The cast and crew of 1976’s The Omen started having bizarre experiences before shooting was even underway. To begin with, Gregory Peck, who’d lost his son to suicide four months prior to filming the movie, flew to London to prepare for his role in September 1975, only to have his plane get struck by lightning. Planes carrying executive producer Mace Neufeld and screenwriter David Seltzer were also reportedly struck at different points. To make matters weirder, the producer of the movie, Harvey Bernhard, narrowly avoided a lightning strike of his own while on location in Rome.

As if that all wasn’t bad enough, a plane that director Richard Donner planned to use for aerial shots over London ended up crashing after running into a flock of birds. Six people were killed in the process, but that wasn’t the strangest part. The plane was said to have landed on top of a car that was parked on the runway. Sadly, inside the vehicle were the wife and children of one of the airfield’s pilots. 

The Making of ‘The Omen’ Was Even More Terrifying Than the Movie Itself

That brings us to Sidney Bamford, an animal expert who worked at the Windsor Safari Park where the famous baboon scene was shot. Bamford helped out with a sequence filmed in the big cat enclosure that was cut from the final version of the movie. Unfortunately, the day production moved away from the park, Bamford was mauled to death by a tiger. The animal had evidently caught Bamford by surprise and grabbed him by the head; by the time a fellow ranger was able to intervene, it was already too late.

Perhaps the eeriest tragedy to befall someone associated with the film involved special effects coordinator John Richardson’s girlfriend, Liz Moore. Richardson, it should be noted, helped stage the unforgettable decapitation scene in the movie. Months later, while working on A Bridge Too Far in the Netherlands, the two got into a bad car accident that resulted in Moore being decapitated. Richardson recalled spotting a sign that indicated they were 66.6 kilometers away from the city of Ommen at the time.

If you add in the fact that the IRA bombings going on in London nearly cost crew members their lives on three separate occasions, it should come as no surprise that people still think The Omen was a cursed production.

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A lot of artists have been quietly pivoting to country over the last few years. With the success of records like “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” and “Choosin Texas” absolutely dominating the Billboard charts, certain musicians have decided to experiment in the Nashville industry. Ne-Yo made the transition, the Jonas Brothers have teased it, BigXThaPlug had an entire album filled with crossovers in the genre. Now, evidently, we can add Boyz II Men to the list.

In an interview with The Tennessean, Shawn Stockman revealed that the group signed a deal with Warner Brothers Nashville as part of their foray into country. With their deal, they announced the release of their first album in 10 years.

According to Stockman, the rest of Boyz II Men have been interested in taking a stab at making country music for years. With their latest record deal, it opened up the opportunity to finally pursue it. “We love the genre so much, and at this point in our career we felt like it was the perfect time to dip our toes,” Stockman told the publication.

“We’ve always been enamored with the storytelling component of country music and how they actually put those stories to melody. Again, it was a learning experience. That is what we like. We have been in this business for three decades, but we’ll forever be students of music and we’ll always be open to learn and to appreciate different styles.”

Boyz II Men Turn Into ‘Cowboyz II Men’ With New Country Album in 2027

Nathan Morris from the group felt like country music was already familiar territory for the group. Despite some of the sounds being a bit different, the core of their melodies and their love songs are very similar. So Boyz II Men never felt too out of place trying out country in a way that felt authentic.

“We’ve reached our tentacles out over many years and dabbled in other types of music, but R&B is the root of who we are. And I think that’s why it’s so easy for us to fall in love with country music because the melodies are similar. The meanings are similar. The feelings are similar. So, it’s almost like we feel at home doing it,” Nathan Morris explained.

Additionally, Shawn Stockman felt like their label actually understood what Boyz II Men wanted. Consequently, he said the recording process has been a breeze, similar to the liberty they felt early in their careers.

“They understood it. There’s nothing better than doing a project with people who understand you and that get it,” he emphasized. “It’s so reminiscent of the days that we started.”

Photo by Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images

The post One of R&B’s Most Iconic Groups Is Releasing a New Album… And It’s Country?! appeared first on vice.

As you get older, your body gets weirder, malfunctioning in some awfully creative, uniquely torturous ways, like how those with a prostate will have to wake up a few times a night to dribble out an obnoxiously small amount of pee. This is because the prostate commonly enlarges in men as they age, though why it does so when cancer isn’t involved has been a little bit of a mystery.

A research team from Johns Hopkins University, publishing their findings in the Journal of Pathology, may have found an answer.

Doctors knew that benign prostatic hyperplasia starts in one specific part of the organ: the transition area around the urethra. Why that tiny ring of tissue suddenly started pumping out extra cells out of nowhere while the rest of the gland kept on doing its thing wasn’t well understood.

By running single-cell RNA sequencing on around 130,000 individual prostate cells, the researchers discovered a brand-new subtype of basal epithelial cells called WIF1+ (which, written out, looks like an improved form of Wi-Fi), and it’s that cell that might be why you have to bleary-eyed shuffle to the bathroom at one, three, and five in the morning.

Your Prostate’s WIF1+ Cells Are Betraying You

The prostate is broken up into several distinct areas, but these WIF1+ cells are holed up almost exclusively in the transition zone. Tissue samples taken from men with enlarged prostates showed a huge surge in these cells, promoting tissue growth and cellular remodeling that puts your urethra in a chokehold, thus explaining why only a little bit of pee comes out at a time.

As obnoxious as that sounds, that might be why the transition zone rarely gets hit with prostate cancer, as these cells might actively dampen local inflammation and tweak specific growth signaling pathways.

There’s some more research to be done to prove direct causation, but if this finding proves true, it will go a long way in identifying a clear target for future drug therapies, thus giving a glimmer of hope to men who just want to sleep without having to drain a leaky hose a few times a night.

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