital isn’t L.A. or San Francisco, it’s actually Sacramento. Out of fifty states, only seventeen have their most populous city as the capital.

10

Alaska isn’t divided into counties

Image: Rod Long

Alaska likes to do things its own way. Instead of counties, it’s split into boroughs , and a massive area known as the Unorganized Borough has no local government at all. People out there don’t pay property taxes, but that freedom comes with challenges, limited services, fewer job options, and tough living conditions.

1

A renovation project saved thousands of lives on 9/11

On September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 struck the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m., killing 189 people. Few people know this part: the death toll could have been much higher. But there was a renovation project underway at the time of the attacks.

The Pentagon’s five-sided structure is divided into five "wedges," and workers had been renovating them one at a time. Flight 77 struck the wedge that had just been completed. Of the 4,500 people who normally worked in that section, only about 800 had moved back in. Without the reinforced construction and the incomplete occupancy, experts believe the casualties would have been catastrophically higher.

2

The Cold War and the hot dog stand

In the middle of the Pentagon’s five-acre center courtyard once stood a modest hot dog stand. According to a Cold War legend (one still retold by official Pentagon tour guides on every public tour), between the 60s and the 80s, Soviet satellite images tracked large groups of high-ranking military officials converging on that small building at the same time every day.

Soviet intelligence reportedly concluded the structure must be the entrance to some underground bunker in America. In reality, all it did was sell lunch. In 2006, the original stand was torn down, and a sandwich shop was built in its place.

3

Its construction began on September 11th, exactly 60 years before the attack

Builders broke ground on the Pentagon on September 11, 1941. That was exactly 60 years to the day before the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks that would strike the same building.

Construction had been ordered by Army Brigadier General Brehon Somervell, who wanted a permanent headquarters for the Defense Department to replace its then-17 scattered offices across Washington, D.C.

The project was extraordinarily ambitious: plans called for the world’s largest office building to be completed in just 16 months. In the end, the conception, design, and construction of the entire Pentagon building took a total of 15 months.

4

The same person oversaw its construction and the Manhattan Project

Colonel Leslie Groves of the Army Corps of Engineers took charge of Pentagon construction in August 1941. He worked six days a week and drove his team relentlessly, at one point employing more than 15,000 workers around the clock.

When the Pentagon was finished in January 1943, Groves was assigned to lead the Manhattan Project, America’s secret program to build the atomic bomb . His deputy, Captain Robert Furman, followed him into the Manhattan Project as chief of foreign intelligence. Together, the men who built the world’s largest office building went on to produce the weapon that ended World War II.

5

Why is it shaped like that?

The Pentagon’s iconic five-sided shape was the consequence of a geographic accident. The original site selected for the building, near Arlington Cemetery, **happened to be bordered on five sides by roads. **Architects designed the structure to fit those boundaries, producing a pentagonal floor plan. Then President Franklin D. Roosevelt intervened: worried the massive building would obstruct the view of Washington, D.C. from Arlington, he ordered the site moved to its current location along the Potomac River. But the five-sided design had already been drawn up, and nobody changed it.

6

It was the first desegregated building in Virginia

When the Pentagon was designed in 1941, segregation was the law in Virginia. Original plans called for doubled bathroom facilities: separate ones for Black and white employees, as required by Virginia statute. But President Roosevelt had signed Executive Order 8802 in June 1941, prohibiting racial discrimination in federal employment and government contracting.

As a federal building, the Pentagon was exempt from Virginia law. It became the only building in the state where segregation was not enforced. A fully desegregated federal workplace that opened in 1943. The doubled bathrooms were built anyway, as the plans were too far along to revise, but were never used as separately designated spaces.

7

Its construction was surprisingly frugal and incredibly fast

Ground broke on September 11, 1941, and construction finished on January 15, 1943, just 16 months later. More than 15,000 workers were on site around the clock. Wartime office shortages were so severe that employees moved into completed wings before the rest of the building was finished. Steel was too scarce to use extensively, so builders relied almost entirely on reinforced concrete. The 689,000 tons of sand and gravel required came directly from the nearby Potomac River, cutting transportation costs. The project was budgeted at $35 million, but the final bill was $63 million, which would translate to over $900 million in today’s dollars.

8

You can walk between its farthest points in only 7 minutes

The Pentagon is the world’s largest low-rise office building: 6.5 million square feet of space, which is three times the total floor area of the Empire State Building. Each of its five outer walls is 921 feet long. It has 7,754 windows and 17.5 miles of corridors. Approximately 26,000 military and civilian employees report for work there every day.

Despite that scale, the building’s concentric ring design is so efficient that it takes only about seven minutes to walk between its two farthest points.

9

The man who secretly lived inside its walls

During construction, Colonel Groves drove his deputy, Captain Robert Furman, so relentlessly that Furman rarely left the building. To cope, Furman had contractors build him a small, windowless apartment hidden inside the walls of the Army’s Ordnance Division. In this private room, he could sleep and shower without leaving the premises.

When construction ended and personnel dispersed, knowledge of the hidden room was never passed on to building management. Months later, when Furman returned to Washington on Manhattan Project intelligence business, he found the apartment undiscovered and exactly as he’d left it.

For over a year, he would slip back to the Pentagon, pop open a wall panel, spend the night, and emerge in the morning with his suitcase. He was finally caught in 1943 and forced to surrender the keys. It was never disclosed whether the secret apartment was maintained or eventually absorbed back into the official floor plans.

10

It houses over 30 restaurants, including everyone's favorite chains

The Pentagon feeds roughly 26,000 people a day, and its dining options read less like a military headquarters and more like a mall food court. The main Concourse Food Court, which opened in September 2009 and seats 875 people, is the largest of several dining areas.

Confirmed chains currently inside the building include McDonald’s, Five Guys, Subway, Popeyes, Starbucks (multiple locations), Dunkin’ (two locations), Panera Bread, Taco Bell, Panda Express, Baskin-Robbins, Potbelly, Jamba Juice, and Moe’s Southwest Grill, among others. The building also houses a CVS pharmacy, a florist, a jeweler, and a dry cleaner. In the summer of 2024, Potbelly became the first restaurant to open in the center courtyard. Yes, the very spot where the legendary Cold War hot dog stand once stood.