Imagine swimming along and this guy just chompin’ on you.
The South Carolina Department of Natural Resources is a government agency that is in charge of things like hunting, boating, fishing, and conservation in the Palmetto State. It also has a pretty neat Facebook page!
No, I didn't photoshop a human mouth on a fish. This is a real fish with teeth like a human's. The agency posted it and invited Facebook readers to guess what kind of fish it is. It went viral because, I mean, look at it.
South Carolina Department of Natural Resources
"You’ll need a saltwater fishing license to catch me! I like to hang out near rocks, jetties, reefs, and even bridges. I’m also known as the convict fish because of my black and white stripes. The coolest thing about me? I have human-like incisors and molars to help crush my food. I like shrimp and oysters just like you do!" the agency wrote on its Facebook page.
"Coolest" is relative, I suppose!!!
People naturally had a lot of comments.
Facebook
Say what, Brenda?!?
Facebook
Drag her, Grace.
Facebook
Many people guessed correctly, though. A spokesperson for the agency, David Lucas, confirmed to BuzzFeed News the fish is called a sheepshead. Here's a YouTube video of the fish and its chompers in action.
"[The fish is] very common in the waters off our coast, and a favorite of saltwater anglers here in South Carolina," Lucas said. "Other folks less familiar with this fish are probably quite surprised to see the teeth it sports."
Lucas gave kudos to Pam Corwin, a biologist and member of the agency's Freshwater Fisheries Section staff, for writing their viral post.
"Of course it’s great when any of our social media posts get wider reach – we are always interested in communicating with folks about our state’s outstanding natural resources and our agency’s role in managing and conserving them," he said.
Three black artists who police in Rialto, California detained as they left an Airbnb rental in a predominately white neighborhood demanded on Thursday a criminal investigation into the white neighbor who called the cops on them.
"There was an individual that placed this racist call with false allegations to the Rialto Police Department on April 30th. And we want her held accountable," said attorney Jasmine Rand, who along with Benjamin Crump, is representing the three women.
Activist and artist Donisha Prendergast — the eldest granddaughter of reggae legend Bob Marley — filmmaker Kelly Fyffe-Marshall and Afrofuturist artist Komi-Oluwa Olafimihan attended the Kaya Festival in nearby San Bernardino and stayed at an Airbnb for two nights, along with a white photographer friend.
As the four left on April 30, a neighbor called the police and reported a suspected robbery, after they didn't wave hello at her as they placed their suitcases in their car. The identity of the neighbor is not public.
Police cars and a helicopter responded, Rand said. She said police told her clients a neighbor had reported three black people acting suspiciously.
Police detained them for 20 to 45 minutes, the lawyers said.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday in Harlem, Fyffe-Marshall recounted how they showed police their Airbnb booking and messages with the host on the app — which showed the address of the home — and that police wouldn't believe them.
Even when the Airbnb host was called and speaking to police on the phone, police doubted her identity.
Video posted by Fyffe-Marshall to Instagram shows a police officer telling them that someone reported "there's three black people stealing stuff."
Fyffe-Marshall also said at the news conference that they were the part of a wave of high-profile stories involving white people calling the police on black people for doing everyday things — and that it was time they were held accountable.
Prendergast had been a guest speaker at the Kaya festival, which also included performances by Lauryn Hill, Ziggy Marley and Damien Marley.
Despite news reports the three are suing the Rialto Police Department, their attorneys said they had not yet filed a lawsuit but instead requested all the evidence, body camera footage, and information available about the incident.
Rand and Crump are known for their representation of high-profile civil rights cases, including the families of Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice.
Police didn't respond to a request for comment on if they are pursuing the neighbor who made the call. In its press release about the event, it applauded the actions of its officers.
"In this matter, officers followed departmental policies and producers in handling this reported in-progress residential burglar call and we are very appreciate of the cooperation shown by its residents and visitors," it read.
"I applaud her for that. I went over to her home after I got home from work and thanked her," she said.
"If the kids had simply smiled at (my neighbor) and waved back and acknowledged her and said, 'We're just Airbnb guests checking out,' none of this would have ever happened," she said. "But instead, they were rude, unkind, not polite."
The trio's lawyer vehemently disagreed during on Thursday's press conference.
"We don't want to live in an America where black people are forced to smile at white people to preserve their lives," Rand said.
A police department in North Carolina is investigating after one of its police officers was caught on video choking and slamming a man wearing a tuxedo to the ground after he'd attended his sister's prom.
In the video posted to Facebook on May 8th — its been viewed nearly 500,000 times — a white police officer can be seen choking 22-year-old Anthony Wall then slamming him to the ground.
"Get your hands off of me," Wall, who in the beginning of the video had his hands in the air, can be heard shouting.
"Get your supervisor out here and get your hands off of me," Wall continues to scream after he is pinned on the ground with the officer's left hand on Wall's head.
"Put you hand behind your back," the officer, who has not been identified, can be heard saying.
Wall had accompanied his sister to a prom on Saturday, May 5th, and had gone to the Waffle House afterwards to eat. The Warsaw Police Department, a town an hour outside of Raleigh, were called after Wall argued with the staff at the Waffle House.
Another cell phone video, shown on local news channel ABC11, shows an agitated Wall shouting at the staff of the Waffle House before police arrived. Wall said he's responsible for his actions at the Waffle House but said the actions of the police officer were not justified.
"I was pretty much trying to scream for air and trying to breathe because he was holding my throat and that's when I got aggressive with him because you are choking me," Wall told the television station.
Warsaw Police Chief Eric Southerland told The News & Observer that the incident is being investigated. "We are aware of the video and currently working on an investigation, following up based on the video posted, doing interviews, gathering video evidence," Southerland said.
"It's not what you're trained to do in incidents like this but when you're dealing with someone fighting and resisting against an officer, you try to use proper tactics and go for one move, but that might not work because that person is moving or the officer is moving," Southerland said when asked if the officer's actions were in accordance with training guidelines.
"In real versus training situations, moves don't always work out like you want them to," Southerland said.
Wall was arrested for resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.
A spokesperson for the Waffle House said, "We are looking into the incident that occurred at our Warsaw, NC, restaurant to gather all the facts. Initial reports say the customer became agitated, and the police were called."
BuzzFeed News has reached out to Wall, the Warsaw Police Department, and the Waffle House for comment.
“This decision was made in the best interest of our students and was made to be as inclusive as possible,” the superintendent said. However, current cheerleaders feel like it’s devaluing their hard work.
A high school in New Jersey caused a lot of drama after it instated a rule that would allow anyone interested in trying out for a top-tier cheerleading team to make the team.
The new policy was reportedly instituted after a parent of a student who did not make the cut had complained about their "selection process."
Hanover Park High School in East Hanover decided to suspend its scoring system for cheerleading try-outs and allow anyone in 11th and 12th grades to automatically make the higher-level team. Underclassmen will be put on a lower-level team.
They're also condensing three competency-level cheer teams into two — now based only on a student's grade level.
The teams had previously been selected based on skill after a rigorous cheerleading audition where students were scored on things like tumbling and choreography.
In a statement provided to BuzzFeed News, Hanover High School superintendent Carol Grossi said these changes were made after a "discrepancy was reported concerning the selection of the three varsity cheerleading squads."
Several students told CBS2 it was a parent of a student who was placed on a lower-level squad who had made the complaint and reported the "discrepancy" to the school.
That complaint led Hanover Park High School to launch an investigation into the cheerleading scoring and try-out process.
The school "discovered...an irregularity" with this process, they said, "which called into question the validity of the results."
In a letter to parents and students, school district officials explained that after only six students achieved the cut-off score for the top team under the initial scoring system, the cut-off score was then arbitrarily lowered so that five more could join the squad.
Yet other students still missed out, so school officials decided a more inclusive policy was more in-line with their values.
The high school principal then decided that for the 2018-2019 school year, their three skill-level squads will be condensed into two general squads based only on a student's grade.
"Our goal in doing so was to include more opportunities for those who want to be on the squad. We had a shortage of members on the team, so our goal was to get more participants onto the team for a full squad," Superintendent Gross told BuzzFeed News.
The decision has pissed off many current cheerleaders and their parents — especially those who've been training rigorously to make the elite top team. Last week, a group of them showed up at a school board meeting to push back.
According to News 12 New Jersey, 10 cheerleaders addressed the board of education in a meeting last Wednesday.
“I came up here to state that I did not put in 18 months of work to lead up to this moment, just to be told it didn’t matter anymore,” a sophomore named Jada Alcontara said.
Another student agreed, saying that the decision from the school had undermined her hard work.
“I tried my hardest. Now everything is going away because of one child who did not make the team," Stephanie Krueger addressed the board. "Their parent complained so now all my hard work has been thrown out the window."
On Facebook, critics are flooding the school's page with comments about the policy breeding "fragile snowflakes" and not teaching kids to "accept failure and move on."
"Moving forward, next year we will be releasing the new designations along with the clear scoring process prior to holding tryouts to clarify the requirements for varsity and junior varsity squads," she said.
"All guidelines will be clearly identified for all processes moving forward."
"This decision was made in the best interest of our students and was made to be as inclusive as possible," Grossi added.
When a white graduate student at Yale came upon a black graduate student asleep in a common area of the school early Tuesday morning, she called the police — telling them the student didn't have a right to be there.
After a 17-minute interaction with the officers who answered the call — which the student, Lolade Siyonbola, recorded on video and posted to Facebook — the police determined the student had done nothing wrong and had every right to have fallen asleep on the common room couch.
On Wednesday evening, Yale's Vice President for Student Life Kimberly Goff-Crews wrote in an email to all graduate students that she was "troubled" by the incident and that she would be holding listening sessions with the school community.
"We remain committed to quickly and appropriately addressing issues of racism and bias on campus," she wrote.
"The Yale police officers who responded spoke with both parties and subsequently admonished the complaining student that the other student had every right to be present," Goff-Crews added.
Siyonbola, 34, who is working towards a Master's degree in African studies, told The New York Times she was working on a "marathon of papers" and had fallen asleep.
In a second video, the white student can be heard saying, "I have every right to call the police. You cannot sleep in that room.”
When the officers arrive, one tells Siyonbola, "We need to make sure that you belong here," and asks for identification.
While verifying her identity, at one point, Siyonbola says, "I am not going to justify my existence here.”
Yale spokesperson Tom Conroy said in a statement Wednesday that the university believes "the Yale police who responded followed procedures.”
“As we do with every incident, we will be reviewing the call and the response of the police officers to ensure that the proper protocol was followed and to determine if there was anything we could have done better," he said.
Christopher Capozziello / Getty Images
According to a university spokesperson, the reason it took longer than usual for the student’s identification card to be verified was because the name on her card was her preferred name (which students are permitted to use) and did not exactly match her name in the university records.
The spokesperson said officers are trained "on unconscious bias, de-escalation techniques, and problem solving, and seek to treat each individual with respect."
In emails to the Yale student body following the incident, the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies wrote that the incident "remind[s] us of the continued work needed to make Yale a truly inclusive place," and that she is "committed to redoubling our efforts to build a supportive community in which all graduate students are empowered in their intellectual pursuits and professional goals within a welcoming environment."
On Facebook, Siyonbola thanked people for the outpouring of support.
"Black Yale community is beyond incredible and is taking good care of me,” she wrote. “I know this incident is a drop in the bucket of trauma Black folk have endured since Day 1 America, and you all have stories.”
BuzzFeed News has reached out to Siyonbola and the student who called the police and will update with any comment.
You can read the emails from administrators to students in full below. The first was sent Tuesday, the second on Wednesday.
Dear Graduate Students,
I write to you about an incident that occurred last evening in the Hall of Graduate Studies. A resident of HGS called the Yale police to report that there was an unauthorized person in the Common Room. The police responded and confirmed the student was in fact a resident of HGS and had every right to be there.
Incidents like that of last night remind us of the continued work needed to make Yale a truly inclusive place. I am committed to redoubling our efforts to build a supportive community in which all graduate students are empowered in their intellectual pursuits and professional goals within a welcoming environment. An essential part of that effort must be a commitment to mutual respect and an open dialog.
Please feel free to contact me with any concerns or comments.
Yours,
Lynn Cooley, Ph.D.
Dean, Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
C.N.H. Long Professor of Genetics
Professor of Cell Biology and MCDB
Message from Vice President for Student Life, Kimberly Goff-Crews:
Dear Yale students,
I am deeply troubled by an incident that took place Monday night in the Hall of Graduate Studies. One graduate student called the police to report another student in the common area, who had every right to be there. The Yale police officers who responded spoke with both parties and subsequently admonished the complaining student that the other student had every right to be present.
As Vice President for Student Life, I have worked with administrators, faculty and students to strengthen the resources available to address incidents of racial bias, discrimination and harassment. This incident and others recently reported to me underscore that we have work to do to make Yale not only excellent but also inclusive. I strongly believe we must strive to create an environment that values equity and justice and in which all students are empowered to pursue their personal and professional goals – an environment that is diverse, intellectually challenging, and broadly welcoming. Over the last 48 hours, I have been in discussion with Dean Lynn Cooley, Chief Ronnell Higgins, and other university staff, including Yale police, to better understand what exactly happened at HGS on Monday night, and how we can work together to avoid such incidents in the future.
We still have so much more to do.
As a step in the process, Chief Higgins, Dean Cooley and I will hold listening sessions with students in the coming days and months. In addition, the university will continue to implement the initiatives we announced a year ago, including the appointment and training of dean’s designees in each school to address student concerns about equal opportunity, diversity and inclusion, and discrimination and harassment. This past year, we also launched a comprehensive website and adopted a discrimination and harassment reporting protocol using the Bulldog Mobile (LiveSafe) app and have been looking at ways to make this more accessible. As already planned, we will share this tool more broadly with students and clarify the reporting process. Over the summer, I will work with administrators and student leaders to review and strategize around suggestions that we have received from faculty, staff, and students, especially with regard to improving the university’s response to incidents of discrimination and harassment. We remain committed to quickly and appropriately addressing issues of racism and bias on campus. As always, we welcome your ideas and feedback on how we can improve our community together.
All of us in senior leadership recognize that incidents such as this one are being framed within a difficult national context. I want to underscore our commitment to carry out our mission as a university in an ethical, interdependent, and diverse community of faculty, staff, students, and alumni, where all are respected.
The Federal Election Commission on Thursday gave a female candidate running for Congress the green light to use portions of her campaign funds to pay for childcare.
Liuba Grechen Shirley, a New York mother of two young children running for Congress on Long Island, pays $22 an hour for a babysitter to take care of her toddlers for about 20 hours per week.
Las month she petitioned the FEC, asking for permission to use campaign funds to pay for childcare, citing two cases from 1995 and 2008 where male candidates asked to use campaign funds to pay for certain childcare expenses in more limited circumstances.
In her letter to the FEC, Grechen Shirley wrote that prior to running for Congress, she worked from home as a consultant and was able to care for her three-year-old daughter, Mila, and two-year-old son, Nicholas, full time.
When she decided to run, she says she had to hire a part-time babysitter so she could focus on the campaign.
"As the primary election approaches, I expect to need full-time care for my children, along with additional support on evenings and weekends, so that I can devote the time necessary to run a successful campaign," she wrote in her letter.
The FEC's ruling applies to future candidates who, like Grechen Shirley, incur childcare costs as a result of running for office.
"The Commission concludes that your authorized campaign committee may use campaign funds to pay for the childcare expenses described in your request because such expenses would not exist irrespective of your candidacy," the FEC wrote in its ruling.
Grechen Shirley released a statement Thursday saying she's proud to be the first woman to spend campaign funds on childcare, adding that she hopes the decision inspires other women across the country to run for office.
"There’s a reason more than half of Congressmembers are millionaires: running for office takes a huge toll on a family’s budget, especially while raising children," she said in a statement. "This groundbreaking decision will remove a major financial obstacle for working families and mothers at a time when women are increasingly considering elected office."
Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had previously sent a letter to the FEC in support of Grechen Shirley's request, writing that if the FEC denies the request it would discourage young mothers from running for office.
"Young women like Ms. Shirley are now running for office in record-breaking numbers ... Under a plain reading of the law, as applied to Ms. Shirley's facts, the answer to her question can only be 'yes,'" Clinton wrote in the letter.
Grechen Shirley also had the support of 24 members of Congress who submitted a letter to the FEC, saying "as we work to build a political environment that is fair to candidates of all backgrounds, the Commission has a role to play in fairly enforcing and administering federal campaign finance laws."
Puerto Rican students who were accepted into an NYU program for Hurricane Maria survivors are asking the school to extend their stay for one more semester because they're frustrated with the island's slow pace of storm recovery and are concerned about the economic instability they'd return to.
"Long story short, the crisis isn’t over. They're saying that this program was an emergency response to the disaster that my institution was facing. It's not a past tense thing, it's very present," Amanda Conyers-Godreau, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Puerto Rico, Cayey.
The Hurricane Maria Assistance Program (HMAP) was open to students at several colleges in Puerto Rico, giving them an opportunity to study at NYU for the spring semester in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria's widespread destruction. They paid tuition at their home institutions and NYU provided housing, food, health insurance, and $200 credit at the university bookstore.
At least three other universities, Tulane, Cornell, and Brown offered similar programs during the spring semester.
The program expires when the semester finishes in the coming weeks — students are expected to return home when their classes and exams finish. But 25 students in NYU's program say that conditions are still so unstable at home that they're not sure they'll be able to continue with their studies if they have to go back for the coming semester.
"The HMAP program was established in order for us to continue our studies while our home institutions, and country, recovered from the destruction witnessed by the world after the passing of Hurricane María," the students wrote in a letter to NYU president Andrew Hamilton on April 27.
"The efforts to rebuild our Puerto Rico have been superficial at best and neglectful at worst."
"Like you," they continued, "we hoped our country and home institutions would have returned to their pre-natural-disaster state by this time. Unfortunately, the efforts to rebuild our Puerto Rico have been superficial at best and neglectful at worst."
While most universities on the island are now open and operating at some capacity, the students say going back to the frequent power outages, coming hurricane season, and economic turmoil on the island is daunting.
"We humbly request that you consider the reality under which HMAP was first conceptualized, compare it to the one we face today, and then consider our proposal to extend the program from its original one-semester plan to a two-semester plan," they wrote in the letter.
Another student who signed the letter, Carlos Gabriel Matos, is a 20-year-old electrical engineering major and sophomore at the University of Puerto Rico Mayagüez, on the island's west coast. He said he's had severe anxiety since living through the hurricane and the power and water outages that followed. He couldn't contact his family for days after the storm, and spent months afterwards trying to care for his mother and grandmother who both had medical emergencies.
"It was a chain reaction which kind of has left me unstable. When I came here I left my university but my studies were already affected because of my anxiety, I had to drop two out of four topics," he said, adding that seeing a counsellor and being in a stable environment at NYU has helped him work through some of that. "I am going back only because I don't have a choice."
Hamilton, NYU's president, wrote back to the students on May 2, denying their request. Still, the students are hoping the school will change its policy.
In his letter, Hamilton said NYU had heard from some of the students' home institutions that they would not support extending the program, and that it "was always intended to be an emergency response, for a single semester."
"NYU’s program, like our fellow universities’ initiatives, was launched in hopes of making it possible for you to continue to pursue your degree in the face of curricular interruptions back home, and in hopes of making it easier for campuses in Puerto Rico to reopen. In particular, we strove to structure HMAP so as to minimize any unintended ill effects to your home institutions in Puerto Rico," Hamilton wrote.
"Based on our conversations with representatives from schools in Puerto Rico, we believe that extending our program would in fact cause harm to their own recovery efforts, and we know they are relying on each of you to play an important role in that work," he wrote.
NYU declined to comment when BuzzFeed News asked how much the program cost.
There were 57 Puerto Rican students in total accepted into NYU's HMAP program, according to NYU, out of which more than 40 were students from the University of Puerto Rico system, the largest group of public universities on the island.
The University of Puerto Rico, which has 11 campuses, sustained around $132 million worth of damage in total from Hurricanes Maria and Irma, according to the UPR 2018 Fiscal Plan. Total enrollment at UPR dropped from 61,748 in the 2017 financial year to 58,402 in the 2018 financial year.
University of Puerto Rico officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Josh Taylor, associate vice chancellor of Global Programs at NYU, oversaw the program. He told BuzzFeed News on Monday that students were welcome to apply for a transfer to NYU if they wanted to, but said the school is also wary of poaching high-achieving students from Puerto Rican universities.
"If they have applied [for a transfer], got in and are able to make it work financially and logistically then that would be one option," he said.
Conyers-Godreau said she's applied to transfer to NYU, but she thinks the financial burden would be too much, even if she receives some aid from the school.
Amanda Conyers-Godreau
"It's very clear to me that the financial aid that I would need to get is nowhere near the amount that I would need so I would be in considerable debt," she said. She has also applied to Parsons, the University of Southern Florida, and the Savanah College of Art and Design.
The students say they're not sure if they will be able to continue their studies when they go back home, between trying to support themselves through college during an economic crisis and the still-unstable infrastructure of the island.
"When I get back home I don’t know what will happen," said Priscilla Malavet, 21, a journalism student and junior at UPR Rio Piedras in San Juan. "I’m in the honors program, and we have to take certain classes to complete a thesis. I think I have to drop out of being an honors student because doing classes and a thesis I cannot pay for it. It’s not just my classes, it’s paying for gas, electricity, apartment, water, it’s a lot of things you have to do."
Priscilla Malavet
She said she'll try to finish her degree as soon as possible and then apply for a graduate degree or a job somewhere outside Puerto Rico. She's still reeling from the stressful situation she left behind. The retail store she worked at closed for a month and a half, cutting off her income. And when she went back she was working close to 40 hours per week to try to make up for the loss of income while also juggling six classes.
"I would literally get to my job, close the door and cry a little bit, then go out and start working," she said.
On top of Puerto Rico's struggle to permanently fix the electric grid, the University of Puerto Rico is facing a turbulent period financially: as part of the Puerto Rican government's attempt to manage the debt crisis, public universities will raise tuition significantly. For undergraduate students, the cost of one credit will rise from $57 to $115 in the coming year, and will continue rising to $157 per credit by 2023.
Angela Elliston
In March last year, a strike protesting the changes shut down University of Puerto Rico schools for several months. The federally-appointed Financial Oversight and Management Board, tasked with overseeing the island's financial affairs during the debt crisis, approved the tuition increases in April. Students say there's already talk of more potentially debilitating protests at the campuses they're returning to.
"NYU has resources that right now the UPR system doesn’t have and what’s happening now with the rising tuition just to assuage the debt, we’re going to have the same terrible infrastructure, we’re not going to have more classes, or more professors," said Malavet.
For Angela Elliston, 20, a junior studying art history and creative writing at UPR Rio Piedras, the past few months at NYU gave her a sense of security, which she's worried will be hard to find back home in Puerto Rico right now.
"It felt like stability for the first time in a long time. Because after the hurricane I just didn’t know what was going to happen with my future, everything was just a mess," she said. "It's funny but even having homework was such a relief, I felt like I was back on track."
A South Carolina man was charged in a murder-for-hire plot for allegedly trying to enlist the help of a white supremacist to have his black neighbor killed.
Brandon Cory Lecroy, 25, contacted a white supremacist extremist organization in March offering $500 to have his neighbor killed and hung from a tree, according to a criminal complaint. Unwittingly speaking to an undercover FBI agent, Lecroy allegedly requested a "flaming cross" also be put in the neighbor's front yard.
"$500 and he's a ghost," Lecroy told the undercover agent, according to the complaint.
Lecroy then texted the agent photos of his neighbors and two days later confirmed the arrangement in a telephone conversation, while also providing the agent with additional information, including the best time to kill his neighbor, according to the FBI.
Lecroy also allegedly told the agent he has more jobs for him in the future.
On April 9, Lecroy met with the undercover agent in Greenwood, South Carolina, and gave him a $100 deposit, "with acknowledgement that this payment was for the murder of his neighbor," according to the criminal complaint.
He was arrested and charged with solicitation to commit a crime of violence. A judge ordered Lecroy to undergo a mental health evaluation.
He faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
“I didn’t really see anything sacrilegious,” said Cardinal Timothy Dolan. He also joked he lent Rihanna his hat.
As you may know, the annual Met Gala took place this Monday in New York City, and celebrities from all over the world hit the red carpet, donning their best take on the theme "Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination."
Noam Galai / Getty Images
The affair was inspired by a new fashion exhibit at the museum called "Heavenly Bodies," which featured artifacts loaned out by the Vatican. Rihanna was there, wearing an impressive pope-inspired outfit, miter and all.
Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images
As well as Solange Knowles, sporting a halo.
Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images
And Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman was wearing some gold crucifixes.
Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images
Well, the Met Gala has found another unlikely defender: Cardinal Timothy Dolan, head of New York Catholic Archdiocese.
Jemal Countess / Getty Images
"There were some aspects that looked like kind of a masquerade party, a Halloween party," Dolan told SiriusXM’s The Catholic Channel about the event, which he also attended.
"I didn’t really see anything sacrilegious. I may have seen some things in poor taste, but I didn’t detect anybody out to offend the church," he said.
Dolan also said that although he was at first "apprehensive" about attending the gathering, he was assured by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, who organized the event, that outfits deemed too provocative would not be permitted.
According to Dolan, a priest was able to review outfits and ask that certain things "not make the cut" and Wintour obliged.
"So I appreciated their sensitivity," he said.
BuzzFeed News has reached out to Dolan for comment.
Jemal Countess / Getty Images
Dolan also joked during the interview that Rihanna borrowed the headpiece typically worn by bishops from him. "She gave it back to me this morning," he said with a laugh. "She was very gracious.”
(The cardinal didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but the archdiocese told America Magazine he was indeed joking).
Jamie Mccarthy / Getty Images
Overall, Dolan says he appreciated the reception he got from celebs over the course of the night. “A number of people came up and spoke about their Catholic upbringing and things they remembered and it was a powerful evening," he said.
The 36-year-old musician has not been seen since leaving a hotel in South Queensferry, Scotland, at 1 a.m. Wednesday and is now thought to be in Edinburgh, according to the BBC.
His family reported him missing to the police, who are now reportedly searching for him.
"Be so good to everyone you love," Hutchison wrote. "It’s not a given. I’m so annoyed that it’s not. I didn’t live by that standard and it kills me. Please, hug your loved ones."
About 20 minutes later, he tweeted, "I'm away now. Thanks."
Inspector Graeme Dignan of the Scotland Police told the BBC they "are keen to locate Scott as soon as possible to ensure he is safe and well and would urge anyone who can assist with our ongoing inquiries to come forward."
"If you believe you have seen him since the early hours of Wednesday morning or know where he currently is, then please contact police immediately," Dignan said. "I'd also urge Scott to get in touch with family, friends or with police, to let us know he is alright."
Frightened Rabbit formed in 2003, and features Hutchison alongside his brother, Grant, on drums.
Mark Metcalfe / Getty Images
The band has released five albums, with the most recent one, Painting Of A Panic Attack, coming out in 2016.
In February, they embarked on a tour to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of their 2008 album Midnight Organ Fight,.
The owner of a coffee shop at Duke University has apologized for firing two employees for playing a hip hop song after a school official complained.
"We would welcome their return to the company," Robbie Roberts, who owns the popular North Carolina coffee chain Joe Van Gogh, told BuzzFeed News.
The issue arose when Larry Moneta, Duke University's vice president of student affairs, came into the campus Joe Van Gogh cafe on Friday for his regular tea and vegan muffin. Young Dolph's "Get Paid" was playing on the speakers, a track from a Spotify playlist chosen by Britni Brown, who worked on the register.
Moneta told Brown the lyrics of "Get Paid"— which include "get paid, young nigga, get paid" and "I fucked her so good, she got up and started cooking" — were "inappropriate," according to the Indy Week.
Brown quickly turned the music off and apologized, and offered Moneta his muffin for free, which he declined.
Shortly after Moneta left the store, her boss Robbie Roberts called her and said another university official, Robert Coffey, the executive director of dining services, had called him to pass on Moneta's complaint.
On Monday, both Brown and Kevin Simmons, who was working as a barista at the time of the incident, were fired.
A human resources representative for the coffee shop told Brown and Simmons that Duke University "has instructed us to terminate the employees that were working that day," according to Indy Week, who obtained a recording of the meeting.
"We had gotten a call from Robert Coffey of Duke saying that the VP of the university had come into the shop and that there was vulgar music playing," HR rep Amanda Wiley said, Indy Week reported. "Joe Van Gogh is contracted by Duke University, so we essentially work for them. And they can shut us down at any point."
Monata, Coffey, and Duke University did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment.
On Wednesday morning, Roberts released a statement apologizing for how the company handled the situation while also welcoming the terminated staffers to return. He also noted that Duke was not to blame for the firings.
"We attempted to understand Duke’s position in this case, but we should have taken a different approach in making personnel decisions," Roberts said.
"As the owner of the business, I take full responsibility for Joe Van Gogh’s actions. I apologize to all of the people directly involved and those who have been touched or offended, of which there are many. We are taking steps to remedy this matter, but all company personnel issues are private and will remain private."
Brown did not respond to questions about whether she planned to return to her old job. Simmons could not be reached.
The president of Nordstrom Rack personally apologized to three black teenagers on Tuesday after they were falsely accused of shoplifting last week at a Nordstrom Rack outlet in St. Louis, Missouri.
Mekhi Lee, a 19-year-old freshman at Alabama A&M University, told BuzzFeed News that he, along with two of his friends — Dirone Taylor, 18, and Eric Rogers, 18 — visited the Nordstrom Rack outlet to buy after prom outfits.
Within five minutes they were "racially profiled" as two store employees followed the three young men around the store, Lee said.
"Wherever we went, they went. Whenever we looked up, they looked up," he said.
The three men decided to buy something to prove to the suspicious employees that they were not shoplifting. But as they exited the store and walked towards their car, three officers with the Brentwood police department approached them, Lee said.
The police told the three men that the store had accused them of theft and read out a list of items that they had been accused of stealing, according to Lee.
After the teens explained what had happened and showed the officers the receipt for their purchase, the police let them go without any charges, Lee said.
"The police did a good job. They understood everything," he said.
But the experience left the three young men "humiliated and embarrassed," Lee added.
It wasn't the first time he had been racially profiled at the Nordstrom Rack store, Lee said, but that it was the first time police were called.
"Being a young black male you experience certain things, you experience being watched, but no one ever takes it to the next level as much as they did," Taylor told KMOV. "By calling the police."
Lee said that he "felt like everyone was looking at us like we were three young black men doing something negative."
"We were not raised that way," he said. "I feel less than equal."
The teens said that they also had "an encounter" with a female customer at the store who called Taylor a "punk" and told them "are your parents and grandparents proud of you?"
After local media coverage of the incident prompted outrage, Nordstrom Rack's president Geevy Thomas apologized to the three teens and met them along with their families, their attorney, and the NAACP's St. Louis chapter on Tuesday.
"Recently there was a situation in one of our Rack stores that resulted in our employees calling the police," Nordstrom said in a statement provided to BuzzFeed News. "We have guidelines that direct our employees to only call the police in emergency situations. Unfortunately, those guidelines weren’t followed."
After meeting the men, Geevy said the company was conducting a "thorough internal investigation of the actions taken by our employees."
“I feel fortunate to have met these young men and their families," Geevy said in a statement. "I appreciate the opportunity to listen to their concerns and offer our sincere apologies on behalf of Nordstrom."
He also thanked the men for "their poise" in dealing with law enforcement and thanked the police for "handling the situation professionally."
Brentwood police did not return BuzzFeed News' request for comment.
The incident occurred in the wake of backlash against Starbucks and law enforcement after a video of two black men being arrested while waiting for a friend at a Philadelphia Starbucks went viral. The city settled with the men for a symbolic $1 each — and a $200,000 grant to teach entrepreneurship, while Starbucks said it would close more than 8,000 stores and corporate offices in the US one afternoon in May to hold anti–racial bias training.
Adolphus M. Pruitt, the president of the NAACP in St. Louis, said that Nordstrom officials apologized to the three teens and praised them for how they handled the situation.
Pruitt said that the meeting concluded with all parties agreeing to a "continued dialogue with an emphasis on a common desire to prevent incidents of this nature from happening in the future; and the implementation of the things necessary to achieve such."
Videos of a faculty member dragging several black graduates off stage prompted outrage with many saying it was racial discrimination. He has been put on paid leave.
The University of Florida acknowledged Tuesday that students of color were most affected by the actions of an usher who "aggressively and physically" rushed graduates across the stage during commencement this weekend.
"Although students of multiple identities experienced this aggression during a milestone accomplishment for themselves, we urge everyone to acknowledge the added hostile environment created for black students who rightly showed excitement," the university's Black Student Union said in a statement on Monday
The Black Student Union said the most aggression was shown towards Nafeesah Attah and Oliver Telusma, who were trying to perform moves significant to their black Greek organizations and which possessed "rich cultural significance in African symbolism."
"It’s a situation where time and time again the university has made black bodies feel unsafe," Telusma told the Gainesville Sun.
After the ceremony, University of Florida President W. Kent Fuchs apologized in each subsequent ceremony and said that he had personally reached out to the 22 students who were impacted.
The faculty member who served as the usher was put on paid administrative leave pending a review of "appropriate administrative steps," university spokesperson Margot Winick told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday. She did not identify him, citing university policy.
In a campus message Tuesday night, the university acknowledged that the marshal's actions "disproportionately affected students of color and are not in line with UF’s stated institutional values."
"The University of Florida and I failed to provide an appropriate event for all of our students so that they could be celebrated and that they could celebrate their graduations," Fuchs said in the message.
He also apologized that he and other administration officials who were seen sitting on stage during the commencement ceremony did not stop students from being rushed across the stage and from being "physically constrained and pulled."
Fuchs announced the formation of a task force that would provide suggestions on how to "re-conceptualize commencement for students." The university said it was in the final stages of searching for its first chief diversity officer who would serve on the task force along with the senior director of multicultural and diversity affairs.
“All of our students, through their hard work and dedication, have earned their moment to be celebrated," Fuchs said. "This incident is an opportunity to reaffirm our institutional commitment to improving campus climate, while recognizing that we have work to do.”
Syringes are scattered in the remains of a tent city along Division Street in San Francisco.
Eric Risberg / AP
Mark Farrell had just stepped off a train and was walking through San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza when he felt something strange under his foot. He looked down and discovered in horror a discarded syringe stuck to the sole of his shoe.
"It poked the sole of my shoe," said Farrell, who is now the city's interim mayor. "I had a moment of, obviously, a huge scare."
To his relief, the needle hadn't pierced through his shoe — which could have exposed him to a variety of serious diseases — but it was nonetheless a jarring experience.
"It certainly opened my eyes to an issue that was starting to become a major concern on the streets of San Francisco," he told BuzzFeed News. "And anecdotally it’s gotten a lot worse over the last year, combined with our residents' rightful anger over the conditions of our streets."
Open drug use has exploded in San Francisco in recent years, enraging residents who complain of having to step over people injecting heroin in train stations and traverse a seemingly unending series of tent villages on sidewalks and bike paths. The problem has ballooned into a public health crisis, officials say, leaving elected leaders scrambling for solutions as discarded needles pile up in the streets.
The issue has also tested San Francisco's image as a liberal, compassionate urban oasis, and underscores a broader trend in large California cities that have been grappling with rising homelessness and drug view on their streets.
Public drug use in San Francisco was thrust into the spotlight last week when a series of shocking videos uploaded to YouTube showed dozens of drug users, seemingly unaware that they are being filmed, sprawled out in a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station and openly injecting drugs as commuters walk past. Others appeared to be unconscious, laying next to a pool of vomit.
The videos, recorded at the Civic Center station in the heart of San Francisco — not far from where Farrell stepped on a syringe last year — highlight how dealing with drug use and needles has become a daily routine for many of the city's residents.
Farrell said Friday he was meeting with BART officials to address the problem.
Beau Brady, a San Francisco resident and street performer, told BuzzFeed News that he's asked several times a day if he'd like to buy drugs — most often heroin, methamphetamine, or crack cocaine — outside his apartment in the city's Tenderloin neighborhood. Brady, a former heroin and oxycodone user who has been on methodone for the past five years, said he has seen a noticeable increase in open drug use in San Francisco neighborhoods.
"They’re doing it more blatantly now," said Brady, who contended that drug users face few repercussions from law enforcement. "They know they’re not going to get in trouble or get arrested."
Data from the city paints a similarly bleak picture.
According to the San Francisco Department of Public Health, there are about 22,000 intravenous drug users in the city, or about 470 per square mile. Most of those people are using heroin and prescription opioids but the use of methamphetamines is on the rise, said Rachael Kagan, a health department spokesperson.
And while it's unclear if the total number of drug users has increased in recent years, the problem has become more visible. "The general public are having more exposure to this activity," Kagan said.
A graph shows overdose deaths in San Francisco in recent years. Heroin is included in the opioid figures.
San Francisco Department of Public Health
Complaints related to drug use in San Francisco have skyrocketed as well. Between 2008 and 2017, reports of needles and other medical waste on the streets grew from 132 to 6,363 — an increase of nearly 4,800% — according to the city’s database of non-emergency calls.
Complaints about human waste on the streets have also spiked, from 1,748 in 2008, to 20,960 in 2017, a jump of nearly 1,100%. Since 2014, the number of reports has doubled. And complaints about homeless encampments have risen from 315 in 2008 to 42,208 in 2017 — a surge of almost 13,300%.
A man lies on the steps of the Powell St. BART station as evening commuters walk by.
Blake Montgomery / BuzzFeed News
Police regularly respond to reports of drug use and have the option to make arrests, issue citations, or intervene to refer people to various social service resources, San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Robert Rueca told BuzzFeed News. The department has been "cracking down" on open drug use, but has limited resources, he said. "We only have so many officers to police the city."
California law prohibits possession of drugs like heroin. However, the law allows people convicted of "non-violent" drug offenses to receive treatment rather than jail time. And in 2014, voters in the state approved a law that allowed simple possession of drugs such as heroin to be classified as a misdemeanor, rather than a felony. The proposition was endorsed by prominent newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, as well as advocacy groups such as the ACLU.
Rueca said that arresting people with small amounts of drugs is ineffective because they quickly return to the street and the habit, but added it is "challenging to enforce some of these laws when we’re not putting people into custody."
"What’s to keep them from going to the next corner?" he said. "The quick fix would be to just go in with a power wash and clear everyone out, but how long will that last?"
Eric Risberg / AP
Transit officials face similar challenges. Alicia Trost, a BART spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News that the agency has spent $32 million since 2014 on "quality of life" issues that include cleaning up drug use, and is requesting another $1.6 million for the coming year. The agency has stationed attendants in elevators, recently hired 21 new cleaning staffers, and has "community service officers" who patrol station corridors and tell people to move along.
BART police also respond to reports of drug use, but the agency faces limited resources, as well as people who "come right back" after being ordered to leave, Trost said.
"Our system’s so big we can’t have an officer 24-7 in every hallway and every car," she added.
The reasons for the explosion in open drug use are varied, but Kagan pointed to increased real estate development in the city as one potential factor. In the past, she said, drug users might have squatted in abandoned buildings or empty lots — places that would have kept drugs out of sight from general public. But today, San Francisco's red hot real estate market means those properties are disappearing, pushing drug users into public spaces like BART stations and city sidewalks.
"People who shoot up in public don’t want to be doing that," Kagan said. "It’s very stressful. It’s embarrassing. There’s a lot of stigma."
The reports of waste and encampments, which vastly outpaced the city's relatively modest population growth, point to the growing number of people who live on the street in San Francisco. And while not all of those who are homeless are also drug users, officials who spoke with BuzzFeed News said there is a relationship between the two issues.
"We need to work on the symptoms," Farrell said. "That includes our homeless population and the drug abuse we’re seeing on the streets. We have to be comprehensive in our approach if we’re going to solve this issue long term."
A man lies on a San Francisco sidewalk.
Ben Margot / AP
Lara Brooks, a vice president at the San Francisco AIDS Foundation, said the Bay Area's rising housing costs have likely contributed to the growing problems of public drug use and homelessness.
"It’s well known that housing is a challenge especially in San Francisco, and in the Bay Area more generally, and that does have a profound impact," she said. "Sometimes those lead to health disparities."
Though these problems have become particularly visible in San Francisco, the city is not alone in facing problems related to drugs and homelessness, and areas across the US are struggling with an opioid crisis.
Down the California coast, in Orange County, a vast homeless encampment stretched for miles along a riverside bike path. When officials eventually cleared the encampment in March, they reportedly found more than 13,000 used syringes and 5,000 pounds of human waste.
In San Diego County, the combination of drugs and homelessness turned deadly last year when an outbreak of hepatitis A eventually killed 20 people. A county spokesperson said that the majority of people who contracted the disease during the outbreak had been "homeless and/or illicit drug users."
Hepatitis outbreaks also affected Los Angeles and Santa Cruz counties last year, with officials stating that one of the at-risk groups were users of illegal drugs.
Last week, the union representing employees of the California Department of Transportation filed a grievance over what it described as hazardous conditions cleaning up waste from encampments. One union member told the Sacramento Bee that he had been exposed to blood, needles, and feces.
A homeless encampment stretches along a riverside bike path in Orange County.
The situation has fueled frustration and anger across California cities, including in San Francisco.
"I hear about it every single day from friends, visitors, people contacting our staff at our office," Farrell said. "These issues are no secret."
In response, Farrell has vowed to fight the problem. The same week that the videos were uploaded to YouTube showing open drug use in the BART station, Farrell announced plans aimed at getting syringes off the streets. Those plans involve using almost $13 million over two years to hire dozens of new street cleaning workers and expanding various facilities in the city.
"I’m fed up with it," Farrell told BuzzFeed News. "And I’ve made it a priority as mayor to fix the issue."
To that end, officials cleared an encampment in the city's Mission District last week, though some homeless advocates have criticized how the disbandment was handled, the San Francisco Examiner reported.
"San Francisco will continue to be a compassionate city," Farrell said when asked about push back to clearing encampments. "But our city also should be safe for visitors for families for children."
Other solutions are on the table as well. San Francisco, for example, is one of four in the US that has expressed interest in opening safe injection spaces for drug users.
The spaces would be connected to existing treatment facilities, which Kagan said when coupled with programs that provide clean syringes can actually cut down on the number of discarded needles in public, as well as reduce the number of people dying from overdoses.
"We feel as a city that we do need to do more," Kagan said. "There is a crisis."
Southern Charm star Thomas Ravenel is being investigated for rape in Charleston, South Carolina, police confirmed Tuesday.
A 43-year-old woman filed a report Monday alleging she was raped by the Bravo reality TV star at his Charleston home in early January 2015, according to the city's police department.
The new allegations against Ravenel, 55, come weeks after real estate agent Ashley Perkins tweeted that her mother, Debbie Holloway Perkins, was sexually assaulted by Ravenel at his home on Dec. 25, 2015. Ashley also tweeted photos that she said were of her mother’s bruised and cut wrists, injuries she said her mother suffered during the alleged assault.
Perkins told BuzzFeed that her mother was sexually assaulted by Ravenel after the two met on Tinder and went on a date on Christmas Day.
Ashley said her mother did not report the assault to police, but instead contacted famed attorney Gloria Allred, and subsequently reached a confidential settlement with Ravenel for $200,000 that barred her speaking publicly about the case.
Allred would not comment on the matter, but another attorney, Ashley Strong, confirmed that she conducted the initial in-person screening of Perkins' claims on Allred's behalf. Strong, however, would not discuss any details regarding Perkins' case, citing attorney-client privilege.
Ashley said she began speaking out after she realized she was not covered by her mother's nondisclosure agreement. She added that she was "thrilled" to learn that a woman was brave enough to report her assault to the police.
After learning of the allegations, Bravo began conducting their own investigation into Ravenel. A representative from Bravo confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the company and Southern Charm's production company are currently investigating Ravenel's activities.
Ravenel’s attorney, Richard P. Terbrusch, did not immediately respond to BuzzFeed News' request for comment. However, Ravenel’s legal team has previously said that, as a celebrity, he has become a target for someone who has "dubious motivations."
Ravenel, a wealthy real estate developer who was once a rising force in South Carolina politics, was the state's treasurer until he was indicted in 2007 for distribution of cocaine. In 2008, he was sentenced to 10 months in federal prison.
Ravenel has primary custody of his two young children with Kathryn Dennis, who is also on Southern Charm. The former couple have engaged in a vicious legal battle over custody, which has partly played out on the show, with Ravenel prevailing because of Dennis' past drug problems.
Researchers are said to kill 100 kittens each year before they are even 3 months old as part of a government experiment, even though the kittens are perfectly healthy.
White Coat Waste Project
The US government is conducting a taxpayer-funded experiment where it feeds dozens of kittens infected meat, monitors them, and then kills them and burns their bodies, even though most of the cats are perfectly healthy, according to a watchdog group.
The anti-animal research group White Coat Waste Project says it obtained information about the tests being conducted on the kittens through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The experiments being conducted at a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) laboratory in Beltsville, Maryland, kills 100 kittens a year, according to the nonprofit.
The group informed Michigan Rep. Mike Bishop, a Republican defender of animal rights, who on Monday sent a letter to Agricultural Secretary Sonny Purdue to ask what was going on in the lab.
In his letter, Bishop said he was shocked to find out that the government is treating "the life of animals with such contempt."
“I’m shocked and disturbed that for decades the USDA—the very organization charged with enforcing animal welfare laws—has been unnecessarily killing hundreds of kittens in expensive and inefficient lab experiments," Bishop said in a press release.
White Coat Waste Project
The experiment is being conducted by the USDA's Animal Parasitic Diseases Laboratory, which is tasked with developing protocols to make food safer for humans and animals.
The experiment's current protocol was approved in 2015, according to Bishop, and it has been going on ever since.
However, Bishop said a review of the documents shows that "this research has been conducted at the USDA since at least 1982."
The current experiment uses 100 kittens each year, all of which are killed at the end of the experiment before they are even 3 months old. It's unknown how many kittens in total have been killed.
The 100 kittens are bred, brought to the lab, then fed raw meat infected with Toxoplasma, or parasites. Researchers then collect the kittens' feces for two to three weeks, in order to extract the parasites to study further.
However most, if not all, of the kittens don't get sick. Even if they do, the condition is easily treatable with antibiotics.
Despite this, the kittens are killed at the end of the experiment, according to the documents.
"[The USDA] kills, bags and incinerates the kittens like they’re trash," the White Coat Waste Project said.
Bishop's letter asks a series of questions to Purdue about the experiment, including how many kittens have died and why the agency does not explore adoption for the animals.
The USDA did not return a request for comment from BuzzFeed News.
The UK's Queen Victoria is largely responsible for beginning the tradition of brides wearing white wedding dresses.
WIkimedia Commons /
When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha on February 10, 1840, she sparked a bridal fashion revolution. Her white silk satin gown, trimmed with lace and embroidered with orange flower blossoms, was a huge departure from the ornate, colorful dresses that were the current trend among brides rich and poor. The image of the young, innocent, adoring queen in her all-white dress — which was widely disseminated by the burgeoning print media — captured the public imagination.
"Newspaper reports, affordable prints and souvenirs ensured that all levels of society were exposed to this model of romantic propriety," writes fashion historian Susanna Cordner. "While coloured wedding dresses were still common, the majority of the illustrations of blushing brides on fashion plates, Valentines cards and sheet music from then on were depicted wearing white. As a result, if a bride was marrying for the first time, and could afford it, a white wedding dress became the norm."
One of the largest royal weddings was that of Lesotho's King Letsie III and Anna Karabo Motšoeneng in 2000 — the ceremony took place in the country's national football stadium, which was filled to capacity with 40,000 spectators.
Marc Deville / Getty Images
King Letsie III, 36, married South Africa's Karabo Motsoeneng, 23, in a Catholic ceremony performed in the national sports stadium on Feb. 18, 2000. Motšoeneng, who became known as Queen 'Masenate Mohato Seeiso after her wedding, was the first commoner to ever marry into Lesotho's royal family. The wedding reportedly cost more than $1.5 million at the time.
For more than one hundred years, Russian tsars picked their brides in a process pretty similar to "The Bachelor."
Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons
From 1505 to 1689, the wives of the rulers of Muscovy (later Russia) were chosen using "bride-shows," where eligible young women were rounded up, inspected, and eventually one would be chosen as a royal bride.
This process came about for several reasons, among them the fact royal families of Europe were reluctant to send their daughters to the far-off land. Bride-shows also allowed rulers to pacify warring court factions with the appearance of political impartiality, even if the "winner" had been chosen in advance.
Behind-the-scenes sabotage was common. In 1616, the hand-picked bride of Tsar Michael I of Russia was poisoned to make her appear ill and unable to bear children — the disappointed ruler exiled her to Siberia and married a runner-up his mother had approved.
The future Queen Elizabeth II used clothing ration coupons to pay for the wedding dress she wore when she married Philip Mountbatten in the UK in 1947.
/ AFP / Getty Images
When then-Princess Elizabeth married Philip Mountbatten on Nov. 20, 1947, post-World War II Britain was still subject to austerity measures. To buy cloth or new clothes, people had to use clothing ration coupons. Each citizen was given a coupon book with a certain number of coupons based on their age and other factors — growing children were allocated more coupons, for example — for the year.
Princess Elizabeth saved her coupons to purchase the ivory silk and other materials that court dressmaker Sir Norman Hartnell used to create her wedding gown. When people found out that the princess was saving clothes coupons for her wedding, many reportedly sent their own coupons to Buckingham Palace for her to use (they were returned with a kind note, as it was illegal to use someone else's coupons).
Of course, being a princess and heir to the throne had its perks — the government gave her an extra 200 coupons for her wedding dress.
The traditional kira worn by Jetsun Pema on the day of her wedding to Bhutan's King Jigme Khesar in 2010 took three years to make.
Paula Bronstein / Getty Images
The kira, an ankle-length wrapped dress, is the national garb for Bhutanese women. On her wedding day, Pema wore a particular type of kira known as a kushutara, made of raw silk. The 21 year-old bride reportedly ordered elaborate wedding outfits from several of the country's prominent weavers.
When 24-year-old Salma Bennani married Morocco's King Mohamed VI in 2002, she became the first consort in the country's history to be given an official royal title.
Getty Images
The wedding of King Mohamed VI and Salma Bennani on March 21, 2002, marked a huge change in Morroccan Royal Family history. The bride, now known as Her Royal Highness, Princess Lalla Salma, became the first consort in the royal family's history to be given an official title. Wives of previous Morroccan kings, including Mohamed VI's mother, were simply referred to as "mothers of the royal children."
Public Domain / Wikimedia Commons
When Elizabeth Bowes Lyon married the future King George VI in 1923, her wedding ring was made from a portion of a nugget of pure Welsh gold from the Clogau St. David's gold mine that had been given to the couple as a wedding gift.
It must have been a pretty big lump of gold — according to the BBC, "the Queen's in 1947, Princess Margaret's in 1960, the Princess Royal's in 1973 and that of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1981 were all made from the same nugget."
Queen Elizabeth II was gifted with a new nugget of Welsh gold in 1981 for future royal wedding rings. Gold from this metal lump has been used for the wedding rings of Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, in 2005 and the wedding ring Prince William gave to Kate Middleton in 2011.
Torsten Laursen / Getty Images
The "cameo tiara," originally a gift from Napoleon to his wife Empress Josephine, has been worn by brides of the Swedish royal family since 1932. Its most recent appearance was at the wedding of Crown Princess Victoria to Daniel Westling on June 19, 2010.
American actress Grace Kelly's "wedding of the century" to Prince Rainier III of Monaco in 1956 was televised live to 30 million people and made into a documentary as part of a deal the royal couple struck with MGM studios.
AP Images
When Grace Kelly became engaged to Prince Rainier III of Monaco in January 1956, she still had three years left on her seven-year contract with MGM. The studio agreed to release her from her contract — and throw in what would prove to be an iconic wedding dress as a gift — if she and her fiancé gave them the rights to film their wedding ceremony for a documentary and a live televised broadcast. The royal couple agreed, but would later describe their wedding day as exhausting — Kelly was known to refer to it as "the carnival of the century.'
MGM dispatched teams of professionals to Monaco to ensure that everything — from the lighting to the position of the cameras that would capture the couple taking their vows — was perfect. Years later, one of Kelly's bridesmaids joked, "the day, like the bride-to-be herself, was a creation brought to us through the joint production efforts of enormous willpower, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and God.”
Under Japanese law, if a princess marries a commoner, she loses her royal status and is removed from the imperial family.
Pool / Getty Images
The most recent example of this was the marriage of Sayako, Princess Nori, the youngest daughter of Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, to a government official named Yoshiki Kuroda in 2005.
On her wedding day, the 36-year-old lost her title and royal allowance to become Mrs. Sayako Kuroda. She reportedly had to learn how to drive and practiced shopping before her wedding. Princesses who leave the Imperial Family to become ordinary citizens also gain the ability to vote and pay taxes.
